Balgo Parks

Balgo is a lanky adolescent topped with untidy dirty-blond hair. In everyday clothes he favors a dark jacket thrown over a pale shirt stamped with the word SLAVE, paired with slim dark trousers and dress shoes. His Dragonclad look swaps in a light hoodie bearing that same SLAVE lettering, worn beneath a chain-linked collar around his neck. When Wing Bind brings him along on a Dragon-tracking assignment, he is handed a Piper mantle and pipe so passersby assume he belongs with the agents.

Easygoing to the point of being scatterbrained, Balgo drifts through events with wide-eyed wonder and is quick to gush over the powers of Noel and Ninny. He dotes shamelessly on the pet Osushi, and his one-sided crush on Noel drives a running streak of petty perversion, chiefly his fixation on glimpsing her underwear. Beneath that shallow surface, though, a braver and more thoughtful side surfaces under duress. He instinctively shielded Ninny from Shelby despite barely knowing her, and even after learning his childhood friend was a Dragon wearing a dead boy's face for ten years, he still tried to reason with him rather than abandon the bond.

At seven, Balgo survived a train collision that killed the original Shelby, who died shielding him; a Dragon then took over the corpse and lived on as his friend. Two months before his own change, a chance bump against Macy Baljure granted her Dragon-sight and set her on the path to raising Cinderella. When Shelby finally revealed his true nature and lunged to devour Ninny, Balgo threw himself in the way, and Noel destroyed the Dragon soon after. Bitten during the ordeal, he became a Dragonclad, gained the ability to see Dragons, and was relocated to Reverse London under Noel and Ninny's care. That status later saw him wrongly branded a Punitive Dragon, the class of Dragon that Wing Bind hunts down. In the crisis his Wing Bind pipe unexpectedly sprouted an energy blade that pacified the rampaging Cinderella, and once she was slain the designation was lifted, prompting a relieved Noel to pull him into an embrace.