Like a chump, I’ve lost track of time.
How long ago exactly was it that I sniffed Runcita’s presence in front of her locker, and her essence shooting up my nasal passages felt like a sweet kick to the brain?
I don’t know.
Because I’ve been blindsided by Trenx’s demented black horns and temporarily reduced to a blob of quivering green scales.
No more, though. Now I’m back in reality.
So I turn away from the Reptilizoid and scope the area. I try to catch a glimpse of Runcita across the hall where she was squatting a few minutes ago, jabbering with her repulsive dad, Dean Floop.
But she’s gone.
And the Dean is gone too.
So without saying another word to the robot, I flap my wings and take off flying down the corridor.
Where is my Queen?
I flap my wings and zoom down corridor after corridor, looking for any sign of Runcita.
I’m waving my snout back and forth, trying to pick up her luscious scent.
Thwack-thwack.
Here in the corridor there are hundreds of cadets flying on both sides of me and beating their wings. And some of them are flying in the opposite direction and rocketing right at me. The air is choked with fiendish flying dragons and firebolts and flamestreams and blacksmoke and skulls being playfully swatted around. It’s ghastly.
I check my powerstaff and see my FLIGHT SPEED at 78 MPH. I’m making good time.
Now I’m kicking myself for letting that robot blindside me like that and making me lose track of my Queen Quest. And I still can’t get over Trenx’s new mega horns. And the fact that they’re a gift from that scaly bastard Dr. Terrible definitely leaves a sour taste in my beak.
Thwack-thwack.
I flap my wings and turn down another corridor.
Thwack-thwack.
Although I have to admit that part of me is happy to hear that the demented fool Dr. Terrible is alive and doing well and up to his old ruthless shenanigans. But I still didn’t understand how Dr. Terrible could see fit to bestow a pair of big black horns on a Datalizard like Trenx and not to his own grandson, his own scales and blood.
I mean really I should take it as a compliment if Dr. Terrible went to so much effort to try and hurt me, right? Because that means I’m on his mind. And if I’m on his mind then that means he cares, even if he has a twisted way of showing it. The sonuvabitch surely cares about me if he’s going through so much trouble to try and mess with my head like this.
So as I zoom along through the air I have to chuckle to myself, thinking about how that Dataworm Trenx is such a fool because he doesn’t even realize that he’s being used as a tool in Dr. Terrible’s diabolical scheme to get at me.
But the feeling of comfort fades fast.
Because Trenx is the bastard with the gigantic horns and the killer WILL TO POWER score. And my scaly green ass doesn’t have doodly-squat. And the more I think about it, the more pissed off I get. And then I change my mind about feeling glad that Dr. Terrible is OK.
Because now I know I want for the rotten bastard to be not OK, and that I’m going to make it my business to make sure he ends up that way. I’ve got a bad case of Dr. Terribleitis, but now at least I know what the cure for my ailment is.
So right then and there as I fly along the corridors of WarWings, I promise myself that I’ll make it my business to find out where Dr. Terrible is hiding and then I’ll rat him out. Because after I find out where Dr. Terrible is hiding, I’ll go and tell Dean Floop and give him the exact coordinates. I’ll hand him that dragon Dr. Terrible gift-wrapped with a ribbon on top. So that Dean Floop can catch my scaly grandpa and make him stand before the Council of the Elders for the charge of treason.
And somehow coming to this conclusion makes me feel better, like my decision to help Dean Floop catch my grandpa somehow brings me closer to my main goal, which is to score Runcita as my Queen for EggHarvest.
Thwack-thwack.
So with a renewed vigor and sense of purpose, I fly through corridor after corridor after corridor.
Check my powerstaff.
FLIGHT SPEED at 92 MPH.
The wind blasting over my green scales feels faboo.
And as I shoot down the corridor I keep whipping my scaly snout back and forth, trying to pick up Runcita’s glorious scent.
When I get to the end of the corridor I flap my wings and take a right down another corridor.
I fly by the Library. I fly by the Commons.
Then as I blast forth I see the Time-Traveler’s Lab up ahead and suddenly the door flies open and a cadet comes stumbling out of the lab capsule into the corridor and he’s cradling a little baby dragon in his forelimbs. Now both this cadet and the baby dragon are starting to disappear, to become transparent, and you can tell that they have no clue that they’re vanishing. And the baby dragon glances up at the cadet who’s cradling him in his forelimbs and snarls, “I hate you!”
Now I’d be willing to bet a pound of gold that that dragon cadet has gone back in time to when he was a baby dragon and abducted his baby self and returned to the present in an effort to prevent his baby self from growing up and suffering the horrors of childhood. But of course now both versions of the dragon are in the process of disappearing, and they don’t even know it. This sucker got his timestreams crossed and accidentally dropped an Existence Bomb on his own scaly green ass.
Where is my Queen?
So as I fly by the Time-Traveler’s Lab I make sure to keep a wide berth as a precautionary measure. Because my scaly grandpa Dr. Terrible has warned me again and again to stay away from time travel. Because my dad, Stenchwaka The Terrible, had been a time-traveling junkie. An addict.
Dr. Terrible says the disease is genetic, and so at all costs I should always avoid time travel. My grandpa says the reason my parents’ spaceship failed in their Fertility Mission and crashed on Earth is because my dad tried to take a shortcut through the galaxy to arrive on Earth. Which was their Designated Foreign Planet. Using time travel as a shortcut to get to Earth, where they were supposed to raise a Colony.
Dr. Terrible has warned me again and again that because of my genes I’m extremely susceptible to becoming a time-travel junkie. And once when I was younger Dr. Terrible even took me to a Time-Travelers Anonymous meeting so I could see what happened to dragons who get sick with the disease. Now as a youngster seeing all those old crusty dragons at the meeting, well it definitely scared me straight.
Because all those dragons had no memory left, from shooting up and down the timestream too often. I remember one old pathetic dragon fool at the meeting reared up on his emaciated haunches and flapped his wings and whispered, “Hi my name is…My name is…My name is…Sheesh.”