I head back into the forest, restocked with healing gel and a new color of neon blue aquari-crumbs. I feel ready. I smash my way through three more packs of twenty monkeys before I start to feel bored. It's not a challenge with my speed. It's more like smashing pumpkins at Halloween. This is definitely not as much fun as drumming. Sigh. Alec said that the distance into the jungle was a pretty good measure of how hard it was.

I head back on the path behind me, and I determine that I’ve maybe made it 500 yards in, with quite a bit of twisting and turning. Heck, there’s enough colorful crumbs in circles and wobbles that I could get lost trying to follow my own trail. For safety, I head back into my clearing and go out a different side, looking for monkeys, and trying to stay straight.

At eight hundred yards or so, I see my first big monkey. Just like the rest, he’s thirty yards up a somewhat larger tree. Looks to be the same type as the boss who came to mess with me last time.

I make sure I’m ready to fight, and scout the nearby clearings. Then I set a new thirteen second personal record for lining up my saserface, and tag his ugly mug with the painful sound beam. No happier than any of the other monkeys who’ve been sound-blasted, he screeches and barrels down his tree. Looks like a great hunt for a moment, but apparently, I was more than a bit stupid. He’s not alone. I count about a dozen of his mini-mes heading down the tree with him, and more moving in the background.

I can usually take a score of the little shits without even getting injured. But Kong and twenty? I don’t like the odds. Good news, though. I still run faster than they do. I start jogging as the first ones hit the ground. Kong stays out in front, racing quite a bit faster than the rest and a three ring circus of monkeys are behind him. Shoot, I only have twelve hours before the final trial. I really need to see how I’m doing. Timing my pursuers, I’ve got a five second lead on Kong, who’s in turn seven seconds ahead of his posse.

I turn around, and blink in front of the ugly mug. Three seconds of two-stick high speed sinawali weave, and the monkey sees no path through. A feint at his face is followed by a full speed tail-crack to his ankle, and then 7 strikes in a second, all to his face-blocking left arm.

And then I run away again a second before the fastest mini-monkeys get to me. Heh. Now I'm calling them mini-monkeys. I’ve fought them for four weeks now, and they’ve been very scary for most of that time. It’s just that they compare to Kong like a pint carton of milk to a half-gallon. They look tiny.

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Between my sonar capabilities and Frodo, I’ve got a really good picture of how far back the monkeys are. I pace them at a constant distance, note a landmark I pass, and then check how long until they arrive. When they’re about four seconds back, Kong is still chasing, but he’s got two partially busted legs, so he can’t keep up with the minions. I don’t think I ever knew what a cacophony was before this, but I do now.

I stop and let the front of the monkey wave reach me. Five monkeys get to me, and I’m able to kill two and disable two in one point three seconds. Using my jacket as a shield against the monkey claws, I split before the second wave hits.

Four rounds of blood tag, and there’s nine dead monkeys on the trail, and five more that have fallen behind. Kong and a short dozen are continuing to chase, and I’m three hundred yards closer to the clearing. I float like a butterfly, sting like a bullet.

Doing something different, I put a wide and tall sound wall a yard in front of me, and get set for the monkeys to arrive. I turn Frodo’s volume all the way up, and pitch it just a bit higher than the monkey screeches. It’s probably close to 100 decibels. That’s like at a concert, a few steps back from the big speakers. Going from quiet on the other side of the wall to a literal wall of sound will make for an interesting experiment.

Ten monkeys make it through the sound wall in ones and twos, and the quarter second disorientation they seem to be experiencing is enough for me to clobber all ten. It's not really surprising. Going through the sound wall is like turning on your headset that normally is set to volume twelve, and finding that your nephew turned it up to volume one hundred. Little fucker. But it's enough of a surprise to be disorienting, and the monkeys can't even see the sound barrier.

Now it’s me against four healthy monkeys and a beat-up Kong. When Kong makes it through, I ring his bell real good. Ratatat all over his drum. Unfortunately, his skull is made of sterner stuff than the little monkeys, and while he may be concussed, he’s still moving. His friends hop through my sound curtain, and I’m able to take 2 more out. Three on one.

The two littles are less stunned than Mr. Big. So as I take off, they’re closer. I perform my patented fake-a-stumble, the monkeys jump, and it’s one on one. The big monkey isn’t so tough any more. My sticks break his good arm badly enough the bone sticks out of his skin, and then his knee. He keeps trying to fight, and I keep breaking joints, until he can’t get up from laying on his belly. With sticks, it takes 41 seconds to finally crack his skull and he stops moving.

Had I any lunch, I would have lost it a long time ago. I’m done monkey hunting. This wasn't fun; it was sick. It was animal cruelty. I’m uninjured after fighting twenty five monkeys and their big papa. I’d be impressed if I were less disgusted. I go back along the trail, put a few crippled monkeys out of their misery, get my thaums, and turn towards home.

As I pass bigs again, I realize I'm not done. Fuck. I forgot. After 2 more hours of bloody work from me and Bowie, I droop towards home.