Bruggert glares at Runcita and snorts firebolts out his flared green nostrils.
“I really wish you hadn’t done that, Run Run,” he growls. “Maybe you ain’t the chick I thought you was after all.”
Then Bruggert casually lifts his talon and holds it up high.
The crown jumps up off the ground and zooms across the gym and back into Bruggert’s palm.
Smack.
He hitches the crown to his utility belt and then turns and glares at Runcita.
“I told you to get that stupid crown out of my face,” she hisses. “You should’ve listened to me.”
Bruggert’s black beak is twisted up into this sadistic grin and you can see all of his fangs. All thousand of them, it looks like.
“Listen to you?” he purrs. “I’m all earholes, Run Run. Message received loud and clear.” Now that depraved dragon pauses for a moment and his eyes bloom red in their sockets.
“But I gotta warn you, Run Run,” he growls. “I’m one of them fellas who thinks that when a chick says no, she really means yes.”
Runcita squints at Bruggert. “So then what does it mean if I say yes?”
“Yes means yes.”
“I thought no means no.”
“No means yes. So either way, your answer’s yes.”
“Hey Bruggert,” she growls.
“Yeah, Run Run?”
“Do yourself a big favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t let your beak write a check that your tail can’t cash.”
In response, the veins in Bruggert’s long neck pop out and his entire scaly green body begins to inflate and the rippling muscles in his chest and forelimbs and powerful haunches swell up to hideous proportions.
His toe claws shoot out.
Then Bruggert’s giant wings ominously unfurl behind his monsterish scaly green head, and each of his leathery wings is seriously massive. Truth be told, the sight of Bruggert with his leathery wings unfurled like that is insanely scary.
Now as if summoned by Bruggert’s fierce Threat Display, a dark wind starts howling through the gym.
Runcita is just crouched there on her haunches looking up at Bruggert with what can only be described as a helpless expression on her beak.
And that’s when I know I have to stop what’s about to happen.
Runcita, poor Runcita, she’s about to get mauled by a psychopath. My darling Runcita is going to get her scaly green head bitten clean off. And I can’t just stand by and watch that happen.
So I step right into the circle.
“Yo Bruggert,” I growl, “why don’t you leave her alone! If you want to show everybody what a badass you are, why not give me a shot?! Huh? Why not give me a shot?! You big ugly sonuvabitch!”
Then I open my black beak and blast a firebolt at Bruggert.
Swoosh.
The firebolt shoots right by the side of his monsterish scaly head.
It creases his left earhole.
It’s meant as a warning shot, nothing more.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Why would I willingly volunteer to sign my own death warrant like this? Love? Well you can call it love if you want. But really it’s much more primal than that.
Because the truth is that a teenage dragon will do anything to make sure the right chick lays his eggs. Even if it means he has to die trying.
And that’s exactly what I am prepared to do.
[ 41 ]
MY BIG HEROICS
So much for my big heroics, though.
Here I am prepared to die and Bruggert doesn’t seem to think I’m worth killing, or even paying attention to. He doesn’t even see my scaly green ass. It’s like I don’t exist.
Bruggert is just hovering there with his wings unfurled. And I figure he’s too focused on the mega damage he’s about to inflict on Runcita to notice anything else.
Homicidal lunatics aren’t known for their ability to multitask.
That’s the only explanation I can give for why Bruggert doesn’t seem to see me or hear me when I step in to protect Runcita from his awful wrath.
“Yo chick,” Bruggert growls. “Just cuz you the finest scale-tail in our senior class, I’m not goin’ to set here and let you disrespect me like that!”
Then he takes one powerful threatening step toward Runcita and raises his talon as if he were taking an oath, and suddenly all five claws shoot out. And these claws are so ghastly they look like they could cut a planet in half.
By this point every cadet in the crowd has their powerstaffs out and is aiming their holovid transmitters at Bruggert and Runcita.
You can definitely feel that this is turning into something huge. Something that will become legend and pass on into WarWings lore. So all these dragons are holding their powerstaffs out and maneuvering to try and get the best possible footage of history before it happens.
“But I promise you something, chick,” snarls Bruggert. “I will teach you to respect my crown! Seems like your hotshot daddy never bothered to teach you the fundamentals of being a dragonette. Your daddy must’ve been too busy blasting helpless cadets with firestreams. So he didn’t have the time to raise his own daughter right. And the first thing you going to learn is to always respect a dragon’s crown! That’s what your daddy should have taught you, Run Run. But that’s OK. Because now I am goin’ to have to teach you myself. That means I’ll be your daddy!”
Then he flicks those savage death-dealing claws out even further and whips his forelimb and slashes at her beak.
Runcita ducks as the claws pass through the air where her scaly green head just was.
“Really?!” she bellows. “That’s all you got? A bunch of stupid daddy talk? Oh please do tell me how you’re gonna be my daddy, Bruggert! Tell me how you’re gonna learn me some lame ancient bullshaka dragon traditions ’bout how since I’m a chick I’m supposed to bow down and respect your nasty crown! I’m all earholes, Brug Brug! Let’s see what you got to learn me! Show me, Brug Brug! ’Cause by my scaly green ancestor’s oath, you don’t want none of this!”
Bruggert’s eyes instantly bloom into raging lava flowers and he launches himself at Runcita with a speed and ferocity that none of us cadets have ever seen before. It is too much. It is beyond the scale of what should be possible.
His rage manifests itself in his attack to the extent that he appears to be less a dragon and more some sort of deranged weather pattern.
Seeing him like that, you feel scared for the whole universe.
The cadets squatting next to me instinctively turn their heads away as if to keep their ugly green snouts from getting blasted off. And I clench my toe claws and dig them into the floor to give me purchase against the hideous wind from Bruggert’s flight, which is threatening to blast me off my green webbed feet.
Even the atoms seem to be having a hard time withstanding the force of his onslaught.
Because Bruggert is wavy around the edges, like he’s bleeding into the atmosphere.
Then Runcita crouches low on her haunches and flips opens her beak and shoots out her tongue.