I should just step down off this teleportation pad and admit defeat.
But at this moment my thoughts are interrupted by Rexro as he roars at me over the loudspeaker: “Hey you out there with them retarded-looking horns! You better get your scales off my teleportation pad pronto or I’m gonna come out there and rip your tail off and whip you with your own tail right in front of your fellow cadets! And if you think I’m joking or I won’t actually rip your tail off and beat you with it, well then go on and test me! Cuz I reckon you’ll find my cruelty has no limits!”
Now when Rexro shouts at me about how he’s going to come out here and rip off my tail and whip me with it, well my scaly green ass doesn’t appreciate being spoken to like that. And it kind of pisses me off. But at the same time I’m already feeling resigned to stepping off the teleportation pad and becoming a slave.
So while I’m suddenly incensed by Rexro’s whole ripping-off-my-tail vibe this morning, I’m also feeling resigned to my crappy fate. I reckon my black heart is torn.
Rexro is glaring at me from inside his cage.
“Didja hear me, knucklehead?” he shouts. “If you don’t get your tail off my Zap Pad right this instant I’m fixing to come out there and rip your tail right off and whip you with it!”
Then suddenly my webbed feet muscles clench and my toe claws shoot out. And Dr. Terrible says when my toe claws shoot out like this it’s my body’s way of telling me that I should attack the source of my agitation and destroy it.
So I puff up my scaly chest and arch my tail in a Threat Display and the tip of my tail starts twitching around like a scorpion’s tail. I snort firebolts out of my nostrils and flap my leathery wings to enhance my menacing appearance.
Then I point my long curved index claw at Rexro and bellow: “If you don’t zap my scaly ass in next to Runcita right now you’ll need to worry about losing a lot more than your job! Cuz I’ll come over there and rip your forelimbs off! And if you don’t have any forelimbs, then how are you going to eat your dinner?! By the time I’m done with you, you’re going to have to pay someone to pick your snout! So hurry up and zap me in next to Runcita, you sonuvabitch!”
Now I don’t mean to pat myself on the back here but when I finish shouting those mega threats like that, well I know in my heart I’ve just slapped one whopper of a scare on that big ol’ nasty Rexro. And I know right about then that Rexro’s giant black horns are tingling like crazy, warning him that he’s in serious danger. Because that caped fiend out on the Zap Pad is definitely not to be trifled with.
I know he’s shaking and quaking and falling all over himself as he tries to push the button for the Telo-Device. Because I figure Rexro doesn’t have any interest in going through life without forelimbs, and I think I made a pretty darn convincing case for why the fool wouldn’t want to start off down that path.
But when I stop shouting and peer over at Rexro in his cage, he just chuckles and lifts his talon and gives me the middle claw.
And when that bastard gives me the middle claw like that, the other cadets behind me start roaring with laughter. “Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Then I’m seeing lava and I know my eyes in their sockets are blooming a fiery red. I feel a mega rage building up inside of me to the point where I go into volcano mode, and I can even feel the lava gushing in my skull and it feels like any second the lava is going to explode out the top of my scaly green head.
Oh you’re gonna whip me with my own tail are you, you sonuvabitch?!
And now I open my black beak and roar a seriously boss roar and a dozen or so bats come tumbling down from the sky and land all around in the lava pits. Because the sonic boom of my roar has knocked them unconscious in midflight. And a tongue belonging to one of the cadets behind me shoots out twenty feet to my left and snatches up one of the bats on the ground and then retracts. And I don’t turn to see who the tongue belongs to but I hear the familiar “Gulp. Mmmm.”
Then I open my beak and blast a mega firestream at Rexro’s cage. It explodes out of my beak and I shoot it a good thirty yards and aim it directly at Rexro’s stupid scaly green face. And speaking just from a visual standpoint here, the firestream I blast at Rexro is a real beaut. Because the cherry-colored flame looks super menacing there in the morning air. It is straight nightmare.
Then my firestream blasts into the cage.
Now Rexro only just manages to dive down out of the way right as the tip of my firestream hits the spot where his monsterish scaly face was a split second before.
But I don’t stop there.
Because by this point it’s clear that I can show no mercy.
So then I clench my talons like some sort of tortured beast and I roar a roar so deafening and sharp that I swear you can feel the sun up in the sky shudder and go dark for a millisecond before coming back on. And then I call forth the roiling lava from my belly and blast another deadly firestream out my black beak. And this time I keep shooting it for a full twenty seconds straight until I hear a bunch of popping noises and Rexro’s cage goes up in a whoosh of flame.
Now there are gigantic waves of blacksmoke pouring out of the burning cage. And I can feel the heat from those flames climbing into the sky all the way over here on the teleportation pad.
And when I finish blasting Rexro’s Safety Cage with that firestream it’s so quiet out here in the lava pits you could hear an ant cough. Because all the cadets behind me are just squatting there hushed with their toe claws retracted.
One thing is for sure, nobody’s laughing at me now.
That’s one of the Four Basic Power Principles from the WarWings Cadet Planet Conqueror’s Handbook:
If the natives fight back,
then give their skulls a crack!
Because violence
brings silence!
And I’m thinking:
Wow, you really got Rexro’s attention! I mean look at the way Rexro’s glaring at you right now as he struggles to escape from that burning cage. It’s like he’s really seeing you for the first time!
Which is true. I can see Rexro whirling around in his fiery cage. Then for a moment there he just stops and stares at me with murder in his eye until a gigantic wall of flames comes and washes over him. And as I stand there on the Zap Pad and stare at the fiery cage with all that blacksmoke pouring out of it, well I can feel how the momentum of this situation has definitely begun to turn in my favor.
Yes sir.