"Aw," The ferret violinist chuckled and waved a paw, flushing slightly herself. "You're too kind, Miss Furotazzi. We're merely humble performers with a love for the game."
"And 'tis fair easy to be better than that slop," the big vixen said. "That's fah certain!"
"Now you rest assured, m'dam," said Satira, her blue eyes twinkling as she looked Marianna over. "We'll keep in touch. Won't we, gang?"
The Cravat Thieves responded with a chorus of verbal agreement, polite applause and nodding heads.
It all seemed to be going swimmingly, until an older rat in a red and green tricorn hat and matching dinner jacket stepped out of the restroom.
His sleeves were rolled up, and he was holding a complex apparatus of tubes and wires fixed to a box loudly labeled BULLY HARBOR MUNITIONS CO.
The rat froze as he walked into the crowded room.
"Oh." he said.
"Er," said the vixen. "What is that?"
The door leading into the hall suddenly slammed so aggressively open the rat and all the Cravat Thieves jumped and a full-size portrait of Miles S. Mistoffelees, least weasel ex-Minister of Niceties and celebrated tenor singer and Opera House sweetheart, toppled from the wall.
So enters Drummond Crayfish Grogg.
"What in the name of Amadeus is happening right now?" Satira managed to stutter, nearly dropping the violin nestled in the crook of her arm. "Who the Hell are you?" she asked the rat. She turned to the corpulent and impressively filthy stoat then. "And who the Hell are you? How did you even get in here?"
"The Bouillabaisse 'Arbor Opera 'Ouse is closed tah bums!" said the muscular vixen in the valet uniform loudly to the intrusive stoat.
"Er, I'm just, er... delivering a prop..." said the handsomely-dressed rat nervously. "For The Golden Voyage..."
Outside, the Third Act could be heard starting with a sudden and very thunderous rumble of drums that would no doubt shake anyone dozing in the audience quite violently from their seats.
The actor playing Admiral Eldon continued his dedicated attempt at making the subpar song lyrics work, using the full range of his impressive pipes.
"Oohh, and what is this strange place, I see,
Surrounded by death and catastrophe?
Red walls, bloody waaalls,
Boys, be on thy guaaard!"
"We've got yore back, Admiral Eldon!" a ferret cried, waving aloft a wood cutlass.
Eldon's foot moved quickly, catching the ferret right in the ankle.
"Yeeowch!" the ferret cried, nearly toppling off the stage. "I- I mean-
"O Admiral Eldon, come what may,
We shalt have thy back, sir, in the fray.
Fret not, O Admiral, fret not a hair,
For we're bold Imperial sailors who don't fight fair!"
The rat and weasel behind him joined in as two, singing pure nonsense as penned by playwright Eventus Candelabra and in the Opera House tradition as popularized by Q. Amadeus Beetleborb.
The rat was an excellent bass singer and an abysmal actor named Waldo R. Carbuncle, the weasel an alto with talent in nearly everything but the art of restraint.
Her name was Emiline Fondulio, twin sister of celebrated mime Fontessa Fondulio, inventor of the game-changing Invisible Banana Peel that unfortunately took the lives of several lesser mimes who were propeled into traffic, down open manholes, into the sea, and in one case, directly onto an executioner's block for violating anti-slippage laws.
The voice of Emiline Fondulio was infamous for perforating eardrums, shattering glass, and occasionally sending smaller creatures airborne.
Waldo, for his part, adjusted his tone in an attempt to match her intensity, lightly shaking the whole foundation of the U-shaped ampitheatre and breaking an Insanely Rich carriage into tiny little pieces as it pulled up outside, leaving a be-suited gentlestoat blinking dazedly on the cobblestones, dusted with wood shards and clenching a mouthful of paper and tobacco that was once a cigar.
