6 tons of slithering steel

No.4 was having a bad day and had decided that not only was it a bad day but not particularly good life either.

No. 4 had eaten its fireman that morning because the happy little bugger had been really annoying of late. He was always so cheerful and going about his business of tending to No.4 while all the time whistling happy little tunes and singing happy little songs and grinning inanely. So No.4 ate him because that's what a big bad dragon was supposed to do only it wasn’t a dragon was it? Well, not a proper dragon it thought feeling very sorry for itself and it would have pouted if it had had a real fleshy mouth instead of quarter inch plate. So it let off some steam and scalded the fireman's cat instantly regretting it as No.4 needed all the steam it could until it found another fleshy bipedal freak to fetch coal.

… and what sort of a diet is coal?
Its ok as a supplement to flamed cattle and sheep and the odd fireman for that matter but as a main meal its just so ... boring. it needed it, craved it and its very existence demanded it but No.4 hated the damned stuff. No.4 didn’t like being a bloody serpent either. It had wings and could sometimes get airborne but what about getting about on the ground to do a spot of “stalking of the pray”?

Being a serpent it couldn’t stalk in the normal sense so it had to slither up to its pray which isn’t the same thing really. Then there was the stealth thing.
6 tons of boiler plate doesn’t slither very stealthily making it almost impossible to creep up on something. In fact No.4 didn’t creep up, it clanked up like an antique traction engine loudly hissing steam all the time like a demented Cobra trying to mate with a microphone plugged into a 100 watt Marshal stack.

Number 4 they called it and it had no idea what happened to the other three although it had that feeling that certain parts were second-hand, “lived in”, if you know what I mean. It was pretty strong and didn’t leak much steam but its Kunkle pop valve had been a problem and its steam cock would get stiff for no reason. The fireman could sort that out in with a quick tap of his hammer.

No.4 thought about regurgitating the Fireman as it had swallowed him whole but that was 25 minutes ago and he had stopped screaming now which was always a bad sign. Pretty fragile are humans thought No.4 but they have much better diets and really wild imaginations. Only a human could come up with a steam driven Dragon with no bloody arms or legs and think it cool. Silly buggers.