Being trapped in the tightly held talons of a young bone dragon was extremely rough and grating. This, consequently, caused Herahld Ghibblets an awful lot of pain, which of course generated a considerable amount of bad vibes. However, frustratingly enough for the Bad Vibes Octopus, there was a number of good vibes counteracting the bad vibes to the point wherein it could get but a measly morsel of vibe salad to lightly much upon as it, too, flew through the air.
Further and further through the sky they went, westward towards Flungunglia coincidentally enough. Eventually, Herahld stopped screaming and instead started complaining, as was his lot in life. It was indeed as if, when Herahld began to complain, what really happened was that his conscious lapsed into and almost flow state wherein he was not truly thinking about what he was saying as much as he was just letting it all flow like a river out of his mouth and into the earholes of who or whatever was in his vicinity. Were Herahld an automaton and not a tauman being, this would've been called his autopilot setting wherein indeed he continued forth in an almost predetermined rhythm that, at least for Herahld, was permanently tilted towards negativity.
"I just don't know where these young bone dragons get off. I mean, really, who even are they? Where does a young bone dragon come from? Sure, sure, I understand if you get just normal bone dragons seeping through the odd perforation from time to time, that much is far. But why has all of Gifflenberg just totally gone to shit recently? The whole place had gone to hell and a bag of holding, I swear to gods... It's ridiculous, the atrocities, and I do mean atrocities, that have been taking place recently. Meteors destroying half the town? Homicidal alien maniacs? Who ever even heard of that shit? Gods damn it, it's unprecedented! And what more, what with the young bone dragon swooping in and taking us as prey and all, well, hell! I just don't even understand why this shit is happening to me. First my home gets leveled, then this, this disgusting freaking octopus shows up with its, your, with your suction cups and all that shit. I mean, hell, what is your problem, you freak? Regardless, apparently we just seem totally delicious to this young bone dragon somehow. Fuck if I know why. Damned thing is liable to get struck by lightning and die a double death, with my fucking luck."
The Bad Vibes Octopus was absolutely basking in Herahld's negativity. Indeed, the rant he'd lapsed into had all but counteracted completely any good vibes that the young bone dragon was generating with its excitement of gaining some captives. Its suction cups popped to and fro as it continued to absorb the negativity, and Herahld continued in turn to dish more out.
As they preceded through the air, the young bone dragon's flight pattern got more and more erratic, almost excited. Suddenly, is jerked up and shot diagonally through the air like a large, boney bullet, and soon enough it was flying up to greet an adult mega bone dragon. This must've been its mother.
The young bone dragon flew up to its mother and greeted her with a screech so loud and obnoxious that it made Herahld's ears ring terribly, so much so that when he complained about it he unfortunately couldn't hear his own voice - which, notably, was one of his main reasons for complaining other than of course habit itself.
Hello, mama! thought spoke the young bone dragon.
Bonemuncher Junior! About time you swooped back up to our airspace! Where have you been?
The young bone dragon quickly tried to calm its mother by explaining that it had captured a tauman and an octopus to eat, but unfortunately enough its mother was not interested in a snack.
See, my child, I think I recently had food poisoning. I ate this tauman, this fire elemental - I know, I know I don't like spicy food, I don't know why he looked so yummy to me, but I did it - and ever since, my stomach has been killing me. I mean, I don't know what all's going on in my perpetual gastrointestinal tract, but it can't be good. So, please, junior, don't eat that tauman or the octopus. We don't know what affect they'll have on our systems. Also, be sure you eat a lot of fiber. I don't think either of those two morsels have much fiber. Seriously, I think I might've just expelled a skeleton from back when I was alive, that's how bad this has been. Please, my boney son, don't be like me.
The Bad Vibes Octopus found this thought conversation quite intriguing. The BVO couldn't thought speak itself, being one of those many undersea creatures that instead communicated chiefly through electrical impulses, but it could interpret them. And what really tickled the BVO was that neither the adult or young bone dragons, or indeed Herahld, seemed to recognize that there was yet another dragon floating in the sky nearby them. A water dragon, by the look of its brilliant blue scales.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
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Unit 5a23 squinted at the tauman riding the blue dragon in the sky with his metal eyelids over the glowing, blue orbs that were his eyes.
[Analyzing]
[...]
[Analysis complete]
[Probable identity determined]
[Guess: Kahli]
[Reason(s): Stone elemental, 6.9% difference in size between left and right foot]
[Certainty: 96%]
"That does look like Kahli," said Unit 5a23. "I can tell with nearly absolute certainty."
"Wow, she's got a dragon now? I wonder if that weird fucking thing she's been carting around in her purse finally transformed. She's been saying it's going to transform and change, you know," said Omar as he burned a few bugs with his flaming arm.
Unit 5a23 was suddenly struck with a realization. Obviously, his system knew who she was, but truly he had no idea in his conscious mind who Kahli was.
"Say, Omar," started Unit 5a23, "I actually have no idea who Kahli is. Or, in all honesty, who exactly you are."
Omar just snorted with laughter. "Nice fucking joke, Mister Robot. And I'm considering taking up pacifism."
Unit 5a23 blinked at Omar with an empty expression. He didn't even know what pacifism was. The only thing Unit 5a23 rightly knew, at least in his conscious mind, was that it was going to take an awful lot of work to repair the large, mushroom-shaped fungus that housed his restaurant.
"Gods, what's wrong with you?" asked Omar with a glowering stare. "Did the apron and toque sap out all your mental faculties or something? Give you a bit of amnesia or some shit?"
"System processing error, file not found."
Omar rolled his eyes. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me. Fucking mindless automaton. File not found, yea, right. Probably shoved it right up your ass or something, I'll bet."
"I'm sorry, I'm still quite confused," replied Unit 5a23. Suddenly, he remembered something. Not something about Omar, or Kahli, or any of that business he'd been embroiled in - instead, he remembered Shammy. Poor, senseless Shammy, always interrupting him while he was busy doing more important things than talking to her. Inexplicably, as he remembered the consumer's attack, he - oddly enough - worried for her safety. Surely, the danger was clear now, yet he still felt almost a need to check on her. It was almost as if he'd grown so used to her bothering him while he was at his restaurant that, now that she apparently wasn't, he was feeling her absence like a chainsaw on his foot. His eyelids shot open like a spring-loaded garage gate. "I must find her!"
"Kahli?" Omar did a double take, looking again at the dragon in the sky. "Unit 5a23, you fucking idiot, we were just talking about her. I swear, you have the memory of a goldfish. She's right up there! You said yourself you were almost certain it was her, and it sounded like you did some robot-y calculations to prove it, too." Omar did a double take. "Hey, what the shit, are there some other dragons up there in the sky? Kind of behind that thick cloud? Fuck, they look like bone dragons, too. That's... fuck, that sucks. But yea, Unit 5a23, you need to get your fucking robo-brain checked. Seriously, you need to download some more RAM or something, you've got the short term memory of a brain dead sea slug."
While downloading RAM was not an impossibility in Nomachiato thanks to the nebulous, sublime implementation of systems as an aspect of peoples' psyches that tapped into the collective unconsciousness, Omar was still quite wrong with this statement. That is to say that it was actually impossible for sea slugs to be brain dead - conversely, they were some of the most intelligent aquatic lifeforms on the whole planet. That being said, sea slugs only communicated with a series of electrical impulses that, to taumans, were indecipherable from underwater currents, or even indeed indecipherable as well from flatulence. With that, sea slugs indeed seemed to tauman beings to be brain dead, however, they were instead astute meditators. Had Froufrou been there on land beside Omar, instead of in Kahli's purse up on top of G'athoong, she would've squelched Omar's ears off the second she heard this statement. Froufrou had actually learned to meditate thanks to a sea slug known as The Sleepy One, one of the wisest sea creatures in not only Nomachiato, but indeed in their entire section of the space torus.
"No," said Unit 5a23. With that, he activated the jets in his feet with his [Robo-Lift] [skill] and flew around the scene, scanning for Shammy. He couldn't find her anywhere at first, until he found a tauman cowering over in a dark alleyway.
[Analyzing]
[...]
[Analysis complete]
[Probable identity determined]
[Guess: Shammy]
[Reason(s): Fungus elemental, glint in eye (obscured by fear)]
[Certainty: 87.5%]
Unit 5a23 was a little startled as he realized why Shammy was cowering in fear. There was a robot stepping towards her. A robot that looked not dissimilar to himself.
"Oh my gods!" said Unit 5a23. "There are other robots like me?"