Gork, the Teenage Dragon Read online

  “Sir, I wouldn’t have summoned you without just cause. I promised his mother before she—” The female voice cracked and then regained its composure. “He is more sophisticated than he appears. He can speak basic Draconese. I taught him. I protected him from the predators. I helped him flush out game when I could, so that he would learn to hunt. So that he could eat.”

  “Well, I suppose I could try to reverse the damage you have done to him. Civilize him. Help him unlearn whatever it is he learned from spending so much time in the company of a machine. It will be difficult. But I suppose I shall try.”

  “And what about our agreement, sir? I did everything as you requested. I contacted you as soon as I could. You said if I delivered, then you would help me restore power and return home. You said that you would let me help you raise him, sir.”

  “Raise him?” growled the creature, his eyes suddenly blooming red. “Haven’t you already done enough damage to him already, Tin Can? Raise him? Well I’m quite certain you shan’t be raising him. As for the rest of the deal, well you will receive the agreed-upon reward and compensation. After you undergo comprehensive psychosurgery—”

  “Psychosurgery, sir?! You never said anything about any—”

  “If you have any hope of returning home, the memory wipe is mandatory. Otherwise you would be a liability. I can’t very well have you going around knowing what happened here, can I?”

  “Sir, but that was never part of our agreement! My memories are all I have. Without them I won’t be me.”

  “Try being logical for a moment, Tin Can,” said the creature, snorting firebolts. “You’ve clearly developed an unhealthy attachment to him, haven’t you? Thus the need for psychosurgery. Also I will need to reprogram your operating system. It’s my own fault, really. Just because you can make a machine with emotions, it doesn’t mean you should. But before we get to that, there’s just one little thing I need to take care of.”

  Then this mammoth creature reached over and tapped at the screen that was flashing:

  DESTINATION: PLANET EARTH

  “Sir!” boomed the voice throughout the chamber. “That’s not for you, sir! You have no right. His mother left that for—”

  “Give me the Prophecy! Open this thing! I’m warning you!”

  “I gave his mother my word, sir! I’m afraid I cannot allow you access—”

  “I will teach you,” he said, violently plunging his talon into a wall, “to obey me!”

  “Ouch! You’re hurting me, sir! Ouch! Please stop!”

  “Aha! There it is.” He ripped his talon out of the wall, clutching a huge black heart, which was still connected to the wall by a fleshy tube. He held the throbbing heart up in front of his beak, carefully eyeballing it. “Rather impressive, if I do say so myself. Superior design. It’s not often I get to admire my own craftsmanship up close like this.”

  He squeezed the throbbing heart and blood squirted out of it.

  “Ouch! What are you doing, sir? Please don’t!”

  “Release the Prophecy or die!”

  “But sir, I did as you said. I alerted you to his whereabouts. You promised me, sir. You said that if I—”

  And then in a flash of rage he ripped the black heart all the way out of the wall and tossed it on the floor, where it writhed and spewed blood.

  “Sir, you shouldn’t have done this. He’ll be traumatized, sir! He shouldn’t have to see this!”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic,” said the creature, and then reached out and stomped on the heart, which exploded in a gush of blood.

  “You are after all just a machine,” he snorted, as he wiped his webbed foot on the floor, trying to get rid of the goo. He chuckled. “Well, I guess I should say were a machine.”

  Then this mammoth creature reached over and tapped at the screen that was flashing:

  DESTINATION: PLANET EARTH

  This time the screen popped open.

  The creature reached in with his talon and withdrew a flat gold disc with a red gem set in the middle of it. I would later learn that this flat gold disc was what we dragons call a Prophecy. He held the gold Prophecy up in the air and seemed to examine it, turning it in his claws, before pocketing it in his tunic.

  Then he looked down at me.

  “Are you the only one?” he said, snorting blacksmoke. “The only survivor?”

  Who was this big green bastard that dared to intrude into my lair? I could understand what he was saying but I didn’t understand how. He was speaking Draconese.

  Besides, this fiend had invaded my lair. So even though I was bleeding out of my scaly green belly from all those puncture wounds, I looked up at the giant creature before me and I hissed and sprayed sparks out of my black beak.

  Then I raised my tail up in a Threat Display, and started clacking my fangs together.

  “I’m your grandfather,” he said, looking down at me. “But you will call me Dr. Terrible.”

  I crouched even lower on my haunches and hissed and sprayed sparks at him.

  Then he reached down and gently held out his massive talon to me, with razor claws extended. “Come with me, Gork. I’m going to take you home. It’s time for you to learn what you really are.”

  Thus ended my first round of adventures on planet Earth.

  So that was The Night When Everything Changed.

  And that’s how I came to live on Scale Island, Planet Blegwethia.

  And that’s how I first met my grandpa, Dr. Terrible.

  I was only three years old at the time.

  Yes sir. That was the night when my scaly green ass went back to live on my home planet Blegwethia.

  But little did I know that on Crown Day of my senior year, it would be my destiny to return here to this fool planet Earth.

  Part II

  CROWN DAY

  [ 4 ]

  I TRY TO GET RUNCITA TO BE MY QUEEN FOR EGGHARVEST

  So it’s Friday morning and I’ve got my black heart set on asking this luscious chick Runcita to be my Queen for EggHarvest. And right now I’m hanging upside down in the cockpit of my spaceship as it zooms over WarWings Academy. Well the full name is the WarWings Military Academy of Planet Conquering, Epic Poetry Writing, and Gold Plundering for Draconum, but nobody ever says that. Because it’s a beakful.

  Parking here is always a nightmare. And the reason my scaly green ass is hanging upside down by my toe claws is because it tends to help me relax. Now when I say “black heart” I don’t mean to paint myself as some kind of monster. Because every dragon’s heart is black and that’s a fact.

  “We are on Loop 3 of cruise stage, sir. Still scanning for an open parking spot,” says my spaceship, ATHENOS II.

  I’m looking out the spaceship’s windshield at all my fellow dragon cadets lounging around down there in the parking lot, getting ready for yet another day of classes. I’m scanning the crowds, desperately looking for Runcita Floop. And if I see her before ATHENOS II finds a spot, then I’ll just leap out the ship and fly down and offer her my crown.

  But as I look out the windshield, there’s no sign of her.

  And I’m thinking: Where is my Queen?

  “I’m going in low, sir. So you can get a closer look,” says ATHENOS II. “My data suggests that there’s an 84% chance of Runcita being down there right now. And Sentiment Analysis yields 51% neutral, 2.7% positive and the rest unknown toward a Gork + Runcita match, sir.”

  Meanwhile here in the cockpit, Fribby the robot is perched on an anti-grav yoga mat which is floating in midair and she’s striking a yoga pose. She’s crouched on her shiny chrome-flex haunches and she’s got her wings spread out wide and her spiked tail is arched high in a Threat Display. She’s baring her fangs and her silver beak is all twisted up with this terrifying expression on it, and the name of this yoga pose is You Can Run, Fool, But You Can’t Hide. Because dragons find the act of terrifying folks relaxing. And when some creature is scared out of their mind and running from them, that’s when a dragon is truly Z
en.

  Fribby’s also wearing her gold tunic, which is the standard uniform for female cadets. She’s stressed out because the EggHarvest deadline is today, and she still doesn’t have a robot fella for a mating partner yet.

  “I don’t see any sign of Runcita,” growls Fribby from up there on the floating yoga mat. “Maybe Runcita heard you were going to offer her your crown. Maybe she’s pretending to be sick this morning. Maybe she’s still back in her lair, hiding from you!”

  From where I’m hanging upside down, I turn and hiss at Fribby and spray hideous sparks out my beak.

  Now Fribby is technically an organic robot, or cybernetic dragon. But because she’s silver she looks like your typical Dragobot. Meaning that if you saw her flying through the sky you’d reckon she was just a regular metal robot dragon.

  But Fribby truthfully isn’t from the Servant Class. She’s programmed to be a Ruler. Because she’s got real dragon DNA. And she was hatched out of an artificial egg. And eventually she will die. Fribby is the first generation of a new dragon species produced by the Creative Evolution Lab. She’s what they call a MortalMachine.

  “Don’t you worry, chick. Runcita’ll be here,” I growl, flapping my wings. “Just keep an eye out. You heard what ATHENOS II said. She’s probably down there already!”

  We peer down at the mobs of cadets kicking it with their different societies. There must be thousands of dragons swarming down there, lounging around next to their airships.

  “Sir, we are now about to pass over the area of highest probability for a sighting,” says ATHENOS II. “My Image Modeling Analysis suggests a 96% visual confirmation on our target. Please pay close attention, sir.”

  We coast overhead, keeping our reptilian eyes peeled. And now you can look down at the parking lot and see the Nerd dragons crowded together. They’re all huddled around floating illuminated screens, their scaly green skulls awash in data. They’ve got these nifty-looking glowing nanoprocessors grafted into their wings.

  After spending all their time in the virtual world, these digidorks’ bodies look so weak you’ve got to wonder if they can even shoot a firestream out their beak. As skinny as they are, you figure if one of them accidentally belches he’ll go flying backward.

  “Well, Runcita definitely isn’t hanging with that crew,” snorts the robot, pointing down at the Nerds. “Like I said, she’s probably back in her lair, hiding. That chick isn’t going to want nothing to do with your crown, Weak Sauce!”

  Weak Sauce is my nickname. Not very fiendish, I know. But when your horns are the size of a couple of baby carrots and your WILL TO POWER rank is Snacklicious, well a nickname like Weak Sauce just comes with the territory.

  Now they say that WarWings is the most prestigious and selective military academy in our solar system. And when I say “they,” I mean all the snooty old fire-breathers who come back to campus each year for Alumni Weekend.

  The WarWings campus is located on Scale Island, which is surrounded by water for as far as the eye can see. Nobody knows exactly how big Scale Island is, in part because the island has time tendrils that extend into different dimensions. According to my grandpa Dr. Terrible, the island also has a bunch of wormholes floating all over it. But my scaly green ass has yet to cross paths with one. Anyway, from what we cadets can tell, the island is at least four hundred square miles of tropical jungle with a ridge of active volcanoes and a bunch of lava rock beaches scattered around the edges.

  Now there’s not a dragon in our solar system who hasn’t at least heard of WarWings.

  You can’t fly a spaceship over the mainland of Blegwethia without seeing one of their holographic banners floating in the sky.

  The WarWings’ banner always shows a muscle-bound cadet fella with two giant black horns sticking out of his scaly green head. And this dragon fiend has his gold powerstaff raised high, and before him kneel thousands of newly conquered alien slaves. And above the dragon there’s a thought bubble and you can see he is thinking: One day I will write an epic poem about this!

  Then, underneath that dragon hoisting his powerstaff, it says in big gold letters:

  WarWings graduates continue to conquer

  the universe one planet at a time.

  We are the proud preservers

  of the EggHarvest tradition.

  Victory will always be ours!

  We soar forward, scoping the crowds milling around below. There’s nothing but parked spaceships and green heads and spiked tails for as far as the eye can see.

  Where is my Queen?

  Now as we whiz by I see the Jocks. A bunch of these psychos are huddled over some freshly killed dragon, which they’re feeding off of. Probably some transfer cadet whose first day at WarWings ended prematurely. The long green necks lunge up and down in a frenzy as they tear off beakfuls of flesh from the dead dragon’s belly.

  Meanwhile some of those nasty Jocks are lying on top of their tricked-out spaceships and shooting lethal firestreams at nothing in particular. Others swagger around giving each other talon bumps. I recognize a bunch of those dumb-asses on account of they’re star players on the WarWings varsity Slave-Catching team. Very big deal.

  As we pass by overhead suddenly one of them looks straight at our ship and rears back on his powerful haunches and tries to knock us out of the sky with a mighty roar. You can see fresh blood dripping from his gaping black beak. Who knows what poor soul that blood belongs to.

  Out there in the parking lot, it’s always a good idea to steer clear of the Jocks until they’ve had their first feeding of the day. Lest you accidentally wind up becoming breakfast. Usually it’s some poor new dragon bastard who’s just transferred to WarWings that will stupidly wander too close.

  “Hi fellas,” the new transfer cadet will say, “this is my first day and I was wondering—” And then Chomp! Slurp! Next thing you know you find yourself stumbling over a little pile of hollow dragon bones in the parking lot. That’s how fast it can happen.

  Hanging upside down with my wings folded here in my flying spaceship, I continue to clock the scene down below.

  “You don’t think Runcita is going to be down with those freaks?” growls the robot, as she uses her silver index claw to point out the windshield at the group of dragon cadets up ahead. “Come on. Give me a break!”

  “Fribby’s right. She’s not gonna be down there with the Mutants!” I say. “ATHENOS, what are you doing?! Hurry up already! You need to find us a parking spot and get us on the ground!”

  “Don’t be so sure, sir,” says ATHENOS II. “I urge you to take a close look, sir. I ran the data myself, sir, and Runcita’s psych chart fits the profile for ‘Fiend with a Mutant Fetish.’ ”

  And right now as we whiz by you can look down there and see the Mutant dragons mobbed together. There’s a ten-headed schizoid. I call him schizoid on account of those ten scaly green heads are busy snarling at one another and trying to gore each other with their horns.

  I see another dragon who shoots his long tongue out of his beak and the tongue detaches and flies across the parking lot like a spear. This fella flaps his wings and then flies over and retrieves his tongue and sticks it in his beak. Then he shoots his tongue again and chases after it. There’s another one with dozens of eyeballs scattered all over his scaly green body.

  These Mutants are the offspring of the Creative Evolution Lab. And each of them has been awarded a medal for bravery by the Council of the Elders for hatching out of their artificial egg here on campus. These dragons are considered brave because only 7% of these genetically engineered Mutants choose to peck their way out of their egg and start their life. While the other 93% are so horrified by their monsterish figures that they never leave their embryonic membrane.

  Now the main difference between the Mutants and us Normals is the Mutants for some reason can’t breathe fire. Though I heard there’s a sophomore Mutant dragon this year at WarWings who can blow smoke rings.

  ATHENOS II banks and cuts back around and st
arts up the other side of the rotation. Other dragons’ spaceships fly off to either side of us, and a few of them cut in front of us as they zoom up the loop.

  “Traffic is heavy this morning, sir,” says ATHENOS II.

  Now as we pass by overhead you can look down and see the Multi-Dimensioner dragons crowded together. These are definitely my kind of dragons. Not like I’m a member of their society, but I would be if I could be. On account of theirs is the tribe which makes the most sense to me. And it’s not just because they’re sophisticated, it’s more than that. And this morning as per usual, they are only visible in bits and pieces.

  Because their whole deal is they prefer to inhabit several dimensions at once in order to make their crummy teenage lives more bearable. So down there in the parking lot, all you can see is a lone wing here and a spiked tail there.

  And a disembodied green head floating through the air.

  “Congestion is tight up ahead, sir,” says ATHENOS II, as she cuts and weaves among the other zooming ships that swerve into our PROJECTED TRAJECTORY PATH. “Please keep scanning the parking lot, sir.”

  I can see the Datalizards are flexing their chrome wings and peering around the lot with their glowing red eyes. A young scaly green Normal dragon throws a lava rock at one of the Dragodroids and the rock bounces off the back of its steel-plated head. Now this robot whirls around with his silver tail arched high in a Threat Display and blasts a firestream at the Normal, who skitters away laughing with his beak hanging open.

  Meanwhile I’m just hanging upside down in the cockpit and clocking all these different fools yukking it up in the parking lot this morning.

  “Don’t worry, sir,” says ATHENOS II. “Runcita will be appearing soon. And I’ll have you down on the ground in no time. You will offer her your crown and she will agree to be your Queen. Your triumph is imminent. I believe in you, sir.”