STA Studios: The Final Battle Part 2 and 3

Chapter 17: First Time Dragon Rider

(Mr. Pepperoni Man's POV)

"Ugh, you again?" Snowball complained. "Why?!" Chester exclaimed. The king chuckled. "Because I know everything that is going on inside this ship, whether you like it or not." I rolled my eyes. Whatever, dude. I thought to myself. Mr. Grits, who was next to me, slowly picked up a spear and nodded towards the back, still desperate for escape. I got the idea and slowly started walking backwards and the king didn't notice, unsurprisingly. He was blabbering away about how we couldn't get away from him.

I took about six steps backwards when I heard a faint click beneath my foot. I lifted it up, revealing a medium sized red button that seemed taped to the floor. Crap, I thought. What does that do? Right on cue, the floor started to rumble, shaking the room like an earthquake. "What in the-?" Aurora questioned, confused. Boxes that were stacked on top of each other fell like light pieces of debris. "How do we have an earthquake in space?" I heard Banana ask somewhere near me. Some boxes fell right near the king, although he didn't seem alarmed about all of this. Instead, he stood there like a complete idiot watching the boxes almost fall on top of him. "You guys can escape now! Go!" Aurora shouted at the top of her lungs. Everyone scrambled out of the room, dodging falling boxes along the way. It felt like we ran a whole marathon when we reached a good place to rest. Panting, we all stopped at a reactor room with Ace close behind.

"Whew, boy! I haven't made a run like that since high school!" Poop exclaimed. "Good for you!" Ninja shouted sarcastically. Poop glared at him. "Was that supposed to be an insult?" "Maybe." Ninja smirked. "Wh...what do we do now?" Chloe asked. Nobody answered her because we were too busy trying to catch our breath, and none of us knew what to do next.

After a few minutes, the rumbling stopped. "What in the world did you step on?" Mr. Grits questioned, facing me. "The floor." I said. "Until I accidentally stepped on a big red button." "Great..." he mumbled. "Well," Your Mom said. "We have to find a way to board the evacuation ship. Or else we'll be stuck here and... die." "Right." Chester agreed. "The majority of us can ride on Ace. The rest of us can follow on foot to another way to the evacuation ship." "That's actually a pretty good idea, despite the fact that aliens are chasing us." Iva said, pointing behind her. "Wait, what?" Chester questioned, turning around. I turned around as well, and saw aliens running as fast as they could down a hallway that led straight towards us. Where's Aurora? I asked myself. Chester quickly jumped on Ace, and yelped when his bottom hit Ace's rough scales. "If we get out of this alive, I'm definitely getting you a saddle." he murmured. "Nice thinking, jumping on him like that." Mrs. Darth Tater teased while climbing on Ace. "Oh, just shut up!" Chester exclaimed. I climbed on Ace as well. I felt the rough, but shiny scales. I figured that I should know what he felt like before we got home. If we do. A lot more of us climbed on Ace as well, filling up almost to his tail. Then Chester turned to the rest of us who weren't on Ace. "Alright guys, Ace is gonna fly so, you better hang on to his tail or his arms and legs." The people who weren't on Ace, (Snowball, Sandy, Jeff, Chloe, and Poop) nodded and grabbed Ace's arms or tail. Seeing that everyone was holding on tightly to his dragon, Chester slightly kicked Ace's side and yelled, "Heeya!" Ace responded immediately. He roared really loudly, scaring the aliens half to death. They stopped running and staggered backwards. I heard the king shout somewhere, "Don't just stand there, catch them!" But the aliens were too fazed to move. Ace darted forward, his wings flapping as fast as I've ever seen him do before. He was flying so fast that Mr. Grits, who had the strongest grip of all of us, almost fell off. It felt like I was riding a horse the size of a small school bus and had the speed of a cheetah, and was probably faster than one too. Due to that, we reached the storage room in no time.

Ace carefully landed near a closed door that read "Evacuation Airlock". His wingspan caused a few boxes to be knocked out of place. Chester was the first one to get off. "Alright guys. Let's get outta here." Everyone else jumped off while Chester made his way to the airlock, with me following him. "Passcode?" I heard him ask quietly. "What passcode?" I asked, standing against the wall. Chester glanced at me with a look of surprise on his face, probably never noticed I followed him, and then looked at the metal door again. "There's a keypad here. It's asking for the passcode." I leaned to the right, trying to see what Chester was hovering over. Indeed I saw a red and black keypad with a small screen on the top that said, "Enter passcode". "I guess we should look for a clue somewhere. Remember that time when Banana rescued Ariel?" Chester suggested. "Yeah, or, we can break down the door." I said. 

"But-" 

"Don't worry, I can do it."

With that, I took a few steps backwards, then ran up to the door and kicked it as hard as I could. Much to Chester's surprise, the door broke apart from the wall and fell to the floor with a loud clang. "Wow, I actually did it." I said, impressed with myself. Right after that, the ship played an alarm sound. "Alert, alert!" A female computerized voice exclaimed. "Evacuation door has been destroyed. Nuclear reactor has been activated. Please run to the nearest evacuation ship before the countdown for self-destruction." Everyone turned to me, either angry or shocked expressions on their faces. Chester glared at me. At that moment, my stomach churned. I felt like I wanted to vanish out of existence, but instead, I grinned sheepishly and shrugged. "Who knew?"