To Ellen's surprise, when she wakes it isn't in a startled rush from panicked dreams. Those are called nightmares. Not dreams. Her mistake. Still, it's startling to just wake up in a tent in a sleeping bag burrito with nothing wrong. There's no world shattering around Ellen's head, no sky falling, no floods rising, no ships crashing, trees burning, assassins prowling, in-laws failing to appear, the whole shebang. Ellen just wakes up not knowing what moment she shifted from sleeping to alert.
She does, however, hear the sound of a zipper opening. Or is it closing? Ellen pulls herself up, sleeping bag rustling like a bush in the wind. The tent is empty. Faint morning sunlight glows on the other side of the fabric, outlining the empty sleeping bag on the opposite side of the tent. Gwen's gone.
'Shh!'
That catches Ellen's attention. Her head tilts as she listens. There's a faint sound of whispering. Basic logic time. Grandpa probably wouldn't be whispering in the early hours of the morning. Gwen's missing. Ben and Gwen both acquired unfathomable power the previous night. Basic, bare bones, hardly trying logic equals: Ben and Gwen are the ones whispering themselves into mischief.
For a moment Ellen toys with staying put. It's the first real day of the summer vacation. After the hassle of last night, she deserves to take a break. Sleep. Ignore everything around her. Pretend nothing's gone wrong. That type of thing. Well, it did go okay. Gwen and Ben beat the bad guys. The day was saved. A whole block of people lost their tents and had dents bashed into their cars, but on the whole they all lucked out that the twins found those watches and were proactive with them. Ellen's still in her sleeping bag, her pillow right behind her, and the last vestiges of sleep still clinging against her skin. All she needs to do is roll back down and rest.
Instead she reaches for her jacket. The tent zipper, along with the morning's faint chill, chases away any tiredness Ellen retains within seconds. All the colours look washed out and dull, like the day itself is still waking itself up before its shades can bloom. It's a far cry from the purples and oranges of last night dancing across the grass. The surrounding area is just as empty as it was when they'd arrived. Nobody else appeared during the night, then? Good thing too, because Ellen spots Gwen and Ben a fair way from the two tents, right at the picnic table they'd eaten dinner at. Ellen closes the tent behind her.
Both are seated at the table. Gwen tap-taps at her laptop. Ben has his head slumped onto his elbow, his other hand idly picking at splinters on the table's face.
'Here's the timer,' Gwen says authoritatively. 'We'll each take turns turning into our aliens. While one of us does that, the other one takes notes and watches the time on here. When I turn back, we start the second timer, and we wait to see how long it takes for the watch to recharge. Then we write down everything we found out about that alien, and we swap over.'
'Right,' Ben drawled. 'So, I'll go first!'
'Hey, I thought of it, I'm going first!'
Ellen stifles a disbelieving snort. Leave it to Gwen to turn magical shape changing watches into a school science fair. They seem like they're just fine. And if the two of them are occupied, there should be very little panic and mayhem… until they became bored, at which point Ellen will flee for the hills. Nodding to herself, Ellen tries the RV door.
To Ellen's surprise, it's unlocked. It's a morning full of gentle shocks, isn't it?
The first thing Ellen does is head to the bathroom. The moment she spies the mirror she sighs in relief. No marker. Now, if that's because Ben couldn't find a marker, or because he chose not to retaliate, Ellen has no way to figure out. In the meantime, Ellen tugs open a drawer and puts the marker away. There. Safe and sound, as all things should be.
After dressing Ellen roots around the cupboards, finds cereal and milk, and sets herself at the table.
So.
Yesterday was a bowl of de-alphabetized soup, wasn't it just?
First Ellen found out she was going camping with her cousins, then her brain pretty much exploded with memories of somebody dying, then her cousins found magic watches, then set the forest on fire, and to wrap the whole thing up they'd fought a gigantic robot. And won.
The glass lights with a brief green tint.
Did all of yesterday really happen? Ellen has no clue. The watches, yes, those happened, because Gwen and Ben are outside the window playing with them as Ellen eats. Wait, did Ben just turn into something? Ellen glances outside. There is a giant green bug of some sort, similar size as a small car, with frantically beating wings and a head like a, like a… Ellen actually doesn't know what it looks like. A moose? It has four tube-y things sticking out of its head, that's for sure. As Ellen watches, Ben's head rears momentarily, and a green goop of some sort splatters near Gwen's shoes. Gwen shouts up at him in anger and throws a stone at him.
Ellen deliberately turns her head away.
Suddenly, her cereal looks highly unappetising.
No, Ellen is positive the watch shenanigans happened. What about the first weirdness, then? Putting the spoon down, Ellen instead pulls out the bracelet.
It looks just the same as she remembers. It's a plain looking thing, with a number of different yellow beads. Course, none of the yellows are consistent. Some are a faded, worn looking wood, different shades of paint flaking off of it. Others are a glassy type of clear material, or not clear at all, but distinctly plastic looking. Even the shapes are inconsistent. Diamonds and cubes and ovals and spheres, all in a random array. One of the wood pieces has a crack tracing through it. A plastic one has been chipped. In fact, the whole thing looks like different beads had been replaced over time.
But, even with that oddity, it looks like a bracelet. It's innocent, like a vampire on an overcast afternoon where the sunlight won't burn and their hunger's tucked away. It's not the type of thing to be a cursed, evil thing, not with the sunny associations yellow has. That is why it's so diabolical. Ellen smiles. Diaboli-oli-olical. That's a super fun word. No, focus Ellen. She schools her expression and glares down at it.
One bead innocently reflects a baby bit of sunlight.
Ellen steels herself.
She raises her hand.
It hovers, a few scant moments away from touching the bracelet.
Come on, Ellen, it's just a science experiment.
Ellen picks the bracelet up, her eyes unintentionally screwing themselves shut.
For several seconds Ellen doesn't dare open her eyes. If she opens them, she'll be somewhere else. If she does, she'll be back on that staircase. If she does, she'll be falling. She'll be falling and her neck snapping and then she doesn't know if she'll make it out to the other side.
Seconds pass.
Oh. Right. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Ellen opens her eyes. There's nothing but the RV around her. Bracelet still in hand, Ellen lets her head fall into her palm.
She's so stupid. She had to touch the stupid bracelet to get it out of her stupid pocket in the first place.
'You're real, though,' Ellen mutters at the bracelet. She absolutely found it in the attic. It being in her hand attests to that, unless Ellen is extremely skilled at hallucinating. But there's no proof that the whole "dying thing" actually happened. Right? It only exists in Ellen's memories, and memories are pretty fickle things for all they are a sum of their owners. Her brain could always be playing with her consciousness like the logic of a dream.
Except… dreams fade. Don't they? Ellen doesn't dream all that much, though she's scared of being trapped in a nightmare just as much as anyone, and she is pretty good at figuring out when she's in her own imagination. But most dreams lose their sharp edges over time, burning away quicker than regular memories do. They're the wire-thin candles to normal life's fat ones. What Ellen remembers is garbled and kooky, but it's exactly as they were before Ellen went to sleep last night. Not even the chaos of yesterday shook them out of her head.
Ellen slowly sets the bracelet onto the table again.
Come to think of it, didn't something odd happen during that fight? Something felt strange. Think, Ellen… it was pretty early on in the fight, and-
It hits Ellen. She'd touched that ranger's hand and then she'd heard, no, seen, no… felt? Was? She… she was that ranger who called for help. The same ranger? Or were they different, and Ellen had just… ended up with… argh, none of this makes sense.
Okay, okay, backtrack it, follow the logic from A to B and something nice might be at the end. Ellen touched the man in the fight. She… she then was the ranger who'd called for help, whose voice they'd heard back in the RV and was the reason why they knew people were in trouble. Then Ellen was herself again, still among the fire and the chaos, like nothing happened? But that, but that meant….
No.
No, f-fuh, screw this. Screw this. It isn't terrifying, that isn't what all of this is. All of this nonsense was just adrenaline. Ellen had the idea of memory on the brain and the panic in the air made her associate the call for help with the ranger's face, and she'd wrapped it all up in a daydream of her memory problems.
That was it. Nothing more. Everything less.
The RV door swings open. In heavy steps, Grandpa pulls himself up into the RV.
'Ah, morning, Ellen,' Grandpa says. His expression smooths out into polite curiosity. 'What's that there? Never thought you were the jewellery type.'
In almost every story Ellen's ever read, keeping silent about the Big Thing the story revolves around always seemed like an awful idea. Is there a dragon hiding under the bridge? Is there a t-talking tree watching you through your window? Did your kids find uncomfortable body parts on a beach? Generally, all of that sounds like things people should tell adults. Or, if the protagonists are already adults, tell the police and other emergency services.
Watches that cause shapeshifting, for example, is something to talk about. By telling Grandpa the whole story, Ben and Gwen absolutely did the smart and logical thing. Then again, Ellen and Grandpa were the ones to stumble across the twins. They hadn't a choice in revealing the Big Thing. Who knew if they'd tell the truth if they weren't tracked down?
For a brief instant, Ellen can picture both furiously wrapping their arms in bandages and switching to long sleeved shirts and jackets, even when they inevitably enter the desert. Ellen shivers. Even Ellen will leave her jacket behind when that heat hits.
The point is, the logical thing to do is tell Grandpa the truth. Ellen would be an absolutely foolish idiot not to tell Grandpa everything, from the memory of another Ellen to the flash from the ranger.
Ellen says, 'I found it in the attic. Neat, isn't it? Are Ben and Gwen okay?'
As Grandpa peers out the window, Ellen plants a hand against her face.
Guess she's an idiot, then.
But this is still salvageable. Sure, she changed the subject, but Ellen can just turn the conversation back at any moment. Just start it with an actually, Grandpa, and go on from there.
'They're just having fun,' Grandpa says warmly. 'You aren't going to join them?'
Now, it is Ellen's turn. Answer the question, return the topic to the bracelet. Simple.
'No, no. It's their moment, you know? I don't want to interrupt.'
Ellen smiles ruefully. Some part of her lets out an internally loud, frustrated screech. Because that's as good as a mallet to her teeth now, isn't it? There's no chance she can tell Grandpa what's wrong anymore. After all, today is Ben and Gwen's day, with real, tangible, and obvious change in their lives. Ellen's just, well, Ellen, plus a bracelet. How can Ellen even prove it?
Besides. They went through a lot last night. They deserve the attention.
…Attention.
It hits Ellen with all the weight of a lightning strike. She's the rod in the storm, one end of a magnet zipping to meet the other, the feet slipping out under her from running on an oil-slick floor. It's obvious. There is an obvious—blatantly so—reason why Ellen's memory problems exist.
The thing about memories is that they are only recordings of the past. Each time they're accessed they're rewound and replayed on an old VCR. Each time played, elements of the memories are recreated, but others are corrupted, like fingerprints left on the tape.
Oh, sure. Books and cameras, they existed. But words can only focus on one sentence at a time, and their author can't ensure each reader will imagine exactly what they intend. And cameras? Pictures only keep a moment suspended in time, and only from a single direction. Recordings, while they retain sound and sometimes wind, lose so much in translation. Textures. Tastes. Smells. And smells, so they say, are the best way to connect with memories.
Just like a recording can be edited, memories can be liars too.
Why wouldn't Ellen remember—sorry, "remember"—a sudden burst of memories that don't belong to her, right after Ben and Gwen discovered magical watches?
There was only one goal in Ellen's mind. She wanted to be special too. Well, tough luck, brain, Ellen thinks as sternly as she can. It's her cousins who are the ones in danger, in excitement, and in need of support. The last thing Ellen needs is to go crazy. Every puzzle has an answer, and here is Ellen's. After all, Ellen has a pretty good memory, so it stands to reason that Ellen is also good at deluding herself. Recall something incorrectly once, and Ellen thinks she has a magic brain. Psh, yeah right. Thank goodness she realised the truth before she said something to Grandpa about it.
Somehow, Grandpa doesn't turn to Ellen or spot what Ellen can only assume were a myriad of emotions rippling over her face. Ellen takes a breath. She schools herself. Once she's steady again, Ellen asks, 'What are we doing next?'
Grandpa hums in thought. 'Well, I say we let them have their fun for the morning. The two of us can have breakfast. We'll pack up the tents too. After that we're making our way to Washington DC.'
'Why are we packing the tents? They're need to wait for their watches to turn back on between their shapeshifting, right?'
Outside, the giant bug that is Ben swoops down, nearly knocking Gwen over, and falls over himself in choking, body wracking laughter. There's a sudden, yet familiar, flash of bright red light, and Ben is human again, still on his back, still laughing.
'Yes, yes they are,' Grandpa acknowledges. There's an odd look in Grandpa's eyes, and as he speaks there's a sudden odd grin that crosses Grandpa's face. 'But we're the ones who'll put the two of them through their paces.'
Is that glee in Grandpa's gaze? Why is Grandpa acting gleeful all of a sudden?
Behind Ellen the toaster abruptly sings. Grandpa pats Ell—
—forth. One drone plummets in a blaze of blue energy, sparks flying, and the other strikes directly into their target. He skids backwards from the force of the blow but there isn't a scratch on him. He isn't even phased. It was a light show for all the good it did.
He looks up, eyes narrow.
'You,' he hisses.
'It's over, Vilgax! You're—
—en's shoulder.
Ellen freezes.
Grandpa's no longer beside Ellen. Instead he's at the toaster, humming softly under his breath as Ellen desperately tries to catch her own.
That… what was that?
No. No, no, see, this, this just makes Ellen's theory so much more plausible, and that's good. That's great. See? Robots and aliens and lasers, of course Ellen made that up, since, since that is on Ellen's mind. The daydream even used baby versions of the robot who attacked the camp.
See? It makes perfect sense.
Ellen needs to stop shivering. There's no reason for it. That siren wasn't real. It might have seemed loud, but it was only her imagination. Better to support Grandpa's gleeful plotting than to imagine, well, to imagine, anything, anything like that, at all. It's just a dream. Didn't Grandpa say they were going to help the twins learn to use their watches? That's far more interesting than anything Ellen's mind can make up. Everything is fine. What's Grandpa's plan, anyway?
It turns out, Grandpa's plan was and is a truly evil one, far eviler than Gwen's with the marker. Thankfully, that plot seems to have fallen through, but Ellen can never be too careful. That's how the saying goes, right?
When Grandpa sat back down with his breakfast he'd brought a notebook. Ellen didn't pry, especially since he only seemed to write one word, barely a sentence, with each transformation Ben and Gwen experimented with.
There was the large dog and the quick raptor Gwen already became, but also a ghostly monster, a fish monster, and a blue one made of crystal.
Then in Ben's half he had the flame filled one, the one with two pairs of arms, the big bug one, and then one that looked like molten electronics and one that was a tiny baby grey frog.
Ellen wishes she'd looked at those notes. Currently, last Ellen saw, it was left in a glovebox.
Because somehow, after they'd driven into Washington and the twins stopped a robbery and an apartment building burning to the ground, Grandpa had somehow worked out Ben's tiny frog alien was far, far, far smarter than all of their smarts combined, including Grandpa. Ellen hadn't even heard of imaginary numbers and simultaneous equations before Grandpa sat Ben down with a very tiny pencil and told Ben to solve the equations on it.
Ben complained. Extensively.
He still did it, though, and Ellen has no clue if it's correct or not. She was in charge of cheating prevention and the timer, so she thankfully didn't need to mark it, and Gwen was busy doing as many laps around the block as she could before Ben finished. From Grandpa's approving noises, Ben got them correct, somehow, without cheating. Gwen was somewhere in the hundreds of laps. Still. Ellen wishes she'd peeked at that notebook, because she badly wants to know how Grandpa worked out the frog alien was super smart.
Unfortunately, Ellen can't find out. They're in a shopping centre, after all, far away from the RV and the notebook's secrets. Maybe tonight, when Grandpa gets it out again, Ellen can take a look. He took notes all through Gwen literally halting a robbery in its tracks, and Ben rescuing children from fires, and Ben's maths test, and Gwen's sprint. Grandpa surely will take it out tonight.
Either way, they're in Washington City. The schedule is that they'll shop for supplies, then for the rest of the evening they'll take a look at some sights before stopping for the night. Grandpa hasn't said, but Ellen's fairly sure they'll work on something alien in the evening. It makes Ellen glad she said nothing about her imaginary "ability." Imagine if Grandpa decided to test it. That would do wonders for Ellen's sanity.
Grandpa abruptly stops walking. Ellen scrambles to halt the trolley before it can slam into his heels.
'No canned eel either,' Grandpa mutters. Ellen cranes her neck, but the shelf is just out of sight. Grandpa says, 'We'll have to make do with just the fish oil.'
Ellen half expects Gwen and Ben to protest in stereo in Ellen's ears. Weirdly, they don't. In fact, as far as Ellen can see they're nowhere in sight. As the youngest of the three cousins, the task of trolley marshalling went to Ellen. Ellen's halfway sure that's faulty logic. But with both gone, Ellen can't exactly protest.
Is she supposed to reply to Grandpa? It doesn't sound like it. Mom usually talks to herself when they go shopping. It's probably, possibly, the same, and Grandpa isn't actually talking to Ellen.
'Excuse me, sir?' a crisp, irritated voice says. Its source is a clerk. He'd turned the aisle corner and strides directly towards Grandpa. 'The two children in the cereal aisle, do they belong to you?'
Grandpa glances behind him. Ellen shrugs, but he's looking around Ellen and at the empty spaces there, not at her.
'They might be. Is everything alright?'
The clerk huffs. 'Come with me,' he commands. He leads Grandpa, and Ellen by association, backwards along their trek.
Ben and Gwen are in the middle of the aisle with another clerk hovering over them. Ben has a hand in his pocket, scowl directed at the ground, and Gwen bores a hole into his forehead in turn. Around them, the aisle of cereal looks exactly like a herd of miniature yaks decided to trample each shelf and its wares.
'These two. Are they yours?' the first clerk asks.
'Yes,' Grandpa says, eyebrow raised in curiosity. 'What happened in here?'
The second, sentry clerk, scoffs. 'Who cares what happened? So long as you pay these two's damages,' he says. Gwen, even mid-Ben-glare, flinches.
Ellen's sight is abruptly full of brightly coloured cardboard. The trolley grounds to an uncompromising halt.
Backing up, Ellen blinks. One clerk had filled the trolley, overflowing, with some brand of cereal. Sumo Slammers? Sounds familiar. She may've heard of that on the playground once or twice. Maybe.
'Mega Mart thanks you for your patronage,' the nearest clerk says in a falsely sweet tone.
Which one is which, again? Ellen's long since lost track. In another blink both clerks are gone, Ellen's gaze blinded by boxes.
The aisle is really, truly trashed. Not all the boxes are in the trolley, but it doesn't look like any cereal survived. Ellen frowns and takes a closer look. They aren't broken like they were beaten. They're torn open, roughly, in a rapid rush. And only boxes of one brand— no, no, not even that, just boxes with the Sumo Slammer declared on it.
Nope. The pieces aren't connecting into anything logical. A box slides off the trolley and hits the ground loudly. Faint music trickles from far above. Gwen and Ben kept their tongues and assorted glares right where Ellen first saw them.
Grandpa breaks the silence.
'So, why are we buying all this cereal?'
Ben bursts, expression twisting in anger. 'Well, we would've only had to buy the one that I found the gold Sumo Slammer card in if Gwen hadn't butted in with her big butt.'
Oh. What?
'Uh, hello?' Gwen says stridently. 'You were trashing the whole cereal aisle just to find some stupid piece of cardboard!'
Ellen's still confused.
'So what? It's not like Grey Matter's useful for anything else,' Ben grumbles.
An idea whispers in the back of Ellen's mind. She ignores it, getting out a mental leaf blower and expelling it from her brain, uncaring of how the thought ruthlessly clings to her cells.
'Seriously? We just got these watches, and you're already complaining about it?' Gwen snaps.
'What's grey matter?' Ellen says helplessly.
'The little frog one,' Gwen clarifies. It doesn't help all that much, because, grey matter? How? Why? When did they talk nicknames?
Screw it.
Ellen places her hand against one of the boxes, screwing her courage into as tight a ball as she can and— and nothing's happening. No memories, no hallucinations, nothing.
See? Ellen tells herself. You're normal. Nothing to worry yourself over.
Course, Ellen's left exactly as lost as before.
'Now, Ben,' Grandpa says, 'I can appreciate how much your collection means to you, but don't you think using your watch like that is a little irresponsible?'
For a second Ben deflates. 'Maybe you're right, Grandpa. I don't deserve a gold Sumo Slammer card.'
Behind Ben, Gwen's eyebrow crooks, unimpressed.
On cue, Ben's head snaps up, and so does his tone. 'I mean, it's not like I rescued a bunch of people from a burning building or anything like that!' Gwen elbows him sharply. 'Ow!'
'Just reminding you the fire was a distraction,' Gwen says primly. 'If anything, I should get a bigger reward for taking down the guys who did it.'
'Kids,' Grandpa says. 'Helping others is not a competition.'
Ellen has to ground her feet and dig in deep to force the trolley into motion after Grandpa. It reluctantly starts rolling. Then it's moving much faster than Ellen thought it could. Oh no. Stopping it will be super, super tricky.
Ben hisses at Gwen, 'But if it was, I'd be winning.'
'In your dreams, mega dweeb.'
Ellen doesn't say a word. What can she say? There's negative space in the things Ellen should speak. Besides, she has a trolley to babysit.
Almost amusingly quickly, Ben diverges from their wandering foot bus with a distracted mumble.
Gwen loudly and deliberately sighs. 'I'll keep an eye on the shrimp,' she tosses over her shoulder.
That sounds fair to Ellen. Ben's watch is still in the red, but from the stories Ellen's heard Ben can still surround himself in chaos, and had done so long before he gained the supernatural watch. But even he wouldn't mess around twice in the same store. Would he? Just the thought of doing something makes Ellen imagine Mom looking down at her in disinterested disappointment.
A hand lands on Ellen's own shoulder. She jumps, startled. It's only Grandpa.
'In that case, why don't we check out the pet department?' Grandpa says.
That's a non sequitur if Ellen's ever heard one. What's a non sequitur? No-sequence? Words don't make sense sometimes, just like Grandpa's suggestion. Not unless Grandpa's looking for live materials, in which case Ellen's pretty sure the RV door would be busted in by the animal police.
What will that look like? A goose, dressed in police black and blue, wings flapping, in the very enclosed space of the RV. Ellen shivers. If that happens, Ellen's locking the bathroom door behind her before she learns how to spell "non sequitur." Shoot, that word is going to bother Ellen all day, she can tell.
Grandpa aids Ellen with the trolley by tugging the front along behind him. Ellen smiles in gratitude, but her sentiments hit Grandpa's back.
The pet department's full of chirping and croaking and that weird squeaking sound rabbits and gerbils make that isn't quite a squeak and it doesn't stick in the imagination as well as a bark or a hiss. But it's full of motion, cages, and Ellen finds herself cooing at a pretty parrot dressed up in white.
Okay, yes, Ellen's in charge of the trolley. But—! But but but, the parrot has the silly yellow punk hair. One cannot say no to the silly punk hair.
Curious, the bird hops closer to the bars, head tilted and cooing at Ellen.
'Hello,' Ellen whispers.
'Ah, Ellen?' Grandpa's abruptly there, his hand on Ellen's wrist. Ellen bites back a flinch, but nothing happens, no other hallucination. All that happens is Grandpa saying, 'Be careful. Birds like this will bite anything that comes close, and that includes your fingers.'
'Really?' But the bird looks so sweet and pretty. Good Polly bird wouldn't do that, would it?
Grandpa smiles faintly. A plastic bag rustles in his other hand. It hits Ellen that he's not meeting her eyes, instead looking somewhere over her shoulder.
'It's not that all birds dislike people. That's just how some of them are. Best not to test and put your fingers through the bars, okay?'
Ellen looks down at the ground. Trainers are nice. They're comfy and easy to wear. Ellen also pulls her hand out of Grandpa's and hopes the best she can that Grandpa doesn't notice. 'Okay. Sorry, Grandpa.'
'That's alright. Why don't we take a look at some of these hamsters?'
Grandpa leads the way, but Ellen takes a second to glance over her shoulder. There's another aisle, another shopper turning the corner, a beady black camera on the ceiling. All in all, nothing that Grandpa would've been looking at. Maybe Gwen and Ben ran past.
Hamsters are less cute than birds.
One runs up to the edge of the cage, planting his feet against the bars, looking imploringly up at Ellen. She grins, but doesn't try touch them this time. Okay, hamsters are cute too, Ellen was wrong.
Ellen frowns. Grandpa's standing next to her. Ben and Gwen are off somewhere. The ground shakes faintly. It must've come from a truck rumbling nearby. The pet department is empty of other shoppers, and far more importantly, where did the trolley go?
Oh, that's what a non sequitur is. It's when someone abruptly changes the subject without any link to things before. Ellen… she probably does that a lot, now that she's thinking about it.
'Hey, Grandpa…?' Ellen starts to ask.
A meteor crashes into the ground behind Ellen.
No, not literally.
But the sound is loud and broad and sudden enough that Ellen flinches straight into the hamster cage. It rattles. The hamster squeaks in sudden fright. It kicks up straw in fright, and belatedly Ellen's shoulder acknowledges a line of pain across her arm.
Ellen spins around.
At the same time, Grandpa sucks in a gasp.
Looming over them is a giant, multi eyed and horned toad, complete with wrinkled skin and gnarled toes and a faint growl in its throat. And by giant, Ellen doesn't mean big, she means flipping enormous. Glass-like red eyes balefully stare down at them.
'...Oh, that's good,' Ellen says faintly. Her back thumps into the cage.
Grandpa's arm appears between her and the frog. Oh, he's blocking it from Ellen. That's nice. That's good.
'Who are you?' Grandpa says. To the frog. Toad. Frog? What's the difference between them? Ellen can't remember and she has more important things to focus on, such as the giant amphibian who Grandpa thinks can talk.
'Ah, curious, are you?' a voice calls. Ellen shifts her gaze from the large number of eyes upward, barely a few degrees. There's a man sat on the back of the toad, also horned. No, it's a helmet, one with what looks like a tomato thrown at it, dripping. The man adjusts it with one hand.
Red light flickers between the man's horns and-
'Duck!'
Grandpa shoves Ellen over, nearly landing on her as a beam—an actual, literal beam of lighting—lances out from the man. It strikes where Ellen was standing, strikes the cage, and Ellen hears what she can only describe as a rodent screaming.
The light doesn't die. It swells, electrifying the air, racing across the bars, and makes Ellen's hair stand on end. But in the light, Ellen can barely make out a twisting, naked shape, and the snapping of bars.
Then it's gone. Both light and cage crumble. All that's left is the hamster. He isn't a hamster anymore. Its fur is patchy, bare skin showing discolouration and pulsing, swollen veins. Its eyes are swollen too. The whole hamster, for lack of a better phrase, is the size of a large dog. Muscles twitch and hold themselves taut, leaving the questionable hamster itself twitchy, growly, glarey. And the buck teeth? From Ellen's angle of on the floor within bite range, they look nowhere close to friendly.
Another lance of light hisses and snaps out. The hamster's head twitches around to face Ellen. Oh goodie, red eyes, as if it needs to look more intimidating. In the corner of Ellen's gaze a bird undergoes the same swelling and agonizing treatment. Part of her recognises the bird she'd walked away from. The rest of Ellen tries to scramble backwards. She doesn't move. She doesn't move. When did she turn into a statue?
Faintly, Ellen hears, 'Behold the genius of Doctor Animo!' A growl builds in the hamster's throat.
Suddenly, Grandpa's hand is there around Ellen's wrist, and she? No longer stone. She can move. 'Run!' he says, shoving her to her feet, and it's enough to shake Ellen into using her legs. One foot in front of the other, quick march, except it's a sprint and not a march.
And she's yelling for help.
Marching doesn't involve running or yelling, not from the marcher's point of view, and why is she thinking about marching when there's a monster hamster after— oh good, good, great, it's actually running after them. Wonderful. This is fine. Ellen does running. She can run. She came thirteenth on track day. Hamster would probably be busy eating who's coming last. And in the race of two, between shelves and bleached floors and achingly cheerful supermarket music, between Ellen and Grandpa Ellen is absolutely going to run out of steam first and once the hamster's done gnawing her bones it might decide she's not fat enough not to go in for seconds and it'll catch up with Grandpa who will be with Ben and Gwen by that time and maybe Ellen will have a nice funeral but it'll be interrupted by an angry hamster who'll gobble up her cousins and then go for Grandpa for its afternoon tea.
A box whips itself off a shelf.
It whistles over Ellen's shoulder and she stumbles, she stumbles and her feet aren't where she needs them. Her knees crack into the supermarket floor and she tumbles, hands scrambling to catch herself. Another box flies over her, and another.
Ellen risks a glance behind her. The hamster's close, a box between its teeth, another smacking it in the eye in the moment Ellen looks.
Hauling herself up on her knees, Ellen dives around a corner.
'Grandpa…?' Ellen says, voice shaking.
'Not quite.'
The voice has the thinness of a whisper but the rasp of a corpse, and between a blink, a shape forms in the centre of the aisle. It's tall, long, thin, and floating in the air, with frail limbs, long fingers, and a single wandering eye. It's a ghost.
'But I'm here to take Fluffy back to the pound!' it, Gwen, says, and she hurls another bag of cat food directly at the hamster's head.
It hits, forcing the hamster to rear backwards, only to hit the ground with an angry hiss up at Gwen. But when it swipes, and it bites, all Gwen does is drift upwards and she's easily out of reach. Its jaws snap the next box Gwen throws in half.
'Feisty, aren't you?' Gwen says dismissively. The ghostly alien's "tail," for lack of a better word, coils around the nearest shelf. 'Well, let's see you get a bite of this!'
Wares topple in a loud rush, striking both hamster and ground. Before the hamster can do more than shriek, the shelf itself rises and slams onto it. Once, twice, thrice, until the hamster stops moving.
Gwen swoops down. Her back's to Ellen, most of her parallel to the ground to be on eye level with the hamster.
'I think you got it,' Ellen says. It doesn't feel like she spoke. But her lungs moved, her throat breathed in and out, so she must have spoken.
With the hamster still, the sounds of the supermarket filter back into Ellen's hearing. There's the rattling tumble of pet food coming to a halt, and further away Ellen hears running footsteps and distant screams. Shouting too, less afraid and more furious. But a pair of footsteps are louder, growing louder, and accompanied by Grandpa's calls.
He and Ben round the nearest corner. 'Ellen, there you are,' Grandpa says in relief. Ellen's stomach swoops. She got left behind. Grandpa's eyes land on Gwen and the hamster faintly visible through Gwen's translucency. 'And… uh…?'
'A freak of a ghost,' Ben mutters.
Gwen swings upright, her thready arms crossed just below the hourglass on her chest. 'Nice going, dweeb,' Gwen says. It sounds like she's constantly gasping for air. Ellen wants to cover her ears and run or even powerwalk away. 'If you hadn't wasted your time hunting for a cheap piece of cardboard, you could've helped.'
'And you're wasting your time gloating at me!' Ben says, jabbing over Gwen's shoulder. 'You're letting the bad guy get away!'
Gwen's single eye widens.
'—hington BC!'
Something punches the store's roof. The rumble is loud, rubble falling several aisles away, and a pair of giant wings flare and swoop out of a distant, newly made hole, momentarily blocking out the faint evening light pouring inside the building.
'Leave Polly to me,' Gwen says determinedly, already drifting upwards.
'Wait, wait.'
Grandpa's voice gives Gwen pause. 'What? He's getting away!'
'He is, and on that bird he's getting away, fast, much faster than this alien can travel,' Grandpa says, eyebrows furrowed in his seriousness. 'If you chase after him, you risk changing back when you're fifty feet in the air. Or worse.'
The single eye on Gwen shifts upwards, then downwards. As it moves it makes a sound like wet meat squelching between palms.
'I'll stay near the ground,' Gwen decides. 'Catch up when you can.'
With that she dives directly through the nearest shelf. Ellen spots her in the next aisle, briefly, but then she's through the other side and out of sight. Ellen looks down at the still hamster. It's breathing, faintly, but Ellen spies bruises forming where its fur is absent.
Ellen wants to say I'm sorry, but… is it even able to understand what happened to it?
Grandpa speaks first. 'Well, you heard her. Come on, let's get to the RV before they're too far ahead.'
Ben sulkily follows. For a moment, Ellen's rooted to the spot, staring at the glassy eyes of the hamster. Parts of the hamster's fur is red. That's strange. Ellen remembers the hamster before, and it was only brown then.
'Ellen!'
'Uh— yeah, coming!' Ellen says, sparing it one last glance, and she follows.
The sky darkens further as the RV rolls down the Washington roads. Moderate traffic exists. It sits around corners and appears on occasion down future streets, but Ellen's attention's caught on the dark night sky and the faint flashes of white wings between buildings. There are frighteningly few of those. Considering only one giant mutated bird exists, that both makes sense and is a very, very good thing because mutated animals are Ellen's current second least favourite thing in the world, but it also sucks because it makes finding the bird very difficult.
What's Ellen doing again? Ah, right. Birdwatching.
Ellen pauses. Birdwatching. Of course. Why wouldn't a cheery sounding term just pop into her brain when she's trying to focus. With a shake of Ellen's head she rescans the sky. Nada.
'...the matter, Ben?' Grandpa says. Ellen only tunes in halfway, but she can guess how the sentence started.
'It's not fair,' Ben says. 'When Gwen uses the watch, everything goes her way, and everyone knows she's a hero. But when I do it, nothing goes right.' His next words are muffled, like he's talking into the window rather than people. 'And then the dweeb's there to lord it over me.'
Nothing out the back window either. Ellen turns back to the front seats. 'I haven't noticed anything like that.'
Ben scoffs. 'Oh, you didn't notice that when I turned into Heatblast, the forest caught fire, but when Gwen went all dog alien, she lucked out and beat up robot drones. And then last night, I saved everyone from that apartment fire, but it was "just a distraction" and Gwen got to stop the bad guys!? You noticed none of that?'
Ellen doesn't know a lot of things, but she's positive Ben won't react well to her honest opinion.
'That's just luck, isn't it?' Ellen says.
'Oh, and, I'm the one having to do math homework during summer vacation! Just because I got Grey Matter! It's totally unfair,' Ben snaps, like he hadn't even heard Ellen's contribution. 'Why isn't Gwen doing that!'
'But Gwen—'
Ellen aims to say, she went on that sprint, but one glare from Ben punches the words to the back of Ellen's throat. No matter how Ellen coaxes, they refuse to take a second shot. She ducks her head and scans the sky. Nothing.
'You've only had those watches for a few days,' Grandpa says reassuringly. 'I know you want to be a hero, but that takes time and hard work.'
'Tell that to Gwen,' Ben mutters.
Ellen worries at her lip. 'I don't want to interrupt, but I can't see the wannabe dinosaur anymore.' She drops her gaze from the sky to the street. So much for birdwatching. Ellen's head lands on her palm.
A sigh falls from the driver's seat. 'Same here. There can't be many places for an overgrown parrot to hide. We'll find it.'
There's a sudden flash of cyan light. Ellen's facing backwards, but it still takes her a second to recognise it.
'Grandpa!' she blurts out. 'I think we just passed Gwen!'
The RV near instantly skids into a U-turn, Ellen latching to the table before she's thrown into the corridor. It halts at the roadside. Ellen shakes her head. That hurt. Out the front of the RV windscreen, a blur of blue sprints up and towards them. Grandpa barely pauses long enough for the RV back door to slam shut before they spin and shoot onwards again.
Gwen lands in the seat opposite Ellen, breathing hard.
'Gwen, are you alright?' Grandpa asks.
Gwen groans. She slumps into the seat. 'No,' she says with feeling. 'I couldn't keep up. But I did manage to snag a souvenir.'
A tired but smug smile crosses Gwen's face as she holds up her hand. It's a giant feather. She lays it on the table.
'Polly was shedding these as it flew. Give me a few minutes and I can go Wildmutt and sniff it out.'
Ben snorts. 'Oh sure, let's wait on your watch. Meanwhile, Doctor Freakazoid's out there doing who knows what with the electronics he stole.'
Oh boy. Ellen drops her attention down to the feather. It's massive, at least the length of her arm, and a dull off-white. She swallows. Imagine the size of its claws close up. It could pick up the entire RV, probably.
'Well, if you'd turned into that giant stink bug, then you'd actually be helpful.' Gwen smiles simperingly. 'Oh wait, you couldn't,' she adds. Ellen shakes her head and tries measuring the feather against her arm.
Ben shoots back, 'It's Stinkfly, and I don't see you flying after him!'
'I can't!' Gwen says, standing. Her hands hit the table with a thump. 'And who cares what you call that—'
—is wings easily glide through the uncaged air. They slide from the rushing warm to the quiet cool, never disturbing Sir from the helm. Some wind falters. Momentary setbacks. A far cry from the pitiful, pathetic cage. Frightened younger birds scream as his shadow falls over their resting places. He could snap one from the air, easily… but that would shake Sir from his place. They have their nests to fly to.
Air shakes under his cries: loud, louder, loudest. He flexes his claws, rolling eyes fixated to a gull. Come closer, come closer.
Sir joins his cries. Foreign sounds, human sounds, but these ones are a balm compared to the cage. 'Phase one complete, my fine feathered friend! Now… take me to the National History Museum! Now!''
There's a pull. He banks, following the tug, and he roars away the tension. The pull builds, sharper an—
'—hit a pothole,' Grandpa says apologetically.
Ellen jerks her wing backwards. Her back hits the chair. It's quiet. The feather rests against the table, large and white. The phantom touch claws into Ellen's skin. It crawls, like ants.
That.
What.
What.
She sucks a breath in, sharp like a sob, but she doesn't heave. She just holds it. She holds her breath tight, tight like a hug, and her skin keeps crawling. Ellen's arms are hugging herself. When did that happen? She's mad. She's crazy. She's a freak.
She's… she's a freak. No way, no way that was real, right? Right? Overactive imagination. That's all it is. Right?
But if that is real, and what Ellen saw, felt, was, was real, and she really did be whatever just happened, then, then... her brain hurts an awful lot trying to parse whatever thought she's trying to express.
Out the window a street sign flashes past. It's too quick to read.
In a sudden burst of speed Ellen gets up and guns for the RV's back drawers. Absently, Ellen notes that she stampeded her way right through Ben and Gwen's conversation, but the vast majority of her mind is too busy screaming to give it much thought. Her hands move like automatons.
'Hey! What gives?' Gwen says.
Ellen pauses. Oh, she's holding one of Gwen's shirts. Why do her clothes all look the same. Nevermind. Ellen throws it aside and keeps digging.
'Ellen!'
'I, I have an idea,' Ellen says. Can't talk, she'll sound crazy. Can't talk, she'll sound crazy. She is crazy, but sounds like doesn't equal quacks like if she keeps her trap shut. 'Ah ha, gotcha,' Ellen says, pulling loose Gwen's laptop.
As Ellen forces the computer open, dodges Gwen's snatch, and slides back into her seat, Grandpa says, 'Any idea at this point is a good one. But we could use more details before you break Gwen's laptop.'
Wake up, stupid slow technology, and please let Gwen not— she does not use a password! Thank goodness. 'Hold on, Sir, I'm finding a map. Where are we? Because, if we can't see where the bird is, maybe—'
'Maybe we can figure out where they're going!' Ben finishes Ellen's thought. He's right above Ellen's shoulder, peeking at her typing. He then stabs the screen, ignoring Gwen's dismay. 'Here, we're here. And the bird was going that way.'
'Way to use your words, tweedle dweeb and dumber,' Gwen says with a scowl.
Ellen's already scrolling out, eyes scanning ahead of the bird's path.
There it was, where is it now, and is its now where her brain claims…?
And in Ellen's mind, her hurricane dies.
The cursor hovers over a small icon of a museum. A moment later, a helpful tooltip declares it a wonderful place to visit.
With a gasp, Ben vocalises the thought. 'Ha, alright! Check it out, the National History Museum's right where Polly was flying. That Animo guy said something about turning Washington DC into BC, so that's got to be it! Where else can you get all prehistoric?'
'A zoo's graveyard?' The words slip from Ellen's mouth. She stares after them. Where did that…?
'The museum's not too far from here,' Grandpa calls back to them. 'Everyone, back into your seatbelts.'
The laptop vanishes. Gwen looms on the other side of the table, laptop in hand. Her glare is solid rock.
'Meanwhile, I'm going to do some digging on this Doctor Animo.' She sets the laptop down, fingers flying.
'What, you think he'd put his evil plan on the internet,' Ben drawls.
A smug smile crosses Gwen's face. 'He has a massive chip on his shoulder and a doctorate. There's no way I won't find something.'
Quietly, Ellen lets her back, then head, hit the seat. Her gaze lands somewhere at the ceiling.
Okay, then. Okay. This is good. Great, even. Maybe her insanity isn't just attention seeking nonsense. It is nonsense. Maybe not attention seeking? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Say, where did their shopping go? The trolley vanished. They must've left it behind when fluffykins came after them. But, wasn't it missing before? Did Grandpa deliberately ditch it...? Actually no, no she doesn't want to think about the trolley. Ignoring her craziness won't make it better. Usually the opposite happens.
Or maybe she's not crazy. Maybe Ellen actually has superpowers. Maybe the timing is just coincidence. Sheer dumb luck and coincidence made it land right as her cousins acquired their own powers.
Except, coincidence makes zero sense.
...Maybe "making sense" isn't a thing the world does anymore. Her cousins can each turn into five different aliens, after all. Either way, Ellen shouldn't make conclusions yet. They don't know for sure if she, well, her insanity, is correct.
A chime interrupts Ellen's train of thought. Gwen holds her arm up. The watch is back to normal, switched from cyan to pink.
'At least if you've screwed up, my backup plan's online,' Gwen comments.
'Did you two work out how long it takes to recharge?'
'No,' Ben says. He sounds frustrated. 'It's like they were trying not to let us know anything.'
'They're too inconsistent,' Gwen says. 'Also, next time you want on my laptop, you'll need to ask for permission. It's now password protected. Times three.'
There's heat on Ellen's cheeks. 'Sorry,' she mutters. Gwen's nose climbs a few degrees into the air, her fingers and gaze flying across the keypad.
Grandpa drives in silence for minutes, each second dragging its feet. When the RV screams to a halt Ellen could scream with relief. She doesn't. Doesn't mean she didn't want to.
'Gwen, let's go,' Grandpa says back into the RV.
A groan precedes Gwen, along with the crocodile snap of her laptop shutting. Her expression is stormy as she lands on the sidewalk.
'I just found an article on Animo,' she complains. Ellen glances her way and Gwen elaborates. 'He was doing illegal experiments on animals.'
'Really, I had no idea,' Ben drawls. He strides off towards the dark silhouette of the museum.
'If you gave me five more minutes, I'd know more than that. You know, like why he's doing this now instead of five years ago? That's when he was still a veterinary scientist,' Gwen adds to her remaining audience.
Grandpa pats Gwen's shoulder. 'Good work, Gwen,' he says consolingly. 'Let's not fall behind.'
As they approach the museum Ellen feels, more and more, that she should've volunteered to wait in the RV. What, exactly, is the point in her tagging along, exactly? Museums aren't usually open at night and usually just have a skeleton crew of a night shift keeping their eyes open. So, it's not like the campsite, where Ellen could help a highly tiny number of people to evacuate. Ellen can work on researching Animo. She can keep her eyes on the sky in case Animo flies away when they aren't looking. There are a hundred and one things Ellen can do that don't involve walking closer and closer to a pale hole in the museum's wall. Yet the words jam in Ellen's throat. Her feet keep stepping alongside Grandpa's.
When Ben bobs down beside the rubble, Ellen doesn't say a word. When he straightens, another large feather in his hand, Ellen stops breathing, but can't speak.
'Something tells me we're on the right track,' Grandpa says. 'Good thinking, Ben.'
Ellen doesn't make a sound.
She does, however, give every feather she sees a wide berth.
In stories, sometimes there's a cave the heroes walk into with stalactites and stalagmites tethered to the roof and floor of the mouth. And mouth, in those cases, turns out to be true, for the cave suddenly is not a cave, but a throat. There are other signs. The floor feels squishy and wet. The air is damp and foul scented. The most important sign, however, is the sudden looming sense of dread. Walking through the museum's hole feels like that. It has the same dread, the same prickle on the back of Ellen's neck that whispers something's going to bite you, teeth will slam down on your shoulders.
Unlike a cave the museum's mouth doesn't lead to a suspiciously throat shaped tunnel. It leads to a museum. Somehow, that's even worse than a throat tunnel. In silent prison sit boxes of glass. Their contents are invisible in the darkness. The sickly green light did nothing to make them more visible. Hallways of stuff hang in total stillness, the spaces between each wide and uncompromising. Then her eyes adjust. There's scattered, frozen, dried starfish in one. Hanging above their heads is a whale in frozen suspension. It's too dark for it to cast its own shadow, but its maw alone is out of comprehension. There's nowhere to hide; their footsteps are far too loud. At the same time there are far too many places someone standing still could slip and stab. The creeping at Ellen's neck whispers again.
It's too dark, too empty, too quiet.
Museums, Ellen decides, suck.
'Where are we?' Gwen asks. The atmosphere is catching. Ellen has no idea how Ben feels free to stride without a care into the empty, watchful floor, but Gwen stays with Ellen, rooted by Grandpa.
'Ocean hall,' Grandpa says easily.
On a second inspection, Ellen should've guessed that. Grandpa barely needed to give the walls a glance.
Grandpa says thoughtfully, 'If Animo wants to bring Washington DC back to the stone ages, my guess is, he's somewhere in the Human Origins section.'
'Then what are we waiting for? Let's find Animo and his creepy crawlies already,' Ben calls over his shoulder, and vanishes through an archway.
When Ellen follows she checks the ceiling. Just in case. She doesn't see any teeth.
Ellen can't remember the last time she went to a museum. She probably visited one on a school trip at some point, but no matter how Ellen asks herself, herself doesn't deign to answer. Yet her eyes shut and under them she can see the towering bones of some ancient bird, standing tall over all the humans in the room. She can see an obelisk surrounded by empty, solemn space, and in the distant sit two cannons overlooking a great hill and a distant city. Then she blinks. The moment passes. She is in the dark, surrounded by the bones of humans encased in glass, with skull's empty eyes gazing back at her, spears grasped in clawed phalanges.
They walk through the entire hall, Ellen glancing over her shoulder the whole time. She keeps her eyes peeled for disturbances. Knocked over artefacts, displaced dirt, loose feathers, the whole array. Gwen spots the first feather. Ben shushes them all.
'Listen,' he hisses. 'You hear that?'
Faintly, faintly, and through another archway, Ellen strains her ears. It sounds like a sound. But it's so soft, she isn't sure if it's real or if it's her mind playing tricks on her. After all, her mind certainly has a habit of that. Ellen bites her lip. Well, that's not totally accurate, since the hole in the wall did sort of prove some of what Ellen imagined was real. That, or she actually had super senses, and her brain decided to hallucinate in order to process the information. ...No, that's absurd. That has too many hoops to jump through, and there's some principle that goes against complicated things. Occam's razor, right? Right.
In the span Ellen spends thinking, she draws a few hesitant steps closer, ever drawn after her family.
There is a loud clatter.
They freeze.
Silently, Grandpa meets each of their gazes, and gives each a significant nod. He motions them to follow him. Slowly, slowly, they step through a door into a wider space. Bones. Ellen can see a lot of bones. All of them are things Ellen does not want to examine too closely. But they have to get closer, and the closer they get the louder a ticking, mechanical sound gets.
There he is.
Animo, thankfully, has his back to them. This also, unfortunately, means that whatever stuff he's tinkering with, it's out of sight and blocked by his body.
Ben stalls beside a podium, plucking something red from it. It's only facing Ellen for a brief moment before Ben's hand drops to his side. It looked like packaging from the supermarket they'd left behind. Good to confirm that Animo didn't shoplift from multiple sources, Ellen supposes. She can't see the frog-toad or the bird anywhere.
Maybe Ben made a sound, slipping the box off the podium, but Ellen spots the second they'd been made. It's pretty obvious. Animo's back straightens, his head snaps up. Oh, and he talks, that's generally a sign of someone knowing people have snuck up on them.
'You are very persistent, I hate persistent.'
Animo spits the last out like it personally wronged him. Maybe it did. This is okay, Ellen decides, stepping back to stay behind her super-powered cousins.
'We all know about you and your freakazoid experiments, Doctor Animo. It's over!' Ben says.
'Oh, but it's only just begun,' Animo says.
He turns in place. It's the first opportunity Ellen's had to examine the guy. Maybe it was just the lighting, but his skin looked green. He looked like he was some brand of ill. Red-lensed goggles glinted under a stiff metal helmet, which in turn had the horns Ellen had seen back in the supermarket. A machine is strapped to his chest with a round dial in the centre.
His hands look clawed as Animo gestures.
'See, I only needed a few components to push my work into phase two: the re-animation of dormant cells.'
Ellen's stomach plummets.
Her eyes are uncomfortably drawn to the human skull on a nearby podium. No. No way, that, that isn't… Ellen wants to think "that's not possible!" Unfortunately, a lot of impossible things have happened in the past few days.
Ben says, 'Uh, does this guy come with subtitles?'
'Breathing life back into that which has been long since lifeless.' Animo's voice is unsettlingly maniac as he turns, a hand trailing across the leg of a model elephant. His hand then clasps against his chest. His grin has too many teeth and the machine screams. 'Observe!'
Red light surges, flowing up the helmet's horns and up, far over their head height and directly into the model elephant. No, not an elephant. Oh, good, that's a mammoth. It's bathed in red, orange, yellow, and Ellen is drawn to its eyes. She can see the moment where it shifts from a glassy, empty stare to alive and filled with blazing anger.
Good. This is good. The gasps of her family do not help calm her heartbeat's speed.
The elephant brays, tossing its great head, and pulling free of the podium like a bull breaking loose from chains. The floor shakes under the sheer weight.
'Behold the genius that is Doctor Animo!' Animo bellows from somewhere. Didn't he say that already? Ellen can't see him. The whole reanimated mammoth is a large distraction.
Something snaps inside the mammoth, like a rubber band. Or a tendon. The head twitches towards their little group, their little and fragilely human group, and abruptly Grandpa's arm is between Ellen and the mammoth.
Gwen steps forward, already dialling her watch. 'You three go after Animo, I'll stop the circus reject,' she says firmly, and slams the pink watch down.
Pink light blares and the mammoth reels back for a moment. There's a confusing memory in Ellen's head—like blinking after looking at a light—of a tangle of limbs and crystal, but Gwen is standing in seven feet of glory, having become the shiny blue alien composed of crystal.
As Gwen launches forward, arms suddenly sharp and gleaming, Ben waves his arms.
'What!? No way, I'm taking care of this!' Ben says.
Ellen grabs his hand before it can touch his watch. 'Isn't this what you wanted? A chance to fight the bad guy instead of the distraction?!'
'Uh.' Ben's eyes dart away from Ellen's. 'Y-yeah, obviously. This way!'
Ben leads the charge left, towards a doorway that Ellen hopes Animo did go through, and that they didn't make a mistake in running at. Behind them, worryingly loud thumps, shouts, and trumpets shake the air. It's all good though, right? Good, it'll be good, please let it be—
—You have got to be joking, Ellen thinks.
The giant bird occupying the hallway is not a joke. In fact, it is a very loud screamer.
'Looks like it's my turn!' Ben declares, and hits his watch.
Again, light and an impression of limbs warping in the blink of an eye. This time it's the giant bug, already airborne with his wings buzzing. Before the bird can do more than chirp, a green gunk fills the hallway, and its wings are pinned to the wall and floor.
There's also a horrific stench from the goo plastered all over the floor.
'You and your aim stinks,' Ellen croaks, trying to breath through her mouth.
'It's called Stinkfly for a reason,' Ben says, his voice croaky and nasal through the alien's throat.
'Come on, after Animo,' Grandpa urges.
'Way ahead of you, Grandpa!' Ben says.
He buzzes down the hall and dives out the other end. Grandpa hurries after him. A flash of red light lights the hallway for a moment, and if that's Ben's watch timing out already, he will have every right to scream about the unfairness.
Ellen's left in the hallway alone, with the bird furiously struggling against the… spit? Puke? Sap? Ellen shudders. 'This is going well,' she mutters, carefully picking her way through the… puke, puke is probably the best word. The last thing she wants is to get stuck to the floor in the same room as the murder bird, even if Grandpa somehow managed to avoid it at a sprint. 'Very, very good, very well.'
Ellen exits the hallway.
There is a dinosaur roaring in the room.
Why.
Ellen throws herself to the floor as the t-rex's tail swipes overhead, clipping the doorway as it goes past. Bits of stone crumble and strike the floor beside her. She covers her head a moment too late.
'What an inspiring beast! But my dominium is ten times as terrific!' Animo yells.
Ellen hears Ben scoff from the other side of the room. Unfortunately, the roar of Animo's device is too loud, and from the floor Ellen has the perfect view of the red light hitting a skeleton hanging from the air.
Oh, Ellen doesn't know what that dinosaur's called. It's the flying one, starts with P. Probably more than capable of swallowing her in one gulp. Good. Good, good, good.
Ellen scrambles out of the way as the pterosaur drops from the ceiling onto the floor, the one Ellen had been cowering at a few moments before, that one.
'I'd love to stay,' Animo calls. Is he—? He's sitting on the t-rex's neck. When did he get there? 'But I need to claim the award I so richly deserve.'
Animo has white hair. Funny, that. Not something that Ellen should pay attention to right now, but noting fashion is better than panicking out of her mi—sweet Jesus —nd about dying. The pterosaur is fast and snaps at Ellen's ankles, tearing a scream from Ellen's throat.
A toad whips past, colliding with the pterosaur, and sending both crashing into the wall. Both howl and hiss with rage.
'Just stay down!' Ben complains, wings droning loudly. Ellen flips onto her feet and barely catches a glimpse of the t-rex's tail disappearing through yet another hole in the museum wall.
Ben can take care of all this, right, there is no way Ellen can do anything meaningful against two turbo mutants. Better to run away and hide. Good plan, Ellen, she deserves a pat on the back for that one, absolutely. That thought in mind, Ellen takes one quick glance over her shoulder to check where frog and flappy are, and runs for the hole in the wall.
Ellen nearly falls over in relief to see Grandpa already there, frantically scanning the streets for Animo. He gives her a quick nod.
Back in the museum, neither beast is down. Ben buzzes to a spot between them and the outside world. 'Aw man, not good,' he says, eyestalks twitching.
'If these two get out onto the streets, who knows what kind of havoc they could cause,' Grandpa says worriedly.
Two of the eyestalks turn towards Grandpa. 'Stop the freaks from freaking the city out? Got it. They're not getting past me.'
The pterosaur roars, wings flaring. On the opposite corner of the room, the toad steadies itself, looking like it'll jump any second.
'...You wouldn't mind going back in the corridor so I can goo you up?' Ben says hesitantly.
The frog moves first, launching itself into the air to the side of Ben and striking out with its tongue. Ben grabs it, wings flaring, only for—ow, that looks like it hurt—the pterosaur to full bodily tackle Ben to one side. It gets up faster, body twisting like a paper plane towards the hole, only for Ben to grab its tail and use it like a baseball bat against the toad, which, incidentally, had used the distraction to nearly crush Ben and—
—and already, Ellen's lost track of everything that's happening. Her palms itch, begging for something, anything to do, something that might help.
Ellen seizes a piece of rubble the size of her chest and shoves it back into the hole.
Well done, Ellen, her thoughts mock. You made the hole a fraction of a percentage smaller.
'...Doctor Kelly accepts Verities Award,' Grandpa's voice says.
'What?'
How can Grandpa possibly stand there, perfectly calm, and read abandoned newspapers when there are two monsters (four if she counts the mammoth and bird) wrestling with her cousin inside? On second inspection he lacks joviality and casualness, so, Ellen's absolutely judging too fast, but, but, oh forget it. Ellen abandons the next rock and hurries to Grandpa's side.
Doctor Kelly accepts Verities Award, declares the newspaper title. Ellen skims over most of the yellowed article, which is mostly about some biologist person and a few mentions of other scientists who were nominated.
'Look who's in the background,' Grandpa says, tilting the paper towards Ellen.
The photo shows two men shaking hands, one holding a golden statue shaped like a beaker, standing in front of a small crowd. Front and centre is a hooked nosed man in a suit, looking sourly at the man with the award. Presumably, award-man is this "Doctor Kelly," and the other….
'Doctor Animo?' Ellen says. 'He, wasn't he saying something about an award? Is that why he's doing all this?'
If that's his goal, he probably knows exactly where that award is right now. The four of them know nothing, have no idea where to go to follow him without relying on finding a news station, which will slow them down, and they have the mutants to take care of before they can do anything else, and it's not like Ellen and Grandpa can do much against a t-rex and a crazy doctor by themselves.
'But we'll never catch up to them,' Ellen says.
'We don't need to. Instead of finding them, we find where they're going, just like the museum.' Grandpa taps on the newspaper, on what looks like a scribble in the margins Ellen squints. 515 3rd St SE, Wash DC. 'Look at that. Animo must've been holding onto this for some time. How likely is it that's where Doctor Kelly is?'
Oh, good. That's one problem solved.
'Grandpa, I don't want to sound negative, but Ben and Gwen are a bit busy. And at this rate, they'll turn back long before they can get a chance to follow him!'
Grandpa nods, eyes combing over the hole— oh, when did Gwen get there? Gwen's helping Ben beat back the mutants, but two against two doesn't do much to even the odds, from the looks of it. There are little mounds of shattered crystal everywhere. As Ellen watches, the toad dodges a line of puke as the pterosaur breaks out of a small crystal band. They're escaping their prisons faster than they're made.
Paper rustles. Ellen starts as Grandpa palms the newspaper to her. He strides forward towards the hole.
'Gwen, Ben!' Grandpa calls. 'Don't trap the creatures inside the room. Trap them inside the room!'
'You just said the same thing twice!' Ben shrieks.
'Grandpa, you're a genius!' Gwen says, at almost the same time.
Gwen skids to a halt beside one of the doorways and punches the floor. Crystal bursts out of it, growing and growing, thicker and thicker until it's completely sealed. With an 'Oh, I knew that,' from Ben, he swoops past and spits up more puke, sealing any last gaps in the hole, Gwen cracking the pterosaur in the face before it can pluck Ben from the air.
The pair trade distraction duty. One moment, Gwen is throwing up walls of crystal, the next, Ben scoops up a large piece of rubble and throws it in the way. It's a blur of motion until, finally, Gwen's at the hole right in front of Ellen, and maybe Ellen should back up a ways.
Yes. That seems like a good plan.
The crystals make a strange sound as they grow, Gwen's eyes turned to slits from the effort. It's like someone flicked the edge of a wine glass, or traced their fingers lightly along the top. It's a tall hole, much taller than the doorways, and at first the crystal at the top is thin and brittle.
'Gwen!?' Ben yells. 'Any time now!'
'Almost!' Gwen grunts.
There's a gap in the centre, Ellen notices. Through it, the pterosaur's wing flashes, barely present for an instant.
Suddenly Gwen staggers back, releasing the floor, and falls onto her back.
Her chest heaves, like there isn't enough air around her.
'Ben! Now!' Ellen yells.
Please let her actually be done, don't actually be halfway there and taking a break…!
There's a long pause filled by flapping wings, snarls, croaks, rubble moving, and a droning sound steadily getting louder, and louder, and—
Ben abruptly streaks through the gap, a ribbon of semi-solid puke following him, and a rock crashes in place over the hole. Ben spits out the ribbon and does an about turn, hacking up more green slime over the hole even as several thuds shake the wall.
Gwen still sounds out of breath. 'Think that'll hold them?'
Ah, right! Ellen hurries to Gwen's side and offers her the newspaper. 'It will,' Ellen lies. 'We figured out where Animo's going. Think you can get there before Animo does?'
Gwen groans. 'No way. Even if I run, I'll time out halfway there.'
'Good thing we're not running.'
'What?'
Wind buffets Ellen, wings buzz, and Gwen is yanked directly upwards in Ben's grip. Faintly Ellen hears, 'Ben! Put me down! Ben!' and then they're both out of earshot.
It takes them longer to vanish from eyesight, but that's because Ben abruptly turns ninety degrees and ends up behind a skyscraper.
Okay. Okay, that happened.
Ellen's legs give out. She hits the ground, hard, and grabs blindly for her knees.
'You're good, you're good, you're okay,' Ellen hisses. 'Stop it. This is fine. You're fine. They're the ones in trouble, you are fine. Stop it.'
Headlights flare over Ellen and she flinches, throwing an arm up. The RV rumbles to a halt beside her and, barely audible over the engine, Ellen hears the window wind down.
'Well, I see they didn't need a ride,' Grandpa says dryly.
'Hi, Grandpa,' Ellen says. Bang! goes a monster against the crystals. Ellen flinches and points behind her. 'I think— I just, I don't think that's going to hold them for long.'
'Then best we get out of here,' Grandpa says sternly. Ellen is happy to oblige, running as fast as her wobbly legs will let her to the door. Once Ellen's shut the door and in the front seat, Grandpa kicks the RV back to life and the museum melts away. Grandpa adds, 'We're not going far, just enough so we're not pet chow.'
'Oh. Good, that's good,' Ellen says.
'The important thing is they bought time,' Grandpa says. 'My guess is, if they break Animo's transmitter all the animals he's affected will go back to their original state. The longer it takes for them to break out, the less time they have to endanger the city.'
Ellen considers this. It… it seems like a good theory. Ellen doesn't want to think about what it might be like if Grandpa's wrong.
Too late. The image is vibrant and far too real. A dripping maw clashes its teeth centimetres from Ellen's face, desperately trying to bite, not caring what injuries it may gain in the process. Guns fire, flashing, and Ellen squeezes her eyes shut—
Handbrake creaks. Key twists. Engine dies.
A hand settles on Ellen's shoulder.
'Hear that?' Grandpa says.
Hear… what? Ellen tilts her head and listens. There's… cars rumbling in the distance. A siren. Muted shouting. It's much louder for night time than Ellen expects. But then, this is a city. City's are loud.
Then—
'I heard a thump,' Ellen says uneasily.
'So did I,' Grandpa says. 'Sounds like they haven't figured out the crystals are harder to break than the walls. If those stop, then it means our theory is right, and we can head over to pick Gwen and Ben up.'
'What if they come back here?'
'Gwen has her phone. We can coordinate.'
They lapse into silence. The siren sounds more and more insistent over the intermittent pounding. Bit by bit, Ellen can see more of the surroundings outside. It looks like Grandpa drove around the corner of the museum. She can see the hole in the wall, well, the rubble littering the ground in front of it. The wall itself blocks the way to seeing the hole. Car lights drift back and forth, but never cross closer.
Nothing happens.
The mutants don't burst free. Animo doesn't reappear, cackling. Ben and Gwen don't topple out of the sky. Nothing happens. The thuds don't stop, but they do slow.
Slowly, Ellen lets her shoulders relax.
The next thud sounds more like a crunch.
Grandpa stiffens.
So does the next.
And the next.
Grandpa quietly turns the engine back on. Ellen reflexively checks her seatbelt. Wait, would it be better to have it unbuckled so if, say, one of the mutants picks the RV up— wait what is Ellen saying, she'd go straight through the windshield. Stupid.
In the end it's a heavier sound than breaking glass, but it certainly shatters. The shadow of the pterosaur swoops up and into the air. For a split second Ellen can see starlight through its thready wings. It circles the empty air above the car park, yowling its victory.
It's flight wobbles.
Below it, a lost car abruptly bangs, something bouncing off its roof and onto the ground.
'What the—?' Ellen says.
The pterosaur's gone. One moment it was flying, and Ellen looked away for a moment and it… vanished. Oh.
Several more objects fall and clatter into the car park, thrown by the pterosaur's arrested flight. Nothing left but preserved, mildly damaged bones.
Grandpa urges the RV back towards the hole. The bones gleam in the moonlight, some cracked and others covered in grit. Ellen, once outside, nudges one with her shoe. It doesn't move, not under its own power.
A frog croaks. It hops down a step, throat swelling.
'...Think we can return this to a pet shop?' Ellen asks.
Grandpa scoops it up with one hand. Its limbs flail.
'I'm sure we can think of something,' he says. 'Come on, your cousins need a ride.'
It's early morning by the time they navigate to Kelly Industries. The lack of address hadn't given them any favours, let alone the traffic blockades. It took Ellen a while to figure out Grandpa was seeking them out deliberately. Which made some sense. They didn't have the address, so follow the wreckage left behind by the dinosaur. With that as a map, they're on the way there.
The police presence outside is also a problem. Ellen doesn't know what Grandpa said to let them drive right alongside the building's massive hole, but somehow they're allowed to park right beside the police car and the hole.
Ellen waits for Grandpa to leave. The door slams shut behind him. Ellen waits for him to appear through the windshield. He rests a hand on Gwen's shoulder and speak to both of Ellen's cousins quietly.
Okay. It looks like Ellen has a few minutes.
She leans across the driver's seat and tries to open the glovebox. It's locked. That's not a problem, Grandpa didn't take the keys out. Press in, rotate, pull out, and tah-dah Ellen has the keys.
This isn't the best idea, but it really, truly, was bugging Ellen the whole time they were driving past the many blockades and hurried detours. What was in that notebook? What did Grandpa write down? She'd planned to take a peek the next time Grandpa took it out, and he hadn't, so it is time for Ellen to take matters into her own hands.
It takes Ellen a few attempts, but with a grin she unlocks the glovebox.
...Where's the notebook?
The glovebox isn't empty. There's a few important looking things, a coupon, a sealed envelope, but there's no notebook. Not one. None. Ellen's mind buzzes as she pushes the paper back and forth, as if that would make something magically change.
'Let me go!'
Ellen sits up. Animo's halfway to the police car, struggling with his hands behind his back. He looks smaller in the daylight. Sickly. Like a student who's spent their days furiously studying and forgetting twenty of their meals each week.
'I deserve that reward!' he yowls. The police officer pushes him at the police car, and Ellen catches him roll his eyes. 'I've got it coming to me! I want it,' Animo wails. The door slams shut behind him, muting his shouts.
It takes a few minutes more of muted murmuring for Grandpa to lead Ben and Gwen from the policemen. Ellen scowls and locks the glovebox again, slotting the key back where she found it. Well, Grandpa has to take the notebook out again at some point. She can find out what hyper-intensive notes he took later.
'Doctor Ani-mo is Doctor Ani-no-more!'
'We know, Ben, I was there,' Gwen says. There's no heat to the phrase.
A bridge flashes overhead. They've hit the motorway, and Ben is far too pleased about his… no, their victory. Isn't that a point of whiplash? It is for Ellen. From the sounds of it, Ben was the one to break the transmitter, but just like the museum and the robot back at the campsite, they worked together to reach that point.
'I know, I know. It's nice, having a cousin who's… ehh, half as skilled as me.'
Ben smirks at Gwen, but again, there's no heat to it. It's starting to scare Ellen. How long is this… this… comradery going to last? And will it detonate in Ellen's face before it's spent?
Gwen's eyes narrow. 'Half?' she says. The tension, barely there, vacates and she shrugs. 'Well, you did pick the best alien you could for that fight. Even if it's the gross, disgusting one.'
'What can I say, Grandpa's tutoring must've helped. I'm gonna be a real pro. You should join in, you know, if you're not too busy running around like a headless chicken.'
It's like the world readjusts and comes to a firm footing. Ben's smirk sneaks into smugness. Gwen's expressions tense. Thank goodness, the weird amiable atmosphere is fading fast.
'Really,' Gwen says flatly.
Ellen glances at Grandpa. He meets her eyes and shakes his head, looking fondly exasperated.
'Well yeah. You snooze, you lose,' Ben says. 'I'm gonna be the best hero ever. I'll earn my awards, and I won't even have to ask for them, because being a hero is its own reward. And you can be my dweebish sidekick.'
Gwen perches her elbow on the table. 'Well, if you're going to act so smug about it, I guess I'll start my own Steel Samurai collection.'
'Uh, it's called Sumo Slammers,' Ben says dismissively. 'And there's no way you're getting any cards. Not while I'm around.'
'Good thing I already made some headway, then,' Gwen says, and flicks her wrist. A golden rectangle appears between her fingers, but Ben's head is in the way before Ellen has a closer look.
'Where did you get that?!'
Gwen leans back, out of the way of Ben's wild grab.
'What, this? I found it while I was playing distraction,' Gwen says. 'I was going to give it to you, but now, I'm thinking it'll stay right here.'
Ben swipes one last time and, falling short, he slumps back onto his chair with a ground. 'No fair,' he whines.
'Hey, you got Animo's mutation box as a souvenir. I'm up for a trade at any time.'
Ben visibly fights himself. It's actually interesting, how his head jerks between the card, then the box he put Animo's transmitter in, then the card, then the box again, until with great effort he folds the cardboard box's flaps closed.
'You found it fair and square,' Ben says through gritted teeth and an even grittier smile. 'Being the hero isn't about rewards.'
There's a lingering silence.
Ben lunges for the card with a cry, and Gwen's almost too busy laughing to keep the card away from him. Almost.
Where exactly does the toad go during this episode? Ben never defeats it. Last we see, it's jumping off buildings after the bird. And the anti-mutation "explosion" goes all over the city, so we know it has to be a regular toad by episode's end. And yes, a mutant toad features in S2E12, but I doubt it's the same one. It just vanishes after Animo gets a better ride. Jerk move, Animo, treat your pets better. I don't know, maybe I didn't watch the episode carefully enough and missed something.
The floor plan of Washington DC's museum, if it's anything like the museums where I live, absolutely would've changed its floor plan between 2005 and 2019. So… yeah, I cheated a bit. Also, I pulled a random place in Washington DC for Kelly Industries by going to Google maps and clicking. I have no idea what's actually there. I think it's in the residential area? Not sure. American cities are not my area.