Cartoon Network Universe: Earth One - FusionFall

by RayO1

ENTER THE CARTOON NETWORK UNIVERSE LIKE NEVER BEFORE; 5 years after an attempted invasion from another world, 16 year old Ben Tennyson meets with old friend Dexter McPherson, who now runs a technology corporation called Dexlabs Inc. He is asked to test out the new version of a time machine, but when someone screws it up, everyone on Earth is thrown into a war to save the universe.

9. Chapter 8: Hands on a Hard Drive

Bold = Emphasis/Commentary

Italic = Emphasis/memory moment/transmission

[] = Artificial Intelligence/Android Speech

---

JULY 18TH - 2014 - SIYENN CITY, CALIFORNIA - GOAT'S JUNKYARD

On this cloudy day, Harold Cooplowski shifted in his fold-out chair, the metal seat creaking with every change in his balance. This had been a taxing couple of days, especially after enjoying one of his favorite dishes: a cheeseburger, stacked with hot dog sausages, wrapped in pizza dough. It really couldn't be beat. Never mind the fact that the ground seemed to shake and vibrate every second, the stray pieces of soil hovering every now and then; the snack was too good to savor as he was waiting.

It had been 20 minutes. 20 long and excruciating minutes since he sent the kid into the Junkyard. This was clearly stress-eating. But for the life of the narrator, no one could tell when this guy was stress eating or just enjoying himself.

Before creaking further back, his brain took a second to think, and one excruciating second it seemed to be. One second where his eyes darted away from the sky, and an existential panic consumed his conscious faster and faster by the microsecond. He was never one to question what was standing right in front of him; squid aliens from the far future? Sure thing. Time travel? Kids' stuff. Post-Apocalyptic wastelands? Been there, done that, even made a few himself! But just how far did that go? No, no questions, he thought. Coop kept rolling the feeling of bliss back in his head. But...everything about this felt unprecedented. It was so unlike anything he had encountered before; well...there was one at that Thanksgiving Parade float...but that didn't count, right? That weird plant couldn't do anything like this.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a figure approaching him. A skinny, pale-looking man dressed in a green hoodie and black leather jacket, the only thing keeping his head warm being a pigeon-blue skull cap beanie. His best friend apparent, Coop called out to him.

"What'cha reading?"

"He left the van's door open, so I peaked. He's got a journal." he explained, with no apparent concern for a total stranger's privacy. "Half the writing in this thing is about his guilt for proposing to his girlfriend."

"Yeah...that'll do it." Coop chuckled, hearing a humorous take on what sounded like a humiliating and stressful situation. He turned back to his friend. "Hey, Jamie?"

"Yeah man?"

He looked back at the sealed-off entrance...and was met again with disappointment. It was only a trip through a quarantined junkyard, what was keeping that kid? From the depths of his food-centric mind, a sprinkle of sympathy...or was it empathy, emerged to get him to take action. "Ehh...you mind getting the phone?"

"We don't have cellular out here."

"Goat doesn't get service?" That was a surprise. Given how rich their former acquaintance had gotten, and given the strangely effective strategy of franchising his Junkyard. "How do we have internet but no service?"

"Actually you were on my hotspot." Jamie explained to a disappointed Coop, hiding a concealed frustration with his friend. These data plans cost money. "And uh...this junkyard isn't exactly one of his go-to-games, not when the real deal's still back in Jersey."

"I really miss that junkyard...this new one kinda sucks."

"It got you to move out of your Mom's, right?" Jamie spoke true. The couch potato, even after getting a giant robot, still lived in his parents' house. He would've probably taken better advantage of how much chicks dig robots. Think of all the free BnBs he could've gotten! Staying in total strangers' homes, and then doing it again every night? He could've overstayed his welcome without any issue.

Speaking of overstaying one's welcome, Jamie found himself staring into the Infected Zone just as Coop did, shuffling and getting antsy. "God that kid's taking forever."

It would take a miracle to move this ennuyeux episode along for these two slackers.

BOOM!

Unexpectedly, a giant BOOM occurred right outside the entrance, coupled with a blinding light. While not a miracle, it certainly gets things moving, literally and figuratively. Coop's trailer shook once and with a violent bounce. There were audible cracks and crashes heard from outside. A few dishes shattered on the ground, the davenport clearly toppled over, and the TV's screen was beyond repair-

"NO, NOT THE TV! MY GAMES!" Coop exclaimed in unimaginable fear and panic.

But of course, the semi-retired pilot of the MEGAS robot rushed to his mobile home, his smorgasbord of snacks still in one hand, and a nonchalant friend watching him dash inside. It had been 7 years since he found that robot in New Jersey, 7 years of piloting the future Earth's last line of defense, and yet his attention span didn't improve at all.

---

SIYENN CITY, CALIFORNIA - TECH SQUARE - DEXLABS HEADQUARTERS

Every detail was immaculate! Edd Zimintator was having the time of his life. Waltzing between the walls, zipping and rushing to anything that either screamed highly advanced technology, or just shiny. He even took a swirl as he melodramatically eye-balled every inch. "This place is humungous! It's beyond my comprehension! I feel humbled stepping inside." The only one who didn't seem to share his excitement was Dexter, the boy genius who built the place.

The aforementioned boy genius also happened to be behind him, serving as an impromptu tour guide to his own headquarters. "I am glad you enjoy it...this is only the meeting hall." His sardonicism was only met with more star-gazed surprise, having the opposite effect of poking fun at the Cul-de-Sac kid. But Dexter couldn't help but admit to himself, the conversation was quite engaging. Not many boy geniuses, or near-boy geniuses, could actually talk to him outside of internships and job offerings, and even so their sincerity and ingenuity was something he found himself hard to trust. And of course, managing a friendship with a rival with almost polar opposite beliefs about scientific applications...Mandark seemed only to boost Dexter's worst social excesses.

Not Edd though. His academic intuition was amicable and free by ego, something Dexter couldn't even say about himself. If helping this resistance against Fuse meant his sincere involvement, he realized he could take a few pointers from this new and upcoming genius.

"I read about your scientific grant. Your research seems quite promising." He complemented.

"I would have hoped so...you were one of the people who paid for it." Edd reminded, halting in his admiring of the Dexlabs meeting room. Immediately though his tone turned apologetic. "I wasn't able to enjoy the full funding, not with my compatriots at the Cul-de-Sac conspiring to...well, take money."

"That is quite relatable." Too many memories of his sister compromising his inventions came to mind. Dexter absolutely could relate. "The invasion certainly hasn't helped, what with all the cardboard boxes you tell me they keep buying."

"Yeah." Edd suggested before correcting himself. "It must be quite exciting for you, with all the potential profit coming out of this."

"I'm not a war profiteer. Why would anyone enjoy doing that?" he agitatedly retorted. Seeing that Edd was looking down in shame, Dexter tried to alleviate the situation. "Work is what I enjoy. But I don't particularly enjoy making weapons."

"Ah, so...this entire thing must be rather challenging."

Smugly, he closed his eyes and pushed his glasses up, looking to correct Edd. "Not challenging. Making weapons isn't what's challenging. Rather...it is everything else surrounding it." Dexter explained. "Mandark's overwhelmed with all this, so I am simply helping out. I'd prefer to leave the weapons business in more committed hands."

It took him an uncharacteristically long time to realize it, but Dexter was starring at a blank wall, not adorned with any of the glowing diodes that illuminated the meeting room, the same diodes that Edd was staring at intensely. He couldn't even notice the sock-head turn to him and nod in understanding. It was stressful, his situation, and it wasn't getting any better.

Poking her head out with a flail of red hair, Edd noticed the Powerpuff Girl known as Blossom enter in the corner of his eye. Her eyes were wide, but generally she didn't seem pressed by urgency. She was trying to get Dexter's attention.

"Dexter we need-"

"-your help with the robot." Just as Blossom was talking, Dexter began too, predicting exactly what she would say. And when she trailed off, he finished the sentence. He spoke in complete unison with Blossom, much to her annoyance. "I shall be right with you."

Pressing his lips, the sock-headed Double-D was quick to put forward another inquiry. "Another minor question..." Edd prepared to ask, pointing to two strangers behind Dexter; one was a tall blue anthro-jay, admiring the pulsating glow from the wall panels. The other was a stocky brown raccoon, seemingly uncompelled by the scenery. They had gone unnoticed the entire time, standing in the background with absolutely nothing to do. Naturally, their unnatural presence attracted someone's attention. "Who're they?"

The boy genius then made the mistake of turning back, nearly getting the bird and raccoon's attention. "...yes. Edd, those two are Mordecai Quintel and Rigby Salyers: park groundskeepers. They had called me about wanting to help."

"In what precise way?" Edd followed up. Simply 'wanting to help' was incredibly vague...and not exactly helping at all.

Dexter sighed in agreement. "That...is exactly what I had asked them...but they refused to answer and just hung up. Now...I'm unable to get rid of them."

"Oh."

Once again, Blossom suddenly poked her head from behind the blind spot. She was getting impatient; but what was so important if it wasn't urgent. What was the emphasis or meaning of one extra robot in the fight against Fuse?

She didn't wait to see what was up, and asked again almost immediately. "Dexter, we-"

"-you need me right now." Dexter did it again, earning more ire from the pink Powerpuff, who rolled her eyes. Nodding in affirmation, he signaled Edd further into his headquarters, walking at a brisk pace and into the deeper building.

Naturally, Mordecai and Rigby silently followed the two as well. Though they were considerably more disinterested.

"Do you think he even remembers us from the fountain incident?" Mordecai asked, to which Rigby fervently shook his head. No way a kid with an ego twice his size could remember people like them.

---

Metal slabs of stairs folded out from beneath each footstep Dexter took. His hands laid behind his back as he descended, his stride almost surgically planned with every swing of the leg and landing of the foot. This façade of confidence was backed up by the cold sterile air of the laboratory, radiating a frosty disposition and objectivity to each element, living and mechanical, in the room. It felt less fake and more like he was showing off.

What Dexter didn't know was that everyone was wise to his dramatics. But seeing it was rude to call him out on it, they kept quiet, and addressed him the way they would any other way.

"Firstly I was gonna say we needed your help, not that you're needed right now." Blossom told him, floating gracefully towards him while taking every opportunity to hold one over the boy genius. Being a scientific prodigy herself, she wouldn't admit to her own egocentric tendencies, but she was more self-aware about them. "Secondly, we finished tracking him down." She pointed to the screen, previewing a profile pic of a blond and tanned man dressed in a flannel shirt missing its sleeves, a patch on his left breast area with the number 12 printed on it, and a shiny southern belt buckle with a brilliant flame pattern, securing a stretched out pair of ripped jeans.

Edd immediately recognized the character on the big screen. "Hey...is that-"

"This is the person-of-interest you recommended to us yesterday, yes." Dexter confirmed, earning another look of validation from Edd. No one would have considered his references back in Peach Creek, he assumed. Turning to the leader of the Powerpuff Girls. "Blossom?"

[Accessing files] Computress pulled up much more than the man's picture. It was a full dossier of every relevant detail pertaining to the person.

"File pulls up as Harold Cooplowski, formerly employed at Goat's Junkyard LLC in New Jersey, then literally exiled to the other side of the country (that's here) after several criminal charges built up since 2007." Pulling up another pop-up window, Blossom began to read off each of them. "Charges that actually overwhelmed the New Jersey supreme court, including arson, larceny, obstruction of justice...loitering and..."

"Here's the big one." Ben muttered.

"Destruction of property, on over 135,000 counts...per year. The only crime in the book he didn't commit was Grand Theft Auto, and that's because of the vehicle he used in all aforementioned counts...being nigh-impossible to steal or be stolen back...a-"

"-A GIANT ROBOT!" Edd excitedly blurted out, interrupting the pink-adorned protector. There was no over-explaining or classifying definition that he would usually preface the apparatus with. It was, simply put, A GIANT ROBOT! A blue one, with hints of a silver chasis, adorned with flame decals on its front, its arms, and its legs. On one arm, there was an eyeball, and the other arm sported an 8-ball (both decals, obviously). In between two taillight fins was the pilot's head...or rather where the pilot's head should've been was instead filled in with a sleek-looking car.

No one knew what kind it was. Typical of their generation.

What was more impressive to them besides the car was the obvious modifications made to its chasis. Ben could tell which areas were purely custom made mods, and which areas hailed from either a distant planet or another time period. The geniuses in the room were more impressed by Coop's re-engineering. Blossom was more curious how he managed to apply the graffiti. This guy had no powers, only a single known associate named Jamie Saunders. He didn't exactly have two friends to rub together to make a third, and even then the paint-job should have looked-whatever the case, she pulled up more files on the robot, no longer sidetracked.

"Not much is known about the robot, none of the police or towing companies got a license plate or brand name. All we know so far is that it's packing one of the largest arsenals on the planet, comprised of technology of unknown origin. It got the attention of a single alien species, also unknown in origin. Aside from said aliens, it also says Cooplowski's most frequent target was apparently the DMV...and that's all the trivia I can find." Stepping away from the holographic interface, she turned to Edd in admiration. This was a good scouting job, and given Fuse's recent development with the Fusion Doppelgangers, she was more willing than ever to consider acquiring more firepower. "Not a bad recommendation, Edd." she complemented.

"There's something else, isn't there?"

"Yep. He actually called us." Blossom revealed. Behind Dexter, Edd raised a brow, realizing the candidate he recommended may have only popped up on their radar because of this coincidence. "The way he explains it, MEGAS's databanks rely on two hard drives. He has one, but the other's still in the robot in the junkyard...which just got cordoned off as an Infected Zone. Obviously we need to help him, but this is how we fold him in."

The Ed with the encyclopedic intelligence, on the other hand, seemed far more hesitant than before. It was clear that he didn't lose any enthusiasm "I...would, in retrospect, reconsider. Not so much the candidacy in incorporating him into the team, but...well...everything else."

From the corner of the hall, a blue jay spoke up. "He sounds badass, honestly." Mordecai remarked, earning an unchanged expression from Blossom. "Intense, but...yeah, super cool. Hire him." He added on before catching a glimpse of Dexter's dirty look through the glasses. The boy genius shot him a glare that could have killed, were it not obscured by the glowing blue lens.

And as implied, Dexter was also less than thrilled. "I understand the need to increase the Earth's chances of winning this apparent war, but can we not agree that this man poses a danger to more than our enemy? We need to assess how his record affects us and them."

"We are trying to save the world." Ben spoke rather redundantly.

Blossom was, surprisingly, one to object. In any other situation, she'd agree with the irresponsible nature of this "hero". But with all that was on the line, what was the hold-up? "That's overstating it a bit. With either of your guys' leadership, we can steer Harold in the right direction." She really had faith in the both of them, but she figured Dexter would be able to sync with Coop over their shared mechanical expertise. This was Dexter's chance to be a better leader.

But still, would they really get along? "Yeah, but how does a guy destroy his own city fighting bad guys?" Ben tried to reason. "I'm not gonna lie, with a record like that, this guy comes off more like a villain."

"That makes no difference in actually folding him into our club." Blossom explained. "Mandark's already in contact with Mojo, Benedict Uno, the Morebucks Corporation, and...some other guy named Beeman, and there's nothing wrong with finding more when all those guys are stationed around the globe. Besides, relative to them, he's way more morally gray."

"Morally gray?" Dexter was exasperated. "I-Blossom, he leveled an entire city!"

"We've done the same, no one really complained." The pink powerpuff was strawmanning at this point and she knew it. And though there was some truth to her words, she was hyperbolizing. She had a bigger point in mind.

"You're comparing your 'record' to vaporizing every building within 100+ acres!?" He was flabbergasted Blossom would even be accepting any of this. "Annually?" He added on.

"Well excuse me, Dexter. I didn't realize science excused you of all responsibility." Blossom's fury was inching upwards. She didn't particularly enjoy releasing her rage on one of her oldest and closest friends, but she could never forgive a double standard, not even from him. "You want me to tell them? Or should I?"

Three and a half seconds passed before Dexter finally realized what one of his oldest and closest friends was referring to. "Blossom." Dexter silently and stiffly begged. "Blossom, please don't tell them."

"I'm telling them."

"No, Blossom, pleas—"

"This guy here, in one of his ego tantrums, shrunk down the MIT campus because his sister got in before he could. Something about–what, extracurriculars? Failing and cheating at P.E. with a fold-out limb-enhancing mech?"

Mordecai voiced the one question that everyone was thinking. "Dude, how are you even a doctor with that baggage?"

"It's an honorary doctorate. The most I could officially and legally earn was summa cum laude." Dexter muttered, earning a couple stifled giggles from Ben, and a wave of shock fell over Edd.

"But you still got the PhD?" Rigby inquired.

Rolling her eyes, Blossom's roasting moved onto its next target, the green-eyed, green-clothed kid with a green watch. "And you can't say anything about that either. Y'know the Powerpuff Hotline is a NanoApp now—we get constant complaints from one guy, Ben! One guy whose shop you keep destroying!"

"…Oh hell, not him." Ben muttered; his head took a sharp drop down, staring at his shoes as he realized who they were talking about.

Blossom continued her rant. "Like…so many times. How do you wreck this guy's shop so many times without driving him bankrupt?! He has a ledger, Ben!"

"Okayokayokay, we're getting sidetracked...again." the alien hero admitted. "Obviously, aside from like, Jack, we've all done really destructive and stupid things and regardless of how much of it we can each say we did, Coop's involvement is still fair-game. Me and Dexter, we'll talk to him, help out with his hardware issues, whatever those are, and he should be willing to join."

"Exactly." Blossom concluded. "As long as we can trust that he keeps himself in check, just like Simon does with the other bad guys, it works in our favor."

"It appears another field trip is in order. But what about these two?" Dexter asked, pointing to Mordecai and Rigby.

"Mordecai and Rigby? They can tag along. They don't even have to do anything." Ben noted inattentively; the park workers shrugged and accepted the role. After that whole incident with the boy and his dog from the future, they would've expected a little more recognition, but this was fine. "Edd can stay behind and quarterback us."

"That, I can't." Edd interjected. "I've been monitoring another situation in Candy Cove. That, unfortunately, has my attention."

Ben sighed, while Dexter nodded. The latter was more than okay with Edd managing operations, despite that Edd had never once worked with his technology, he figured Blossom would stay behind to walk him through it. Ben on the other hand was a tiny bit disappointed, having seen first-hand the kind of bravery Edd was capable of on the field. Whatever the case, it was good Edd was making himself useful in any respect, no less in the field he was most experienced in.

Blossom clapped her hands together, signifying that the plan was set. Everyone had their jobs (except her), and they'd hopefully take care of the situation. "Alright! We know what he have to do. But just remember, have a little more faith in Coop. If he's really been doing this for seven years, he should understand the nature of a superhero team-up." She told the boys as they made their way up the stairs to leave Dexlabs HQ.

Dexter sighed to himself. He should have been just as enthusiastic as Blossom. His whole concern over making weapons was revealed to the newest member of the team, and here was one laying at their feet. But the pilot attached to this weapon gave him great discomfort from reputation alone. "Our concern isn't him being a maverick, it's what he's capable of as a maverick." he explained, turning around before continuing to climb the stairs. "Ben, you're paying on the Slider."

"Aw, man..." Ben lamented. Another $3.99 to pay off the recent damages to Mr. Bauman's store...gone.

---

SIYENN CITY, CALIFORNIA - GOAT'S JUNKYARD

Out of breath, out of time, and trying to keep it together, the boy in the pink varsity jacket crumpled and collapsed as his back met the solid stone wall. His descent was slow and steady from all the exhaustion. He had wanted to help out as much as he could, but these aliens...they had strength in numbers. He was lucky they didn't leave a scratch on him.

They were the World-Eaters. Spawns of the Great Harbinger. At least, when he was living at the Temple, and whenever his three surrogate mothers would have time to teach him about Crystal Gem culture...that's what Pearl and Garnet called them. The former dismissed them as a myth, a belief only given credence by what she knew of this reality. And even then, she didn't know enough. It overwhelmed his mind, to think that the Crystal Gems who were at most 10,000 years old...were merely millennia younger than whatever he faced down below in the piles of scrap and dirt. A history long forgotten.

These things were ancient, and Steven Universe knew that even for him this was far out of his league. Self doubt and isolation crept up his back, like mosquitos to rich amber, or butterflies readying to take off into the air. Steven could tell he was losing it, and why wouldn't he? For all the loose ends he tied before he left his home, for all the goodbyes and hugs and kisses he could feel even as he was miles away, for all the assurance that the Earth would be safe...it really wasn't, was it?

The thought was now in full flapping its wings, circling Steven's head in a nauseating sensation. Of course the Earth was never safe. From the geo-weapons to the invasions to the corrupted...people. It all was just a reminder that he so innocently ignored. There was an entire universe out there beyond the Gems and the Authority. There were Broccoloids, Space Demons, Plumbers, G3, now this...where did it end? Would all of these really keep him from a normal life? He had to hold it together, holding his head as it became increasingly heavy from all the nauseating and discombobulating thoughts...fluttering around like butterflies.

He couldn't let it get any worse. So, he took a moment.

One thought, one path. One moment to collect himself.

Deep breaths. One. Two. One. Three. One...Four.

That always worked.

The credit went to his therapist; she was so helpful. Kind, supportive...and not the first. The first one was that Borges woman. Too cold. Then there was that anthro-weasel. Too self-absorbed. But this doctor helped. She was willing to. She reinforced things that seemed obvious, difficult in practice. But things that he felt he knew. It was simply Garnet's advice to his fusion. The pain and guilt wash away, the thoughts flutter away.

He came back to the right-now. To the present. The pulsating containment shields. The route-ways, miniature roads to get around the junkyard easier, lined the entire lot. The green sky...a reminder of where he was, when this was, and in the distance, the colossus that was the robot.

The robot...Coop's "car."

"Hard drive." Steven reminded himself. Yes, the hard-drive. He had to get to the car...if he could open it.

And below, the World-Eaters...their spores attempted to climb.

"One more..."

Steven stood up, summoning his shield in a flash of hot pink light, using it to stand himself up like a walking stick. Now, he couldn't risk going back down there. Maybe he could hop onto one of the floating pipes and platforms. Gravity was weird in the infected zones, rendering the most random of objects with its own gravitational field as the planet below was trying to compensate for the gravitational changes.

Steven knew though that it wouldn't be enough. Those platforms were narrow, and the pipes were even harder to jump onto.

This required some old-fashioned Diamond powers. He took several steps back, shield still at his arm, and found the least narrow platform to jump onto. It was high, higher than even the robot seemed.

Running towards the ledge of the factory top, he made his jump, soaring as high as he could, and with his own defiance of gravity, he descended onto the platform with grace.

It's a shame that he didn't notice the spores below him immediately spotting him. It looked like they were almost at the ledge, and now they were changing course...growing membranes on their sides, bending metal and chasis in their monstrous forms to fly just like him.

---

RIGHT OUTSIDE

"I fail to understand." Dexter began to ask irritatingly. "What is taking him so long?!" Two hours had passed since he and Ben arrived, and there seemed to be a series of unfortunate events at play. Ben's NanoCard didn't have sufficient funds to pay for the bus trip, forcing him to pay out of his own pocket. Then, he's greeted by this guy Jamie–the beanie-wearing slob, and since then the four of them had been waiting for a most uneasy number of hours. He didn't want to shout at Jamie, but Coop was the one that called. He expected a little more punctuality from the main man.

Behind him, Ben was looking around. It was quaint, the entrance to a junkheap surrounded by a steel fence. It looked like it circled the entire area, only cut off by the containment shield. It felt like mini-piles of trash could be found for miles. Leading towards the entrance were several holographic advertisements for the other locales in California. One for Bravo Beach City, back in his hometown of Bellwood, one for Endsville, a neighborhood on the other side of Siyenn City; there was even one for Orchid Bay, the shoreside shipping district of San Francisco.

And of course Townsville had an ad at the front of the Junkyard gate, proudly selling its magnificent skyscrapers. The Mayor of said city was front and center, with welcoming open arms, but the shotophop was sloppy; you could tell that he was cropped while at Townsville City Hall's pickle stand, holding two pickle-dogs.

It was rather dreary to Ben that the most eye-catching elements of the land before him were advertisements for other places. The rest of the junkyard paled in comparison. He could tell that even without the green sky looming over the entire place, that this establishment was dreary as all hell.

When it came to their mission, Ben wasn't happy with the route they took. Despite the great speed of the Slider System, they ended up making several stops before walking on foot. He wished that they could have gotten there sooner. He wondered if Mojo Jojo had ever even considered his Sky-Monkey inception. Whatever the case, he wished now that this mission would be over sooner.

Looking to make conversation, he looked to greet the park workers behind him. He remembered now; he had met them once; they never exchanged words. Being on roadtrips every summer really set the tone for meeting lots of new people. "Good to see you guys again." He remarked. "Been a while since that crossover with the Land of Ooo."

Mordecai and Rigby exchanged looks. Did Ben literally just say that to make conversation with them? The last time they were in the same talking space was literally just an off-handed glance. "Bro, we barely even know you. It was a one-time encounter. And we didn't even know what that watch even did." Mordecai told him.

"Okay, true. But I know you wanna be noticed, and you want to do some good for this whole situation." Ben sheepishly told them. "I'm not gonna stop you, but for now stay close to the big guns. Being right next to an Infected Zone is already extremely dangerous." he explained. Behind the three of them, the boy genius was having no luck with Jamie, and had waded over to wait with the rest of the group.

Mordecai was less than happy with Ben's reasoning. "So stay close to you, but don't get involved." he paraphrased. "Great talk." the blue jay was clearly mocking Ben now; for all that camaraderie and spirit he gave into that broadcast, none of that was evident now. Ben could only roll his eyes a bit. He was half the age of this guy, and somehow he was the more mature one.

The raccoon had more to say, and reasoning to back up Mordecai's apparent eagerness to join the battle. "Y'know we actually piloted a giant robot too once." Though in addition to supporting his friend, Rigby was intent on one-upping the heroes in front of him. He had driven one more robot than they probably have. "We only got to use it once though. It never went to Outer Space."

"Which, by the way, we have been to, for over 3 years." Mordecai interjected, also clearly feeling inferior compared to the two in front of him. Why he would feel inferior about having an extended stay in space, probably spending more time there than Ben himself ever did, no one could possibly guess.

But clearly, the humans were well-aware. "We know." Dexter said. "We read the papers." Their whole extended stay in space was the only reason Dexter took their call seriously.

"Papers? Pfft. It's all digital now."

"I know it is all digital now, because I made it so. Reading the papers, however, is still the colloquial expression." He believed.

Just then, the sound of a metal door opening caught his attention. Dexter swiftly turned around, and standing behind him was the man himself, layered in his flannel half-shirt, adorned with all sorts of miniature metal buttons and zippers that looked added onto the fabric, and of course the shirt with a big number 12 on the left breast area. At last, Coop was in–or, rather out–of the house. "Don't be too sure, pal. Being outta touch in your field sounds nose-dive deadly."

That was probably not a real expression, not at that time anyway, but it was what he spoke. It was a soft and laid-back voice, and most certainly from New Jersey. The heavy-set man in plaid stepped down the not-so sturdy metal stairs of his trailer home, coming out with an extended arm to greet the boy genius and alien hero.

"Thanks for showin' up on such short notice." Coop said with a sly smirk, knowing he kept them waiting for far longer than their short-notice arrival. "Didn't know what else I could do."

"You didn't?" Jamie asked as Dexter and Ben took turns shaking Coop's hand. Ben immediately recoiled when he was done; Dexter couldn't tell because of his gloves, but Ben felt a hell of a lot of sweat and callouses on that palm. Clearly Coop had been working on something delicate in that trailer.

All the while, Coop himself was still talking to his close friend. "I didn't. The only thing I'm good for is sealed behind those shields. I sure as hell can't go inside." Coop reasoned before turning his attention to the two leaders against Fuse. "Now, I know you've got questions and stuff, so...well, actually, you probably looked me up when you got here, so maybe not as many questions as I thought."

"You refer to piloting the...robot?" Dexter inquired.

"Yep. I'm the only one who can pilot MEGAS. The big guy's hooked up to video game controllers, and who's better at video games than me?"

"Wait, you pilot it with video game controllers?" Ben asked. With a quick nod from Coop, the alien hero was impressed. "That's so cool..."

"Those and a steering wheel, but heck yeah, dude."

"We also wanted to know, what kinda car is that on your robot?" Rigby asked...to no objection. From the footage they saw, it was a pretty cool car.

So of course, Coop took the opportunity to boast. "Custom 1970 Plymouth Barracuda. Built that baby from scratch. All the way from the pistons and engine blocks to the mirrors and leather seats." Dexter raised his eyebrow. He was in disbelief. Looking to the much more candid and objective Jamie, who could only nod his head, the other eyebrow rose to meet and create an even more surprised expression.

In any other situation, it would be hard to believe that a single guy could build an entire car on his own, let alone rig it to a giant robot and rig it again to video-game controllers and his steering wheel. The difference would be that none of them would have the criminal record to prove it, or the automotive knowledge to confirm it. The dossier on Harold Cooplowski was true to the Tee. The engineering expertise of this guy was clear as day, and it left everyone almost awestruck. None of them would admit it, let alone make it obvious, but they really wanted him on their side now.

He was too cool.

To Mordecai and Rigby, the inferiority complex was creeping up their backs quickly. What good did their nine years of wacky and surreal misadventures mean if they couldn't even do half of the things Coop said he could do? Pride was getting to their heads, and they tried compensating. "Y'know we actually piloted a giant robot once too." Rigby murmured. "It also had video-game controllers rigged to it..." Though his murmurs fell on deaf ears.

"Space for...three years..." Mordecai murmured. Once again...went unnoticed.

Clearing his throat, Dexter got back on topic. "Okay, Mr. Kowalsk–my apologies, Mr. Cooplowski, you said you needed assistance obtaining your robot's hard drive. But I would assume that, because you say you are the only one that knows how to operate your robot, you are also the only one who knows how to obtain the hard-drive." Dexter questioned. It was obvious why Coop couldn't go inside himself. He was human, lacking the apparatus that made him a super 'hero'. It was clear why he would need some superhuman assistance.

"You can call me Coop." the pilot corrected. "Yeah. I got one hard drive in my trailer, but the other's still in MEGAS. I mean I don't know for sure why it's a huge deal? Those things are hard to decipher, and I know 'cause I've been poking at this one for hours."

"Noted. I'll set up a commlink so you may direct us to find the second drive." Dexter said while he nodded, and soon after that he took a few paces around the Junkyard entrance, seeing the robot in the distance, towering the entire establishment, stationary and in a rest position. It sparked one last main question in Dexter. "What does MEGAS stand for?"

To the boy-genius' disappointment, there was nothing but silence from the all-knowledgable Coop.

Though that's not to say that Coop didn't try to give some kind of answer. "Uh, like Mega-Awesomeness-"

Seeing that Coop had truly forgotten the full name, Jamie pinched his nose as he got up from the tires. Behind the three visitors, he spoke up. "Mechanized Earth-Guard and Attack Sentinel. At least, that's what Kiva told us it stood for."

Coop seemed pretty amazed. His typically disinterested friend actually remembered the full designation. "How do you even remember that?"

"Why don't you?"

"You mentioned in your message that we weren't the first to try and help with the hardware troubles. I assume this "Kiva" metahuman is inside the containment field? Doing what she can to repair it?" Dexter asked, keeping the conversation going. Going off the same logic as before, it made sense that this Kiva person they were talking about had to have some superpowers of her own. "How would she know how to repair it if you couldn't?" he further inquired.

"'Cause she's the one who built it. She was from the future, like...way into the future. Like a couple thousand years or something." Jamie explained.

"I see. So...is she inside the Infected Zone?"

"Err..." Coop paused, the words on the cusp of his tongue, held back by the end of the white lie. He really couldn't take it and further, and so he blurted out, "...life's funny."

It didn't reassure or draw sympathy from anyone. "Oh my god." Ben realized. "She's not around anymore!?"

"She sorta...fizzled out like, a couple weeks ago. We thought she just went back to the future." Jamie explained. "Obviously she didn't. 'Cause she didn't come back. We have no idea what happened to her."

Moving past the pressing mystery of where Kiva disappeared to, Dexter wanted to know who was inside. "Then who's in there?"

"Some guy I called, he had like a van and a really cool backpack and-"

"Get to the point!" Dexter was fed up with the meandering. Whoever was in there was losing time and they were the ones wasting it. "Who did you send into the Infected Zone, Coop?!"

"Some guy!" Coop shouted back, before regaining composure and explaining further. "Again, some kid I called; 'went by Steven Universe."

Everyone's eyes widened. He sent in who?!

"Steven Universe?" Ben's eyes lit up with worry and wonder. "As in that kid who liberated the entire Promethian Galaxy?"

"That dude that hangs out with the lesbian space rocks in Bravo Beach?" Mordecai asked.

"The legend with a limited edition Ultimeatum-Cheeseburger backpack?!" Rigby exclaimed. "I say let 'im die in there! I call dibs on the—"

"RIGBY!"

Ignoring the raccoon's crass comments, Dexter continued interrogating his friend. He knew they lived in the same city, but never knew they were familiar with one another. Why he never expected such a possibility is beyond comprehension, but whatever. "Ben, have you met him before?"

"It was one time…when we were kids. The Crystal Gems had been undercover on Earth for over 5 thousand years; the Omnitrix landing and…well, my aliens, sorta blew their cover wide open, and eventually we stopped by the Beach." Ben clarified. "What was Steven doing here at a Junkyard?!"

Coop held his hands to his wide hips. "I called him 'cause of the car troubles, and he thought he could help by lending me his van."

"And you forgot to tell him the car troubles were with your giant robot."

"I told him I left a few things out…besides he seemed cool with it." Coop reasoned calmly. But behind Dexter, Ben was scratching his head in inner discomfort towards that impression. He had heard Steven left Bravo Beach City months ago, set on his own journey across all fifty states to find a new life away from an endless battle. Years of trauma had taken its toll on the poor guy. It was then that a wave of guilt overcame the alien hero; to have winded up by Goat's Junkyard, so close to home, must've meant Steven was trying to help out with the invasion.

Ben grimaced. Was his call to arms now going to inconvenience someone's emotional stability for the sake of the planet?

He wondered if Steven thought the same thing when deciding to return anywhere near Delmarva County.

"Well the longer he's in there, the more at risk he is…and the more of a risk that becomes to us." Dexter concluded, pacing closer towards the rippling containment shields. The light bounced off his glasses just as his realizations became darker. No one could tell, but Dexter was way past worried and close to panicking. "The Crystal Gems are among the oldest species in the known universe, and since their physical forms are made of hard light, their genetic sample would be hard to obtain…but were Fuse to acquire the genetic sample of a half-human gem…" Turning around, keeping a resolute face in light of dark tidings...everyone shared that same look. The gravity of the situation was clear.

"Oh...hell." Ben said. He hadn't thought through that.

"That sounds bad." Mordecai spoke. "And we barely know what's going on."

"Wait, I-I'm still a bit-OW!" Rigby was interrupted once again, this time with a hard punch to the side.

"Yeah, we gotta get him out." Ben declared. Dexter needn't say anymore. It was time for their action.

Uh...right?

What Ben should have expected at that moment was for all eyes to stare at him. Which they were, but he didn't realize until that very moment that he was the only one with superpowers. Dexter wouldn't go in, and he already wouldn't risk the lives of the two dudes that followed them. He'd have to make the journey into the infected zone alone.

He gave a weak sigh. "Okay, I'll go get him out. Remind me again how we enter Infected Zones without a warp-gate?" He almost sounded annoyed that Dexter hadn't figured out the warp-gate tech yet. It was on the USB drive from the future. There must've been something that was missing in those plans.

"In lack of those, because I have not yet invented them," Dexter began to suggest, "you have a temporary program in your nanites. You will be able to walk through without trouble."

"God I hope this doesn't terminate all my clothing." Ben remarked, approaching the rippling waves of the holographic wall, bypassing the quarantine perimeter as easily as with yellow tape.

---

To his surprise, and relief, it did not terminate any part of his person.

But Ben was well aware of why additional apps for anyone's nanites could pose a problem. Overloading them with information was one of many causes of Exponential Variegation, also known as turning into an EVO. The sooner Dexter could invent those warp-gates, the better.

Ben turned around to see Dexter's warped figure across from himself, standing on the opposite side of the containment shield. Through the warbled visage, Dexter could be visibly seen reaching for his ear, prompting Ben to mirror his action. Just a tiny press of their ear cavity could activate the proper nanites and set up a NanoCom Commlink.

With communication now established, Dexter had to be sure Ben knew what he was doing, as he was going in alone. The last time he went it alone, there was 3-day panic from Ben's friends and family. Dexter wouldn't risk that again...not intentionally anyway. "I assume you know how to identify him?"

"I don't know what he wears these days, but curly hair and some kind of pink energy shouldn't be hard to spot." Ben reasoned. "I'll be out shortly."

"Affirmative. Stay safe. I will not be able to track your Nanite signature inside the Infected Zone, so good luck."

With that, Dexter's voice cut out, leaving Ben to get to the task at hand.

Taking a few steps forward, holding his fists to his hips, and soon after, raising his left arm to meet the Omnitrix. He popped open the dial, and surveyed the holographic previews of his aliens. "Alright, I need to be in the air, and to mask my scent...that is, hoping fusions have a sense of smell..." Ben trailed off, realizing that the Fusions weren't alive in the traditional sense; they probably didn't have a sense of smell. If that were the case, he would've gone for Stinkfly, but not knowing as much it was safer to bet on a wider range of aliens. "Yeah, I don't care which one I get, just gimme something with wings!"

With all that confidence in his watch, it seemed like everything would go smoothly. He'd slam the watch, go alien, and get Steven out before he gets hurt or worse, sampled by the fusions to make some kind of Fusion Steven doppelganger.

So he slammed the dial, and let the rest happen on its own.

...

...only he didn't feel anything. There was no neon green light, no sound. The dial was slammed and pressed.

And yet Ben 10 remained human.

"The hell?" He cussed, flummoxed by the apparent glitch. Why wasn't the Omnitrix working?

He gave it a little side-smack with his hand, and even shook his wrist up and down. Seeing that wasn't working, he popped out the dial once again. Pressing it gently as opposed to his typical slamming...did nothing either.

What was going on, he thought. This hadn't happened before.

Not knowing what else to do, he popped out the dial a third time. Not paying attention to the hologram, he tried pressing it again. And to his heartbeat-skipping surprise...

...this time it worked!

That brilliant neon flash of light caught him off-guard; a wave of relief came over him as he bathed in the green energy that covered his body. He was so startled by the suddenness of the transformation that he didn't have time to process what he felt he was turning into.

So when he opened his eyes to find himself half his height, green, but long-tongued with not a single wing on his body, he was understandably upset.

"I didn't even ask for a specific alien this time! Come ON!" Yeah, he was tired of this running gag. Around the third summer he had with the Omnitrix, he had learned to call on a different alien or turn back into Ben at will. It required gently touching the left black sector on the Omnitrix badge in alien form. He had learned the hard way that it wasn't worth abusing that function when it wouldn't even ensure the right alien sometimes. All it could be relied on was changing him back to human.

But he decided to hell with the randomizer. Anything had to be better in this situation than frickin' UPCHUCK.

Pressing the badge, he tried again, hoping to Azmuth the watch wouldn't screw this up again.

---

"So they who control the hard-drive controls the entirety of the robot?"

"That's what I took away, yeah." Jamie reasoned. "MEGAS's systems are tied to a dual hard drive set; I guess the data was split in two for covert purposes? You never know how these war machines work. But yeah. You can't really use the robot with only half of its systems."

"I'm assuming the two of you knew how to obtain the first hard-drive?"

"Coop knew. Kiva convinced him to build in a failsafe whenever MEGAS was offline. Literally any one of those buttons in that car could be the one to get the hard drive." Jamie explained as Dexter nodded in agreement. To the boy genius, this made his precaution of setting up the commlink all the more rational. "Yeah it is weird. But he is telling the truth. Coop's the best engineer I know, if he couldn't figure out how to decode it, I don't know who else can."

"Does he...know how to decrypt a file?"

"Not one in a future language."

"Ah..." Dexter understood. From the sound of it, this programming language was unlike anything they had seen before. "Then what makes you think we would fair any better?"

"Between the kid with the cosmic watch and the other kid with a diamond in his stomach, I figure someone can translate that kind of stuff." Jamie reasoned. "Kiva probably could...but, well she's gone. And I-we have no idea if she's coming back." He almost sounded like his voice was breaking up, if only by the tiniest of hints. He must've missed his friend dearly, especially one that would tag along for 7-or-so years.

Looking back to the containment shield, and seeing no warped figure of Ben, Dexter was reminded by Jamie's nostalgia. "On the topic of coming back..." he began to say, "Ben. Do you read me?"

"I read you. Sorry, 'was having some watch issues. I'm flying over the junkyard now." explained Ben. "'Gonna enter radio silence for a bit. I don't want to get any fusion attention."

"Excellent," said Dexter, "we just have to account for everything going according to plan, and-"

BOOM!

Unexpectedly, a giant BOOM occurred right outside the entrance, coupled with a blinding light. It startled everyone in that junkyard. The two park workers jumped in shock, and Dexter made an instinctive crouch down, all too used to explosions. Smoke and dust quickly filled the field they stood on.

Jamie was surprisingly undisturbed. But he was definitely perturbed. "God, not again." he muttered.

It was a blast so powerful it forced Coop out of his trailer. "GODDAMNIT! Will you stop that? I was tryin' to eat DINNER!"

Rising from his crouched position, Dexter turned to see what it was. But there was no need. The figure responsible for that explosion instead came marching into the Junkyard entrance himself. Sporting a blue hoodie, curly but slicked hair that pointed upward, and a familiar set of glasses, he marched out of the cloud of dust he created with his time-jump.

"Nothing is going according to plan!" Otto shouted.

---

Across the heaps of trash, on the other side of the Junkyard...

...Steven Universe was running for his life.

His shield was still in hand. This was the 5th one he had to generate, the other four he lost on the way from the platform to the ground. He was panting, out of breath and sorely regretting this mission. He would never admit it though, no matter he had been encouraged to be more brutally honest to people he liked. The squish and squash of the bouncing spore monsters chasing him, the loud growls of something totally inhuman, the metal clanking of what almost felt like dinosaur footsteps, all of them were telling him to keep running. At least to find somewhere to get the drop on them.

He couldn't do that while they were chasing him. Quickly, he threw his fifth shield, decapitating the Junkasaurus Wrecks that was tailing him...

...failing to notice an uneven level of ground two paces from the back.

He tripped. He was on his back now, and quickly in defense, he summoned a bubble before the spore spawns could bite his face off. It was a miracle that they didn't land a tentacle on him, let alone the pink diamond gem on his belly.

He was already well aware of what could happen if they were successful at that, he had heard Ronaldo's report. That's what made their biting and scraping at the bubble all the more motivating for Steven to keep it up. As long as he concentrated, they wouldn't be breaking it.

But as long as they continued rolling him and attacking him, who knew how long it would truly stay up.

He had to get them further back. He embiggened the bubble, pushing them back as though with a shockwave. And he took the opportunity to run. Running once again. He could feel himself blushing pink, and while that was...cause for concern, he had to use it, sending more shockwaves with each stomp of his feet, just as the gem of the mountains had taught him.

Stomp! Stomp! Each foot dispersed waves of pink light, but it wasn't enough! These creatures, they were losing form, but regenerating faster and faster!

And just then, suddenly a bright green light was here to save him. Three beams of light shot from the sky landed and together with another one of his stomps, the spores were down for a hell of a lot longer this time. Steven looked up just as the green light faded out, barely even making out a silhouette of a manta-like creature disappearing in another flash, and landing on the ground was a teenager he didn't recognize.

But Ben was back, waiting a few seconds to preserve the Omnitrix's charge. Turning around the corner, and then immediately dodging a blast from the fusions...what a close call! And even closer to him was a very confused Steven Universe.

"Hey dude!" Ben shouted, startling Steven almost immediately. "Nice to run into you again! Not digging the top-knot though!"

Steven, bewildered by everything that had happened so far, didn't seem to recall who this brown-haired teen was. He definitely seemed familiar. Was he on TV? His voice especially was familiar; wasn't he on the radio? Perhaps if an angry horde of spores weren't giving the heroes hell, Steven could've calmed down and paid attention to who he was talking to. So he ended up asking a rather aloof question. "We know each other?"

That caught Ben off guard. He thought the half-gem would recognize him, The alien hero that showed up at the steps of the Temple Obsidian. When he first showed up, the bird-nosed lady and purple-prune lady chased him around the beach for ages, only for the Scary Square Hair Lady to then punch him so hard the black eye remained even when he transformed back from Four Arms.

He knew exactly how to jog his memory. "Don't worry. Lemme do this one thing, and it'll come to you!" Ben said, slamming the watch down once more, and transforming very vividly into a furry tiger-like humanoid. The form that called itself Rath. And that's when Steven's jaw hung open. It was Ben 10! The jaw stayed ajar, both in surprise, and in remembering when they had met. It was so long ago and so off-handedly that he had almost completely forgotten that it happened; the summer the Tennysons came to Bravo Beach, a couple years before he finally began to use his powers. He mentally face-palmed. How could he forget Ben 10 when he was the whole reason he returned so close to home, to fight these monsters from an abominable amalgamation of worlds?

Though the Alien Hero was less thrilled. He wanted Four Arms, damnit! But at least he didn't get Upchuck again. "RRAAAGGGGHH! LEMME TELL YOU SOMETHIN' OMNITRIX, YOU AND YER STUPID RANDOMIZER...IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY NO MORE!"

"Ohh..." Steven sighed. Aside from the relief of being safe, he was a bit disappointed that he could've forgotten meeting a big-shot hero like Ben 10 in the past. And honestly, he didn't watch enough news to know what Ben even looked like. "G-Good to see you too?"

"RRGGH! LEMME TELL YOU SOMETHIN', STEVEN UNIVERSE! ACTUALLY-LEMME TELL YOU TWO THINGS! RATH DON'T APPRECIATE HOW YOU COULD FORGET A GUY LIKE RATH, OR HIS OTHER NOT-AS-COOL ALIEN MODES. AND THAT-UCK!"

Steven was distracted for one second, and suddenly he found the feline fighter down on the ground, shaking his head and recuperating from a concussive Spore blast. But he was saying something, wasn't he? What was he about to say?

"And that...WHAT!?"

"AND THAT YOU NEED TO START THROWIN' THAT SHIELD LIKE YOU'RE CAPTAIN AMERICA!" Rath shouted, still lying down, recuperating from the damage. As the sweat rolled down his temple, Steven finally let go of all distractions. A hero was down, and as much as he hated what came next, he knew it had to be done.

There was a reason he came to a junkyard. He came not for a hard drive. He came to help.

So...he nodded.

He dashed forward, hopping over the scrap-metal that obstructed his path. With no other path to take he summoned one more shield and ran into one of the Scrap Monsters held together by random appliances, toppling it over and giving him the opportunity to wedge the shield into its televised face. No more hesitating. No more confusion. No more butterflies of the stomach or of the mind.

So naturally he took Ben's comment literally, and widening his arms, he span around to fling his shield across the field of garbage, and using his control of the energy via his own will and mind, he commanded the shield to bounce off one world-eater and onto the next, and the next, and the next.

He didn't stop there. He threw another shield, once again using his will and mind. Getting acquainted with this practice, he repeated the steps in his head: he bounced the shield from corner to corner, from target to target. As the spores opened fire on him he summoned yet another shield construct to protect himself. He grunted as he recoiled in his steps; even as the shield he threw dispersed into thin air, he knew they couldn't keep this up. It was ridiculous how this pack was just dogpiling them, no real strategy at play, but they were certainly taking his hits well.

And like a champ, Ben's Rath returned, having recovered from the blast. He dogpiled the dogpile, tearing into the living globs of green gelatin like a regular tiger would dig into its prey.

It's a shame he got in the way, because the first shield that Steven threw sorta-

"ACK!" Ben yelped.

...flew into his jowl.

It had him somersaulting backwards as Steven over-apologized.

"Sorrysorrysorry!" He said, but all Rath did was growl back and continue punching. At this point, Steven realized they needed to better synchronize. It was just like dancing. He was great at dancing, at least...he was great at dancing when it came to people he knew and could trust. He had only met Ben as a child one time, and this was the first time they had seen each other in about 6 years. This was all circling in his head as he did what he did with his shield. For now, they fought separate hordes of the same pack of spores.

But...

...crrreak.

he could hear something...something that slowly distracted him from the fight once again.

It was a creaking. A subtle...but loudening, metal whining and moaning.

...CRRREEAAAK.

Looking past the scrapheap to his right, his eyes met with the MEGAS robot. It had to have been the source of the sounds.

Was it...leaning?

It looked like it was beginning to lean forward. In its completely neutral position, it was leaning forward.

As Steven was watching this, his shield was beginning to shrink; he was losing concentration as he was overwhelmed with a great swell of panic.

Before the spawns could force his shield down and kill him, Rath managed to save him, tackling him out of the way, then standing him up, and beginning to fight the boy's battle.

"STOP DOIN' THAT AND USE MORE O' YER POWERS! RANDOM OBJECTS DON'T HURT FUSIONS WITHOUT THEM CHEMICALS!"

Distracted, eyes widened, almost everything stops as Steven hears that word. Did he mean gem fusions? "What fusions?!"

"THOSE FUSIONS!" He pointed to Steven's side of the fight, not before smashing in and mutilating the bubble of fusion matter making up the fusion spawn in his paws and claws.

"These?!" Steven was bewildered by Ben's use of that term. The fusions that he was used to...they wouldn't like being associated with these gooey gelatinous monsters. They were called the World-Eaters, or the Spore Spawns, for a good reason. "These aren't fusions!"

"Th-WHAT?!" El Gato Extraterrestre shouted. Ben was equally at sea with the now widened vocabulary to describe the Fusions. Ben could accept that there really was another word, but what made that word preferable? As Rath, he sounded less confused with Steven's difference in jargon, and more appalled due to all his screaming.

"I know you call them that, but I don't!" Steven said as he flung another shield, and clenched his hand, expanding the projection of his shield into an inflated balloon of spikes, taking out another wave of Junkasauruses.

Clearly, there was an impasse of terminology between the alien and the crystalline crusader. One called the invasive creatures 'fusions', while the other had a much more denotive name for them in 'world-eaters'. In a split second, it occurred to Ben that, despite learning of the term from the future, there was knowledge Steven had that proved to be more revealing in a minor seven-second argument than an entire 2 days in a nigh-apocalyptic future. Immediately, theories fluttered around Ben's brain, asking all the questions he'd wanted to ask before, but never got the chance to.

How did the rest of the galaxy respond to Planet Fusion? What is it known as in the wider cosmos? Why does Steven, and presumably the immortals that raised him, have a different name for the species? So many questions...

...so little time. The moment was over, and Rath was convinced to return to the fight.

"WELL QUIT CALLING THEM ANYTHING AND GET TO SMASHIN' THEM!" the Appoplexian shouted as he sliced and diced as much as he could without looking.

But Steven had his eyes on the enemy, glancing around as he lodged his shield into the jagged jaws of a giant-sized spawn. As more of the monsters entered the battleground, spitting some hazardous plasma at them, the two of them finally started feeling outnumbered. Earlier it was easy, they could fight six hundred of these things, but not repeatedly, and not before the first six-hundred would fall.

---

Incredible, unexpected, but it was a relief above all else to see him again. Otto Osworth had made one spectacular entrance, but was taking no additional praise. In a seemingly frantic state he was darting his head from left to right, looking over the metal fence standing on his toes, and crouching down...tasting the dirt? That was gross, but it was merely one finger. Standing up with the same frantic energy, he started paying all attention to his watch, turning around while everyone else was at a loss for words.

"Whoaaa." Rigby marveled at what he witnessed. Time travel was nothing new to him, but it was always a treat to see it done with style.

Dexter on the other hand, had let the silence go on long enough. "Otto?!" he exclaimed, clearly in surprise to see the teenaged time-traveler. "Who called you?"

Instead of an answer, all Dexter got was a single index finger, asking for a moment of silence. Otto was typing something on that extremely small watch of his. Dexter was intrigued by the watch, it wasn't on Otto the previous time they had met. It was a golden device with an engraving on the strap. The engraving looked like a set of wings spread out and ready for flight. The timepiece was also gold, with an average clock-looking touchscreen behind a cap of glass, and a blue light emerging from its center. Clearly the light was projecting a holographic interface, and a keyboard that Otto was using, typing with one hand and with great speed.

Understanding he wasn't to be disturbed, Dexter backed off. But became similarly intrigued by another aspect of that whole episode. He turned to face Jamie, who bore an undeterred and bored expression. "Wait, 'not again'?"

"He showed up like an hour ago, and then disappeared a second later. No idea why."

This was getting annoying for Dexter. He needed answers! "Otto, are you done?"

"One millisecond..." Otto said, finishing up his report. "Alright, to answer your question, no one called me. I'm actually here on active Time Squad duty." he explained. "Also, I have no idea what they're talking about, this is the first time I've come here." he continued. Even when he was busy it seemed like he was a good listener. "Well, Imean-"

"Am I talking to an Otto Osworth from before my time travel experiment?"

"No?" said Otto, almost sounding taken aback by the notion. "You think I'd let past versions of myself interfere with my own timeline? We have rules for this stuff, contrary to what you think." Otto said. He seemed rather aloof towards Dexter, clearly not quite happy with how others treated or responded to the organization that raised him. It didn't matter how many times Otto had to be the voice of reason in his nuclear family of a robot and a man-child, they were still his family and he wouldn't let anyone talk behind their backs. "Like I said, I'm here on duty. My assignment says someone got caught in a temporal paradox, disappearing..." revealed Otto. "by your guys' perception it happened weeks ago, but from a temporal standpoint, it happened just now."

"Yeah, her name was Kiva Andru." said Jamie rather morbidly. It was like identifying a body at a morgue, but the only thing left of the person here was her name. He hid that pessimism with a question that he'd been dying to get answered. "Is she coming back?"

"Well...it's complicated. The reason why her robot remains in the past is because...well, it's a fixed point in time. Direct information about MEGAS developed in the 21st century could potentially impact her timeline." Otto explained. "But as for her..."

"Complicated...of course." Jamie realized with a sigh. He didn't want to hear any more of it.

To their left, Mordecai and Rigby were taking everything in with utter awe, everything about the time traveler and the whole paradox issue. It was wild, but they still kept quiet. This wasn't way out of their league, but it wasn't within their circumstances to be able to contribute as much.

Meanwhile, Dexter turned away, taking everything in, noting the two park workers and Coop back in his trailer, probably cleaning up the mess caused by the time traveler's explosive entry. He did not expect mere moments later to have someone screaming in his ear.

"DEX, YOU THERE?!"

He visibly recoiled from that volume. "Not so loud! Who is this?"

"LEMME TELL YOU SOM-"

"Never mind, I know who it is." Dexter said, recognizing that catchphrase from one of Ben's televised exploits on the news. "You have the hard drive?"

"NO, BUT I'M WITH STEVEN! THERE'S TOO MANY OF 'EM!"

"Noted. Move back outside when you see fit. The hard-drive takes secondary priority." ordered Dexter. It was unfortunate that they couldn't obtain the hard drive, but it was much better that they got the demigod-like Steven Universe out of the fray. Nonetheless, Coop needed both hard drives to make sure that the secrets and functions of MEGAS wouldn't fall into Fuse's hands.

Dexter's quick thinking allowed him to quickly make use of new variables...including the time traveler and the added information of MEGAS being from the future...

"Otto, we could use your help inside that trailer. Mr. Cooplowski has a device from the future that could use decrypting." the boy genius explained.

"I'm a time traveler, not a programmer...but I'll see what my HGW can do." he reasoned, tapping the watch on his wrists before jogging into the trailer to begin decrypting the hard drive...while Cooplowski moved outside. He was...eating a hot dog. And Otto was on his own, apparently.

---

"We gotta get out of here!"

"RATH AGREES. YOU'RE WAY MORE IMPORTANT THAN A HARD DRIVE!" Ben agreed. He began thinking of all possible ways to get out of there. He could transform into XLR8, but it would accelerate the loss of power for the watch, and who knew when he'd need it again. "DIDN'T YOU USE TO HAVE SUPERSPEED?"

"Yeah, but...I kinda lost that power."

"HOW?!"

"No idea."

Finally getting tuckered out, and left with no other choice, Ben stepped back. In milliseconds, he came to a decision as the fusions in front of him lunged for him. The world froze, the wind stood still, Steven's shield dissipated in what felt like slow motion.

And Rath was swapped out for an alien to fit that perception. Tapping the badge, Ben's fur was swapped out for blue reptilian scales. A striped tail sprouted out, a black bodysuit with a green front, a chevron around his pelvis, and the black metal spheres formed under his changing feet.

XLR8 was now at work, and at the speed of sound he ran into Steven in a blur, moving out of that trash-heap and making his way towards the Junkyard Entrance. It was still blocked by the pulsating containment shields.

He was almost there.

Just a little bit further.

But soon enough he found himself at the disadvantage. He heard a sound from his dial. The Omnitrix was about to time out.

He had to reach a little more...

...almost...

...THERE! He made it!

Past the shield, out of the infected, just as the badged droned and finished the count down to a forced transformation back into a human. Both boys were lying on the ground, one of them taking deep breaths, and the other moaning in what sounded like a bit of pain, clenching his stomach.

It caught Ben's attention. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, just...uugh," Steven took a heavy breath, he was queasy. "Going through that barrier...kinda messes with my gem."

"You'll be alright though, right?" He said, standing up and lending Steven his hand.

"Yeah. I'll be fine." He told Ben as he took his arm to stand back up.

"I'm sorry you had to get dragged back into all this." Ben apologized. "Where were you when the call went out?"

"Lakewood City, all the way over in Maryland. Made a few stops around Utah and Nevada. Helped out a couple people; this old Scottish lady in Nevada had the best plum curry." said Steven. This kid went all the way from Bellwood to the East Coast, and then went back. That was impressive. The country crossing Steven made his way to Coop, who was stuffing down the hot dog, seeing the crystalline crusader coming towards him. "Coop?"

"Hey, um," Coop began to apologize, but not before taking a big gulp of that hot dog. "I am so sorry...for getting you in life-threatening danger..."

"It's fine...I didn't get your hard drive...and also I don't think I can help with the car on the robot. I have no idea what kind of car that is."

The meandering mechanic huffed in frustration. None of these people, save Mordecai & Rigby, actually appreciated his tribute to a golden automotive age. "...of course you don't."

Almost like clockwork, the events progressed as Dexter swung open Coop's trailer door, directing his attention to the alien hero. "Ben, Otto's calling for you."

"Otto?" Ben almost shouted; he had thought he wouldn't see him again.

"Yes, the one and only." He confirmed, before looking to find a new face amongst all this madness. "I take it this is Mr. Universe?"

"Uh, no it's his son."

Dex rolled his eyes behind his thick opaque glasses. "Allow me to check his vitals. You go inside, and I will check on your progress later."

"I'll be right over." Ben said. He then turned to shout at the other end of the Junkyard entrance. "Mordecai, Rigby, keep Steven company...try to make sure Dex is nice."

"That's harder than you think!" Mordecai shouted as Ben walked away. Rigby rolled his eyes, unhappy with having to be around Dexter. They just straight up didn't like him.

Steven could only get one question out. "What's going on?"

"Time Travel shenanigans, some woman disappeared and left her robot in the junkyard. We have her hard drive."

"That feels...contrived." Steven noted as Dexter was kneeling down beside him, using his NanoCom to run a quick medical assessment.

Ben shrugged his shoulders just as he approached the door frame. "It's time travel. It'll make more sense later on."

---

Turning the latch and opening the large door, Ben was now face-to-face with his friend from the future. It was a face he had admittedly grown to miss, having been trapped in the future with him, and Otto ultimately being the reason Ben made it back. Ever since the beginning of the war, Ben wondered how Otto would factor in besides that.

"Long time no see!" He rejoiced, grabbing Otto's palm and patting him on his opposite arm. Ben closed the door behind him. "You haven't called in 2 months."

"Actually for me, it was closer to 3, but whatever."

Ben couldn't help but notice the watch that Otto was wearing. "Interesting watch. That also turn you into aliens?"

"Nope, much different. This is a Hartdegen-Graham Watch. Basically my main tool for Time Squad duties."

"How does it work?"

"Classified." Otto explained as he sat back down. "If I told you, I'd have to erase you from the timeline...at least that's what other officers say when they talk about Tempus-tech. But Tempus-tech is one thing...this is another. I have no idea why Dexter assumed I would be able to decrypt alien technology."

"Alien?"

"Yeah, the most I can say is that the hard drive appears to be alien in origin. I know history front to back and...humans never develop this style of tech on their own." Otto continued to speculate. "Makes you wonder though...what's so important about this hard drive beyond its weapons systems?"

"That's not good...Plumber protocols dictate that technological evolution not be interfered with. Earth's currently at level 3.5-okay, well it's just a hard drive, right? It's not that much of a big deal...but it's a hard drive with weapon systems and schematics that really shouldn't be used..."

"Ben, you're rambling and losing my point. MEGAS is a fixed point in time; its presence here is said to never radically alter the future of humanity or its progress. I'm just saying that whatever made it...wasn't human to begin with...which makes cracking this thing a bit of a challenge..." Otto was brainstorming some idea, one that he kept quiet about. Finally, he decided- "...I'll be right back."

And so he was gone. In another flash of light.

Well that was unexpected, Ben thought. But literally one second later...

BOOM!

The entire trailer rocked with Otto's sudden materialization, startling the pants off of Ben (figuratively).

"Okay, I'm back." He noted, taking little notice of Ben's frightened position. Otto was back with answers. "I'm gonna need you to use the Omnitrix on this one."

"Yo-You need me to turn into Upgrade?"

"No, you need it to decrypt that file." Otto explained. Ben was intrigued by that notion. He knew from all of Azmuth's talk that the Omnitrix had more functions than being able to transform the user into different species. He had been able to do it only once before. This would be fun. "Speak the code "Codon-05012004-MosuraTitaVosu-01152005." Otto instructed.

"...what?"

"Okay, repeat after me. Codon."

"Uh...Omnitrix, Plumber Protocol H, deactivate hard drive encryption protocol, Codon."

"05012004"

"05012004"

"Mosura...Tita...Vosu..."

"Mosura...Tita...Vosu..." Ben repeated. What language was that? The Omnitrix gave him a universal translator in case any aliens weren't speaking or using Galactic Basic–also known as English. But it sounded like gibberish to him. That language was either non-translatable, or it didn't even exist yet.

"01152005"

"01152005"

[Codon Protocols engaged. Plumber Protocol H in conjunction - engaged. Would you like to turn on wireless?]

"Um...yeah?" Ben confirmed, holding in the chuckle towards the implication that his watch had its own Wi-Fi.

[Voice authorization accepted. Decrypting Hard Drive...] The neon green hourglass symbol on the dial began pulsating in its glow. The decryption would be done shortly.

"God I love remembering how awesome this thing is." Ben spoke, looking at his watch with faith and valiance before turning to Otto. "How did you know how to do that?"

"Like I implied, I took a tiny trip into the future." Otto responded, beginning another tangent. "Time Squad keeps a profile of every facet in the universe. But it was a nightmare to get, and that's beyond all the cosmic rules about the beginning of time and stuff. There's proper clearance, waiting in line, waiting in line again...missing meatloaf Monday at HQ Cafeteria. I think I was waiting there for like, five hours...or maybe it was five seconds. Timetravelmakesthatstuffblurtogether really easily." Otto commented, and much to his surprise Ben nodded and shrugged in sympathy. Ben was more than familiar with time travelers losing track of all time and space. "But the tricky part was getting additional clearance to collect evidence from the Main Path."

"Main Path?"

"Yeah, the Main Path. It's like the central flow of time. Think of it like a tree, very much that tree, where you have all the little branches and then a giant bark that has the roots in the ground that go in all the different directions." Otto was using hand gestures that meant nothing to Ben. It was like he was used to pointing at a hologram, but there was no hologram to point to. "The bark is still growing, and some of the branches are high above the bark, at higher level, at future times. That's the analogy."

"Really?"

"Honestlythough, Larry had a rope analogy that worked a tiny bit better but it never did account for alternate timelines." Otto admitted. "The model is actually how we differentiate different methods of time travel. Time Squad typically uses tachyon particles to make Main Path missions happen. Because the much cruder way would be with irradiated quartz crystal...which is actually what Dexter ended up using in your guys' experiment. I think he actually uses it eventually to make those warp pads for the Infected Zones. Really ingenious, honestly, it cuts back on the wholedeadlynatureofteleportationandmolecularredistribution-"

"Okay but...wait, what happens with quartz-crystals?"

"Time travelling with those...it's less actual time displacement and more like...alternate reality displacement."

So Dexter's experiment truly was a failure...and Future-Mandark was on the right track with time travel over him. Weird.

Ben could only utter "What?" in utter disbelief.

"Quartz crystals operate on a non-paradox transformation. When used for time travel, the subject can't really jump and change the past because that could cause a temporal rift. If you time travel to do something, that eliminates the need to have ever done it, which then eliminates the lack of need to do it, and it sorta devolves into a spiral. Quartz crystals are irradiated to prevent that kind of paradox, so they're only used to survey alternate histories. Tachyon particles are different in that they can restore information in a paradox, which could cause anything ranging from...a guy's wife fading from existence, or sending someone back to their correct timeline." He looked at Ben.

"So...the future I was sent to...wasn't the future at all?"

"A possible future. But not the true one."

"But...but when I was gone, that was one of the things that led to that future, and it was only by sending me back that that future was averted!"

"Right, like probability has enough cosmic energy to create entire universes. You're not creating new timelines, you're just authenticating them. There was always a timeline where you never returned, and there was this timeline, where you always did." Otto corrected him. It was harsh, but he had been cleared to disclose this information with him. He was much less secretive about Time Squad's inner workings in the event of this crisis. "The tree was probably a bad metaphor but it's literally the accurate model. As opposed to saplings growing into the bark and log, the tree always is. No chicken versus the egg, there's just...the chicken."

A pregnant pause took place between the two. Ben's head sunk with realization over the weight of Otto's superior understanding of time. He felt like he would throw up, because of what it meant for this timeline, what it meant for the future he fought to make sure never would happen...but at the center of it all he was so confused about the tree analogy...

...while Otto was unaware of how he popped Ben's bubble. "Now I'm craving brunch..." the history nut offhandedly remarked.

"So...all that stuff about fate...all that stuff I was telling them in the future, and the stuff I said here...it was wrong?"

Otto visibly clenched his jaws together, holding his tongue. This was a question that he had expected someone to ask at some point. To know that all of their existence was pre-ordained, especially after being told the future could be changed.

"No, no I didn't say that. Um..." Otto was choking on his own words, unable to give it to the alien hero straight. Sure, it would be accurate to tell him, but there were laws in place; no living being could know how the timeline began. At the same time, however, it would be even more accurate to acknowledge the ways the future wasn't set in stone. "I guess...uh...Larry's metaphor does work better." Otto realized.

More silence hung over the two, and it was making them both uncomfortable.

Wanting to fill up the void, Otto began to act impatient.

"Alright, that watch of yours couldn't get any slower..." said Otto vainly. "Gimme a moment, I need to visit an alternate timeline." Tapping his HGW, he set off an orange flash of light, visibly distorting as though in the event horizon of a black hole, and finally disappearing as he was sucked into the timestream.

With everything that just happened, Ben took another deep breath. He clapped his hands together, and then moving them towards his face, rubbing his palms against his face in deep thought. Time travel, as it would so seem, was destined to play a bigger part in this war than he had hoped. Part of him was now wishing in hindsight that Otto hadn't come back, that he could let the Fusion War–or whatever war they were fighting against whatever name Steven called these things–just play out in peace.

Behind him, Dexter entered the trailer with the same loud turning of the latch and opening of the door, tapping the shoulder of Ben's green racing jacket. He looked like he was done surveying Steven.

Ben nodded back to him. "Looking for Otto? He just left."

"Left for the future?"

"Near future." Ben offhandedly spoke. "How's Steven?"

"Continuing to hold up alright. I assume Otto told you more about the nature of time travel?" asked Dexter. "I could tell from your indicated sullen face."

Not wanting to go into specifics, simply because there was a time and place for everything, he instead shot back a funny joke. "He...uh, told me about the whole experiment that started this mess..." Ben explained. "That your framework was totally wrong."

Dexter was shocked, but hid it well. "Not possible. I spent weeks testing that framework." the boy genius's eyebrow lifted as his confusion and arrogance overtook the conversation. "What did he say about the supposed 'correct' solution?"

"Er...he said that was classified." Ben lied. He knew that according to Plumber laws, what with him knowing about the Quartz crystals, that if Dexter was to properly follow the rules of time and space, he would have to make that discovery himself.

Dexter remained silent, only grumbling a tiny bit.

BOOM!

Otto rematerialized in the exact place where he stood, the shockwave once again startling the crap out of the scientist and hero.

"Will you STOP THAT?!" Dexter shouted.

Then they came to notice...Otto's face. It wasn't changed physically, but it bore a level of worry and dread that they had only seen him in when faced with fusion monsters.

"Uh..." Otto simply couldn't speak.

"What, what did you see?" Ben asked.

Otto was still at a loss for words, unable to speak without the fear of being ruthlessly hammered for it holding him back. "Uh, well...the watch is about to finish anyway..."

And so it did.

[Codon Protocol fulfilled: Glorft Database Decryption complete]

"What the hell are the..." Ben asked, before being cut off by his entrancement of the various files of the single hard drive.

They looked complete. Based on what Jamie told them, they were expecting half-complete and corrupted files that would only be accessible with the other hard drive. But the bigger reveals came with aptly named files, files that Ben didn't need a translator for, because they were actually in Galactic Basic, also known as English. And two words, a phrase, a subject was sticking out to him as though it was poking out of the hologram.

"Dex?"

"I see them too..." Dexter confirmed. "I...see them...too." His voice was seething with a growing rage.

And it was an understandable rage.

The key words were...

...'Planet' and 'Fusion'.

"Oh boy." Otto murmured. It seemed like the alternate future he visited was about to be authenticated. Things were about to get heated.

---

BACK OUTSIDE

"So then of course, the city gave me a medal for demolishing the DMV building."

"I thought they charged you with property damage."

"Legally yes, but I know they gave me a medal in their hearts." Coop rationalized. Mordecai and Rigby were...more than concerned by that mindset.

They were about to find themselves even more concerned with something considerably more severe.

The trailer door flung open with a CLANG! A total of two people came out of that trailer; Ben was tailing a red-headed killing machine, trying to get it to calm down...

...to no avail. Dexter was more mad than he had ever been in his life, and there was nothing that could stop his onslaught of one man. "COOP!"

The one man in question was completely out of the loop. "Hey, is my stuff okay in there! I heard you guys, that junior time cop popped in an' out of my house INSIDE my house!"

"COOP!" He repeated but LOUDER. "YOU. STOOPID. PIECE OF-"

"Dex!" Ben saw no other choice but to stand in the boy genius' warpath. "Dex, DEX! Calm down!"

"He LIED to us." Dexter shouted as Ben grabbed his shoulders. The red headed captain of industry was throwing a full on tantrum, pointing aggressively at Coop while the aforementioned pilot of MEGAS stood there in utter disbelief and confusion. "He lied about the most crucial PART-"

"You need to calm down!"

"I. WILL. NOT. He lied, in omission." Dexter would waste no more time beating around the bush. "The MEGAS unit wasn't created by humans, only modified by them. It was created by an extraterrestrial race known as the Glorft."

Dexter expected everyone to be overwhelmed with shock and surprise, but instead they seemed far less reactionary. In someone like Mordecai's experience, it wasn't uncommon for alien tech to fall in unexpected hands. "That's all?"

"No. One half of a hard drive goes a long way to reveal much more important details, especially when it's NOT missing half its intel." Dexter shouted while looking to Jamie. The slob's hunch had been wrong. Whatever the reason for two hard-drives, it certainly wasn't for covertness. Turning back to Coop, Dexter could only continue shouting as his rage increased. "Tell me, Coop, did you know that the Glorft have, or will have, an extensive dossier on Planet Fusion?"

The cat was now out of the bag, and that proved to be much more controversial, as both park workers were left flabbergasted. "What?!" Rigby exclaimed, exchanging looks with Dexter and darting to meet the unmoved bum's expressionless face. Coop really didn't seem to care. "WHAT?!"

"Uh...no? I couldn't even hack into that thing." It didn't make sense! How could someone with Coop's level of mechanical engineering expertise, he who learned to rig video-game controllers to that of a giant robot, be unable to crack a code and work a hard drive? Perhaps the futuristic encryption was too much as Jamie had suggested, but in that case... "Using future hardware was..."

"Was. Whose. Job?"

Dexter punctuated every word, as though he was punching a whole in Coop's stomach with, letting every blow to the mechanic's state of mind make him truly realize the severity of his actions.

"Exactly. It was Kiva Andru's specialty." He paced back and forth, with the energy and fervor of a lawyer preaching to their jury...or treating their witness as hostile. "She was a refugee, wasn't she? A soldier? Trained to fight these Glorft and decrypt their technology, which is thousands of years ahead of anyone's capabilities! Had it not been for the Omnitrix, OR Otto, we would never have been able to find out what was in that drive!"

"Your point?"

"Our...my point is that you knew. Or rather you should have known that your friend could decrypt whatever was important on that thing, but she couldn't because she FADED OUT OF EXISTENCE! And instead of trying to get help in her absence, you sat on your FAT ASS and waited until the world was ending!"

'His' point? The use of that pronoun, associating all his hunches with himself alone. Dexter refused to associate any of his team with his point, clearly resentful for the fact that they all thought Coop was so cool, when all the things Dexter had suspected about him back at the lab were all proven one-hundred percent true.

With his true colors, or rather his absolute lack of colors on full display, Coop took a few steps back. It seemed like everyone was against him.

"Okay..." Coop said softly.

"Okay?" Dexter questioned. "That's it?!"

"I don't know what you want me to say man. 'Oops?'"

Everyone's eyes widened. Steven in particular. When he met Coop, he expected the best of him. Sure, the mechanic made him risk his life, but Steven had volunteered. But he seemed like someone that he could get along with. But he had met his fair share of despicable humans. None of them sold out the planet over something as material as laziness. He could only shoot Coop a look of disappointment. That was as far as he was willing to take it.

But Dexter wouldn't tolerate laziness. Let alone sloppiness.

Not one bit.

"Yes. That's it."

"What's it?"

Steven could tell immediately where this was going. An empath not by metahuman ability, but by sheer practice and humanity, Steven could see the rage and venom in Dexter's eyes. It was sure to break Coop's spirit. Unwilling to see any conflict in a time of crisis, he tried to intervene. "Guys, no! That's not necessary-"

"You, a neophyte to a responsibility you carried for years, have cost us one of the most, IF not the most, profitable advantages against a cosmic horror the likes of which the Glorft are DWARFED by. You neglected to tell us of your robot's imprisonment, you neglected to tell us about the MEGAS's true origins and how relevant they might be, you neglected to report the disappearance of your friend from the future as a result of a temporal paradox, and you neglected to show any form of concern for the survival of your own planet!"

Steven wanted to intervene, but even he wasn't sure how far Dexter was going to take his anger.

But Dexter had a clear-as-crystal image of how he wanted Coop to understand his failure. "Once we obtain that hard-drive, I will be taking the keys to your car, and any other paraphernalia relative to keeping the MEGAS in a stable condition." Dexter said, now right in Coop's face as he stood on the tips of his toes. "But you will no longer be its pilot. Not now, nor ever again."

Coop was...

...unmoved by the threat apparent.

Clearly he was taking time to process the threat, breaking it down piece by piece.

Did he say he was going to take MEGAS away from him?

Yeesh. There were so many things Coop had yet to do with MEGAS. He had yet to attempt the Joyful Burger chain-challenge with MEGAS. He had yet to go to a drive-in theater with MEGAS (with hopefully a scale-appropriate tub of popcorn). He had yet to lend it to Jamie and whatever devious purposes he wanted to use the bot for. So many awesome joyrides and road trips across seven years and so many more adventures ahead of them, and somehow that was suddenly invalid because of one minor mistake? He thought he had a great track record!

He chuckled a little bit. Glancing over to his right side momentarily, possibly looking for some validation, he was smirking at Jamie...only Jamie wasn't looking back to him. He was looking down, staring into the glowing green soil that Fuse had infected, with a stare as blank as his job prospects. The weight of responsibility was crushing him, choking his skinny physique, to cause so much damage simply by doing what he expected to work itself out in the end: just being a slacker.

But it would take a lot more to snap Coop out of his self-absorbed mindset. He could take away the trailer, even the junkyard and replace it with a five-star hotel because he had that kind of money, but not his property. Not his car, and not his robot. Finders keepers.

"Uh, no." Coop told him rather bluntly, still chuckling too. It was almost as if he wasn't taking Dexter's word seriously. MEGAS was his robot. If this nerd really thought that he could take that away, he was sorely and finally mistaken. "Megas and me, we stick together. He's MY robot. I found him in Jersey, I paid for him with my own hard-earned money-"

"He paid two bucks from his mom's allowance." Jamie clarified.

"-with my own two bucks from my allowance, and Kiva decided to make me the new pilot. Megas is MINE."

That...

was the last straw for the boy genius.

"THEN WHY IS HE TRAPPED IN AN INFECTED ZONE?!" Dexter was now furious. Coop's bullshit had gone far enough. And the former's anger rang through the fence, the metal, and as he stomped with a justified tantrum. Everyone was not expecting to see this side of the boy genius. It was terrifying. "If he's yours, he would be OUT. HERE."

Coop himself was finally starting to see what this kid's point was, frowning in a growing self-pity.

What seemed even more terrifying was that Dexter wasn't finished. Though now much calmer, Dexter tempered his rage into an authoritative demeanor. "If you actually cared about the robot more than you would a toy, MEGAS would be out here, fighting the Fusions and winning this war. I don't give a damn if Ms. Andru thought you were the only one to be able to pilot it. Were she here now, she would be so disappointed in you."

"I…I'm still the only one who can…"

"You rigged your car and a handful of video game controllers to its motors; it's not like it's a hard drive from the future. It is nothing that we cannot decipher ourselves. And there are a handful of gamers that can take your place once MEGAS is free."

That last bit caught Mordecai and Rigby's attention. If there was anything they knew they were good at, it was video games. They had experience using controllers to pilot gestalts. Who's saying they wouldn't give it a try?

But another glance made them hold those thoughts back. Coop was nowhere near as aloof as when they had met him. His head hung down, staring intensely into the soil, he was being weighed down by the consequences of his inaction. The two groundskeepers couldn't help but be reminded of how Benson would scold them, whether or not it was rational. If that was who they would have to follow…they could count themselves out.

But when Coop tried getting sympathy from these two... "Bird-man? Raccoon person?"

They had to admit that a small part of them finally understood what was at stake. This was the worst time for anyone to slack off. "It's our planet too, dude." Mordecai answered for the both of them. "We don't want to see it die again."

Coop, defeatedly, tried saying something more. Jamie looked at him with a frown. "…not cool, bro." the slob remarked to his long-time friend.

"My thoughts exactly, unless of course you would like to reveal that you had the second hard drive here the entire time, and risked the life of a Crystal Gem Hybrid for nothing."

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Steven shouted. "You already made your point! You don't need to rub it in!"

"Dex…" Ben calmly spoke, agreeing with Steven, "…calm down."

"I…" Dexter began to take deep breaths. "I'm not being irrational…this is-"

"What's happening to Coop...isn't going too far, honestly." Ben admitted. "But look at you. This isn't leadership. You can't be a leader if this is how you treat people just going about their lives. Don't you remember what I wanted to talk to you about?"

Dexter remembered all too well. "Deedee is a different situation."

Ben shook his head vigorously. "Not really." Turning to Coop, yet still addressing the boy genius, he continued. "Dex, he made a mistake, and he knows he'll pay for it."

"I need a burger frenzy…"

"Shut up." The alien hero spoke rather coldly. For the slightest moment, he let his own anger slip out. He really should have been mad, given that yet another person was responsible for the war's current state. It had happened with Mojo, and at that point, he resolved to be a better leader; he couldn't act that way when the world was looking to them for answers. "What we need to focus on is getting the rest of that hard drive. Steven obviously can't come this time…but I can go back in. I can get past the fusions, wait until my watch is fully charged, and then fight my way to the Barracuda." He declared as he stepped back, a few paces south and with solidarity, he marched towards the warpgate.

But before Ben could step back into the Infected Zone, Steven raised his arm to the side and blocked him. "No way." He said. "That's a bad call, and you know it."

"What?"

"You'd be facing them alone." Steven admitted. "I already tried getting through the Infected Zone alone, and if the Spores got to me, it could've lost you guys the war. If you go in alone, what do you think the Spores are gonna do?"

"It's a risk worth…" Ben trailed off, realizing how right Steven was. Even though he had a shield, even though they both had ways to protect themselves, and even though Ben had been fighting Fusions the longest, he realized that in this specific situation, his powers posed a genuine risk.

He remembered why some of his aliens weren't able to use their powers in the Future. Fuse could manipulate the atmosphere. He remembered how the first Terrafusers increased their descent speed, because Fuse adapted to their strategy from miles away. In the Junkyard, the Fusions were trying to slowly destroy Megas, to deprive the Earth of a chance against the Fusions.

If Fuse got hold of the Omnitrix the same way it got hold of MEGAS, who knew what he would be able to do with limitless alien information. He could very well gain more control over Earth's elements.

He managed to fight off Fusions this long because he got backup. Fusion Eduardo was destroyed when Future Number Five stepped in. Not an ounce of fusion matter reached the watch's dial because he got lucky. Going in alone really was a bad idea.

But Ben looked around. Besides Steven, he was the only one with the powers to deal more damage. Dexter was needed here to help Otto, and thus couldn't join him. Mordecai and Rigby neither had Nanos, nor the weapons necessary to convert the Nanos' raw energy into firepower. And Coop & Jamie, now melancholic as hell, weren't of much use.

He was the only one who could do it. Luck had to carry him on a little longer.

Before Ben could make a decision, Steven made his own initiative. "Look, maybe we should wait here for now, let the time traveler finish analyzing the hard drive we have. We'll figure out where to go from there."

He turned around, exhausted from the screaming and fighting...and now Dexter was sitting by the tires, working on his NanoCom.

"Dex, what're you doing?" asked Ben.

"Establishing a little wireless reprogramming. These containment shields are under my control, and I believe I can reengineer them from here to direct an EMP wave."

"EMP?" Steven asked. "Like a-"

"An electromagnetic pulse. I'm not doing this to harm the fusions or the fusion matter. The shields aren't yet equipped with Imagination Energy, they're powered by Dextronium."

"Dex, what're you trying to do?"

"I'm trying to fry MEGAS." Dexter explained. Taking a moment to look away from his NanoCom, he looked up as he was sitting. At the back of his head this reminded him of the days he was short and had that Napoleon complex, but he was slowly realizing that maybe Coop would have taken him more seriously if he was short. Then again he wasn't thinking as rationally as before, so much so that this prose is detailing him losing focus. "No matter how we examine the problem, that robot holds valuable information as well as the most dangerous arsenal of explosives and artillery on the planet. Fuse can only do more harm with either of those, so if we can't get the hard drive, then no one should."

"That doesn't make sense. You'd be frying the robot's systems, the circuitry, but it'd still be a hulking piece of metal!"

"I am only trying to cripple its weapons and systems. After that, yes, it does become a hulking piece of metal, but if that's what Fuse takes control of and sets on us, then I know one of your aliens is more than equipped to combat it."

Ben realized immediately Dexter's point. The boy genius was referring to Way Big. And sure, it made sense, the terrifying toku'star had enough might to crumple MEGAS's chasis down into a square block, at least that would be so without its defense systems. But he wasn't still sure this was the right idea. MEGAS was still the giant robot, the one they needed. The hard drive could have information on Fuse, he thought, but how useful was that information without the best possible countermeasure to take Fuse down? The robot itself had to be preserved.

But everything that happened...everything Coop had unintentionally sabotaged, and the fact that the Fusions were inching up MEGAS and trying to reach his servers...too much was on the line and they couldn't buy more time. Ben had to let it go.

But he just...couldn't. "When you set off the EMP, that means all the systems will short-circuit. There could be an unsafe discharge of electricity."

"Affirmative. I just started the count-down. Everyone is in a safe distance away from the IZ, so we are okay." He gave a sigh, equally tired by all that transpired.

Everyone was tired. Tired of bossing people around...

Tired of treating others like dirt for simple mistakes...

Just tired of this war.

It sucks that things were about to get more stressful.

"Guys?" Steven called, having walked off, getting a full view of the entrance and noticing something was amiss.

"Where did the bird and the raccoon go?" he asked.

Frowning and then worrying, the two fusion fighters realized that unbeknownst to them, Mordecai and Rigby had gone missing. They had a 360 degree view of the entire lot and beyond. Ben looked behind to see if they had gone out the entrance and past all the city ads. He could see no silhouettes, they did not. Dexter stood up, checking his NanoCom for any nanite signatures beyond the six at the entrance. Ben, Dexter, Steven, Jamie, and the miserable Coop were the only ones there.

There was only one other place they could be.

One place.

Suddenly, the trailer door opened. Otto popped out with an almost childlike fear.

"Is the shouting over yet? Can I come out now?"

"Uh, hi," Steven introduced himself to the teenaged time-traveler. "Did you see where the anthro blue jay and brown raccoon went off too?"

Realizing what Steven meant, Otto gasped, "...nope, shouting's not done." He promptly shut the door behind him.

Dexter was now furious. You could practically see fumes of smoke escape his ears. He huffed, and puffed, and eventually-

"MOTHERHUBBARD-"

---

While Dexter was getting ever-closer to an aneurysm, Mordecai and Rigby were dashing along the mountains of metal and trash, narrowly avoiding several blasts of toxic plasma spit from various fusion monsters below them. The two park workers had found a direct path of debris that led to the MEGAS and they were making a run for it.

They just had put zero thought into their plan besides that.

"This is possibly! THE STUPIDEST IDEA! WE HAVE EVER HAD!"

"I KNOW DUDE!" Mordecai agreed.

But it was worth noting...in their total lack of odds, in the very likely likelihood that they would perish...

...they were getting much closer to MEGAS than Ben and Steven were. If by sheer dumb luck.

---

"Those two are officially INSANE!" Dexter shouted.

"You guys can't call them?" Steven asked worriedly.

"We didn't set up a NanoChat with them, or a commlink! We didn't think they'd need it!"

"Set one up now!" Steven implored.

"We would need their nanite signatures for that, and we don't have them because they're already inside."

"Well if we don't do anything, when that EMP fries MEGAS, they could get seriously hurt!" Ben noted.

"But only if they reach the car at the wrong time."

"It's a zone-wide EMP and they're in a JUNKYARD. Literally anything in those trash-heaps could explode on them from the pulse!" Ben exclaimed. "How long will it take to shut it down?!"

"I engineered this code to have the most stubborn security system on the planet. Even I, the programmer, might take longer than the time they have."

"Does it need all the shields to make it happen?"

A most unexpected voice entered the discourse. Coop, his face looking shiny from tears he wouldn't admit he wept, stepped forward, looking to prove himself in any sort of way.

Dexter was reluctant to answer, but given two innocent lives were at stake, he decided to take Jamie's word for Coop's mechanical expertise. "Yes?"

He huffed, and began turning around. "I need a beer." He said, picking up what looked like a baseball bat, one that glowed a royal Adaptium blue. "Yo, Steven, Time Cop Jr. Gimme a hand."

---

Having narrowly escaped the horde of Fusion Monsters was not enough. Mordecai and Rigby knew more monsters would find them. They would never stop hunting the earthlings that traversed their land. Which is why what stood before them was a life saver.

It was a jump-pad, a light-blue holographic pedestal that materialized right in front of them. It stood on yet another floating platform, another piece in the Archimedean spiral these various objects of debris formed around the slumbering mechanical weapon. They looked up to see the upper chasis of the giant robot, realizing what they were about to do. One last time, they exchanged looks.

"It's a long way up, and there're monsters all around us. No pressure, right?"

"Yeah no pressure at all!"

"NO PRESSURE."

"Hmph! Hmph! Hmph!Hmph!"

"Hmph!Hmph! Hmph! Hmph!Hmph!" Mordecai hmph'd in agreement. They were hyping up each other, boosting their collective confidence. "We got this bro."

"YEEEAH WE DO-"

Just before Rigby could finish, the eruption burst with a blast from within the surface, and in front of the two, they could see the fusion matter pool rising in level. Both of them didn't fail to startle the two, their focus now re-centered.

Mordo, then Riggs, walked onto the jump pad, and were thrust into the air, almost touching the clouds of the green sky. They paid the inherent beauty of the scenario no thought. They were too busy screaming and flailing their arms.

They landed onto MEGAS' collar, but as they were unprepared for the sheer force of landing onto the metal, they rolled and slid down the robot's chasis, too confused to process anything. Would this be their end?

Not a chance. Adrenaline rushed to their brains, waking them up enough to flail their arms, to look for something to hold on for dear life. They managed to hold onto the ledge of MEGAS' upper torso, right below the number '12' that matched Coop's own apparel.

"This was a REALLY STUPID IDEAAA-"

"GET CLIMBING!"

---

"Any luck?"

"NONE!" Dexter exclaimed, sweating from the apparent stress. "I do not mean to 'toot' my own horn but-"

"DON'T toot your own horn, focus!" the alien hero exclaimed. "How much time do we have left?"

"6 minutes!"

Ben scratched the back of his head in a nervous panic. The stomping that was taking place outside the entrance wasn't making anything easier or less stressful. The situation was completely out of hand, and he had no control over it. "That's it," he insisted, "I have to go ins-"

That's when the metal stomping became too loud to ignore, and Ben was face-to-face with walking scrapmetal.

A Junkasaurus peeked from behind the fence, roaring with its metal voice, only to be met with a rubber tire to the snout, courtesy of Jamie. The slob was not happy with how stressful this was making him, and he hated being dragged out of his comfort zone.

"That's...never happened before..." Jamie remarked in panic. While the rest of the world was dealing with open Fusion Monster attacks in civilian locales, they never seemed to come near the entrance. He had no idea why that was.

The others were not nearly as shocked. "Ben!" Dexter called, pointing to the outside of the lot. A mangled figure looked like it was charging towards them. It looked like a variety of things cobbled together. There were motorcycle parts on its arm, a construction claw on its other arm, several air conditioners and vacuum cleaners as its torso and feet, and its face was a TV screen, baring a traditional fusion scowl with dark glowing red eyes.

This Scrap Scrapper was getting closer, looking to directly threaten the area. Fortunately, the humans had a changeling challenger on their side.

"Looks like they're playing hardball now! And I'm fully charged!" Ben said, as he slammed the watch down, going through the selection process rapidly, showing off his mastery and practice over the years with the Omnitrix. But...

...nothing happened.

It was the same glitch that had stumped Ben when he was in the Infected Zone.

He slammed it down, looking up in panic as the Scrap Scrapper drew closer.

Slam! Nothing happened.

Another SLAM! This time harder, nothing happened.

Third's time's the charm? Not here, because nothing happened.

"BEN!"

"I know, just give me-" Before Ben could finish, the Scrapper was in his face. "WHAT THE-"

He was whacked, thrown across the lot and into a pile of tires and metal wheels. "AGH!" He yelled.

"BEN!" Dexter shouted. He wanted to get up, sic some of the drones on this fusion beast, ANYTHING. But that timer...he wasn't going to let more innocents be hurt by his experiments. He had to get back to work...while his friend faced certain death.

The Scrapper continued marching towards Ben, intending to finish the job. Jamie was petrified, unable to move a muscle, and Dexter...

...was not sitting on the tires.

The countdown was now at four minutes...

...and Dexter made a choice he wasn't entirely proud of.

His gloves, his iconic purple gloves, were always full of surprises. Tightening a strap, it activated some sort of electrical current that pulsed through the glove. He marched over and gritting his teeth he held his active weapon against the fusion. It shrieked, unable to withstand the electrical current that Dexter was coursing through the fusion matter, breaking down all its ionized bonds until it would return into the ground.

Venting out some bottled frustration, Dexter used his other hand to slam the monster up and down and over again several times until the hardware that the Scrap Scrapper was made of was in an even more scrappy state than before. "We don't. have. time. for you. right now!" Dexter said, punctuating each word with each slam and scrap scrapped. Ben and Jamie could only look at him in surprise and shock.

He clearly needed to vent.

But there was no time. He gave one last huff, and quickly returned to the tires, display now showing 3.5 minutes.

---

Meanwhile, Coop was swinging the baseball bat charged with the biochemical. Jumbo-sized Fusion Spawns approached him and Steven. And if there was one thing he was good at that wasn't engineering, it was smashing the ever-living shit out of anything...

...anything that wasn't particularly alive.

He took his bat to the upper jagged jaw of the Fusion Spawn. One of its younger siblings attempted to hit them with a plasma blast, only for Steven to block each of them with his shield and move in closer to swat them away. Otto on the other hand, was taking slower steps to make it to the rest of the group. He had no defenses...

...but he did have time travel. He realized what he could do, and switched his HGW from quartz-crystal, which allowed him to move between timelines, to tachyons, which binded him to the current timeline. He set the date for the watch and teleported.

---

ONE HOUR AGO

BOOM!

Unexpectedly, a giant BOOM occurred right outside the entrance, coupled with a blinding light. While not a miracle, it certainly gets things moving, literally and figuratively. Coop's trailer shook once and with a violent bounce. There were audible cracks and crashes heard from outside. A few dishes shattered on the ground, the davenport clearly toppled over, and the TV's screen was beyond repair-

"NO, NOT THE TV! MY GAMES!" Coop exclaimed in unimaginable fear and panic.

But of course, the semi-retired pilot of the MEGAS robot rushed to his mobile home, his smorgasbord of snacks still in one hand, and a nonchalant friend watching him dash inside. It had been 7 years since he found that robot in New Jersey, 7 years of piloting the future Earth's last line of defense, and yet his attention span didn't improve at all.

Jamie huffed as he continued to wait. It was agonizing, being bored like this. He looked to the source of that blinding light, seeing a head of tufted up, slicked-back hair reveal himself to Jamie. He looked like he had somewhere to be.

"Who're you?"

"I-we know each other."

"I have a hard time with faces that aren't chicks, but I'm fairly certain I've never met you."

"Oh my god, I'm not in the right time period. ONE SEC!" The teen time-traveler realized his blunder, and vanished into thin air once again.

---

BOOM!

He really needed to fix that HGW. Its tachyon bursts were getting to be too much.

This looked to be the correct time period. Otto turned around to see Coop standing on the trunk of a crushed and abandoned car, while Steven was explaining to him something. The crystalline kid turned around to face Otto, "Where did you go?"

"Took an...accidental detour." Otto admitted. "What's going on?"

"Better we show you. Steven!"

Steven then extended his arms, forming a rose shape with both hands, and materializing a much larger shield on the car's top. Coop stepped up on this shield carefully, and after giving Steven the thumbs up, the former crystal gem levitated the shield up, getting Coop high enough to tamper with the containment shield.

His toolkit tied to his hips, he unscrewed a panel on the main device as it was still projecting the pulsating wall, exposing several internal wires and circuit boards. It was nothing like what Coop had seen in typical engineering; Dexter really was on another level. But in his experience, all that was needed to make operations like this work was the removal or severing of one single wire. "Aight, wires exposed." He confirmed.

"Be careful, those world-eaters are getting closer." Steven noted. He had seen how they could adapt and take flight whenever they really wanted their prey dead.

Otto was confused by that term. "You mean fusions?"

"No I mean-"

"Time Cop?"

"-justeveryonereferstothemas-"

"Otto!" Coop called out. "What wiring do I mess with?"

"Right!" Otto agreed with Coop's plan, reconfiguring his HGW for quartz-crystals, and disappearing in an orange light...

...and then appearing milliseconds later.

BOOM!

"Easy!" Coop exclaimed, nearly knocked off Steven's platform, and Steven himself nearly losing focus from the sheer shake of that rematerialization, nearly causing the shield to dissipate.

But Otto had an answer for him. "Red wire!"

"Which one?"

"All of them!"

"That's a lot of red wires!"

"I'm only saying that 'cause I don't know which one's the right one to cut!"

"Damnit." Coop muttered. He began taking off the other three panels, revealing another slew of red wires. He started cutting each one of them, and did so with haste. Mordecai and Rigby's lives were on the line, and the shield wall had to come down.

---

A feathered four-fingered hand rose up and grasped the ledge of the mountain-like collar of the MEGAS. Feathers weren't ideal for when trying to latch a sweaty hand onto metal, there'd be no humidity. But Rigby was down below, hoisting him up by the foot and luckily being able to climb with his own traction. The anthropomorphic blue jay was the first to make it on top. Rigby followed suit.

And when they finished climbing and standing up, boy was the 1970s Plymouth Barracuda a sight to behold. The marvel of the automotive golden age.

They had to resist the urge to sigh like schoolchildren in love.

"Dude."

"I want the car so bad, man." Rigby stated offhandedly. "They don't make 'em like they used to."

"Dude."

"We could just...replace this car with one of the golf carts...or Muscle Man's car. He won't mind." That was true. Mitch Sorenstein was last saving up for a family van.

"Dude."

"What?"

"I want this car so bad."

"I know. Those twerps below have no idea how cool this is."

"Dude."

"Okay, what?"

"We gotta get that hard drive, dude."

"Yeah." Rigby was not happy to be awoken from the fantasy, but the twerps did give them work to do.

It's a shame they walked into the Infected Zone without the keys to the actual car. They were forced to break the pristine (albeit, draped in fusion matter vines) windows of the Barracuda to unlock the door. Mordecai nudged his elbow with sheer force, shattering the window and providing them a glimpse inside. Luckily for them, the fusion matter hadn't made it inside.

Opening the door, they stepped into the car and were floored. It was perfect. Like a Da-Vincian symphony of mechanical engineering. As though the car makers of the future had come to make their mark on the past. On the dashboard was some wacky amalgamation of leather padding and parts right out of the cockpit of a spaceship. Several levers adjoined the gear shift, the main gear shift itself adorned with a sick 8-ball, and a joystick was perched on a rod extending from beneath the steering wheel. Square buttons and blocky switches protruded from the angular plastic of the dashboard, upon which was bolted an impressive collection of displays and consoles. Mordecai and Rigby knew to expect a loaded interior of video-game paraphernalia, but nothing like this. This was even more cool than what was described. Coop used these to pilot the robot along with the gas pedal?!

It was unbelievable. Coop really was an extravagant pilot, no matter how incompetent he now seemed to be. The greatest testament to all of that was, at the center of the entire assortment...

...a miniature hula-hula girl.

Well, yes there was that. But there was also, in the space between the front seats...

...a big red button. A big red glowing button.

It looked like it was still active. But more so, it looked as though it was taken out. It wasn't a part of the glove compartment, it was simply resting on it; with exposed wires and circuit boards seemingly belonging to the center of the steering wheel, where the air bag was located. Seems like Coop was last working on something with it.

As they sat down, their beak and snout (respectively) were still gaping wide open, taking every moment to savor this experience. The leather was godly, the gears felt tight, it fit like a glove. It's a shame it wasn't theirs, and an even greater shame that this seemed like the last time they would get to freely pilot a giant robot. Anyhow, they had a job, a job that everyone else seemed too chicken to actually do.

Mordecai rested his winged hands across the dashboard, unaware of the answer to his side. "Remember dude, Jamie said that any one of these buttons could give us the hard drive, so we have to be very..."

The blue jay trailed off, finally noticing it. The big red button between their two front seats.

It's magnificent, glowing crimson light reflecting off each other's eyes, the light cascading into their feathers and fur. Time was ticking and they didn't know it. They couldn't care even if they knew. Oh how they wanted to press it...but that would be stupid, right?

They exchanged their looks once again, clearly in utter fear. They had seen enough movies and gone through enough trauma to know that usually, a big red button was not the answer.

But conversely, they also had seen enough movies and gone through enough trauma to know that usually, a big red button was absolutely the answer.

The two of them were open to debating the topic. "So...we're just gonna press this one...'cause we're running out of time…" Mordecai postulated.

"…and if it's the wrong button and something bad happens, no one's gonna really care, so it's fine." Rigby concurred. Flawless logic.

"Right, but the important thing is that we tried…" Flawless rationalizing.

"And that we get to go out doing something so frickin' cool." Rigby concluded. "Big Red Button time?"

"BIG RED BUTTON TIME!" Mordecai completely agreed.

"wOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH" They both yelled as they raised their fists...well as high as the car hood would allow, ready to strike the big red button. It was a mutual decision, and one entirely motivated by their unbreakable fellowship. They, having known each other since childhood, could always make light of a dark situation, and find a way to support each other from beginning to end, even at the risk of certain death.

Which is why, when their fists met the red panel, and slammed it into its mainframe…

…and when a black hard drive popped out of the makeshift toaster oven…

…and when Rigby caught it for the both of them…

…they really could not have been more lucky.

Rigby could only stare at the hard drive, basking in this victory. "DAAAAAAMMMNN SON, WE GOT IT!"

"YEEAAAY-YUHHH!" Mordecai rejoiced. "Suck it Steven Universe, and your METAHUMAN BULLSH-"

CreeeEEAAAAAKK!

...oh hell.

Their celebration was short-lived, and came too soon. That droning creak silenced them...and they could feel as though they were moving.

They exchanged looks for what seemed like the last time, without any need to exchange words. They knew exactly what was about to happen.

The robot was about to topple over, thanks to the fusion monsters and their pool of fusion matter. They were about to die.

---

The sight was not pretty from outside the Infected Zone. Dexter and Ben watched with terror as the titanium titan descended face-first. This was completely unexpected, and indeed, their plans had been sufficiently upended. There were 3 minutes from the EMP, and as Dexter was distracted, he wondered if it mattered for him to stop the countdown.

A meter away from where they were watching stood the robot's former co-pilot. Jamie was horrified.

7 years of adventures, of space travels and chicks needing a ride, all the adventures, all the sacrifices that Kiva made that they flat-out ignored, all of it ws about to be for nothing. It was all coming crashing down.

At least this would make it easier for Mordo and Riggs to get the hard drive.

---

The same was felt further down by the shield. The group watched petrified by the sight of the mechanical behemoth meeting its end. Otto was frowning, not quite sure what was happening, given the very...weirdly flexible nature of a fixed point in time. Steven's eyes were widening as he saw his huge mistake.

"Oh no." Steven muttered to himself. "It was leaning forward."

He had seen it. He had heard it! In the Infected Zone as he was being saved by Rath. He should have paid more attention! Why didn't he tell anyone before this could happen?!

But in particular, proving Dexter wrong about how much he cared about his role...Coop was distracted from his job, distraught to see his joyride leaning over to its doom. He had no idea who was inside, but all he could think about was the memories. Jogging with the robot into the sunset on the roadtrip of a lifetime. All that fun, and for what? The nerd was right.

It was all his fault. MEGAS wasn't his toy.

It was one of Earth's last hopes.

Kiva trusted him.

All he could do was scream, "NNOOOOOOOOOO!" he yelled, pounding on the still-active force field of the containment device.

As Coop watched in despair, the others began to wince and refuse to look, not ready for the sounds of metal crumpling and collapsing in on itself, the gears and servos that would fall apart from the sheer force and magnitude of the descent. Steven held his hands to his ears...but Otto just kept wincing.

It was about near the ground...

...only...

...they heard no crash.

They felt something. A pound to the ground, but Steven nor Otto could see, their vision obscured by the heaps of metal ahead...and the fact that they were still keeping their eyes shut.

By the time they opened them to see, they were completely unaware of what happened. Otto rubbed his eyes under his glasses to make sure he wasn't having temporal nausea again. Steven could barely make out what was peeking over the hills of garbage. When he saw it... "Stars..." he muttered under his breath. He looked up to see Coop, still having not lost concentration on the shield platform.

He saw Coop, who had a better view over the junkyard, was eyes-wide and speechless. Was it panic? Was it the hard hitting reality of seeing his beloved robot smashed apart?

It was the opposite.

---

Mordecai and Rigby were shaking.

Their eyes were sealed shut. They just didn't want to open them.

They didn't want to wake up and find themselves dead.

Which on its own wasn't all that bad, but this was a poor and painful way to go out.

But...they both knew what it felt like to be dead.

They...didn't feel dead.

If anything, Mordecai in particular felt like his hand was on the primary video-game controller, the one that rested on the steering wheel that his other hand gripped tightly.

And Rigby was huddled in a fetal position, his arms and clawed paws wrapped around his head and snout, very quietly wimpering.

He was in so much panic, that he didn't grab the hard drive that the nerds outside needed.

So with a video game controller being squeezed in fear...and a hard drive for the motor functions of the MEGAS still in its slot...

Mordecai and Rigby slowly opened their eyes, and peaked out from their position of fear...to find that they were just about 10 feet from the ground.

And to their side, the giant five-digit servo of the giant robot car was right next to them, holding them up with all the strength of its pistons. Rigby's mouth went wide open with surprise once again, his eyes went from the servo to the object in Mordecai's hand. The controller.

Looking down, Mordecai looked back and forth as he fiddled with the controller's joysticks, seeing them controlling the movement of the elbow joints and the wrist joints. One button, and the servo clenched into a fist. He pressed it again and it was back to a hand. Indeed, this controller was for the right arm, and the arm was still moving!

MEGAS was still operational. It hadn't succumbed to the fusion matter yet!

---

By the shield wall, Coop gave out a breath of relief. Mordecai and Rigby saved his robot.

Steven was in shock, while Otto let out his own sigh, clutching his hair and letting it puff out.

---

Dexter was in even greater disbelief. "I don't believe it."

It evoked Ben to give him a look of disbelief.

3 minutes remained. However that would play out, Dexter was happy to see his hypothesis proven right. Any gamer could drive that thing.

---

Mordecai gave out a chuckle of relief. He always did want to go out playing a video game. So his first instinct was to grab the controller, and it turned out to save their lives!

"Holy crap!" Rigby exclaimed. "HOLY CRAP!"

No more time for celebration, they had to get back outside with expedience. The fusion monsters were gonna catch up. "Dude, the other controller!" Mordecai pointed

"What about the legs? Keep your hand on the gears, man!" Rigby pointed to the gearshift and the steering wheel. Of course! MEGAS was a robot car. The steering wheel and gas pedal were used to direct it! To move its legs!

Mordecai followed his advice, letting one hand let go of the controller to take hold of the wheel. His anisodactyl foot pounded the gas pedal, with full speed in mind. But they weren't moving as quickly as they would have liked. The fusion matter was holding them back. Its presence was in the gears, clogging up the internal mechanisms and making actually piloting this thing much harder.

But the feather-handed slacker persisted! And by his side was his ages old friend, controlling the right arm to sway the robot free. Mordecai accompanied that with proper use of the steering wheel. They were working in full synchrony.

It's a shame they were still in danger.

---

After that momentary distraction, Coop was down to the last two red wires. This would, to his understanding, shut down the Infected Zone and disable Dexter's EMP. With his pliers, he reached in to finish the job.

Snip...

...and SNAP!

"ALL DONE!"

And so they were! With the containment shield finally damaged, it plopped down, crashing on the ground and spreading into a million pieces. He smiled, as Megas was finally standing up, standing proudly over the Junkyard once more...and erasing that smile all the more quickly.

The wall came down. The blue light at each device's center turned red, and they all descended gracefully. Steven and Otto were now more relieved than ever, the former now finally able to set Coop down, descending his own levitating shield contruct. Coop stepped down from it with a huff.

"EMP DISABLED!" Dexter shouted from the entrance.

---

The boy genius was the most relieved out of the entire bunch. "Too close...too close." he contemplated making his firewalls a bit easier to breach. As he held his hands to his head, his NanoCom rang with urgency.

It was Computress. Dexter patched through to her immediately, and even for a robotic AI she sounded worried. [Alert - Containment Shield failure in IZ10; further action requested-]

"It's alright, Computress. Reconfigure IZ10 perimeter, and reboot containment protocol."

[Affirmative] Computress complied, [The protocol will be engaged accordingly. T-Minus: 120 seconds]

Dexter nodded as he hung up...realizing all too quickly that with the shield down, he coudl now directly transmit to Mordecai and RIgby with their nanite signatures! He could open the NanoChat!

But at the same time...Fuse targeted the robot. And now the robot was free...

...and the shield wall was down.

"Testing, testing," he began shouting with urgency, attempting to reach them.

---

"Testing-Testing-MORDECAI! RIGBY!"

As MEGAS marched forward with towards the edge of the Junkyard, with Mordecai on the gas pedal and the left controller, and with Rigby on the right controller.

"Who said that?!"

"It is I! Dexter, on the ground! We feared the worst!" Dexter sounded exasperated, as though all too familiar with all this confusion and frustration, but never finding himself prepared to actually go through it over again. At least that's what Rigby assumed. "Are you in the car?!"

"Hell yeah we're in the car!" Rigby celebrated. "How frickin' AWESOME was that?!"

"Do you have the hard drive?!"

"Hard drive's the only reason we're alive!" Rigby continued. "We're almost at the edge of the Junkyard, we'll park there and-"

"NO, get the hard drive and make haste for-"

[ALERT! Marked Projectile: approaching atmosphere]

Above them, they could hear it. A thunderous boom clapped in the sky. To Mordecai and Rigby, having been on open-field duty at the Park when the invasion hit, they were all too familiar with what would come next, moving into shock to see the clouds in the sky lit with a green tint.

"DUD-"

Before they could react or move out of the way...a green projectile struck the robot square in its chest.

They were rocked back, not expecting such an impact; the hula girl was knocked off its glued position on the dashboard; one of MEGAS' tail-fin-lights was knocked off, falling to the ground and shattering on impact, and the front chasis itself was sufficiently wrecked, dented and filled by the projectile. As they sat in the car, they could feel what was now attached to them.

The plant-like projectile was now stuck to one of its biggest threats; without the Glorft database, MEGAS had none of the countermeasures they developed against alien parasites like the fusions. Not that Mordecai and Rigby would have known how to access them in the first place.

Dexter began screaming into their ears. "IF YOU HAVE THAT HARD DRIVE, GET OUT OF THERE NOW!"

"We gotta get outta here!"

"I got it, dude!" Mordecai said, grabbing hold of the steering wheel, video game controller in one hand and the steering wheel tight in his other grip. They were gonna make it! He had to believe it, they were gonna make it! He began speaking it out loud to give himself more confidence. "We're gonna make it! WE'RE GONNA MAKE IT!"

Fuse had something else in mind. As Mordecai worked the pedals and wheel, he could tell contrary to his declarations of confidence that MEGAS was getting much harder to manuever. He opted for the video game controller, but found the left arm barely responsive, only moving decimeters per second. He looked to Rigby. He was having the same problems with his right arm. MEGAS was failing, now fully succumbing to the Fusion matter, and they were right where the aliens wanted them. They knew that once the fusion matter reached the hard drive port, it was over.

But they were so CLOSE! So close to the edge. They could now see Coop, and Steven, and the Time-travelling dude!

They just had to reach! For this would not be their last stand! They still had to figure out how to help fight these nightmares.

Mordecai leaned forward, banging the controller against the steering wheel's exposed car horn. Trying to get it to work. He turned its torso with the wheel...just as it began to stiffen for good. And lastly, he held down the joystick and spammed the 'X' button, raising the arm out and extending the palm of MEGAS out, doing so for dear life. The two park workers could now see the green infectious roots and vein-like streams of fusion matter inch their way towards them, having climed to MEGAS' collar.

They were almost there. Rigby made a reach for the hard drive.

Mordecai tried to shift the 8-ball gear to bend the robot down, but...the mechanisms were jammed now! They would have to run across the arm, and jump off!

Seeing no other way, he turned to face Rigby with a deathly stare. Rigby knew; he immediately pulled out the hard drive. The MEGAS stopped dead in its tracks, no longer able to move as its systems were just ejected from its body.

"GO GO GO!" Mordecai shouted as they scrambled out of the car.

And then came the speed. The speed of dashing across a robots arm, trying to avoid the servo soaked in fusion matter. Everything became a blur.

Rigby, on all fours, and hard drive in his mouth, was in a full panic. He couldn't tell how far either of them had gotten. All he knew was that he jumped first, and there was screaming.

And then...

...a really bright pink light, and a hard-as-bedrock surface.

It really hurt to land on, much less roll off and onto the ground. The next thing they heard was some pulsing noise–probably the shield wall coming back up–and someone else over apologizing. They were still in shock.

That was what it took to pilot MEGAS. That's what Coop had to do whenever fighting villains in New Jersey. Life threatening danger...which wasn't new to them, but damn.

They really needed a break...or at least to watch the master from a distance.

---

ONE HOUR LATER

"You sure you want to stay here?" Ben asked the two. They seemed pretty resolute.

"Park staff are on indefinite break anyway." Rigby explained. "Besides, this is too cool a job."

"Traumatizing, absolutely." Mordecai added.

"But worth it..."

"Absolutely."

Raising his eyebrows in confusion, but ultimately accepting the two's decision, the alien hero, who felt rather useless with this whole episode, simply shrugged and left to go see Otto before he too left.

The teen time traveler was crouching down on the dirt, logging the event on his HGW and finishing up the report he started when he got here. Ben moved towards him with some additional thoughts.

"Hey Otto?"

"Hey...uh, I need to better explain this whole thing." Otto awkwardly began, taking over the conversation that Ben wanted to pursue. "Thinking about it more and more...seeing events oracles wouldn't have guessed in their wildest dreams playing out...like Mordecai Quintel and Rigby Salyers actually piloting that thing. I realize the tree analogy sucks."

"Uh, yeah it does." Ben agreed.

Otto got up, taking deep breaths to make sure he was wording this as faithfully to Larry and Tuddrussel's words as possible. "I wanna try explaining this again."

Ben nodded and let Otto explain away.

"Forget the tree, and think of a rope. As we move forward in history, the rope becomes older, weaker, so the straws can start to unravel. When that happens, the Main Path gets wacky. So tachyon assignments stick to that end of time. Repairing the past, keeping the future on the right course. We have an imperfect understanding of how time goes in the future, but as the rope winds and forms from the straws, timeline after timeline are authenticated and brought into the present." That was the best possible way to explain it that he could think of. Ben was his friend, and while not worth breaking the rules of the Squad over, it wasn't worth demotivating him and screwing up the future as it was. "Whatever I say I know about what happens in this war...take it with a grain of salt. I'm a Time Squad Officer, I'm trained to make those kinds of educated guesses."

Ben could see how that analogy worked better...and for the worse. "Then if anything, the future is still up in the air...and that's what's terrifying."

Otto nodded. "Stuff like what Coop was hiding, it was one of those alternate timelines that I didn't expect to get authenticated. I can only travel and take info that I have to hope works for this timeline."

But Otto could see that Ben wasn't over what he had gone through in that future past. The last thing he wanted to see was those same fates to befall his friends; he didn't know how he would factor into his own timeline, after all. Otto rested a hand on his shoulder. "Were I you, I wouldn't dwell on it. Heck, Finn and Jake could pop up on your doorstep tomorrow, and you would have no idea how that leads into Fuse's future...or the one where we win. Time's a rope. You got no idea how it binds together." He reasoned, repeating and abridging the analogy.

But it was rather ironic to Ben. "But you do...kind of."

"I do, but...spoilers." Otto joked. "I'm gonna stay in the shadows for a bit. Director Sternwell's gonna kill me for interfering so much."

And with that, he disappeared in another flash of blue light.

Meanwhile...Dex was on a call with HQ. He was telling them everything. From the phone, Blossom looked extremely frustrated, and especially disappointed. Coop couldn't hear what she was saying, but the pink commander and leader didn't seem like she was on his side any longer. He walked off while Jamie retreated indoors to the trailer, the hard drive with him and safe from fusion harm.

He stared longingly at the now still giant, fully immobilized. The terrafuser on its chest covering the four-flame decal he put so much work into, the green egg-like plant was pulsating, wriggling, and slowly spreading its vines and roots across the robot's figure and hugging it with control. Something wasn't adding up. "Why hasn't it taken control of him?"

Dexter prided himself on his attention to detail...but until this point he never realized that Coop referred to the robot possessively. He gave the robot a pronoun. A part of him couldn't help but feel bad for his brutal takedown, while the more rational side of him disagreed.

But the meandering mechanic raised an interesting question. "We cannot know. Not yet anyway." Dexter futily answered.

It was true. As easy as these fusion monsters were to defeat, it all felt too good to be true. Fuse had a galaxy wide and temporal reputation; he, it, whatever Fuse was, they were not known for making a sloppy mess. Fuse was playing with the food. And they had no idea how all of this would unfold.

"You were right, y'know?"

"Which part?"

Coop didn't say anything...all he did was turn around, pulling something from his pocket, something that audibly jingled. It was a ring of keys, with a particularly large one with a flaming 8-ball decal on its back.

He tossed it over to the boy genius, who was thoroughly confused as he caught it. But it wasn't too hard to figure out. He looked up and rephrased his question.

"Which part in particular?"

He looked back to his robot, the only place he could look was up. A resigned optimism echoed in his voice as he came to the bitter realization that his actions had a hefty price...and it wasn't 2 dollars.

"Anyone can drive that thing."

The mechanic looked longingly at the chatting park workers. Dexter didn't make that connection, but apart from that he was now fully realizing what happened. Looking down at the ring of keys, he realized Coop had just relinquished control of MEGAS to Dexlabs. All Dexter could do was frown, more irritated despite Coop's seeming plea for pity. This should have happened before MEGAS was compromised.

The boy genius turned his back and walked away without a second thought; Ben followed him. His anger wasn't worth Coop's time. But if anything, it proved to Dexter that he was wrong earlier while talking to Edd. He needed to be more involved. He couldn' let blunders like this happen ever again. He had to get into weapons, or someone less qualified could ruin everything.

---

Steven was playing with his own keys, taking another moment to collect himself, all of himself. In the span of a couple hours, he had been chased, beaten, rescued, benched, and then un-benched to help with hardware. Surprisingly this was not the most stressful situation he had been put in.

But it all confirmed what he feared. Indeed there was a whole other universe behind the front of the Crystal Gem race. A universe that knew more about this Great Harbinger and his World-Eaters, and he was shocked to find people that treated this kind of intel so thoughtlessly and irresponsibly. Was this another call to action? Was this the world's way of telling him that the right hands for the job needed to step into the light? He thoguht this quietly while waiting on the two heroes to make their way. They needed a ride back home and it sounded like they had no bus money.

The van door was open, the van that his dad had given him as a choice between a Hyundai and a place to live in if hotels were too expensive. He had no idea how that happened; he remembered closing it; either way, he was distracted by those keys as he wrote in his journal. As the boy genius and the alien hero approached, they got a glimpse into the interior of the vehicle. Clearly, Steven was using it as a living space.

"Nice backpack." Ben complemented his Ultimeatum Cheeseburger backpack. He recalled how much Rigby envied it.

"Eh. They were handing them out for free." Steven admitted. Clearly this Ultimeatum backpack wasn't as 'limited edition' as had been assumed.

"Thank you again for lending us a hand in getting back to Tech Square, Mr. Universe."

"Mr. Universe is my dad, I'm Steven." Steven joked. "I can sing though." he added as he took out his guitar from a blind spot in the car.

"Please don't." Dexter was just...not in the mood for any more drama...or musicals.

Deciding to change the subject, the alien hero brought up a point from before. "So that's what these things are actually called, huh?" Ben asked. "World Eaters?"

Steven shook and scratched his head, clearly perturbed by their difference in naming conventions. "Look, I overreacted to the whole naming thing. You can call them fusions if you want, but I wouldn't say that if you ever stop by Beach City." he explained. "I knew of these things as a bedtime story. Garnet would tell me about them on Halloween, how so much as their name...and their power to feed off of or fuse with organic life...it made Gems everywhere fear to fuse with a different type. That kind of fear means Homeworld had to have had major history with them."

"Remarkable." Dexter realized. The term was taken back by the Gems, it seemed. "So the fusions are the ancient enemies of Gemkind..."

The crystalline kid-turned-crusader winced. His vocabulary association was messing with him. "Sure...I mean, yeah." He said. "I let the Crystal Gems know in the months leading to the Harbinger coming. They wanted to come back, but the Diamonds vetoed it...and Zircon agreed."

Dexter raised his eyebrow. He wasn't familiar with the monarchy that the gems operated under, but this was troubling. "Why were they gone in the first place?"

"They were helping extract the Cluster in Townsville Park." Steven explained. "Reintegrating the gems back into Era 3 society. Lapis, Peridot & Bismuth are still here though, at Little Homeworld." Looking around, Steven wasn't digging the time of day. "Uh, let's get in, guys, it's getting dark."

Dexter nodded, while Ben shook his head. He didn't need a bus or a ride, he'd go back as one of his aliens...why didn't he come here as one of his aliens?! UGH, Ben thought. The bus fee was for NOTHING!

"I'll need to talk to my Grandpa Max," he explained. "I need to know just how many planets or species have heard of Lord Fuse to begin with. If anyone should have history with it, it should be the Plumbers."

Steven nodded, and Dexter climbed into the front seat, both watching Ben play and struggle with the Omnitrix. Maybe it was something they were unfamiliar with him doing, but it was beginning to look like Ben was extremely confused.

"What's up?" Steven asked.

"Nothing, I can get to Bellwood on my own," argued Ben, "something's up with the watch; it's taking a while to boot up."

"Err...maybe it needs a song?" he asked as he took out his ukulele from a blind spot in the car.

Both heroes voiced in unison "NO!" This was the wrong time to go into a musical number.

Soon, the fidgeting was getting to be too much. Ben was clearly struggling with something. But what could it be? Typically whenever he wanted to transform he would pop open the watch's ring, but the Omnitrix was unresponsive. He pulled, he pushed, he tried everything...until...success! The watch ring popped open.

But there was no hologram. No neon green light. It was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Dexter could tell this was absolutely not normal. "Ben, is something wrong?"

The not-so alien hero looked up at the both of them with wide as day eyes in the middle of the evening. Ben was sporting a look of terror. One, because it looked like his best bet against Planet Fusion was experiencing serious malware, and two...because he was not about to call his mom to pick him up. "Um...got room for one more?" With a single glitch, this was now looking like the darkest timeline, yet to be authenticated.

This war could not possibly get worse.

---

DEVELOPER'S JOURNAL: Hands on a Hard Drive

Hiatuses suck.

But school comes first.

I'm gonna drop the deadlines. It doesn't help me when writing this stuff.

I hope you all enjoyed this long-awaited chapter. This is one where I was juggling a whole lot of elements, and will probably be the one that I come back to change the most. Don't worry about continuity, I would make sure that drastic changes here would still connect to other chapters.

I also would like to co-credit BasicSarah for helping me develop some of the worldbuilding to address the naming discrepancies of FusionFall's fusions and Steven Universe's fusions. In later revisions, I might cut back on how deep into the lore I go in this chapter, mainly because I promised her that she could use it after I posed Chapter 8. So I'm really sorry Sarah for the super long wait. Go forth and add in that worldbuilding!

Till next we meet. Please remember to leave a favorite, or leave a review/comment if you liked this chapter. For those that know my story from my talk about it on Discord, PLEASE DO NOT ADDRESS ANY OF THE DETAILS that I've disclosed on Discord in your comments or reviews.

Thank you and have a wonderful night.

---

NEXT CHAPTER: The Imagination Examination

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