On account of everything will be different then.
Me and my Queen Runcita will be laying plans for invading a planet together. Soon I’ll be out in space on my Fertility Mission, and me and Runcita will be “bumping scales,” so she can lay my eggs.
I’m running so fast right now you’d think I was going to leap headfirst into another dimension.
Runcita will be wearing my crown in a jiffy.
My cape is snapping and popping behind me, and my powerstaff shows my current RUN SPEED ramping to 53 MPH.
Will my plan to get Runcita to be my Queen work? I sure hope so.
When I practiced with the Talking Mirror it always said, “Yes sir, I will be your Queen.” But then again the Talking Mirror is part of my spaceship and so really, what else is the Talking Mirror going to say? Because I mean it’s not like Runcita is ever in a million years going to call me “sir.” So in terms of verisimilitude, I’ll be the first to admit these practice runs with the Talking Mirror haven’t done a ton to boost my confidence.
Anyway, this morning there will be no helpful mirror. This morning there’s going to be a real dragonette and her name is Runcita.
Because Crown Day is the ultimate test of our WILL TO POWER. Plus our STRATEGIC DESTRUCTION CAPABILITY. Plus our MATING MAGNETISM. And even more importantly, it’s a showcase for our CONQUER & RULE FACULTIES. The true display of what we are as dragons: how fiendish we are, how hideous we are, and ultimately how prepared we are to be Planet Conquerors.
Because for us senior cadets, Crown Day represents the culmination of all our academic work at WarWings over the last four years. It’s the final task of our demented training and education, the crucible that defines you.
EggHarvest cuts to the core of who we are as a species.
Three hundred thousand years ago, this is exactly how we dragons settled here. A young dragon fella and a young dragon chick known as the Original Couple landed their spaceship on Blegwethia.
At that time, human beings were the dominant species on Blegwethia. And all the man-creatures went around naked. And according to our WarWings history texts, it was a heinous sight to behold.
So the Original Couple climbed out of their spaceship and went to war with the man-creatures. And the dragons won.
And those two dragons rounded up the surviving humans and made them their slaves. And the first thing the Original Couple did was force the man-creatures to put on some clothes. Then, after conquering the humans on Blegwethia, the dragon chick hatched a clutch of eggs and raised a Colony of dragons.
Not long after, the man-creatures went extinct.
Then this Original Couple, well they started a school and named it WarWings. They wanted to ensure that the EggHarvest tradition would continue forever and that dragons would always have a place to grow and develop their WTP. So that dragons of the future would be able to take the Original Couple’s fundamental lesson of Conquer and Reproduce and apply it to the universe.
Though according to some eminent dragon historians, two man-creatures escaped from Blegwethia in a stolen spaceship. A female and a male. These historians claim the two human beings eventually landed on the planet called Earth.
Now fast-forward three hundred thousand years, and we seniors at WarWings are still proudly replicating the ritual of that Original Couple who landed on Blegwethia.
And as far as the humans go, every once in a while some dragon here on Blegwethia will dig up some old fossilized man-creature bones and it’ll make the news. I remember earlier this year when a human skull made the news because it fetched two hundred pounds of gold on the black market.
Recently there’ve been rumors around WarWings that some of the dragon professors in the Creative Evolution Lab have discovered a way to clone humans. Supposedly they’re using DNA found in the stomachs of ancient Snow Dragons buried deep in their arctic ice tombs.
Honestly I don’t think any of us dragons cares one way or the other about the prospect of bringing the man-creature species back. I mean, considering how easily they’d let themselves go extinct, it’s kind of tough for younger dragons to get jazzed about human beings. Though I hear they might make good pets.
Cadets here at WarWings are still utilizing the Original Couple’s fundamental lesson of Conquer and Reproduce. And we call that ritual EggHarvest. And if I don’t get an official Queen by sundown today then my rights as a dragon will be revoked. I’ll be demoted to slave status.
So if I don’t get luscious Runcita Floop to agree to be my Queen, then I’ll have to spend the rest of my days working as a slave on some lame Colony Planet in one of the Outer Galaxies. Ugh.
Anyway, my green webbed feet are flying right now. I’m flashing across the lava pits.
My powerstaff shows my current RUN SPEED ramping up to 63 MPH.
Runcita is right here in front of me, standing on the teleportation pad.
Now I guess at this moment Rexro must be pressing the button there inside his Safety Cage. Because instantly the bright yellow light starts glowing under Runcita’s green webbed feet.
And right there in front of me, Runcita’s image starts to get wavy.
Because the machine is whipping up her subatomic particles.
And then there’s a crackle of lightning in the giant glass tube overhead and poof—Runcita is gone.
[ 8 ]
THE HEART IS THE HIGHEST LAW THERE IS
By this point I couldn’t stop running if I wanted to.
If I’ve got a weak spot in my running game, it’s my inability to brake.
Because in my life I’ve run into more walls than I care to count. Fribby likes to say that I don’t so much stop at a destination as impale myself upon it.
And it’s not just my running either, the same thing goes for my flying. When it comes to my flying, don’t even get me started. Once I came flying out of the sky at 200+ MPH and hit the ground and plowed a good forty feet straight down into the ground before finally coming to a stop. And then spent the next couple days scooping dirt out of my snout with a shovel.
I glance at my powerstaff. My RUN SPEED showing 71 MPH. It feels like I’m running even faster than that.
A big dragon bastard named Velch who’d been next in line has already stepped up onto the teleportation pad. I don’t know this fiend very well and frankly I don’t want to. But I do know this bastard has WILL TO POWER coming out the wazoo. I mean I don’t know what his exact WTP rank is, but it has to be well over SkullCrusher.
I also know Velch plays on the WarWings varsity Slave-Catching team. And I remember how a couple weeks ago in the locker room he used his powerful talons to hold my scaly head underwater in the toilet while he flushed it to see if he could give me “swirly horns.”