Author's Notes: I want to thank my Beta Reader, Slicerness, for helping with the fight scene as I'm awful at writing them. If you think you can do better, please let me know and I'll use you next time.
Chapter Nine!
Clay Attack - Part 4!
As the two preteens got up and turned to face where the attack came from to see their attacker; an elderly man with his right arm in the process of reforming. His angry scowl melted off his old face, with everything else along with it as he lost colour and definition, becoming the blob they'd seen in the forest.
"Now I'll ask once again, hand over the Omnitrix or things will get messy." The alien growled as he returned to his original form.
"Why do you want it so badly?" Harry asked, trying to fish for information he could potentially use. "You've got the ability to alter and change your body to anything, so why do you want this Omny-thingy."
"I don't care about your little trinket, but my boss, Warlord Vilgax, wants it." He explained, "Now hand it over!"
Upon hearing that a Warlord wanted the Omnitrix, both Harry and Gwen knew it was a bad idea to hand it over to him. So Harry shook his head in the negative, "Sorry, can't allow this thing to fall into the hands of a mad man who wants to us it for war, even if I could remove it."
"Sorry to hear that, I guess you'll have to die." The clay monster said indifferently. As Harry was about to hit the Omnitrix the alien's arm reached out and grabbed hold of it. "I don't think so human, the Omnitrix isn't going to-AH!" He pulled back his arm to reveal and chunk was missing, which quickly refilled.
A voice came from the Omnitrix, which was glowing yellow. "Scanning DNA…"
"What's going on here?" The alien demanded.
"How the hell should I know?" Harry demanded, "I only got it yesterday, so I don't know what's going on any more than you do."
Before anyone else could say anything the Omnitrix went green again before the dial popped up, the modulated voice once more appearing, "DNA scan completed! Sample accepted and successfully implanted into archive. Species: Arxilasapien, is now available for use."
Harry looked at the dial and saw a very familiar silhouette. "Now that's new..." He commented with a raised eyebrow, "Let's see what I can do with this!" was the final thing he said before he pushed the dial down, not giving the alien another chance to block him from the Omnitrix.
Harry's form was almost identical to the other clay alien, but he was smaller, thinner, and the Omnitrix symbol was where his neck would be. "I think I'll call this form Clayface." Harry said with a smirk, turning to face the other Axilasapien, "Let's see what you can do facing one of your own kind!"
"Please, do you really think you can defeat me because you have my form now?" The alien sneered, "I am Gandrayda, an Arxilasapien Warrior from the planet Arxulon Prime. If you, human, think you have an idea what my race can do, think again." He threw his arm out in a backhand, throwing spikes of clay towards Harry.
What Gandrayda didn't take in account was that Harry had already transformed into an alien with shape shifting powers, and had a good idea how they worked. With a thought Harry's form collapsed into a puddle, causing the hardened spikes to sail harmlessly over him, where they continued until they buried themselves in someone's car.
As the spikes passed over him Harry's grinning head popped back up from within the puddle, followed by shoulder, arms, a torso, and eventually legs, "I think I've got a decent idea what your people can do, thanks. Now, do you want to continue and see where things end up, or can we be civil and we leave things as they are?"
Gandrayda was shocked that a human could use his people's abilities so easily so quickly when he had no previous experience. But that didn't mean that the human could outdo him, he was the finest of his people and he would not be beaten by some adolescent human. "You just got lucky human," Gandrayda said angrily, "I'll show you what a real Axilasapien can do."
Gandrayda's body hardened, becoming armour that covered his form covered in spikes and blades. Harry's transformation was simpler, his right arm becoming a spikes mace like the one his foe had used when he first appeared, while his left hand morphed into a kite shield. The shield turned out of be a good decision, because it effortlessly blocked the spear Gandrayda launched towards him. Harry's right arm swung around and slammed into the other clay monster's chest, cracking his chest piece and throwing him back. Taking advantage of the momentary lull in the battle he turned back to Gwen, "Gwen, run and hide!"
The orange haired girl didn't hesitate to run away, diving behind one of the farthest cars in the lot; far enough away to be out of trouble, hopefully, but close enough to assist if the watch unexpectedly times out and her cousin needed a distraction.
Since Harry's attention was on his cousin he didn't see Gandrayda swing his arm wide, using momentum to assist his fist, shaped like the head of a sledge hammer, and break clean through his shield in a spray of hardened clay bits. Harry hurled himself backwards to evade the back swing, and groaned as he stood up and saw his arm reforming. "That hurt." He said unnecessarily.
Before he could do anything Gandrayda sent thousands of arrows at him. "I'm impressed, you may know how to use our powers, but you don't know how to fight as an Axilasapien." The warrior sneered at Harry as he split himself into two, making a copy of himself. Neither hesitated to attack and began to beat on Harry with spikes, blades and whatever else they could come up with. Their attacks weren't complimentary towards each other, but the lack of teamwork didn't really matter in the face of sheer quantity.
A furious and deadly game of rock paper scissors began as Harry defended against the spikes with a quickly formed hylian shield, countered the blades with his own, and became liquid to evade the bludgeoning attacks, throwing his own hurried attacks their way at every chance he given to him and making as many walls as possible to give him enough breathing room to stay alive and one step ahead of them.
It took a total of five minutes, which felt far longer in combat, for Harry to really realize that he was outmatched and needed to retreat. His chance came a few moments later when both of them went for an overhead hammer strike. The two rectangles of hardened clay slammed down on his hastily formed clay dome.
The two Gandraydas gave a shout of triumph as the dome shattered like glass, but made noises of confusion as they bulled their hammers back to reveal nothing.
Unseen by either of them a puddle quickly slithered away from under the van next to the dome towards Gwen. The preteen girl would have shrieked as she was smothered from behind by a massive blob of clay, if it weren't for Harry covering her mouth as he pulled her behind the SUV she'd taken cover behind.
Gwen panicked, but calmed down as the thing grabbing her shrank down and let go of her. She turned to see her cousin peaking over through the SUV windows at the two clay aliens, who reformed and started flipping cars over to find him. At first she thought he'd changed back into a human because the watch timed out, but the lack of red flash, Omnitrix on his wrist, and the addition of the symbol on his chest suggested otherwise.
"Let's get out of here before he finds us..." He whispered to her as he took her hand and dragged her from the car park.
o0OoO0o
A short while later the two of them were back in the empty room that they were hiding in earlier, Gwen still having the key on her. Once inside the room, the Omnitrix flashed red and beeped and Harry returned to his human self, which, since he was already in human form, wasn't very much of a change at all and he didn't even break stride. What did cause him to stumble was Gwen punching his arm, "What were you thinking you stupid Doofus? You almost got yourself killed because you couldn't stick to the plan!"
"I thought I could use its own skills against him-" Harry tried to explain himself.
"Idiot!" Gwen snapped at him, "You used an alien that you had no idea if you could even use, against an alien that you were becoming who obviously knew far more than you likely ever will. We may not be geniuses, but we had a solid plan, we could have won." Gwen sighed and calmed herself down as it became apparent she was just repeating herself; this was getting them nowhere. "Harry there's a saying, there is a tool for every job, and for this that new alien you used wasn't the right tool, Heatblast was."
"Sorry Gwen, I thought-" He said slowly, looking down.
"I understand what you thought Harry." Gwen said softly, "And I'll admit your line of thought even makes sense, but like you said, we may not like each other and we may never get along, but I don't want you to die on me. So please be careful." She added sadly as she hugged him.
"I'm sorry Gwen," Harry replied softly, his arms raising to hug her back. "I'll keep to the plan now."
"Thank you," Gwen said with a smile before she asked, "So how did your mentality or mood change as Clayface?"
Harry immediately turned red and pushed her away, "I-I don't want to talk about it," he said quietly, "All I'll say is that multitasking is really easy."
In truth, Clayface had a sort of calm about him that made it very easy to multitask, even in combat. The problems started appearing when he'd been fleeing with Gwen. His eyes had locked on her backside and refused to leave, his fingers had transformed into tentacles seemingly of their own volition before he forcibly changed them back to normal and the less said about the things that went through his mind the better.
The Omnitrix beeped, thankfully, before Gwen could build up to a full on interrogation, and glowed a ready green. Looking up at Gwen Harry slapped a slightly forced smile on his face and got up. Placing a hand on the door he turned back to tell her, "Okay, let's try this again, and this time I'll stick to the plan. Stay here, I'm sure we both know how crazy a full on battle involving Heatblast is going to get."
"Alright, just be careful." Gwen said with a hint of warmth before she joked, "I don't want to explain to Grandpa that you were killed because you were being a Doofus."
Harry just smiled as he left the room to find the Axilasapien.
o0OoO0o
When Harry left the room and made his way outside he saw that the parking lot was in ruins, most of the cars and RVs were turned over and on fire. Harry was grateful the Rust Bucket had been pulled into the employee parking area so it was untouched. He scanned the area for other humans and, thankfully, only found a portion of the hotel guests peaking out of their windows or doors. Some had the courage to shout for him to stay away, or get back inside, but he ignored them.
Or rather, didn't get a chance to ignore them as a puddle of clay slithered out from behind a tree right in front of him and hopped on him. It rolled out of sight, which was fortunate because in an explosion of flames Harry was set free, now the living magma monster named Heatblast.
"A Pyronite!?" Gandrayda cried out in shock, and a hint of fear. The Pyronites and Axilasapiens were at one time at war with each other a long time ago, for reasons he didn't know personally, but what he did know was that the Pyronites almost wiped them out. The Pyronites were one of the few races that could defeat them with little effort. It was only because of a treaty that the war stopped, but the Axilasapiens feared ever facing one, just in case they decided to finish them off.
Although he was in shock at seeing a Pyronite in the flesh, he was able to raise a hardened and reinforced clay wall to block a fireball that was aimed at him. He refused to give up. While very difficult and dangerous, it was possible for an Axilasapiens to fight and defeat a Pyronite. He mostly chose to forgo defence in favour of overwhelming offensive, launching attack after attack with an almost desperate urgency.
Heatblast was on the defensive, needing to block the barrage of spikes, spears, arrows, knives and even just regular jagged hunks of hardened clay lest he get skewered. He knew he needed to act fast before Gandrayda decided to split into two and he would have to face two, maybe even more, so he sent his own barrage of quickly launched but no less dangerous balls of fire at the Axilasapien to hopefully cause his opponent to switch to the defensive for even just a few second
It worked as well as could be expected on a race that was apparently very good at multitasking and Harry took a clay knight to the right forearm, but he pushed past the pain and, when most of the constantly shifting clay alien's attention was on defending against the spheres of heat he charged and fired a cone of pure white flames at the enslaved alien.
Gandrayda was hit full force by the powerful attack and his entire body began to lighten, slowly becoming stiff and cracking in places as the heat was raised.
Upon seeing Gandrayda was now as hard as rock, Harry didn't hesitate just in case he hadn't fully stopped him and the Axilasapien was able to recover from the attack. He quickly grabbed the collar and yanked it off, mindless that he'd just 'decapitated' his opponent. He threw the ring of metal onto the ground and brought his arms together at the wrist to force a wave of pure heat at his target. The air itself wavered and the grass was instantly black in a ten foot radius, which widened a few more feet as Harry poured more energy, as much as he could, into the heat wave. It progressed to the point that the trees were started to turn yellow and even smoulder around him before he was finally met with success; the collar began to beep and crack before eventually melting.
Once the collar was no more Harry fell back onto the ground and began to pant from the energy he'd used. It was more than he'd ever used at once before, but it was worth it. The Omnitrix flashed red and timed out. Back to human form, Harry was too busy panting for breath that he didn't hear the should of clay cracking, or see the hardened clay darken a little bit at a time until Gandrayda was fully recovered, his body malleable once more.
Once Gandrayda was able to move again he saw that the human was no longer a Pyronite but had returned to his weak base form, weakened and with his already puny defences lowered. This seemed to be the right time to finish the human off, but he froze as he suddenly felt something, or rather the lack of something, and looked down to see... nothing. The collar that Warlord Vilgax had put on him so long ago was gone. He was finally free from the Warlord, free to pay the tyrant back for what he did to him, for changing him into what he was now, a cold hearted killer who barely had any honour and killed without mercy. It was this same rekindled honour that made him stay his hand and spare the human. The human had, judging by the damage to the environment, been specifically targeting his collar instead of finishing him off.
He felt a responsibility to warn the lower being about the threat the warlord presented, so he said aloud, "Human!" The boy opposite him whirled around, raising to his feet. His form was ready despite him clearly running on empty, displaying an admirable level of willpower, but was ultimately pointless; the fight was over. "At ease Human, I do not want to fight you anymore, not today at least."
"Then what do you want?" Harry asked, ready to make a run for it as the Omnitrix hadn't reset itself yet.
"To thank you and to warn you." Gandrayda said simply. Using the surprised silence he continued, "I want to thank you for freeing me, that collar you destroyed was forcing me to serve Warlord Vilgax against my will, forcing me to become something I wasn't. So for that I thank you, and for that I reward you by letting you live, be warned though, the next time we meet I'll finish what I started today." Harry breathed a sigh of relief as the clay warrior turned to leave. He really wasn't up to fighting anymore.
"As for my warning," Gandrayda spoke up again over his shoulder, "just be cautious and ready for attacks in the future, you should know that Vilgax won't give up until he's got the Omnitrix in his hands. He'll keep sending whatever he can until he gets what he wants, so be careful. Until we meet again, human." The freed Axilasapien transformed into a giant bird and flew away from there.
Harry breathed another sigh of relief as Gandrayda left, but was worried about what he had said. He would need to be careful from now on. But he would worry about later on, for now he had to get back to Gwen and make sure she was alright.
o0OoO0o
2nd of June 2001:
It was late afternoon and Harry and Gwen were watching their Grandpa finishing up fixing up the Rust Bucket. He had returned that morning as people were beginning to clean up the miss from the 'monster' attack from the night before. When asked what happened, they told him the story that was going around the motel, but later told the truth in a more private setting where they wouldn't be overheard. When they did, Harry thought he saw shock and fear in his Grandfather's eyes, as if he knew of the names said in his story. But the look on his face quickly passed as fast as it appeared. Harry convinced himself he was seeing things and let it go, but a little suspicion was forming in the back of his mind.
Now though it was late afternoon, and Grandpa Max had just finished fixing the Rust Bucket. "So kids, do you want to spend another night here or head off to Washington now? We can get there in a few hours." He claimed as he wiped the oil from his hands with an old shirt he'd started using as an oil rag.
Harry and Gwen both looked at each other, both thinking about what happened the night before and turned back to look at him, crying in unison, "Washington now!" And so the three Tennysons got into the Rust Bucket and left for Washington. Not knowing that their next adventure was only just around the corner.
TO BE CONTINUED!
Author's Notes: So after another four parts, here ends the Clay Attack of Harry Tennyson, once again this one isn't canon so I hope you like the first new work for this story. And once again they are heading to Washington, will they get there when the planned or will something happen to stop them getting there, keep reading to find out. Now that you spent the time to read this story, could you spend a few minutes to review and let me know what you think of the story? Like it or not, I would like to hear what you think and what you would like to happen next. And if you can come up with a better title for this chapter, please let me know…
I would like to ask what episodes you would like to see and not see within this story, and ideas for new aliens, what they look like, powers, where they come and things like that to make it easier to write them in. So you know, I'm planning to use a few aliens from Star Wars.
So you know, I won't be following the same episode timeline as the show, they'll be all over the place to fit into this story, so if you think of an episode that could be shown soon that it did in Ben 10 let me know and I'll add it if I is it fits with my story.
Omake's are also welcome, or even just suggestions for scenes you'd like written out if they're funny but you don't feel confident you can write them out yourself.