Memory Games

by Elbbsas

Before her summer holiday with her cousins, Ellen Tennyson receives scattered memories that don't belong to her. This alone would make her holiday unsettling, but within a few hours of their first stop her family discover two alien watches. (Series retelling of Ben 10 with an OC and an extra Omnitrix).

1. It Takes Two To Tangle

–cue, the birds pause in their song. No longer do they share their merry tunes or interrupt the shining moment that is Pythia. They hold their breaths in their wonder. And on cue, a sunbeam filters though the distant window, dancing across Pythia's heels. And on cue, Pythia raises her head like a dignified, yet terrified, queen. Ellen said it once and will proudly say it again: Pythia looks beautiful in white. She deserves to look that way. Years of waiting led up to now, this singular moment, when Pythia can look as beautiful as how she acted day by day.

'Are you sure?' Pythia asks. Ellen lets out a sigh and buries her face in one hand. She doesn't need to turn her head to see Pythia's face. Ellen knows Pythia's shoulders have slumped back into a slouch. It's easily visible without Pythia's jerseys.

Steady on, Ellen.

'Thia. Thia.'

Ellen takes hold of Pythia's shoulder. She does her best to affix to Pythia a serious stare, one prepared to insert sanity into the situation.

She isn't sure she succeeded.

'You're gorgeous,' Ellen emphasises. 'You're fab. Sam is going to forget his lines because you look so good.'

Her eyes grow wide. 'I don't– I don't want him to forget!' she stutters.

Ellen tries not to sigh again. She fails. Again. Pythia's nerves slip into a puffed-up chook's frown. Even that fails to help, since Pythia turns back to the mirror.

'I'm not ready for this,' Pythia says. Her breathing quickens. 'I'm not ready, Nora. We, no I'm sure it'll be fine, it'll be fine, don't look at me like that this is what I sound like when I'm fine–'

'Thia!' Ellen's voice finally snaps Pythia from her spiral. 'Look at me. You're wearing the dress. That's all that's happening today. You're just overwhelmed because you can see it happening. It's been a long time coming. You are ready. Relax. Count to ten. Take a breath. Chill.'

Pythia's hand clasps around Ellen's arms. She trembles, quick enough that Ellen feels her vibrate. Pythia's hand stays clasped around Ellen's bracelet, pinning it against Ellen's skin. Ellen carefully pats Pythia and tries to be a comfort.

Pythia steadies her breathing.

'You're right, you're right,' she says. 'I'm overemotional. That's all.'

'See? There's my sister in law to be. Rational as always.'

With an unlady-like snort, Pythia says, 'You're the rational–

xxxXXXxxx

–didn't like her one little bit. 'Why do we have to pick up your stupid girlfriend!' Ellen complains. She's dug her foots into the ground the whole way there and Sam still isn't listening!

'Nora!' Sam snaps. 'She's not my girlfriend! Stop acting like–'

'Is too is too!' Ellen tries to pull out of Sam's grip but he's big and dumb and fat and so are all of his fat fingers! He's gonna break her bracelet with his taking! 'Sam and pee-ah, sitting in the tree, dragging me along in your piles of pee!'

'Ugh! Stop being insufferable!'

'Only person suffering is me!'

'You're doing this on purpose, I know it, so you are not getting any sym– sympa– I'm not going to listen to you!' Sam stops walking but he doesn't start walking home, so Ellen keeps pulling. 'Come on. You barely even know her. Who knows, maybe you'll find something in common.'

'The only thing we have in common is you, and I don't even like you.' Ellen pauses, then adds after a moment, 'And you're smelly. You stepped in dog poo on the walk.'

'No, I didn't.'

Then Sam scoops her up off the floor into the air, and Ellen starts screaming.

'Put me down! Sam! Sam, put me down, put me down, put me down right–

xxxXXXxxx

–all this?'

Ellen didn't startle, or accidentally knock her water over. Any water on her desk is completely accidental and unrelated to Sam's girlfriend suddenly talking to her from behind. Ellen grabs a towel and slams her arms on it. God, don't be ruined.

Ellen peeks. They're fine.

'Hi, Pythia,' Ellen says. She turns. As usual, Pythia's in her shapeless sweater. 'It's not much. Essays and stuff, you know how it is.' Ellen plays with her bracelet absently. Hopefully she leaves. Nobody cares about essays.

Weirdly, Pythia's eyes light up. 'Really? Can I see?'

'I– um. If you like?' Ellen tosses the towel away and carefully checks over the page. The water's blotted out. Ellen would feel much better if it was completely dry. Good thing it's only a draft, and a draft for fun as well.

There's a presence at her shoulder. Ellen wordlessly passes the page to Pythia and finds her pen. What was she up to? Oh, right, the unmoved mover summary, how it causes motion through narcissism.

Pythia stays weirdly quiet as she reads and Ellen writes. Ellen checks every few seconds. But Pythia doesn't leave. That is strange. She honestly thought she'd have gotten bored and gone off to find Sam by now.

'...How old are you?' Pythia eventually asks.

Ellen can't help but snap, 'You've known me since I was five. Aren't you supposed to be good at math, like Sam?'

'Sam's always been better at it,' Pythia says fondly. 'Let's see. Sam was eleven, so–'

Before Pythia can finish Ellen cuts in. 'Fifteen. There, now you don't need to calculate your ten-year anniversary.'

Pythia flushes bright red. 'We are– you um, that isn't what I was um. A-anyway, you're fifteen and you're writing this?'

'What else am I gonna do? Math?' Ellen says. She lets her voice ooze with contempt, letting it flood along the floor and stain Pythia's pristine shoes. 'And I didn't come up with any of that. I've been reading a bunch of books and I've been getting annoyed at losing my translations of it, so I'm making them pretty so I don't lose them while I'm reading. They're funny. Lots of old people thinking about how the world works and stuff, and they come up with some interesting things like um, this one guy, he had this theory about how 'cause of how perception works everything you perceive is doubtable except the fact you're doubting it. So, if you know anything at all to be a hundred percent true, it's that you are real.' Ellen pulls a face. 'Sorry, I'm not explaining it well. That's why I wrote it down. But, I lost those notes. And I can't find the book.'

The room falls silent. Outside, a bird sings a soft, piping tune.

Eventually Pythia looks up from the page.

'You write better essays than I do,' she says, handing it–

xxxXXXxxx

–looks even more nervous than Pythia did. Ellen cricks her back. Time to teach her idiot brother to suck it up and stop stalling. He's getting married for goodness sake! As she walks closer Sam's pacing doesn't change. But she does hear him muttering utter nonsense. It's mostly self-doubt and panic, so Ellen doesn't give it any of the attention it deserves.

'You know, usually it's the bride that's late,' Ellen jokes.

Sam gives a panicked little hum. 'I'm not late,' he says, like the words are fighting him. 'Wai– what are you doing here, aren't you supposed to be with…?'

Ellen nods, grinning.

Her brother looks like he desperately wants to swear. Think of the children.

'Where's your entourage gone?' Ellen asks. She hooks her arm into his elbow and starts tugging him. 'Come on. They know where they're supposed to be, I'll get Uncle Damion to call them if we get there first.'

'N– you don't need to– Nora I–'

'What?' A dark pit plunges and Ellen whips around. Sam doesn't look like he's caught a case of terminal stupidity. 'What's wrong?'

'I… it's nothing.' Sam swallows, thickly, like there's a lump in his throat.

Ellen contemplates murder. 'Samuel Arthur Reeds,' she says in a low voice, almost a growl. 'I have known you both for twenty years. You do not get to prove me right, not now.'

Instantly Ellen is relieved, because Sam's eyes fly wide in shock. 'What?! No! That's not at all what's going on!'

'Good. Talk, now.'

'I don't think I should tell you.'

'Sam.'

'No look, I. Can I borrow the phone?'

What? Ellen gives him a questioning stare. No answers come forth, just pleading eyes and worry. Ellen shakes her head even as she hooks around her handbag. Her bracelet slides up her arm as it goes, catching her skin. It takes her a moment to find the phone Pythia gave her. 'Why do you want it?' Ellen asks.

Sam swallows again. 'I think– I mean, I just….' He kneads his forehead with a knuckle and then turns back to Ellen. 'Let me start again. I need to check something with Thia. I have to do it before the wedding, because I don't know if she'll want to marry me after I check.'

He hesitates. His next words leave him in a rush.

'And I won't want to ask her after, because I don't know–'

Ellen shuts him up by planting the phone in his chest. 'Idiot,' she says fondly. 'Twenty years. The two of you love each other. No matter what you say, she'll stick with you… unless you're a serial killer, in which case I would be morally obligated to do something and marriage is a whole different ball park.'

Five minutes pass. Ellen kept distant enough that she didn't hear a word, even kept her eyes on the floor so she couldn't be tempted into guessing. Eventually she hears Sam walking back. She can clearly hear relief in his tone, and the quiet 'Love you too, babe, see you in a few,' settles all her own worries. Ellen doesn't give a hint of them. She puts on her smile.

'See? Now come on! You're supposed to be standing by the altar getting more and more nervous over Thia's dramatic entrance! Hurry up, let's move–

xxxXXXxxx

–spat out her drink, if she had one. Ellen doesn't. She chokes on her own tongue instead.

'Of course not!' she says. She sternly points at Sam. 'Just because you're married and need to hurry and fulfil your ultimate purpose in life–'

'Which is loving me,' Pythia adds with a giggle.

'–yes, exactly,' Ellen acknowledges, then turns back to Sam, 'does not mean I am. I need to know them for twenty years. It's traditional.'

Sam snorts at that. He slings an arm around Ellen's shoulder as well, guiding them both down the street. It looks like it will rain, later, again. Meandering, they start working their way back to the bridge stairs. It's a lovely evening. Ellen's face aches from smiling.

'I'm never going to forget today,' Sam announces. They slip free so they can start down the stairs. Ellen darts a little ahead so Pythia can walk beside him.

It's the right choice. Pythia gives Sam a nudge. 'I won't let you!' she proclaims.

Laughing, Ellen half turns to get them both in view. She grips the bannister. God, they're amazing. Sam and Pythia, perfectly matched, and Sam's stage fright doesn't seem to be anywhere in sight. A knot of tension leaves Ellen.

'This is only step one. Next is having lots of–'

The bannister's gone.

Her foot skids.

Ellen shrieks.

Her arm wheels, cracking into the wall.

No purchase.

It slides down.

So does she, world tipping.

Her shoulder hits the stairs, then the back of her head.

'Eleanor!'

She's still moving, she realises, step after step flee from under her feet.

Her arms are numb.

Sam and Pythia are framed in the night light.

How many stairs are left?

Pythia dives for her, eyes wide.

None.

Pressure–

–her back hits the wall. Somehow she has the presence of mind to grab an old, dusty pillow and ram her head into it. She's just in time to catch her scream. Bad idea. She chokes on the dust. Ellen rears back. Her palms slap into the old wood floor and she coughs, her lungs and ribs protesting under the strain.

What just happened?!

Did she– she just, she just died. Ellen feels cold all over. As her coughs subside she finds a hand on the back of her neck. Not a hand, her hand. It's whole. Her neck is whole, intact, the opposite of broken. But, she died.

Ellen feels like a milkshake. Someone shook up her insides and started sharing them around a room, now they each start slurping at different rates, some adding sprinkles and some picking through the fluff. She wants to puke. Cold clammy noodles were forced down her throat to start wriggling in her, wanting to dump everything into a bin.

Hugging herself, Ellen's gaze lands on the bracelet in front of her.

No. No, she didn't die. She… she came into the attic, she looked through one of the boxes, and picked up that bracelet. Ellen steadies her breathing. Someone put her under a heat lamp. Her head aches. Headaches. There's a high-pressure hose in her head.

'Ow…' Ellen mumbles. She palms her forehead. It's warm. That's okay, right? It's only bad when it's boiling your fingers off.

Far below, someone rattles the ladder with their footsteps.

'Ellen?' Mom calls. 'Is everything alright?'

'Yes, everything's fine!' Ellen squeaks. 'Just tripped over.'

'You have school in half an hour,' Mom cautions. She starts to walk away, her voice growing fainter as she does. 'You don't want to be late on the last day.'

Her breath catches in her throat like a baseball half slipping from the catcher's hand. It ends up slipping anyway, bouncing into the dirt and the grass. It turns unpleasantly damp and the crowd cries out in their disappointment. The runner slides into the plate, throwing her arms up in triumph. Ellen picks up her breath again. Last day of school. That feels like a lifetime ago.

Okay, step backwards a bit, kid. She's Ellen. She's sixteen– no, twenty– double no. Nine. Ten. She's ten years old. She runs a hand down her face. Still hot. She wonders what it's like to have tea, does a kettle have the same warmth to it or is there enough insulation? Ellen is ten years old. The last day before summer vacation is today, in half an hour. At least, that's when she'll start leaving since technically she'd already be at school if it began in half an hour. She's in third grade, soon to be progressing into fourth grade. In the transition, she's going on a road trip with her extended family.

Ellen huffs in annoyance. That is really, really not helpful. She needs to focus on who she is, not leave Mom and go on an adventure around America with her bro– no, not brother. She doesn't have a brother. She has a Mom and her Grandpas and uncles and aunts and cousins and–

And… there aren't anyone else.

Everyone has parents, but Ellen can't think of any extras, not even one attached to a "brother."

Despite herself Ellen is relieved. She doesn't have two families bumping around like soggy cereal. She has her family, and she doesn't have an entire extra foreign set. She has the uncanny sense of having a brother, except she doesn't, but at least her death isn't swarming her completely. Her death? No, no she didn't die. Ellen is here. She plants a hand on her chest to check. Yes, her heart's knocking away. Her limbs are gobbled jelly and her skin's a frog's, but she is not dead. But she did die. She felt herself die. She felt her neck give way and snap like a candy cane.

That's not what just happened.

No, no, no. Ellen is a ten-year-old girl, a ten-year-old girl who is sitting in an attic. She… Mom said she had a lot of old things and Ellen wanted to take a look. There's a time crunch. But, Ellen wanted to look through it before being swept away for the next few months.

And then, she'd picked that up, and died.

Ellen hugs the pillow to her chest. Her knees dig into her hands from how hard she clutches herself. It's a super old pillow. There's pretty golden patterns on it, really faded, but it looks like elephants and horses. The bracelet doesn't look like the pillow. It's old. Both are old. The bracelet's made of a lot of beads, fruit looping around in a halo of cold. Red and gold and orange, bright colours, and not a hint of grey clouds are there. Ellen doesn't want to go closer.

Past it, past the immovable bonfire of a bracelet, is the ladder.

The way down is on the other side. Ellen has half an hour to gather the courage.

How long has it been since she touched it? Ellen can't tell. If a lifetime were a jigsaw, someone decided to stuff a box into her ears. Her head throbs with it. Elephants and horses are dancing in her mind, and by weight or hard hoof it hurts.

Ellen hugs the pillow tighter for a moment, just a moment. She gently uncurls. The pillow goes back on top of the box.

'I'm Ellen,' she whispers into the dust ridden air. 'Ellen. I'm not dead.'

She picks up the bracelet and flinches.

It's surprising how tight the walls turn, when Ellen's afraid. The roof isn't tall. Sam always needs to duck when he's here– no not Sam, Mom. When Mom is here, she needs to duck. The boxes make imaginary barrier warriors, ready to take up arms and pin her to the ground and make sure she dies.

The bracelet hasn't killed her.

Ellen's still breathing.

It's a pretty bracelet. That's why Ellen picked it up in the first place. It's pretty. It matches Ellen's shirt, kinda, with yellow fabric being cousins in the warm colour family tree. The beads are cold under her fingers. They warm up quickly as Ellen holds them, like how her jacket zipper does. It's too warm now, for jackets, but it's a really nice puffer jacket. She'll wear it in autumn. It's in the wrong family of colours for the bracelet. It's blue. Don't opposing colours sorta match each other, though? Ellen supposes they must be a marriage of colours rather than a family, then. But the beads are still cold, for now.

Good. Good, good, great, that's good. The bracelet is not going to do that again. Unless it is. It's pretty still and pretty harmless looking. Ellen bites her lip.

She doesn't have time to try figure it out. There might be something in the other boxes but she only has half an hour, no, less now. There might be something in there that would explain the death bracelet, or even other death bracelets.

There could be a mental death armoury!

And somehow that mental death armoury wasn't noticed by anyone else in the family. Not Ellen's Mom, or Dad, or anyone that owned it, nobody ever came out of the attic screaming. That makes sense. Not, Ellen adds scornfully.

'Ellen, are your bags packed for Grandpa?'

The call's startlingly loud. 'Um, ah, yes? I'll check!' Ellen says. She scrambles forward to the edge of the ladder.

She can think about it later.

Five minutes into the drive to school, Ellen puts her hand in her pocket. The beads are warming up. Her vision doesn't fracture into alien thoughts and feelings. That's… good, that is good.

How in the world is she going to focus on her holiday?

---

Throughout her day Ellen is a burning bundle of nerve ends and unnerved ends. Can nerves be unnerved? She's pretty sure they can be. That's what she is: raw, unnerved nerves planting into sand, grit digging in.

The second the bell rings Ellen gets up and goes for the door. School presses and like water bursting from pipes the flood of fellows flee the facilities. Ellen hops the side of the stairs, under the bars and out of the way, and makes her way to the car park.

Where's Thia– Gwen, where is Gwen. Ellen searches for a hint of blue among the blur of shirts and motion. It looks like she's first. Before she can second guess herself Ellen skips to the carpark and up a nearby tree.

She sighs in relief. One arm wraps around a branch the same size as that arm, the other lazily hangs loose. No bag to worry for, no school to worry about….

The bracelet pops into her mind again.

What to do?

It hadn't done anything during the day. Ellen had touched it a few times, always in a semi-public area that wouldn't be stumbled across immediately. If it actually, literally killed her, Ellen wants people to find her but if it just made her faint, well, that would be embarrassing. But it hasn't done anything.

Ellen puts her hand in her pocket. The beads twist under her fingers, not doing anything. Wind buffets the branch she's lying on.

'Ellen! Ellen!' a voice calls, more frustrated the second time.

There's Gwen. Ellen doesn't do anything. She has more important things to care about. Gwen's wandering the car park and, honestly, her cousin can take care of herself. Ellen may as well delay reuniting with the queen of prissy.

Ellen has two hypotheses.

Option one is that she died, then she remembered who she was in the attic after she touched the bracelet. The bracelet was in all those memories, after all. Maybe it reminded her of who she was and poof, there she was. Ellen doesn't think that's right. Those memories, while overwhelming, are like a shattered stone after many years being glued back together. All the cracks seem wrong.

Option two is that Ellen just… randomly got memories from someone with the same name as her who died.

That doesn't sound right either.

There's a pretty obvious reason why neither are likely.

Gwen crosses the car park, then abruptly looks up. She lets out a frustrated huff. 'There you are! What are you doing?!'

Ellen hurries to finish her thought. That reason why is, simply, people don't randomly get memories from bracelets. It's more likely she daydreamed, even if it didn't feel like it. That happens in stories, not real life, and it's frankly absurd that it even happened at all, Ellen concludes, then leans her head against the wood.

'Hanging out? What are you doing?' Ellen calls down.

'Looking for you!' Gwen sweeps her arm and points down the street. Her eyes don't leave Ellen as she glares. 'Grandpa's waiting for us and you're sitting up in a tree.'

Gwen pauses expectantly. Her other hand is on her hip and like she's made of wire, neither shift. Maybe she has clothes hangers instead of bones and Gwen's actually an invisible entity carefully puppeteering the body of a ginger green-eyed Tennyson. Ellen wouldn't put it past Gwen. She's rigid enough. Ellen frowns at her thoughts. That made zero sense, even when she runs through it again. She must've skipped some steps.

At Ellen not replying, Gwen groans. 'Did you really think that'll work? Get down. Grandpa's waiting, and he's not gonna let us go home because you're sitting in a tree.'

'I'm not sitting in a tree,' Ellen grumbles, 'I'm lying on it. The branch isn't flat enough–'

'Whatever, just get down.'

Ellen scowls, grabs the branch, and tries her best to land on Gwen. She dodges. Ellen lands and hides her annoyance. 'Your parents didn't convince Grandpa this was a bad idea?'

'Please. They're the ones who convinced Grandpa to do this. Did your Mom?'

'Grandpa convinced her.'

With another huff, Gwen starts leading the way towards where Grandpa must be parked.

Ellen asks, 'And, Ben's still coming?'

Gwen throws Ellen an irritated glare. 'His boasting's why we're on this trip in the first place. What do you think?'

'He could've flunked fourth grade and had to take summer school.'

That knocks a smile onto Gwen. It must be a fun image. Ben, scruffy as always, flipping over a test sheet, only to find a sudden row of circled Fs, Fs, Fs that fly out of the page. They swirl around Ben, the classroom vanishing around him and leaving him in a purple and red fog of his failures. Last to go is his desk, then the floor, and he drops down into a jail cell. His outfit swirls from white with one stripe to many stripes, horizontal ones, and the cell slams shut.

It's a good thought.

Gwen shakes her head, the mood drying.

'As nice as that would be, I don't think you can flunk fourth grade.'

'Aw, really?'

'Why does it sound like you want to try?'

'Hey! I, unlike some people, like school, thank you very much.' Ellen pauses after her words. It was almost like a habit to say that. What some people? The only person that Ellen really knew who doesn't like school is Ben. Where had that come from?

It's that sly trickle of memory's fault. That makes an awful amount of sense.

'A-anyway, I did not try to fail. I'm not someone who does that,' Ellen says hastily.

'Riiiight,' Gwen drawls. 'There's the Rustbucket. Let's get this over with.'

That is a sentiment Ellen can wholeheartedly agree with. It's not that Ellen dislikes her family. She likes her family! Her family is great. Sometimes. But both her cousins in an enclosed space for months isn't the best idea even when Ellen isn't questioning herself.

The RV, also known as the Rustbucket for reasons Ellen doesn't know, is a pretty small space for four people. If cars were building blocks, the Rustbucket would be a brick on wheels covered in plaster. Cream paint peels at the bottom bits of metal. It makes the Rustbucket look way old, and it probably is super old! It's old enough that her uncles and Dad must have gone on their own trips inside it to infinity, beyond, and beyond the beyond.

What's "beyond the beyond," anyway? "Beyond" is probably space, right, so would beyond that be more space or another level of space? Ultraspace! Megaspace! Space space space space space! Knowledge on space, that needs to be a top priority! After bracelet, that is. Maybe she should put space aside for now.

Speaking of space, the Rustbucket's in a temporary parking space. No wonder Gwen was so cross. They head over. Ellen's feet, at least, pick at the floor and grow heavier as she approaches.

As they pass the window Gwen taps on it. 'I found her,' she announces, then strides on and pulls open the door. Ellen hops inside after Gwen, hand catching at the door–

–potential, pride, warmth of family–

–Of course! Rust-bucket! It's a bucket of bolts and rust.

Grandpa's so smart.

'Glad you could join us, Ellen,' Grandpa says warmly.

The Rustbucket's just like Ellen remembers, even with a long absence. Everything about it is warm. It fits the dry desert air they'll inevitably ride across and Ellen just knows she'll wish everything is made of cool blues soon enough. Gwen has the right idea. Oranges and lemons, say the bells of saint Bellwood, and that is the permanent colour range. Orange to yellow. It would be nice to have a lemonade when they're out in the desert.

Ellen shuts the door behind her, absently shaking her hand. 'Hi, Grandpa. Is Ben coming?'

'He is,' Grandpa confirms. Gwen, sat at one of the window seats, irritably lets her head slump into the window. 'We're heading to pick him up now.'

...Fun.

Ellen claims the backwards seat. She props her chin on her hand. A bit of vertigo swims as the Rustbucket rumbles, then as the world peels away from Ellen outside. Forget lemonade, now she really wants an orange. Did she drink anything at all today? Ellen worries at her lip. It feels dry. No, she didn't drink anything today. An orange would be great.

Outside the window there are no oranges. Trees spot the side of the road, whipping into Ellen's sight and then slowly shrinking as Ellen watches. Briefly, Ellen expects a gloomy sky and a grey tone. That's silly. Gloomy skies are exceptions, not norms, but Ellen expected it anyway. As with everything else, Ellen decides to blame the bracelet. It's very blameable. Considering it made her think she died, it deserves being blamed. None of the trees are orange trees. Most are brown, in fact. Houses pop by and pop by and pop by, one after the other in different shapes, sizes, and standing of riches.

'So…' Gwen says. Ellen starts, then glances her way. Gwen's shifted to leaning her chin on her hand, and Ellen quickly picks her head up and lays her arm on the table between them. Gwen absently stares out the window, her eyes occasionally flicking to Ellen. 'How was school?' she says. The way she phrases it is like she's speaking from obligation, like she couldn't think of another sentence to say.

'Good,' Ellen says. She shrugs her shoulders. 'School,' she adds, like that encompasses everything an answer can give.

Clearly, school isn't why Gwen started the conversation. Ellen's proven right as Gwen sighs and says, 'If Ben puts up a big enough stink, do you think we can go home?'

'Ben doesn't know?'

'No. He doesn't.'

'That's not good.'

'Cover your ears when he gets here so his dweebish tantrum doesn't make your brain melt.' A sly smile crosses Gwen's face. 'Then again, you're already halfway there.'

Ouch. Something in Ellen withers a bit. She pastes on a smile. 'At least I'm halfway unmelted. I don't think Ben has any more sway over all this than we do.'

'I can dream, can't I?'

The Rustbucket starts to slow and the trees look familiar. Math and statistics say that means they must be there. Where's there? Ben's school? When in the world did Ellen ever go to Ben's sc– oh, right, family get together for Ben and Gwen's shared birthday a few years back, they'd borrowed the field afterwards for a water gun war because the two were–

Ellen mentally halts.

Why is Ben hanging by his pants in a tree?

Grandpa has to step out of the RV to get him down, along with another boy trapped alongside Ben. They'd been hit by a freak tornado. Clearly. They'd been strolling from Madison Elementary. The hour was dimming. The streets were quiet. A rumble crested the buildings, with both looking up in confusion. Then, crash! Bang! Their arms were caught by the hands of wind. Naturally, screams ensued. The wind didn't like that and unceremoniously dumped their catch into the trees, to wait for rescue.

Or, someone just hung Ben there, with their hands.

Tornados sound cooler.

With a clatter and a clamber Grandpa steps back into the RV, Ben quick on his heels. Ellen tries to catch Grandpa's eye as he passes. She isn't sure what she wants to convey. Pleading? Pleading sounds good. But instead, Ben pops into Ellen's view.

'I've so been looking forward to–'

That's when Ben locks eyes on Ellen. He stares, then spots Gwen as well. His sentence dies in his throat like a wet tarp smothering a campfire. Ellen is unwillingly sympathetic. Then she remembers how his boasting is why Gwen and Ellen are there at all, and the sympathy poofs away.

'What are you doing here?' Ben demands, gaze darting between them both. He throws to Grandpa, 'What are they doing here!'

Behind Ben's head Gwen scowls. She shares with Ellen a look of aching irritation and foreboding frustration. 'Take it easy, dweeb, this wasn't our idea.' Gwen then adds in a lofty tone, 'Someone convinced my mom that going camping for the summer would be a good experience for me.'

Like a gong sounded Ben's eyes turn wide.

'Grandpa, please, tell me you didn't…?' he starts to say.

Ellen finds her lip between her teeth again. It takes effort to stop worrying. Gwen was right. Ben didn't know. Whose idea was it to spring it on him last minute? Then again, Ellen only found out for sure a week ago after weeks of whispers. But as expected, Grandpa doesn't back down.

'I thought it would be fun if your cousins came along with us this summer.' Grandpa's eyebrows turn into storm clouds. 'Is that a problem?'

Ben seems speechless. His eyes dart to Gwen, to Ellen, then he sags and makes his way to the front seat. Summer's going well for all of the hour it had been.

The RV kicks into life. Can a car kick anything? That would be an interesting sport. Cars playing soccer, or basketball, that would take a lot of thought and skill and… thinking about it, not so fun to watch. Cars aren't the most dexterous things. The RV pulls away from the sidewalk again. They're on their way.

Ellen settles by the window. Grandpa called that he wanted to be at the campgrounds by sundown, didn't he? Ellen stifles a groan. They'd be sitting upwards of three hours? That's great. Good good great great. What to–

Ellen sits bolt upright and scans the back couches. Yes, there's her bag.

'I have a pack of cards?' Ellen suggests to Gwen. 'We could–'

'Not interested,' Gwen says flatly.

Just like that Ellen's sentence is slaughtered. A poor farmer wakes to a field of phrases and finds one, its breathing laboured, and in great sorrow puts it down. 'Oh. Okay, then.'

So much for that idea. It's going to be a long few hours.

---

'Alright, pit stop.'

Grandpa's call cuts through the RV, passing by Ellen and heading outside. Ellen grunts and picks her head off the window. When did the Rustbucket stop rumbling? Across the table Gwen smirks. Ellen quickly checks her face. It doesn't feel off–

Of course. Ellen checks her face via the window.

'Ben,' Ellen grumbles. She licks her thumb and tries to rub away the marker swirls on her cheek.

Something smacks into Ellen's elbow, bouncing, then clattering to the table and rolling. Ellen swats it like a fly. It's a marker.

'There,' Gwen says. She thumbs towards the back of the RV. 'Good luck getting revenge. Oh, and you're sleeping on the floor.'

The horror from that proclamation could distort a cup into half emptiness. There are three official beds in the RV. The table where Ellen and Gwen are sitting can drop down, letting Grandpa pin the larger bed into place. That's his. Then there is the back couch, which doubles as the storage for all their clothes and their things. Above that is the hanging bunk bed, which Ellen spies Ben sleeping in. That can be taken down when it isn't being used.

By "the floor," Gwen means Ellen gets to sleep on a mattress. The mattress is on the floor.

'How long was I asleep?' Ellen says incredulously.

'Uh, two hours?' Gwen slips out of her seat. 'I'm getting a megagulp,' she tosses over her shoulder.

'Ooo, can you get me one?' Ellen requests. 'I'll draw your cat onto Ben if you do?'

Gwen sniggers. 'Deal,' she says. The RV door shuts behind her.

With that, Ellen grabs the marker. She flashes a grin towards the back of the RV, where Ben sleeps, unaware of his oncoming doom.

'Alright, dorkbrain,' Ellen says, uncapping the marker, 'let's see how you like it.'

Ben was playing on easy mode. Everyone knows that Ellen's a heavy sleeper and that it's borderline cheating to draw on her face. The patterns on the floor are land mines that Ellen has to step around. Her shoes were already off, letting her tread be light.

Target acquired: one Benjamin Tennyson. Ellen cannot make a single sound. Anything could give away her position.

That in mind, Ellen slides open the bathroom door as she passes. Ben doesn't so much as twitch. Good good good. She leaves it open and approaches the edge of the bed.

Begin the heist. Step one, kitty mark. Ellen winds one hand around the bed support and hauls herself upward. It's a bit difficult to balance with one hand. The other hesitates over Ben's face. Why stop at just replicating the symbol on Gwen's shirt? Why not make Ben become the mark? If Ellen could see a mirror, she hopes she could describe her expression as "fiendish." She isn't too sure what a fiend is, but they sound super cool and super good at sneaking.

Eyes, ears, mouth, nose, whiskers, and two of the symbols themselves. Ellen gives the oblivious Ben another grin, steps off of the couch, and slips into the bathroom.

'Ugh, Ben,' Ellen grumbles. Ben had gone all out. Ellen rubs off as much as she can see in the mirror. This'll teach her to sleep–

Someone hurls a shot put into Ellen's stomach.

Ellen's sleeping on the mattress. She's sleeping on the mattress!

Outside, motorbikes roar.

If Ellen's on the mattress, then Ben can draw on her anytime! All the time! There's nowhere where Ellen is safe. On the bunks Ellen might've managed to roll and keep her head facing the wall, and ensured her fortress of her face couldn't be stormed by Ben's knights of writing, but on the floor? Ellen is doomed.

And Gwen knew. That's why Gwen gave Ellen the marker! She knew that neither one would be safe! Ellen can get Ben whenever, Ben can get Ellen whenever. It's a cycle. A "bye-bye Gwen having to worry about her cousin's" cycle. Gwen merrily gets to saunter away while Ellen and Ben dog fight on the beaches.

It's a cycle that Ellen fell for.

Ellen taps the marker against her mouth, thinking hard, or hardly thinking. Right. All Ellen has to do is not retaliate. When she wakes up tomorrow and has marker on her face, Ellen must not retaliate. She must not retaliate.

What are the chances that, in the face of no retaliation, that Ben keeps doing it? Ellen internally groans. If Ben succeeds, then doesn't have an answering shot… there's nothing to stop Ben from doing it again and again. Ellen has to hand it to Gwen. Good plan. The second Ellen drew on Ben, she was doomed. Until she can break the cycle, doomed is what she will be.

She can hear shouting and… police sirens, for some reason. The RV door opens with a bang, rattling the toothbrushes on the bathroom shelves. Ellen winces and pokes her head out of the bathroom. Ben, mercifully, is still asleep.

Ellen pockets the marker and heads for her seat. Her cheeks feel raw. 'What's–?'

'Someone tried to rob the gas station!' Gwen says. She doesn't have any drinks! Ellen glowers at her empty hands. Ellen fell for Gwen's trap, and Gwen didn't even uphold her promise? Oh, and robbing places is bad, yes, but drink.

'What?'

'Sit down, kids,' Grandpa says.

They are seated for barely a second when Grandpa tears out of parking and onto the road. The sharp turn throws Ellen to one side and she has to scramble to sit down properly.

'Someone tried to steal things?' Ellen checks, once seated.

'Not one someone. These two guys in these masks, they ran out of the store with bags of money. Seriously stereotypical of them. They knocked the drinks out of my hands and ran for these motorbikes, and they almost got away when Grandpa stopped them!'

Gwen leans forward to address Grandpa.

'That was amazing, back there,' Gwen says.

The RV slows to a more ordinary pace. Grandpa chuckles. 'Naw, just doing my part to keep my grandkids safe. Stopping two no-good thieves was just a bonus.'

'What happened?'

Ellen winces. And here begins the cycle of doom, with Ben waking up.

Gwen says, turning, 'Grandpa stopped some th–' and then she can't speak due to laughter. Ben had hopped down from the bed. The whiskers Ellen drew are on full display, twisting in Ben's own confusion. Even if it's leading to Ellen becoming a permanent canvas it must be one of Ellen's better attempts. Despite herself, Ellen starts to grin.

'What?' Ben says grumpily. It hits him almost immediately. 'Argh, which of you dweebs did it?!'

Before Ellen can seize the opportunity to break the cycle, Gwen points at Ellen. In for a penny, in for a pound.

'I think it's a purr-fect improvement,' Ellen says. She flips the marker across her knuckles and sends Ben a smile.

Ben, halfway through scrubbing his face, shoots Ellen a glare. 'You better watch your back,' he grumbles, and heads for the bathroom.

---

The campground is as quiet and empty as the hours after a garden party.

'It's beautiful, Grandpa.'

Ellen must agree with Gwen. The grass is short, but smooth like a bed of feathers. Each light curve captures the fading sunshine. The field is empty, too. Didn't Grandpa want to get here early? No, no, he wanted to be here before nightfall. It's before nightfall. The sun is purpling the sky, gone from sight, and the moon is dominating the horizons. It's the minimum time before nightfall.

'Ha, I knew you'd like it,' Grandpa says to Gwen. 'I'll get started on dinner.'

With that gentle announcement, Ellen finds herself shooed outside along with her cousins. Ben's cleared the marker from his face and his expression heralds Ellen as marked for doom. The marker itself burns in Ellen's pocket. Not literally, of course. A literal burn would mean Ellen would rapidly lack trousers. She isn't a fan of, of, exposure? It's something about exposure. She can't remember what the words are off the top of her head.

More importantly, trees.

'Grandpa does have good taste in camping spots,' Gwen says. Her tone thrums with unsaid disdain. Grandpa has good taste, unlike everyone else here, is what her tones says.

'Uh huh,' Ellen says absently. The nearest tree doesn't have low branches, but the next tree does. Ellen pats Gwen's shoulder in distraction and starts towards it. 'I'm going up there.'

'Oh, sure! Ditch everyone to break your neck!' Gwen calls after Ellen.

Ellen is positive Gwen kept talking, and Ben starts needling her as well, but Ellen tunes both out. The first branch is a little higher than Ellen's reach, but with a jump and bark to her stomach, Ellen pulls her way up. She doesn't stop climbing until she's at least on a branch four metres up.

Once in the air, Ellen lets out a relieved sigh.

She scoots backwards. The trunk is wonderfully straight, so Ellen leans her back against it. She sits like she's riding a pony. What's riding a pony like? It can't be too comfortable, since it's a living creature, and its muscles and bones must be all pokey. That must be why saddles exist. Branches are more comfortable. At least, Ellen assumes so.

Gwen's lounging on the picnic table. Her face looks pinched, frustrated, and scrunched. Ben's pacing around the table, arms waving in animated annoyance.

Ellen grins. It's easy to imagine voices to the sight.

Ben says, grr, I'm a shouty angry person and I'm really mad.

Gwen says, I'm mad too, but I'm going to be posh about it.

Ben says, shut up I totally have a better reason to be mad. People are here, I don't like that, and I'm going to blame them even though they had nothing to do with it and hate it just as much.

Gwen says, yeah well I'm a criminal mastermind. Bwah ha ha.

The reminder chills Ellen's glee. Ellen drops her head to the bark behind her and her fingers paw into her pocket. The marker's still there, of course. She has to think of something, anything, that'll stop the cycle before it starts. Gwen's cycle. Ellen can't try and stay awake all night. While that would be the easiest way to prevent retaliation, it isn't one Ellen would be good at.

Ellen stays in her tree. She only climbs down when called for dinner and she quickly retreats back to the air once she's done. If it were up to Ellen she'd stay there for the entire night. She'd stay in the air, in the breeze, where she can watch the stars mingle with the clouds and faintly make out birds settling in for the night.

It's not. It's not up to Ellen.

A shooting star dips its way across the sky. Make a wish, Ellen. She wishes she never touched the bracelet, to start with. If that's too difficult she'll take some fluke to let them all go home.

'Ellen,' Grandpa calls up to her. 'Why don't you come down and help me with the tents?'

Ellen flinches in surprise. When did he get to the bottom of Ellen's tree? Last she saw, he was hovering over the pair sat in stubborn opposites. The clearing's deserted of cousins, bickering and all. A dull boom of an unseen firework rolls by.

'Where's the twins?'

'They're on a nature walk together,' Grandpa says. He looks pleased. Ellen is almost certain that whatever walk the pair are on it isn't being done willingly. And they're together. That can only end with a shower of happy rainbow flowers and a chocolate sundae. Grandpa says, 'If you like, you can go join them.'

That… does not sound fun. It's rare, the times when they can get along with one another. In almost all of them Ken is around to mediate between Ben and Gwen. Ellen is not a good mediator. She's more likely to immediately meander towards a pit and a trap constructed from the musings of one of them, and then end up soaked to her skin. Or act in kind.

Trees are safe. Ellen is the best at them. 'Can't I stay up here?'

With a chuckle, Grandpa shakes his head. 'That's not an option today, Ellen. It's spending quality time walking with your cousins, or with me pitching tents.'

The most important word in that sentence is the word "today." It is not day, it is night or late evening! Therefore, Ellen is absolutely able to stay in her tree!

Ellen climbs down.

Well, tomorrow still counts as not being part of "today." She can climb back up tomorrow.

Maybe it'll be a tree whose branches let her climb even higher! It'll be high enough that even the smallest gust of wind will send her swaying and tumbling through the air, whose cool breaths play with her hair and let it become a shower behind her head… but it's far more likely to swat Ellen in the face with blonde. That's usually how it goes. That is why she's packed hair ties, and a jacket for the cold.

At least, Ellen thinks she packed it. She packed her bags last night. ...It feels like a lifetime removed, since a certain bracelet rammed a bleating battering ram into her head.

Grandpa passes Ellen a mallet and they start ticking the pegs into place.

What memories did she get, anyway? Who were those people? Ellen. In those memories she was called Ellen. Was that because Ellen's name is Ellen, or was that Ellen also originally called Ellen? Ellen's head feels like it's starting to spin. She, or rather the other Ellen, had a brother named Sam, who got married to someone named… Pythia? And that Ellen hadn't liked Pythia at first but then suddenly was all for being best buddies with Pythia for some reason.

The more Ellen pokes the memories, the more it feels like there are gaping holes between each. There's a garbled quality to them. Thoughts bubble between the empty spaces that hint, barely, of things Ellen knows that she knew when she was in the memory, but the Ellen in that memory didn't think of clearly enough for Ellen to remember. It's like the logic of a dream. There's a castle with a dragon in it, and Ellen knows it'll let her through if Ellen sings it a song, but when she wakes up Ellen doesn't know why she knew that or even why she believed it, let alone what the song was. It doesn't help how the memories bounce around out of order like a disorganised parade.

Ellen's nose wrinkles. If a magical bracelet was going to drop memories into her head, it could have the decency to make them make sense. It also could stop making her head play on the mini roundabout. Ellen would like to get off this ride, please.

'Aw, would you look at that,' Grandpa says disapprovingly. Ellen immediately checks over her tent. She isn't doing that badly, is she? But when she glances at Grandpa he's looking over the treeline.

A faint plume of smoke coils into the sky. Heat and light beckon at its underside, calling for the particles to fall back down, but they stay thick and black and rising until, inevitably, they fade into the night sky and the stars.

'What is it?' Ellen asks.

'It looks like the start of a forest fire.' Grandpa's sigh feels irritated. 'Probably some darn fool of a camper messing around with things they shouldn't.'

Poor trees. They don't deserve to be hurt just because someone made a mistake. It looks thick enough that anyone nearby will clear out soon enough. The rangers are sure to notice it, too. But by the time they get the fire under control, a lot of it will be cinders and ash.

Wait.

Wait a minute.

Ellen drops her mallet. She whirls to face Grandpa, just as he says in a voice of dawning horror, 'They're not back yet.'

He bursts into a flurry of motion. One second he's at the tent, the next near the RV. Ellen scrambles to her feet and follows him. She's just in time to get a fire extinguisher to the chest.

'Better take this,' Grandpa says.

He easily holds the other like it's a coffee mug. Not a drop spills nor does it throw off Grandpa's direct stride towards the forest. That's good. Ellen hugs hers to her chest. It's almost as big as her chest. She scrambles to find the handle and scrambles to follow Grandpa, altogether ending up as scrambled eggs. Ellen's yellow enough for that.

Grandpa leads the way through the woods, through a narrow winding path. It quickly fades into the scattering of trees and clear spaces. As Ellen jogs after Grandpa the clear spaces seem wrong. They're too big. There's not enough ground cover. There should be bushes and ferns and bipolar skies and ramshackle bushwalk signs. Ellen blinks. The moment passes. She can hear fire crawling its way up the meals of trees.

And then there is fire.

It's like an ocean bathed in sunset. Blazing light glints from rippling points, catching on piles and then throwing themselves to the next crumbling edge. Heat hits Ellen like the smell of the ocean, but that's not sea spray. It's smoke. Foul and thick, but Ellen didn't even see it. She's in it. Like a fog it's invisible save for the blurring of the distance. Fire laughs like fish, flinging out of the uniform ground's orange waters and launching from tree to tree to tree.

In the air there's more fish. Ash. Shimmering air. Invisible fish with gleaming scales swimming back and forth but too quickly for Ellen to see. All of it's blackened and shrivelled. Ellen's never been to the sea, not one like this, never like a storm. A forest shouldn't scream like this. Good, this is just great. This is great. Great. This is wrong.

'Grandpa…?' Ellen says hesitantly.

'I know,' Grandpa says. What he knows, Ellen doesn't. 'Stay close to me and listen carefully.'

With a sweep of his fire extinguisher, Grandpa kills the nearest fish. Fire. It's bathed in froth and returns to its natural state, suffocating on the beach. Good.

Ellen mirrors Grandpa. There's an invisible rope between her and the path they'd come down. She keeps looking over her shoulder and expecting to see it burning away. It'll go up in smoke. Poof. No more Ellen. It'll be slower than snapping her ne–

'–to the whole forest!'

'Oh yeah? You're the one–'

'Grandpa!' Ellen says. She darts forward, towards the garbled shout. 'I heard Gwen! Gwen! Gwen, where are you!'

'Wait, Ellen–!'

'–so busted for this–'

Fire roars beside Ellen, swatted away in a burst of foam. Trees. Trees. Trees. Trees and fire fill all Ellen sees, and maybe she should've waited for Grandpa.

Heat curls around her ankles. A twig, warm and dry, scratches at her as she passes, but it's not on fire so it's all good, it's all fine.

Ellen just needs to find her cousins and everything will be okay.

Everything's fine, everything's good, everything's gr–

There is a man made of fire in front of her.

Ellen shrieks, grabs the fire extinguisher, and drenches him in foam.

He splutters. He had his back to Ellen, but quickly turns around at Ellen drenching him and maybe she shouldn't have done that. He's made of heat, of magma drawn into a humanoid form, and in scant moments the fire flares back into a bonfire. He spits out some foam. 'Hey!' he growls. 'I know I look weird, but–'

'What did you do to my cousins!' Ellen says. She's surrounded by fire. This guy, he started it, didn't he? He started the fire. Gwen was here, Ellen knows that for sure, but where is she and what did he do?! 'A-answer me.'

'I'm right here,' Gwen drawls.

What?

Ellen doesn't take her eyes off the glowering human candle. Sidestep. Oh, there's Gwen. She's standing right behind the monster, her hands on her hips. Head, shoulders, stomach, knees, toes, there's no burns. Good. That can change alarmingly fast. Great.

'You… what's going on?' Ellen says. She notices her extinguisher aim had dropped, and quickly forces her arms to aim upward again. Why are these so heavy. Because they've got a lot of compressed extinguisher stuff in them which is very dense and useful. Right. More importantly, where's Ben. 'What happened!'

The extinguisher jerks to one side and Ellen has to stagger to keep her grip. Fire guy swatted the hose! 'Don't even think about it, dweeb,' he says.

'Oh, please, you're the dweeb,' Gwen says snobbishly. 'Which of us set fire to the forest, again?'

Fire guy rounds on Gwen. 'That never would've happened if you hadn't messed with those watches is the first place!'

'Says the one who decided to juggle fireballs!'

'Wait, wait, wait, what's going on?' Ellen points the hose at fire guy again, this time more to point at him without dropping it than to aim froth and hopeful unpleasantries at him. 'That's Ben?!'

'Welcome to the party, doofus,' Gwen says.

Footsteps, heavyset and with some degree of speed, sound nearby. What took Grandpa so long? Also: why is Ben a third degree burn victim and still capable of locomotion? The latter question seems waaay more important as of right here and now.

'Kids, are you…' Grandpa trails off the closer he comes. When his sentence resumes it's stuttery and bewildered. '...What in blazes?'

'Literally,' Gwen says. 'Ben grabbed a space watch and it turned him into a freak!'

'I grabbed it?! You grabbed it!'

'Did not!'

'Did too!'

Slow down, slow down, slow down! 'What did you grab?'

A hand lands on Ellen's shoulder. It's Grandpa's. 'Hold on, all of you. We can talk about who did what later. Right now, we have a forest fire to deal with.'

The living guy fawkes scarecrow who's Ben, apparently, that's a thing, his eyes widen.

'Aw, man, what do we do?' he says.

Ellen hoists up her fire extinguisher. 'We have these?'

'Two fire extinguishers can't stop an entire forest fire,' Gwen says. The words sound like Gwen meant it to be mocking and dripping with contempt, but the fire burnt the tone all away.

Strictly speaking, Gwen's right, fire extinguishers can't put out a full-on bonfire, but they can clear a path out of the heat and free as a bird. But if Ben caused the fire, it's their responsibility to fix it. Ellen gulps. The flames lick at the trees surrounding them. The invisible rope is well and truly cinders because Ellen has no idea where to run.

It's Grandpa who has an idea first. 'Backfire,' he says. He gestures to the flames. 'Start a new fire and let it burn into the old fire. They'll snuff each other out. Think you can do it, Ben?'

Ben agrees, and Grandpa quickly ushers Ellen and Gwen away. Ellen hears Ben racing in the opposite direction. He's on fire, he'll be fine. Grandpa clearly hadn't lost the rope leading back, because by following his lead Ellen soon steps out into where the forest had yet to burn, and then the clearing with the Rustbucket.

Ellen half bows over, supporting herself by her knees, carefully letting the fire extinguisher lean against her leg.

Everything feels raw, yet cold. Her lungs feel stretched and like there are little pinches in them, which fade as Ellen catches her breath. That's strange. They hadn't even run when leaving. Adrenaline, must be, adrenaline makes everyone's head spin when it's done.

'Gwen, Ellen, are you both alright?' Grandpa asks.

'Fine!' Gwen says, 'Ben stapled a freaky space watch to my wrist, but other than that I'm perfectly angelic.'

'I'm okay, too,' Ellen says. She glances up and down her arms, her legs. Nothing feels burnt or disturbingly numb.

Above the trees the smoke looks like it's dying down. That, or Ellen's eyes are playing tricks on her. One or the other. The other direction is Gwen, who does have a watch on her wrist. It's in blues, matching her clothes, with various pink highlights around it.

Ellen's successfully caught her breath, so she waves vaguely in Gwen's direction. 'What were you saying about that watch?'

---

By the time Ben graces them with his presence, Gwen's outlined the whole sordid tale with a myriad of gestures and insults. Ben catches the tail end of it, so he naturally decides to start correcting Gwen's story. Both Ellen's cousins end up in one another's faces, with Gwen stood on top of a log to properly shout in Ben's flame filled frame.

From what Ellen could gather, a thing had fallen from the sky and nearly hit the pair of them. One of them had fallen into the pit it dug, with both claiming it was the other one, and the thing had opened itself up. Then, the watches had pounced on them.

'No, you reached in and tried to grab it!' Gwen says. She points at her watch for emphasis. 'I tried to stop you, and then the watches jumped on us!'

'You said that if we went to get Grandpa the watches would disappear before we got back. This is your fault!'

'I never said that, you said that!'

Ellen perches her chin on her hand and idly swings her marshmallow back into the fire. Ben kindly provides the flames. The flames of an argument are far more unwelcome.

Now that Ben's outside of the fireplace named "the forest is burning we're all going to die," it's much easier to see what he's been turned into. He's essentially the Human Torch. Plates of reddish, rocky material sit like tectonic plates, complete with magma gleaming through the cracks. The rocks grow smaller at the edges of his limbs, thickening further away, and his head is topped with flickering flames. There's one thing that doesn't fit the colour pallet of orange and red, and that's the round metallic looking disk on his chest, offset. It's grey and white. It has an hourglass symbol on it, which looks the same as the one on the face of Gwen's watch. Except, you know, his one is white while Gwen's is pink and attached to a watch. His is in his chest. How'd it get there? Did a tree mallet it in?

Ellen swings the marshmallow into the fire again. Ben notices this time and swats at the branch, thankfully not hard enough to knock it from Ellen's hand.

'Cut that out,' he calls up to Ellen.

She doesn't. She just leans forward further, not enough to tip her from her tree, but enough for the marshmallow to bake on Ben's fire hair. 'You set the forest on fire, the least you can do is stay still and be useful,' Ellen says.

'The last time I did that Gwen turned me into a fire monster, so, no,' Ben says deliberately.

'You're not a monster, you're an alien,' Grandpa says.

Ellen glances down towards Grandpa, who's in the process of gathering wood for a proper campfire. He's paused in the process to make the comment. Ben, on the other hand, looks just as freaky and monstrous as before.

Grandpa stutters for a second. 'You said the watch came from space, so, what else could he be? Anyway, you're saying the watches just jumped up on your wrists?'

'That about sums it up. Right, Ben?' Gwen says accusingly.

'It's not my fault!' Ben shoots back.

'It doesn't matter whose fault it is,' Grandpa says sternly. 'What matters is figuring out what they are.'

In Ellen's pocket, the bracelet feels heavier and heavier with every word. No way are they related, right? But it can't be a coincidence that a bracelet threw memories into her head, and now watches were locomoting on their own and turning cousins into barbeques. Or, it could be. Coincidences do happen, sometimes, and what happened to Ellen did happen several hours ago. It could be unrelated. Is it? Ellen has no idea, but she does have marshmallows to eat. They're sweet and burnt.

'And how to turn Ben back,' Ellen says. Stick empty, she pokes Ben in the head, who scowls. 'No offense meant, but if you get in the RV you might melt it before we get anywhere near the desert.'

'What if Gwen's watch turns me back?' Ben muses. Ellen has the privilege of seeing Gwen's eyes widen, then whip her watch behind her back. Ben says, 'Here, Gwen, gimmie your watch!'

'Oh no, no way, you are not messing around with mine.' Gwen practically prances to the other end of the log, avoiding Ben easily.

'Gwen, come on! You turned me into this!'

'Yeah, and you touching mine's gonna turn me into another alien freak!'

Ellen's stick is on fire. Whipping it through the air successfully extinguishes the flame. Unlike Ben, who when running after Gwen doesn't even dim.

Grandpa intervenes, stopping Gwen in her tracks with one hand, outstretching to Ben with the other. 'I don't want either of you fooling around with these until we know what they are,' Grandpa says, in a tone that rejects arguments and shuts down conversations.

That sounds like the end of that to Ellen, right up until the symbol on Ben's chest starts to blink.

Red light bursts out.

It's sharper than a torch to the eyeballs, with its only warning being a drooping and rhythmic yet sad buzz. Ellen has to drop her stick, cover her eyes, anything to block the painful light. A grunt escapes her. It's unbidden. And when Ellen peeks between her fingers, Ben is standing there at his normal height, clothes, and self.

He looks down at his hands. It's like Ben hasn't seen hands before. A laugh slips from him. 'I'm me again!' he cheers, showing off his hands.

Ellen forlornly looks to the pack of marshmallows. 'Aw, man. I liked having a portable campfire,' Ellen says. She waves the pack to Ben for emphasis. It looks like Ben doesn't even bother to notice, since he's grappling with a grey watch and staggering under the effort he's unleashing.

'Still can't get this thing off,' Ben says.

'No duh, Sherlock,' Gwen says sharply. She taps Ben's forehead, deliberately angling her wrist to hit him with her watch. The pair glare at one another.

Meanwhile, Grandpa leans down and coaxes the actual campfire into life. Knowing their current luck, it's guaranteed to suddenly break loose and go wild, swimming across the world and bathing it in orange. He nods once, satisfied, and when Grandpa straightens he has a torch in his hand.

'Then we'd better start figuring out how. I'll check out that crash site.' Stern eyes turn on each of them. 'You guys stay here until I get back.'

'Don't worry, Grandpa, I'll keep an eye on them,' Gwen says primly.

'Aren't I the only one who didn't poke an alien satellite between the eyes?' Ellen asks. She leans on the branch and grins down at Gwen. Strictly speaking, she poked something else, but Gwen doesn't need to know that.

Gwen folds her arms. She doesn't meet Ellen's gaze, and she speaks through gritted teeth. 'If you were there, you would've grabbed it before the watch could even jump on you.'

'If I were there….' Ellen trails off. Her eyes dart to the side. Gwen does have a point. That's why Ellen has her own mess to deal with. 'Okay, fine, but you don't know that for sure.'

With an irritated huff, Gwen sets herself on the log.

The campfire is warm, inviting, and Ellen gives a longing stare to her tree. There's no fires in reach in the branches. If Ellen wants marshmallows, she has to leave. Ellen climbs down and joins her cousins around the campfire. All she needs is a nice long stick, and she's good to go.

Ben's wrestling with his watch, still. So's Gwen. She's a little more subtle.

'Didn't Grandpa say to leave them alone?' Ellen asks.

It's a funny picture, both of them freezing simultaneously. They're mirror images. It's even truer with their watches attached to opposite wrists; Ben his right, Gwen her left. Both watches match their respective owners too. Gwen's is decked out in blue with pink highlights, Ben's in greys with red highlights.

Ellen's stomach swoops. Her bracelet matches her. It's in yellows and oranges.

Gwen glances at Ben first and quickly drops her arm. 'Yeah, Ben,' she says sharply, 'leave it alone.'

'Come on. You can't tell me you aren't a little bit curious about what else these things can do?' Ben says.

'Not in the least!' Gwen says, even if it sounds like a lie. Her eyes slip from meeting Ellen and Ben's. 'Besides, Grandpa said not to touch them. So, we aren't touching them.'

That's fine by Ellen.

Ben on the other hand, scoffs. 'What, you think Grandpa's going to find an instruction manual out there? If it isn't burnt to a crisp, that is.'

'And whose fault is that?'

'Yours! You turned me into that alien!'

'Grandpa's sure to find something,' Ellen says. 'Besides, what if messing with them just turns you into something else? And this time, it doesn't turn you back after setting the forest on fire? Or you do something, and it turns you back before you can fix it?'

'Then I'd turn into fire guy and fix it. Duh.'

Ellen raises a hand, then pauses. Opens her mouth. Closes it.

Gwen, thankfully, picks up the slack. 'You'll just make things worse. Besides, I don't even think your one works anymore.' She reaches out and pulls Ben's watch away from his chest. 'See? It's all red.'

'So?' Ellen asks.

'It was green before,' Gwen says irritably. 'Hey, maybe it'll be shut down forever and you'll have a useless watch stuck on your wrist.'

Ben snatches it back and starts twisting the dial. 'No way. If it's stuck here and it doesn't do anything, we have to find a way to get them off.'

Bleeps and buzzing murmurs under the crackle of the campfire. Ellen pulls another marshmallow from the fire and watches the flames roar around it. The surface bubbles and melts. Pink shifts to black, the flames burn the sugar and flicker to green at the edges. Ellen blows it out, piecemeal. By the time she's eating it Ben has made no progress on his watch.

The forest edge is empty of Grandpa, fire, and presumably the rangers combing the forest for what caused the fire. Ellen checks the stick. Empty. She sticks the base into the dirt and leans forward.

'What happened out there?' she asks.

'Uh, watches jumped on us and Gwen turned me into a freak?'

Before Gwen could jump in, Ellen waves her hand. 'No, I mean, when you changed the first time. What happened?'

Ben's mouth opens and Ellen can see the sarcasm building up in it. He pauses. His hand drops next to him, perches on the log as he leans on both his palms.

'It was freaky,' Ben says slowly. 'Like… there was all this green light, and then I was me, but I was also somebody else.'

Him, but other… there's a word for that. Something about personhood, where it's like you're looking at yourself from the other end of a tunnel, but you're still holding the reins. Like, you're a gamer and your self is the video game character. De… something. Ellen can't recall the word but it's a decent word to be sure. Oh! Indecent exposure, that's what she was thinking of before. She is not a fan of indecent exposure. But even with that question settled Ellen can sympathise with Ben. Maybe she wasn't turned into a freaky alien fire guy, but she did have alien memories slip in her head. And by alien, Ellen means "other," "alterity," not extra-terrestrial.

'Was the fire your first clue?' Gwen grumbles. Ellen frowns. Gwen sounds curious, and not as dismissive as she's trying to be. 'Hold onto that feeling, dweeb, because you're never feeling it again.'

Ben's eyes drop to Gwen's wrist.

A crooked smile crosses Ben's features. 'I dunno. It's not fair if I can't share it around.'

As Ben spoke he lunges for Gwen's arm. Gwen instantly jerks backwards, but Ben is latched around her wrist and they both tumble to the ground, both yelping. Ellen takes cover behind her log. Her back thumps into the wood and, wow, the stars really do look wonderful when they're away from the town, they'll look amazing when they go to the desert. Ellen's looking forward to seeing the Milky Way, if there isn't any light pollution out there. Gwen snaps at Ben to get off. Clicks and buzzes and the scuff of shoes in dirt, grunts of effort, and finally–

–a burst of pink light flashes over Ellen's head.

'Did Ben win?' Ellen calls.

Ben cries out. A deep, bass-y roar covers the shout like a wet blanket.

'Ben won,' Ellen confirms.

Two heavy impacts rock the log. The stars above Ellen are broken by a wall of orange, and a gaping, angry maw of thick and wet black gums.

Ellen's mouth hangs open for a second. 'I stand corrected,' Ellen says, her voice a higher pitch. 'Gwen won.'

The hairy, gigantic ape-dog growls at Ellen. A wave of hot, damp air falls onto Ellen's face. Ellen wriggles away and sits up. She wipes the moisture off her face needlessly. Ugh, it smells like a sheep whose wool was drenched in a lake.

Waving away air from her nose, Ellen squints at Gwen's new form. She looks ticked off. Her posture reminds Ellen of an angry pit bull, even without squinty eyes to glare down at Ellen. Gwen's a good few heads taller than Ellen the way she is now. Stiff orange fur covers her pronograde body, and a blue bracer is clasped around her left shoulder, a grey and white hourglass symbol sat inside it.

Ben's on his feet, brushing plant debris from his pants. His nose wrinkles. 'You make an even freakier dog than a person,' he says, voice filled to the brim with mirth. 'Are those gills? What's the point of gills on a dog?'

'It is an alien dog,' Ellen points out. Gwen's head turns to face Ellen, teeth bared, and Ellen quickly puts her hands up innocently. 'Just stating the facts!'

'Can't you talk?' Ben says. He walks right up to Gwen's nose. Gwen looks like she could swallow half of Ben in one gulp. 'Ha! Phew, what a relief! Peace and quiet for the rest of the trip. I could get used to this.'

Ellen starts to speak. 'Doesn't the watch–'

'Oh, right, only half quiet,' Ben moans. He flops down with his back to Ellen's log.

'But doesn't it–'

'Man, why couldn't you have a watch that made it so you couldn't talk?' Ben says. 'Or, hey, think there might be one that can do that for me? Like, a giant spider, and I could web both your mouths shut!'

Ellen folds her arms and glares. '...Tomorrow, you're going on an adventure to find your toothbrush,' Ellen vows. 'Won't the watch turn her back soon?'

A burst of hot air hits Ellen's neck. She side steps away, giving Gwen an uneasy glance.

'Probably,' Ben says. He hooks his arms behind his head. 'But my job is done.'

The ground shakes under Gwen's footfalls. She practically bounces from behind Ellen to above Ben, a strangely curved frown on her massive jaws. Her mouth opens, Ben grimacing under the flood of warm air, and–

'Ah! Gwen, put me down!'

Ellen has to blink several times to understand what just happened. Gwen had grabbed Ben around the waist, hauled him into the air, and somehow managed to clear the entire clearing in one smooth bound.

Ben's hands swing and bop Gwen on what would've been the nose of the eyeless dog she is. She's already dropping Ben. He gently rolls along the ground. Gwen grins above him as he groans loudly, swiping at the thick drool soaking his shirt. Scowl set, Ben swipes up a long stick and swings at Gwen, but she dances backwards long before it reaches her.

From the looks of it, either the giant alien dog doesn't need eyes, or its eyes are just very tiny and are perfectly able to track everything Ben attempts.

The chase continues for a few minutes.

Ellen gives up watching and locates her bag of marshmallows again.

---

What breaks Ellen's concentration is a dull, roaring sound.

Ellen looks up from the fire to find herself alone. She scans the clearing but, as before, there's a grand total of absolute zero other people around her.

Was that an explosion? Did her cousins make something blow up?

'Oops,' Ellen mutters. She carefully closes her book and perches it on the edge of the log. Her ears strain. Nope, nothing. She picks herself up and cups her hands around her mouth. 'Ben? Gwen? Where'd you go?'

There's another low, dull sound, like a baseball bat to a pig on a meat hook, reverberating around the forest. Not quite a roar. Ellen whips around, a flash of light catching her attention, but it's gone before her gaze lands on it. Ellen swallows thickly. They better not be setting the forest on fire again.

Climbing trees is something Ellen is always happy to do, but it's just as fruitless as calling out. Olly olly oxenfree? Nothing. Fear tiptoes into Ellen's mind and quietly asks for a place to room for the night. It promises to be unobtrusive, but it's an agitating, nagging sensation that won't go away. Ellen nervously paces the clearing. She doesn't bother hiding her stares out into the darkness.

As she waits the word she was looking for pops into her head. Depersonalisation. It doesn't quite capture what Ben described, at least, from what Ellen could tell. Or maybe it did. Ellen doesn't carry a dictionary on her at all times, something that Ellen keeps wishing she did do. But depersonalisation, that was when thoughts and feelings suddenly didn't feel like they really belonged to who felt them. Detachment. Alien-ness internally. It fit with what the bracelet threw into Ellen. Ellen doesn't know if it fit Ben, or Gwen, now that Gwen had turned into a giant dog. Was she still the dog? It couldn't have been long since Gwen changed. Ellen swallows. Well, when they came back, Ellen can ask them. "Can." She isn't going to, but the possibility exists.

'Ellen?'

Ellen twists and startles. Grandpa voice came from nowhere at all. It takes Ellen a second to find him, striding out of the forest. He is wearing a Hawaiian shirt, how in the world did he even partially be sneaky? Sneakiness is Ellen's thing. Then again, she's distracted.

With a click his torch turns off. Grandpa looks stern, and he looks around the clearing. The empty clearing.

'Where's Ben and Gwen?' he says.

'Ha, right.' Ellen grins with nerves. 'That, well, I wasn't paying attention when they went off, but–'

Ellen cuts herself off. Faintly, there are footsteps. Running footsteps. Ellen could sing with relief. On cue the pair tumble out of the forest and bow over in puffed, panicked breaths. When they look up in unison Ellen checks Grandpa's expression. Stern, disapproving, and generically unhappy.

'Oh,' Ben says.

'"Oh" is right,' Grandpa says. 'Why don't we have a chat in the RV.'

His tone doesn't give even the smallest chance of it being ambiguous. Ellen immediately follows Grandpa. Even if Ellen isn't the one in trouble she can practically feel the second-hand shame bubbling under her skin like the sheer force of it cooks her blood.

Behind Ellen she hears Gwen hiss, 'I told you not to touch my watch!'

'Don't even try to say you weren't having fun. We kicked robot butt!'

Wha…? Ellen has no idea how to respond to that exchange. So, she does not. Instead Ellen hops into the campervan and claims the front seat. She crosses her arms on its top, kneeling, leaving the back of the RV clearly in view before her. Ben and Gwen file in and take the table seats. Grandpa stands between them, looking to each.

'Mind telling me what the two of you were thinking?' Grandpa says mildly.

Ben and Gwen exchange a glance. Gwen's the one to break the silence.

'I was curious about the watch. Ben came after me to, "stop me getting into trouble." Sorry, Grandpa,' Gwen says. She does not raise her gaze from the table.

Ellen schools her expression. That… that was a blatant lie. Not to mention not at all like the Gwen Ellen knows. What happened out there?

'But in his defence, if he didn't– I mean, if he didn't come after me, I might've ended up target practice. So… thanks, Ben,' Gwen says. She grumbles out the last part like it pains her.

Just before Ben speaks, Ellen catches a look of confusion on his face. But it's tidied away in an instant. Ben says, 'Hey, if you hadn't been that alien, we'd both be smears on the forest floor. Grandpa, there were these two robots that came after us in the woods. But we managed to stop them, so, all's well that ends well.'

Ben leans back in his chair, looking pleased with himself. Grandpa, on the other hand, doesn't. If anything, he looks more concerned. He perches a hand on his hip in thought.

'Robots, huh,' he muses. Grandpa shakes his head. 'I was worried the two of you might get popular with these things on your wrists. That's why I asked you not to fool around with them until we know what the heck they are.'

'Did you find anything at that crash site?' Ellen asks.

Grandpa hesitates. He shakes his head. 'Naw, just a hole in the ground and a scrap of metal. It was still warm.'

'The forest?' Gwen says.

With a shake of his head, Grandpa frowns. 'No, the metal.'

Ben lets out a sharp bark of a laugh. 'It must've blown itself up. Told you getting Grandpa would take too long,' Ben boasts.

'Yeah, go us. Instead of them vanishing into thin air, we got two mega-powerful watches stuck on our wrists. Which, just in case you forgot, come with robots that tried to kill us. Way to go, Ben,' Gwen grumbles. She turns back to Grandpa. 'There was nothing there at all? Nothing that could tell us what they are, how they got there, who they belong to... nothing?'

'Nothing,' Grandpa agrees, unfortunately. 'It looks like they're stuck to you. And if someone's sending robots after you, my guess is we'd better help you learn to use them. Fast.'

As one, both Ellen's cousins light up. It's like Grandpa's words are a match to two piles of optimistic kindling.

'Alright! It's a good thing I figured out how they work,' Ben says. He lays the grey watch on the table between him and Gwen. Ellen pushes herself up a little taller to keep it in view, and Ben starts pointing, then pressing and turning at the watch. 'All you do is press this button. Then when the ring pops up, just twist it until you see the guy you wanna be.' As Ben speaks, he demonstrates. Ellen barely catches a glimpse of what looks like black silhouettes. Ben presses the button again and the ring retracts. 'Slam it down, and bammo! We're one of five super-cool alien dudes!

'And if we work out how to use them, no robot stands a chance against us,' Gwen says.

'Forget robots, we could help people in trouble, and I mean really help them!' For a moment, Ben looks morose. 'Not just, you know, make things worse.'

A sudden spit and crackle catches Ellen's attention. Drawn from table to radio, Ellen has the unique perspective of spotting the sound source first as well as seeing her family turn in confused unison towards it. Grandpa quickly steps over and adjusts a dial.

'Mayday! Mayday! Somebody help us! We're under attack by some sort of–' The radio man meanders for a second, gathering his courage, '–I know you're not going to believe me, but… robot!'

Just like that the connection fizzles out like it never existed in the first place. Well then. Ellen lightly knocks on Ben's head. 'What was that you were saying about helping people in trouble?' she says pointedly.

'Now?' Gwen frets. 'But, we only just got these things. What if we really make things worse?'

Ben gets to his feet. His hand's already on his watch, and he's wearing a set, determined expression. 'Better than not trying at all. Don't those robots sound familiar?'

'I know, I know.' Gwen grimaces. 'I bet they're the same as the ones who attacked us. Which means they're after the watch, and are our responsibility. We can't run from it. Okay, let's go get them.'

'Hold on, both of you,' Grandpa says. He's still at the radio, at the dials, working with a furrowed brow. 'Let me find out where we're going first. Hopefully there's only one robot there. That way, you can both practice without getting into too much danger.'

There's a moment of ringing silence. All sound is reduced to the crackle of the radio, the duo of breathing, and the pounding of Ellen's heart in her throat.

'Got it,' Grandpa says. 'It's not far... But it'll be faster to take the RV. Strap in.'

---

Leaving the campervan on the side of the road, Ellen races after her cousins through the woods. Grandpa had nearly thrown a torch at Ellen's head on the way out. She'd caught it, barely, and made sure she kept the light pointed to the ground. The last thing she wants is to let the robot know where her cousins are.

They make an odd picture. Two children, completely different in some ways, the same in others, united in their running towards the sounds of screaming, metal tearing, and what Ellen can best describe as explosions. They're framed by Ellen and Grandpa, one form smaller and one far larger, both lining their path with circles of light.

And as one Ben and Gwen pause. Ellen can hear crickets chirping as they reach for their watches.

'Eenie, meenie, miney,' Ben begins, twisting the watch.

Gwen shoots him a glare. 'You're leaving your alien up to chance?' she says.

'Why not?' Ben says.

With a roll of her eyes, Gwen still mirrors Ben as they both press the face of their watches down. This time Ellen's prepared. She covers her eyes as both her cousins vanish in light. One green, one pink.

When Ellen lowers her arm, her cousins are no longer there. Or, rather, they are there, but they're different.

One of them has red skin covering taut muscles. They have no hair to speak of, but they do have a black mark on their brow. They shift, arms tensing and– there's more arms than Ellen expected. There's four of them, all powerfully built. Same goes for their eyes. There are four of them, pupil-less, and a beady orange. More importantly, they– no, he, because he is wearing Ben's shirt, white with a black stripe down the centre. More importantly, he towers even over Grandpa.

If the four-armed alien is Ben, then the blue raptor-like alien must be Gwen. Her tail whips around and nearly slaps into Ellen's chest, so Ellen backs off a bit. She has the appropriate number of limbs save for the addition of a tail. But her legs balance on twin black orb-looking things. She's wearing blue, Gwen's colours, too. It's a lighter shade than her new skin. Unlike Ben, her eyes are still green, but the pupils are also absent.

'So, what can these guys do?' Ellen asks.

All four of Ben's arms flex. 'Not sure, but I bet I can pack a mean punch,' he says, slamming two hands into their opposing palms. He grins.

Abruptly Gwen's eyes are gone. They've vanished behind a mostly black mask of some sort, with a faint blue pattern on the front. 'Not if I get there first,' she rasps, and then– and then she's gone, all that remains just a puff of smoke.

Ellen coughs, waving the dust away.

'Hey, wait up!'

And there goes Ben.

'Come on,' Grandpa says around coughs. 'We should help evacuate.'

'R-right,' Ellen says. She hurries after her cousins and in step with Grandpa.

In all honesty, Ellen didn't expect to see even more fire when she reached the campsite, but she does see fire. She also sees several crushed vehicles, and bits of broken machinery, and screaming panicked people, and smoke pouring from damage and destruction. There's a humming in the air. The air is thick with fears, like someone's about to crush Ellen into paste.

Ellen looks up.

Oh.

That's just great. Good. Yes, that's something to be afraid of.

Emerging from the smoke and towering over the camp is a robot. It's huge. It's made of red metal, forced into the form of a humanoid. It's like an upright cockroach with a periscope for a head, all sat atop three legs.

It easily dwarfs what Ben became and towers even higher over Gwen.

'Looks like papa robot this time,' Ben remarks. Somehow, Ellen's relieved. Whatever Ben and Gwen fought before, it wasn't the same as what now sits above her family. Unfortunately, that means that whatever Ben and Gwen did last time, they can't just repeat and get the same results. Fabulous. Ben lowers his head to address Gwen, Grandpa, and Ellen. 'I'll get gear-head's attention, you guys get the campers to safety.'

Gwen doesn't have visible eyes to roll, but her tone sounds like she is rolling them anyway. 'Yeah yeah, but as soon as everyone's out of the way, I'm showing the robot what the need for speed is.' Gwen vanishes in a blur of motion.

Slower than Gwen, Ben mimics her, and runs directly towards the robot.

Ellen catches a glimpse of the robot holding someone, a park ranger perhaps, and then a blur of blue streaks past and the robot no longer holds anyone. Abruptly, the man reappears in front of Ellen.

He looks around, confused. 'Huh, what? What just…?' he starts. He clasps his hat against his head.

'Hey, ugly!' Ellen hears Ben say. 'You ever tried playing catch?'

Ellen shakes her attention from the robot. She reaches out to grab the man's hand and start tugging him out of the line of fire. 'It's okay! Come on, let's get out of the–'

Ellen's hand–

–help us! We're under attack by some sort of–' Brose hesitates. Fuck, how the hell will anyone–

–makes contact with the ranger's, but she lets go almost instinctively. What…? Throwing the thought aside Ellen instead grabs the ranger's sleeve and pulls him after her. It takes three steps before the man shakes off the miasma of confusion and terror enough to run on his own. His legs are far longer than Ellen's. Nodding to herself, Ellen turns back to the minefield of the robot's making.

At first Ellen can't see beyond smoke and fire. But then– there! The robot's turned with its back to Ellen, one arm stretched towards a pile of various metal debris. It shifts. Many red forms part the pile and Ben emerges, looking annoyed. He promptly seizes one of the sheets, spins in place, and tosses the metal directly at the robot's head.

It misses.

The robot easily sidestepped the throw.

It does not, however, dodge the second and third throws that Ben swiftly followed up with. They land with loud, vibrating crashes. The robot swats one out of the way and aims an arm back Ben's way. He promptly starts running.

Ellen's pretty sure Ben can handle himself. He's probably making dumb, distracting comments the whole way through like, you call that a laser? and my cousin can hit harder than you. Course, if he refers to Gwen then that's just a statement rather than a dig.

There are several tents pitched up. Ellen runs to a nearby one, pushing the fabric to one side and checking its interior. Nothing but sleeping bags. Ellen nods, then moves to the next, and then the next.

It's the fourth tent that has someone in it. Blonde woman, vaguely familiar.

'No! Don't– it'll know I'm here!' she says, eyes wide with panic.

'It's being distracted,' Ellen says firmly. When people are in trouble the best way to get trust is to be stern, firm, confident and without pause. Ellen has no idea why that hopped into her brain, but it is useful advice, so she'll take it. 'Come on, this is still in the line of fire, and you'll be safe if you move now.'

The woman nods. Ellen isn't sure if she fully believes her, but she does at least hurry her way along. Complete with nearly pushing Ellen over in her haste. Ellen freezes for a second. Nothing blips into her brain other than ow, her sides, so that is a good thing.

There is a faint creaking sound. Most of the tents have their ropes pulled up, so that's not coming from there. Ellen shrugs to herself and steps towards the next ten–

And then Ellen isn't standing up anymore.

Where she is, her legs are off the ground. Something latched around her in a millisecond she didn't register, and a heavy grunt abruptly assaults Ellen's ears.

'Wha– huh?' spills out of Ellen's mouth.

Before she can properly register the redness around her waist, it's gone. Ellen tumbles back into a standing position. Dirt. Ground. Sky above her, robot… somewhere. Ellen turns and there is Ben, four eyes wider than before, and– oh, there is a fallen tree where the tents were. Where's the robot? Where'd it go?

'You know, most people start running when a tree falls towards them,' Ben complains. 'But nooo, you walked, and you didn't even walk to one side!'

Ellen gapes. Words, where are her words? 'I, you–' She swallows. 'Thanks.'

'Just get out of the way,' Ben grumbles. One hand pushes Ellen towards the trees, and Ben turns back to the fray.

Nodding shakily, Ellen gives the campsite one last scan. It looks deserted enough. There's a collection of people Ellen can just spy on the opposite side of the tree, so Ellen hurries for it. In the fight, it looks like Gwen concurred with Ellen's assessment of the campsite's clearness, since Ellen spots flashes of blue striking the robot's ankles, then cracking into its arm, then attempting to punch the robot's "eyes."

Gwen's first mistake appears there. At least, the first that Ellen sees. Instead of a smashed eye, the robot swats Gwen out of the air and into a van, the metal caving in around her. Ellen hisses between her teeth and tears her eyes away. She won't do any good there. She has to get out of the way, and hopefully her cousins can save the day.

But, they've got super powered watches, right? They're good. Saving the day is totally possible for them. They'd gotten rid of two robots already! They'll be fine. They'll be good.

'Grandpa!' Ellen calls.

'Over here,' an answer arrives.

Ellen darts through the tiny crowd to Grandpa, who is– good, great, he's pulled himself to the top of the fallen tree, that's a great idea, why not? Good and great, that's the way to do things. She accepts his hand and joins him.

'Are we winning?' Ellen says. Her voice is unsteady and it feels numb to her tongue.

'Well, it looks like B– the uh, the red one took out one of its legs,' Grandpa says. His eyes flick to the side. That's towards the crowd, and he inclines his head meaningfully. Don't say their names. Got it. 'It can't take a step without falling over.'

Gwen screeches to a sudden halt beside Ben. Her scratchy voice doesn't carry over the hiss of flame and the murmur of those behind Ellen. But Ellen does see Ben's head jerk around to fully face Gwen and she does hear Ben say, 'A distraction? Are you serious!'

The robot brings its full attention directly onto Ben, since Gwen vanishes long before Ben even finished his statement. Ben raises his eyes to the sky, then cracks his knuckles.

'Okay, freak,' he says in a loud, ringing voice, 'I've got a bone to pick with you! Your kids? They're the ones who were an actual challenge! You're–'

A blast of laser-fire streaks over his head. Ellen claps her hands over her mouth. When it passes, Ben's fine, but for a moment it looked like, like, like something Ellen never wants to think about again yet had been thinking about far too much on that day.

'–as I was saying, you're only good for scrap metal! No, make that modern art. You're only good for sticking in a park and letting the seagulls nest on your head!' Ben plants all his hands on his waist and flashes the robot with a cocky grin.

There's a shift of movement behind the robot. No, wait… around the robot? Around the robot's feet, really, but Ellen can't make out what–

Gwen reappears in a flurry of dust. 'Now!' she shouts.

The robot raises its arms to fire again at Ben, but Ben doesn't move. He just swings his arms out wide and then claps, once, with both sets of arms.

It's loud.

It also, apparently, makes a shockwave.

The robot tips backwards, and Gwen has something in her arms. She yanks it and one of the robot's legs shoot off into the sky, what looks like rope attached to its end. With two legs out of commission the robot can't cope with the impact, and it crashes heavily onto the ground. In the next instant Ben and Gwen's there, right by the arm, and they've pulled the arm to point directly at the robot.

It fires.

It hits itself.

And then, there is fire.

Gwen grabs Ben by an arm and they blink to the other side of the clearing in a moment, and in the next the robot utterly detonates.

For several startled seconds, twinkling reddish metal rains from the sky. None of it lands near Ellen, or Grandpa, or the rest of the crowd. It just rains in a concentrated mess and onto the crackling flames. Even those begin to die from lack of fuel. Far above the stars are the flame's mirror but they don't die out. They just watch.

Grandpa breaks the quiet. 'Way to go, ki–! Uh.' Grandpa's gaze darts for a second. 'Speed lizard and four-armed guy?'

Like the cry broke the action's cease-fire, Ben punches the air. 'Alright!' he cheers. 'Who's bad?'

Gwen's helmeted form shakes mournfully. She grabs one of Ben's elbows and tugs him off balance, then starts dragging him in the direction of the RV. Ellen hears Gwen say something, something in an aggravated tone, but the words themselves were unintelligible.

'Who were those guys?' someone says.

Oh. Right. Crowd. Grandpa's hand lands on her shoulder, and he makes a quick gesture with his head. It's one that screams, "let's scram," and Ellen couldn't agree more with the sentiment.

Ellen hops off the tree after Grandpa. The fire is reduced to mere ashes surprisingly quickly. The remains of the robot don't move at all, not even when Grandpa experimentally lobs a broken branch at it.

With a nod, Grandpa motions Ellen to follow him, and they quickly make their way back to the treeline.

---

The drive back to their campsite is a strange mix of quiet and loud.

...That's a statement which requires clarification.

The strict, literal view Ellen's ears have is the RV rumbling around her. The motor chuckles and the wheels bounce on mild irregularities. Behind Ellen, Ben and Gwen excitedly share the events of twenty minutes prior, from boasts to competing greatness. That's where the loudness comes from.

But the quiet is there too. Ellen feels like a tsunami had crashed over her and where she sits. Now she's tied to the chair, unable to lift a finger. Sound exists, but it bubbles and it's impossible to decipher. Her world's long since narrowed to the bob and weave of motion and the inside of her eyelids.

It's a shame, then, that they eventually come to a halt.

'Alright, kids,' Grandpa says, cutting over their conversation. 'You can talk more in the morning.'

Ellen isn't sure how time progressed. But progress it did. The motions of night raced by, and Ellen finds herself collapsed in a sleeping bag, in a tent, wondering how the world had gotten so big, and if in the morning she'd wake up with dreams. She hears faint, familiar chimes of Gwen's watch. Ellen doesn't open her eyes. Gwen can do what she likes. Ellen needs to rest her frazzled–

She still has the bracelet in her pocket. Not a pocket she's wearing. Pyjamas don't normally have pockets. But it's bundled in the jacket pooled by her pillow for the morning.

...She'll work out what to do with it later. In the meantime, Ellen roots around and pulls out the marker. It'd been in her pocket the whole night. Without another thought, Ellen tosses it into the bottom of her sleeping bag.

---

Hi. I'm new to this site, so I currently don't know if the paragraph breaks will eat themselves or not. I also have no idea what the culture here is like. Is stating that the writer doesn't own the original work still a thing? I don't. Show would've been awful if I owned it.

Regarding the OC. I don't trust myself to adequately write from any of the established character's points of view, so, the OC is absolutely a cop-out. Here's to it not being irritating! If it is, then hopefully my writing style improves and makes that less of a thing as I go. If this story continues, it is just going to be a retreading with an OC and an Omnitrix. I don't know how often this will update or if it will update at all. I mean, I created the document halfway through May 2018 apparently, so, that says a lot about my attention span and/or writing speed.

Oh, also, that middle alignment at the start is not an error. Unless it's absent or converted the rest of the text into itself, in which case, it's absolutely a mistake I'm currently struggling to fix and I apologise for any confusion and lack of clarity. Double that if it's lacking the aforementioned paragraph breaks.