Silas gripped the sides of Spurtle’s head, then began bashing his face into the pavement. Sparkles flew out with each strike.

  SMACK. SMACK. SMACK.

  “Good gravy, Silas!” I winced with each slam.

  Danny screamed. “Spurtle, withdraw! Withdraw!”

  Spurtle wiggled out of Silas’s grasp and withdrew his head and limbs into his shell, concealing all his vulnerable parts from attack.

  “That’s cute…” Silas tapped and prodded the shell with his tentacles. Then he leaned down and peeked inside. He furrowed his brow ridge. “But I don’t think so.”

  He snaked his tentacles into the openings of the shell, wrapped them around Spurtle’s feet and arms, and yanked his four limbs out, holding them taut. Then he lifted Spurtle into the air and flexed his tentacles, stretching Spurtle tighter in four different directions.

  “I don’t know if I can watch this,” Sync lamented.

  I had to admit—it was a good strategy. Brutal, but effective.

  Spurtle groaned against the strain from inside his shell.

  “Aahh!” Danny began to panic. “Spurtle, use Head Bash! Head Bash!”

  Spurtle’s head emerged while Silas continued pulling him in four different directions, but not because he was trying to attack.

  “Spuuurtle! Spuuuuurtle!” he screamed in agony. Then Silas coiled a tentacle around Spurtle’s neck and began to squeeze.

  “Silas!” I called. “Just let him go! Reset.”

  He didn’t listen.

  Sync held her head in her hands, covering her eyes.

  “Spuur—” Spurtle’s cries cut short as Silas ripped his four limbs off in a shower of sparkles.

  Danny and the entire crowd wailed in horror.

  Silas dropped him, and Spurtle gurgled and wobbled on the ground, literally a shell of his old self, while yet another gratuitous pool of shimmering glitter poured out from his wounds. With a pained wheeze, he died.

  I let out a long groan.

  Silas whirled the torn turtle limbs above his head, flinging sparkles everywhere, and roared, “Bring me another!”

  The first fight I could maybe justify as an overreaction on Silas’s part, but this one—not so much.

  Danny wailed and looked at his dead, limbless Spurtle.

  Alfred stepped in and drove his hands into his hips with a scowl. “Again, Erik Shaw and Silas prove the victors… But we, uh, we don’t need to kill the opponents’ Shouldérmon, you know?”

  Silas stopped waving Spurtle’s limbs above his head and tossed them onto the corpse. “Right, of course. It is a battle, you understand, and things happen.”

  He crawled back up onto my shoulder.

  I glanced around at the appalled glares of the audience and fellow Shouldérmon Players.

  I whispered to Silas, “That one was worse than the first one. We’ve got two more. This time, just knock them out instead. Don’t rip them apart. Be chill, mmkay?”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “Were you chill with Todd the rabbit? No, you did what needed to be done. You said win, so I’m winning. My goodness, I could fill your pockets with gold, and you’d complain it’s too heavy.”

  The crowd no longer cheered, the tone of the tournament soured, and the remaining participants cast nervous glances at Silas and me.

  During the next match, Sync stressed to Silas how to end the fight with a knockout instead of a fatality. We went over the plan several times, and I thought—well, I hoped—he’d stick to it.

  After another battle, we went up against Chrissy, a bespectacled girl of about thirteen in some sort of girl’s scouting uniform, and her Plantasaur. It was a cute little four-legged, blue-green dinosaur thing with a pink flower bulb on its back.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Sync cringed. “Remember, go easy.”

  Alfred announced us, and Silas crawled into the ring.

  Chrissy trembled, and her Plantasaur seemed apprehensive as well. “Plantasaur, I… choose you.”

  The Plantasaur jumped down from her shoulder and landed in the ring, trembling, but wearing a grumpy look on his face.

  “And… begin,” Alfred announced with a defeated tone.

  “P-Plantasaur, use Vine Whip!” Chrissy stammered.

  “Plantasaur!” He sprouted a pair of vines from his back to whip Silas, but the Karjok tucked his eight limbs in and rolled across the pavement with alarming speed, deftly dodging the whips.

  After the vine attacks concluded, Silas cloaked himself with his Camouflage ability, all on his own, without any direction from me.

  Chrissy’s frantic gaze darted around the ring, while Plantasaur spun left and right, looking for him.

  “U-Use Sleep Powder,” Chrissy commanded.

  Plantasaur belched noxious fumes in different directions, but none seemed to hit Silas.

  Then Plantasaur’s head smashed down onto the pavement as if struck by an unseen force, and his eyes lolled. Before he could recover, his throat cinched tight, and he gagged. He bucked and thrashed, all to no avail.

  Silas appeared on his back, his skin shifting to its normal orange hue. He was strangling Plantasaur’s thick neck with two tentacles while latching onto him with the other six, like he was riding a bucking bronco.

  “Plant-a-saur!” the Shouldérmon choked out.

  “No, no!” Chrissy shrieked. “Do something, Alfred! Help him!”

  Sync sighed. “It doesn’t matter what we say. Silas is just gonna kill them all, isn’t he?”

  I massaged my temples. “It seems so.”

  Plantasaur’s energy depleted, and his thrashing subsided, leaving him completely at Silas’s mercy—and we already knew how merciful Silas was toward these things.

  Silas’s tentacles wrapped around the pink bulb on Plantasaur’s back and tore it free like a weed. As usual, sparkles spurted from the fresh wound, but more disturbing, the bulb was attached to a sort of vinelike spinal cord with a potato hanging from the other end. It pulsed like a beating heart.

  Plantasaur’s eyes rolled back, and it gurgled. Its legs gave way, and it flattened out on its belly, very much dead.

  Silas gripped the pulsating potato, yanked it off the vine, then jammed it into his mouth and ate it. He shoved the vinal cord back into Plantasaur’s torso and repositioned the flower on its back, fluffing its petals out so we could see them arrayed in their full glory.

  “There,” he said. “Good as new.”

  I pinched my eyes shut. “Dirt clod almighty…”

  Chrissy buried her head in her hands and sobbed while Silas slithered off and left the remnants of Plantasaur behind him.

  Instead of announcing us victorious, Alfred sighed and looked down, and the crowd moaned and looked away.

  “We’re doing great!” Silas said, still chewing the potato heart. “This tournament is as good as ours. And wow, this potato needs sour cream, or butter and salt, or something. Tastes really earthy.”

  “Did you… did you need to eat its heart like that?” I asked.

  “Huh? Oh…” He chuckled and shrugged. With one big gulp, he swallowed the rest of it. “Yeah… yeah, I did.”

  “What is the matter with you?” I blurted.

  He rubbed his forehead and looked into the sky. “I dunno, mate. Something about these creatures just fills me with a dark rage. I need to see them all defeated.” His eyes narrowed, and his voice took on a sinister edge. “Gotta fetch ’em all… right?”

  “I’m a hundred percent confident that’s not what that slogan means,” Sync said.

  “Ugh, let’s just get this over with,” I said.

  When the finale rolled around, a grown man named Kyle_Corgi stood opposite us with a burnt orange winged dragon-thing about the size of a person perched on his shoulder. It had a long neck and a tail with a little flame at its tip.

  Kyle_Corgi had to lean heavily to the opposite side to balance the huge Shouldérmon. He glared at me, revenge glinting in his eyes, mixed with obvious discomfort from literally shouldering such a heavy burden. “Charbroilzard, I choose you!”

  Charbroilzard hopped into the ring, flapping its wings to slow its descent, and it bellowed a confident dragon roar. Puffs of fire jetted from his mouth like a flamethrower.

  Silas slithered down from my shoulder and stretched his limbs, unimpressed.

  “Your Shouldérmon’s murder spree ends here!” Kyle_Corgi yelled, trying to stretch out his back.

  I just sighed. A small part of me hoped he was right.

  I glanced at our former opponents, all of whom still cried or gazed off into space vacantly, clutching the mangled corpses of their Shouldérmon. I felt bad, but I also wanted to win, and we’d already come this far.

  Unlike the first three, this Shouldérmon might actually pose a challenge for Silas. He didn’t like fire—or sand, filtration fans, chlorine, or my attitude—so the Charbroilzard might actually get him.

  Silas took up his position and shadowboxed before the fight started, completely ignoring the dragon until Alfred commenced the contest.

  “Begin!” Alfred announced with a glimmer of hope in his voice.

  “Use Flamethrower!”

  Charbroilzard belched a jet of fire at Silas, who tucked into a ball and rolled around in avoidance. Unfortunately, one of the fiery blasts hit Silas and knocked him back. Smoke wafted off him, but he growled and shook off the hit with fury in his ocean-teal eyes.

  The crowd watched with bated breath, clearly hoping the Butcher of Shouldérmon was about to be defeated.

  “That’s it, Charbroilzard! Press the attack!” Kyle_Corgi growled. “Use Talon Strike!”

  Charbroilzard stalked forward, raising his front claws high, but Silas tucked into a ball, slipped under his swipe and between his scaly orange legs. Silas unfurled and climbed up onto Charbroilzard’s back by way of his tail.

  “Use Aerial Submission!” Kyle_Corgi hollered, a bit of fright in his voice.

  Charbroilzard jumped up and beat his powerful wings. He soared straight up and began spinning to shake Silas off him.

  “Have I mentioned Karjok hate excessive RPMs?” Silas shouted from the air. A few of his suction cups popped loose.

  I grimaced, wondering if he’d met his match. Meanwhile the crowd began to cautiously cheer.

  Then Silas coiled two tentacles around one of Charbroilzard’s wings.

  SNAP!

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