don’t let your hopes get sunk!
So on Crown Day make sure you grab
the right chick,
and by that I mean the chick whose tail
is thick!”
As soon as I finish singing, I remember: Dr. Terrible’s Cranial Telecaster Device.
Now my grandpa surgically implanted the CTD-2000 in my skull at the beginning of my senior year. As a way to accelerate my personal development and to jack up my BIOCON LEVS. Basically it activates whenever I find myself in an insanely stressful or dangerous situation. Whenever I need a serious injection of WILL TO POWER.
This is poetry as mega stimulant. The thing is, I always quickly forget the CTD-2000 is even in my skull. The device itself imposes selective amnesia by burning synapses and neural pathways so as to conceal its presence from me. So what was I saying again, oh yeah.
So after belting out the poem here in the spaceship this morning, I can feel it pumping me up with boss blasts of MATING MAGNETISM. And the title of this poem is “Grab the Chick Whose Tail Is Thick!” Then, when I finish singing, I do what Dr. Terrible has trained me to do out at the Institute, which is to take a quick POWERGASM and think about the STRATEGIC WISDOM of the poem as it applies to me and my current life situation. And as I do this I can feel even more glorious TURBO FIEND juice exploding throughout my haunches and shooting down my tail.
My nostrils flare.
Don’t be a wussy. Gotta get a chick whose tail is thick!
Yes sir. I glance at my powerstaff and see my WILL TO POWER rank has spiked to PsychoticTyrant. I’ve jumped from the paltry rank of Snacklicious and vaulted to the status of AREA DOMINANT FIEND. My scaly green ass is feeling demented and ruthless.
“Bravo, sir! It’s a lovely poem,” says ATHENOS II. “And a perfect commentary on your particular plight. And I must admit, Runcita is definitely the chick whose tail is thick, no doubt. Did you write the poem yourself, sir?”
“Of course he didn’t!” snaps Fribby. “Weak Sauce here couldn’t write a poem if it came up and bit him on the tail! That’s just more flapdoodle from his despicable grandpa. Dr. Terrible cut open Weak Sauce’s head and stuck some device in there. So the poor bastard Weak Sauce just starts singing Dr. Terrible’s poetry, like a jukebox.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t exactly know how to respond to this. Because part of what the robot is saying rings a bell. Dr. Terrible’s CTD-2000 is responsible. The device inside my head selects a poem based on my current situation, and then forces me to sing it. The idea being that singing Dr. Terrible’s poem will boost my BIOCON LEVS and help me destroy whatever obstacle stands in my way.
Poetry as a weapon.
Poetry as a way to be more deplorable and hideous.
This is what Dr. Terrible is forever preaching to me out at the Institute. This is what all the dragon professors at WarWings preach. Because you’ll often hear about fiendish dragon bastards belting out poems as they conquer a planet. I don’t know why it is, but singing a poem out loud will always make you appear more repulsive and psychotic to those who you intend to enslave.
Even though these poems give me temporary blasts of WILL TO POWER, well they still don’t help the source of the problem. Fribby calls the boosts of WTP I get from singing Dr. Terrible’s poems out loud false power, because the power fades away.
She says I need to learn how to write my own poems, and that’s how I’ll get some real badass WILL TO POWER.
I just tell her that’s easy for her to say, considering her WTP rank is freaking MegaBeast.
But these poems just spontaneously pop into my head and I’ll open my black beak and start singing a poem and I won’t really know why. And for a while there Fribby would try and stop me whenever I started singing. She’d use her shiny metal tail to punch me and knock me out. But as soon as I regained consciousness I’d just finish singing the poem. And so finally Fribby decided it was best to just let me get it out of my system.
Anyway, so here in the spaceship this Crown Day morning, Fribby points an index claw at the open door and barks: “What are ya waiting for, Weak Sauce? Your Queen awaits!”
I just squat there like a royal moron.
Fribby flaps her chrome-flex wings and looks out the windshield and says, “Seriously, Weak Sauce. You better get a move on. Your Queen is getting away.”
I can tell that something is definitely off, but I can’t put my claw on exactly what it is. There is something in the robot’s voice I can’t quite place. And it’s not the usual sarcasm, it’s something else.
I snort firebolts out my nostrils and say, “Thanks for understanding, Fribby!”
She harrumphs loudly, as if I’m being a jerk.
Then I leap out the spaceship and start jogging toward Runcita.
And just like that, my Queen Quest has officially begun.
Part III
THE
QUEEN
QUEST
[ 7 ]
THE ZAP PAD
I run as fast I can, pushing my way through the crowds of cadets.
I’ve got my wings extended just slightly to help me stay balanced.
For a dragon, I’m a pretty good sprinter. My MAX RUN SPEED is 79 MPH.
Now some dragon degenerates I know are so slow they couldn’t run their way out of a tortoise shell. Their MAX RUN SPEED is maybe 3 MPH. We call them snailheads. ’Course those fools, they usually can fly real fast. Me, I can fly pretty fast too.
Anyway, my hind legs are pounding the ground and because of how fast I’m running my red cape is blowing behind me. And I don’t have to look around to know that these other dragon bastards are enviously eyeballing my fiendish cape as it flaps in the wind. We dragons may be high-tech, but some things are timeless. And there’s nothing like a cape to turn heads. I choose to ignore the one dragon fool who shouts, “Nice cape, assface!”
Anyway, as I’m running I can see Runcita just up ahead, and I’m closing the gap fast. Runcita is squatting directly on top of the Zap Pad, which is a yellow circle that’s about fifteen feet wide out in the middle of the lava pits. When you’re teleporting, the Zap Pad glows with a bright yellow light and you can look down and see your green webbed feet all lit up from underneath. Above Runcita hangs the giant glass tube that conducts the particle accelerator energy.
When Dean Floop first had the Zap Pad installed a couple months back, it was a highly controversial move. There was a big article about the teleportation pad controversy posted on WarWings’ datastream, The Digital Fire-Breather. It said there were concerns about the long-term health effects of teleportation and what it might do to our internal organs over time.