[ 28 ]

THE MUTANT HAS A SURPRISE IN STORE FOR ME

I end up shooting a firebolt, instead of a flamestream.

But then I look up and to my ever-loving shock I see this giant dragon doesn’t even have a scaly green head. Because where his monsterish head should be, there’s just air. And so my firebolt shoots harmlessly up through the air until it hits the ceiling.

And I repeat: this bastard doesn’t have a scaly head.

And if it sounds freaky, well that’s because it is.

Now the weirdest part, though, is this Mutant does have a short scaly green neck.

Head? No.

Neck? Check.

And the dragon’s neck appears to sprout up a couple inches off his shoulders and then just abruptly stops, as if his scaly body had found the process of making itself too complicated and so when it got to the head it just threw in the towel and quit.

Spooky.

Because the point where the dragon’s neck stops is a perfectly flat plane, so that you could set a mug of lava on it and not worry about spilling a drop of it.

“Hey,” I growl, “get out of my way! I’m on my Queen Quest! And if you’re looking for a new friend, go look elsewhere. Because headless just isn’t my thing.”

The bastard flaps his wings and points a murderous-looking claw at me. “Just because I’m not Normal, you can’t disrespect me like that,” he booms. “I still got rights!”

Where the heck is his voice coming from? This bastard doesn’t have a head, but he has a voice?

Then I feel some hot air on my scales. And I glance down and am shocked to see the Mutant’s entire scaly green face is located in his belly. Here this fiend’s two yellow eyes are staring up at me. And there’s his nasty black beak. And as I’m studying his beak, the red tongue flicks out and licks it. Then, finally, there’s his green snout.

The Mutant’s monsterish scaly face is right here in the center of his stomach, staring up at me.

I feel woozy just looking at it. Now as the Mutant bastard stares up at me his yellow eyes keep flicking back and forth, left to right. Like I’m a book and this fool is reading me or something.

Ugh.

Then this scaly bastard sticks his talon right in front of my beak, like he’s trying to show me something.

“Recognize this, you dirtbag?!” he growls. “Look familiar? How about the right for chicks around here not to have jerks putting tracking devices on them while they’re asleep?! Recognize this, scumbag? Huh?”

I peer at the shiny silver thing this maniac is showing me and a jolt of shock shoots down my spine. I feel the blood rushing to my scales and my tail slinks between my hind legs.

It’s my nanotracker. My Secret Weapon. The little silver glinting thing. Right there in the Mutant’s claws. And just seeing it here like this, well I start sweating. And my black heart starts pounding away like some creature trapped inside its coffin, buried alive.

I feel so ashamed, I just want to vacate my life.

“Where did you get that?” I croak, as my hind legs start to tremble.

“Where did I get it? Oh that’s rich. You know exactly where I got it, you little sonuvabitch!”

Then he drops the little silver tracking device on the floor and lifts his leg and stomps on it with his webbed foot, making a big show of using his heel to grind it into oblivion.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

“Well technically speaking,” I whisper, “it’s not like I myself put the tracking device on her while she slept. You see, I used one of my micro-drones—”

“Shut your beak before I knock it off!”

He yanks his powerstaff off his utility belt and I’m pretty sure he’s going to hit me with it. And I flinch. But all he does is flick his powerstaff and a holophoto appears in the air and I couldn’t be more shocked by what I see there. Because in the floating holophoto you can see Runcita squatting next to this headless Mutant bastard, and they’re both smiling. She with her luscious scaly green head in the correct location, and he with his demented beak down in his belly. And Runcita has one leathery wing wrapped warmly around the Mutant’s shoulder, looking like she’d be content to spend the rest of her life hugging this maniac.

“Is this your Queen?” he snarls, pointing at the floating holophoto of Runcita with her wing wrapped around him. “Because if so, take my advice and forget about it. Runcita wouldn’t go to EggHarvest with you if you were the last dragon in the universe!”

“How do you know that?”

“Because she’s one of my best friends! And she’s not into bastards who stick tracking devices on her wingjoint while she’s asleep, you scumbag!”

The shame I’m feeling right now is more than I’ve ever felt. I hate myself.

My God, what have I become?

The holophoto floats over to the headless dragon and transforms into blacksmoke and then flies into his powerstaff. He hitches his powerstaff back on his utility belt.

“Does Runcita know it was me?” I whisper.

The headless scoundrel snorts firebolts and starts laughing like a lunatic. “No, you egomaniac,” he growls. “She doesn’t know it was you! How would she?! You think you’re special or unique or something?! You think you’re some kind of genius when it comes to scoring a Queen for EggHarvest?!”

Now he holds out his other talon and I see a bunch of silver tracking devices piled up there in his palm. There must be hundreds of them. And seeing this makes me feel even worse.

What a loser I am.

Even when I try to act fiendish, my actions are just run-of-the-mill.

Because apparently I’m not the only sorry bastard at WarWings who thought that using a tracking device would help him score Runcita.

“You’re not very smart, are you, scumbag?” he growls.

Now the headless cadet lifts his right forelimb and curls his claws into a fist the size of a boulder, making ready to hit me. His yellow eyeballs in his belly seem to narrow as he stares up at me, like I’m a fly he’s about to squash.

“How about the right to knock a scumbag’s scaly head off?” he says, snorting blacksmoke. “What do you think about that, Normal? Well I think that’s a right I’m about to exercise!”

I don’t bother trying to correct him about how technically it wasn’t me who went into Runcita’s lair. Because in my gut I know he’s right. I deserve to have my head knocked off. I really do.

So I just look up at the headless dragon’s talon clenched into a fist. And all of a sudden I realize this fist must be an integral part of the scaly green Mutant learning how to survive and go through life without a head.

Because in this fist you can see the Mutant’s entire life struggle etched in the scar tissue, like hieroglyphics.

The painful childhood, the unrequited desire to be loved and accepted unconditionally.

The endless taunts and beatings.

The growing realization that you will be the butt of every joke ever told in your vicinity.

The horrible epiphany that you are all you can ever count on, and that the excruciating loneliness you thought was a passing feeling is actually your essential being.

That we are all to varying degrees hedging our bets against the inevitable insanity.

This fella’s raised fist is less a weapon and more of a living text, the autobiography of the damned.

“This is for Runcita!” sneers the Mutant. “And you can kiss your Queen Quest good-bye, scumbag! Because I’m going to knock your scaly-ass head clean off into the next galaxy!”

Then he starts to swing and I see his humongous fist come flying at me. The breeze on my green snout generated by his oncoming fist is getting stronger.

I clench my lids shut even harder now, as if I might somehow be able to deflect the Mutant’s fist with my eyelids. Because if you want to know the truth, I really do deserve this. That trick with the tracking device was a real low stunt for me to pull.

So I figure I’ll just take my punishment. Get what’s my due. And the fist is so close now that it’s not so much of a breeze as it is a tornado and I can’t hear anything except for this ominous screaming noise that the wind is making.

And then I think to myself:

Snap out of it, Gork! This fool’s fist is going to arrive any second and knock your scaly green head clean off your neck and you at least need to be prepared for it!

Maybe if you focus and are lucky you can fetch your scaly head and have a surgeon sew it back on.

“Wait a sec,” says the headless dragon.

I cautiously open one eye and see the fist’s green knuckles just inches from my beak.

“Aren’t you Dr. Terrible’s grandson?”

I open my other eye now and take a step backward.

“I could be,” I say. “But first you gotta tell me, is that a good thing or a bad thing, being Dr. Terrible’s grandson?”

With a little distance between us, I can feel my courage swelling.

“And why in the heck is it any of your business who my grandpa is?”

The Mutant’s reptilian eyes in his belly are looking up at me. “Come on, really? It’s those horns of yours, stupid. Everybody knows that Dr. Terrible’s grandson’s got the smallest horns at WarWings—”

“They’re not the smallest. There’s this robot named Trenx—” It hits me like a punch to the gut that now I really do have the smallest horns at the Academy.

Then the Mutant points his powerstaff at me and a small floating screen pops up right there in front of us, with my data splayed out in the air. His monsterish scaly green face down in his belly is studying my Cadet Profile on the floating screen:

“See! I knew you were Dr. Terrible’s grandson!” he says. “That’s the only reason you’re here at WarWings, because of Dr. Terrible. Frankly, with those horns you shouldn’t even qualify to have Normal status. You should really have Mutant status.”

“Don’t you dare insult my horns!” I growl.

I’m suddenly worried that I might start crying.

And for a second there, I see a look come across the Mutant’s monsterish scaly green face on his belly. And I can tell he feels pretty low-hearted for what he just said to me, that he actually pities me. Which just makes me feel worse. I mean you know you’re in bad shape when you’ve got a headless Mutant feeling sorry for you.

You can sense that the dragon is thinking:

What’s the point of me treating this freak like this just because everybody has treated me like this my entire life? Having suffered like him, shouldn’t I be more inclined to show this dragon mercy and compassion, and not perpetuate the cycle of violence?

You can see him thinking:

Has my life filled with pain taught me nothing?

“Well,” says the headless dragon, his voice softening, “maybe not everybody at WarWings knows about you. But you see, Dr. Terrible’s my physician. He’s working on my evolution. He’s the one that put this face right here in my belly. Before Dr. T came along, I had no face. I was deaf and blind and mute. Somehow he managed to make me grow my very own face right here in my belly. Dr. Terrible is a miracle worker!”

“Dr. Terrible is a jerk. Dr. T, you call him Dr. T? That’s so lame! Does that T stand for ‘Thing’? Is that because he’s Dr. Thing?”

“Don’t talk about Dr. T like that! You’re just an ungrateful little bastard with horns to match!”

“Hey,” I bellow, “how can you sit here and dump on my horns when you don’t even have a head? You think Dr. Terrible’s so great because he made you grow your scaly face in the wrong place?! Why didn’t he grow you a head instead?”

By now the headless dragon is clearly boiling over with rage, and he’s definitely seeing lava. He gnashes his fangs and sparks are flying off of them.

It’s probably actually a good thing this fool doesn’t have a head. Because as worked up as he’s getting right now, if he did have a head it would probably pop right off.

“Speaking of horns!” I shout, flapping my wings. “My horns may be small, but at least I got some. If Dr. T’s so great, then why doesn’t he help you grow some horns?!”

“He did, you idiot!” he roars. “Dr. T did give me horns, you fool!”

Then, as I’m glaring down at the dragon’s monsterish scaly green face in his belly, the weirdest thing happens.

Two giant black horns shoot out of his chest.

The horns are right above the Mutant’s yellow eyes and they come flying out so fast it’s like one second they’re not there and then the next second they are. Like a switchblade.

Thank goodness I’ve got a quick first step.

Because I leap back just before the tips of those horns gouge the air where I’ve just been squatting. And if I was even a half step slower, I’d right now be impaled on this Mutant’s horns, dangling with my green webbed feet off the ground. No doubt.

The Mutant grins up at me. He uses his talons to point at the horns sticking out of his chest.

“Retractable. Dr. T built me these retractable horns! And trust me, these things are built to last!”

I’m just squatting here in shock.

Retractable horns?

How the heck did Dr. Terrible give this maniac retractable horns?

The headless Mutant clenches his talons into fists and booms: “You know what? Before I met you I was having a bad morning but now I’m feeling much better. I’m going to enjoy tearing you apart limb from limb. I’m going to break you down so bad that even Dr. Terrible won’t be able to put you all the way back together again!”

As I stand here eyeballing this demented Mutant working himself into a frenzy, I believe him. I can feel it in my bones that he’s telling the truth. He really is going to tear my scaly green ass limb from limb. And not even Dr. Terrible will ever be able to put me back together again.

Remembering that just a few minutes ago I saw Runcita here in the Dining Hall, I take a couple whiffs but can’t detect her scent signature in the air. Now squatting here in front of the treacherous Mutant, I wave my snout back and forth but still can’t get a whiff of Runcita. And with a sinking heart I know then that she’s already left the Dining Hall. I take a couple more whiffs and realize that I’ve inadvertently become an expert at detecting this particular fragrance.

If this particular fragrance were a perfume then I’d call it A Room Where Runcita Once Was But Is No Longer.

“What’s wrong with your snout?” sneers the Mutant, staring up at me with his insane scaly green face. “Why do you keep sniffing around like that?” He sniffs the air. “Is it me? Do I smell funny or something?”

A tiny smirk plays across my beak.

“Hey,” he says, “what’s the big idea, wise guy?”

He cocks his fist up. And there are some things that are just more than a fella can reasonably take. And at this particular moment in time, the prospect of getting my sorry tail beat to a pulp by this headless Mutant bastard is one of them.

So I do the only thing I can think of at the moment.

I unfurl my leathery wings and fly my scaly green ass out of there.

Thwack-thwack.