The Flock of Fury

by Tom Sniegoski

  The number-one goal of this mission—besides saving the mayor, of course—was to look cool. It was the Hooter’s first time out in public, and he needed to do everything in his power to make sure he didn’t embarrass himself.

  The mansion loomed ahead. “OwlSkate, halt!” Halifax commanded, and the board immediately came to a screeching stop, causing him to fly from the deck and land in a crashing tumble in the driveway.

  “Is that you, Owlboy?” a voice asked from somewhere close by.

  Halifax climbed to his feet and pushed back his cape, which was now draped over his head.

  “It’s the Hooter,” Halifax said. His goggles were askew, so he straightened them as he looked toward the mansion.

  The mayor was at the window of one of the upstairs rooms. He was wearing a bright red bathrobe with a black velvet collar, and his ratlike features were twitching wildly as he raised his voice. “It took you long enough to get here. . . . Maybe I should have just called the Monstros City police instead!”

  “What seems to be the problem, sir?” Halifax asked, trying to be polite. He would have rather told the rat-faced politician to go find himself another superhero to yell at, but he was aware that being courteous was part of the whole superheroing package.

  “What seems to be the problem?” the mayor screeched, pointing to something behind the troll. “That giant robot seems to be the problem! I just had the front yard landscaped! Get that giant robot off my lawn!”

  Halifax looked to see that, in fact, there was a giant robot standing on the mayor’s lawn.

  “Would you look at that,” the troll mumbled to himself, strolling over to the robot. It was a good size, maybe twenty feet tall or so. It reminded him of some of the giant robots he’d designed and built over the years.

  “Hello there,” Halifax said to the motionless robot. “Is there any reason why you’re standing on the mayor’s lawn?”

  “I am a transporter,” the robot suddenly droned, its eyes blazing yellow. “My function is to transport.”

  “Like a delivery?” Halifax asked. “Do you have some kind of delivery for the mayor?”

  “Negative,” the robot stated. “I have a delivery for Owlboy.”

  “Owlboy?” Halifax repeated, stepping back. “Well, he ain’t here right now. Would a sidekick do?”

  “I have a delivery for Owlboy,” the robot stated again, eyes flashing.

  “Well, I’m the Hooter; Owlboy and I are pretty close, and I’d be willing to accept this delivery, with the proper identification of course.”

  The robot started to shake and hum as two huge panels on its broad metal chest began to open.

  Halifax reached for his tool belt and removed his greatest tool and weapon, his all-purpose wrench.

  A platform lowered from the insides of the giant robot, and a small figure, even smaller than Archebold, waddled down to the mayor’s lawn.

  “What the heck is going on down there?” the mayor yelled from his window. “Hurry up and get that thing off my lawn. What the heck am I paying you for?”

  “Paying? You don’t pay us,” Halifax answered, keeping his eye on the small creature that now stood before him.

  “Oh,” the mayor said. “Well, if I did, I’d ask for my money back.”

  “Well, don’t get yourself all worked up for nothing,” Halifax yelled up to the house. “I should have your problem taken care of pretty quick.”

  He leaned forward, talking down to the small, armored creature.

  “And who might you be?” the troll asked in his kindest voice.

  “Vomitor,” the creature answered in a low, bubbling voice.

  Halifax stood up, stroking his chin in thought. “Vomitor,” he repeated. “Y’know, I think Owlboy once battled a supervillain with a name just like that.”

  “Vomitor,” the armored creature repeated, the strange gurgling growing louder.

  “Yep, Vomitor,” Halifax agreed. “How about that? So, do you have something for Owlboy that you can give to me?”

  “Vomitor,” he answered.

  “Yes, Vomitor, we’re moving on from that now, thank you.”

  “Vomit—” he started again.

  “That’s enough of that, little guy,” Halifax interrupted. “So what do you have for me?”

  The armored creature motioned with a stubby, segmented finger for him to come closer.

  “Yes?” Halifax asked.

  Vomitor’s mouth suddenly opened incredibly wide, and Halifax had to wonder if he’d ever seen a mouth able to open that much. And just when he was about ask why Vomitor had done that, the awful, strange, bubbling-gurgling sound grew louder.

  Just as Halifax was about to put two and two together, Vomitor exploded.

  Thick, bubbling, foul-smelling stomach juices flowed from the armored beastie’s open maw. It was a tidal wave of nastiness that picked up Halifax and carried him across the mayor’s property, right toward the house.

  Helpless, caught up in the current of puke, Halifax watched in horror as the mayor’s mansion came closer and closer, as did the mayor in his window, a tidal wave of foulness headed straight for him.

  “You’re fired!” the mayor screamed just before the wall of digestive juices struck the side of the mansion.

  “I quit!” Halifax screamed, streaming through the window on a bubbling torrent of vomit.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Monarch stood before a row of eyeball-shaped monitors, watching secret footage of the villains at work.

  “Interesting,” he growled, stroking his chin with a gloved hand. “There appears to be more than one of them now.”

  Klot and Mukus moved in for a closer look.

  “More than one Owlboy?” Mukus asked.

  “Exactly,” the Monarch answered. “Each of these disastrous events took place too close together for there to be only one.” He pointed to each of the screens as the superheroes’ failures played out over and over again.

  “Son of a gun,” Klot said. “All this time he was cheating.”

  “No,” the Monarch corrected, his eyes riveted to the screens. “I believe this is a more recent turn of events. There is still only one real Owlboy; these buffoons are probably . . . lackeys.”

  He turned his hooded head to look at his own.

  “Lackeys,” Mukus repeated with a snarl. “I hate those guys.”

  Klot nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

  Within his hood, the Monarch rolled his eyes. It was tough to get good lackeys these days, and it was never more obvious than during conversations like this.

  There was a sudden flash of white, and they all turned toward the center of the room.

  The villains were returning from their missions with the help of miniature teleportation devices the Monarch had created for them.

  “Excellent job,” the Monarch proclaimed as the villains recovered from the effects of the teleporting. “I applaud you all.”

  And the master crime lord of Monstros did, bringing his black-gloved hands together.

  “We could have killed him,” Sireena growled, hefting her weapon and shaking it at the ceiling.

  “You demolished an entire mall. I would think that would be enough to momentarily satisfy your bloodlust,” the Monarch said.

  “The only thing that’s gonna satisfy me is blasting Owlboy into little pieces,” Sireena insisted, pretending to fire her gun into an imaginary something lying on the ground.

  Mother Sassafras smiled, patting her daughter on the head. “That’s my girl,” the troll mother said, beaming. “She makes me so proud.” She began to sniffle and wiped her dripping nose on the sleeve of her dress.

  “I could have filled his lungs with noxious gas and choked the life from him,” the Ghost said, floating above the room.

  “And we could have stomped him into owl juice,” Balthasar Bounder said as all his demon monkey brothers eagerly nodded.

  “To digest his heroic form in my stomach juices,” the armored Vomitor gurgled, “would have been a
most glorious thing.” His huge mouth bent into a smile.

  “But it would have been over all too quickly,” the Monarch stated.

  “So what?” Sigmund asked. “Owlboy would be dead, and that would be that. We’d be free to perform any act of villainy we wanted.”

  “Now, where’s the fun in that?” the Monarch asked. “Owlboy’s suffering must be long and drawn- out . . . savored like a fine glass of Jugular Wine.”

  The leader of the villains turned to his eyeball televisions and produced a remote from one of the pockets of his robe. He aimed the remote at the televisions and one by one they began to change.

  “An instant death is far too merciful,” the Monarch stated.

  Each television showed a different news program, and they were all talking about Owlboy and his failures.

  “He must be made to suffer before we destroy him completely.”

  Billy had been the first to arrive back at the Roost. He’d returned the rocket pack to storage in the garage and then gone up into the headquarters to find the others and report his failure, but they hadn’t returned yet.

  Zis-Boom-Bah and Ferdinand were excited to see him, obviously unaware of how badly he’d screwed up at the mall.

  The miniaturized monster with the upper body of a gorilla, the antennae of a bug, the lower body of a dinosaur and the tail of a fish hugged Billy’s lower leg lovingly while Ferdinand the dragon flew circles around his head.

  “Hey, guys,” Billy said in greeting. “Nobody else is back yet, huh?”

  The tiny monsters responded with a series of grunts and squeaks that Billy really didn’t understand, but he got the message: he was the first one to arrive back at the Roost.

  From a pouch on his utility belt Billy removed the communicator Halifax had given him and turned it on. All he got was static that hurt his ears. He’d tried to use it after the mall had collapsed, to let Archebold know what had happened, but he hadn’t been able to get through to him, or to Halifax, for that matter.

  He hoped they were having better luck than he’d had.

  And with that thought, Billy heard the elevator coming up from the garage. At the end of the hallway, the doors on the elevator slid open, and Archebold stepped out in his OwlLad costume. But he wasn’t the only thing that came out of the elevator.

  The goblin wasn’t even halfway down the corridor when the smell flooded into the monitor room.

  “Oh my God,” Billy said, clamping a hand over his mouth and nose. “What’s that smell?”

  “It’s the smell of defeat,” Archebold said, his shoulders slumped.

  The tiny monsters were excited to see Archebold as well, until they got too close.

  “What happened to you?” Billy asked through his hand, afraid to breathe.

  Archebold pulled out a chair and sat down heavily.

  “It was going so well,” he explained. “I got to the stadium and was asked to go onstage with the Puking Corpses. Then some stinky ghost had to go and pollute the entire place with his stench!”

  “A ghost?” Billy asked.

  The goblin nodded, removing his helmet and goggles. “A ghost made from some kind of stinky green gas.”

  The door from the shadow paths then flew open and they both watched as Halifax came into the room. He was carrying the OwlSkate beneath his arms, and his costume appeared to be soaking wet and covered in . . . something too gross to even mention.

  “I don’t want to talk about it!” the troll yelled as he slammed the door.

  “Don’t tell me,” Billy said. “You failed on your mission, too.”

  Halifax wiped some drying spew from his goggles. “Why, did you guys have a bad time?”

  Both Billy and Archebold slowly nodded.

  “The whole mall collapsed,” Billy said, looking to Archebold.

  “The Puking Corpses concert had to be evacuated because of a ghostly stink.”

  “Is that you?” Halifax asked, holding his nose. “I thought I was starting to smell worse than I already did.”

  “What happened to you?” Billy asked the troll.

  “I had a run-in with some armored villain called Vomitor,” he explained.

  “Dude, is that . . . ?” Billy started to ask, wrinkling his nose in disgust as he pointed to the stuff dripping from Halifax’s Hooter costume.

  “I think it is,” Archebold answered, sadly shaking his head. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

  Billy couldn’t believe it; it was bad enough that he had failed, but his two sidekicks, too? Add that to what had happened at school and it was official—this was the worst day of his life.

  “So I went up against the Bounder boys and the Sassafras family,” he said, pointing to himself. “Archebold went up against a really stinky ghost, and Halifax was puked on by somebody called Vomitor.”

  His friends nodded.

  “What’s up with that?” Billy asked. “Were they giving get-out-of-jail-free cards over at Beelzebub?”

  Archebold snapped his fingers. “I knew there was something I wanted to tell you,” the goblin said. “There was a prison break the other night.”

  “And you forgot?” Billy asked, annoyed.

  “I don’t know if forgot is the right word,” the goblin said, looking to Halifax for support.

  “Screwed up royally comes to my mind,” the troll said.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Billy said. “We would’ve gotten our butts kicked tonight anyway.”

  Halifax picked up the OwlSkate and slung it over his shoulder. “I don’t know about you, but I could use some snacks,” he said.

  They all agreed that was the thing to lift their spirits, but Archebold and Halifax definitely had to clean up first.

  An hour later, Billy, Archebold and Halifax were in the snack room, gorging themselves on bloodberry pie, cockroach-chunk ice scream, country- fried pterodactyl and whatever else they could find to chase away the blues.

  “I can’t believe we all fouled up so bad,” Archebold said, popping a handful of chocolate- covered newt eyeballs in his mouth.

  “Maybe we’re just not cut out to be sidekicks,” Halifax added, breaking off some crust from his bloodberry pie and giving it to Zis-Boom-Bah.

  “Don’t you think it was kinda weird, that stuff all happening at once?” Billy asked. Ferdinand was asleep in his lap, and he gently stroked the slumbering dragon’s scales.

  “It was a little odd,” Archebold agreed. “You thinking there’s something more to it than a nasty coincidence?”

  “I’m not sure,” Billy said. “It’s kind of like somebody’s trying to test Owlboy . . . trying to stretch him to his limits.” Billy had a big swig from a bubbling glass of poltergeist potion. “Just a thought.”

  Halifax pushed his empty pie plate toward a waiting Zis-Boom-Bah.

  “Something to keep in mind,” Archebold said, “but I think right now we just need to kick back and relax a bit.” The goblin, seated in an overstuffed recliner, reached down between the cushion and the chair frame, coming up with a remote control. “How’s about a little TV?” he suggested.

  They all thought this was a good idea. Billy hadn’t seen much television in Monstros and was curious about the kind of programming they had.

  Archebold pointed the large remote at one of the portraits of a previous Owlboy that decorated the walls of the snack room, and pushed a button. With a low hum, the picture rose to reveal a good-sized television screen beneath. It wasn’t a fifty-inch plasma like the one Billy’s great-aunt Tilly could watch at Shady Acres, but it was a pretty decent size.

  “So, what’s on?” Billy asked, getting excited.

  “Not sure,” Archebold said, turning the set on.

  “Bowling for Organs is good,” Halifax said. “I hear somebody could win a new pancreas today.”

  The TV came on in the middle of a news report.

  An attractive monster—as far as monsters go—was reporting in front of the rubble of the Monstros City Mall.

  “Oh my
gosh, it’s the mall!” Billy cried, moving to the edge of his seat, his sudden movement waking up the sleeping Ferdinand. “What’s she saying?”

  “That’s Violet Venomous,” Halifax said. “She’s one of the top investigative reporters in Monstros.”

  They all moved closer to the television.

  “Nobody knows for sure what happened, but what is known is that the Monstros City mall, once one of the city’s crown jewels of commerce, is now nothing more than a pile of twisted wreckage thanks to someone who was once considered our protector and savior . . . Owlboy.”

  Billy and the gang gasped. Ferdinand rose to all fours and growled at the television, small gouts of orange flame shooting from her nostrils.

  Violet began to interview some mall shoppers. “What happened here today?” she asked the creature wrapped in filthy bandages.

  “I talked to her!” Billy yelled at the set. Archebold and Halifax shushed him.

  “We thought he’d come to save us, but I guess we were wrong,” the bandaged beastie said with a sad shake of its head. “It’s a real shame, I liked this mall.”

  Billy gulped as Violet interviewed another.

  “All I wanted was some hand cream,” a giant worm wearing a hockey helmet said before breaking down into pitiful sobs.

  “Hand cream?” Halifax asked.

  The ugly little creature with the huge handbag was the next to be interviewed.

  “He took my Dr. Mellman’s Home Surgery Kit,” she said, eyes bulging. “Said he’d been looking everywhere for one and took mine. It’s a crime, I tell you!”

  Billy jumped to his feet. “She’s a big fat liar!” he screamed, shaking a finger at the screen.

  “All right, calm down,” Archebold said, turning the channel.

  But it appeared that there was no escaping their really bad night. Another news program was reporting from the Giganticus Stadium about the evacuated Puking Corpses concert.

  “Oh no,” Archebold said as another reporter, a giant squid, placed multiple microphones in front of multiple Puking Corpses fans who had been forced to leave the show.

  “It’s all Owlboy’s fault. I think he ate something nasty before he got here.”