by Gabe Hudson
Then on the TV screen they cut to a vid clip of the newly “swapped” worm, and in this vid clip you could see this little worm chasing a gazelle as the gazelle bounded at top speed through the jungle.
The little demented worm raced along behind the bounding gazelle, nipping at its hoofs.
And when the gazelle briefly stumbled, the worm roared and leapt up onto the gazelle’s neck.
The terrified gazelle with bulging eyes exploded out of there with the worm clinging to it. And then that worm bit the gazelle’s neck and wrenched it down to the ground for the kill.
Dr. Terrible proceeded to show a few more short vid clips of the worm, and one of the clips showed the worm running straight up a tree. Another clip showed the worm roaring so loud that the ground shook.
Then my grandpa looked out at the audience and began wryly flapping his wings, as if to cool off the stunned journalists who sat there quietly with their toe claws retracted.
“Now I would like to show you the lion!” purred Dr. Terrible, as he squirted firebolts out his nostrils. “This lion who now has the worm’s mind. Here is a vid clip that was shot earlier today in my Institute’s BioGarden!”
And lo, this giant deranged lion came twisting up out of the soil like some sort of bionic worm and leapt in the air and then dove back deep down into the soil. Apparently my grandpa had strapped a vidcam to the lion’s forehead, because now on the TV you could see the lion’s point of view as it rocketed underground and powered through the soil. Then they cut to another camera, and as the lion tunneled through the soil you could see the top of the lion’s mane slicing along the dirt’s surface like a shark’s fin in the ocean.
Then Dr. Terrible surprised all the journalists at the press conference when he opened a hole in the floor and suddenly the lion appeared standing there next to him.
The journalists in the audience growled and fiendishly gnashed their fangs at the sight of the psychotic lion standing there glaring back at them.
Then Dr. Terrible unfurled his leathery wings and bellowed: “And now for my final demonstration! So nobody can doubt the genius of my Evolution Machine! Let all my colleagues bow down to the greatest mind WarWings has ever seen!”
Dr. Terrible used both of his talons to pick the lion up and hoist the beast over his scaly green head and he held the lion like that as if he were in a weight-lifting competition and he was striking a pose for the judges. And then Dr. Terrible suddenly wrenched his talons in opposite directions and ripped the lion in half like a sheet of paper.
Now Dr. Terrible casually tossed the two halves on the ground and then the two halves regenerated their missing parts so now there were two smaller lions standing there.
Both lions roared.
The delirious audience leapt to their webbed feet and started clicking their talons together in applause and flapping their wings and thumping their tails against the floor. So that press conference happened on Tuesday morning, which was three days before Crown Day. And after that Tuesday morning press conference in which my grandpa Dr. Terrible revealed his new Evolution Machine and its ability to perform the mind-swap, all hell broke loose here on WarWings’ campus.
And the next couple days turned into a demented nightmare. Which culminated in what we dragon cadets were right away calling the Doctor vs. Dean RageFest last night. Basically, when Dr. Terrible and Dean Floop clashed horns out on the campus quad. I’ll get to the RageFest later. And when the RageFest was over and the smoke had cleared, my grandpa disappeared.
Dr. Terrible had up and vanished, and nobody knew where he was.
The next morning was Crown Day, which is today. And this morning there’s even a big article about the Doctor vs. Dean RageFest posted up on our school’s datastream, The Digital Fire-Breather:
DISTINGUISHED RESEARCH PROFESSOR
DR. TERRIBLE DISAPPEARS WITHOUT A TRACE
SOME SUSPECT FOUL PLAY
It is Crown Day, the most important day of a dragon’s four years at WarWings. And this morning none of the senior cadets are wasting any time wondering what happened to Dr. Terrible because they’re too busy worrying about making sure they find a mating partner for EggHarvest.
And on the morning following what everyone is already calling the Doctor vs. Dean RageFest, it’s actually Dean Floop’s luscious daughter whom I’m scheming to score as my Queen.
Runcita Floop.
And that’s what I started off telling you about before I took a detour to get you up to speed on all this fiendish Dr. Terrible stuff. I started off telling you what happens this morning in the Central Campus corridor when Dean Floop suddenly points at me and then his daughter turns and looks at me and so I quickly duck down out of sight.
Runcita Floop.
[ 12 ]
MY SCALY GREEN ASS GETS AMBUSHED
“Yo what’s up, Weak Sauce?!”
The voice is right behind me and it slices through my brain like a blade.
Then I feel a talon grab my wingjoint, and that same voice growls: “Fancy finding you here, Weak Sauce! Ha-ha! At first I heard somebody singing here in the hallway and I was thinking who’s the big singing moron? But then I turned and saw that it was you, Weak Sauce! Your singing led me right to you!”
My nostrils flare and I try to pull away but there’s nothing I can do because this talon has my wingjoint clapped firmly in its grip.
Now my webbed feet clench again and my toe claws shoot out so far this time they make a screech sound as they cut deep into the floor. And the talon gripping my wingjoint from behind is squeezing even harder, making sure I can’t twist free from its grip.
I crouch down low on my haunches and growl. A firestream rises up out of my belly and shoots into my throat and flickers over my tongue and then halts and hovers at the back of my fangs. I’m gargling fire.
And I hiss and spray sparks out my beak.
“Hey Weak Sauce, why so antisocial?”
And:
“Can Weak Sauce come out to play? Ha-ha!”
I’d know that voice anywhere.
So I spin around and sure enough. It’s this robot. Trenx.
This Datalizard is grinning at me with this deranged look on his metal beak. When the robot sees the look on my scaly face, he squirts flamestreams out his nostrils and purrs, “Why so edgy on this glorious Crown Day morning? Now you’re not going to faint, are you?”
This Datalizard Trenx always acts like we’re fiendish buds even though we aren’t. He reckons that gently mocking my scaly green ass this way is code for how close we really are, as if we’re brothers in flame who used to raid and pillage planets together or something.
I’m whipping my tail back and forth, trying to use it as an outlet for the big freak-out that’s building up inside me. Because it’s super important that right now I don’t blow my stack. Too much is on the line. I mean here I am on my Queen Quest and so there’s definitely no room for idiot emotions or bogus distractions.
I glance over the robot’s wingtip and spot Runcita right across the hallway. And as soon as she finishes flapping her beak with her villainous dad Dean Floop, then I’ll go over there and present her with my crown. My Queen Quest will finally be over.
Meanwhile my horns are still tingling, which means they’re acting as antennae and picking up on some specific danger right here in front of me. But for my horns to be going bonkers like this seems kind of weird.
Because this Reptilizoid is one of the few cadets in my senior class that I don’t have to regard as a savage predator who could eat me. Because the day this robot becomes a legit threat to me is the day that I’ll just fold my wings up and call it quits as a dragon.
Still grinning like a lunatic, the robot reaches up and slings his metal talon on my shoulderbone as if he’s holding me at forelimb’s length so he can get a good look at me.
“Yo you’re wigging out, Weak Sauce! You gots to chill!”
I casually reach up and knock his steel talon off my shoulder.
Trenx,
aka Mr. Gigabyte.
This robot has a way of popping up wherever I am and always at the exact moment when he’s the farthest thing from my mind and the last fiend I want to see. You know the type of fool I’m talking about. Because in the cruel hierarchy that is the WarWings rating system, this Datalizard is a straight-up bottom feeder. I mean a couple weeks back I pulled down this robot’s Cadet Profile and his WILL TO POWER rank was a lousy FlameToy.
And so when you think about it, it actually seems like kind of a miracle that Mr. Gigabyte here has managed to survive all four years at WarWings. Because usually robot cadets with a FlameToy get eaten by the DataHaters.
Now as I study Mr. Gigabyte’s stupid grinning beak, my black heart flutters in my chest and I feel just a tiny pang of pity for this poor fool. And as a WarWings dragon I’m sure not proud to have to be telling you this, and trust me, I know it’s despicable. But the truth is it’s just my natural way to try and see the good in a fella. Even when it comes to a low-down loser like Trenx.
Dr. Terrible and I have been over this before, during our weekly WTP sessions. And we’ve even discussed my relationship with this robot.
My grandpa told me I was a wussy for even talking to Trenx and that my stupid jumbo oversensitive heart is messing up my natural dragon instincts. And Dr. Terrible said the next time this Mech-Freak dared to speak to me in public, well that I should just attack him and eat him right there on the spot. Of course Dr. Terrible doesn’t give a crap about this robot one way or the other, but he said it was just the principle of the matter.
Plus Dr. Terrible says weak WILL TO POWER is contagious. And that it sends the wrong message to the Normal dragonettes to even allow them to see me jabbering with a degenerate loser robot like Trenx in public. And that it seriously damages my MATING MAGNETISM too. And my grandpa says when I try and see the good in a piece of robot trash like Trenx I’m really just hurting myself.
But these are just my natural instincts, so what are you going to do?
Anyway, so my point is the one good thing I’ve been able to discover about this robot over the years is he’s the only cadet at WarWings with horns that are actually smaller than mine.
He has an inch up there, if he’s lucky.
Because if you want to know the truth, this Datalizard’s horns are downright microscopic.
So when I stand next to Trenx he always makes my two-inchers look seriously mega.
And because this robot is such a pathetic loser, I always feel a little sorry for him. And so I can’t bring myself to completely ignore him or blast him with firestreams like the other dragons from my senior class do. I mean sure, Mr. Gigabyte here tries so damn hard to be cool that it makes your scales crawl. And having this Reptilizoid around definitely isn’t going to help you score any dragonettes.
But it just never made sense to me to spit venom on a fella when he’s down. Which of course Dr. Terrible says is a big part of my problem. The fact that I’m not such a big fan of spitting venom on a fella when he’s down. Because out at the Institute, my grandpa told me that’s exactly when you’re supposed to spit venom on a robot like Trenx, is when they’re down.
And one time recently during our weekly session, Dr. Terrible told me that’s why Datalizards like Trenx let themselves get so low in the first place. Because it makes them an easier target in terms of spitting venom on them. And my grandpa said he’s not in the habit of doing favors for Mech-Freaks and robot trash and such. But when it comes to spitting venom on a Tin Can like Trenx who’s already down, well that’s one favor he can’t help himself from doing.
Now when Dr. Terrible uses the phrase “spitting venom,” he’s using it as a euphemism for eating them.
Then Dr. Terrible concluded that particular session by making me promise that the next time this robot Trenx tried to talk to me in public, I would attack him and eat him right there on the spot.
And so because Dr. Terrible had been filling my head with his DataHater garbage, I’d promised. “OK yes,” I’d said to Dr. Terrible. I would eat Trenx the next time he tried to talk to me in public.
I could tell my promise made my grandpa happy. And my grandpa had thumped me on one of my wings and said, “Don’t do it for me, do it for you.” He said, “You’ve got to connect with your inner Terrible.” He told me attacking and eating that Datalizard Trenx would do wonders for my class ranking and my rep.
And I remember I’d said, “What rep?”
And he’d said, “Exactly my point.”
So after making that promise to Dr. Terrible during our session, anytime I saw Trenx approaching me I’d just turn and run the other way. But now here the sorry Dragobot is, squatting right in front of me.
“Hey,” says Trenx, still grinning at me like a lunatic. “I like your red cape!” He spins around to show me that he too is wearing a red cape.
Great. Now the fool is jacking my signature style.
Maybe it won’t be so hard to find motivation to eat this bastard after all.
“Your cape looks just like mine,” I growl.
“I know, right? What a coincidence, huh? I guess when we’re together our coolness factor gets multiplied by two. Lucky I found you here then!”
For a moment I just study the Datalizard’s silver skull. I’m stunned. And now I understand why my horns are tingling like crazy.
Because on top of Trenx’s chrome-plated head are two long black shiny horns which curve near the top and finish off with incredibly savage-looking spikes.
I feel like I am literally squatting in the shadow of this robot’s horns.
Whereas my horns are so small I couldn’t even use them to gore a flea.
This Datalizard’s big badass horns make me sick with envy. And the fact that this robot is able to make me feel so jealous is almost more depressing than anything else.
I suddenly feel like I want to take a running leap headfirst down a black hole.
I use my index claw to tap the screen on my powerstaff and see that Trenx’s WILL TO POWER has exploded.
He’s rocking a MegaBeast.
I point my claw at his silver head and growl, “Yo, who’d you have to murder to get those babies? Are those things prosthetics or what?”
He chuckles.
And I can tell by his chuckle that he’s been waiting all along for me to notice his new horns.
He laid the trap and now my scaly green ass has walked right into it.
[ 13 ]
THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME LIVE
Now just in case I’ve failed to grasp the particulars of the situation, I guess Trenx wants to make sure he drives his point home.
Because then without warning the robot leaps up and whips his metal scaly head and rams his horns straight into the wall, burying them up to the hilt. His giant black horns are obviously securely anchored in the wall. Because then he quickly flexes his long neck to hoist the rest of himself up off the ground so that now his chrome-flex body is rigid and sticking out of the wall. As if he’s a spear that’s just hit its target.
I mean at the base of his neck you can see a small sprocket bulging under his silver scales, but other than that he seems completely relaxed.
Now the robot looks at me with this stupid grin on his beak. “So you tell me, Weak Sauce, could prosthetics do this?”
I’m speechless.
Then he flaps his wings twice—thwack-thwack—and yanks those horns out of the wall and then drops to his silver webbed feet and stands there leering at me.
“That, Weak Sauce,” growls the Datalizard as he points an index claw at the two new gaping holes in the wall, “is what happens when some nasty Normal bastard tries to mess with my scaly ass. They get their ass ventilated right quick!”
This robot doesn’t need to explain what he means when he refers to some nasty dragon messing with him. Because we both know he’s spent the last four years getting sadistically tortured by Normals on a near daily basis. And some of the bigger DataHater dragons on the island like to use him
as target practice for their lavaloogies.
And I remember one day last semester some fiendish DataHaters kidnapped Trenx and tied him up to a palm tree out in the jungle part of campus. And then for well into the night, they proceeded to blast him with so many firebolts and flamestreams that he’d nearly died and eventually had to be airlifted out of there by the Medevac and rushed to the psychosurgery ward. I heard the medics found him in six pieces strewn across the jungle floor over a half-mile radius.
He’d also had a bunch of sessions of intense psychosurgery, until they’d wiped most of his memory clean. But I judged that was cruel to give the robot psychosurgery and wipe the memory of his abuse away.
Because when those DataHater dragons came for him the next time, he wouldn’t know how scared he should be and so he wouldn’t activate the proper levels on his ESCAPE & EVASION program. So I figure those psychosurgery sessions actually increased the Datalizard’s suffering in the long term.
Bullying isn’t considered a problem at WarWings, our professors actually encourage it. Most professors will even let you turn in a holovid clip of you bullying another dragon for extra credit. Because bullying is considered a healthy gateway activity that leads to planet conquering. And bullying a robot? Well for some of the old-timer professors, that’ll get you extra extra credit.
I mean, technically, MortalMachines are supposed to have the same basic rights as us Normals, though of course in reality it doesn’t exactly work out that way.
Or as Professor Ponk from the Robotics Lab likes to say with a smirk on his beak, “Suuuurre these bots have the same rights as the rest of us dragons.” Then he pauses for a second, before shouting, “The right to get eaten!” That always gets a big laugh from the Normals in the classroom.
But there’s some truth in the professor’s joke. Because out of the 500 robots from Fribby’s line that started out at WarWings, 147 of them have been murdered by Normal cadets. Well actually two were suicides. But the only reason those Dragodroids killed themselves was on account of they’d been endlessly ridiculed by Normals and so they couldn’t take it any longer.