“Sammy, is it?” Billy asked.
Sammy nodded vigorously, sending sparks flying from his head like firewood snapping in a campfire.
“Who’s been saying what about me?” Billy asked.
“The television and the newspapers,” Sammy answered angrily. “They say you’re incompetent . . . that you should have your superhero license revoked.” The fire atop his round head was now burning bright red. “Do they have such a short memory?” he asked. “Do they not remember Zis-Boom-Bah and how you saved the city from a terrible fate?”
Billy smiled, a little embarrassed by Sammy’s enthusiasm.
“Well, I did have a bad time the other night,” he said, turning slightly to look at Archebold and Halifax, who were looking everywhere but at him.
“I said to my friend Zeeborg,” Sammy continued, “I said, ‘Zeeborg, Owlboy is just having a bad night. Don’t you think that after all he’s done he’s entitled to one bad break?’ ”
“What did Zeeborg say?” Billy asked.
“He said they should take away your costume and make you run naked through the streets, but that’s just Zeeborg. He’s a very cranky monster.”
“Oh,” Billy said.
“I said to Zeeborg, ‘You mark my words, when things turn very bad, we’ll be begging for him to save us again.’ ” Sammy wagged his chubby finger at Billy and his friends. “And look,” he said, spreading his arms and looking around at the deserted street. All of the stores looked as bad as Sammy’s. “Look at what has befallen us.”
“The bad guys?” Billy asked, feeling his fury on the rise again. He’d only been the hero of Monstros for a few months, but he found himself incredibly protective of it.
“It was like they had no fear,” Sammy said sadly. “Like they knew we had chased you away.”
Billy shook his head and placed a firm hand on Sammy’s shoulder.
“You didn’t chase me away,” he said. “I would never leave Monstros unprotected.”
“And that’s exactly what I told Zeeborg,” Sammy said, his flame now burning a cheery yellow.
The ground shook violently beneath their feet.
“What’s that?” Sammy asked, his fire hair darkening with concern.
“Probably trouble,” Billy said, making eye contact with his team. “Are we ready for this?”
They all turned toward the sound of destruction. Something was coming—something big, loud and heavy. It would be coming around the corner of Rigor onto Mortis Street at any second.
An old, beat-up truck, its back end loaded with peeper fruit, flew down the street like a toy, the eyeball-like fruit rolling and spattering grossly on the ground.
“This is it,” Billy said as the dark shadow of whatever it was blanketed the ground.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Victoria announced.
“Not now,” Billy said as the threat appeared.
The robot was huge, its head a large, plastic bubble where whoever was controlling the mechanized instrument of destruction would have sat, but in this case there was more than one controller.
In fact, there were five.
The robot’s head was filled with monkey demons—Slovakian Rot-Toothed Hopping Monkey Demons, to be precise. They all looked as though they wanted to be the one driving the metal monstrosity.
“Where the heck did they get that?” Billy yelled over the thunderous footfalls of the stomping robot. It was going out of its way to step on the cars parked along Mortis Street.
“My workshop,” Halifax answered.
“Your workshop?” Billy asked. “Are you telling me you made that?”
The giant robot picked up speed, jogging toward them on enormous robotic feet.
“You know how it is,” Halifax said, rolling on the ground to avoid being ground to a paste. “It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, I had some spare parts left over from a lawn mower I had just fixed . . .”
“And you built a giant robot?” Billy asked, avoiding twin laser beams shot from a weapon that had suddenly emerged from the robot’s barrel chest.
“I told you it was a bad idea,” Archebold screeched, peeking out from behind a fire hydrant, a terrified Sammy beside him.
The blast struck a mailbox, blowing it up and sending the mail inside into the air like confetti.
“Happy New Year!” Victoria screamed as she threw her hands into the air.
The Bounder boys immediately noticed the little girl dancing in the snow of confetti and headed toward her.
Not wanting to explain to Mrs. McDevitt how her daughter was squished into something resembling a pancake, Billy ran toward the oblivious little girl.
“Victoria, look out!” he yelled, watching as the giant robot loomed above her, raising one of its legs, preparing to bring a foot down on her five-year- old head.
The foot descended, and he could hear the sounds of the Bounder boys screaming and laughing.
“A giant robot?” he imagined Victoria’s mom shrieking, immediately taking a big gulp of the special grape juice she drank in moments of stress.
“A giant robot driven by five Slovakian Rot-Toothed Hopping Monkey Demons, to be precise,” he saw himself explaining.
There was sure to be more screaming and drinking of the special grape juice, and Billy knew that it was just way too much drama for him. He dug deep into a special reserve of strength and power that he had stored for occasions just like this, and for getting the last chocolate pudding at lunch before Danny Ashwell had the chance.
Billy was suddenly with Victoria beneath the enormous metal foot. The little girl was still lost in her own world, bent down picking up pieces of the shredded mail.
“This one looks like a butterfly,” he heard her say as he lifted his arms, catching the falling foot in his hands.
Planting himself, he used all his Owlboy strength to hold the foot in place.
“Forget . . . the . . . butterfly,” he grunted, the sound of the robot’s mechanics whining and grinding as the Bounders did everything they could to finish the job.
Victoria stood up, turning toward him with a piece of jagged envelope in hand. “This one looks like an ocelot,” she said, holding it up so that he could see.
Billy wasn’t sure he’d ever done anything quite so hard. The Bounders were trying to kill them, and Billy was the only thing keeping him and Victoria from becoming giant red stains on the ground.
A piece of trash that looked like an ocelot wasn’t really on his list of important concerns at the moment.
“I . . . don’t even . . . know what . . . an ocelot . . . is . . . ,” Billy moaned, pushing against the increasing pressure of the giant robot’s foot.
“It looks like this,” Victoria said, and reached up to shove the piece of paper right beneath his nose.
The Bounders must have done something while at the controls, diverting all power to the giant robot’s leg, because suddenly Billy was no longer holding the foot back, and he felt it start to push him down.
“This one looks sort of like a baby chick,” Victoria said, dropping the ocelot to pick up another piece of envelope.
“You know what a baby chick looks like, right?” she asked sarcastically.
For a minute, he thought about diving out from beneath the foot and letting it squash the preschooler, the explanation that he would owe the little girl’s mother not seeming all that difficult anymore. But he decided that maybe letting one of his teammates—one of his Flock of Fury—get crushed might not look so good for him.
So instead of jumping out of danger’s path, Billy converted his annoyance into raw power.
“I’ll show you what a baby chick looks like!” Billy screamed in quite possibly one of the most bizarre super-heroic cries of exertion ever uttered. A burst of strength exploded from his body. He pushed the giant robot’s foot so ferociousy the mechanized assassin flipped backward. The robot went tumbling into the street with such force that the clear domed head of the robot shattered on impact.
 
; Billy dropped to his knees, totally exhausted and gasping for breath. He hadn’t been this tired since reaching the level of Galactic Imperator on Star Commando Thirteen for ZBox 499.
“Peep! Peep! Peep!” Victoria said, making the piece of envelope she was still holding in her tiny hand dance in front of his face. “Victoria still has to go to the bathroom. . . . Peep! Peep! Peep!”
He didn’t have the strength to do anything but kneel there and let the baby- chick-shaped piece of paper dance on his head.
“Are you all right?” Archebold asked as he ran to Billy’s side. “That was absolutely amazing!”
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” Halifax added.
“I knew you could do it,” Sammy said, patting him on the back. “Those monkey demons didn’t have a chance.”
Billy was only half listening to his friends. He’d seen some movement near the toppled giant robot and was curious about what was going on.
The Bounder boys emerged from the damaged cockpit, bouncing on their spring-heeled shoes and looking ready for round two.
“He broke our robot,” Benny grumbled, brushing pieces of glass from the front of his vest.
“I loved that robot,” Bobby said, starting to cry.
“It was like another brother to me,” Bernie added as he checked his springs to make sure nothing was stuck to them.
“I say we stomp Owlboy and his friends into the dirt in honor of our fallen mechanical brother,” Balthasar proposed.
“Maybe we could stomp on them every year at this exact time and make it a holiday,” Bailey suggested.
“Brilliant!” the monkey demons screeched all at the same time. Then they slowly began their bouncing approach.
Billy struggled to stand, his legs trembling as if they were rubber bands. He didn’t know if he had any fight left in him.
“What are we gonna do, Billy?” Archebold asked.
“Peep! Peep!” Victoria was still playing with the paper, making it dance on Billy’s head.
“We’d better think of something fast, because those monkeys are getting kind of close,” Halifax said, backing away.
Billy considered throwing Victoria at the monkey demons and letting her drive them insane, but that was probably too slow a process. Just then, he heard the sound of voices behind him.
“Looks like you could use a hand,” a voice commented.
They all turned to see four old goblins dressed in tight- fitting costumes that mimicked the color and style of his own.
“Grandpa Artemus?” Archebold asked. “Is that you?”
“Not at the moment, Archebold,” the old goblin said, his hands on his hips. “Right now me and the fellas are in superhero mode.”
Billy couldn’t believe his eyes. It was like his prayers had been answered. Archebold’s grandfather and his friends—Saul, Percy and Morty—had all been sidekicks to the last three Owlboys that had protected Monstros before Billy, and here they were—the newest members of his Flock of Fury arriving for duty. Even Morty, who was nothing but a cobweb and dust-covered goblin skeleton in a wheelchair, looked ready—as much as that was possible—to defend the city they loved.
“You said I should give you a ring if I ever needed a hand,” Billy said with a relieved smile. “Looks like you saved me from having to make the call.”
Realizing that the size of Billy’s flock had just increased by four, the Bounders attacked with wild abandon. Before Billy could even begin to think about his plan of defense, the old goblins were already on the move.
“Let’s show’em how we dealt with punks like this in the old days,” Artemus growled as he took hold of Morty’s wheelchair. Saul and Percy jumped into Morty’s bony lap, and Artemus wheeled them all toward the advancing monkey demons.
Billy immediately felt guilty for letting the old-timers be first into battle. He moved to join in when he felt a small hand grip his arm. It was Archebold.
“Let them try first,” the little goblin said. “They’ve been waiting years to do something like this. It’ll do wonders for their self- esteem.”
The former sidekicks let out screeching war cries as the wheelchair carrying them crashed into the center of the bouncing monkey demons. Three of the Bounder boys managed to leap out of harm’s way, but Bailey and Bernie didn’t move quite fast enough and got their feet run over.
“My toes!” Bailey screamed, hopping up and down and letting out an earsplitting screech with each hop. “It hurts to hop!”
Bernie had dropped to the ground and removed his coiled boots. Pulling his feet up to his mouth, he blew on his red and swollen toes.
“Not fair,” he cried. “Not fair at all. Don’t these goblins know that our feet are our livelihood?”
“They don’t care,” Bailey answered, trying hard not to bounce. “All they care about is stopping the bad guys. . . . Well, bad guys have feelings too, you know!”
Artemus laughed, punching an old wrinkled fist into the palm of his other hand.
“I love it when they whine, eh, boys?” he asked his partners.
“Like little babies,” Saul responded with a tough- guy snarl.
“Maybe we should call ’em the Bounder girls,” Percy teased.
Cough! Morty added, a cloud of dust and cobwebs shooting from his skeletal mouth.
The remaining Bounders had bounced back and stood in front of their injured brethren.
“No need for name calling,” Bobby Bounder cried indignantly.
“Sticks and stones may break our bones,” Balthasar said. “And wheelchairs crashing into us, of course.”
“And big rocks,” Benny added. “Big rocks could break stuff, too.”
All the monkey demons agreed.
“Enough of this chatter,” Artemus yelled. “We’re gonna give you boys—and I use the term loosely—a chance to surrender, but if you don’t drop to your knees with your hands behind your monkey heads, things are gonna get real ugly.”
“I don’t believe it,” Billy whispered to Archebold. It actually appeared as if the Bounder boys were considering Artemus’ offer.
“Told you they were tough,” Archebold said, a proud smile on his goblin features.
And that was when things went bad.
“That nasty monkey is getting away!” Victoria suddenly screamed as Bailey Bounder weakly hopped over to the wreckage of the giant robot.
“They’re going for the robot!” Halifax warned.
The old goblins started to move on the Bounders but were driven back by the speed of the bouncing monkeys.
“We gotta help,” Billy said, already on the go.
But it was too late. Bailey Bounder had emerged from the fallen robot wielding a double- barreled laser rifle.
“This is for my toes!” the monkey screamed, firing wildly.
The blasts were coming fast and furious, and the Flock scattered. Twin beams of scarlet destruction raced through the air, narrowly missing Billy before striking Sammy’s store, causing it to explode.
“No!” the little flame-headed shopkeeper cried sadly. Archebold had to hold on to the guy to keep him from running into the burning building.
Billy had had just about enough of this nonsense.
His entire team was hiding, and the Bounder boys were laughing insanely as they gathered around their laser-wielding brother. Their giggles became louder and higher pitched with each new object Bailey destroyed.
Billy quickly looked around and spied the suitcase he’d dragged from his garage. He grabbed it and dove for cover behind a parked car.
“Get him!” Balthasar screamed. “It’s Owlboy, he’s the one we want!”
Bailey fired the lasers again, twin bolts of sizzling death looking to make Billy history. But they missed, which bought him enough time to do what he needed to.
As fast as he could, Billy unzipped the suitcase and flipped back the lid. Halifax had said that many of his projects would be considered quite dangerous in the world of monsters, an
d Billy was hoping to find one that would put the Bounder boys in their place.
He moved some stuff around, and beneath a box of baking soda and some stray pieces of paper covered with notes and drawings, he found exactly what he was looking for.
The potato crackled with a bluish energy. If he hadn’t been wearing his special goggles, it would have been blinding.
“I guess Halifax was right,” Billy said, carefully reaching down to pick up the energized vegetable. His entire body began to tingle.
The Bounders urged Bailey to fire again, and Billy looked up to see the Slovakian Rot-Toothed Hopping Monkey Demon aiming down the barrels of the weapon at him.
As Bailey fired, Billy hurled the potato at the Bounder boys with all his might. If it had been a dodge-ball throw, he was certain that it would have knocked at least two opponents from the game.
He had no idea what to expect from the potato.
The ground beneath his feet exploded into rubble as the twin laser beams struck, hurling him backward to the street. Billy managed to roll onto his stomach just in time to see the potato land, the bluish white energy intensifying.
“What’s this?” Balthasar asked, bouncing over to study the object.
“Looks like some kind of vegetable,” Bobby answered.
“Looks like a potato,” Benny said.
It was Balthasar who suddenly realized the danger they were in. “A potato!” he shrieked.
The others realized as well, but it was too late.
The vegetable exploded in a flash of thunder and light, and the monkey demons were tossed here and there with the intensity of the blast.
Billy just stared in awe.
“Told you they were dangerous,” Halifax said.
“Do it again!” Victoria screamed happily, clapping her hands.
There was still one potato left, but Billy didn’t see the need. The Bounders were bouncing away from them as fast as they could, the fur on their monkey-demon bodies standing on end as if charged with a zillion volts of static electricity.
Billy carefully zipped up the suitcase, wondering about the destructive potential of the other seemingly harmless objects he had brought from his garage.