'I searched everywhere,' Rook told Shar. He rubbed a tired hand over his face, feeling his muscles protest as he scrunched his face up beneath the closeted warmth his fingers provided. Not for an instance did he feel as though he could relax. 'But I found nothing. No tachyon emissions, no DNA, not even a trace of hair.'
And even though part of her was still weighed down with bandages, Shar shifted herself upright, using the empty tea-tray wedged under her arm as leverage. She winced, her brow curling in thought, and despite himself, Rook was amused to see the meticulous way she had arranged all her empty plates next to her dresser.
'You have asked Gwen for a mana reading, yes? You informed me once that she had dowsing abilities.'
Rook grimaced. 'Disturbingly enough, once we brought her to Anodyne she started shaking and shortly afterwards, collapsed. She has been in a fevered state ever since.'
'Could Alien X have done something?' Shar asked. 'Transforming a planet into a star...that ought to have been an easy feat for one such as him.'
Rook growled slightly, fingers wrenching themselves into his knees as he stared anywhere but at Shar. 'I will not believe it. Ben has done stupid, foolish things, some of great magnitude, yes. But he would never cast a species and its planet to extinction, not even as a last resort.'
There was a pause. And then from out of the corner of his vision, Shar's hand crept down to offer his own solace with a touch.
'I am not suggesting that he acted out of ill intent,' she said softly. 'But in the haze of a fight, things get clouded. If I had the power of the Omnitrix, I am sure I would end up acting rashly at times, just as your partner would.'
'You do not know Ben the way I do,' Rook said stiffly. But his fist unfurled slightly, fingers falling away from the kneecap that they were attempting to grind to dust, as hers pushed down against his knuckles with a much lighter touch.
'I should hope not,' she said dryly. 'But if we wish to find out what has happened, perhaps we should seek out the aid of someone familiar enough with mana to manipulate it, while not being directly one with it in the same way an energy being such as Gwendolyn is.'
It was sound advice. But Rook grimaced to hear it all the same.
Rook trod over the campus of Gwen's university, ignoring any curious stares and the quick silver flashes of camera phones going off in his general vicinity. He checked the janitor's closet, the washroom, and even the dustier corners of the library. But Bezel was nowhere to be found.
He snorted. Of course. Like Ben said, it would be 'too easy,' would it not?
So then he sought out Hex's office. Only to find Charmcaster raised to her tiptoes on his desk, her hands scrabbling inside a jar moulded into the shape of a skull. She froze, a bunch of Hex's papers creasing beneath her booted foot as she fumbled with the very top of a black bookcase, the crested outer edges giving off the vague impression of a bat's wing, or at least the webbed membrane of one.
They both stared at each other for a moment.
Then she wrinkled her nose. 'Oh, it's the tall, blue, furry one. Go away.'
She turned back to her scuffling, her trademark bag falling round the slant of her hip and crashing into a rather ragged-looking tome that wobbled forwards, out of place. And almost accidentally, as though gravity was pulling at it, the zippered mouth fell open, a long, lazy green streamer rolling out of its mouth in the shape of a tongue.
Rook attempted to ignore this. 'My name is Rook,' he informed her tensely and dimly, he realised he had yet to release the door handle. He carefully un-clenched his fingers. 'Why do you not just levitate?'
Charmcaster snorted. 'It would interfere with the muddled array of protection spells my dear old Uncle set up in here. Levitate? Ha! Might as well put a beacon on my head.'
Rook began reaching up for his Proto-tool delicately. 'I see. What is worth liberating from that jar then?'
'A cookie, of course,' Charmcaster answered as though it was obvious. Then, without turning her head, her free hand swiveled round to point at Rook as white light burst from her outstretched fingers. 'Reptilius bind!'
A snake burst into existence, promptly wrapping itself round his arms and fastening them to his sides. He struggled but it's muscles simply tightened, bunching together into the squeeze of a python.
'That does not look like a cookie jar,' Rook somehow found the strength to inform Charmcaster snidely, recalling the various flowered arrays that decorated the kitchen of Mrs Tennyson and the orange lidded pots that trailed from the ceiling on knotted vine stems within his Mother's own. He jumped a little as the jawbone on the jar skull Charmcaster's fingers were rooting inside seemed to flex, flurries of plaster escaping from its mouth at the motion. 'Or at least,' he amended, 'it is not your typical non-magical one.'
But Charmcaster wasn't listening.
'Almost...ah-ha!'
She brightened visibly, her fingers crawling away from the jar with what looked to be a brown crumbly chuck of...something ensnared in their grasp. 'Perfect! Now,' she added, twirling round, 'tell me why you're nosing around.'
Rook grimaced. He had not had been having a good record with fights against mana-wielding females of late.
'I was seeking out the aid of someone who is familiar with mana,' he explained gratingly. 'Anodyne; you have heard of it, yes? The homeworld of the Anodites? It has been transformed into a small, burning star. It is not big enough to burn the way a real star should, not without collapsing into a dwarf, and yet burn it does. And of the Anodites and...other people of interest, there is not a trace.'
'This sounds like a Gwen problem,' Charmcaster said loftily, stuffing the ill-named cookie up her sleeve; Rook could see no hidden pockets sewn into the seams and given how loosely it fell open he could only assume that she was using magic to tuck it away and out of sight. 'I'm surprised she isn't biting at the bit to take up the cause.' She hesitated, then narrowed her eyes at him. 'Unless...she can't?'
Rook winced, his mind racing to come up with a lie but Charmcaster was already leaning forward, an excited gleam in her eye. 'She isn't well, is she? Oh, poor Gwennie, all out of commission...perhaps I should take a look at the problem, after all. That'll really put her nose out of joint.'
...How come Ben was always better at 'making stuff up' in these situations than he was?
And it was at that precise moment of Rook's internal recrimination, that the window broke open and Shar came flying through, a piece of thin twine in her hands. Rook blinked as the glass fell out around her like a shattered halo and then the twine was leaving his sister's still-working hand, emerging into a long loop, tightened at the end with a knot. Though made slightly awkward with her bandages strapped to her side, Shar managed to clatter over Hex's upturned chair and throw the make-shift lasso over Charmcaster's head with a sly twist of her wrist. The whole thing took less than a second and Rook strained forward as Charmcaster's mouth opened incredulously, spitting out word after word; yet each spell these gave life to, fizzled out with an angry flare of white, like a candle flame ground into dust.
There was, Rook thought, a karmic twist here, given how similarly to his own arms Charmcaster's were now bound; but then Shar leant against his shoulder and scraped the edge of the lasso against the snake. It shivered against the contact and then fell away into nothingness.
'Where did that come from?' Rook asked suitably impressed.
'It was woven from the hair of one of Zs'skar's nieces according to the information that strange Professor Hokestar gave me,' his sister answered flippantly. 'Also, and he was quite insistent about this, it has apparently been blessed by a Geochelone Aerio sage, one of which is said to have a certain immunity to mana; but I was not sure if this would render it immune to magic until now.'
Rook sighed.
She elbowed him. 'Do not be like that! To take chances is what a Plumber must be prepared to do on the field of battle.'
Rook stared at her, taking note of her bandages and the way tremors rang through the fur immediately surrounding them, causing it to ruffle and spike. In fact, her whole body was now shaking, torn by the strain of holding Charmcaster steady in the lasso by the grip of her muscles alone. So with a single step, he closed both his hands over the rope she had threaded around her left wrist and yanked Charmcaster down off the desk in one firm tug.
'Yes,' he said grimly, 'I suppose we Plumbers must do, at that.'
'What do you suppose will happen when I cannot use any of my spells to help with your little problem because of the rope binding me?' Charmcaster asked dangerously.
She was sitting bundled in the back of the Proto-truck, the lasso now hooked round her arms more thoroughly, even dipping down to twist round her ankles a few times for good measure.
Shar bristled in front of her, despite the fact that she still had to lean on the wall slightly for support. 'You will help us sorceress, otherwise we shall dump you in the Null Void.' She tapped a finger against the Null-Void projector set against her hip in threat.
Charmcaster snorted. 'I am, as you say, a 'sorceress' she said, injecting an imitation of the scorn Shar had used to lavish the title with moments before. 'So what makes you think I won't find my way out with a spell or two?'
'With a spell or two, yes,' Rook said. 'However without your bag, it will possibly require a great deal more effort.' He dangled it loosely from his side, eyes fixed on the window in front. 'And due to your current circumstances, you are running on 'empty' as I believe Ben would say. Trust us: at the first sign of trouble we will not hesitate to send your bag through to the Null Void first; to arrive at a different set of coordinates that the ones we will send you to.'
Charmcaster let out a growl. And Shar leaned forward to stare at her more closely.
'Are you sure you are human? Your hair is white; it should not turn that colour until you are much older.'
Charmcaster let out a short scream of rage and Shar leant back, wide-eyed.
'Are humans related to howler monkeys?' she asked her brother in a whispered aside.
Rook smiled but his heart wasn't in it. 'Not closely enough to excuse their own behaviour.' He gave her a quick glance, eyes narrowing as she attempted to hide her wince, just before stumbling and grabbing hold of the headrest behind him as he used the wheel to veer to the left as gently as he could. 'I should have left you in the hospital.'
'I would have gone crazy,' muttered Shar. 'Besides I have had plenty of rest these last few days. And I feel you should not be left alone to deal with this.' She closed her hand over his shoulder.
'Aw, family, ain't it swell,' Charmcaster muttered with a vicious bite to her voice. She shoved her cheek up against the nearest seat moodily, almost like she wanted to squash it entirely.
Rook frowned, unsure if he should point out the fact that Hex was actually willing to put forth the effort of getting to know her all over again. Or at least that was what Gwen told him. A part of him wondered if deep down Charmcaster had always resented her uncle for being the brother to survive rather than her father, Spellbinder. But he had no time to ponder over this further. Because they had arrived, stopping to hover near a bright, twisting orb of yellow, as a pink hue danced merrily over the surface and rose in swirls of heat that caught and crackled their way up into a cascade of rising flames. it was as though tongues of fire were licking across the darkness of space.
Charmcaster frowned and leaned forward. 'Oh,' she said, eyes narrowed like a stalking cat. 'That is odd.' Abruptly, she hobbled to her feet and, exchanging a brief look with each other, Rook and his sister leaned over to carefully untangle the rope from her limbs. 'There's a bunch of energy all swirling together, not quite mystic, it's like...' Charmcaster frowned in thought and passed her hand in front of her face slowly as though she was waving to herself. Swirls of faint pink light glimmered at the end of her nails, before sparkling out into thinly veiled trails of glitter.
'How to explain to a bunch of people with even less knowledge than Gwen? Well, let's say you were an idiot and mixed together a bunch of ingredients into a potion without accounting for the way their properties could clash together, especially if you carelessly picked some of the herbs out of season. Then you would get a simmering mess, barely held together by whatever liquid you first put to the boil before you popped the first ingredient in.' She frowned. 'Whatever's holding those energy signatures together, it's tenuous. Barely keeping itself in check.'
She frowned even harder, stepping forward until her nose was almost grinding against the glass. 'Urgh, but the psychic energy it's beaming out...it's giving me a headache just looking at it.' She muttered something quietly to herself, threads of power running through her voice and charging the small atmosphere inside the Proto-truck with a buzz. Rook thought he made out the word 'lumpus' a few times and reflected that the spells he heard recited in real life were really nothing like that Harry Potter series Gwen was always encouraging him to read. 'It's coiled up, but I might be able to force a connection...'
Rook's ears pricked up. 'Force?' he asked suspiciously, 'that does not sound very healt-'
As it turned out, he was right and Charmcaster broke off from tracing some sort of symbol in mid air in surprise as the air around them darkened. It deepened, becoming doused in a foggy pink and Rook let out a breath, seeing it emerge in a stain of twinkling blue like a CGI effect.
'Wow,' said Charmcaster, her breath coming out in a surge of purple. 'I feel like a dragon again.'
'Again?' asked Shar warily, orange rushing from each swell of air that escaped her lungs.
'But I guess in the end I can relate better to that time I got high. Several times actually. You collect one set of magic mushrooms and you collect them all.'
That was not even remotely true, Rook thought. But then he staggered to the side, his sister falling into his side. For that is when the voices started.
-Oh no, oh stars, oh Anodyne, is this punishment, is this sin-
-I'm forgetting what's it's like to have my own head, it was round I think-
-I never thought I'd miss having fingers-
-Mother, where are y-
-this is what we get for meddling with creatures who've barely raised themselves out of the muck, look, there's more of them circling our...us!-
-Filth-
-I'll never be an individual again, I never thought I'd miss it this mu-
-oh stars, it hurts-
-where's my energy-bearer, where's my nestling-spark, where's the collector of my hear-
-Mummy, Daddy, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just wanted more-
-TOO MUCH-
Yes, Rook thought, or perhaps simply took away from it, it was. Shar was shaking him slightly, looking confused, but Charmcaster's hand fastened over her wrist, loosening his sister's fingers from the roll of his shoulder with a firm grip.
'There's a thread of connection between you and the web above.'
Rook half-heard her, half lip-read; the voices were pressing in on him making it difficult, but Charmcaster took a firm grip of his chin, nails digging in, before her eyes flashed white and suddenly thinking became a little easier.
'Whatever's making it, is connected to your mana, or finds it familiar enough to make a connection. Or perhaps it simply wants to drain you of your life-force. But hey, I'm not an Anodite here and we're going a little outside my comfort zone. I can try and booster the connection, make it stronger. But I also might end up frying your brain.'
Shar let out a little frightened gasp at that. 'Blonko-'
Rook's fingers ground down into the floor. Whatever happened here had involved Ben.
'Do it,' he growled out. And Charmcaster only smiled, her eyes glowing even fiercer than before.
'Aperire animo,' she murmured.
For one horrifying second all the voices rose up into a shout, a scream. And then there was blissful quiet.
Rook started. Stared. And looked between Charmcaster and his sister. They both stared back at him, but nothing in their eyes flickered to follow him, and the shine of light over their frozen bodies remained the same no matter how he turned and twisted his shadow over them. It was odd, to see the corresponding darkness fall away from him, to watch it seep out and away the moment it attempted to rest over their skin and fur.
'You're the only one who isn't shouting.'
Rook spun. And there, crouched over the wheel, elbows resting over the tops of the handles like they were surfaces specially designed for him to rest on, leant a boy. His skin glowed with the same silky darkness as a fully-formed Anodite's and his hair fell away from his forehead in short tendrils of curling white. But even though his eyes were hollow and blank, without even a hint of green to soften them, Rook still recognised the voice rolling out of the mouth below, even now that it was dappled by a resonance that sounded as though a microphone had blended in with the vocal cords. And that posture, the casual slump-forward, it was all hopelessly-
'Ben,' he said, his voice a rough rasp, initially braced for any sort of pain, but instead, now it could soften, rush, break into relief – 'Ben,' he said again louder, eagerness forcing the syllables to explode into a gleeful sound and then all of him was rushing forward to grab this strange new creature that his boyfriend had become.
But Ben leant back, all of him tense with alarm and Rook stopped, the skin of the shoulders beneath his hand as cold as metal. A part of him wanted to scoop Ben up, make him warm even with the pitiful shelter of his fur and armour. Another part, the curious, detective part, wanted, no, needed to work out this new mystery.
'The Omnitrix can only store DNA, of which Anodites have none,' he said carefully. 'So how are you now one of them? And where are the others of this species?'
Ben grinned. But even without the individual cracks of white that would mark out human molars and incisors, it still looked like a sharp and frightening thing. 'Others? You mean the voices? I...guess I pulled them in.'
'In? Ben, please try to make sense to me.'
Ben laughed, hand reached up to rub against hair which immediately skated away from his fingers as though it had a life of its own. 'There was...I remember being smaller. And frightened. My hand was tiny and broken, filled with splintered calcium. A boot landed on it. And I couldn't use this word, this Omnitrix. It sounds important.'
Rook's fingers tighten on Ben's shoulder, as each word, each un-Ben-like phrase came tumbling out.
'There was a lot of orange. Against the walls, all shiny and a girl...shiny...shimmery...'
'Sunny,' Rook said gently.
Ben brightened; he could tell by the quick, upward curve under the bulge of his eyes – the Anodite equivalent of forming laughter lines. 'Yes! She was stuck! And everyone, these voices, the energy that held them, it was all stuck in the orange too. But they didn't have bodies they were stuck as the voices and the energy and they were screaming, I started to hear them and I-'
He frowned. 'I felt it all rushing out and then I was here and I wanted to set them free, but I didn't know how, so I sent it all back, into the space where it was before, but it didn't fit, it was too different now, converted into light and heat and all I could do was keep it swirling and moving, because if I let it stop I wasn't sure if the voices would stop and if they did that would be...' he trailed off and looked away. 'So sad...'
Rook's thumbs stroked down over the part of Ben's chest that should dip down and fall away into the slide of collar bones, but instead refused to shudder out into the vulnerable softness of skin. It was hard, chiselled, the structure humanoid, yes, but missing the persuasive blemishes that marked out Ben as vulnerable, malleable to harm. With a start, Rook realised that he had been forced into a position Kevin had been made to take before, the humanity of his lover a mere free-fall away into oblivion. Unsettled, he tightened his grip.
Ben laughed. 'Do you want to hurt me? This is a different kind of pain than what the voices give me.'
'No,' Rook whispered. 'That is the last thing I wish to do. What I wish is for you to return to me, human, as you were before.'
Ben gave what looked to be a pout. But without the blend of his lips, the nubs emerging from his skin like dark hooks were indistinguishable from the rest of him. It made something inside Rook shudder and grimly he drew Ben into his arms properly, ignoring the chill of his Anodite skin.
'But I'm so...big now. Better than the Way-Big big. I think. Huh, I remember that name. And I can do-'
'You cannot be the greatest hero in the universe anymore,' Rook interrupted harshly, his fingers tracing the cool curves of Ben's back. It felt wrong, not to feel the knobs of bone nestling beneath, or find the patch of New Jersey shaped skin to scrape beneath his dulled-down claws. 'You cannot be anyone's hero if you do not first save yourself. And properly help all those people you are still trying to save now.' He leant back. 'I do not know if this is some latent ancestry from your Grandmother at work in you now, or whether Anodyne has worked its own separate magic where there should be none. But you need to let it go. Listen to the voices, no, don't just listen, ask. They will have experience converting and transforming energy. Perhaps they can guide you.'
Ben wobbled a little in his arms, almost a shake. And bravely, Rook's reached up to grab a fistful of that hair that whipped across his palms like fire. But there was no flare of pain. Only an odd burn that felt like a mixture of salt and ice.
'Please,' he said. 'For me, if not yourself. You will be saving yet another person if you do so.'
Ben nodded. Then tentatively he reached up and pressed his lips to Rook. And Rook...well. Rook had never asked Kevin what it was like to kiss Gwendolyn when she was in her Anodite form. He had never dared. Plus, there was the fact that the thought of kissing Gwendolyn made him feel weird. She was a perfectly lovely young woman just...not his type. At all.
But oh, now he would definitely never ask. Ever.
Sparks and electricity flew into his mouth with a cold intensity that felt like biting into ice-cream and he dove forward, more out of grace than any real pleasure. There was no warmth here, only desperation. But if Ben needed him to be an anchor, than he would gladly hold himself steady.
But it was hard. For there was no easy familiarity here, no cheeky scrape of tongue to invade his mouth and tangle with his own, and no teeth to clink against the bones in his jaw. It was all empty of the usual teasing spirit Ben used to play with him, whether it was to draw back and lick the black dip of his mouth-outline with his own tongue or simply to press warm breath against the tiny gaps between his teeth. Now there was just a passionate kind of selfishness in the way Ben moved, his body pressed against Rook's not for sport or pleasure, but just as an opposing weight.
Ben shuddered and moved away. 'If my mind's clearer afterwards I'll probably want to make this up to you.'
Rook brushed the hair over his forehead into a fringe, flattening it as best as he could. 'If you come back with actual breath in your mouth, that will be more than enough for me.' He leaned forward and stroked his cheek. 'Come on, Ben. It is hero time.'
And Ben shuddered one last time before letting out a wavering, 'alright.'
Notes: Told you shit would hit the fan. There are other stories out there of Ben awakening into his Anodite powers and having fun with them. But this isn't one of them.
Also, obligatory 'Tangled' reference in the chapter title.
