I mean it’s true that a lot of weird stuff has happened to us since they installed the Zap Pad. Like according to that post on The Digital Fire-Breather, there was one fella who zapped into Central Campus and materialized in front of his locker and his heart exploded right out his scaly chest like a small meat bomb.
Then of course you hear these horror stories about the cadets who’ve zapped onto campus and materialized at their destination with one of their organs on the outside of their scaly green body.
There’s one dragon you see scrouching around the island with his gallbladder in a plastic bag, and the bag has a tube running into his belly.
So yeah, it’s definitely a gamble every time you step onto the Zap Pad. But me personally, I’m willing to live with the risks. Because I like the way teleportation feels. Especially that one moment where you can feel yourself whizzing through the air, but you don’t technically exist because you’re not a solid form in one place or the other.
Anyway, I’m running toward my Queen, and the parking lot abruptly ends.
Without missing a beat, I leap forward into the lava pits and start splashing my way forward. I look up ahead and see Runcita give a little wave to Rexro. This big evil dragon Rexro is the Chief of WarWings Security here on the island.
You want to get into WarWings Central Campus, you got to go through Rexro. And this morning he’s squatting inside his Safety Cage, which sits out there in the lava pits about three hundred yards off from the teleportation pad. He’s wearing full Conquer Gear, including a bright red helmet with his big black horns sticking out the top of it. The way the system works is, from inside his Safety Cage, Rexro presses the button that teleports us cadets onto Central Campus each morning.
Now squatting up on the Zap Pad, Runcita smiles at Rexro.
“Good morning, Rexro!” she shouts.
Rexro squirts blacksmoke out his nostrils and shouts: “Good morning, Runcita!” Rexro speaks through an intercom, so his voice booms out over the lava pits. But his voice sounds a little crackly, like one of the intercom wires is loose. “You want to go straight to your first-period classroom? Or should I zap you to your locker?”
Then Runcita shouts something back at him and I practically sprain my eardrums trying to catch her answer. But because of how hard I’m running I can’t for the life of me make out what she says. Does she want to get zapped to her locker? Or does she want to get zapped to her first-period classroom? I have no freaking idea.
There’s the crazed splash splash splash of my webbed feet blasting across the lava.
And then Runcita flaps her leathery wings and smiles a beakful of fangs at Rexro.
“OK, Runcita, have a nice day!” shouts Rexro.
There’s a monstrous crowd of scaly dragon cadets waiting in line for the Zap Pad.
Well by this point I’m still sprinting through the lava pits but have seriously closed the gap. I am only a hundred yards away from Runcita.
Glance down at my powerstaff to check my RUN SPEED. I’ve built up a good head of steam. I’m galloping at 42 MPH.
Now to the cadets standing around watching, I know I look like a green blur with a splash of red mixed in from my cape. Whereas for my scaly green ass, I can see every fiend around me with perfect clarity. Like most dragons, the faster I go, the stronger my powers of perception.
I can see Runcita standing right up ahead on the Zap Pad.
She can’t see me, though, because I am running at her from the side.
Now obviously I haven’t thought this whole thing through.
Because I really don’t know what I’ll do when I reach Runcita. I mean for the past three days I’ve rehearsed asking her to be my Queen in front of the Talking Mirror and I know exactly what I’m going to say, down to the word.
But I hadn’t planned on having to intercept her at the teleportation pad out here in the lava pits. I’d planned on cornering her back in the parking lot and offering her my crown out there, long before she ever thought about getting herself zapped into Central Campus.
These are the things I’m thinking about as I run right at her:
Should I tackle her to make sure she doesn’t teleport before I can ask her? Or should I rush up and get down on one haunch right there in front of everybody, and hold out my crown and ask her to be my Queen?
Because of how fast I’m running, it’s making it real hard to think. My mind is a jumble. And my lungs are heaving so hard it feels like they’re going to pop. Now as I run my powerstaff vibrates and so I lift it up and see there’s a message from Fribby:
Sorry for being so aggro earlier!
Me and my stupid robot brain. Ha-ha.
Anyway good luck with getting Runcita to be yer queen!
If you need my help, let me know.
I’ll be in there soon! Xo
Cool, I think. I never can stand it when Ms. Cyber Scales is sore at me. I mean sure she still can be a royal pain in the ass. There’s that, of course. And yes, sometimes when I look up and find her staring at me with those glowing red eyes, well it makes the scales on the back of my long green neck stand up. There’s that, too.
But that’s not all of it. No sir. Because there’s also the way Fribby always saves a seat for me in the Dining Hall at lunch. Even when a while back I was a dumb-ass and started trying to pretend like I didn’t know her. This was back when my grandpa Dr. Terrible tried to fill my head with a bunch of DataHater garbage during our weekly WILL TO POWER sessions.
So for about a week there, I took to pretending like I didn’t know her. And when I did that, well Fribby just comes over to where I was sitting by myself in the Dining Hall and asks me what the heck I’m doing sitting way over here. Meanwhile some of the DataHaters around us would start snickering, but she didn’t pay them any mind. That robot would just keep standing over me, asking me what the heck I was doing. Until finally I would sigh and get up and go back over with her to the empty seat she was saving for me.
Like I said, it was a dumb-ass thing for me to do. And I sure didn’t enjoy it, I can tell you that. After a couple days I finally gave up on pretending like I didn’t know her, because it hurt me in my big old heart, if you want to know the truth. Of course Dr. Terrible chewed me out for it during our weekly WTP sessions. I think it was the one time when I took a stand against my grandpa like that.
Most days here at school Fribby is the only one who acknowledges that I’m even alive. And is glad that I am too. Alive, that is. Like I told you before, she finds me amusing. I guess what I aim to say here is Ms. Cyber Scales is my best friend. And Dr. Terrible says that’s why my BIOCON LEVS are such a wreck, because of how I mostly only fraternize with Datalizards.
My grandpa says call him a DataHater if you want, but if I don’t respect myself then none of the other Normals at WarWings will respect me either. Then he reminds me that respect isn’t even the half of it. Because what I should really be aiming for is to have my fellow cadets fear me.
But after today, that won’t matter anymore.