“Where did I get it? Oh that’s rich. You know exactly where I got it, you little sonuvabitch!”
Then he drops the little silver tracking device on the floor and lifts his leg and stomps on it with his webbed foot, making a big show of using his heel to grind it into oblivion.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
“Well technically speaking,” I whisper, “it’s not like I myself put the tracking device on her while she slept. You see, I used one of my micro-drones—”
“Shut your beak before I knock it off!”
He yanks his powerstaff off his utility belt and I’m pretty sure he’s going to hit me with it. And I flinch. But all he does is flick his powerstaff and a holophoto appears in the air and I couldn’t be more shocked by what I see there. Because in the floating holophoto you can see Runcita squatting next to this headless Mutant bastard, and they’re both smiling. She with her luscious scaly green head in the correct location, and he with his demented beak down in his belly. And Runcita has one leathery wing wrapped warmly around the Mutant’s shoulder, looking like she’d be content to spend the rest of her life hugging this maniac.
“Is this your Queen?” he snarls, pointing at the floating holophoto of Runcita with her wing wrapped around him. “Because if so, take my advice and forget about it. Runcita wouldn’t go to EggHarvest with you if you were the last dragon in the universe!”
“How do you know that?”
“Because she’s one of my best friends! And she’s not into bastards who stick tracking devices on her wingjoint while she’s asleep, you scumbag!”
The shame I’m feeling right now is more than I’ve ever felt. I hate myself.
My God, what have I become?
The holophoto floats over to the headless dragon and transforms into blacksmoke and then flies into his powerstaff. He hitches his powerstaff back on his utility belt.
“Does Runcita know it was me?” I whisper.
The headless scoundrel snorts firebolts and starts laughing like a lunatic. “No, you egomaniac,” he growls. “She doesn’t know it was you! How would she?! You think you’re special or unique or something?! You think you’re some kind of genius when it comes to scoring a Queen for EggHarvest?!”
Now he holds out his other talon and I see a bunch of silver tracking devices piled up there in his palm. There must be hundreds of them. And seeing this makes me feel even worse.
What a loser I am.
Even when I try to act fiendish, my actions are just run-of-the-mill.
Because apparently I’m not the only sorry bastard at WarWings who thought that using a tracking device would help him score Runcita.
“You’re not very smart, are you, scumbag?” he growls.
Now the headless cadet lifts his right forelimb and curls his claws into a fist the size of a boulder, making ready to hit me. His yellow eyeballs in his belly seem to narrow as he stares up at me, like I’m a fly he’s about to squash.
“How about the right to knock a scumbag’s scaly head off?” he says, snorting blacksmoke. “What do you think about that, Normal? Well I think that’s a right I’m about to exercise!”
I don’t bother trying to correct him about how technically it wasn’t me who went into Runcita’s lair. Because in my gut I know he’s right. I deserve to have my head knocked off. I really do.
So I just look up at the headless dragon’s talon clenched into a fist. And all of a sudden I realize this fist must be an integral part of the scaly green Mutant learning how to survive and go through life without a head.
Because in this fist you can see the Mutant’s entire life struggle etched in the scar tissue, like hieroglyphics.
The painful childhood, the unrequited desire to be loved and accepted unconditionally.
The endless taunts and beatings.
The growing realization that you will be the butt of every joke ever told in your vicinity.
The horrible epiphany that you are all you can ever count on, and that the excruciating loneliness you thought was a passing feeling is actually your essential being.
That we are all to varying degrees hedging our bets against the inevitable insanity.
This fella’s raised fist is less a weapon and more of a living text, the autobiography of the damned.
“This is for Runcita!” sneers the Mutant. “And you can kiss your Queen Quest good-bye, scumbag! Because I’m going to knock your scaly-ass head clean off into the next galaxy!”
Then he starts to swing and I see his humongous fist come flying at me. The breeze on my green snout generated by his oncoming fist is getting stronger.
I clench my lids shut even harder now, as if I might somehow be able to deflect the Mutant’s fist with my eyelids. Because if you want to know the truth, I really do deserve this. That trick with the tracking device was a real low stunt for me to pull.
So I figure I’ll just take my punishment. Get what’s my due. And the fist is so close now that it’s not so much of a breeze as it is a tornado and I can’t hear anything except for this ominous screaming noise that the wind is making.
And then I think to myself:
Snap out of it, Gork! This fool’s fist is going to arrive any second and knock your scaly green head clean off your neck and you at least need to be prepared for it!
Maybe if you focus and are lucky you can fetch your scaly head and have a surgeon sew it back on.
“Wait a sec,” says the headless dragon.
I cautiously open one eye and see the fist’s green knuckles just inches from my beak.
“Aren’t you Dr. Terrible’s grandson?”
I open my other eye now and take a step backward.
“I could be,” I say. “But first you gotta tell me, is that a good thing or a bad thing, being Dr. Terrible’s grandson?”
With a little distance between us, I can feel my courage swelling.
“And why in the heck is it any of your business who my grandpa is?”
The Mutant’s reptilian eyes in his belly are looking up at me. “Come on, really? It’s those horns of yours, stupid. Everybody knows that Dr. Terrible’s grandson’s got the smallest horns at WarWings—”
“They’re not the smallest. There’s this robot named Trenx—” It hits me like a punch to the gut that now I really do have the smallest horns at the Academy.
Then the Mutant points his powerstaff at me and a small floating screen pops up right there in front of us, with my data splayed out in the air. His monsterish scaly green face down in his belly is studying my Cadet Profile on the floating screen:
CADET NAME: Gork The Terrible
NICKNAME: Weak Sauce
CONQUER & RULE SCORE: 6 out of 1000
RANK: MildFuriosity
MATING MAGNETISM SCORE: 1 out of 1000
RANK: RatherGoEggless
HEART MASS INDEX SCORE: 2 out of 1000
RANK: DangerouslyJumbo
CLASS RANK: 2357th out of 2358
WILL TO POWER: 6 out of 1000
STATUS: Snacklicious
“See! I knew you were Dr. Terrible’s grandson!” he says. “That’s the only reason you’re here at WarWings, because of Dr. Terrible. Frankly, with those horns you shouldn’t even qualify to have Normal status. You should really have Mutant status.”
“Don’t you dare insult my horns!” I growl.