And I remember one day last semester some fiendish DataHaters kidnapped Trenx and tied him up to a palm tree out in the jungle part of campus. And then for well into the night, they proceeded to blast him with so many firebolts and flamestreams that he’d nearly died and eventually had to be airlifted out of there by the Medevac and rushed to the psychosurgery ward. I heard the medics found him in six pieces strewn across the jungle floor over a half-mile radius.
He’d also had a bunch of sessions of intense psychosurgery, until they’d wiped most of his memory clean. But I judged that was cruel to give the robot psychosurgery and wipe the memory of his abuse away.
Because when those DataHater dragons came for him the next time, he wouldn’t know how scared he should be and so he wouldn’t activate the proper levels on his ESCAPE & EVASION program. So I figure those psychosurgery sessions actually increased the Datalizard’s suffering in the long term.
Bullying isn’t considered a problem at WarWings, our professors actually encourage it. Most professors will even let you turn in a holovid clip of you bullying another dragon for extra credit. Because bullying is considered a healthy gateway activity that leads to planet conquering. And bullying a robot? Well for some of the old-timer professors, that’ll get you extra extra credit.
I mean, technically, MortalMachines are supposed to have the same basic rights as us Normals, though of course in reality it doesn’t exactly work out that way.
Or as Professor Ponk from the Robotics Lab likes to say with a smirk on his beak, “Suuuurre these bots have the same rights as the rest of us dragons.” Then he pauses for a second, before shouting, “The right to get eaten!” That always gets a big laugh from the Normals in the classroom.
But there’s some truth in the professor’s joke. Because out of the 500 robots from Fribby’s line that started out at WarWings, 147 of them have been murdered by Normal cadets. Well actually two were suicides. But the only reason those Dragodroids killed themselves was on account of they’d been endlessly ridiculed by Normals and so they couldn’t take it any longer.
But mostly, like I said, those robots were murdered by these DataHater cadets. And in pretty horrible fashion. I can’t tell you how many times on Central Campus I’ve chanced upon a metal headless Dragodroid hanging from the ceiling. With the words NO ROBO scratched on their shiny chest.
Anyway, as I study those two giant black horns on Trenx’s metal head it’s pretty obvious his days of being sadistically used for lavaloogie practice are over. I don’t think those DataHater bullies will have the gumption to try and blast him with firestreams until he breaks apart into little puzzle pieces on the ground.
Not with those nasty-looking horns on his silver head.
Because a dragon’s WILL TO POWER is generated in his horns.
There’s even an old Blegwethian riddle that goes like this:
QUESTION: What came first, the horns or the WTP?
ANSWER: Both.
Now somewhat in a daze, I turn and stick my eye up to one of those new holes in the wall like you would to a telescope. And even with my night vision skills I can’t see where the hole in the wall stops. It’s like staring down a tunnel, it just goes on and on. I mean this Datalizard’s horns are so freaking mega that it’s as if he’s just carved out a whole new hallway in the Main Building.
I step back and gape at the robot.
He grins at me and belches up a mega firestream that shakes the floor beneath my green webbed feet. Then he points at his horns and says, “Talk about a game changer, huh?”
“How did you make your horns grow so fast?!”
The Reptilizoid just snarls at me and shakes his scaly silver head like he pities me for being so stupid. “The same way I got this cape. What do you think, fool? Your grandpa, Dr. Terrible. I went to see the righteous old nasty himself. That dragon’s a genius. He could turn a goldfish into an assassin. Speaking of which, he actually had a goldfish with big black horns on its head and the goldfish’s name was Little Gork. Weird, huh?”
My mind is instantly reeling and I can’t quite process what he’s saying. “Did you say Dr. Terrible?”
“Yeah, fool, I know he’s vanished,” says the robot. “I saw the RageFest last night out on the quad, just like you. But just because he’s gone, that doesn’t mean he’s not alive and ticking. Sheesh. Your grandpa sent me this letter a couple days ago telling me he’d seen me around campus and he noticed my pathetic horns and he invited me to come see him so he could fix my scaly ass up in time for Crown Day. So I figured hey, why not give it a shot. Cuz as it was those Mech-Freak chicks weren’t exactly lining up to be my Queen for EggHarvest. Speaking of which. Where’s your hot-ass scalebot friend, Fribby? That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to show her my new horns. And plus what with it being Crown Day and all. Well I was going to see if she’d be my Queen. That is one smokin’ hot scalebot, my friend. So where is she? Where’s Fribby, yo?”
“You met up with Dr. Terrible? When?!”
“Last night,” says Mr. Gigabyte, snorting blacksmoke out his nostrils. “I saw Dr. Terrible last night. He sent a spaceship for me. Your grandpa is a seriously righteous nasty! He got me the hookup! He straight cured my ass is what he did! Hey Weak Sauce, I can’t even begin to tell you how much better my life is now that I have two big black horns on my dome! It’s like I’m not even the same dragon anymore! I mean I’m still me but I’m also better than me, if you know what I mean. Of course you don’t know what I mean!” he says, looking at my puny horns.
My heart is cranked up and pounding away.
And if you want to know the truth, I feel like I might faint. I’m having a hard time breathing. I can see yellow dots swimming through the air. Everything is swirling around me and my brain feels like it is sprinting to catch some critical piece of information which is galloping just up ahead, permanently out of reach.
I flutter my wings and croak, “I need oxygen.”
“What did you say, fool?”
“Can’t breathe.”
The robot grins and reaches in his utility belt and pulls out a couple chunks of gold. “Yo, check out this loot! Just a couple minutes ago I took these off some sophomore fool Normal in the Library. And when I took this loot from that nasty little dragon, he didn’t even put up a fight.”
I look at the shiny chunks of gold in his talon and my heart flutters a little, like it always does when I’m in the presence of gold. “What do you mean you took them off him?”
“I mean I just walked right up to the fool and demanded he give me all the gold he had on his scaly green ass! And he did it. And you know what else he did? He thanked me for letting him live!”
“Thanked you for letting him live?” Which we both know is incredibly rude, for this sophomore punk to have thanked him for letting him live like that. “Did you eat him?”