Scales the Draconic Oddball

by Kowlickkid

Chapter 3: Sunny Desert

Sunny Desert

The sun slowly came up over the horizon, shedding it's light over all it reached. I greeted the dawn with a grin.

'Not bad, Celestia. Not bad at all.'

I looked around again and listened for something suspicious. Funny thing how I could stay up all night and not yawn even once. As the sun rose slightly higher, the rays began to shine into my eyes. Almost subconsciously, two scales above my eyes thinned and elongated, allowing me instant sunglasses. I had spent part of the night practicing with my scales. They came in handy for more things than just battle, even though they were suited to throw at enemies.

On top of a log, Lena was snoring peacefully. That might have contributed to why I couldn't sleep. It might have been peaceful to her, but to me, it sounded like several potatoes being rolled down a thin wooden plank. I wasn't hungry, but I figured she would be, so I used the stems of some fruits as target practice, slicing them off the branch and swiping them with extended claws. After a relatively short space of time, I had a platter(or flat stone) of fruit slices good enough for a breakfast. I picked up a nearby stick and prodded Lena with it.

"Oi, sleepin' beauty. Wake up before I decide to roust you out the hard way.", I said with a few more pokes. She jolted awake as if I had just stabbed her with a sharp pencil.

"No need for that, Scales! I'm awake!", she said, before eyeballing the fresh fruit.

"Chow down, Bubblegum. We're gonna start moving today, and you're gonna need to stay awake and energetic in case something decides to assault us."

"Do you have to call me something other than my name every time you speak to me?", she complained.

"Not really, but it's just how I talk."

She muttered something to herself before filling her mouth with a chunk of banana.

A snap of a twig in the distance alerted me of something else around us. Lena frowned at my twitching ear.

"Anything wrong?" she asked.

"We're not fully alone." I replied, slipping into camoflauge mode. She choked on an orange slice. "Calm down, I can camoflauge myself. Actually, I can pretty much disguise myself as anything, change my scales to any color."

She lowered her plate(flat rock) and looked around nervously. "What exactly is it?"

"Don't know, but it smells horrible. Kinda like burnt cat hair."

My guess was more accurate than I would've guessed. A tiger came hurtling out of the bushes towards Lena, teeth bared like nobody's business. Before it got halfway to her, I gave it a punch in the side. It hurtled to the side, crashing on the ground a couple of feet from the pink pony.

"I hope that hurt, furbrain!" I taunted.

It snarled at the general direction my voice came from and settled into a battle stance. I could see why it smelled so bad now. On its side, there was a burnt patch of hair, from what, I wasn't sure. I came out of stealth mode, on the side where the tiger wasn't looking.

Lena looked at me with surprise. I gently tapped the cats shoulder, and when it turned around to hiss at me, I shot a fireball at its face. Immediately, it started roaring and clawing at its face, before jumping into the spring to extinguish itself. A blackened face turned to me and hissed before turning in the other direction and leaving.

"How did you get on the other side of it?", Lena asked in surprise. I disappeared.

"The same way I just did it to you." I replied. Lena turned to the other direction and jumped 5 feet in the air, startled by my sudden appearance.

"DON'T DO THAT!"

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We had gathered a small supply of fruit with us, slung in one of the now dry blinker furs. I carried most of our pack, while Lena shuffled nervously behind me. The scenery was constant. Trees so thick I couldn't wrap my arms around them, ivy climbing up their crackled and dry trunks. A few birds dared sing their sweet songs, much to the delight of the periodic falcon swooping down. The light came through the trees with little difficulty, allowing life to the small patches of grass that could absorb a bit of sunlight. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a flash of red peeking out of a fork in the branches. I stopped in my tracks to take a better look at it.

"Trouble?" Lena asked, straining her ears for a possible sound.

I shook my head and pointed at the bundle of twigs that rested in the safety of a tree. She looked at me confused.

"There's nothing there but a clump of sticks." Without a word, I gently knocked on the trunk of the tree. Immediately, two bright, red, yellow and orange heads peered out of the nest at me. "A phoenix nest.", she whispered. She turned to me. "You have very good eyes."

I moved her jaw up to its proper location. "I could eat soup off of your eyeballs by the day, judging how ya keep 'em open that way."

She hastily blinked twice and forced her eyelids to a normal position. Without another word, we trudged on through the wood.

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High up in the clouds, a dozen pairs of cruel eyes watched the unlikely companions trek on through the woods.

"You sure you can take him?", asked a wheezy voice to another creature beside him. "He looks pretty tough." Immediately, the second one grabbed the first by the throat and snarled.

"Are you sayin' I'm some kind of a wimp? I'll crush him into the dust, and I'll eat the pony as a celebration dinner. You gotta problem with that?" retorted the second creature, still holding his neighbor by the throat.

"No no, I just meant that..."

"Now listen here, ya lily-liver. You might be a chicken, but I'm not. We'll ambush them when they hit the desert and I'm going to make him wish he was never born, ya got it?" The unfortunate victim nodded enthusiastically, clutching the claw around his neck. "Good. Now let's fly."

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"So how do we know we're on the right track?" I asked Lena.

"We can follow the compass for now, but soon we'll hit the Sunny Desert, and we can follow a few natural landmarks from there."

I snorted. "Sunny Desert? That name is... original."

"Well don't look at me, I didn't name it."

And so we trekked on through the huge forest. At one point, I noticed a distinct lack of moisture in the air.

"We're getting closer."

She merely nodded at my remark.

The trees started thinning out, leading to an increase in sunlight. Soon, we were walking on mere grass out in the open, tough, coarse grass that would make your feet hurt if they were soft enough. Celestia's sun burned in the afternoon sky, raining heat down upon us in large quantities. I, being a dragon, and therefore pretty much heat-proof, was unaffected. The same could not be said for the pink pony dragging herself over the dry grass, tongue hanging out like a canine.

"You okay, Pinks?", I asked. She took a swig out of her canteen.

"Yeah. Pretty much."

"Feelin' a bit boiled?" She nodded. I spread my wings. "Hop aboard, there's plenty of shade."

She hesitated, before nodding again and moving towards my back. I kneeled down and spread my wings wider so she had a bit of space to hop on. A bit towards the area of my wings, there was an area that she hopped onto. It gently sunk a little as though accommodating her. I spread my wings over my head, between her and the sun. The grass was thinning out, giving way for patches of bare ground through the few dull-green blades. Before us spread the vast expanse that was the desert, a mainly flat surface punctuated with large solid boulders.

"Well, Scales. Here we are. Welcome to Sunny Desert, one of the hottest places known to pony.", mumbled Lena in my ear. I looked around with a critical view.

"Place could use a good dusting.", I remarked. I started to walk across the boiling landscape.

'I am so glad that I can resist heat. A pony walking by itself must go through torture here.' I peered over my shoulder. Lena was sweating like there was no tomorrow.

"You okay back there?"

"Better than I would be if I was going alone." she managed to pant out. I turned my head back to where I was going. As I approached a shady boulder, I heard several loud thumps behind me.

'Crud! I wasn't listening!'

I quickly turned my back to face whatever had landed behind us. About a dozen figures of different colors stood in front of us. Their heights varied, but all were at least a head shorter than me. Lena pulled her head up over my shoulder to see what the new arrivals were, quick to pull it back down as a small ball of fire got spat out by a shorter yellow dragon. I snarled and moved the fireball out of the way with my hand. A red dragon, obviously the ringleader, stepped closer.

"Well looky here!", he jeered. "A fancy little pony riding a dragon. Doesn't that make you feel humiliated, Cheese-breath?"

I merely smiled. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names ain't gonna hurt me. Actually, strike that first part. Sticks and stones aren't gonna hurt me either."

"I see you're a funny man. How about we take this to the arena? Whoever defeats the other gains rights to the pony. If you refuse, we all take ya on at once. In other words, I'm challenging you."

I debated my options. If I fought him in open combat, the dragons might go after us, in spite of the agreement. However, all of them at once would most likely rip me apart, and that wouldn't be a good option. "Fine. I accept. Where is this arena?"

The leader grinned in a sinister manner. "Right this way, pony-friend." He spat the words out as if they tasted bad to his mouth.

'Not really surprising. Most dragons are quite anti-pony. I peered over my shoulder to look at Lena, her eyes once again the size of soup-plates. I let a tip of a smile graze the left side of my mouth as I winked at her. She visibly gulped.

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The arena turned out to be a large square field, marked by large boulders, with a shaded area on each side, where the others who weren't fighting waited. I stood next to Lena, using the five minutes they gave me to examine my opponent.

"Are you sure you can beat him, Scales?" Lena asked, clearly worried.

"I'm not fully sure, but he seems pretty confident. That might lose it for him. I have a few tricks up my sleeve, and he seems like he isn't using the best of his natural abilities to his advantage.", I responded.

"How so?"

"Look at his physique. He's the tallest of the bunch, and his whole body, from the tip of his elongated schnoz to the end of his tail, is best suited for speed. However, he's noticeably put a lot of time into raising his biceps, trying to make himself stronger instead of faster."

"You notice all that? Where did you learn?" she asked me, obviously impressed.

"Actually, it's coming naturally. I wasn't really this observant or smart before." I was a little confused though myself, but I dismissed the thought.

'Heck, it'll probably just be the magic in the air, making me smarter, like a sort of Narnia thing with brains.'

"Hey Pea-brain!", yelled the young drake. "Five minutes are up, let's go!" I stood up and flipped into the arena. Literally, flipped. Enhanced agility was mine. Not to be outdone, the drake tried to do the same, but ended up on his rear-end, grumbling in pain. I smirked.

"So are we gonna start or what? I wouldn't want to interrupt your communication with the dirt, but perhaps we can arrange an appointment with it again soon, say, in about two minutes." A rumble of "Ooooooooooooooo"s rippled through the dragon seats. I guess they took whatever fun they could.

"You pansies shut up!" yelled my opponent. "As for you, you're gonna be eatin' dirt in 50 seconds!"

I grinned and shifted into my defensive stance. "Let's see whatcha got, red."

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Scales has entered his first real battle with a dragon. Granted, the dragon is young, but it should still be an interesting match. Will Scales emerge triumphantly? Or will Lena's hide belong to the dragons? Find out next time in 'Tyrannosaurus Wrecks' or 'Dragon the Trash Out'! (Also, a cookie to whoever knows what that's from)

Comments

[oldtimeydude]

I find it kind of odd that she would not be at least a little bit disturbed by him SKINNING a few canines, I would imagine that wouldn't be all that common where ponies live (or him eating the corpses in front of her afterwards). It would've been nice reading about the difficulties he would be finding in trying to skin them since for each species theres usually a certain way you have to skin them so you don't ruin the hide and then theres a method you have to go through to make them useable for long periods of time. And with going into a desert him being a dragon I would imagine him being at least a bit more like a reptile and how they behave in warm/hot weather, more active and energetic, but since he's a dragon I would imagine that with him being able to breathe fire would give him a bit more of an edge against a regular cold-blooded creature.

Sorry I'm nitpicking at the thing but it just kind of bothered me seeing all these and comparing them to real life.