Chapter Ten: Torn Asunder
Maxwell Tennyson had been searching for answers for years. Through every known database in the galaxy for any information on Gwen's innocence. He knew she had done nothing wrong, they all did, but she had been sent to the Null Void. Ben, Kevin and the other Plumber's Kids had been planning to spring her from jail and help her go into hiding when it had been announced that she'd died in prison.
Will Harague had jumped all over this story, calling the entire Tennyson family a lot of murdering, treacherous scumbags. Kevin had gotten wasted, Cooper had joined him in his endeavors, Julie had cried herself to sleep, Emily had gone over to see her and they both reminisced about their friend. Even Sunny was stunned into silence. Magister Hulka had decided to launch an internal investigation that was still ongoing fifteen years after one of his finest students had been declared dead.
"She's a standup kinda girl, no way someone with her morals is gonna kill somebody, the kangaroo barreled into the courtroom full of idiots."
Max lay in a hospital bed, because he had discovered a long-buried secret that would save his granddaughter's life after sixteen years.
Max had been there for a week until Ben had gotten him transferred to a Galvin doctor and he had completely recovered, but Ben told him to rest until he found who had attacked him.
Maxwell saw a young man standing outside his door. He had white hair and bright blue eyes.
"My name is Leroy, the leader of the Dollars sent me, she said to come to the Plumber's meeting tonight, she said you want answers about what's going on."
Leroy tossed him something. Max looked at it. It was a hair band, something that he'd given Gwen.
"Where'd you get this?" Max demanded.
"You'll find your answers tonight."
Gwen stood in her house and slipped into nice clothes, that cost several thousand dollars, but she wore her old prison uniform from the Null Void over them.
"It's time to go," Gwen walked out. Faria followed her; he sent a text to all the important people in the Dollars, not the original group in Ikebukuro, but the members that specifically worked for her.
Gwen walked out to her limo and soon a procession of cars followed her. They drove to a hidden area where she had transport ships waiting with false security clearances to get her into the Plumbers headquarters for Earth Sector.
She pulled out an I.D. mask and placed it over her face, hiding her appearance. Gwen used her own variation of the Plumber's badge to contact her followers.
"Put your I.D. masks on, it's time for the show to start."
They landed and infiltrated the building, tranquilizing anyone in their way and putting them in energy binders and duct taped their mouths shut so they couldn't get up to warn anyone.
Leroy found the sound booth where the technician was; sometimes they showed video or holograms during their meetings. They knocked him unconscious and placed their own man there.
"You know what do and when," Gwen nodded at him.
"Yes boss," he replied.
"And this is where it begins," Gwen smiled.
Kevin saw Ben waiting for him outside his house.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"It's going to happen tonight, she contacted me. Be there, the Plumber's meeting."
"I'll be there," Kevin nodded.
Tonight was going to be really interesting.
Kevin left his house.
"Dad, where are you going?" Devlin asked.
"Just out for awhile, I have a meeting, Plumber's business." Kevin turned and left.
Devlin called Kenny. "Dude, my old man's up to something."
"What do you mean by that Dev? He's always up to something."
"He's going to a Plumber's meeting."
"So?" Kenny frowned.
"My old man hates those meetings, and I think he's trying to ditch me."
"Well, let's go and find out. It's probably gonna be a boring meeting just like they always are."
"And if it's not?" Devlin prodded.
"All right, I'll humor you!" Kenny followed his best friend. They made their way toward the Plumber base.
They found a place where they could see and hear everything but not be noticed by others.
Morrg was giving one of his long and useless speeches, ranting about how the galaxy was worse off because of the Dollars.
"It's because of them that criminals are running rampant. The alien tech black market is out of control and the drugs are being trafficked and despite our best efforts, they continue to evade us!"
"This is so boring, Kenny groaned.
"Let me show you surveillance footage of the Dollars and how brazen they've become."
Morrg gestured and the video suddenly came on, the crowd gasped in shock as they saw a figure being restrained while two men gloated over her.
Michael Morningstar was the first to speak, "So nice of Morrg to give us the collar and the energy cuffs, now we don't have to worry about lovely Gwen's powers."
He removed a knife and held it close to her eyes. "I could gouge out your lovely eyes, but then you wouldn't be able to look at me, and it makes me happy that you have to see me every day instead of Levin. No, I'm going to slice up your face, so even if you did escape, he wouldn't take you back, Kevin only likes girls when they're smoking hot, he wouldn't ever want you."
Devlin flinched as he saw the knife blade bite deep into her skin.
"Aaaah! Stop! Stop! Please!" Gwen screamed, but Michael sliced her face, smirking as she continued to wail in agony.
"Just hurry up and do her, I want my turn," Michael goaded the nameless thug.
"Yeah, just let me undo my pants."
"Ladies and Gentlemen, regardless of what happens next, you mustn't look away, not even for an instant!" The voice that spoke was female, and familiar to many in the room.
"Stop fiddling with that stupid camera and help me hold her down, even with the restraints on, she puts up one hell of a fight!" a man's voice growled. "You know you want me, Tennyson! Stop screaming you little slut, just enjoy it, you know you like it."
"I'll kill you, beware, my revenge will be terrible when I take it!" Gwen shouted hoarsely.
"What's this?" Morrg shouted in terror. The entire room was watching the video.
The man slapped Gwen hard across the face.
They could see the figure clearly Gwen and she looked very terrified. She was also nude, and nothing was censored or covered at all.
"Let's see what else we can do to her!" Michael snarled on the other side of the camera.
"No, no wait, please! I'll do whatever you both want, just don't rape me anymore!" Gwen's voice as desperate.
The man that no one recognized spoke up first.
"Then give me a blowjob sweetheart, do a good job and maybe I'll be gentle with you."
"All right," Gwen said, trying to keep the terror out of her voice.
"Make sure you touch me too. I like it a lot. You know Michael, after she's done with me we should tape her doing you, send it to Levin, that'd be really funny."
Morrg was terrified, everyone could see everything, it wasn't like on the news where you blurred or edited the video so no one would see anything, it was quite obvious what was happening and then he heard his own voice say over an intercom.
"Hurry up and finish, I need you out before Magister Hulka gets here!"
"Stand up on the chair, it will give me…a better angle to do this," Gwen whispered as she kissed him, shoving her tongue into his mouth.
Devlin and Kenny were trying really hard not to look at the screen, but then again, so was everyone else.
"You're really kinky; I like that, what's with the rope?"
"Autoerotic asphyxiation, you know, kinky," Gwen tried to sound flippant. She slipped the rope around his neck then returned to what she'd been doing earlier.
The audience's reactions were more than enough, people became visibly sick and some averted their eyes. Kevin's eyes were riveted to the screen; his fists were clenched until his palms started to bleed. To think that Michael and this other scumbag had degraded her and tortured her, filming it like it was fun. He wanted nothing more than to reach into the video and kill both of them. The fact that she was still bleeding from what they had done to her face was horrible.
"I'm going to—" the man began to groan.
"You're going to die!" Gwen snarled, as she suddenly shoved the chair that she had manipulated her rapist into standing on out from under him. The body started dangling as the man began choking.
"I can't breathe, Michael, I can't breathe!"
Michael dropped the camera and it landed awkwardly as Gwen removed her toothbrush which she had turned into a shank and stabbed Michael in the leg, the wound was very deep.
The sound of a door slamming was heard and the man continued to fight for his life.
"No, Tennyson! Don't! Don't!" They heard him gasp as he was stabbed over and over again until everything was quiet; they saw the battery on the camera die as it shut off.
"It's a lie!" Morrg shouted. "Gwen Tennyson is dead! This video is a doctored lie!"
"Flatter not yourself that such is the case. An all-wise Providence permits not sinners to escape thus easily from the punishment they have merited on Earth, but reserves them to aid His own designs, using them as instruments whereby to work His vengeance on the guilty."
"Just who are you?" Morrg demanded, looking around for the source of the voice. The audience was searching for it too.
"You know me, Morrg, you know me, very well," the voice said. Suddenly, a spotlight pierced the darkened room and fell on a small, but commanding figure.
"it can't be, you're—you're supposed to be dead!" Morrg shrieked. "Why are you here?"
"I, betrayed, sacrificed, buried, have risen from my tomb, by the grace of God, to punish that man. He sends me for that purpose, and here I am."
"But it's not possible!"
"Say my name so all can hear you!" she shouted at him.
"Gwen Tennyson!" Morrg uttered. The entire room gasped in shock, not just at the admission, but at the sight of Gwen Tennyson.
The hideous scars on her face, the paleness of her skin could be seen on her body were proof that she had been a prisoner in an Incarcecon.
"O God of vengeance let your glorious justice shine forth!"
The lights in the room ignited and the entire Plumbers' organization saw that Gwen was surrounded by men in slick black suits, the emblem of the Dollars was shown on an insignia and they all knew that she was the leader of the Dollars.
With a snap of her fingers the uniform dissolved away, revealing the fine suit she was wearing and the insignia of the Dollars.
"You see Morrg, I have used the Dollars to better the galaxy, because it's you Plumber's that are making it worse. I created this because of you, because you're all corrupt hiding behind your noble speeches and pretty faces. With all your moral ambiguity betokens me to proclaim that I am the future of the galaxy!"
They all knelt before her and shouted as one, "Gwen Tennyson, Ma'am!"
They stood to their feet and saluted her. Magister Hulka was stunned. The Dollars had infiltrated their headquarters and none of the Plumbers had any weapons on them. They couldn't fight them if they wanted to, and the Dollars were all armed with the latest weaponry.
His finest student, the head of the intergalactic mafia. He was torn between awe and horror. Still, considering what he'd just seen on the megascreen, he didn't blame her one bit.
Gwen suddenly doubled over with pain. Hulka saw a man rush to her side; he suspected he was the only male Anodite that was known to exist. He couldn't recall his name, but it was rumored he had escaped the Null Void too. So that was what he was doing now.
There was a camera that easily showed that Gwen was holding in her hand anti-inflammatory medicine. The Plumbers knew immediately that the video they'd seen was true and the scars on her face didn't lie.
Max Tennyson was there as well. He felt like it was all a horrible, terrible nightmare that he would wake up from, but he knew that it wasn't, his body shook with a rage that there were no words to describe. He rushed straight at Morrg.
"You let her rot in that place and let those monsters rape my granddaughter you despicable, disgusting freak!" Max began to slam his fists into the alien's face. Over and over, he wanted to make him pay.
"Someone, make him stop!" Morrg pleaded.
"How many times did I call for help with no answer?" Gwen sneered. "No one was there to help me, and no one here wants to help the likes of you."
"It was because of you; I was born and raised in that hellhole!" Evan shouted, the focus turned to him, and Max took a glance at the boy and knew who he was, the resemblance was too much for him to not know what had happened.
"I should kill you! Put you down like the rabid dog you are!" Max was about to strangle him.
"No, Grandpa, he can't suffer if he's dead, well, he would go to Hell, but that's too easy."
"You must be proud, Gwen Tennyson," Morrg coughed loudly. "You are a bright and shining beacon of justice, a hero and savior of the galaxy."
"Proud?" Gwen screamed in his ears. "You think I'm proud of what I am? I'm the villain protagonist of this story, you idiot! I have become everything I ever fought against. Look at what you have created. A God of Vengeance to pass judgment on you. Look at me! The monster inside me is getting bigger! I have done nearly everything in my power to bring about our reunion. There are few lines I haven't crossed. The very actions that I once despised I embrace, and everything that I have believed in has been transformed into nothing but empty lies."
"She quoted Johan Liebert," Kenny gulped. "We should run away now."
"I remember that anime, that guy made my dad look sane, really, really sane," Devlin agreed.
She gestured to a curtain that was pulled away to reveal piles and piles of money. Warden Morrg gasped, it was the sum total of all his wealth converted into Earth cash.
"I watched my life go up in flames, now it's your turn. Killing you would be too easy. Living and knowing you've lost everything is so much worse." Gwen began pacing in front of him, "But I have made it even more humiliating for you. Not only will you see everything you cherish destroyed, but all the people you ever put in the Incarcecon will see it too!"
Gwen gestured and revealed that Morrg was surrounded by the same people he had imprisoned. He was quaking with fear. How could one human woman do the impossible and expose the corruption that he worked so hard for years to conceal? She'd almost single-handedly stolen his wealth and shattered his reputation as an upholder of justice.
"I don't feel sorry for you Morrg," Ben Tennyson's voice rang out. "You hurt her, and that's an understatement. You forced her to do something that I never thought was possible and you've turned her into a criminal, but when you goad her to do the impossible, she'll do it. I for one have been waiting for someone to knock you off your high horse for years. I just never dreamed it would be her."
"Tonight is a day of infamy in the history of the Plumbers. Tonight, the villain won." Gwen walked over and brought out a lighter and a full gallon of gasoline.
She ignited the lighter and threw it on the money. Morrg began to scream, "That's my money! You can't do this to me!"
Gwen turned on rows and rows of monitors, showing various opulent houses, located on various planets. "These are all the houses you bought with your ill-gotten money. All of these properties belong to me, and I'm getting rid of them!"
"But you'll lose billions of dollars by destroying them. If you're going to take everything I own, at least make use of it!" Morrg simpered at her feet, whimpering like a pathetic fool.
"I am making good use of it; I'm using it to humiliate you. Burn it all down!" Gwen threw the lighter into the stack of money and the flames began to lick the paper, reducing it to ashes. Simultaneously, men set fire to all of Morrg's houses, all that could be hear was the sound of buildings being set aflame.
"It's a beautiful sound, isn't it boys? The sound of vengeance as Providence punishes the wicked with retribution worthy of their crimes. Drink it in, and enjoy it, it's not every day that corrupt officials taste their own medicine."
Kevin was slack-jawed. He'd heard stories about getting even, but this was the most well thought out, exquisitely planned vengeance he had ever seen in his life. "I'm utterly speechless!"
"Tennyson! Tennyson! Tennyson!"
Kevin and Ben watched as she casually took a deep puff of her $1,000 bill cigarette and tossed it into the burning inferno. Devlin and Kenny were watching from their hiding place and thought it was the most badass thing they'd ever seen in their teenage lives. Why did she have to make being the head of the intergalactic mafia look so freaking cool?
"We better split before our dad's catch us," Devlin said.
"Hello son," Kevin spoke behind them.
"Oh, man!" both boys groaned.
"Do you want to go see her?" Kevin asked.
"Yes!" they eagerly answered. Kevin led them to where Gwen was.
Ben and Kevin stood by and watched her as she spoke to thin air. "I shouldn't feel so happy. I have ruined a man's reputation, desruoyed his livelihood and sentenced him to an eternity of despair and loneliness. But I'm so giddy, I feel like I'm ten years old on Christmas, it's like the high school graduation or how I feel on my birthday. I conquered him, I won. But I can never rejoin the Plumbers; I can't get my old life back. How can I go back to normal when I am a monster both inside and out? What would Kevin see in me that he would want? I can repair my face with surgery, but it's not the same! What can I give him? My body? I couldn't even look at him the night I made love to him! I probably disappointed him, but he'll never tell me!"
"Gwen, if I cared about how you look, I would have left you the night of our reunion," Kevin told her; she hadn't even realized he was there.
"This is your story, don't you forget that. So what if you're the villain protagonist and you win. Pay evil unto evil. There are no heroes here, no squeaky clean knights in shining armor. When I mutated because of the Omnitrix a long time ago you didn't care about my looks. You loved me for who I was. I love you for what you have always been, a strong and good person who always saw the best in people."
"And if you honestly must know, I love you so much, I am happier with you more than anyone I have ever been with and I have had a few girlfriends in my life. And the happiest I have ever been is with you. Don't ever think otherwise. I have you and that's all that matters to me."
"Please stop lying to me!" she raged, "Stop feeding me the words I want to hear, tell me something honestly for once!"
"I am not lying to you. What I've told you is the truth."
"This fair, you both are supposed to stop me...I'm the evil that you are fighting against. I shouldn't...it's not..."
"There's too much black and black morality in the Plumbers now. Ben may be a saint over there, but this will end when you are finished, and I say that you're justified, and if you must be punished then it can fall on me."
"He's right, as much as I hate to say it, everything we all fought for is gone, I don't really believe in anything anymore," Ben sighed. "The world has been turned on its ear and nothing is the truth."
"I...I..." Gwen broke down in tears and flung herself into Kevin's awaiting arms. He comforted her and soothed her with calming words and let her cry.
"I'm sorry you had to see that video, Kevin," she whispered.
"You did whatever it took to survive, it was disgusting, but you're still here and that reprehensible scumbag is dead."
"I know, Ben you shouldn't have let Kenny and Devlin come here, I didn't want them to see that either."
"I didn't they snuck in."
Gwen finally wiped her eyes and gathered her composure. "It's bittersweet I know, but at least Providence has punished him. From now on, I will no longer feel guilty for what I will do. I will make them pay. It's time I stopped living in regret."
"I have made my decision," he told them, "Something I've been dreading for a long, long time."
"What's that?" Kevin asked.
"I'm leaving the Plumber's. They attacked Grandpa Max. We will make them pay."
"I am leaving too," Kevin agreed.
"But Kevin, being a Plumber was your dream," Gwen told him.
"My dream became a nightmare when they took you away from me," Kevin's eyes became hard. "This is not the organization my father fought and died for. And it's too broken to be fixed."
"We're with our old man, we're leaving," Devlin chimed in. "If we're going to be painted as the bad guys, we might as well get the quitting part over with."
Gwen reached out and ruffled Devlin's hair affectionately. He blushed from embarrassment.
"Hello Kenny," Gwen hugged him. He was stunned that this was the same lady who ruled the intergalactic mob with an iron fist as was feared by every criminal who knew anything about alien tech.
"Is everyone here Ben?" Gwen asked her cousin.
"Yes," Ben opened the door.
Max rushed into her arms and wept. "Pumpkin, it's so good to see you! I have to tell your mother—"
"No, grandpa, what I'm doing is too dangerous; I don't want her to know about me, not until after this is over. It's enough that I told you everything."
"But it's not right, she doesn't even know she has a grandson," Max sighed.
"The timing isn't right," Gwen sighed, she hugged her grandfather a little longer.
The rest of the Plumber's helpers walked in. "It's time to get rid of them," Manny added. "Just tell us what to do."
Gwen composed herself and straightened her shoulders. "We're going to do the impossible. We're going to declare war and destroy the Plumbers."
Later Gwen saw Morrg as he was now dressed in a prison uniform instead of his Plumber's uniform.
He looked up at her, "Have you come to gloat?" he asked.
She handed him a Plumber's firearm, he knew there was no way he could shoot her as she would deflect it with her powers. She saw the doors of the transport shut as it prepared to depart for an Incarcecon, his old incarcecon, which had new staff, all people that hated him and worked for her, there was no one he would be able to bribe and all the droids had been replaced with various alien species.
Morrg couldn't stand the idea of returning to his old prison as a prisoner, not like before, he'd rather die than go back there. He pulled the trigger. He was horrified when nothing happened.
"You didn't think I'd make it that easy did you?" Gwen asked. "The fiery torments of the eternal Hell are too nice for someone like you. I will give you eternal suffering and remorse, but without the fire and brimstone. The demons don't get to have their fun yet."
She shouted to the pilot. "Get him out of here!"
The ship pulled away. Gwen watched him leave as the others gathered around her. "One."