So a good portion of this chapter will be dedicated to a story I've been thinking about for a while but I'm not sure will ever get written down in it's complete form, but the point of this 'flashback' is showing perhaps the worst thing about Wrangler society that they can and will erase the memories of humans sometimes completely wipe out their former identities and brainwash them into new personalities and more then death, Edward feared that if the Wranglers recaptured him after he was freed from his previous brainwashing and decided to join the Federation that they would destroy all the wipe his memory of all the times with his Humanimal friends and his wife Minsk and would brainwash him harder than ever into a merciless hunter who would not be broken free of his conditioning again, to me the real gut punch in Cordwainter Smith's The Dead Lady of Clown Town is not the death of D'joan which is actually a fullfillement but that her human friends Elaine and the Hunter have to have their memories erased and totally forget the events of the story feels like all that character development flushed down the toilet if it weren't for the fact at the end they still seem nice to the Underpeople as seen with the elephant-man who gives them a gift of fruit and when he mentions D'joan they say they wish they could have known her, but to me it really does seem like this personality rewriting really is a fate worse than death as your memories make up who you are, and if in an afterlife loved ones can be reunited, how can destroying a previous personality complicate that?

Now dressed in his Riddler costume, he actually had to recreate it as he had burned his first costume when he thought he had killed Batman but in the town the Rogues had been sent to on Planet Alderbaren had quite a few fancy tailor shops and other places for fancy attire seemed to be leftover when that planet was a more repectable place, with Jonathan and Jervis' help as the first Riddler costume was mostly bought and this time the new costume had to be mostly made from scratch he remade his costume, it wasn't really even to commit crimes, the Rogues had developed a sort of...Psychological need for their costumes, in this new world of danger they felt braver when wearing them, in donning their costumes they felt no longer like mere humans but they had truly become the characters' they had built up in their minds and yeah you could say that it was pure palcebo, that it was really just a 'magic feather' but just like a cat puffs itself up to look bigger the costumes did serve to make them look not like ordinary humans and their Alderbaren neighbors feared them for that reason.

As the ordinery Wrangler citizens were panicking because of the Blinking and were mostly running around like chickens with their heads cut off, Riddler was amazed how he was able to run right past them and nobody so much as looked his way, but he knew where to go, he had been informed beforehand of the secret passageways and backroads the Humanimals took, as he began taking this winding path to the palce, so much reminding him of the Riddle of the Minotaur Maze he had subjected Batman and Robin too during his first misadventure as the Riddler his mind as he began thinking about what he would say and do when he finally reached Lady Gloria and Lord Sean, he thought to a story his son shared with him, a misadventure that happened very shortly after he had become an official member of the Fellowship herd, that a few weeks after officially joining Matoaka got a psychic distriss message from her Uncle the Shaman Fossil seemed some important Humanimal was being held prisoner in the Royal Family's Vacation Castle on their own private island (This was later to be revealed to have been a trap, that this lady Velociraptor was in no way particurally importnant but they pressured her to send the psychic distress call to Fossil who became smitten by the lovely female of his own species, and thus he pressured the greatest heroes of his race to take a dangerous trip to the heart of enemy territory just to save a pretty face) too late did they realize it was a trap and it was utter Pandemonium as the Fellowship crew was scattered every which way, until finally the Queen Lady Gloria herselfd caught Edward Green and Minsk alone, and at that moment the Younger Edward shielded his beloved Mink-Wife with his body begging to his mother that she kill him and not her, and that he would rather die than go back to what he once was, the big strong man like him reduced to blubbering like a baby...For a few moments Lady Gloria stomped around furiously than she decided to whip her Son with a switch like when he was a child, Edward took his punishment without one word of complaint and then finally she told him to take his Humanimal bride out of here, and at that point all the Fellowship crew had been captured but she had them all let go, but she would have the Royal Soldiers laugh and mock and jeer at the disgraced former prince as he carried Minsk who was still so frightened she was unable to walk. Afterward his backside still smarting from the whipping Edward went to his new captain expecting a real dressing down at the very least, but instead the Captain quietly confessed that she had accidentially them to a fool's errand and seemed she was actually furious with her Uncle for sending them into a trap to rescue someone he just had a crush on and that he actually probably had saved their lives.

He went back to Minsk to apologize but instead she said "I've been thinking, I realized that actually it was within your Mother's rights by Wrangler law to destroy you one way of another but thinking about what happened it seems...It seems she let you go because she loves you and wants you to be happy, to appease her Fellow Wranglers she had to publically say she disowned you and gave you that whipping but seems her love for you is greater than her hatred for my kind."

And Edward suddenly felt like a very stupid little boy, and he clutched his hair and cried "Oh Mother! Mother!" And seemed to everyone his voice seemed higher pitched that moment like he had temporarily regained a teenager's voice he realized in that moment his Mother really did love him and so she let him go live with the enemy she saw he loved that Humanimal and while she herself couldn't understand it, because she herself deep down was a hopeless romantic she let him have his way, Edward had come realize in hindsight his family may have set that trap for the Fellowship crew as revenge for capturing and deprogramming their son, but seeing his was truly happy on the other side they decided it was worth putting national security at risk...Thinking about that tale as he was making his way to the palace, Edward Nygma was beginning to feel Gloria was beginning to realize that the fact she had to make that choice probably meant that she was the one who was the villain that she actually wasn't fighting to preserve human dignity instead she was upholding an unjust system that was harming both races.

Meanwhile deep in the Downdeep-Downdeep, Don couldn't take anymore of the wooly outfit and was stripping off his city machanic outfit when he heard a soft femminine voice go "OH!"

He looked to the other entrence and saw standing there a Green Dragon-Girl, this one a European or 'Fire Dragon' as opposed to his Water Dragon wife, she wasas twice as tall as a human woman, bright emerald green scale with two short yellow horns on her head and of course the spade on the end of her tail which Eastern Water Dragon don't have, Belladonna had a bushy tuft of indigo fur at the end of her tail which might be mistaken for a spade if it was really dark...Or you had 20/200 vision. She seemed to be wearing a Waitress outfit

"I'm sorry." The Dragon-Girl said "Am I interupting something?"

"I'm sorry." Don said "Where I come from, I...Usually don't wear clothes on my world and down here I feared I was about to get heat stroke so I had to take my clothes off. I'm Don, what's your name?"

"Emerald." The Dragon-Girl didn't want to be rude but it was hard to not stare to bulgling muscles that the Native Turtle Humanimals could only dream of, no offense to the Native Turtle Men but compared to them this Turtle seemed like an Adonis!

Don chuckled "I can see why they call you that! Even in this red hot place you seem to bring in the greenery of spring!"

And Emerald chuckled "Flatterer..."

'Unfortunatly that's the most poetic I seem to be able to get in this lyrical place...' Don thought to himself as he turned and pulled something he had been storing in his outfit's sleeve, as Bumble had been leading him through the Downdeep-Downdeep, Humanimals practuically threw themselves at him and asked Don if there was anything he wanted while he was here, after some thought Don asked "Do you by any chance have a lengh of purple ribbon about this long?" he showed with his hands how long he wanted it.

They responded they had retrieved from the human's trash ribbons in any color you could imagine

And Don told him he just wanted a replacement for his mask revealing he actually felt kind of naked without his ninja mask.

And the Humanimals giggled at just how humble a request it was, many of them talking amongst themselves about how if it had been them they would have requested something delicious to eat or drink and Don felt great pity feeling that, that was probably their low blood sugar talking these poor wretches of the deep underground, hearing the various things they would have requested he knew these were the words of the overworked and bordering on malnourished rather than gluttonous like when Mikey started daydreaming about food.

So this is just a thing I've been thinking about in regards to the 2003 Turtles and also the Riddler how their masks give them a 'white eye' look I like to watch zoology videos and have learned about Neoteny or keeping of juvinile features in an adult animal, it is why domestic pets are so much cuter than their wild counterparts a large factor in what humans find cute his big eyes and I had been wondering if for character like the 2003 Turtles and BTAS Riddler we like they way their eyes look with their masks on because it makes their eyes look bigger thus making them look cuter