Chapter by: Rammstein.
Skips is doing push-ups in the driveway of his house. Rigby stiffens with jealously, his eyes flicking up and down, counting, wondering how many he's done so far.
"Skips!" Mordecai calls, waving his hand. He quickly slaps his hands together, staring down into them, muttering "oops."
Skips, with a grunt, hefts himself up onto his feet. "Well, if it isn't Mordecai and Rigby," he says gruffily.
"Hey Skips, what's going on?" Rigby asks rather blandly.
"What do you have there?" Skips ignores Rigby, walking over to Mordecai.
"A mouse," Mordecai answers, carefully opening his hands to show Skips.
"What's the matter with it?"
"Mordecai smashed it with a gym bag. Probably snapped its spine or something."
"Shut up, dude," Mordecai elbows Rigby. "It was an accident, Skips," he explains apologetically. "Can you help him?"
"Let me see." Skips holds out his hands, and Mordecai hands him the mouse.
The little gray mouse blinks tiredly, laying down in the soft white fur of Skip's wrists.
A warm feeling unhinges Skips usually cold-hearted appearance. His shoulders sag and his lips curl back into a smile. His eyes drift downwards and gaze at the sleeping mouse.
"Skips...?" Mordecai says shyly.
"What?" Skips glares at Mordecai as if he's interupting something. "Oh, yeah. Don't worry, guys, I'll take care of the mouse."
"Thanks man," Mordecai sighs with relief. "I never knew you had such a soft side for wild animals."
"There's a lot you don't know about me," Skips tells him darkly.
"We know your name used to be Walks," Rigby bursts out. He swiftly receives a punch from the bird. "Ow! What the heck?" Rigby scowls and rubs his shoulder.
"So, are you going to tell us a story, or...?" Mordecai rubs the back of his neck uncertainly.
"A long time ago, a dragon ruled the entire world. As black as midnight, the beast would roam the skies at night, lighting forests and fields ablaze with bright orange fire. It was a terrible time. Many heroes rose up and tried to defeat him, but the dragon was too powerful. All it took was a single breath of air from the dragon's nostrils to turn you into a pile of steamy guts."
"Ew." Rigby winced.
"For centuries the dragon ruled the earth and sky, day and night, never sleeping. Humans and animals became all but extinct. But then one guy had a plan. He had been living in the great icy caverns at the North Pole, and had never seen the dragon, only heard of his horrible deeds. He thought, if the dragon never comes here, maybe that's because ice is his weakness. So he climbed out of his cavern and packed as much ice and snow into his backpack as he could carry and walked all the way to the edge of the North Pole. "
"There's an edge?" Rigby asks.
"He went all by himself? How long did it take him?" Mordecai wonders.
"Just listen to the story," Skips retorts. Mordecai and Rigby fall silent. Skip goes on. "At the edge of the North Pole, the earth drops straight down thousands of feet before circling back around to the other side of the world. But if you fall from that edge, you fall into outter space and die.
"So this guy stood there at the edge, shouting for the dragon to come out and face him. He was scared, but he wasn't going to show it. When the dragon appeared from the fog below, the guy puffed out his chest to prove he wasn't afraid. Flapping its massive black wings, the dragon hovered just out of the man's reach.
"The man was no hero, but he knew that if he didn't try to stop it, the dragon would continue to ravage the earth until it was reduced to ash. He knew he could not throw the backpack and make it into the beast's mouth. He knew that any weapons he had would be useless against the dragon's iron-like scales. So this guy did the one thing he could think of. He got on the very edge of the cliff and dove off, smacking straight into the dragon's nose."
"Dude!" Rigby gasps.
"Then what?" Mordecai demands.
Skips smiles thinly. "The man started to slip from the dragon's nose, so the dragon opened his mouth and the man climbed inside and was eaten."
Mordecai and Rigby stare, their mouths hanging open.
"Is that it?" Rigby asks, feeling cheated.
"No." Skips glances down into his hands, checking on the mouse. It slumbers peacefully. "No," he says again. "Once the backpack reached the dragon's stomach, the acids burst apart the fabric, exposing the ice and snow. The combination instantly created a whirlpool of steam. The reaction was so complex and painful that the dragon could not stand it.
"Roaring and thrashing, it flew off the edge of the world and circled the globe, belching smoke and fire and crying tears of blood. At last, the pain subsided and the dragon came to rest on the sandy white shores of a beach. Exhausted from his flight, he laid his great head down and closed his eyes to rest for the first time in all his exsistance.
"The few hundreds of men and women that survived had been watching the dragon in the sky, and now that he was asleep, they ran towards him with swords and pitch forks and axes. So deep was the dragon's sleep, that he did not wake up until the people had apart his eyelids and began stabbing his eyes."
Mordecai's face is horrified.
Rigby licks his lips, waiting for more.
Skips took a deep breath. "They tore out his eyes, each one bigger than that golf cart, and sliced them to pieces. The people cheered. Red and green and orange blood pooled out of its black, empty sockets, the dry sand gulping it down. The dragon howled in anguish and threw itself into the sky, flying away as fast as it could. A black streak across a blue landscape, the dragon darted straight out into space and into the boiling sun, never to be heard from again."
"Woah," Mordecai shakes his head.
"What did that have to do with-?"
Skips interupts Rigby quickly. "I'm not finished," he snaps. "The people carried the eyeballs back to their town and built a shrine around them as a reminder. But eyeballs are meant to be in their sockets, so over the years, they dried out and whithered completely away.
"A little boy wandered into the shrine years after they had all forgotten about the dragon, in place of the eyeballs were two glass stones, one black and one white, each the size of a cherry. Taking the stones home, he became curious, and researched all there was about the dragon and wrote it all down in a story book. At the back of the book, he carved out two holes and implanted the stones into the leather binding. No one ever believed that those stones had actually come from the dragon, and no one was alive anymore that had actually seen the dragon, so the boy was branded as a fool and sent away from his town along with his family."
Mordecai and Rigby wait patiently.
"I have that book," Skips says dramatically.
"Really?" Rigby's jaw slaps open.
"You were the little boy?" Mordecai asks in awe.
"No!" Skips shakes his head. "I just have the book. It's cool piece of history, and it just happens to be mine."
"Can I borrow it?" Rigby asks.
"It's a piece of history, no, you can't borrow it."
"Aww, man," Rigby sighs.
Mordecai glances at his watch. "Come on, Rigby." He smacks Rigby back into awareness. "We gotta go get the cart back from Muscle Man."
"Alright, fine." Rigby pouts.
"Thanks again for taking care of the mouse!" Mordecai calls back as he run away, Rigby chasing after him.
Skips merely smiles, petting the tiny thing on the top of its delicate, soft head.
To Buck Tick: Wheeeeew.