“Wait, wait, wait,” Alora said, raising her paws up in front of her. “You have to teach me my place, but since you don’t know how, you have to tell Grimmy? What, is this another one of his rules?”

“Codes,” Vur said. “This is one of his codes.”

Alora sighed. “Alright, sure, codes, rules, whatever.” She nodded. “I’d rather you teach me my place than tell Grimmy. Why don’t you know how to teach me my place for eating your people?”

Vur scratched his snout. “To teach you your place, I have to beat you up and make sure you never want to invade my territory again, but another one of Grimmy’s code said I shouldn’t hurt family without a good reason. So, I don’t know how to teach you your place since I can’t beat you up. Then the only option left is to tell Grimmy.”

“Can you … pretend to beat me up?” Alora asked. “I’ll pretend to get hurt, and that’ll be that. After you pretend to beat me, I’ll promise not to eat your people or invade your space, okay?”

“Would that work?” Vur tilted his head. He grunted. “No, I think I should tell Grimmy. It sounds like you don’t want me to tell Grimmy, so the best way for me to teach you your place is to do what you don’t want me to do the most, which is tell Grimmy.” He nodded and crouched, readying himself to leap into the air.

“Wait!” Alora said, rising onto her hindlegs. She waddled forward and placed her front paws on Vur’s shoulders, preventing him from jumping. “Let’s think this through together and find a loophole in Grimmy’s code, okay? He said you shouldn’t hurt family without a good reason. Isn’t me eating your people a good enough reason? I think it is. I definitely deserve to be smacked for doing that. Yep.”

“That’s not a good enough reason.”

Alora frowned. “If I were one of your people, I’d be pretty upset after hearing that,” she said. Her head turned to the side, and she pointed at the lone trembling sheepman with her tail. “Hey. Aren’t you upset your great leader isn’t taking revenge for you?”

The trembling sheepman stiffened. His eyes shifted from side to side, glancing at Alora, then Vur, then back to Alora. A small bleat escaped from his mouth as his eyes rolled up to the top of his head. Then he fainted, toppling to the ground like a wet noodle.

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Vur said and shrugged. He nodded and stared into Alora’s eyes. “Why don’t you want me to tell Grimmy? Are you scared of him?”

“S-scared of him?” Alora asked. “Of course not. Why would I be scared of him? Look, eating your people makes me a bad person who deserves to be punished. That’s why you want to tell Grimmy, right?”

Vur nodded. “Right.”

Alora took her paws off of Vur’s shoulder and took a step back, still standing on her hindlegs. “Now, since bad people deserve to be punished, what do you think your people will think if you don’t punish me? They’ll lose all respect for you! You can’t let that happen.”

“But I’m punishing you by telling Grimmy,” Vur said and tilted his head.

“Yes, yes,” Alora said and nodded twice. “But that’s not punishing me yourself. Imagine if…, let’s say Bonnie stole your cookie. Then, normally, Grandma scolds her and makes her apologize to you, right?”

“Right.”

“That’s the kind of punishment she’ll receive if you tattle on her,” Alora said. “But is it enough? Of course it isn’t! She ate the cookie, and all she gets is a scolding? She didn’t even have to return the cookie! Instead of telling Grandma, you can flip her over onto her back and tickle her stomach until she returns the cookie to you. She gets punished, and you get your cookie back, and you didn’t have to waste Grandma’s time, see?”

Vur blinked before furrowing his brow. “You’re saying I should flip you over and tickle you until you vomit?”

“Exactly!” Alora said, raising one claw into the air. She paused. “Wait. No. That was just an analogy. You were supposed to realize that dishing out punishment yourself is much fairer for the cookies, no, sheepmen that were eaten instead of tattling to Grimmy.”

“That was a terrible analogy,” Stella said, her head appearing from the tip of Vur’s snout. “Cookies are meant to be eaten, sheepmen are not. You can’t compare the two.”

Alora stared at Stella. Then her gaze went up to meet Vur’s. “As I was saying, your people will only respect you if you punish me yourself, not by telling someone else to punish me. It’s not that I’m afraid of Grimmy, I just want you to be as respected as possible by your people.” She nodded. “I’m really sorry about eating them and want to make it up to you.”

Alora’s claw shone with a white light. “You really are the evil dragon here.”

Vur’s and Stella’s gazes shifted over to Alora’s claw. “Who was that?” Stella asked. “Who spoke just now and why is your claw glowing?”

Alora’s expression blanked. “You can, uh, see this?” she asked. “And you heard him too?”

Stella dragged her arm out of Vur’s snout and pointed. “It’s a really bright light. We’d have to be blind not to see that.”

“The voice was really loud too,” Vur said.

Alora blinked and looked at her claw. She whispered, “I thought people couldn’t see or hear you.”

Zyocuh whispered back, “I think that sheepman was lying to you to buy time for his brethren to escape.”

Alora lowered her claw and looked up at Vur. “Did you like my ventriloquism? I can make my claw speak.” She wet her lips with her tongue. “It’s a neat party trick, right? My lips don’t move, but my voice comes out anyway.”

Vur narrowed his eyes. “What does Grimmy’s code of honor say about lying?”

“Um. Don’t?” Alora nodded. She raised her paw, pointing her claw at Vur. Nothing happened. She glared and smacked the back of her paw.

“I wasn’t lying about practicing ventriloquism,” Zyocuh’s voice said as Alora’s claw lit up. “Don’t you think it’s neat that I can make my claw talk?”

Vur rubbed his chin and squinted. “How do you do that?”

“Vur!” Stella said, rotating her body which was still half-embedded in his snout. “That’s not ventriloquism, that’s Zyocuh’s voice! He’s Mary’s evil uncle! He must’ve possessed Alora!”