[ 15 ]

NOW LET ME GET BACK TO THE MAIN STORY I WAS TELLING YOU ABOUT, IN TERMS OF HOW THIS ROBOT TRENX IS SAYING THAT DR. TERRIBLE JUST GAVE HIM A NEW SPACESHIP CALLED ATHENOS III

So now you understand why my belly twists up into painful knots when Trenx tells me that the spaceship Dr. Terrible gave him is named ATHENOS III.

“Did Dr. Terrible say anything else about me?!” I shout. “What about me?!”

“Well…there was one thing, now that you mention it. When I told Dr. Terrible I was friends with his grandson Weak Sauce, he seemed really surprised. And your grandpa said that you, Weak Sauce, had never mentioned my name before and that he had no idea we were pals. I thought that was a little weird and my feelings were kinda hurt.”

And at that moment I’m thinking:

You need to tell Trenx the truth. You need to tell Trenx that Dr. Terrible is using him to get to you somehow, and it won’t end well. He’ll end up with his silver head mounted on the wall. That’s probably why Dr. Terrible gave him those big horns, anyway. So they’ll look good mounted on his wall. Oh God. That’s it.

“Listen buddy,” I say. “There’s something I need to tell you. I think you might be in big trouble. And I don’t want you to get hurt. Now the thing you need to know is that Dr. Terrible—”

Trenx cuts me off and blurts out: “But then I talked it over with Dr. Terrible and I realized that as small as my horns were before, I guess I couldn’t really blame you for not wanting to claim me as a friend. And your grandpa said now that the tables were turned, he wouldn’t blame me one bit if I didn’t want to be friends with you anymore.”

He can’t even hear you.

Those horns have changed him.

He can’t even pick up your frequency anymore.

Then my train of thought is interrupted by the sound of the Datalizard’s voice, and he’s saying, “…and your grandpa said he’d given up hope on you.”

“Given up hope on me?”

“Well, to earn your WarWings. Your grandpa said there’s no way that you could get a chick to be your Queen for EggHarvest. Not with those horns of yours being so puny. He said your main problem was that you don’t have any WILL TO POWER.”

Now my scaly green ass is practically seeing lava when I hear this. “I already had a Queen for EggHarvest! Her name was Idrixia, but then Dr. Terrible stole her away and—”

Trenx holds up his metal talons with his palms facing me. “Dr. Terrible told me all about it and he had no idea what a gigantic pity party you were going to throw for yourself. Not that it would have stopped him. And by the way, I don’t know if you know, but your grandpa already divorced that dragonette.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, fool, he divorced Idrixia. Said he loved her and all but he just couldn’t stand the idea of getting your sloppy seconds.”

“But we never even mated!”

“Whatever, fool. Not my deal. Dr. Terrible said he moved Idrixia to some gold planet or something, so of course she’s set for life.”

Now my mind is pinwheeling and I am not able to process everything I’m hearing. I figure for sure I’m going to faint. Because I’m seeing yellow spots swimming through the air all around me. And whenever I see those yellow spots swimming like that, well it’s a surefire sign that I’m about to black out.

When you see the yellow spots, this is when you need to start looking around at the floor. And maybe if you’re lucky you can sort of aim yourself for a soft spot before you faint.

But as I glance at the floor, all I see are this machine Trenx’s silver webbed feet with his titanium toe claws sticking out.

Please God no matter what else happens don’t let me faint right on top of the robot’s webbed feet.

“So is it true?” says Trenx.

“What?”

“That you can’t get a chick to be your Queen for EggHarvest.”

Runcita.

My Queen Quest.

Where is my Queen?

How the heck have I let myself lose sight of my goal?

What an idiot I am!

Now all the noise and chaos in the hallway from the other dragons shouting and whatnot comes rushing back into my earholes at a sonic volume.

Like a chump, I’ve lost track of time.

How long ago exactly was it that I sniffed Runcita’s presence in front of her locker, and her essence shooting up my nasal passages felt like a sweet kick to the brain?

I don’t know.

Because I’ve been blindsided by Trenx’s demented black horns and temporarily reduced to a blob of quivering green scales.

No more, though. Now I’m back in reality.

So I turn away from the Reptilizoid and scope the area. I try to catch a glimpse of Runcita across the hall where she was squatting a few minutes ago, jabbering with her repulsive dad, Dean Floop.

But she’s gone.

And the Dean is gone too.

So without saying another word to the robot, I flap my wings and take off flying down the corridor.

Where is my Queen?

I flap my wings and zoom down corridor after corridor, looking for any sign of Runcita.

I’m waving my snout back and forth, trying to pick up her luscious scent.

Thwack-thwack.

Here in the corridor there are hundreds of cadets flying on both sides of me and beating their wings. And some of them are flying in the opposite direction and rocketing right at me. The air is choked with fiendish flying dragons and firebolts and flamestreams and blacksmoke and skulls being playfully swatted around. It’s ghastly.

I check my powerstaff and see my FLIGHT SPEED at 78 MPH. I’m making good time.

Now I’m kicking myself for letting that robot blindside me like that and making me lose track of my Queen Quest. And I still can’t get over Trenx’s new mega horns. And the fact that they’re a gift from that scaly bastard Dr. Terrible definitely leaves a sour taste in my beak.

Thwack-thwack.

I flap my wings and turn down another corridor.

Thwack-thwack.

Although I have to admit that part of me is happy to hear that the demented fool Dr. Terrible is alive and doing well and up to his old ruthless shenanigans. But I still didn’t understand how Dr. Terrible could see fit to bestow a pair of big black horns on a Datalizard like Trenx and not to his own grandson, his own scales and blood.

I mean really I should take it as a compliment if Dr. Terrible went to so much effort to try and hurt me, right? Because that means I’m on his mind. And if I’m on his mind then that means he cares, even if he has a twisted way of showing it. The sonuvabitch surely cares about me if he’s going through so much trouble to try and mess with my head like this.

So as I zoom along through the air I have to chuckle to myself, thinking about how that Dataworm Trenx is such a fool because he doesn’t even realize that he’s being used as a tool in Dr. Terrible’s diabolical scheme to get at me.

But the feeling of comfort fades fast.

Because Trenx is the bastard with the gigantic horns and the killer WILL TO POWER score. And my scaly green ass doesn’t have doodly-squat. And the more I think about it, the more pissed off I get. And then I change my mind about feeling glad that Dr. Terrible is OK.

Because now I know I want for the rotten bastard to be not OK, and that I’m going to make it my business to make sure he ends up that way. I’ve got a bad case of Dr. Terribleitis, but now at least I know what the cure for my ailment is.

So right then and there as I fly along the corridors of WarWings, I promise myself that I’ll make it my business to find out where Dr. Terrible is hiding and then I’ll rat him out. Because after I find out where Dr. Terrible is hiding, I’ll go and tell Dean Floop and give him the exact coordinates. I’ll hand him that dragon Dr. Terrible gift-wrapped with a ribbon on top. So that Dean Floop can catch my scaly grandpa and make him stand before the Council of the Elders for the charge of treason.

And somehow coming to this conclusion makes me feel better, like my decision to help Dean Floop catch my grandpa somehow brings me closer to my main goal, which is to score Runcita as my Queen for EggHarvest.

Thwack-thwack.

So with a renewed vigor and sense of purpose, I fly through corridor after corridor after corridor.

Check my powerstaff.

FLIGHT SPEED at 92 MPH.

The wind blasting over my green scales feels faboo.

And as I shoot down the corridor I keep whipping my scaly snout back and forth, trying to pick up Runcita’s glorious scent.

When I get to the end of the corridor I flap my wings and take a right down another corridor.

I fly by the Library. I fly by the Commons.

Then as I blast forth I see the Time-Traveler’s Lab up ahead and suddenly the door flies open and a cadet comes stumbling out of the lab capsule into the corridor and he’s cradling a little baby dragon in his forelimbs. Now both this cadet and the baby dragon are starting to disappear, to become transparent, and you can tell that they have no clue that they’re vanishing. And the baby dragon glances up at the cadet who’s cradling him in his forelimbs and snarls, “I hate you!”

Now I’d be willing to bet a pound of gold that that dragon cadet has gone back in time to when he was a baby dragon and abducted his baby self and returned to the present in an effort to prevent his baby self from growing up and suffering the horrors of childhood. But of course now both versions of the dragon are in the process of disappearing, and they don’t even know it. This sucker got his timestreams crossed and accidentally dropped an Existence Bomb on his own scaly green ass.

Where is my Queen?

So as I fly by the Time-Traveler’s Lab I make sure to keep a wide berth as a precautionary measure. Because my scaly grandpa Dr. Terrible has warned me again and again to stay away from time travel. Because my dad, Stenchwaka The Terrible, had been a time-traveling junkie. An addict.

Dr. Terrible says the disease is genetic, and so at all costs I should always avoid time travel. My grandpa says the reason my parents’ spaceship failed in their Fertility Mission and crashed on Earth is because my dad tried to take a shortcut through the galaxy to arrive on Earth. Which was their Designated Foreign Planet. Using time travel as a shortcut to get to Earth, where they were supposed to raise a Colony.

Dr. Terrible has warned me again and again that because of my genes I’m extremely susceptible to becoming a time-travel junkie. And once when I was younger Dr. Terrible even took me to a Time-Travelers Anonymous meeting so I could see what happened to dragons who get sick with the disease. Now as a youngster seeing all those old crusty dragons at the meeting, well it definitely scared me straight.

Because all those dragons had no memory left, from shooting up and down the timestream too often. I remember one old pathetic dragon fool at the meeting reared up on his emaciated haunches and flapped his wings and whispered, “Hi my name is…My name is…My name is…Sheesh.”

Then this old gnarled sad-sack dragon sat back down with his scaly head in his talons. Because the fool couldn’t even remember his own name.

And as a youngster I remember walking out of that Time-Travelers Anonymous meeting, holding my grandpa’s talon, and looking up at him and saying, “Dr. Terrible, I promise I won’t ever time travel. I don’t want to wind up like those idiots. I want to remember everything from my life. Thank you for being such a wonderful grandpa. I love you.”

My grandpa peered down at me and fetched the tip of his spiked tail to gently whap me upside my scaly green head. “Mind your manners, Gork,” he said. “Don’t ever use the T-word in front of me again. Remember, gratitude is weakness. And gratitude diminishes your WILL TO POWER. But that said, I’m glad to hear you promise that you’ll never time travel. Always remember. Just because your dad was a weak-willed moron, that doesn’t mean you have to turn out the same. So do yourself a big favor, and stay away from time travel. It’s just not worth it.”

Thwack-thwack.

I flap my wings as I zoom down the fiery corridors and keep whipping my scaly snout back and forth, trying to pick up Runcita’s glorious scent.