Serialization of "Quedly Dake and His Quest to Conquer the Globe" — Chapter 17 of 25
From Book 3 of the Trilogy “Taterskin & The Eco Defenders”
Albert stepped into the room, half-expecting to see a flummoxed and irritated Quedly Dake there to angrily confront him.
But no one was in the room.
Hoping they had at least a few minutes before Dake appeared, Alexis lifted her wings, and Albert carefully plucked us all off her chest feathers, one by one, placing us on Dake’s spacious and ornate table.
Using the Compressor/Decompressor wand, which he had wielded as if it were a cane while walking through the hallowed halls of the U.N., Albert decompressed us all, in no particular order—unless you call placed randomly from left to right on Dake’s table to be a particular order.
Due to their natural size as opposed to the size (especially the ceiling height) of the room, the larger Modoc siblings (Tubthumper and Chumbawumba) had to only be enlarged to half their normal size — still humongous, but relatively “pygmatized,” as Marmalade put it.
It was a good thing the room was very spacious, as Jowls Behemoth, Ocero Puddleby, and the Elephants (even at half-size) alone took up quite a bit of space, without even mentioning Ooga, Stripes, Rory, and the rest of us.
We wanted to make a good impression—or better expressed, I guess, a dramatic impression, on Dake when he arrived, so we had Ooga sit in the chair in front of Dake’s desk so that he would be the first one of us that Dake would see when he entered his office. Placing Ooga there was something like having him be “the first one off the bus” when a visiting sports team arrives at the site of an athletic contest; the purpose of this stagecraft or “psyops” was to have the most impressive physical specimen strike fear into the opposing team. Ooga would be “the first Defender off the bus,” so to speak (although many of us could have ably filled that role, including, especially, Tubthumper and Chumbawumba Modoc, Ocero Puddleby, Jowls Behemoth, Stripes, and Rory).
For my part, I was actually in favor of Rory being our “poster Defender,” but I was voted down by the others. It was not wasted breath, though, because I made a (better) friend of Rory in the process; I hoped Ooga wouldn’t hold it against me—he shouldn’t, because I did agree with the popular choice in the end. Let Ooga think I changed my mind; let Rory think I was just being agreeable and going along with the crowd; no harm, no foul.
At any rate, we did not have long to wait. Dake soon entered the room, flanked by his two bodyguards.
The previous chapter can be found here.
The next chapter can be found here.
Book 1 of Taterskin & The Eco Defenders, “Wonders Never Cease,” can be found here.
Book 2 of Taterskin & The Eco Defenders, “Tell It To Future Generations,” can be found here.
Book 3 of Taterskin & The Eco Defenders, “Quedly Dake and His Quest to Conquer the Globe,” can be found here.
