20. Plumbing the Depths (Collateral Damage Remix)

It should have been her or Ben to get hurt. Not Grampa. Anyone but Grampa. It wasn't like the time when the red-skinned punk girl had sent him to the hospital. There weren't any hospitals for miles around. For that matter, while on the road they hadn't seen any buildings for the entire day! Pity the person who ran out of gas in the middle of... Gwen thought they were in New Mexico, but wasn't completely sure. No helpful people, no phones, none of the support systems of society and civilization were available.

She wanted to get mad at Ben, but that would have been stupid. He was just as freaked out as her over the whole thing, and it wasn't like he'd done anything wrong. He hadn't made the (probably Vilgax-sent) robot drone attack them. Nor had he dodged in such a way as to encourage the robot's misses to get anywhere near Grampa. Crap happened. Grampa got laser-zapped, and got a nasty bump on the head to boot, and Gwen wasn't sure which was, medically speaking, the more serious problem. What she was sure of was that she had to take control of the situation, because Grampa was too dazed to think, and Ben was too pissed to think.

"Ben? Ben, get the first aid kit out. I bet we can find something in there to help him. Grampa, come on, let's sit down for a little bit. Over here... no, not there, here. Okay. Just relax for a sec while Ben gets the kit out. Alright?" Maneuvering the nearly senseless, heavy and bulky mass of Grampa's body was hard. There was something wrong with his eyes. The pupils kept changing... they dilated, then shrank into pinpoints, then dilated again. And Grampa didn't seem to be hearing anything she was saying, although he didn't resist her efforts to move him around. She turned her head to the back of the van where Ben was noisily rummaging around. The dork probably didn't even know where the first aid kit was, even though Grampa'd specifically pointed it out to them like five times. "Ben, I think that laserbeam did something weird to Grampa, more than a regular concussion. We may have to find some help somehow. Do you see the kit?"

"No!" The word was almost a growl, filled with frustration and self-directed anger. They didn't have time for this.

"Relax, Ben," she said forcefully. "Look behind the cushion on the left side. It's a little white box with a big red cross on it, just like in Doom."

"I remember what it looks like, spazoid. It's not there."

"Are you sure you're looking on the left side?" She jumped a little when Grampa nearly crushed her, swaying down against her spinelessly. It took a two-handed push with all her might, leaving her arms aching, to get him straightened out again on the seat so gravity wouldn't turn against her like that a second time.

"The left when you look into the back from the front, or the left when you're looking at the front?"

With a disgusted sigh, Gwen hurled herself into the back of the van to find the kit herself. After almost five minutes of irritable searching, she reached the same conclusion Ben had, that the kit was nowhere around. Which did not make one freaking bit of sense. Grampa was always careful to keep it in its place and fully stocked! Why would it be missing now, when they actually needed it, when it was around every other day?!

"Uh, Gwen..."

She looked up to see her cousin with a depressed look on his face, holding up a crisply blackened, twisted hunk of plastic. It took a moment for her to realize that it was the first aid kit they'd been hunting for. The robot hadn't just blasted Grampa, hadn't just blasted the van, it had blasted the first aid kit with which they could've treated him!

"Great. Talk about adding insult to injury."

Ben tossed the box on the floor with a snort. "I'm gonna go kick the crap out of what's left of that thing."

"Like you didn't smash it enough before?" Ben didn't reply as he wandered off.

Frowning, she picked up the kit and cracked it open, searching for anything that wasn't totally destroyed. Instructions, of course, were ash. Likewise, the bandages and bandaids. She did find some smelly clear goop that had sort of survived, even if it's plastic bottle hadn't. Well, she didn't know what it did, but it was better than nothing, and it couldn't hurt, could it? Shrugging, she scooped up the gel in her fingers, planning to smear it on Grampa's egg-sized bump as delicately as possible.

A deep-throated bellow from up front left her startled enough that she fell down, smearing the liquid medicine off her fingers and all over the floor. She scrambled up front, expecting another robot attack, and found Grampa going through something between a stroke and a flashback.

"Where the hell is Fraudin?!" he roared in a voice she had never, ever heard come from his mouth before. Random jerking motions of his arms, except they weren't totally random, just out of place. Like they belonged in a different environment and situation and Grampa hadn't realized it yet, his brain in a totally different location from his body. Eyes that frantically tried to see everything, but seemed to see nothing. Nothing real, anyway. "The whole place is, is falling apart and the man who's supposed to be in charge is nowhere to be found! If central checks up on us now, who do you think's gonna get the blame? Me! That's right, jolly ol' Max Tennyson, the guy who's always got a handle on every little thing thing, always dependable, never takes his days off, always turns in his reports the day before they're due with every I dotted and every T crossed! That's who they'll go to lookin' for answers, 'cause I've always got 'em, right?! WELL I DON'T HAVE ANY ANSWERS NOW, GODDAMMIT!"

Before Gwen could even think of anything to say, lips twitching but nothing audible coming out of her mouth, he turned around and focused on her with frightening intensity. She couldn't help flinching, but when she realized she was, she steeled herself, holding straight as a rod. Had to be calm. Had to be rational. God knows someone had to be.

"Who're you?" he hissed suspiciously, eyes narrow, the pupils still fluctuating. Looming over her like some of Ben's alien forms loomed over bad guys. "I've never seen you around here before. What's your authorization level?"

"L-look, Grampa, you, you need to chill out and sit down for a second-"

"CHILL OUT?!" he screeched, causing her to recoil further. "YOU LITTLE PISSANT, I BET YOU'RE THE INSIDER WHO LEAKED LAST WEEK'S RECON TO VILGAX! ADMIT IT! IT WAS YOU, WASN'T IT?!"

The most unlikely of all saviors came to her rescue. A voice piped up from just behind her, sounding insanely serious and professional in a way she'd never heard it before, just as she'd never heard Grampa's voice so loony before. "Plumber sub-lieutenants Benjamin Hero and Gwendolyn Mage authorization level zeta-mauve reporting for duty, sir," Ben's voice came coolly, as if he had everything under control. "Don't mind Mage. She just got out of training camp so she doesn't know what's what yet."

Whether by blind luck or by Ben somehow knowing what he was doing (had he just made up the rank and code, or had he paid more attention to Grampa's stories than she'd ever thought?), it seemed to calm Grampa down. He stopped jerking around and relaxed in his seat, though he still looked very unhappy. "Right. Right, well, Hero... huh. Makin' 'em a little short these days, aren't they?" he asked, cloudy eyes wandering from Ben to Gwen and back again.

Gwen saw an opportunity to break in and stop the whole farce before it got started. "Yeah, that's because we're not-"

Ben elbowed her. "Shut up," he whispered furiously in her ear.

She pinched him. "You shut up, what do you think you're doing?"

"He's too deep in to snap out, we just gotta play along so we can keep him from hurting himself, dummy! We're a lil undernourished," Ben added to Grampa in a normal voice. "So, what've you guys got to eat around here anyway? Anything fun, like haggis or cow tongue? I hear you Tennysons like that kinda stuff."

Grampa laughed, but it was a guttural, unpleasant laugh, with spittle and bite in it. "HAUGH! Yeah, right, kid, did Joline put you up to say that crap? Bitch never did forgive me for breaking her printer. Look, when you're doin' fieldwork you can eat whatever the fuck you want, but as long as you're in deskwork, it's coffee, vegetable medley, and Salisbury steak, the end. And you might mistake the first one for the last one if you let it sit long enough. Welcome to the glorious life, heh, of being a government employee." Then he burst into tears, great big drops rolling down his cheeks. Gwen exchanged looks with Ben, who was just as confused as she was. "Oh, God, why did you take her away from me... s'not fair... VILGAX YOU SON OF A BITCH!" he suddenly erupted, but quieted down again into grief instantly. "I'm sorry... I'm sorryyyyyy..." he wailed, clutching his face in his hands and rocking back and forth.

"It can't be just the bump on the head making him act like this, can it?" Ben whispered to her while they stared in bewilderment and any number of other, less pleasant emotions. "I mean, even if it was a really bad bump on the head, they don't do things like this. Do they?"

"Why're you asking ME? I don't know," she whispered back, wide-eyed.

"Well, you're always saying you're the smart one!" he shot back. "All that time you spend on that laptop, you never looked up anything USEFUL on it, or what? Whadda you do, just surf porn?"

"That's what YOU do, perv," she hissed. "And I know, because you never figured out how to erase the browser's URL history! I looked up a LOT of useful stuff on it, thank you very much, just not head injuries!"

Ben flushed cherry-red and he looked away from her, defeated. "It was just like a couple times, I was curious, okay? I think I remember some stuff I found on Wikipedia once. We're supposed to get his feet higher than his head, aren't we?"

"I don't think so. Isn't that for bleeding?"

"Oh, whatever! You don't know anything anyway. This is such a waste of time." Ben moved forward to hesistantly put an arm on Grampa's back, patting. "It'll be alright, man. I promise. I know it hurts and stuff, but it's gonna be okay." Grampa didn't seem to hear, and just continued swaying back and forth, sobbing quieter now but still steady. "Grampa? I love you," Ben said very distinctly, eyes locked on Grampa as though he was afraid to glance at her, see what she thought of him saying that. "It'll be okay."

Feeling ashamed, as though she'd done something wrong in letting Ben say it first, she moved up and put a hand on Grampa's back too. There was ample room, she didn't even have to touch Ben's hand, which was looking sweaty. "I love you too, Grampa. Just hang in there. We're going to get you some help."

Ben looked back at her quizzically. "What kinda help? We're out in the middle of, like, nowhere times infinity." Whispering didn't seem very necessary anymore; Grampa's world had narrowed to the mysterious one inside his own skull.

"If we drive long enough we'll get somewhere, right? At least a gas station or something so we can find someone." It enraged and humiliated her that they needed someone, that with everything that made them special, they still couldn't fix this on their own. But they did need someone, anyone, that just knew what to do. Because they didn't.

"You wanna DRIVE?"

"No, I want you to drive."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence broken up only by Grampa's quieter and quieter sounds of mourning over... who? She didn't know, and probably didn't want to know. "This is a really lame time to be sarcastic, Gwen."

"I'm not being sarcastic! I want you to drive so I can look up stuff on the computer at the same time, okay? It's not like I trust you to drive like anything other than a braindamaged monkey, or anything, but it's just the best choice right now." She wasn't quite sure why she added that last part about the monkey. Seeing the hurt look on Ben's face, she almost regretted it.

As usual, the hurt turned into sullenness. "Fine, you go hide your face in your computer and I'll drive."

And that was what they did. Gwen had had high hopes when she'd turned on her computer, but those hopes quickly became angry despair as she had the connection for a second, and then lost it for a minute... and then had it for a second again, and then lost it for five minutes... and so on and on and on. She lost count of the number of times she clicked reload, trying to get just one page to load properly all the way. It never worked. They had finally reached a part of the globe where her computer had no internet access, thus rendering her hundreds of dollars of fancy electronics about as useful as her: in other words, a waste of space. Ugh. At least Ben could still go hero. Why couldn't he have had a medic alien form?! The awful way he was driving didn't do anything to improve her temper. It was the very opposite of smooth, with lots of sudden, sharp jerks and uneven speed. Sure, he hadn't crashed yet, but there was nothing to crash into, after all. A particularly rough slowdown that was almost a total stop slammed her head straight into the side of the van, and she snarled. Enough was enough. Ben was under a lot of stress, but so was she, and if he kept knocking the van around it wouldn't do any good for Grampa. She tramped up front to give him a piece of her mind.

"Hey, dork, this isn't bumpercars you know!"

"I know that!" Ben practically yelled at her, totally out of proportion to the insult, and she flinched. "S-sorry," he quieted down immediately. "S'just I'm too short to really reach all the pedals right, and-"

Gwen took in the scene in the passenger seat, and panicked. "Did you let him fall asleep?!" It was a redundant question, Grampa was snoring. Even though his eyes were still partly open. It would've been very creepy if the raw terror inside her had left any room for being creeped out.

"Y-yeah, why?! It's safer for him now like this, and he needs to rest to get his strength back and stuff!"

"You idiot, you're not supposed to let people with head injuries fall asleep! Sometimes they never wake up!" She'd read it... somewhere. Somewhere fairly reputable, she was certain. Mostly certain. Anyway, was there any point in taking a chance?!

Under almost any other circumstances, seeing Ben freak out as much as he did at that moment would have been incredibly satisfying. "WHAT?!" The van swerved in a way that did not at all match the pavement it was rolling over.

"Watch the road!" she yelled at him, shaking Grampa's shoulders as gently as she dared. She didn't want to hurt him more, but she wanted him to wake up, now.

"Gwen, I didn't know, I swear-"

"It's fine, just keep on driving." It wasn't fine, she had no idea how she kept her voice from shaking, but some part of her instinctively knew that focusing Ben on a specific task and keeping him to it was the best thing for him right now. When Grampa groaned and mumbled something about his neck hurting, the relief that flooded through her was almost euphoric. She looked all over his neck and couldn't see anything wrong with it. Not that that reassured her much. For all she knew there could be damage she couldn't see, right? Who knew what alien robot lasers could do to human bodies.

Grampa still didn't recognize them, still didn't recognize where he was, but at least his hallucinations or whatever they were had taken on a less viscerally active tone. Mostly, he just talked to himself, droning on and on about wild and crazy events that might have been real, or might have been made up, or might have been a little bit of both. She hoped that the more unfun parts were made up, imagined. The missions botched by random little details, the colorful fatalities, the office infighting, the deadly technological malfunctions, the betrayals and the assassinations. She didn't know if she'd ever have the courage to ask him, if he got better and things went back to normal. When things got better, she corrected herself fiercely. WHEN.

Ben started wondering if it was illegal for a kid to drive a car even in a medical emergency like this. She told him to not worry about it, considering all the other illegal things he did on a regular basis without bothering to think about it. Always for doing good, he snapped back! A mere look from her sufficed to get him to correct himself to 'mostly' for doing good. They kept on talking, as much as Gwen dared to talk to him for fear of distracting him from driving, especially during Grampa's most disturbed ramblings, to keep their minds off it. Every few minutes they tried to make contact with him again, break through, but he didn't acknowledge their existence. Not once did his mutterings over the past include her or Ben, which made her feel angry, and then completely ashamed for being angry over something so incredibly petty. They had no right for a place in the subconscious of their grandfather compared to his dead wife, who took up so much of his rants that it amazed her that she'd never heard him talk about the woman before today. She hoped with silent desperation that a building with people, any building with any people, would show up soon, pop up on the horizon like one of those books with the cutouts that would unfold in 3D when opened. What would they do if they ran out of gas? Would resorting to the Omnitrix make things better or worse? Should she keep trying to get on the internet again instead of tending to Grampa's disordered mind and Ben's disordered driving? Should she get Ben to break the speed limit, or would that just use up gas quicker? Should she take the wheel instead? If nightfall came before they found something, what then? Did she really remember how to read road signs as much as she thought she did? The road never seemed so flat, so smooth, so long. Like a snake coiled around the world, biting its own tail.