By David C. Daoust
The flames licked and curled around his great metal form as the mechanical dragon broke atmo. The heat that enveloped it was immense, caused the metal of its carapace to glow a warm red. A welcome change, however, to the cold nothing of space.
It curled its elaborate solid-light wings tightly around itself as the dragon let his heated form drop into a barrel roll; A plummeting barrel roll that might cause an onlooker to stop and wonder if this great beast of a bot was even conscious. Yet, an onlooker there was not, not at such a great height, nor was there any question to whether the beast was conscious, when it suddenly flung its wings out wide to catch an updraft, that sent it sailing through the skies above.
Its body cooled as the winds enveloped him and its carapace dulled again to its normal sheen. It had been a long flight, it felt good to make planet-fall, where he could cut through the winds on wings, rather than propelling through the nothing with thrusters.
The dragon-form was a product of ‘Sweet Honey Zhou, the Pirate Queen’. It was her elaborate plans that stripped this bestial bot from his home in the simulated worlds of the ‘Hub’, and gave him such a deadly form in the real world.
The Dragon was meant to be a beast of war. A product sold to the highest bidder, that would surely then shift the tides of battle.
Problems arose when the Great Dragon’s of Taman witnessed the human’s mistreatment of the Natural World; of the plant life, of the animals, big and small. Where these Dragons were meant to be a force under the human’s sway, the dragons decided they must be a force above; a force to free the ‘Life of Taman’ from the short-sighted human’s grip.
The Dragons of Taman forced the humans from the jungle moon.
This, in turn, caused the humans to retaliate. Thus, the Pirate Queen infected this particular dragon with a destructive line of nanites, and dubbed him ‘Plaguecat’. The nanites were meant to seek out and destroy any dragon that made contact with him.
Plaguecat fled the jungle moon, Taman, and began his flight to the desert moon, ‘Twin Crown’, all to thwart the Pirate Queen’s plans.
Plaguecat was no longer what he was. It was infected with more than just the nanites of the Pirate Queen. It now held hybrid nanites, made up of both, the mundane destroyers of the Pirate Queen and those nanites which came from mysteries unknown, combined. These Hybrids fused with the dragon, became the dragon, made them all stronger.
Very little of this, did Plaguecat actually know. His mind was closer to that of a beast or an animal, as was true of all those siblings he’d left behind. Whether his fusion with the hybrid nanites meant he was no longer a danger to his siblings, was a possibility he’d not yet grasped.
Now, he experienced something new, something he could only puzzle over. A hunger maybe? Or a hollow in his chest? He did not know what he could hunger for. He had no need of food in this form. He dismissed the idea of it being a hunger. It wasn’t a real hunger, more of a pull, maybe a noise— yes, an unheard noise.
He decided it was more akin to a call.
Plaguecat let out a call of his own, a great tin screech that echoed through the canyons below. With this action he decided to follow the strange call to its source.
It was an enigma.The call was a constant, it rang-out around him without making a noise. He followed for miles, until at last his journey came to an end. He couldn’t understand it, anymore than he could understand the swarm of machines, known to humans as ‘Battle Drones’, that were emitting the call.
Plaguecat circled at a distance for a while, all to try and witness; hundreds of them, swarming around, fighting each other.
Plaguecat never made sense of it.
Suddenly, the drones crashed to the ground, seemingly at once.
The call changed. Not gone completely, but flat, and without character.
The hybrid nanites wanted a closer look, this was the first time they’d made such a request, he complied…
The Great Dragon brought himself down, fluttering gently onto the sands. His wings closed, flickered, and vanished, leaving only the nubs at his shoulders as he took his first steps on Twin Crown. His long body snaked its way around the sudden ‘junkyard’ of still drones that stretched around him.
The dragon could do little more than look at the armored lumps… The hybrids, however, were sending pictures into his mind, as they did before, when they showed him Twin Crown. These images told him nothing. The nanites were hard at work though, so the dragon leaned back on its haunches to preen.
After a time, he curled himself into a knot and rested his horned head… only to lift it again, when, one by one, the drones began to spring back to life, to rise back up into the air.
Again, the Nanites had fused themselves with new technology. More and more information flooded the dragon’s systems as the Nanites took control of greater bodies, larger bodies, bodies all their own. Yet, still, a part of the newly arrived Dragon of Twin Crown, Plaguecat.
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