Another of Silas’s tentacles lashed out and wrapped around Kickachu’s neck, squeezing tightly.

  The Shouldérmon wheezed and wiggled his little yellow arms to free himself, but to no avail.

  Silas grabbed his tail next, stretching Kickachu in three directions like he was on a medieval torture rack. While he held Kickachu in his grip, Silas began mercilessly beating him with his other five tentacles.

  Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!

  The crowd fell silent. Nash froze mid-fist-pump with a horrified look on his face.

  “Yeah, yeah! Get that rosy-cheeked yellow rat!” I cheered.

  “Whoo! Let’s go, Silas!” Sync yelled. We were like overenthusiastic parents of the one kid on the team who spent most of the season on the bench and finally got to play. We were also the only ones cheering anymore.

  Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!

  Silas continued thrashing the creature until tiny teeth began flying from Kickachu’s mouth in sprays of glitter, and he got the Bonked debuff.

  Soon, Kickachu’s eyes swelled up and bruises began to cover his flank. If I wasn’t mistaken, I’m pretty sure I heard some of his little rodent ribs cracking, too. Even I cringed at that.

  With each of Silas’s blows, Kickachu issued a strangled peep. He constantly gurgled and choked, trying to breathe, but Silas showed absolutely no mercy.

  I finally called, “Okay, Silas… I think you got him.”

  Satisfied with the profound battering he’d delivered, Silas let go of Kickachu’s neck and held him upside down by the tail. Kickachu hung there like a carcass in a butcher shop, motionless and dripping glitter.

  The crowd murmured and pointed at the new unlikely winner.

  “Ki… kick… achu…” The Shouldérmon stirred and weakly squeaked its own name as it wiggled to get free.

  “Uh, Silas, I think you won, pal,” I called. “You can let him—”

  SMACK.

  Still clutching Kickachu’s tail, Silas swung him over his head and slammed him face-first into the pavement. Glitter and sparks spat out from the impact, and I cringed again.

  Then Silas swung him back over his head the other way and bashed him into the concrete again. And again. Multiple times.

  SMACK SMACK. SMACK.

  With each new slam, more of Kickachu’s bones crunched. I didn’t remember the original game that well, but I was pretty sure this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

  Sync’s mouth hung open. She’d halted mid-cheer and looked on, stunned like everyone else.

  I just stared, dumbfounded. Nash remained frozen with his fist still in the air, in complete shock. Tears streamed down his face.

  “Kickachu?” Nash asked, voice shaking.

  SMACK.

  After a particularly nasty slam, Silas finally let Kickachu go. The Shouldérmon wheezed on the pavement then reached out its stubby, sparkling, broken arms and tried to crawl back toward Nash.

  Nash buckled and fell to his knees, crying, and he reached his arms out toward his Shouldérmon. Why he wasn’t just running in there to help, I didn’t know. Maybe it was against the rules?

  “C’mon, buddy!” Nash pleaded more than encouraged. “You’re gonna make it!”

  “Kick… a…” Kickachu coughed, and glitter pulsed out of his tiny mouth. He was only a few inches from reaching Nash’s outstretched hands.

  “Well, we have a new—” Alfred began, but Silas cut him off.

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  “Where do you think you’re going?” Silas pushed off with all eight tentacles, launching through the air and landing on Kickachu’s back. He wrapped one tentacle around Kickachu’s tail and tore it clean off in a shower of sparkles.

  Kickachu wailed in agony. “Kiiiickaaaachuuu!”

  I gasped. “What the shell, Silas?”

  “How about a little taste of your own Iron Tail?” Silas roared. He proceeded to beat Kickachu with his glowing severed tail while sparkles pooled beneath him.

  CLANK. CLANK. CLANK.

  The audience gasped, shrieked, and recoiled, all too stunned to intervene. They could only watch in horrified awe, like me.

  Kickachu’s eyes changed to Xs, and then one popped out and dangled by its optic nerve.

  “Silas, stop already! You won!” I called, frantic.

  Silas did not stop.

  He coiled four tentacles around the tail and raised it high for a mighty blow.

  CRACK.

  He brought it down hard on Kickachu’s skull and smashed his head open. Sparkles spattered everywhere, including on Nash’s jeans, and a glittery river gushed across the pavement.

  Absolute silence fell over the crowd, except for one guy who promptly vomited at the sight.

  I leaned back and grimaced. Holy grit.

  Nash shrieked. The hands he’d held out to his dying Shouldérmon now fell to the shimmering pool covering the pavement.

  Silas heaved with ragged breaths, covered in Kickachu’s sparkling blood. “Oh, look at that. I won.”

  Sync covered her mouth and stared with wide eyes.

  No one said anything except for Nash, who wept on his hands and knees. “He… he was m-m-my only f-friend! I raised him from j-just a b-baby, Level 1…”

  “Well, he ain’t nothing now, is he?” Silas glanced down at the macabre scene and shrugged. “He had the chance to be sportsmanlike. He refused. This ain’t on me.”

  The crowd began yelling and pointing and calling out for us to be banished from Shouldérmon tournaments.

  Alfred cleared his throat and stepped into the ring. I fully expected to be thrown out. True to my earlier assumption, I did regret choosing to enter the tournament, but for entirely different reasons than I’d expected.

  Alfred adjusted his collared shirt and inspected the grisly spectacle. Apart from the blood being glitter, it looked more like the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan than the aftermath of a cartoon animal battle from a children’s game.

  Nash turned his red tear-filled eyes up to Alfred, who could offer him nothing except legalese.

  “According to the waiver you signed when you entered, you acknowledged the possibility of death or dismemberment—” Alfred glanced at Kickachu’s corpse. “—or all of the above, in this case. Legally, he fought within the parameters of the tournament, and thus… according to the rules which you all agreed to, we—we have a victor: Rickshaw Erik Shaw and his… uh… Silas.”

  Silas slithered off Kickachu’s corpse and back to me. “I’m feeling good about my chances with the others.”

  I looked back at Sync, who’d finally lowered her hands from her mouth and fixed a stunned stare at me.

  I could only shrug. “You got me. That might’ve been a one-off?”

  “Let’s hope so.” She gestured to Nash, who scooped up the remains of his Shouldérmon friend in his arms. “That’s… that’s not even supposed to happen in Shouldérmon. I guess the game crossover algorithm is… not working well.”

  “You don’t say,” I muttered.

  “Seems to be working just fine, if you ask me,” Silas said.

  Sobbing, Nash carried Kickachu’s remains from the fighting ring. He asked no one in particular, “Do you… do you think if I g-get him to a Shouldérmon Center, they’ll be able to h-h-help him?”

  “Only thing that’s gonna help now is getting that kid an appointment with a trauma counselor,” Silas muttered. He rubbed his chin. “Guess I may have done some lasting damage there. Got a little carried away, truth be told.”

  “A little?” Sync and I said in unison.

  “As the old saying goes, the show must go on,” Alfred proclaimed. “Our next match is about to begin!”

  The NPCs and Players in the crowd definitely took on a more somber tone during the next bout. Two other challengers battled while Silas and I took a break. The winner, which ended up being a pale blue turtle-looking thing that walked on its hind legs, would be Silas’s next opponent.

  Instead of pleasant cheers as our opponents made their way back to the ring, they received lackluster, almost nervous applause. When we approached, no one cheered for us at all. I couldn’t blame them.

  “Now remember: you don’t need to kill them, Silas,” Sync encouraged. “The loser in the battle before you just got knocked out.”

  “Right. Right you are, love.” Silas nodded. “I’ll constrain my considerable combative caliber.”

  “Danny Kane and his Shouldérmon Spurtle, the victors of the previous battle, now face their biggest challenge yet,” Alfred announced with reluctance, “Erik and Silas.”

  Player Danny gulped when Silas hopped off my shoulder and slithered into the ring. He looked at the turtle thing.

  “Spurtle, I choose you…” he said meekly.

  “Spurtle!” it said with gusto, and it abandoned Danny’s shoulder and bounded into the ring with glee.

  I folded my arms and braced myself. “Now, win, but go easier than last time, pal.”

  Alfred gave the go-ahead, and the crowd hushed, afraid of what could happen.

  “Spurtle, use Water Cannon!” Danny shouted.

  Spurtle opened its turtle-beaked mouth and vomited out a jet of water like a fire hydrant. It blasted Silas right in the face.

  All the while, Silas just sat there, soaking wet, with his front two tentacles folded in front of him. When Spurtle’s attack concluded, Silas said, “That was mighty refreshing, mate. Thanks.”

  Danny shuffled nervously.

  “Silas, uh…” I tried to mimic how the others commanded their Shouldérmon. “Kick him?”

  Silas sprang off the ground with his tentacles, leaping into the air and spinning.

  THWACK.

  All eight of Silas’s tentacles struck Spurtle in the face and knocked him to the ground hard.

  “Yeah, nice!” I yelled.

  If only it had stopped there.

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  Dungeon Crawler Carl Audio Immersion Tunnel for Soundbooth Theater, and he's the lead writer for the Dungeon Crawler Carl Role Playing Game.