Or was I the crazy one for even worrying about it? I mean, Klawde liked to brag about his amazing schemes, but so far none of them had worked out.
CHAPTER 18
Though I would never admit this to the boy-ogre, it was not complete and utter torture to be back on Earth. This was mostly due to the paneer and other delectables that had arrived from the grandmother-ogre. It was also gratifying to learn that the Humans had nearly died of sorrow in my absence.
After eating, I proceeded upstairs for a nap on the boy-ogre’s sleeping platform. It was impossible to rest, however, once he began angrily complaining about my recent unexplained disappearance.
I was pleased to see my Human capable of rage, even if it was aimed in my direction. Perhaps there was hope for him yet.
Still, it was intolerable to be dressed down by a lower life-form, and I would hear no more of it. I leaped off the sleeping platform to go to the bunker.
“Look, Klawde,” the boy said. “Can you at least promise never to do that to me or my parents again?”
“Fine,” I said, and departed.
This, of course, was a lie. I was going to be leaving again very soon, as the election contest would begin in 250 time units—the equivalent of approximately three Earth days—deep inside the Infinitude, a vast, distant sector of the cosmos unreachable by wormhole.
Although I had no problem breaking a promise (or an oath, for that matter), I realized that I did not want to hear the boy-ogre whine about my absence once I returned. Thus I needed to find someone—or something—to take my place at the fortress. Luckily, I knew just what that something would be. I simply needed Flooffee to send it here.
But first I required the minion to give me news of AWESOME’s convention.
“Tell me, lackey,” I said. “Was there mayhem and bloodshed?”
“Even better, O Supremest!” he said. “The buffet was so delicious. I mean, we’ve all had grilled Ravolkian rumshumples. But deep-fried? With oystroid sauce! Oh boy, Most Masterful, you would’ve licked twenty plates clean!”
“Enough, fool!” I said. “One, you are making me hungry. Two, I must know who I will crush in the contest for the emperor’s throne!”
Flooffee blinked stupidly at me. “Wait, seriously? You’re the candidate of the Good Animals Group? I did not think that plan was going to work.”
“You should know by now to never underestimate Wyss-Kuzz the Magnificent!”
“Okay, well, I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this, O Superior Sire,” Flooffee said, “but AWESOME nominated General Ffangg.”
I met the news with one mighty swish of my tail. “Have they, now?” I said. “What a most welcome development.”
“Really?” Flooffee said. “I thought you were going to be super mad.”
“Hardly. I find it pitiful that AWESOME would nominate a double-crossing, dull-clawed alley cat such as Ffangg to be Emperor of the Universe. Yet I relish it, because now I will finally have the chance to defeat my most infuriating enemy. And this time, the entire cosmos will be watching!”
“Wow, good for you!” my minion said. “Confidence is important.”
“At my coronation as emperor, the only dish served at the buffet will be revenge.”
“Wait, no grilled sprikkelbrats?”
“It was a metaphor, you fool!”
“So . . . that means yes on the sprikkelbrats?”
How I wished I could simply hang up on him, but I had one more question.
“Tell me, minion,” I said. “Has the X2 remained operational in my absence?”
“Well, he needs a new fission pack and he’s probably super dusty, but he should still work. Why?”
“Get your feather duster out, Flooffee,” I said. “For the X2 has a new assignment. On Earth!”
CHAPTER 19
“Good morning, Fightin’ Flatworms!” Miss Emmy Jo said as our homeroom smart screen flickered on.
“Bookworms,” Brody reminded her.
“Whatever!” she said. “I heard from a little birdie that one of y’all has their first basketball game of the season this afternoon. Is that right, Mister Number Twenty-Seven?”
I shrank down in my seat.
“Go, Barkworms!” she shouted. “Go, Rage!”
“It’s Raj,” I said, shrinking even farther down.
The truth was, though, I couldn’t wait for the game. I felt like I watched every minute tick off the clock until I was finally on the court and warming up with the rest of the team.
After the shootaround, the coach called us in for a pregame pep talk. It was all about working together and communicating with one another, and I wished I could have recorded it for Newt. She still hadn’t done anything on the Napoleon project, while I’d already read two books on the guy and started putting together the slideshow.
The whistle blew and it was time to play. The stands weren’t packed, but there was enough of a crowd to make me nervous. I didn’t want to make a fool out of myself in front of all these people.
I didn’t get off the bench the whole first period, but Coach put me in to start the second half. I made a good crosscourt pass right away, and I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to embarrass myself. It was Dad who was going to embarrass me.
He jumped up and down in the stands and hollered every time I touched the ball. The worst was when I got to the free throw line, because he burst into “Raj, Raj, he’s our man! If he can’t do it, no one can!”
It’s hard to make a free throw while rolling your eyes, but I did it.
Our team won by eleven points, and there were lots of high fives in the locker room. When I came out, Dad was waiting for me with a big grin on his face. Mom, too.
“Oh, Raj, that was even more exciting than chess,” she said.
Dad gave me a big hug. He was breathing hard and sweating. “Man, cheering you on is a major workout!”
As we were walking toward the car, Newt came over. “Nice game, Raj,” she said, and made for a high five.
As I went to slap her hand, she pulled it away.
“But you gotta work on your reaction time.”
CHAPTER 20
“Is it okay yet for the X2 to enter Earth’s atmosphere, O Master of Masters?” my minion asked.
With the parent-ogres having departed for the boy-ogre’s sporting contest, the fortress was at last empty. “Send him down,” I said into the communicator.
Mere seconds later, the small spacecraft approached its targeted landing area in the rear yard. Just before touching down, it slowed to a hover and began to transform. Its wings, made from an indestructible fermatrium alloy, folded inward to reveal soft gray fur. The craft’s landing gear morphed into four legs, and its thruster was replaced by a flexible and luxurious tail. Finally, the nose cone transformed itself into a proud and noble face.
Mine.
The catdroid blinked its eyes. “Hello, O All-Encompassing Master.” The voice sounded like mine, but it was actually Flooffee speaking. He was controlling the X2 from Lyttyrboks.
In a moment of rare brilliance, my minion had designed and built this Wyss-Kuzz replica to thwart all those who tried to assassinate me when I was Supreme Leader of Lyttyrboks. Colonel Akorn alone had fallen for the ruse dozens of times.
“Remember when Akorn popped up out of nowhere and cried, ‘I’ve got you this time, Wyss-Kuzz! Revenge is mine!’?” Flooffee asked. “Oh, the look on his face when he realized the head he had just cut off was a catdroid’s!”
“That was adorable.”
Here on Earth, of course, the X2’s role would be simpler: He would be my stand-in so that the ogres did not realize I was off-planet.
I gave Flooffee a tour of the fortress, showing him strange Human inventions, such as the kitchen chair. “It is because their bodies are so poorly designed that they cannot even sit o
n the ground without assistance.”
“Wow, it almost makes you feel sorry for them,” my minion said. “Hey, what’s that noise? It sounds like a Sproxian reverse thruster.”
I sighed. “That would be my ride.”
Dull claws came thumping down the bunker steps, and then—
“Hey, good buddy! I’m here to pick you up. Next stop, the Infinitude!” Barx panted stupidly at me. Then the idiot noticed the catdroid. “Whoa—are there two of you now? I must be in trouble, because I’m seeing double!”
The things I would put up with in order to rule the universe.
CHAPTER 21
I was just about to say something back to Newt when Dad came over.
“Is this one of your nice school friends, Raj?” Dad asked. He stuck out his hand. “Hey there! I’m Krish Banerjee. Super nice to meet you!”
“Oh, I know you, Dr. Banerjee. I’ve seen your ads,” Newt said. Then she made guns out of her fingers and pointed them at my dad. “There’s a new dentist in town!”
Mom and I both groaned. Right after we moved here, Dad had run a bunch of ads in the local paper to drum up business. They showed him dressed in a cowboy hat with a dental drill in each hand, underneath the words WANTED: A FABULOUS SMILE.
“You’re basically famous,” Newt said.
“You’re too kind.”
Was my dad blushing? Newt was so obviously putting him on.
“Um, I’ll catch up with you guys in the car,” I said.
Mom put her arm around Dad’s waist and said, “Come on, Krish—let’s give Raj a moment with his friend.” Then she winked at me.
Did she think I actually liked Newt? Gross!
As they walked away, Newt said something I was not expecting.
“Look, I’m sorry about the other day,” she said. “I totally crashed on my skateboard when I went to get us pizza. Some random person had to stop and bandage me up.”
She rolled up her jeans to show me her left knee. The whole thing was nothing but scab, and the skin around it was purple and blue. Now that was gross.
“I would’ve called you, but my phone was dead,” she added.
I tried to decide whether or not to believe her. I mean, why would she lie about something like that? Well, other than the fact that she lied to me all the time.
“How about I come over to your house tomorrow after school?” she said. “I’m ready to do some serious work.”
“Okay,” I said, shrugging. I’d believe that when I saw it.
CHAPTER 22
“Boy oh boy! I just love a road trip, don’t you? There aren’t actually any roads in space, but you know what I mean,” Barx said. “Don’t you wish you could stick your head out the window and sniff up the smells of the universe?”
“You can’t breathe in outer space, you flop-tongued fool,” I said.
Barx’s tail beat against the back of his seat. “I can’t believe we’re going to the Infinitude—the place where it all began! Whether we are cat or dog, we are all star stuff! Oh, Klawde, I feel so bonded to you right now.”
I vomited into my cup holder.
We blew past the Quartz Nebula and the Voxorkian Supercluster, but when we came to the Hakkilott Asteroid Belt, Barx slowed the craft.
“Why are you pulling over into this wasteland?” I demanded.
Barx unbuckled his spacebelt. “I gotta lift my leg on something.”
“You just did that three hundred thousand light years ago!”
“When you gotta lift, you gotta lift,” Barx said, undoing the air lock. “Besides, this might be unmarked territory!”
If only I could have left the fool there.
While I waited, I turned my thoughts to what I would do once I became emperor. Jail and humiliate my enemies, of course, but what else? Make all beings pledge daily allegiance to me? Begin my own Reign of Terror? I did like that name.
“Boy, I feel a lot better now,” Barx said, reentering the cockpit. “And I was feeling pretty great before. I mean, you and me, working together to spread honesty and goodness throughout the universe. Isn’t it amazing?”
Yes, it really was amazing: Every time I thought Barx could not be more brainless, he proved me wrong.
“Stop yammering and pilot this thing,” I said. “We’re going to be late.”
Barx glanced at the instrument panel and then scratched his head with a hind paw. “Hmm, now where’s that pesky Kopeck Galaxy? I feel like we should’ve passed it by now . . .” He squinted into the icy blackness with his tongue hanging out. “Really, it’d be so much better if we could open this window.”
“We’re lost?” I shouted. “How did you get LOST? Don’t you have your map app turned on?”
Barx cocked his head at me. “Come on, Klawde, there’s no GPS this close to the Infinitude! And I’ve never been here before.”
“So how are we supposed to navigate?”
“Usually I go by smell. I mean, on planets, the nose knows, good buddy. But in space? It’s like the Good Dog says, Have faith in your instincts, and you shall find your true path. Or is it find your bone? I never could keep that one straight.”
“I’ll tell you what you need to keep straight—our path to the Infinitude!” I roared. “Now stop talking and start moving!”
And with that, Barx pressed the thrusters, and we commenced warp speed.
CHAPTER 23
After the game, we had a late dinner of leftovers. Because it was the last of the food Ajji had sent, I wondered why Klawde hadn’t come running the second the microwave started going. At first I was happy, because I didn’t want to share. But then I started to worry. He wouldn’t have gone off-planet without telling me again, would he?
“I have to say, that Newt sure seems sweet,” Dad said as he took a sip of rasam.
“Sweet is not the word I’d use,” I said.
“Speaking of something sweet,” Mom said, “I think we should celebrate your first game with a treat.”
Mom’s usual idea of a treat was green tea sweetened with a drop of agave syrup, so I was pretty psyched when it turned out she’d bought a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. We were having big bowls of it in the living room when Klawde came in and leaped onto the couch.
Next to Dad.
“Hey, little buddy! You missed Krish, did you?”
I expected Klawde to at least hiss at him, but he just curled up and closed his eyes. He didn’t even try to get at the ice cream!
“He’s obviously happy to be back,” Mom said. “It must have been scary to be away from home for so long. Sometimes an experience like that can change an animal’s personality.”
I found that seriously hard to believe in Klawde’s case. Plus it wasn’t like he’d gotten himself lost. He’d gone to another planet.
“Poor little guy,” Dad said. “Hey, Raj, look at this! He’s letting me scratch his belly.”
Was Klawde feeling okay? Could space travel have scrambled his brain?
Later, when I went upstairs to go to sleep, Klawde was lying right in the middle of the bed.
“Do you have to do this every single night?” I said. “Can you please just move over?”
“Sorry,” he said, scooting over to the edge of the bed. “Is that better?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “Klawde, were you just polite? Did you do what I asked?”
Klawde blinked at me. “Uh . . . that was a mistake,” he said. “What I meant to say was, This bed is mine, you worthless minion ogre-Human! Now, er, I have to leave. Don’t follow me, furless fool!”
As Klawde vanished down the hall, I wondered if Mom was right. Maybe being gone really had changed Klawde.
CHAPTER 24
Although the ancients noted that dogs possessed excellent senses of direction, this particular dog had gotten us lost yet again. After taking
a wrong turn by the Brobdingnagian star nursery, Barx got us trapped by the gravitational pull of a gas giant. We orbited it three times while he made imbecilic fart jokes. When he said, “I’ll show you a gas giant, woof woof,” I had to restrain myself from beating him to death with his space helmet.
When at last we arrived in the Infinitude, Barx panted with excitement as he steered us toward our final destination: the Temple of the Ages.
Built upon the black surface of a cooled dwarf star, the Temple of the Ages was home to the exalted All-Wise Council. Nearly everything about these twelve supreme beings was a secret, including what species they were. (Though one must assume they were felines of some sort.)
As the Council alone understood the myriad mysteries of the cosmos, it was they who would select the universe’s next emperor.
Me, obviously.
As we hurried toward the Temple, we saw a multitude of creatures thronged around the base of the Eternal Steps. The ceremony was already underway.
“No doubt we’ve missed the Pledge of the Planets and the singing of the ‘Star-Spangled Cosmos,’” I hissed. “Thanks to you.”
Barx’s tail drooped. “Aw. I wanted to howl the chorus to that.”
More importantly, I was late to join my fellow nominees at the top of the Eternal Steps. I could hardly believe how many of us there were. The platform was so crowded that the only place I could find to stand was right next to my nemesis.
Ffangg’s eyes went wide upon seeing me. Then the wretch began to snicker.
“I was looking forward to humiliating you in front of the entire universe,” he said, “but that sweater is doing the job for me.”
I opened my mouth to deliver a stinging rebuke but caught myself, for there were many GAG pandas in the crowd. These black-and-white bozos were known for being excellent lip-readers.
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