Meanwhile, in the back section of the building, in surgery room C...

Willy is busily being extremely vocal about his displeasure about being forced to wear a cone of shame. Up until Natalie snuck it around him and velcroed it shut, he had been happily exploring the parts of the automated surgical equipment which are exposed in accessible locations for him, all brought abruptly to a halt by this cruel act of betrayal.

Lucas's sympathy is expressed in the direct opposite fashion of what Willy would have wanted, via him pulling his phone out to take pictures while laughing so hard he's started crying, all while poor Willy keeps pitifully double-barking at him.

Dan's assistance isn't needed for translation, the intent behind his "HOW DARE YOU!?" pairings of barks proves to be fairly self-evident.

Being unaware of the fact that Willy is genuinely intelligent, and wasn't just being a normal dog sniffing around the area, Natalie has managed to get a firm hold on the gangly pupper and brought him over to the table in the center of the room, getting ready to strap him in place.

Watching her awkwardly lifting Willy onto the table, Lucas finally interjects, but still continues laughing quite a bit between words.

"Oh, heh, actually he knows what's going on, you don't gotta manhandle 'em like that. Snrk, come on buddy, lie down and show her." Even though Willy is quite cross with everyone involved, he does cooperate as a demonstration of his understanding. He makes a point of keeping his back to Lucas as much as possible though. If a dog could go "hmph" and cross its arms while pouting, that's exactly what he would be doing right now.

Natalie was already impressed enough when Willy shifted over and laid down in the correct location, but she is outright shocked when he even willingly slips his paws into the loops that are attached to the table to help hold his legs in place.

Strapping each of the loops closed as per protocol, she does make a conscious effort to close them more loosely than normal.

"Well, that's... Oh, were you laughing so hard because he's so well behaved that he doesn't even need the cone to stop him from chewing on the insertion site afterward? Wait, you could have stopped me then!" As Natalie comes to realize the truth of the situation, Willy turns his head as best as he can in order to look at her and gives one resolute bark in her direction.

This, of course, just makes Lucas start laughing all over again.

Sighing lightly, Natalie puts her hands on her hips and turns to face Lucas straight on.

"Well, while you're having fun mocking him, did you at least pick where you want his chip?" Even though she tries to take on a scolding tone, she's not only smiling, but she also looks like she's having trouble not joining in the laughter as well.

Pausing a moment to wipe the tears away from the corners of his eyes with one hand and putting away his phone with the other, he chuckles one last time before answering.

"Eh, I figure he'd just pick it out himself. Where'd ya want it, buddy?" In response to Lucas's query, Willy lifts the hind leg that previously held his last chip, waving it around a bit within the limited scope of movements he has remaining thanks to being strapped in place.

"OMG wait, he completely understands!?" As Natalie realizes that Willy wasn't simply following commands or is merely well behaved, she freezes in place for a moment. Without giving her much time to soak in her newfound knowledge, Willy gives one exasperated bark in answer.

"Why didn't anyone tell meee!? I'm sorry, that dumb cone must be so insulting!" Regretting treating him like a normal animal, Natalie immediately rushes over and undoes the velcro holding the cone in place and takes it off of him. Getting a thankful and triumphant bark in response, Willy's tail starts wagging rapidly.

Feeling inspired, Natalie turns towards Lucas with a huge grin. He looks at her in confusion for a moment before she lunges at him and barely manages to get the cone loosely strapped around his neck in punishment.

"Wha-HEY!" Thanks to superior limb flexibility and the intrinsic advantage of opposable thumbs, Lucas is able to promptly remove the cone from himself, but that brief moment was already enough to greatly lift Willy's spirits.

The rhythmic thumping from his happily wagging tail smacking into the table serves as a backing track to his delighted bark of approval, followed by joyful panting.

[You totally deserved it. If anything, you should have worn it as long as Willy had to.]

'Hey! Though, I'm kinda surprised it even was able to sorta fit?'

[Have you forgotten how large some breeds of canines can grow to be?]

'...There really are some huge borkers out there, isn't there?'

[...]

"Okay, okay, enough of that. Let's get this over with. What else we gotta do?" As Lucas tries to cut things short, he tosses the disassembled cone back at Natalie. Once she catches it, she goes over to a display screen set in the side of some of the elaborate machinery near the table that Willy is obediently strapped onto.

"Just gotta do the prelim scan, use that to tell it where to put the chip in, and it'll do the rest. Here we go... Ah, you may wanna close your eyes, Willy." As Natalie enters in a few commands using buttons under the display, there's a whirring noise as some of the equipment comes to life. A multi-jointed arm unfolds and a narrow bar attached to it lights up, slowly scanning along the curves of Willy's form with a bright laser, a low hum sounding out from its efforts.

The display shows in real-time the results of the scan, slowly filling in the black and green grid with contour lines showing a wire-frame outline of Willy's body. Roughly 60% of the way through the scan it freezes in place, Natalie kicks the central device twice before it all resumes working properly again.

"Sorry, don't let that spook you though. The actual important bits are regularly updated, but corporate can't be arsed to fund replacements on 'still functional non-hazardous components'." Trying to calm Lucas and/or Willy with her words, she still lets out a small sigh of frustration.

Seeing that it seems to be going about the rest of its business properly, she walks over to slide the ID chip she carried in, static-shielding case and all, into a small opening on another section of the machinery filling a large portion of the room. Tapping it a few times to make sure it's soundly in position, she heads back over to the display that Lucas has been absentmindedly watching.

'This thing's kinda cool. Like, sure I've seen stuff that could come up with a map like this, but it would take a helluva lot more time and effort. Nuttin' you could expect a dog to just sit through, even tied down.'

[Frankly, knowing some of the things she designed when she was only eleven, Miss Calculated could probably design a better version in her sleep. The problem would be getting the materials to experiment with, and then everything you'd need to assemble the final design.]

'...You weren't kidding when you said there's no such thing as enough money when a researcher is involved.'

[...I may have been speaking from experience.]

'HA!'

-----

Lucas kills this chapter: 0

Lucas total kills: 7

Lucas deaths this chapter: 0

Lucas total deaths: 10

Lucas current GDV: 8.98

Lucas's fame level: 2.75* (Mostly just local)

Lucas's hero suspicion level: 1.5* (Only highly paranoid people)

Jonathan kills this chapter: 0

Jonathan total kills: 5

Jonathan deaths this chapter: 0

Jonathan total deaths: 2

Jonathan current GDV: 2.00

Jonathan's fame level: 1.75* (Just local)

Jonathan's hero suspicion level: 1* (Only highly paranoid people)

Supervillain social circle size: 10

-----

Little character theater:

Jonathan is fully engaged in story-time once more, hearing all about some of the nonsense the sisters got into early after the conclusion of the war. It shouldn't be a surprise that the funniest events were all planned by Miss Chievous.

Willy, bored enough that he yawned and messed up the scan for his head, causing an amusingly spherical shape in the display until the program realized that's probably not right and re-scanned the area.

Lucas's wandering attention keeps finding Natalie's chest to be the exclusive thing of interest in the room, though he at least has the decency to not outright stare.

427, feeling embarrassed in advance, expecting Lucas's line of sight to be noticed and deciding now is the time to provide an entertaining distraction: [So uh, while we've been gone, Miss Masher has been telling Jonathan...]

Author, smiling softly: Thank you 427, I was gonna have to make him get in trouble if he kept it up.

Mr. Quacks, curious to see how his majestic figure would appear on the scanner's display: Quack..?