The dragon brothers sat at the table together for the experiment's debrief. "If it makes you feel any better," Lottie explained, "neither of you were able to go five minutes without eating the marshmallow."
A breath of relief slipped past both their jaws as Ibnoxe and Holoxe shared a shameful glance.
"I had cameras set-up in both rooms—" she started to explain, but neither of them let her finish.
"You were spying on us?" Holoxe blurted out.
"Why bother with all that?" Ibnoxe asked.
"I was curious how you two would respond, especially given your identical genes and similar upbringings. There's actually a surprising genetic influence on behavior, like twins raised apart who end up with lots of commonalities in their life."
The dragon brothers had already discovered that much for themselves. "We do think really similar," Ibnoxe said, "though I think Holoxe is a bit more clever. He came up with our secret tail flick which we used to find each other and communicate at Grandesia Power Company." For whatever reason, Ibnoxe explained this to Lottie with a tone of great pride in his voice. It felt good to brag about how awesome his brother was to her.
"I did, but it was your idea to save Lottie and have me chase after the Disco Menace—I mean Victoria.." Holoxe fell silent and looked away sheepishly rather quickly. While this was certainly something that Holoxe could use to emphasize how cool Ibnoxe was—and indeed, Lottie viewed him as her hero—it sounded wrong to say that Holoxe had not thought to save her.
"We were trying to be creative that night," Ibnoxe concluded. "And we did manage to think of some different things."
Lottie nodded along, happy to listen to their stories. Once they had concluded, she continued to tell them her nerdy fun facts. "Additionally, people tend to adopt some qualities of the personalities around them. It's a common saying that you're most like the three people you spend the most time around." Three of her fingers stuck in the air.
"You, Holoxe… and the vuls! That's who I spend most of my time around," Ibnoxe blurted out. While he knew the vuls did not count
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Quieter, Holoxe took longer to respond with his own three biggest influences. At last, he admitted as he was staring down at his claws, "I've spent more time around Victoria than you, Lottie. Of course, Ibnoxe is the one I'm with the most!" Holoxe added hastily. "Is that a bad thing?"
Charlotte's chin bobbed in a solemn nod. "Especially for sub-dragons, I think it's important for you to be mindful of who you associate around. As part of my research, I also learned more about your brain structure. It's a bit different than full humans…."
While Ibnoxe and Holoxe knew that they were different and felt furthest from the human half of their identity, the way Lottie put this suddenly struck a chord of fear in them. They did not want their nature as sub-dragons to make them sub-human too.
"The limbic system is relatively larger in the sub-dragon brain compared to the prefrontal cortex. The relatively smaller prefrontal cortex means your individual personality expression will be a bit weaker—since the part of the brain handles that. The colloquial name for the limbic system is 'lizard brain', the part of the brain which handles basic survival instincts. It makes you more inclined to seek pleasure and avoid pain."
"Interesting." Given that quality of sub-dragons, Ibnoxe wondered why sub-dragons were a favorite choice for private militarized forces among the mega-conglomerates. I bet were cheap to mass produce and easy to control. Even if the sub-dragons despised combat and training, they could be coaxed to do it so long as they had adequate rewards. I suppose our survival instincts might even make us better in combat situations, to an extent.
"I think that explains a lot—how we were able to stay complacent at the company for so long," Holoxe mused aloud.
Charlotte reached a sympathetic hand to each of their claws, but flinched after holding Ibnoxe's hand for longer than a second. Soon thereafter, she drew her hand away from Holoxe as well, but she was looking away from Ibnoxe as she was blushing. "I just wanted you both to be aware of this going forward. If you're cognizant of this and make good habits to make long term plan—another function of the prefrontal cortex—I think you'll be all the better off for it."
As much as Ibnoxe appreciated the positive twist on this, he shared a grim look with Holoxe. It felt like the dragon brothers could never truly escape what they were, a product of an experiment that left their brains not even functioning as well as human brains might.
"Don't look so glum," Lottie shouted. "I have a theory! Would you like to try the marshmallow experiment again?"
"Okay!" Ibnoxe and Holoxe said. Already, their lizard brain was taking over. The serious conversation which they were just having with Lottie disappeared from their minds. Instead, the dragon brothers looked forward to a second marshmallow.