"Ow, damn." It didn't kill me, and whatever armor I'd formed kept it from stunning me, but I still jumped and jived for a moment. I didn't fall.

"Why you little–" I made my Monster hands, chunks of my soul with too many fingers and claws. And I sent them in.

Past the armor, through the layers of conduits and coolants. I left no wound; my hands were ghosts. Down, further than I could have reached with my actual limbs. Much further. And when I felt something interesting, I grabbed.

The Monster hands took hold. Smooth, complicated, machined surfaces. Oily. Some wires. I pulled. I felt things bending, then tearing.

The shark-machine lurched in midair, and I zipped my hands back out, almost losing my balance this time.

But I was still in that runner's high, that crazy violent good-time party mood. "Oh please. This is no big deal at ALL, guys. A flying piñata! Team Goat Fetus, come take a whack at it!"

I think they'd been on their way already, because there they were. The Serious Girls of Doom. All three had their faces set in terrifying grins, and they were skimming over the surface of the water, each of them leaving a wake just below their hovering feet. They traced long, quick calligraphic curves over the shallow turquoise sea, silent and all business.

I could feel their souls, connected to mine. All the Monster Students were, and I was just now feeling it for real. These girls were bloodthirsty.

The shark machine whirred, its twin rotors tilting, and it went into reverse. It was tilting upwards under my feet. A retreat?

Of course not. Something on the thing went slide-chunk, and two dark things buzzed out from beneath it. Smaller machines. They moved with a kind of birdlike precision; freezing in midair, rotating, moving in quick, short bursts. They were like smaller versions of the shark platform.

One simply exploded. A member of Team Goat Fetus erupted right through it, straight up from the surface of the water, screaming in triumph. The drone scattered its guts over the hull of the mothership.

"Whoaa," I yelled as the drone slayer herself landed neatly in front of me. "Ten points for Griffindor!" I offered a high five to the Serious Girl, and she took me up on it with a lunatic grin, bam. I made a show of flapping my hand, wincing elaborately. "Oh man, go easy on me, Goat Fetus!"

She ran and jumped off the edge, warbling a battle cry. She disappeared for a moment, then kept up with that crazy hovering flight over the water surface.

The other small drone was between the remaining Goat Fetus girls, buzzing and groaning miserably. They were pulling it apart between the two of them. It broke into an unspectacular mess, not with a satisfying explosion like the other one. The Serious Girl who'd scored the big half tossed it overhead, spinning into the water.

"Big Three, you gonna let these psychopaths show you up?"

Light twinkled on the beach. The Big Three, Taylor and his two guys, had made it down there somehow. Dark objects, small but getting bigger, closer, hurled from the shore. Boulders.

They burned as they came, igniting like meteors. The shark machine, the main one I was perched upon, rotated to face the Big Three. It got a face full of flaming rock.

The vibrations of the strikes went up through my bare feet. I felt my position had suddenly become quite dangerous, and flung myself off the edge of the weapons platform, into the sea.

It was a good idea. The huge stones knocked it into a spin. It was burning now, and long nasty scratches were in its smooth surface. Craters now riddled its metal skin. One of the boulders stayed stuck in the thing, and its prodigious weight made the machine list to port.

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"That's the way, gentlemen! An A plus to Big Three!" And I heard them laughing into the Radio. Even Taylor.

The shark machine wasn't done. It began grinding, and the air around it shimmered from the heat. It did something, opening many small ports in its otherwise egg-smooth surface. Things came out, tiny missiles that burst into other, tinier missiles the size of bullets. They left twisting trails in the air over the water. All of them were heading for Taylor's team.

I was really quite concerned, but I didn't say it. "Oh look at this, we got all the balls in the WORLD here, guys. Missiles! Big three, you know how to deal with that?"

They did. The missile swarm popped harmlessly against an invisible barrier. Dozens of detonations, small but loud. From what I could see, the three big guys had formed a shield, all of them working together. Some sort of football sport thing, probably.

"Extra credit for Big Three," I yelled. "Repelling ballistic missiles! Cocaine Schmendricks, what have you got?"

In answer, the front half of the shark machine simply fell off, splashing into the ocean where it floated like a small boat. The cut was frighteningly clean. Intricate innards of the thing were exposed, moving, whirling and shining. Sparks burst and blazed around some promisingly complex-looking things in there.

"Holy cow! Sliced it's damn FACE away, Cocaine Schmendricks! I gotta find out how you guys do that!"

One of the Cocaine Schmendricks, a young man whose name I hadn't bothered to learn, started breathlessly speaking into the Radio. "It's actually quite simple, what you do is focus spacetime into a single node, and–"

"I appreciate it, but I think I need to ask where Team Radio Dj–Oh, there he is. Holy mackerel, what the HELL are you doing, Ezra?"

He didn't answer, but we all saw him coming. Birds rose in terrified clouds. Distant booms. Footsteps.

Because Ezra, he of the living glasses, who could put life into things, was inside that lighthouse. It was walking down the beach with four outrageous brick-and-gem limbs that sprouted from its base, almost galloping. The flame at the top had been a clearly visible yellow beacon last I'd seen it. Now it was a blue-white jet exhaust aiming straight up.

It was ridiculous and terrifying. How had he gotten the thing down the cliff? It was down here now, though, and set its elephantine legs into the water. It was on its way here. The tower went up and up, tilting and rocking wildly with its charge. I felt it was prudent to add some distance between myself and today's target.

The shark robot machine saw it Ezra's Walking Lighthouse Flame Distributor. And to my surprise, it turned and tried to get away. But that embedded boulder was slowing it down, messing with its steering. It was off-kilter, dragging one of its fins in the water, and could only rotate in place. It shot something into the sky, a silver ball that sprouted a parachute and slowly drifted with the wind.

Ezra's voice poured through the Radio: a wordless yell of fury. The jet flame at the peak of the lighthouse screamed along with him. The stony body of the building bent like a striking cobra, and the horrible fire lanced out and right into the exposed inner workings of the weapons platform.

It groaned like a living thing as that flame melted its insides. The shark machine shed metal parts, both solid and liquid. The sea boiled around it as Ezra kept that jet mercilessly steady. Huge clouds of steam made the area into a temporary fog bank. I was glad I'd started for shore again; I could feel the heat in the air and water, though I was comfortably far away.

The armor shell was all that remained. It floated on the surface of the water, weirdly buoyant. The lighthouse-Ezra construction ceased its monstrous flame. It straightened up, waded for the corpse of its target, wound up one of those absurd legs and kicked.

The armor husk of the thing spun wildly through the air and hit the cliff. It didn't explode, because nothing was left in there that wasn't already burned. But its armor made a satisfying clang when it struck and shattered into decently-sized fragments.

"That is the signal for supper!" Ezra said, confusing everybody.

One of Team Goat Fetus, the girl who'd high-fived me, giggled. "I got that," she said. "When Bilbo…nevermind."

Everyone cheered. I cheered loudest of all.

"Owen felt he should answer the call from the Principal of Schmendricks' Monster School."

"There she is!" I shouted. Everyone was yelling excitedly to Schmendrick.

"Did I miss anything?" She said. Then, because it was a multiple-person call: "I am Schmendrick."

"Your students are amazing, that's what you missed," I said.

She sounded dejected. "Will you come get me? I made my boat fall apart by going so fast."

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