Hi! I've been gone awhile, huh? I apologize for the slow update. I went to the beach for a week, then I forgot for a week, and then the 'D' key stopped working. It's still a little iffy, to be honest with you.
Although I have to say that you guys deserve the late post. I had to wait weeks for one single review (thank you, Tiryn). So there.
Anyways – to space!
Disclaimer: I don't own Ben 10. It belongs to Man of Action. Just in case you didn't already know.
Donny stood in her room and stared at her reflection. She was all dressed up for space travel and Knight-fighting: dark skinny jeans, long-sleeved black T-shirt, and black boots she had borrowed from her neighbor Milo last week. She had thought that she would need them for horseback riding with her dad, but no such luck.
Satisfied with her outfit, she grabbed a jacket (space was cold, right?) and her bag, which still contained the change of clothes she had packed in it that morning. Funny, that seemed like forever ago. With a sigh, Donny opened up a portal and stepped through into her garage.
Bane greeted her happily with a great big lick to the face. Unable to stop the giant canine-like alien, Donny endured the spit attack with grace. Then she clambered onto the Deathstalker's back and opened a second portal.
When they crossed through that portal (quietly, so as not to alert Donny's mom), they found themselves in Kevin's garage.
Kevin, Gwen, and Ben had been waiting on Donny for around five minutes. During that time, Ben had filled his companions in about Mrs. Dominico's call – and her temper. So when she arrived, the couple was ready with their questions.
Before she had even managed to get all the way off of Bane, Kevin hit Donny with the first question. "So what'd your mom do?"
Donny shot Ben a dirty look. "Grounded me for eternity. Or until she thinks she can trust me again."
"If you're grounded, what are you doing back here?" Gwen got the feeling that Donny and Kevin shared a few personality traits.
"I'm going into space with you guys, duh," the blonde answered matter-of-factly.
"Nice, Donny," Kevin grinned. "If I remember your mom right, she'll kill you when you get home."
Donny turned pink. "Uh-huh. Good thing she can't call me in space."
"Speaking of," Gwen interrupted. "Where's Julie with Ship?"
Ben opened his mouth to tell her that she was on her way when the small Asian-American girl walked into the garage, her pet in her arms. Bane moseyed over to give the strange new creature a good long sniff.
"Hi guys," she greeted, giving the very large creature before her a wary look.
"Hey Julie," Ben answered. "That's Bane. I don't think he bites."
Julie looked skeptical; Bane wandered back to the other side of the garage and sat down.
The other three occupants of the garage chorused a quiet, "Hi."
"Thanks for letting us borrow Ship," Ben walked over to his girlfriend, who put her little mechamorph on the ground and gave him a small hug.
"No problem. Ship loves space travel, don't you, boy?" She tickled his head, right around where his ears would be if he were a dog. He wiggled his bottom like a happy puppy.
"Aw, he's so cute," Donny was reminded vaguely of Bane the baby. Except that he had been bigger.
Julie smiled. "Thanks. Um, and who are you?"
"Oh, right, sorry. I'm Donny. I knew Kevin forever ago," she explained. "Bane's my dog."
"Nice meeting you," she replied. She really couldn't comment in the area of weird dogs, so she let that subject drop. "Sorry guys, but I've gotta go. My parents want to go to the movies tonight as a family, so I'm supposed to hurry back."
Ben gave her a light kiss on the cheek. "'Bye Julie, have fun. Thanks again for Ship."
"'Bye," she waved back at them before getting on her moped and speeding away.
Gwen leaned over and picked up Ship; then she headed out into the driveway. Kevin was the first to follow after her, and Donny brought up the rear when she realized what was going on.
Kevin looked at the small alien in his girlfriends arms. "Okay, Ship, you ready for space again?"
Ship made a couple of funny noises, and then leapt out of Gwen's grip. Halfway through his jump, he got a whole lot bigger and became a space ship. Bane had another sniff of him.
"Holy crap!" Donny exclaimed. "That's awesome!" She turned to beam her awe at Kevin, who was totally unaffected by the whole thing.
"He's great isn't he?" Ben seemed to think that this was a reflection of his owner.
Ship lowered what Donny decided to call the gangplank because she knew more pirate ship words than space ship words. Then, to her great delight, they got to go inside of Ship.
Kevin sat himself in the pilot's seat (although Ship liked to do the driving a lot of the time), Gwen sat navigator, and Ben and Donny simply sat. Bane gave the room an uneasy once-over before lying down against the back wall.
The interior was entirely black with Ship's unusual pattern covering every available surface. Donny noticed that yet again, the vehicle color coordinated with Ben. Somewhere in her head, she was glad she'd brought her red jacket. She'd have never found the black one.
"Ready for takeoff?" Kevin grinned back at his passengers.
"Yep," Donny answered. "Ready as I'll ever be."
"We're good up here," Gwen added, looking at her controls.
Ben was looking a bit blank. All of a sudden, he jumped up out of his seat and started yelling. "YOU GUYS! I FORGOT TO GET A SMOOTHIE BEFORE WE LEFT! WE HAVE TO GO TO MR. SMOOTHIE!"
The older boy simply shot him a dirty look and said, "Sit down and shut up, Benji. We're taking off."
The smaller brunette practically deflated. He plopped back into his seat, buckled up, and pouted. Donny buckled up like she'd watched him do, and seconds later she felt Ship lift off. Her mouth gaped open a little as she watched the garage and then the city drop away below them.
Either space travel was easy, or Kevin was a great pilot because the exit from Earth's atmosphere went almost without a single bump. Donny's mouth remained hanging open until the sky turned black and the stars began glittering around Earth as they floated away from their home planet.
"You can close your mouth now, the fun part's over," Kevin teased over his shoulder. Her mouth snapped shut and she graced him with an indignant glare. He laughed, and then told her she could take her seatbelt off and walk around if she wanted to.
She unclipped her belt and walked up to the front, where Gwen was finishing up with putting in the coordinates for the dragons' planet.
Out the front, Donny could see some of the other planets in the solar system: Mars, Jupiter – even Saturn in the distance. It then occurred to her that they were going very slowly.
"Um, how long will it take us to get there?" she looked at Gwen, who caught on to her train of thought.
"In about half an hour, we'll be far enough away from Earth to go into light speed. The trip will take about eight hours from there. The dragons' home planet is in the Milky Way galaxy, so the trip is a lot shorter this time," Gwen smiled apologetically. She doubted Ben or Kevin had bothered to explain that to her, and this was the first time the two girls had actually gotten the chance to talk to each other.
"Oh, man," Donny furrowed her eyebrows. Nine-ish hours there and back, plus whatever time it took to conduct their business on the planet equals…? Not good, in her mother's timetable, probably. Poop, she was gonna die when she got home.
"So," Gwen decided to change the subject, "How long have you known Kevin?"
The other girl looked down at her. "Forever; or I guess I should say since I was born. Our moms were friends, and when his mom met his dad, they introduced my mom to one of Devin's plumber friends. Our moms got pregnant within two months of each other, and Kevin is older than me. We've been hanging out since before we could walk."
"Wow. I met Kevin when I was ten and he was evil," Gwen thought back to that summer, when she and Ben and Grandpa had fought the monster that was Kevin.
"He left me sitting outside a candy shop to go get bubblegum machine quarters and never came back," This was obviously a sore subject.
Kevin chose this moment to join the conversation. "And you gave me a shiner, so we're even."
Donny did a very childish thing and stuck her tongue out at him.
"Kevin, we are having a girl to girl discussion," Gwen told him.
"About me," he added.
"Right. Now go away," Donny finished for them. Then she shooed him.
He left, but not without putting on a hurt face.
Donny turned back to the redhead she'd been talking to before Kevin's rude interruption. "How long have you and Kevin been dating?"
Gwen flushed a little (which Kevin, who was watching from across the small room, thought was adorable) and said, "Almost a year. But we've been hanging out for two years, ever since the whole Highbreed thing."
"Which would be when you turned Kevin good?" Donny propped up on the control board, careful not to touch any buttons or switches.
"Yeah," Gwen nodded.
The two girls spent the next twenty minutes or so discussing whatever they could think to discuss about Kevin and boys in general. Gwen spent a little while complaining about Ben, which Donny could connect to, seeing as she'd gained a younger brother since Kevin had left. As it turned out, Ben had a lot in common with Charlie the five-year-old.
They were surprised when Kevin interrupted them to tell them to get ready for the jump to light speed.
Gwen buckled back up in her seat as Donny dashed back to join Ben. She plopped back into her seat and clicked the seatbelt into place.
She looked over at Ben, who was no longer pouting. "What have you been doing?"
"Getting to know Bane," he answered.
Before she could follow that new tangent, Kevin declared that they were ready for the jump. Donny braced herself; she was expecting it to be like it was in the movies, where your cheeks flapped back from your face. It turned out to be more like the start of a roller coaster. The ship lurched forward, and then it was like nothing had happened. Unless of course you looked out the window; then you could see the stars streaking by in long, thin, white stripes.
The next eight hours would be really, really boring.
I have nothing to say to you people.
Except… REVIEW! Or it'll be another month before I update! Rarr!