Sunny was crying. Actually crying. Or at least making strange hiccupping sounds that in Ben's opinion wasn't much better.
'I-I-I wish I ha-a-ad a relationship as g-g-oooood as yours!' She threw her arms round Ben and squeezed.
'I don't,' Charmcaster muttered.
Shar nodded firmly. 'Yes, I am first and foremost what they call a 'career woman.' Romance will not halt the criminals in their tracks!'
And as winded as he was from the tight grip Sunny was exerting on his neck, Ben was still able to make out the smug all-knowing glint in Rook's eyes as he turned to his sister. 'Just you wait, Shar! When love strikes you, it will shift the way you put certain priorities into place!'
Shar rolled her eyes. 'The Earth saying is that 'love is blind' not illuminating, Brother. And given what I have seen today, I must say that it is a very fitting sentiment.'
Rook frowned as Charmcaster laughed.
'Oooh, good one!'
She stuck out her palm, waving it in front of Shar's face as the Revonnahgander stared at it blankly. '...You're supposed to hit it!'
'Oh!' Shar perked up immediately. 'Why didn't you say so!' She promptly threw a hefty punch into the centre of Charmcaster's outstretched palm, only for it to bounce off as a pink bubble sprung out of the folds and waves of Charmcaster's lifelines in order to cushion the blow.
'Wow,' said Charmcaster, 'you really do take everything literally. I could get a loooot of mileage out of this.'
Shar drew her fist back, confused. But it wasn't bruised, Ben noticed, or sprouting snakes or anything else disturbing. So maybe Charmcaster's time in the bag had actually softened her up. And hell, maybe these last few days had managed to make him do something similar for Sunny. He sighed and untangled himself from her arms, feeling a slight pang as her chest continued to heave. This was more Gwen's department than his.
'Try not to jump into a relationship straight away, this time,' he told his step-cousin firmly. 'Just take some time just for yourself. I remember how you thought Antonio was poetic, and you seemed to enjoy what Rook was saying. So maybe you should do some poetry classes or something. Or enter a lyric-writing contest.'
God, he really had turned into Gwen. He could just feel Rook vibrating with amusement beside him. But it didn't seem to stop Sunny from brightening at the advice as her hair flared out into a tentacled halo of writhing sunbeams. 'Yes! I should nurture my creative spark for someone who can appreciate it! Someone who isn't Ricky!'
Ben felt his smile dip and waver at the mention of the guy's name. Poor, monstrous Fistrick. Now he would never make the weak attempt to go straight.
Sunny narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to one side. 'You don't actually feel sorry for him, do you? He deserved his fate. Now he can be one with the darkness, the way we almost were.'
Rook stiffened. And Ben winced. Because Rook wasn't stupid.
'If Fistrick has been murdered-'
'Whilst in the midst of attempting to place a whole species and their planet up for sale on the black market? Then I'm afraid that virtually no interstellar court will pursue the matter,' Verdona finished tartly, not sounding sorry at all. 'A single human life measured against the existence of an entire species, especially one many consider to be more valuable than humans, will not be seen as worthy of their time.'
Rook scowled. 'That is not just.'
'Few things in life are,' Verdona said gravely. 'And if you intend on climbing the Plumber ranks, you will soon have to learn to compromise with other factions in the universe who will not share the same sense of morality as you is something I saw Max struggling to come to terms with many a time over the years.'
Yeah. Ben knew a little something about that. He took hold of Rook's hand and squeezed gently.
'I'm sorry. I know how fond you are of whipping those handcuffs out, but you're not gonna get to arrest anyone this time.'
Rook stared down at him with that strange neutral look on his face he got sometimes, the one where his mouth tucked down slightly at the corners. Then it wavered and broke.
'I suppose I should count my blessings,' he said his fingers curling slightly into Ben's own. 'I have you back, after all. And it turned out to be a feat significantly more difficult than the last time you went undercover.'
Ben raised his eyebrows. 'Hey now, I wasn't the one who got kidnapped and held hostage that time. And I didn't this time, either. Put in trouble, yes. But not kidnapped.'
'It sure felt like it,' Rook said lowly, enough so for the tease in Ben's smile to thoroughly slide away. And perhaps just enough to remind him of a strident point.
'Grandma,' he said, turning his head and raising his chin, just enough for him to stare into her glowing eyes. 'Can you take this spark, or whatever it is, out of me? Because I already have the Omnitrix and I don't need - I don't want whatever it is that Gwen's got.'
Verdona's smile turned a little sad. 'I had a feeling you would ask me that. It's that wretched human part of you. Perhaps I should have stuck around more when you were growing up and helped to expand your view more.'
Ben snorted at the idea, picturing his dad and Aunt Natalie having some very strong thoughts about such an occurrence. But perhaps, as his Grandfather had moaned once, he really did inherit his impish side from Verdona; because he definitely recognized the way her eyes were now crinkling at the corners.
'Oooh, yes, we would have had so much fun together! Cracking and then rebuilding your aunt Natalie's teacups, a little at a time so that she would have felt she were going crazy. I'm sure we could have come up with so many bright ideas!'
'That sounds rather mean,' Rook muttered, and Ben swore, for just a moment, that he heard the trail end of Charmcaster whispering, rather fiercely, 'now why couldn't Gwen have inherited more of that jovial attitude?'
He shook his head and turned back to Verdona. 'Well? Can you? Ah, make me a real boy?' his quirked his lips and hoped she got the joke. Only to feel put out moments later as he heard her let out a very blunt: 'No.'
'Well, why not?' he asked, well aware that his voice was about to break into a near whine.
She sighed. 'You might as well ask me to take away your spleen or liver,' she explained, raising her hand out in a placating gesture. But the tied-together closeness of her fingers and the way their darkness caught the light harshly, like metal instead of the rounded softness of skin, reminded Ben of scalpels.
Rook tensed beside him, perhaps also reminded of something similar at the sight and Ben quickly moved his hand against the crook of his arm in gentle warning.
'I can no more remove the spark from your system, than I can chip out pieces of your DNA and expect you to remain whole,' Verdona continued to explain.'It's there, fused with the mana already circulating your system. You just have more of it now than you did before.'
There was a slight puff of air on the back of his neck and Ben nearly jumped out of his skin as he let go of Rook's hand and swirled round to stare directly into Charmcaster's grinning face.
'So does that mean you can hurl out pink blobs of mana like your cousin?' she asked, floating before him, all of her sprawled out casually onto her front as though the air beneath her was one long recliner. Her hands came up to perch beneath her chin to complete the effect, before she grinned, slow and easy, a strange chiding spark in her eyes. It reminded Ben rather sourly of the various iterations of the Cheshire Cat he had seen throughout his life.
He frowned. 'Why should I tell you? And whose idea was it to bring you along, anyway?'
Rook coughed. 'Your cousin is hospitalised on account of what happened to Anodyne. She was the only one we could find on short notice who could sense mana and not faint.'
Ben's eyes widened. 'Gwen's hurt!'
'No,' said Verdona ponderously, tilting her head to the side as though listening for something far away.'She's shouting at me through the mana-field. She appears to be fully conscious now. And quite angry.'
Charmcaster's smile broadened. 'Perhaps I should pay her a get-well-soon visit.'
Her iris and pupils were abruptly washed out by a broad white light as she lurched backwards, her knees bending up beneath her as though in support of her buckling frame. It was like she was trying to force herself into a new yoga position.
'No,' Ben said or started to say as he began to reach out for her, but with a blaze of white light, she disappeared and his fingers continued to pass through the space she had inhabited before. With a soft curse, he made them curl into a fist, only for them to loosen seconds later as the skin became surrounded by a soft neon-pink glow.
And Verdona let out a squeal very much like the teenage girl she was not.
Shocked, Ben stared at the bubble of light that had now formed round his fist like a lantern. It was energy, so it should have felt warm, radiating heat as though it were an electronic appliance. But instead it felt cool and crisp, reassuring in the same way that dabbing his hands in a stream after a long countryside hike with his Grandpa always felt. With another shock, he realised that he had never asked Gwen what it felt like to her to have her human skin surrounded by her own mana, and nervously, he took a step back, unsure whether to loosen his fist and risk letting the mana slip free and slide off into a bolt of pink like a bullet – but then there was a touch on his wrist, a quick, soft slide of fur chapping against his skin as Rook's fingers closed over the line of flesh visible above the flare of pink.
'Careful,' Ben muttered, eyeing the mana as the bubble widened slightly, the rim of it flaring like the sudden swell of water against the shoreline. Rook's fingers didn't flinch at this approach, but they did tighten slightly.
'Try and relax,' the Revonnahgander instructed. 'The more you feel, the more potent your power becomes. And your fear-'
'I'm NOT scared!'
'And your nerves,' the Revonnahgander corrected, though Ben didn't feel as though it were much of an amendment to be honest, 'will only feed the mana and make it stronger. I have read Gwen's file, as well as the Plumber's limited research on Anodites, so I know.'
Verdona's hands slipped down from her mouth as she gave Ben a pitying look. 'Oh honey, did you have to date such a bookworm? They're always such a downer at parties.'
Ben bit back the affront that was climbing up his throat as Rook narrowed his eyes at her. 'You could be helping!' his boyfriend said sternly, and just like that, all those retorts, all those comments about how Verdona's favourite grandchild was just as much a bookworm as Rook, died an abrupt death in Ben's mind. And the glow round his fist dimmed a little.
But Sunny was glaring at their Grandmother. 'Well, compared to the guys I've dated, Rook seems like a regular Prince Charming!' she spat out. 'So, there, Grandma!' She drifted down to Ben's level, ignoring the surprised look Verdona gave her. 'He's also, annoyingly enough, right. You can't just stop feeling emotions, or try to shove them away or whatever, otherwise they'll blow up in your face later on. Literally. You just have to, urgh, work through them as calmly as you can. It's really annoying and time-wasting and I always go and blow stuff up rather than dealing with it. It's more fun that way.' She quails a little under Verdona's glare. 'But err, if you want to be all boring about it, then you have to relax and...I guess...breathe? That's what humans do to stay calm, right?'
Ben felt his lips twitch a little at that. Breathing? Relaxing? Those were the last suggestions he'd ever thought would escape her mouth.
'Yes,' said Shar stepping forward. 'Let it go. Like that strangely catchy but still obnoxious song Shi and Shim would not stop humming when my other brother downloaded that 'Frozen' Earth movie from the Xtranet.'
Ben did outright laugh at that. Enough for his fist to shake and uncurl slightly, allowing his tense fingers to escape from its shape. And like magic, as though the action was no more than a light switch, the pink glow of mana vanished alongside the unfurling of his knuckles.
'Well,' said Rook quietly after a moment. 'Laughter does help to relax the muscles. And work wonders for your heart rate as well as aiding in reliving stress. I suppose I should not be surprised that it works on you rather than a simple mediation exercise.' But he doesn't sound grumpy, just unspeakably fond. Ha. Ben's got his number.
'Let's go see Gwen now please,' he said firmly, recognising the light glow in Rook's eyes and the soft line of his smile as the unguarded I-will-do-whatever-you-want-with-more-grace-than-usual expression. He had to take advantage of it while he still could. 'I don't trust Charmcaster with her.'
Shar looked very much as though she wanted to fold her arms. 'Yes. It would be irresponsible of us not to track her down.'
Plus, Ben was now becoming alert enough to see the little glares she kept throwing Sunny's way. Which: uh –oh.
'Ew,' said Sunny, looking oblivious to all that. 'Earth. How lame. Yeah, I think I'm checking out for this one.' She brightened and then threw her arms around Ben, who tried not to tense as the cool lines of her limbs fell over his back. 'It's been real, cuz. And...kinda nice too. Let's chat again sometime, okay? I never knew talking to a boy about boyfriend stuff could actually be fun!'
Ben had enough sense to fell relief that she didn't refer to it as 'girl-talk' or anything even more embarrassing, before she drew back, threw him a taunt wave and disappeared.
Verdona stared after her wistfully. 'Well, it seems there is hope for her after all...I was beginning to despair.' Then she turned back to Ben with a clap of her hands. 'Alright, then! All aboard the Grandma Express!'
'Wow, Grandma. Lame.'
Gwen had been having a lousy day. Rook had called her, panicked, when Ben, Sunny and oh yeah, a whole planet had disappeared, leaving nothing but a tiny star in its wake and she had immediately rapped out a tense 'I'll be there,' and tried not to feel too guilty as she hung up. She knew, logically, that Rook was Ben's partner in more ways than one, but still, when things like this happened, it was like a klaxon signal started to scream through her brain and that same panicked thread of'Ben, Ben, Ben, can't, WON'T let anyone hurt him, no one except ME' flared out inside her the way it had during that turbulent summer together when they were ten.
And then, after Kevin and her had arrived at the scene of the crime, she had ended up swaying slightly, even before she had attempted to leave her seat. The energy outside the ship was massive, it bubbled and rolled and screeched in a molten ball of gold like a lost dragon, the flecks of fire running over its surface managing to break away, time and again, to curve out into space like the stray flicks of a wing or tail. It's roar – and how could Kevin not hear it? – beat against the inside of her skull, flickers of voices and half-made out words thrumming through her brain and attempting to mash it down into potato salad.
'Help,' she had said weakly, and then she had fallen, even as Kevin lurched out of his seat to catch her.
Soo...that plan of rescuing Ben? That had been out of her hands, quite literally. And now she was propped up against the blue wall of her bedroom, having successfully wrestled her way free of the sheets, and feeling, quite frankly, out of it. She had no concept of how much time had passed and either Kevin or her Mom had stepped out for a glass of water or something, because Charmcaster was now here, lazily tapping her heels against the back of her desk chair, and no one was screaming.
Gwen scowled. 'Get down from there!'
Charmcaster rolled her eyes, but obliging shuffled her bottom off Gwen's desk, sliding her legs beneath the back-rest of the chair like it was a safety-bar on a theme park ride, so that all of her could easily slide down onto the seat below properly. The motion reminded Gwen a little too much of a snake or perhaps a particularly slimy eel, but she refused to take her eyes away.
Charmcaster grinned. 'You really are nothing like your Grandma.'
Gwen's mind raced at that, her hands shooting out to let pink light brush out from her fingertips threateningly. It pulsed there, but she refused to let it fire off into the high-speed bullets Charmcaster knew she could produce.
'You've never met my Grandma – or at least you shouldn't have. Can't have. Not with the mess on Anodyne being what it is. Which means...did YOU have something to do with it?'
Charmcaster let out a delighted laugh as Gwen sprang forever, every freckle on her furious face now highlighted by the pink that built and burnt into a blinding intensity at the ends of her hands. 'WHAT DID YOU DO TO BEN?!'
Charmcaster smiled and made as though to draw something from her sleeve, but then there was a crash of light – that's the only way Gwen could think of it afterwards,a crash, not a flash – because the walls shook for a moment, and reality swirled in a white blaze, and suddenly Grandma was there, her hair flaring out to cover and cross her ceiling like a halo, the tendrils curling round the light bulb fixed in her ceiling like a curious octopus.
Gwen blinked, her mind registering the shapes standing stiffly underneath, registering Ben, before one of them leaped between her and Charmcaster and stumbled on account of the mummy-look-a-like her right side was weighed down by.
'Halt!' Gwen blinked against as the female Revonnahgander swiveled her head round to glare at Charmcaster, mostly because she had never seen a woman of Rook's species up close before. And while the slant of her face and that faint offshoot of her dark, feline nose were more delicate than the bolder curves that made up Rook's own, that similar ruff of white decorating the majority of her face seemed to mark her out as the sister Rook had rather proudly described to her over the phone a few times.
'No more magic. Or I shall lasso you again.'
Gwen shook away the strangeness of the statement and darted over to Ben who was looking both exhausted and relieved to see her.
'Ben!'
'Gwen! I heard you fainted!'
Gwen hugged him and resolved to cuff him on the head later for the sheer glee she heard in his voice. 'Oh, what happened to you!' She tried to supress the shudder as she pulled away, but it felt like static clung to her shoulders, faint pinpricks running up and down her arms. The air hummed between them and she could tell Ben felt it too, because of the uncomfortable look he gave her.
'Um...it' s a long story?'
Verdona laughed and swirled down from the ceiling to join them. 'Oh, but it is a most joyous one too! It seems you are no longer the only one of my earthbound grandchildren who nurses an Anodite within their human skin!'
Ben flinched. And Gwen...she wasn't sure what to feel.
Because...he had always had the Omnitrix. Been the first one of them to be special. But then she had found magic and her powers, and had kept them, learnt more, made them grow, even after he had shed the Omnitrix for a few teenage years of normalcy. And for once she had been the special one. Even more so, when it was revealed that she had inherited something inside of her that would never spark and grow within Ben.
This...this changed every-no. Not everything. Just the way she perceived them both.
There was a loud bang as the door swung back, almost off its frame and Kevin bowled in fist-first. 'Gwen!' Then he stopped. 'Ooookay,' he said, eyes flicking over everyone in her room, before they landed with a scowl on Charmcaster. 'Glad to see you back in the land of the living, buddy, and not as part of some fireball, but did you have to bring, well, Caroline here?' he jerked his head over to Charmcaster, who smirked, waved and blew a grossly exaggerated kissy face at him.
Shar let out a small gasp. 'He is not your mate! You should not be flirting with him! Unless...' she paused, brought a tentative finger up to her mouth and ventured a guess. 'Unless you are all part of a polygamous relationship...'
Charmcaster, who had been developing quite an ugly scowl at each word dropping out of Shar's mouth, straightened slightly in surprise at the last two words, before her head dropped down and her shoulders began to shake.
'Shar!' Rook looked appalled, his eyes nearly bugging out of their sockets. 'You cannot, you must not- what have you been reading!'
Shar frowned at him. 'Many alien cultures engage in relationships that are not purely monogamous. I was shocked too at first, but when I began reading the anthropologic backgrounds for such behaviour, I could begin to understand why such things started and how it was less a deviant behaviour and more of a lifestyle. And for some people, a necessary one.'
Rook's mouth seemed to be caught in a black hole, his fingers flexing slightly as though they wished to shoot something. Charmcaster meanwhile, had given up all pretense and was cackling her head off, kicking her heels back so violently that they lurched up and managed to catch at the edge of Gwen's desk.
'Quit that! You'll chip the paint!'
But Verdona simply shook her head, and with a sad look on her face, hovered down to Ben's level and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, giving him a patronizing pat as she did so. 'How did you wind up with such a prude for a boyfriend? I just hope he makes up for it behind closed doors.'
Ben stiffened, looking horrified. Gwen didn't blame him in the slightest. She raised her fist, letting it glow a healthy pink.
'Charmcaster, for the last time: GET. OFF. MY. DESK!'
Five minutes and a smashed desk later; everyone was more or less settled down. Some things, Gwen thought irritably, glancing over the chipped splinters marring the lining of far-flung drawer, were just inevitable. Case in point: remain with a five metre radius of Ben and something was bound to get broken, even if he wasn't the direct cause.
She sighed. 'Ben, you can't just...make yourself not an Anodite. It's a part of you now.'
Ben flung his hands up. 'Sure you can! Find the right magic spell and hey, presto chango! I'm back to not being a pink flashlight!'
'You have only managed that trick once,' Shar pointed out. She was leaning down inside an old bean-bag cushion that Lucy had given Gwen for Christmas. It was purple and ragged and the stitching was awful, great, ghastly, uneven crosses of navy littering its sides in hulking patches, but it made Shar tip over and giggle slightly every time she shifted within it like it was novelty, so Gwen grudgingly decided that it had its uses. Plus, it seemed to have entertained Charmcaster, as she was busy stroking her fingers across the forms of one such cross in question. Perhaps it reminded her of the similar blend of ugly stitching that decorated her bag and its weird face.
'I don't care how many times I manage to give everyone a lightshow, so long as there's an end to it,' Ben said angrily, now sitting on the carpet. His fist clenched and there was a faint pink glow hovering over the taunt knuckles for half a second before Ben caught sight of it, swore (and that caught Gwen off-guard – Ben hardly ever swore for fear of small kid or media camera lurking nearby) and uncurled his fist, lying it flat against the floor pink hue faded as Ben glared at it, but failed to cut out completely.
Looking worried, Rook leant over and slid his fingers across the faintly pulsing ones of his boyfriend's, letting them settle over the small, knobbly bends of the knuckles with the large collective arch of his hand. It was weird, Gwen thought with a start. Ben's hands were littered with faint lines and wrinkles, a collective web of green running beneath the skin in the form of blood vessels like all human's. But now they were hidden away by the light, tucked over by its pink spillage in the same way such biological features were always hidden away on Rook's hands by his fur. And it was weird to see such a contrast lost between them.
Either way, the light seemed to flare up even brighter at Rook's touch.
'Err...' said Ben looking alarmed. Rook didn't look much better off, in fact he was wincing as though in pain, but after a moment the line of his mouth became firmer and he pressed down a little harder.
Pink instantly pressed out, no, sprang out across the carpet, bouncing into the leg of Gwen's bed with small explosive shatter. With a quick snap of a creak, pieces of wood shook off the limb as it bent and broke in two and Gwen was forced to sigh as she conjured up a pillar of pink to hold her dangerously swaying bed in place. 'Grandma?' she asked between gritted teeth.
'Of course.' A moment later, her bed no longer needed to sway as the leg reformed itself, broken matter twisted and reshaped like clay so that it snapped back together without a crack in place to mar it. Gwen bit her lip. She had almost seen what her Grandma did that time, the way she pushed and pulled the mana into doing what she wanted...but no. She couldn't quite hold it in her mind, the way reality snapped back into 'being' like an elastic band, instead of simply 'wishing' it to be so.
Verdona sighed and gently slid her hand over Rook's with a firm, gravelly pat, the way a caring parent might do to a child in need of reassurance. 'Off,' she told him firmly, 'you're making it worse.'
Startled, he drew his hand back.
'Ben,' said Verdona. 'Producing mana for Anodites is a highly emotive process. I'm amazed Gwen managed to control it so well when we first met, unschooled as she was. But perhaps that was precisely why; she was still a child when she first discovered what she could do and children, as I have seen in many species, are highly adaptive. You, while still young, are a little more...fixed, shall we say, than when you were ten. And in love. That will make it harder. Love makes every emotion harder to handle, especially when in the presence of the one responsible.'
Ben flushed and Rook coughed quietly. Which, of course, did nothing to prevent Kevin from letting out a shit-eating grin.'Aww.'
Ben wriggled. 'Shut it, Levin.'
But Rook was frowning. 'When Ben learns to rein in this power and unleash it as he wills, it will be quite useful, yes?'
Gwen felt her heart sink, though she was not quite sure why. Especially as Rook's voice picked up, the excitement within it growing in order to reach up and make his eyes brighten with a gleam. 'So why not train it, Ben? The Omnitrix, while useful is not always reliable. But with this in reserve, you will be able to protect yourself better!'
Ben gave him a dull look. 'Meaning I couldn't protect myself before...?'
Gwen clapped a hand over her mouth to prevent herself from snorting.
Rook blinked. Then gave him a crooked smile that wasn't quite insincere, but still ran awkward enough for Ben to narrow his eyes at it. 'Is that a rhetorical question? Your skills are not insufficient. But I will not deny that 'every little bit helps' and I for one, would welcome such an asset.'
'Oh really?' Ben asked coldly, drawing his hand away from Verdona. She let him, but there was now a twist of worry to her brow that had not been there before. 'Was it still just an asset barely an hour ago when I nearly lost my humanity for good and you were prepared to shoot my Grandma in the face to get it back?'
Rook stiffened. But he wasn't the only one. Gwen could feel her own spine being pulled up straight and beside her, she could see Kevin's eyebrows falling, the joke being wiped off his face.
'Soap opera central, here we come,' murmured Charmcaster, an avid expression now on her face.
Rook's eyes narrowed. 'That was different,' he said, equally as cold. 'You were not just in danger of losing your humanity; you were in danger of losing your individuality as well. I had never seen you so disoriented before, so unsure. All creatures suffer self-doubt, but you usually make an effort to hide it. And this time you were incapable of even that.'
'Well, excuse me for having millions of voices in my brain!' Ben shot back. 'It's not easy hosting a planetful of energy beings!'
'My point exactly!' Rook exclaimed, throwing his arms out in that dramatic flair of exasperation that often caught him when he was dealing with Ben. 'You were in pain!'
'Weeeell it didn't exactly hurt in the 'ow' kinda way, but even if it did,-'
'You were in pain,' Rook stated factually, his voice lowering and now sounding a lot more sure of itself as a result. 'And I had to stop it. And in the future, when you are in danger of suffering pain again and you have Anodite powers to help prevent that, then how can I not want you to keep them and use them in such situation?'
Ben's eyes dropped, his hands floundered against his knees for a second, and he looked, for lack of a better term, lost.
'I'm the wielder of the Omnitrix,' he said lowly, a familiar stubborn jut to his jaw. 'And it's suited me fine, long before now. I don't need magic, I don't need mana, and I don't need to start glowing pink every time I feel something.'
Already there was a slight flicker of bright pink spreading out from between his fingers, like the tiny shake before the main eruption, but before it could burst into a fully-formed glow, Ben closed his eyes, breathed in harshly, and the light dropped, crashing and smashing into pieces against the carpet like Gwen's mana platforms often did.
Gwen bit her tongue to prevent herself from pointing out that all living things needed mana in order to exist, but Ben was already clambering to his feet and striding out of the room and Rook, his eyes still narrowed, was swiftly jumping up in order to follow him. And that was when Gwen felt herself move, felt pink blossom under her feet with no more than a thought in order to push herself between him and Ben, cleaving much-needed space between the two.
'No,' she said firmly. 'Let me talk to him. As one human-anodite hybrid to another.'
