Gork, the Teenage Dragon

by Gabe Hudson

  His toe claws shoot out.

  Then Bruggert’s giant wings ominously unfurl behind his monsterish scaly green head, and each of his leathery wings is seriously massive. Truth be told, the sight of Bruggert with his leathery wings unfurled like that is insanely scary.

  Now as if summoned by Bruggert’s fierce Threat Display, a dark wind starts howling through the gym.

  Runcita is just crouched there on her haunches looking up at Bruggert with what can only be described as a helpless expression on her beak.

  And that’s when I know I have to stop what’s about to happen.

  Runcita, poor Runcita, she’s about to get mauled by a psychopath. My darling Runcita is going to get her scaly green head bitten clean off. And I can’t just stand by and watch that happen.

  So I step right into the circle.

  “Yo Bruggert,” I growl, “why don’t you leave her alone! If you want to show everybody what a badass you are, why not give me a shot?! Huh? Why not give me a shot?! You big ugly sonuvabitch!”

  Then I open my black beak and blast a firebolt at Bruggert.

  Swoosh.

  The firebolt shoots right by the side of his monsterish scaly head.

  It creases his left earhole.

  It’s meant as a warning shot, nothing more.

  Now I know what you’re thinking. Why would I willingly volunteer to sign my own death warrant like this? Love? Well you can call it love if you want. But really it’s much more primal than that.

  Because the truth is that a teenage dragon will do anything to make sure the right chick lays his eggs. Even if it means he has to die trying.

  And that’s exactly what I am prepared to do.

  [ 41 ]

  MY BIG HEROICS

  So much for my big heroics, though.

  Here I am prepared to die and Bruggert doesn’t seem to think I’m worth killing, or even paying attention to. He doesn’t even see my scaly green ass. It’s like I don’t exist.

  Bruggert is just hovering there with his wings unfurled. And I figure he’s too focused on the mega damage he’s about to inflict on Runcita to notice anything else.

  Homicidal lunatics aren’t known for their ability to multitask.

  That’s the only explanation I can give for why Bruggert doesn’t seem to see me or hear me when I step in to protect Runcita from his awful wrath.

  “Yo chick,” Bruggert growls. “Just cuz you the finest scale-tail in our senior class, I’m not goin’ to set here and let you disrespect me like that!”

  Then he takes one powerful threatening step toward Runcita and raises his talon as if he were taking an oath, and suddenly all five claws shoot out. And these claws are so ghastly they look like they could cut a planet in half.

  By this point every cadet in the crowd has their powerstaffs out and is aiming their holovid transmitters at Bruggert and Runcita.

  You can definitely feel that this is turning into something huge. Something that will become legend and pass on into WarWings lore. So all these dragons are holding their powerstaffs out and maneuvering to try and get the best possible footage of history before it happens.

  “But I promise you something, chick,” snarls Bruggert. “I will teach you to respect my crown! Seems like your hotshot daddy never bothered to teach you the fundamentals of being a dragonette. Your daddy must’ve been too busy blasting helpless cadets with firestreams. So he didn’t have the time to raise his own daughter right. And the first thing you going to learn is to always respect a dragon’s crown! That’s what your daddy should have taught you, Run Run. But that’s OK. Because now I am goin’ to have to teach you myself. That means I’ll be your daddy!”

  Then he flicks those savage death-dealing claws out even further and whips his forelimb and slashes at her beak.

  Runcita ducks as the claws pass through the air where her scaly green head just was.

  “Really?!” she bellows. “That’s all you got? A bunch of stupid daddy talk? Oh please do tell me how you’re gonna be my daddy, Bruggert! Tell me how you’re gonna learn me some lame ancient bullshaka dragon traditions ’bout how since I’m a chick I’m supposed to bow down and respect your nasty crown! I’m all earholes, Brug Brug! Let’s see what you got to learn me! Show me, Brug Brug! ’Cause by my scaly green ancestor’s oath, you don’t want none of this!”

  Bruggert’s eyes instantly bloom into raging lava flowers and he launches himself at Runcita with a speed and ferocity that none of us cadets have ever seen before. It is too much. It is beyond the scale of what should be possible.

  His rage manifests itself in his attack to the extent that he appears to be less a dragon and more some sort of deranged weather pattern.

  Seeing him like that, you feel scared for the whole universe.

  The cadets squatting next to me instinctively turn their heads away as if to keep their ugly green snouts from getting blasted off. And I clench my toe claws and dig them into the floor to give me purchase against the hideous wind from Bruggert’s flight, which is threatening to blast me off my green webbed feet.

  Even the atoms seem to be having a hard time withstanding the force of his onslaught.

  Because Bruggert is wavy around the edges, like he’s bleeding into the atmosphere.

  Then Runcita crouches low on her haunches and flips opens her beak and shoots out her tongue.

  Zing.

  Now Runcita’s tongue is flying too fast to track but you can just make out the red blur of it. And you can tell by how Runcita is crouched there on her haunches, with her leathery wings spread wide and her green tail lifted high, that she’s trained in the art of tongue-fu. Meanwhile Bruggert is zooming right at her like a missile. Runcita’s tongue smashes Bruggert’s beak and he goes soaring up into the air and lands with his ass stuck inside a slave-catching barrel mounted up on the wall. Bruggert’s monsterish scaly head is lolling off at a weird angle and it looks like his long green neck is probably broken. And all the cadets crowd around and start whooping and snorting and whistling.

  Zing.

  Runcita retracts her long red tongue back into her beak. Then she strolls over and looks up at that scaly green bastard Bruggert wedged there in the slave-catching barrel.

  “Told you not to call me Run Run,” she says. “I even said please.”

  Bruggert looks at Runcita with googly eyes, and then he moans.

  Now Runcita starts to make her way to the exit. And all the other cadets in the gym instantly revert back to their regular hoopla.

  Nearby a couple dragon fools are milling around and laughing. One of them leaps backward, doing an impression of Bruggert getting his ass knocked out.

  Making her way to the gym exit, Runcita just so happens to be coming my way.

  “Pardon me,” says Runcita. “Coming through.”

  She is walking straight toward me. So I quickly raise the little silver canister to my dome and spritz my horns with GrowGrow® gel. Suddenly there’s a white hot flash in my brain and I can feel some sort of machine crank up inside my skull. Then without really knowing why I am doing it, I tilt my scaly green head back and snort flames out my nostrils and start singing a WILL TO POWER poem:

  “Oh why oh why, you ask,

  is Gork so great?

  Well by and by you’ll see it’s cuz

  I’m the fiend who seals your fate!

  Cuz I’m the one that decides who’ll

  be living and dying,

  And my foes are foolish if escape is something

  they’re thinking about trying

  Cuz my will’s like iron

  and it don’t matter if you running, swimming, or flying!

  Now where’s all them luscious chicks

  who keep begging me to mate?

  All y’all dragonettes got to get in line,

  cuz I’m so great!”

  As soon as I finish singing, I remember.

  The CTD-2000.

  And when I finish belting out the poem here in the gym, I feel the poem j
acking me up with blasts of MATING MAGNETISM juice.

  My nostrils flare.

  I can hear all the cadets behind me start snorting and roaring with laughter after hearing me sing the poem out loud. And then they start chanting: “Weak Sauce! Weak Sauce! Weak Sauce!”

  But I don’t care. Let these dragon fools make a racket. I’m near the end of my Queen Quest and that’s all that matters.

  Because Runcita is standing right here in front of me looking up with a pleasant smile on her beak, patiently waiting for me to step aside.

  And I know exactly what I have to do.

  I’ve already practiced asking Runcita to be my Queen in front of the Talking Mirror at least a hundred times over the past couple days. So as I stand here in the gym I can feel my speech perched on the tip of my tongue like a missile, ready to be deployed.

  And I reach for my crown where it’s fastened to my utility belt. This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.

  “Hey Runcita,” I say. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  [ 42 ]

  THE MOST BEAUTIFUL TOE CLAWS YOU COULD EVER HOPE TO SEE

  I won’t give you the gory details.

  It’s hard for me to talk about even now.

  I must be suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder from my recent horrorshow visit to Dean Floop’s lair. Because as I stand in the gym with Runcita right here in front of me, I can suddenly hear the Dean’s voice shouting in my skull: “Take my word for it, if you so much as even glance at my daughter Runcita I will have you marched out to the campus quad and I will blast you with a firestream and reduce your sorry tail to a pile of ash!” So let’s just say that Dean Floop’s threat is reverberating inside my skull and it’s definitely doing a bang-up job of psyching me the heck out.

  Runcita is standing right here in front of me, waiting for me to speak.

  “I I I I I I…”

  But for the life of me I can’t make my black beak move and say what I want it to say. I look down and stare at Runcita’s scaly green webbed feet and see her toe claws with the bright red polish on them and oh my God are they ever luscious and mesmerizing. At that moment I feel like I would be happy if things could just stay like this forever and I could squat here studying her beautiful red toe claws. I would die a happy fiend.

  Look at those gorgeous toe claws.

  I want to weep with joy just looking at them.

  I wonder if it’d be weird for me to get down and start kissing them with my beak?

  Now on some level, everything seems so unreal. I can’t believe this is the same chick whose lair I infiltrated with a micro-drone. The chick I’ve spent the whole morning questing after.

  Don’t be a wussy.

  Gotta get a chick whose tail is thick.

  I lift my gaze so I am staring into her eyes.

  Runcita looks up at me with her big green eyes. “Yes? What is it, Weak Sauce?” And then she giggles. “I mean, Gork.”

  My heart is pounding like a bastard.

  “Um, Runcita,” I say. “I’ve been looking for you all morning. Because I wanted to ask you—”

  And that’s when I black out.

  [ 43 ]

  A CRY FOR HELP

  A few minutes later, I’m alone in the bathroom near the Dining Hall.

  I am repeatedly smashing my forehead against the mirror above the sink. In between forehead smashes, I look at my stupid reflection in the mirror and shout:

  “Why!”

  Smash.

  “Are you!”

  Smash.

  “Such a!”

  Smash.

  “Wussy?!”

  Smash.

  But the truth is, deep down I already know the answer to my question. It’s because of my puny horns. That’s why I’m such a wussy. I don’t have any WILL TO POWER. Because if I had a big pair of horns on my scaly head, then I’d right now be swiping my crown over the EggHarvest Module and registering Runcita as my Queen for EggHarvest.

  Now my powerstaff starts vibrating like crazy. I yank the powerstaff off my utility belt and see it’s a message from Fribby:

  I cut my leg here in the spaceship! There’s a lot of blood!

  I think I need a doctor. Please come quick. Hurry!

  And if you think I was flying fast when I was zooming around WarWings before, why that was nothing compared to the extreme speeds which I’m about to fly at.

  Who cuts their leg in a spaceship? What is she talking about?

  I have no idea what’s going on, but I don’t care. Because Fribby has saved my tail more times than I can count, and like I told you before, she is my best friend in the entire universe.

  So what if they sometimes drive you crazy? Name me one carbon-based creature that won’t also drive you crazy.

  Isn’t that the definition of a best friend? Someone who drives you crazy but someone who stands by you even if your horns are no bigger than a couple of baby carrots? And I know Fribby wouldn’t have sent the message if it wasn’t something serious. She’s the kind of dragon who will still go to class even if her leg gets bitten off.

  So, standing here in the bathroom, I shoot her a message back:

  I’m coming now! Hold tight!

  Then I quickly whip my wings out, and when they reach full extension they make a pop noise like a flag snapping in the wind.

  I clench my talons and raise my forelimbs straight ahead of me.

  Then I launch forward into flight, like a photon bolt.

  And I don’t even bother flying out the bathroom door.

  I just fly right through the wall, punching a hole in it.

  [ 44 ]

  FLYING OVER WARWINGS

  I flash through the sky in a blur.

  Check FLIGHT SPEED on powerstaff. 374 MPH.

  Hold tight, Fribby. I’m coming.

  Flying over WarWings, I peer down and see the remnants of my clash with Rexro at the Telo-Device. There’s rubble spread out around the Zap Pad like the aftermath of an asteroid storm.

  Rexro’s Safety Cage is still smoldering, with plumes of blacksmoke twirling up off of it.

  You can see there are journalists from our school’s datastream, The Digital Fire-Breather, snapping holopics of the scene with their powerstaffs.

  A couple of the dragons down below turn and look up into the sky and point at my scaly green ass.

  I know they’re snapping holopics and saying how that fiend up there wearing the red cape is the crazy fool bastard who blasted Rexro with a firestream.

  They’ll probably post a piece about me on The Digital Fire-Breather in the next hour or so.

  Now as I’m flying through the sky I have to admit it feels a little glorious to be pointed out like this, as if I am some kind of boss dragon with tons of WILL TO POWER.

  But unfortunately I don’t have time to enjoy it, because I’m needed elsewhere.

  Below me I spot ATHENOS II, parked among thousands of other spaceships.

  And so I flap my wings and start my descent, rocketing toward my spaceship.

  Thwack-thwack.

  [ 45 ]

  I COME TO FRIBBY’S RESCUE

  When I burst into the spaceship, I’m shocked at what I find there.

  I don’t see blood. I don’t smell blood either. And my horns are tingling like crazy. My scaly green body is flooded with WILL TO POWER and I whip my tail around behind me, keeping it ready to help propel me with lightning speed if I need to make any sudden movements.

  Then I see her.

  What is she doing?

  Fribby’s staring out the fool windshield as if she is lost in thought. This is yet another characteristic of Fribby. She can daydream or get caught up in a memory so that she loses touch with the present. She’s the first machine I’ve ever seen that can drift right off in the middle of a conversation and get a vacant look in her eyes when she thinks what you’re saying is boring.

  Now when Fribby hears me burst through the spaceship’s door she turns and looks at me
. “What are you doing here, Weak Sauce?”

  What’s going on? Where’s all the blood?

  My tail is thrashing around behind me.

  And then Fribby says: “I was just coming in to go to my next lecture in the Egg Hatchery. Professor Natch is giving a lecture this afternoon on Conquering Minor Planets and Laying Your Egg in Enemy Territory.”

  And like I said, my horns are tingling like a bastard.

  “Hey Weak Sauce,” she says. “Are we dead?”

  I can feel a bunch of lava rushing to my skull.

  “Don’t start,” I growl.

  “I mean seriously,” she says, flapping her silver wings. “I’ve been thinking. Is it possible that right now we’re already dead?”

  “Heck no, we’re not dead,” I growl. “You said you were bleeding. I thought you cut your leg!”

  “How do you know we aren’t dead?” says Fribby.

  “I just know, that’s all.”

  “Have you ever been dead?”

  “No, I haven’t ever been dead. Not in the way you’re talking about.”

  Then Fribby peers at me as if she’s seeing me for the first time. “Hey Weak Sauce, your beak looks funny. What’s that big bump on your forehead? Hey, have you been crying?”

  “Why’d you send me that message? I nearly killed myself flying back here!”

  “What message are you talk—”

  But then she claps a metal talon over her beak. It looks like she starts to step toward me but then her scaly body commences jerking back and forth and I can instantly tell that something is wrong. Her tail is whipping around behind her as if she has no control over it.

  What the—?

  [ 46 ]

  THE WARNING

  Fribby has gone into some sort of hideous bizarro freak mode.

  I mean it’s obvious by the way she’s moving that her mobility is being impeded by some sort of invisible constraint. It is as if her silver webbed feet are glued to the floor but her scaly chrome-flex body is spazzing out all herky-jerky. She looks like she’s doing some sort of demented dance to music only she can hear.