Then this old gnarled sad-sack dragon sat back down with his scaly head in his talons. Because the fool couldn’t even remember his own name.
And as a youngster I remember walking out of that Time-Travelers Anonymous meeting, holding my grandpa’s talon, and looking up at him and saying, “Dr. Terrible, I promise I won’t ever time travel. I don’t want to wind up like those idiots. I want to remember everything from my life. Thank you for being such a wonderful grandpa. I love you.”
My grandpa peered down at me and fetched the tip of his spiked tail to gently whap me upside my scaly green head. “Mind your manners, Gork,” he said. “Don’t ever use the T-word in front of me again. Remember, gratitude is weakness. And gratitude diminishes your WILL TO POWER. But that said, I’m glad to hear you promise that you’ll never time travel. Always remember. Just because your dad was a weak-willed moron, that doesn’t mean you have to turn out the same. So do yourself a big favor, and stay away from time travel. It’s just not worth it.”
Thwack-thwack.
I flap my wings as I zoom down the fiery corridors and keep whipping my scaly snout back and forth, trying to pick up Runcita’s glorious scent.
[ 16 ]
HOW THE UNVEILING OF DR. TERRIBLE’S EVOLUTION MACHINE LED TO DEAN FLOOP EXECUTING ALL THOSE CADETS OVER THE PAST COUPLE DAYS
Thwack thwack thwack thwack thwack thwack.
Glance at powerstaff. FLIGHT SPEED at 117 MPH.
I lower my eyelids so the wind shear doesn’t mess with my vision.
Where is my Queen?
I fly by the SimuFlight Lab where Professor Noops is lecturing a group of dragon cadets on the finer points of stasisfield chambers. So they can arrive rested and ready to conquer any planet up to five billion light years away.
Thwack-thwack.
So on this glorious Crown Day morning, as I shoot through the Main Building, I revisit the grisly events which occurred earlier this week at WarWings. Which culminated in last night’s RageFest between Dean Floop and my grandpa Dr. Terrible. And Dr. Terrible’s disappearance. I reckon my strategy being that if I revisit the ghastly events which led up to last night’s RageFest and Dr. Terrible’s disappearance, then I can uncover a clue as to where that bastard Dr. Terrible is currently hiding.
Now like I was telling you before, the whole sordid mess started Tuesday morning when my scaly grandpa held that press conference on TV and unveiled his Evolution Machine, or Evo-Mach 3000. Now as soon as those vid clips from the press conference went out on the Blegwethian datastream, my grandpa was an instant celebrity all over the planet but especially here on the WarWings campus.
Word of Dr. Terrible’s twisted experiments flew around campus that Tuesday, and dragon cadets in the Dining Hall were all jabbering about the hideous and freaky creatures they’d seen recently on the grounds of Dr. Terrible’s Institute. Like one cadet claimed to have seen a giraffe with a shark’s head strolling around on Institute grounds.
Another cadet said she’d seen winged swordfish perched in the trees.
Another cadet claimed to have seen a swarm of saber-toothed butterflies descend on a bear, and a few seconds later when the butterflies flew away there was nothing left of the bear but a pile of bones.
So within a matter of hours, the rumors about my scaly green grandpa had reached a fever pitch among the cadets at WarWings.
Now Tuesday morning after debuting his Evolution Machine and the results of his first mind-swap on TV during the press conference, Dr. Terrible had flown to the mainland at the request of government officials to further discuss how his Evolution Machine might be utilized for military purposes. And so this past Tuesday night while Dr. Terrible was away on the mainland, three senior dragon fellas got real high by shooting each other full of PartyBullets. And then these dragon fools broke into the grounds of Dr. Terrible’s Institute because they wanted to see if all the rumors about the strange creatures my grandpa had created were true.
And nobody knows exactly what happened that night when the cadets broke in.
But one thing is for sure.
Everybody on the island heard those screams.
Those dragons’ screams were so horror-filled, they peeled the skin right off your eardrums.
Those hideous screams were so insane that they caused sleeping dragons to pop upright in their lairs screaming.
The scream was contagious.
I mean those three cadets’ screams there in the Institute were so piercing that a sophomore cadet on the other side of the island even leapt out of his lair, which was perched on a gorge, and didn’t open his wings and plummeted to the ground, killing himself on purpose. That’s how bad those screams were. Where a dragon fool would commit suicide just so he didn’t have to hear them anymore.
So late Tuesday night Rexro and his campus security goons found those three cadets on the Institute’s grounds. And the three cadets had lost all sense of reality and gone permanently insane and they had to be muzzled because nothing could make them stop shrieking. Then Dean Floop and the WarWings Council of the Elders called an emergency meeting and determined these three screaming dragons would pose a serious security risk if they were ever allowed to leave the island.
So the three cadets were sentenced to death by firestream. And then the next morning at sunrise, those three cadets were marched out to the middle of the campus quad and blindfolded. And their talons and wings were shackled to prevent flight.
Dean Floop stood thirty yards in front of the three cadets and took his mark, and the rest of us demented cadets had to stand in formation behind the Dean.
Now the three blindfolded dragons stood there out on the campus quad, opening and closing their black beaks, but no noise was coming out and it was obvious they were trying to scream but they’d long since shredded their vocal cords and now their screams were completely silent.
So those silent screams served as their last words.
Then Dean Floop blasted each of those poor cadet bastards with a mega firestream, and all three of those cadets were reduced to a neat little pile of ash. And the rest of us cadets standing in formation were made to click our talons together in applause and flap our wings and lash our tails against the ground. And then we all simultaneously gave the WarWings victory salute, which is one raised index claw plus tail arched while blasting a firestream.
Then each pile of ash was collected and placed in a WarWings Honorable Remains Container and delivered to the parents, along with a posthumous WarWings citation for bravery in the line of duty.
Now if you’re a man-creature who’s reading this, then you should know it’s pretty common for us cadets at WarWings to die while getting our education. Only 38% of the cadets in every incoming class live to graduate from WarWings. And it’s not just because we have capital punishment here on the island.