Dragon Father disappeared in the middle of a swashbuckling battle with Captain Badass and his pirates. 

Bonny’s Revenge and Captain Badass’ ship hung in the air just outside a cloud city, and his entire crew had leapt onto Bonny’s Revenge. Only three minutes into the battle, Dragon Father disappeared (having woken up). With him disappeared the cloud city as well as all of Captain Badass’ pirates. 

But Captain Badass, as almost all top villains do, remained behind. 

And Dragon Little, only three-and-a-half years old, stood in front of him, metal sword in hand.

“Finally, I have you alone,” whispered Captain Badass and raised his sword. 

“That’s not how you fight,” Dragon Little told him, not in the least frightened. 

“Huh?” 

“See? Like this.” She showed him with her own sword. 

“I will fight you any way I want!” he snarled and took a step forward, preparing to lunge. 

“Your feet are all wrong.” 

“What?” 

“My dad taught me. If you want to really attack, you have to go like this,” she showed him how her father had taught her to lean back in order to lunge forward with more force. 

“What? Like his?” he tried. 

“Like this,” she showed him. 

He shook his head. “It’s not going to work with my peg leg.” He was referring to his right leg, which had a wooden peg from the knee down. 

“Sure it will. Try like this,” and she imitated his peg leg by not bending it at the knee. 

“Hmmmm,” he tried and seemed to find that useful. 

“Yeah!” 

“Yeah!” he tried again and again, getting excited. “Thank you,” he looked down at her appreciatively. 

She nodded. “One more thing before we start.” 

“Hmmm?”

“My dad’s behind you,” she pointed. 

Captain Badass turned around as swiftly as he could on his peg leg, only to be hit in the face so hard he flew over the railing of Bonny’s Revenge and over his own ship’s railing and landed on its deck. 

I had realized then that Dragon Little knew that it was too early for her father to disappear for many hours and that, as often happened, when he disappears early, he reappears within minutes. She had been stalling! 

I fell in love with her even more then. I thought that perhaps she would have a chance, a fighting chance to live a little bit longer, facing all the dangers that awaited this dream girl outside her father’s dream. 

—Told by The Red Dragon