The Girl with the Destructo Touch

  The other squids produced their weapons as well, showing they meant business. The bank erupted into chaos, the screams and cries of the frightened filling the air.

  Armstrong raised a tentacle and fired a shotgun blast into the air. It sounded like thunder, instantly silencing the panicked bank customers.

  “That's better,” the squid gurgled through his speaker, his bulbous eyes studying them all. “Now give us everything you've got,” the leader of the tentacled terrors proclaimed, producing large sacks from within the folds of his many arms. “And don't be stingy with those awesome Dr. Mellman Home Surgery Kits.”

  “I think congratulations are in order,” Sigmund Sassafras said to his sister as he listened through a set of headphones covering large ears which protruded from an even larger head.

  Sireena Sassafras reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror in the van, checking to see if she'd evenly applied the bright-red lipstick to her large, swollen lips. Without missing a beat, she raised her palm so that her brother could give her a high five, which is exactly what he did.

  “How are they doing?” she asked, smacking her lips and checking her reflection from every angle.

  Sigmund smiled. He was glad he'd decided to wire up the squids and experience the thrill of the robbery without the risk. “Excellent. Squids were definitely the way to go.”

  Sireena looked away from her reflection. “But isn't that what you said about the Sludge Sloggers?”

  Sigmund's round eyes bulged. “Don't start that again,” he warned, ripping the headphones from his large cranium. “You thought the Sloggers were a good idea too, and just because they encountered some minor difficulties before they could deliver our goods doesn't mean that—”

  “Minor difficulties?” Sireena interrupted, bending the mirror back to its original position. “You call being stopped by Owlboy a minor difficulty?”

  Sigmund's blood started to boil, and he felt his good mood begin to disintegrate. “I told you never to mention his name,” he growled.

  “Whose name?” his sister asked in mock confusion. “Owlboy's name?”

  Unable to contain his fury, Sigmund reached out and ran his hand across his sister's moist lips, smudging the freshly applied lipstick all over the side of her face.

  Sireena shrieked, grabbing the rearview mirror again to assess the damage.

  “Look at what you've done!” she bellowed, attempting to wipe the red smear from her greenish skin.

  “I warned you,” Sigmund said, shaking a finger at her. “That name is a blight upon the Sassafras family. Have you forgotten what that… that… person did to our parents?”

  “Of course I haven't forgotten!” Sireena cried. “Do you seriously believe I could forget that it was Owlboy who thwarted our mother and father's plans to become king and queen of crime in Monstros City? And that we were deprived of their love and affection during our most formative teenage years when Father was banished to Dimension X and Mother was sentenced to serve—is currently serving—sixteen life sentences for crimes against inhumanity in Beelzebub Prison?”

  Sigmund felt a slight twinge of guilt. “I'm sorry for smearing your lipstick,” the male half of the Sassafras Siblings muttered, lowering his gaze. “It's just that since Owlboy's …I mean, since that person's return, my fuse has been running a little short, and sometimes my temper gets away from me.”

  “That's all right, dear brother,” Sireena said, reaching down to the floor to retrieve her Gigantisaurus skin handbag. “And I'm sorry for shooting fifty thousand volts of electricity through your body.”

  Sigmund paused. “What was that about fifty thousand volts of electricity?” he asked, his face twisted up in confusion.

  From inside her handbag Sireena produced her electroshock pistol and fired a crackling bolt of electricity into her brother's chest. She watched him twitch in the driver's seat, a plume of smoke billowing up from the top of his square head. Satisfied, she placed the pistol back in her bottomless purse and returned to fixing her makeup.

  Sigmund was about to launch himself across the front seat at her when a faint sound from his discarded headset distracted him. “Did you hear that?” he asked, patting out the flames that burned at the top of his head.

  “Hear what?” Sireena asked.

  Sigmund picked up the headphones and placed them over his ears again. “I could've sworn I heard one of the squids say something about…an owl.”

  “What did you say?” Armstrong's voice gurgled from the speaker around his neck. He turned his conical head away from the strange image now shining upon the bank vault door.

  “I said, it sort of looks like an owl,” the squid (whose name was Tibert) said, studying the strange shadowy image. The bank patrons, who had all been herded together with their paws, feelers and odd appendages behind their heads, agreed.

  “But why would there be a shape of an owl on the bank vault door?” the squid boss asked aloud.

  Their sacks stuffed with cash and Home Surgery Kits, the other squids approached for a better look.

  “Maybe it's just a decoration… for Owl Day, perhaps,” suggested one.

  Another set his overly stuffed bag down on the floor and crossed four of his arms. “This is vaguely familiar to me,” the squid's voice crackled through his speaker box.

  “Didn't it have something to do with the super-hero?” asked another. “You know, the one who disappeared.”

  “Yeah,” the last squid agreed with a nod of his pointed head. “What was his name again? I think it had something to do with a bird.” He snapped his tentacle in the air like a whip, trying to remember.

  “Owlboy?” somebody within the savings and loan suggested.

  The squids all stopped, considering the answer.

  “Who said that?” Armstrong wanted to know. He didn't recognize the voice, and it hadn't come over a speaker, so he knew it wasn't one of his boys.

  “I think it came from over there,” Tibert said, pointing to the crowd of bank customers.

  “I said it,” said the mysterious voice again, and one by one the customers of the savings and loan slowly turned their heads to see a small figure dressed in a brown costume and feathered cape jump up onto one of the counters.

  “And who are you?” Armstrong asked.

  “Thought you woulda figured it out by now,” the costumed character said, pointing to the dark image shining on the bank vault door.

  “I would've thought it was obvious.

  “I'm Owlboy.”

  CHAPTER 5

  And Billy had thought the Sludge Sloggers were dumb.

  “Owlboy,” said the squid who seemed to be the leader of this gang of dopes. He scratched his chin— at least Billy thought it was a chin—do squids even have chins?—with the tip of a tentacle that wasn't holding a gun. “Then that explains the owl symbol on the safe door.”

  All the squids started to nod as if the secrets of the universe had been revealed to them.

  Billy put a gloved hand to his head and shook it in dismay. “Can't fool you, can we?”

  Meanwhile, Archebold had emerged from his hiding place at the back of the bank, still holding the portable Owlboy signal. “Can I turn this off?” he hollered.

  “Yeah,” Billy answered. “No sense in wasting it. We could've had ‘Owlboy is in the house' posters, and I still don't think they would've gotten it.”

  “They're not very bright,” Archebold yelled across the room.

  “Tell me about it,” Billy called back.

  The squids were looking at Archebold.

  “Who's that?” the leader asked.

  “My sidekick,” Billy replied.

  The squids nodded but remained silent, until at last the leader spoke again.

  “So, you're Owlboy, a superhero, and I bet you've come to try to stop us.”

  Billy folded his arms across his chest. “That's about it, yeah.”

  That was when things got really crazy. The squids were dumb, there was no doubt about that,
but they were also violent.

  “Think again,” the leader bellowed, his voice so loud it caused his speaker to crackle. “Boys, stuff this bird fulla lead!”

  Billy barely had time to react before the entire squid gang aimed their multiple weapons and started to fire at him. Better me than the customers, he thought, jumping behind the counter as bullets flew above his head and struck the wall behind him.

  He had to put a stop to this before anybody got hurt. Sitting on the floor, he opened all the pouches on his utility belt, but didn't see anything he could use to take down a gang of squids.

  He was going to have to improvise.

  He started to stand, and roughly banged his head.

  “Ouch!” he squeaked. One of the bank tellers had left their drawer open, most likely when they were handing over the cash to the squids. Billy noticed that a section of the drawer was filled with rolls of change.

  “Hmm, these might just work,” he said, hefting the heavy roll of coins in his hand.

  He could hear the squids whispering to one another as they stalked closer to the counter.

  “Do you think we got 'im?” one asked.

  “I hear him movin' around back there. Maybe we winged him.”

  Another squid started to giggle. “Winged him, I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “The joke…he's Owlboy…a bird… and we might've winged him. Pretty funny.”

  “I don't get it,” the squid said.

  Billy couldn't stand to listen to these idiots anymore. Tensing his legs, he sprang from his hiding place, arms filled with rolled coins. “Deposit or withdrawal?” he asked.

  The squids gasped, jumping back, multiple limbs attempting to aim multiple weapons.

  “How about a deposit?” Billy offered. “Me first.” And he began to throw the rolled coins with amazing precision. Even he was impressed by his own accuracy.

  It was a blast being a superhero in Monstros City.

  The rolled quarters struck the squids exactly between their funky, protruding eyes. One after the other Billy hit the bull's-eye, resisting the urge to laugh as each of the multilimbed criminals went down in a flopping heap.

  “Owlboy!” Archebold's squeaky voice called out. Billy glanced up to see the goblin scampering across the bank, Book of Creeps in hand. “You might want to be careful because…”

  But before he could finish, the weirdest thing happened.

  An inky explosion erupted from each of the squids, filling the air with a rolling black cloud that made it nearly impossible to see.

  Billy jumped down from the counter, searching for his goblin pal. “What the heck is this?” he asked, fumbling through the inky fog.

  “I was trying to warn you,” came Archebold's voice from somewhere in the artificial darkness. “According to the Book of Creeps, when a squid feels threatened, it releases a chemical cloud to aid in its escape. In other words, we've been smoked, sir.”

  Billy couldn't see anything through the black fog, but then he got an idea. He reached up, fiddling with the button on his special night-vision goggles. Suddenly he saw the shapes of his foes through the rolling smoke. “Bingo!” he cried, watching the squids as they made their way toward the door, and freedom.

  Billy started after them, but tripped, falling to the floor.

  “Stupid bags,” he growled, kicking at the sacks that littered the ground where the squids had abandoned them, causing the money and other contents to spill out onto the floor.

  “Are you all right, sir?” Archebold asked, now at his side.

  “I'm good,” Billy said, kneeling down to take a look at a case that had spilled from one of the loot bags. “Dr. Mellman's Home Surgery Kit? You gotta be kidding me.”

  Archebold shook his large head. “Oh no, Dr. Mellman is very respected here.”

  Billy felt a shiver run up and down his spine. His mother had a Dr. Mellman book that she had gotten at a yard sale before he was born.

  Weird.

  He opened the lid of the kit and pulled out what looked like a spray can. “What's this?” he asked his companion.

  “That's canned anesthesia,” the goblin explained. “Careful with that, don't want to knock yourself out.”

  Billy smiled, an idea blossoming inside his head. He quickly scanned the black fog, seeing that the squids had just about made it to the door.

  “Excuse me a minute,” he said, taking the canned anesthesia with him. “I've got some squids to apprehend.”

  With a mighty leap, Billy propelled himself through the squids' escape cloud, landing in front of them just before they exited through the door.

  “Going somewhere, ladies?” Billy said.

  And before they could raise their weapons, he lifted the can of Dr. Mellman's Home Surgery Kit anesthesia and sprayed it into their squiddy faces—holding his breath, of course, so as not to render himself unconscious.

  One by one the squids went down, their limbs like limp spaghetti as they dropped to the floor of the savings and loan, knocked out cold by the canned gas.

  The black fog gradually started to clear, and Billy saw Archebold marching toward him, a gigantic smile plastered on his ugly face.

  The bank customers were right behind him.

  “Good thinking, sir,” the goblin said just as the savings and loan customers began to clap.

  And to cheer Billy's name.

  “Owlboy! Owlboy! Owlboy!”

  Sitting in the van, not too far away from the Monstros City savings and loan, Sireena Sassafras watched her brother turn the most interesting shade of blood red, which was quite a trick, seeing as his skin was usually green.

  “What's the matter now?” she asked, sliding away from him. It wasn't good when he got like this. This she knew for a fact, because she often reacted in the exact same way.

  “It's him!” Sigmund screamed. “He's done it to us again!”

  “Who?” she demanded, certain that she already knew the answer but wanting to be absolutely sure. “Who? Who?”

  “Exactly,” her brother growled, removing the headphones from his large head and shoving them in her face so she could hear.

  “Owlboy! Owlboy! Owlboy! Owlboy!”

  Sireena felt her own face begin to contort in rage.

  “Owlboy,” she spat, flexing her fingers, the freshly polished bright-red claws eager to rip something apart. “What should we do?” she asked, hoping her brother had some sort of answer, though she doubted it.

  He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

  Sireena watched as her brother twitched and contorted, the rage that he was attempting to contain threatening to explode from his body.

  “I can't take it anymore,” he said pathetically, shaking his head from side to side. “Why is he back now? All those years he was nowhere to be found, but as soon as we decide to take our rightful place as the crime bosses of Monstros City, he's back in our faces. It's not fair, I tell you…not fair!”

  “Get ahold of yourself, Brother,” Sireena warned. “Losing your nut isn't going to help anything.”

  The wailing sounds of police sirens suddenly filled the air.

  “The cops!” she screamed, panic setting in.

  Sigmund grinned. “Losing your nut isn't going to help anything,” he snarled.

  She'd had just about enough of him, and jumped across the seat to punch his fat face in.

  But Sigmund was ready for her. He wrapped his hands around her flabby throat, preventing her from getting the upper hand.

  Sigmund had been hatched a mere three seconds after Sireena had emerged from her own egg, but from the moment she'd laid eyes on him, she had wished she was an only child. No matter how hard she'd tried over the years to make it a reality, she just couldn't seem to get the job done.

  She was hoping today would be her lucky day.

  They had fallen into an all too familiar rhythm of biting, punching and kicking, when Sireena heard it over the wails of the approaching police cars: the sound of a pow
erful engine, rumbling like the hungry stomach of some great beast.

  “Do you hear that?” she asked through her brother's filthy fingers as he attempted to pull the flesh on her face over her skull like a hood.

  “I hear nothing except the sound of my rage-filled blood pounding in my ears and …” Sigmund paused. “What is that?” he asked, taking his fingers from his sister's mouth to cup one of his prominent ears.

  Sireena climbed off her brother to peer through the driver's-side window at the street outside. From an alley that ran alongside the savings and loan, a strangely shaped yellow car emerged, its engine roaring powerfully.

  She was mesmerized by the sight of it.

  “That's his car, isn't it?” Sigmund asked, squishing his bulk against the car door so that he too could see.

  “Yes, it is,” she said, almost in a trance. The vehicle was shaped like the head of a bird—an owl, its slick, metal surface painted a bright, nearly blinding yellow.

  The car turned left from the alley, rumbling quickly past them on its way to parts unknown.

  Perhaps to some secret location, Sireena thought.

  And then another thought wiggled into her mind, like a deadly brain serpent crawling from the ear of its unwary victim.

  Sigmund gasped as he saw the multiple police cars pulling up in front of the savings and loan, the law officers scrambling from their vehicles and running into the bank.

  “What should we do?” he asked in a frightened whisper.

  Sireena pushed her brother out of the way and maneuvered herself behind the steering wheel of the van. The keys were still in the ignition and she started the vehicle, screeching out from their parking space and away from the scene of the crime.

  “What are you doing?” Sigmund yelped, fumbling to put his seat belt on.

  “We're going hunting, dear brother,” she snarled, her eyes focused dead ahead, searching for the yellow vehicle.

  “Hunting?” Sigmund asked, not yet getting the picture. “I don't understa—”

  “Owl, Sigmund,” she cut him off. “We're hunting owl.”

  The Owlmobile drove through the dark city streets of Monstros City, from Banshee Boulevard onto Vampire Drive, then turning left onto Corpse Crossing.