I love this Sphinx. I love her so much I'm posting the original design here:

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[Transcript]

        Lieutenant Councilman Serge, decorated veteran of the recent Hitball Incident, erroneously took the silent stares of his superiors to mean he had the floor, and so he rose up from his seat, rotating the hand he’d raised into a smart salute.

        “Mr. President,” said Serge. “Query: regarding Clause 3 of Subparagraph 6, on Page 321 of the bill on the floor for debate—”

        “Objection!” scoffed an irritated Barrister. “Who, pray tell, whispered a single word about DEBATE?! The only thing that should be on the floor is YOU, Lieutenant Serge, in supplication to your LIEGE!” He waved a hand at Cody. “This public servant is your KING!”

        “...If there is no need for debate, General Barrister,” interrupted the President, “then perhaps I’ll cut your club... or maybe I’ll cut YOU.” He flashed the blade concealed within his cane. “One taxes the budget; the other, my patience. Would you care to lobby for the choice that you prefer?”

        “W-WELL!” stammered Barrister, tugging at his collar. “Such may be my right as your constituent, but, er... I’ve never had the constitution for exercising much of anything, let alone its First Amendment, so please feel free to tread on me, milord.”

        “And isn’t feeling free what democracy is REALLY all about?” sneered Roxy. “No need to stand up for yourself when you’re just SO dang frickin’ cozy with a boot on you, eh, Barry?”

        “Gosh, Roxy, I HOPE your boots are comfortable. I’d HATE if you were suffering for fashion in thrifted pleather pick-me duds like THAT.” Diva rolled her eyes and scanned her nails with feigned disinterest, desperately hoping for a single crumb of drama that she could use to flaunt her talent.

        “Fashion is art, and all art is suffering.......” Matte mumbled, sinking lower in his seat.

        “I don’t have to take sass from the Phantom of the Costume Closet, Diva,” Roxy scoffed. She strummed a screeching chord on her guitar. “Your mom dressed you ’til seventh grade, and she was BETTER at it.”

        “Umm, my outfit is a STATEMENT? Like your MUSIC doesn’t make?” The Black Saint’s Number Seven tossed her hair. 

        “Hey, your mask is hilarious, D-list, but have you considered wearing one that covers your WHOLE face?”

        “You LITERALLY look like a skunk’s humansona.”

        “I thinkyouguysarelike BOTH supercute,” Pompom offered diplomatically. “There’slikeaLOToflike internalizedmisogyny I’mhearing? Girlslikeus should TOTALLY be, like, upliftingeachother? In like PYRAMIDS and on eachother’s shoulders to do backflips so so FUN and cooltodo like OHMYGOSH...”

        Cody clicked his cane sword shut, causing Bobblehead’s killing intent to recede from the room. Their fateful duel would have to wait...

        “Make it quick,” the President said to Serge, “or I will.”

        “S-sir!” Serge sputtered, saluting again. “Th-thank you for your time. It’s just—there’s a discrepancy. The arrest quota that the new bylaws demand... it simply can’t be met!” The stoic Student Councilor found himself starting to sweat in the spotlight of scrutiny. He pushed his glasses up as they slipped down. “Theory: a clerical error. An extra zero, sir. If you’ll refer to the revisions I submitted through, of course, the proper channels—”

        “THERE IS NO ERROR. NO FUMBLE. NO FLAG ON THE PLAY,” boomed Blitz.

        “Every move we make,” said Bishop, “is the correct one.” He slid a knight from one side of his chessboard to the other. King me.

        “Pluslike, BEA checkedTroll’stranscription and Bea doesn’tmakemistakes?”

        Bea stared back at Pompom and wished that she could make just one mistake. 

        “...General Troll’s... transcription?” Serge asked, squinting in confusion. 

        He blinked, surprised, when several of the Black Saints looked knowingly up at the Vice Principal... the true source of the teeth in every clause the law laid bare. DuNacht grinned back down at her puppets from her shadowy perch in the cobwebbed corner of the council chamber.

        “B-but sir!” Serge said, whirling back to face the President. “Even if we execute every outstanding warrant—and they are: outstanding, sir, and you have every right to execute a student—we STILL couldn’t hit the quota without convicting almost everyone at school!” Serge looked around the room and saw blank faces. Had he not made his case with ample facts and logic? “Most students are innocent: the VICTIMS of the rulebreakers we’re sworn to bring to justice. We’d be locking them up in detention with their bullies! This would only lead to chaos, not the perfect order we all strive for!” The blank stares had transformed to sneers and looks of mild pity. But why? These were his peers. They’d all sworn the same oaths—had access to all the same data...! “Statistical analysis: 64.5 percent of students have ZERO criminal demerits on their record. To even get them down here, we... we’d have to fabricate false charges, would we not?!”

        The empty eyeholes of the President’s mask shone with a darkness darker than the sunglasses surrounding him. Everyone was staring. The President’s gaze was cold and heartless and as silent as the grave... but Serge, somehow, could sense that he had steeled himself—that something he had said had come as a surprise to the stoic leader of the Council.

        “S-sir...?” asked Serge. “Did you... did you not know? The logistics are—” He blinked. “Did you not read the legislation? Y-you’d be calling for a witch hunt—”

        “Ahh, but that’s EXACTLY what this wicked little Biddle School needs, isn’t it...?” 

        A creaking voice had dripped like cave slime from the stalactites high above them. The Vice Principal, Devilora Demonelle DuNacht, had spoken up at last. 

        “To bring its creeping sins to light. To drag them down into the dark, where I’ll be waiting! Ehehehe-HEH HEH! Innocent students?! Don’t make me LAUGH!” the Vice Principal laughed, before they had the chance to heed her order. “You’re all just nasty little ZITS waiting to POP!”

        Barrister tried to get a round of applause going but nobody was feeling it. 

        “You’ll THANK me when the hurly-burly’s done, believe you me! But worry not, Lieutenant Splurge,” said the Vice Principal. The misnomer was an honest mistake on Devilora’s part; her hearing wasn’t what it used to be, and her worldview easily assimilated the idea that her Student Council toadies might have names like nasty goblins in a Roald Dahl book. “We won’t have to fake a single misdemeanor! Oh no, no!” Devilora leaned forward in her chair, chewing repulsively on the rusty old brass of her opera glasses. “You can throw out the ‘statistics’ of the PAST. I have INTELLIGENCE you LACK, and it projects, Splurge, that the future holds a CRIME WAVE that will PROVE OUR CRACKDOWN PRESCIENT! Eh-heh-heh HEH!” She grinned at Cody. “You see things my way... DON’T you, Mr. President? You’ve always done what’s NECESSARY for the safety of the school... and its sticky, icky squirming student larvae!”

        Cody drew the pen that had been prepared for him from its scabbard like a knife. He signed Fauxbia’s scheme into law without looking away from her, his eyes two hateful, pinpoint flares of burning cobalt.

        “The deal is struck!!” laughed Devilora.

        This time, the Vice Principal led the applause, and every straggler joined in out of fear, if not excitement. Serge stared in silence at the floor; for a moment, he thought that he had found the courage to refuse to clap... before he realized he was just numb to the impact of his automated movements. Serge was reminded, with a shiver, of a line from his very favorite movie. “So this is how liberty dies,” he heard in Princess Padmé Amidala’s voice. “With thunderous applause...” 

        Amidst the noise, Cody’s sharp vampiric ears picked up upon an unseen spirit’s flourish: the proud unfolding of feathered wings around DuNacht. He heard claws click against the stone beside him, and then the unmistakable sound of heavy steps and heavy chains dragging behind them.

        “Hey, bub. You can hear me, can’tcha? Since you’re batty like your old man,” laughed a smoky voice at his feet.

        He felt a pawing at his leg, just like a cat begging for food; the cold metal of its manacles matched Cody’s icy temperature. He glared down at the empty space where he knew the spirit stood.

        “Yeesh, if looks could kill!” the creature chuckled.

        “If looks could kill, he’d be extra GLAD he couldn’t see YOU,” spat another feline voice at Cody’s side.

        “Heh heh. Thanks, Rules. You’re drop-dead gorgeous, too. Mwah!” With a clinking of chains, the spirit’s attention moseyed back to Cody. “Cut a gal some slack, bub. I’m on a short leash already, and that ain’t where a cat belongs. They treat me like a dog, and keep me caged until they NEED ME. A cage—THAT’S for the BIRDS! What kinda animal do they think I am, huh?? I don’t even got wings like the resta the friggin’ family!” A Cheshire grin unfurled upon an unseen sphinx’s face. “Sheesh, but listen to me hiss an’ moan! Ain’t no way a kid like you could understand MY struggle. Locked away by my own flesh and blood, for my own good, until it’s time to follow orders...”

        Cody flared with cold, vampiric rancor.

        “...Who are you supposed to be?” he growled beneath a second wave of redoubled applause (Pompom had started leading the Student Council in a cheer). “That decrepit old witch’s pets?”

        “Heh heh. That’s right, bub, in my case—for now. Which means we’re doin’ time together. There’s lots more ways to bind a beast than chains, huh?” 

        Cody’s echolocated image of the spirit caught her gesture towards the papers he had signed. He didn’t let himself consider what he might have just agreed to, knowing Fauxbia had already once bound him in a pact. Cody didn’t feel as though new terms had seized his freedom, like last time, but going along with DuNacht’s schemes still stung like unconditional surrender. He’d deal with anything, though, even a devil like her, to protect Jeff and his smile.

        “Consider me your cellmate, kid.” The spirit purred and sidled up against him. “Pleased to meet ya. I’m the Sphinx of Crime. Got a feelin’ we’ll be thick as thieves before this score is settled. Heh heh heh.”

        “...Just stay out of my way,” whispered Cody, sweeping his cape behind him as he marched out of the chamber.