The Monster War

by Alan Gratz

“Not really,” Gonzalo told her. “You get those people out?”

  “Pretended I was a Shikaakwa fireman. Got them to use the back door.”

  Gonzalo was trying to stand when something coiled around his arms and legs and lifted him off his feet.

  “Vines!” Kitsune said. They were both caught up in thick green vines that hadn’t been there a moment before. “That plant man. He must be the other—lerk!”

  Kitsune choked as a green vine sprouted from the ground and slithered around her neck.

  A flower bud opened on one of the vines, and the green face of Honda Nobuharu, the Ametokai Strangler, grinned down at them. “Konichiwa,” Honda said. “Very nice to make your acquaintance, even if it is only for a short time.”

  Gonzalo felt a vine curl around his neck and tighten. He lifted his raygun to shoot Honda, but the pain from the vine made it too hard to focus his other senses.

  “Up, right, right, up,” Señor X said, guiding Gonzalo, and the ranger struggled to follow his direction. Ka-POW! Señor X sliced through the vine right below Honda’s face, deadheading him. The vines slackened, and Gonzalo and Kitsune hit the ground.

  “So, there’s two of you,” Leaning Oak said. Kitsune’s illusion was broken. He could see both of them now. “That’s okay—there’s two of us too!”

  New kudzu vines sprouted beside Leaning Oak and took a vaguely human shape. A flower budded and opened, and Honda Nobuharu’s face appeared again. “That wasn’t very nice of you,” he told Gonzalo.

  Kitsune jumped up and ran away.

  “Hahahaha!” Leaning Oak laughed. “Guess there’s only one of you now!” He charged across the park at Gonzalo, his big heavy crystal legs leaving holes in the soft earth. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. Gonzalo raised his raygun again.

  “G-man—no! The refraction—” Ka-POW! Gonzalo fired Señor X, but not at the gangster. He shot the beam at the ground a few feet ahead of Leaning Oak’s thundering feet, blasting a giant hole. The big crystal man couldn’t slow his momentum in time and fell into it, sprawling in Shikaakwa’s famous muck.

  Gonzalo heard Honda Nobuharu slither back into the ground, but instead of growing up at Gonzalo’s feet, the strangler grew back in the muck underneath Leaning Oak. It would be harder than lifting Gonzalo and Kitsune off the ground, but in time Honda would put Leaning Oak back on his feet. Gonzalo aimed his gun at the sound, waiting for Señor X to give him directions.

  “Gonzalo, run,” Señor X said.

  Gonzalo felt a shadow cross his face, blocking out the warm sun. The shadow of something big.

  “Run, run, run!” Señor X yelled.

  Gonzalo ran. Something creaked and groaned, tinkling with the sound of bricks falling on bricks, and KA-THOOM! The earth bucked like a steambronco and Gonzalo went flying. He landed with a thud and lay dazed on the ground.

  “Gonzalo? Are you all right?”

  It was Kitsune.

  “Y-yeah. What did you do?”

  “I dropped the Sears and Roe Buck Building on them.”

  She showed him an image in his head: the once-tall twenty-story building lay sprawled across Brant Park and the nearby vacated city blocks like a dead snake in the middle of a road.

  “How?” Gonzalo asked.

  “I just turned on some of the hydraulic pumps on the back until they tipped it all the way over.”

  Gonzalo sat up, his ears still ringing from the crash. “Well, that ought to take care of them.

  Kisssh! Broken bricks and glass flew as a big crystal arm punched its way up through the rubble. Another pile of bricks tinkled and tumbled away as a green vine pushed its way out from under it.

  “Órale, you gotta be kidding!” Gonzalo said. “That crystal man’s as strong as diamond, and the plant keeps coming back like a weed! If dropping a skyscraper on them doesn’t kill them, what will?”

  “You’re right—Honda is a weed!” Kitsune said. “And what do you use to kill weeds?”

  “A really big hoe?”

  “No—weed killer!” Kitsune said. “I think I saw a flower shop drive by before, if I can just catch up to it. I’ll be back!”

  Kitsune bounded away. Gonzalo heard more bricks shift out of the way and stood, wondering if he could keep the two monsters occupied long enough for Kitsune to return. Even if she did get back in time, how were they going to take down the crystal man?

  Gonzalo stood very still, putting together an image of what was happening around him with his other senses. He felt the muck at his feet and the malevolent wind swirling around him. Smelled the brick dust in the air, the gardenias growing in Brant Park, the lingering grease and smoke odor of Shikaakwa’s elevated train. He heard the tinkle of broken bricks and the vibration from a gas lamp as it rattled in the wind.

  “Señor,” Gonzalo said, an idea coming to him. “The crystal man. We gotta shatter him.”

  “We tried that,” Señor X told him. “He refracted my beam like a prism.”

  “Not with an aether beam,” Gonzalo said. “With sound. We vibrate him until he shatters! Can you do it aggregating aether?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Señor X said. “But you’re gonna have to manually override my aggregator settings. Cranking the aggregator up that high will overload me, and my programming won’t allow me to kill myself.”

  “What? No!”

  “Kid, shattering him with sound waves is brilliant. It’s the only way we’re gonna take this guy out. But to do it you gotta overload me.”

  “But if you overload you’ll explode!”

  “And I’ll take that monster with me.”

  “No,” said Gonzalo.

  “Gonzalo, listen to me. Killing monsters is what I was built for. It’s my whole reason for being. It’s not programming—it’s a choice. And I choose to go out fighting.”

  “You think dropping a building on me is gonna stop me?” Leaning Oak called. “You only slowed me down, Ranger!” Gonzalo heard the bricks shift again. Heard people in the street scream. Any moment, Leaning Oak would be free of the rubble and smashing up Shikaakwa again. Hurting people again.

  Gonzalo took a deep breath. There was only one thing to do. Gonzalo set Xiuhcoatl’s aether aggregator to overload and ran for the sound of the shifting bricks.

  “You made the right choice, kid. The hero’s choice. Just like I knew you would,” Señor X told him. “Listen, before I go, I gotta tell you the truth. It wasn’t an accident that you found me. I found you. I’m Xiuhcoatl. The turquoise fire serpent. I was built millennia ago to be wielded by each League of Seven’s Lawbringer. Somebody who’s totally fearless, and always knows right from wrong. Sometimes I find them; sometimes I don’t. But as soon as I heard about the blind kid who was a Texas Ranger, I knew you were the one. It took me eleven years of moving from lowlife to lowlife until I finally found one who got in the way of your Texas Ranger family. That’s how I found you. Passed from one criminal to the next until we were together at last. I was made by the finest tekno-mages of Lemuria to find the most fearless, righteous man in the world and turn him into a hero, but when I found you, Gonzalo, the joke was on me. You already were one.”

  Gonzalo stumbled to a stop. “Why—why didn’t you tell me before?” he asked.

  “Well, I didn’t want you getting a big head now, did I?” Señor X said.

  Gonzalo couldn’t believe it. For as long as he’d wielded Señor X, he’d always thought it had been luck that had brought the two of them together. But if what Señor X said was true—

  Leaning Oak shed bricks as he stood. “Here I come, little ranger!”

  “Climb! Climb!” Señor X said.

  Gonzalo stumbled into the pile of bricks and scrambled up them, scratching and tearing his skin in his hurry.

  “Just lodge me in the mess of crystals growing out of his back, and then run for the hills!” Señor X said. But all Gonzalo could think about was what the raygun had told him. He leaped on Leaning Oak’s back and clung to the giant crystals that grew there as the gangster stood. Lean
ing Oak twisted and turned, trying to swat Gonzalo off, but he couldn’t reach him.

  “Ah, forget it,” the gangster said. “Come along for the ride if you want. It’s not like you can stop me!”

  VmmmmmmmMMMMMMMM. The turquoise raygun shook as it passed its safety limit.

  “Gonzalo! Leave me and get out of here!” Señor X yelled.

  “No!” Gonzalo yelled back. “You found me and I found you. We’re partners! We were meant for each other! You said so! So I’m sticking it out, no matter what happens!”

  VMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

  “I didn’t tell you all that so you’d go and do something stupid! Run, you idiot!”

  “No! You’d stay with me if it was the other way around!”

  “That’s because I don’t have any legs, estúpido!”

  “What are you yelling about up there?” Leaning Oak said. “Whoa—hey. What’s going on?”

  The gangster’s crystal body was vibrating. The higher pitched Señor X got, the more he shook.

  “Hey. Hey!” Leaning Oak spun, trying to knock Gonzalo off. “Hey, plant man! Where are you? I need some help here!”

  But Honda Nobuharu was gone. It was just Leaning Oak, Gonzalo, and Señor X.

  VMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

  “I—can’t—I—can’t—” Leaning Oak said, his body quaking. He dropped to his knees. “I can’t—”

  Señor X made a whine so high-pitched Gonzalo pulled his blindfold down and tightened it over his ears. The raygun was vibrating so hard he could barely hold on to it.

  “Thiiiiiiiiis iiiiiiiiis iiiiiiiit,” Señor X said. “Sssssssix thhhhhhoussssssand yyyyyyears iiiiiiiis a gooooooood ruuuuuuun fooooooor aaaaaaanyyyyyyyybbbbbbbboooooooodddddddddyyyyyyy. Nnnnnnnniiiiiiiiiiiiice knnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooowing yooooooooooooooooou, kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkid!”

  Leaning Oak made a high, keening sound that started in his throat and spread to every inch of his vibrating crystalline body. “EeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

  KISSSSSSSSSSSSSH!

  The crystal man shattered before the raygun did, exploding into billions of shards. Gonzalo hit the ground, and Señor X tumbled from his fingers. A hail of crystals sliced through Gonzalo’s clothes and skin and a thousand cuts sprang up all over him, but all he could think about was finding the turquoise raygun. He had to find it before it overloaded and exploded.

  “Señor X?” he cried. “Señor X?” Gonzalo’s ears rang so loudly he couldn’t even hear himself yell. He fumbled around in the dark for the raygun, never so lost in his blindness as he was now. The whine from the overloading raygun was overloading all Gonzalo’s senses too. Tears streamed from his blind eyes as he clawed through the razor-sharp shards for his friend. Not there. Not there. Not there! Where was he? Where was he?

  Gonzalo’s stomach twisted in on itself, like a black hole of despair. He had lost him. He had lost Señor X, and now they were both going to die, all because he was born blind and couldn’t see.

  Something nudged him. Pushed the ancient raygun into his hands. What!? How!? Gonzalo’s fingers scrambled for the aggregator and switched it off. The raygun’s awful scream stopped, and Gonzalo fell to the ground, pulling Señor X into a fierce hug.

  Alamo nudged Gonzalo again to make sure he was still alive, then collapsed onto the ground beside him.

  * * *

  Alamo limped into the stadium, and Kitsune ran to help take Gonzalo off the steamhorse. The Texas Ranger was bloody and torn, and clutched his strange turquoise raygun to his chest like he was an infant and the gun was his beloved stuffed animal. “Gonzalo, you look terrible!” Kitsune told him. “What happened?”

  Gonzalo didn’t answer. He was as deaf as he was blind. She spoke to him through the shell in her ear, the way she had told him where to find her: Wigwam Field, the home of the Shikaakwa Cubs. “Gonzalo! What happened?”

  Gonzalo put a finger to his ear. “We won.” He lifted his raygun, his hand shaking. “Where’s Honda?”

  Kitsune put a hand to Señor X and gently lowered him. “I’ve got him. Relax.”

  Gonzalo slumped gratefully onto her shoulder, and she led him to the outfield wall. “I’m going to show you, all right? In your head,” she said through the shell. “Can you handle it?”

  Gonzalo nodded.

  Kitsune pushed the image of the world around them into his mind, the way she’d been able to since she was old enough to talk. The green grass, the pennants flapping in the breeze, the ivy growing up the red brick wall of the field.

  “Where is he?” Gonzalo asked.

  “You’re looking at him,” Kitsune told him. She flicked one of the ivy leaves, and a small bud opened. Honda Nobuharu’s pained face glared back at her.

  “What do you want, warugaki?” he said.

  “Where is the dynamo?” Kitsune asked.

  “Drop dead,” Honda told her.

  Kitsune raised a metal can and threatened to pour its contents on Honda’s head.

  “We don’t have it! We don’t have it!” he told her. “Moffett sent it with someone else.”

  “Who?” Kitsune asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Kitsune threatened him with the can again.

  “I don’t know! I swear!” Honda cried. “She sent us out before any of the others. She gave it to one of them.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Gonzalo said.

  “How do you know?” Kitsune asked.

  “I know.”

  “Okay,” Kitsune said, and she dumped the rest of the can’s contents on Honda Nobuharu’s head and all over the ground. The little face cried out and shriveled away.

  “Weed killer?” Gonzalo asked.

  Kitsune nodded. “Hope they weren’t attached to this ivy. Probably just killed it all.” She chucked the can away and put her shoulder under Gonzalo’s arm again. “Come on. Let’s get you back to The Kraken. Maybe it can fix you up, just like it can drive itself.” She put her finger to her ear again. “Um, Clyde? Clyde, can you hear me?”

  “Whoa! Hey! Yeah!” Clyde said in her head. He was half a continent away, but it sounded like he was right there with her. She wondered if this was how other people felt when she sent thoughts and images into their brains.

  “Gonzalo and I took out the crystal guy and the plant guy in Shikaakwa,” Kitsune told him. “The dynamo’s not here.”

  “Roger that,” Clyde told her. “Looks like we’re up next!”

  17

  “The last time me and Buster were in Wichita territory, we got hounded by a Wichita Cavalry regiment with an aether battle tank. Which turned out to be okay, ’cause Buster thought they were just playing chase with him.”

  Clyde looked over at Fergus, who sat in the navigator’s chair to his right. The tattooed boy was lost in his own thoughts. And unhappy ones at that. He’d worn that same frown half the time they’d been marching west from Memphis.

  “Fergus? What’s up?” Clyde asked.

  “Huh? What?” Fergus said, shaking himself out of it.

  “You been worryin’ over something since the minute we left, and that’s a fact. Want to talk about it?”

  “I—nae,” Fergus said.

  “No, you ain’t worryin’ about something, or no, you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Fergus said.

  “All right,” Clyde said. “But Mrs. DeMarcus used to say that if you swallowed what was eatin’ you, it’d eat you up instead.”

  “Your Mrs. DeMarcus was a wise woman,” Fergus said, but he still wouldn’t tell Clyde what was bothering him.

  Buster whistled, and Clyde looked back out the big round windows on the steam man’s bridge. A thick line of smoke hovered on the horizon.

  “We got something,” Clyde said.

  Fergus consulted the maps. “This should be Broken Arrow. Big oil town. And a good place for a couple of Shadow Leaguers to make trouble.”

  The city of Broken Arrow stretched out for a mile in either direction. The outski
rts were ringed with round Wichita buildings and homes, but the center of the town was all oil fields. Tall metal oil rigs pumped the liquid from the ground that the entire continent used to heat their homes and light their lamps, and refineries burned beside them day and night, pumping black smoke into the air above the city. It was a rich business, but a dirty one.

  Red raycannons lit up the dark, hazy sky, and Buster clicked down his magnifying windows. Five Wichita aether battle tanks were firing at a towering metal monster. He was a walking junkyard: broken windmills, bent train tracks, old steel gears, copper pipes, velocipede wheels, tin cans, nails and screws, busted airships, crushed monowheels. Anything magnetic stuck to him. Clyde and Fergus watched as a stack of empty oil barrels flew up and clanked to his body, making him bigger.

  “That’ll be Hector Villarreal then,” Clyde said. “Now where’s number two?”

  A building alarm went off across town, and Buster turned. The front wall of a bank exploded out into the street, and a locust man hopped outside, a sack of money thrown over his shoulder.

  “Naalnish,” Fergus said. “Didn’t he used to be a bank robber?”

  “Still is, by the looks of it,” Clyde said. “All right, so—”

  “Um, Clyde? Clyde, can you hear me?”

  Clyde put a finger to the shell in his ear. “Whoa! Hey! Yeah!”

  It was Kitsune, calling to tell them they had taken care of the crystal man and the plant man in Shikaakwa.

  “Roger that,” Clyde told her. “Looks like we’re up next!”

  Fergus climbed the ladder that led to the hatch on top of Buster’s head. “I’ll take the grasshopper.”

  “And I’ll take Buckethead,” Clyde said. “Good luck!”

  Gyrocopter blades popped up out of a backpack Fergus wore, and with a blue spark of lektricity they whirred and lifted him away.

  “Okay, Buster. Playtime!” Clyde said, and Buster whistled happily.

  The Wichita Cavalry had the magnetic monster surrounded just beyond the houses and shops on the east side of town, but Villarreal had already taken out one of their aether tanks and was pushing toward the heart of the city. Clyde flipped a switch, and Buster’s left hand retracted, turning his entire arm into a giant raycannon. The air inside the bridge crackled as it charged up with aether, and he aimed the raycannon right at Villarreal’s chest.