“Come on, Fribby,” I purr. “Could you please just go over my cape with a lint-roller?”
“Oh sure,” she growls. “Lemme just see now. Where did I put my lint-roller?” I can hear her rifling around in her utility belt. “Oh that’s right, now I remember. I don’t carry my freakin’ lint-roller around with me. And why not? Cuz I’m not in the business of lint-rolling fools’ nasty capes!”
At that moment, a long green fleshy tentacle shoots out of the spaceship’s wall and zooms over to us.
“I’ve got a lint-roller, sir,” says ATHENOS II. “Shall I lint-roll your cape, sir?”
“Give me that!” The robot lunges for the lint-roller and the green fleshy tentacle deftly swerves away and then Fribby trips and falls on the floor.
ATHENOS II giggles. And the sound of ATHENOS II giggling makes my toe claws shudder.
“Oh we’re going to play it like that, are we?” says Fribby, as she gently flaps her chrome-flex wings and lifts herself up off the ground. She’s just hovering there in midair, glaring at the green tentacle clutching the lint-roller.
“Who’s the bucket of bolts now, chick?” says ATHENOS II.
There’s a flurry of commotion as they explode into combat. Fribby and the muscular green tentacle are really doing a number on each other, and you’d think it was a demented fight to the death. And my heart is a little torn, because Fribby is my best friend, and ATHENOS II has been like a big sister to me. And she’s done considerable work to help my scaly green ass boost my WTP rank from ThrashBait up to Snacklicious. And as I crouch there on my haunches and watch, I start getting a little worried for Fribby.
Because ATHENOS II’s tentacle zooms across the cockpit with Fribby in its clutches and slams the robot’s shiny head against the wall. Bam. But one thing I’ve learned from my sixteen years of life is that if a dragon’s WTP rank is above ScalesOfMenace, then you shouldn’t even bother trying to help them in a fight. Because once a dragon’s got that much TURBO FIEND juice coursing through their system, they’re dangerous.
Last week in the WarWings Dining Hall, I stepped in to defend Ms. Cyber Scales when some nasty DataHater cadet got up in her grill. It was this big depraved senior dragon named Groog.
“Hey stupid robot trash!” roared Groog, with his green tail twitching around over his head in a Threat Display. “It stinks like rusty machines in here! Should I just throw you in the garbage?! Huh, stupid robot trash?! Hey my computer broke down and I need some spare parts to fix it! Should I just open you up and take the spare parts out of you, stupid robot trash?!”
Now for a moment there, Fribby looked confused. Like I said, the weird thing about Fribby is that she keeps forgetting that she’s a machine. So when this DataHater fiend busted into her like that, you could tell she didn’t have a clue what he was jabbering on about at first.
“Now wait just a minute,” said Fribby, and then her silver webbed foot slipped in some food on the floor and she fell back down in the mess. It certainly wasn’t one of her finest moments, I’ll say that much.
Meanwhile Groog was raised on his toe claws and dancing toward Fribby and spraying sparks out his beak. Other scaly green cadets started to gather round behind him with flared nostrils, getting ready to join in the fun.
Anyway, when this maniac Groog knocked Ms. Cyber Scales to the floor like that and started roaring at her and calling her robot trash, I stepped up and shoved this bastard Groog and snarled, “Hey! Leave her alone, you jerk!” Then I squared off on this deranged fiend Groog and raised my scaly green tail over my head in a Threat Display. And I started gnashing my fangs so there were big sparks flying out of my black beak.
Boy did I learn not to do that again.
Because instead of thanking me, Fribby opened her chrome beak and blasted me with a mega firebolt right in the chest. I flew back over several tables and landed awkwardly on my tail, spraining it. The burnt spot on my scaly chest was smoking from where her firebolt struck and I had a big bruise on my chest for a week after that. Meanwhile that loudbeak Groog who’d been messing with Fribby and calling her a stupid robot just stood there pointing at me and snorting firebolts and laughing.
Then Ms. Cyber Scales turned and blasted Groog with a hideous firestream to his scaly green face and then leapt on him and tore into his chest with her silver fangs, as if she meant to eat him on the spot. Groog’s blood sprayed everywhere. Blood all over the other dragons. Blood all over Fribby’s metal beak and chest. The way that Datalizard unleashed on that Normal, it was totally brutal.
Groog ended up with a nervous twitch under his left eye and some sort of permanent damage to one of his leathery wings. So after that you’d see him walking the campus corridors with his one gimpy wing dragging flat on the floor behind him, like a stingray. And because of that gimpy wing, I happened to know, Groog had bypassed the Crown Day ritual and gone ahead and registered to be a slave. So he’d flown out to his assigned planet earlier this morning.
Anyway, now back to this battle in the spaceship. Well like I was saying, ATHENOS II’s muscular tentacle is bashing Fribby’s shiny head between the walls with so much velocity that the two of them are a green and silver blur.
Bam bam bam bam bam.
But then in the midst of being smashed around the cockpit like that, Ms. Cyber Scales somehow manages to open her metal beak and bite down on the glistening tentacle with her fangs. You can hear it.
Chomp!
“Ow!” cries ATHENOS II.
Now there’s a hissing noise as air seeps out of the drooping tentacle. The robot has punctured the tentacle with her fangs. I see what looks like plasma oozing out of the puncture wound on the tentacle and I have to remind myself that ATHENOS II is 72% organic reactive tissue. Then the green tentacle zooms back into the spaceship’s wall.
The robot harrumphs and flaps her silver wings and flies over and scoops up the lint-roller and quickly cleans my cape.
“Some chicks just don’t know their place around here,” growls Fribby.
The spaceship’s driver-side door flips open and ATHENOS II says:
“Sir, you really must leave right this instant if you want to have any chance at all of catching up to Runcita!”
I look at the spaceship’s open door and then I look back at Fribby, as if I’m not quite sure. I don’t know why I’m lingering like this. Maybe I really am scared that Runcita will put me in the Medical Center.
Now I quickly reach and spritz my horns with a canister of GrowGrow? gel. The gel makes my horns burn like crazy but I just grit my fangs and remind myself that the pain is for a good cause. Suddenly there’s a white-hot flash in my brain, and I feel some sort of machine crank up inside my skull. Then, without really knowing why I’m doing it, I tilt my scaly green head back and snort firebolts out my nostrils and start singing a WILL TO POWER poem:
“Hey, Weak Sauce, don’t be a wussy or a punk!
And when it comes to EggHarvest