Chapter Fifteen!
The Krakken - Part 1 (From Season 1 Episode 3)
6th of June 2001:
It was a few days since the incident with Dr. Animo back in Washington, things would have been fine if it wasn't kept to Grandpa Max to decide where they would visit on their journey. All they visited were places that Harry thought were utterly boring, and even Gwen's faked enthusiasm was growing visibly forced at seeing the same boring museum or villages. Gwen was beginning to see that her Grandpa had no idea what fun was for the kids of today. After the second night of sightseeing, they stopped off at a lake campsite for the night and the next day or so. By the looks of it, it could be one of the better places that their Grandpa had taken them to.
So at Camp Lakeside, Harry decided to take a nighttime swim in the lake before going to bed. Getting to the lake, Harry took a running start and shouted, "Cannonball!" as he made a splash. "The Judges scores, and yes! A prefect ten!" Harry cheered at himself, "The crowd loves him."
"The perfect dweeb more like it." Harry heard Gwen snip, as he looked up to see her at the edge of the fishing deck, giving him an annoyed look.
"Oh come on Gwen." Harry said with a grin, "After the last few days with the awful sightseeing that Grandpa Max set up you can't deny me this bit of fun."
Gwen was forced to reluctantly agree, after the last few days they'd been having she was pretty desperate for some fun. Still, she had standards. "Fine, I understand that, but can you be careful with where you're splashing?"
"Yeesh Gwen, lighten up a bit!" Harry said, "We're camping near a lake, you have to accept you might get wet. Now come on, get that swimsuit on and dive in." He was easily able to forced down the strange jolt of eagerness he felt at the idea.
She sent him a dry, condescending look. "We are camping near a swamp. You. Are. In. A. Swamp. Do you have any idea what kind of filth lives in those? Because I do. I wouldn't get in there if I was on fire!"
Harry sniffed, annoyed that she did sort of have a point. It wasn't the cleanest water around. So channeling that annoyance, he splashed some water at her.
The orange haired girl gasped and instinctively scraped at the front of her shirt to get the water, and whatever else was in the water, off. "Knock it off midget!" She cried as she quickly turned around and began walking away.
Harry was about to start a prank, make Gwen think he was drowning, but was mature enough to realize that was a really bad idea. What if he really did start drowning in the future and Gwen thought he was just playing? Instead, he morphed into Four-Arms and covered himself in slime and plants to give the appearance of a lake monster. "Because really, a lake monster? Nobody would believe that." He chuckled.
Unfortunately for his would be plan, Gwen had left faster than expected. "Oh well." Harry said with a sigh as he cleaned himself from plants and slime. "Doubt she would have been fooled anyway."
But fate seemed to be a funny thing, because when Harry heard a splashed behind him, he turned around to see a huge shadow of something, some kind of monster. And before he could do anything, two long tentacles that looked like they were coming from its mouth grabbed hold of him and threw him across the lake. As Harry landed in the water, he looked around to see where this monster was, only to be dragged down into the lake without seeing anything. As Harry got close to what he thought was the monster's face, he hit with all of his four arms.
The tentacles went slack long enough for Harry to escape, but as he swam for the surface the tentacles reappeared, binding his arms once more.
Muscle eventually won out after more struggling, and Harry swam as fast as his body would let him towards the surface. This time the monster seemed to let him go, and he made it to the surface and most of the way towards the Rust Bucket in a blur of speed before the tunnel vision wore off.
He ducked his head into the RV and claimed, "I was just attacked by a Lake Monster."
The reaction to his claim was as to be expected.
Annoyed by the noise her cousin was making, Gwen threw a pillow at him. "Come on Harry, as if we'd fall for one of your pranks. I'm trying to sleep, so lay down and shut up before I hurt you." She wasn't happy to be disturbed and wasn't afraid to voice it.
"But I'm not kidding!" Four-Arms tried to explain. He admitted it was hard to belief, in fact he didn't believe in Lake Monsters before just a little bit ago. He started to wonder what else he considered not real was in fact real, like magic, dragons and such things.
"Come on champ, now's not the time for jokes, it is late." Grandpa Max said with a yawn. Four-Arms tried to insist, but the older man cut him off. "Get some sleep Harry, remember we've got an early start for our fishing trip."
And with that the Omnitrix timed out, to leave an upset Harry in the door way. Seeing as Gwen and Grandpa weren't going to take his word for it right now, he would have to get some rest and try and convince them of the truth in the morning. So he sighed, got dressed, or rather undressed, for bed and went to sleep.
o0OoO0o
7th of June 2001:
"No, really, it had these big red glowing eyes and it had two long tentacles that looked like was coming from its mouth." Harry once again explained what the monster looked like as they headed towards the docks. It was nine o'clock in the morning and the Tennysons had been up since seven. They were going to catch some fish for lunch that day - something that made both Harry and Gwen happy, as they didn't fancy the idea of another meal cooked by Grandpa Max.
"Harry, it could have just been a giant fish." Grandpa Max tried to explain what Harry saw; he thought that Harry would give up the prank by now, since they were calling him up about it. But it would seem Harry wasn't giving up without a fight.
"Yeah Harry, just give up this whale of a story already, Captain Dweeb." Gwen sighed with frustration.
Harry sighed, he knew he was a joker and loved a good laugh, but sometimes he knew he went too far and people didn't believe him. But as of late, apart for a few small pranks, he didn't do anything that wouldn't make them to believe him. Also with how the summer trip has been so far, with the aliens and robots that they had faced, they should have been more open minded.
Harry then spotted a bucket of worms at the end of the dock and smirked when an idea for a prank came to mind, before he shook his head. Any other time he would go ahead with this pranks, but he needed them to believe him and doing a prank now would make that outright impossible.
So with a quick thought, Harry whispered so no one else heard him, "Do you really think that a giant fish could have thrown Four-Arms across the lake? Also, after everything that we've seen so far in this trip, can you honestly say that there that there isn't something at least like a Lake Monsters?"
Gwen and Max couldn't help but admit that Harry had a point there. One, Four-Arms was strong and weighed several hundred pounds, easily; throwing him around would prove very difficult for a human sized creature. Secondly, a lake monster would be fairly tame compared to what they'd seen so far.
Gwen finally admitted that, if her cousin was indeed speaking the truth, it was entirely possible there was something extraterrestrial within the lake.
For Max though, he already knew that Harry was right, as a Plumber he'd read records from past missions of different monsters that Plumbers had seen. Most turned out to be aliens, but there were one or two that were monsters, like the loch ness monster in Scotland. He would keep an eye out.
Either way, seeing that neither of them were agreeing with him, Harry muttered angrily, "Fine, I'll find it myself and prove to you that the monster was there. I'll find out why it attacked me too! Was it because it saw me as a threat, or was another reason altogether? If it attacked me for another reason, we'll need to figure what it is and deal with it."
"What do you mean by deal with it?" Gwen demanded.
"Well if it didn't attack me because it saw me as a threat, then what's stopping it from attacking someone else?" Harry asked, gesturing out towards where several dozen other people were enjoying the day, "There must be something making it to attack, but the question is, what?"
But Gwen and Max shuddered at the thought, and so Max said, "Fine. Tonight we'll go out where you saw this lake monster and see if it's real or not. If it is we'll see what we can do about it. but for now let's enjoy our day, okay? We might even see signs of this lake monster of yours Harry. Other than that, there isn't much we can do with so many people around."
As much as Harry wanted to find this monster now, he could see his Grandpa's point, too many people were around. And if he was right about the monster attacking him other than seeing him as a threat, it would put people in danger. While he wasn't a hero, it didn't mean that he wanted to put people's life in unneeded danger. So waiting until night fall wasn't all that bad, and so he happily replied his grandfather, "Okay Grandpa, let's do some fishing…" and with that he ran off to get the bracket of worms.
But as he did, his smirk returned, now that he got Gwen and Grandpa Max believing that there is at least something out there, he could pull off the prank that he wanted to earlier, and so he put his hand into the bracket and pulled out a handful of worms and placed it in front of Gwen and said, "Here Gwen, a snack to pass you over until lunch time."
"Eww, gross Harry!" Gwen squealed in disgust as she looked at the worms in her cousin's hands before pushing his hand away from her.
"I know, not nice to look at," Harry admitted, "but considering what we've been eating of late, they don't look so bad. So, would you like some?" Offering the worms again.
Try as she might, Gwen couldn't help but giggle at that joke. So with a smile she asked, "So what's with the bucket of slimeys?"
"Bait!" Was Grandpa Max's reply.
"Yeah I think I'll pass on the fishing thing..." Gwen said, not really into fishing as much as her cousin and Grandpa, "I think I'll stay here and soak up some sun."
"Okay, but you don't know what you're missing!" Max told her, not letting her denial dampen his mood.
"I'm pretty sure I do Grandpa." Gwen told them as she waved them off, "Let me know if you find anything."
As Gwen left them, Max and Harry turned to the boat they were going to use for the day, and Max asked the man who was working on the boat, "Captain Shaw?"
"Who wants to know?" A rude old man replied.
"Max Tennyson, and this is my grandson Harry Tennyson." Max replied, as he introduced the two of them, "I called a few days to hire your boat for today for a fishing trip."
"Then what are you waiting for, get on board, I'm Shaw, and I haven't got all day." Captain Shaw barked.
Although Max had a glum look at the rudeness of the Captain, Harry was all too happy to get onto the boat and wasn't bothered by the man's rudeness. All he cared about was fishing and seeing if he could see the lake monster that he saw the night before.
It was about half an hour into the boat ride they were at one of the fishing spots at the lake, when Max asked, "Anything of interest to catch around here Captain?"
"More then you know..." Remarked the Captain, "Looks like your grandson is using his breakfast for chum."
Looking to his side, Max saw Harry bending over the side of the boat, thinking that Harry was sea-sick, he asked, "Are you alright Harry?"
"Yeah, I'm fine Grandpa," Harry said and he stood up, looking perfectly fine and not sea-sick at all, "I'm seeing if there's any signs of that lake monster that I saw last night. If it is out there, I'm not going to be taken by surprise this time!" Then he thought he sure something from a far, that looked like a monster.
"There it is!" He cried excitedly.
Only for the boat to drift closer and the fog to clear to reveal a floating pile of wood and bit of garbage keeping it together.
"Today is all about the fishing trip, not about monster hunting." Max said with a smile.
"It be called the Krakken." The Captain of the boat declared.
"Wow, you know about it?" An excited Harry inquired with a wide smile.
"It's my business to know about it!" Shaw informed them as he give them a badly taken photo of what seemed to be a sea-monster, but from Harry's point of view and his Grandpa's, it could be anything. "I've been searching for years, since I first saw it. Some people think that my radar isn't right…"
"Why doesn't that surprise me." Max said sarcastically. Harry had to agree with him, Shaw didn't seem to have all his oars still there.
As they travelled the lake Shaw went on to say, "The sightings of the Krakken go back hundreds of years, at this very lake. Some say it's a myth - and they would, seeing as they haven't seen it. Not like me, I've seen it myself. In fact I could take you to the very spot that I personally saw it. That is if you got the stomach for some real adventure."
Max wanted to say no, it seemed a bit dangerous to do so, but with the puppy dog look that Harry was giving, he couldn't say no. Concerned but willing, he sighed and nodded, "I guess so."
And so Shaw took them to where he first saw the lake monsters.
In fact the area that Shaw took them farther out of the laking area, and this is where the man said he first saw it. While they were looking around, Shaw told Harry, "Sonar, ultrasound, I've got all the equipment that I need to find the monster, and I'll tell you my boy, I will find it, mark my words. It can't hide forever."
Harry was concerned for the man's sanity, it seemed the fishermen had lost it. Sure Harry wanted to find the monster too, but for a much different reason than this man had.
So, wanting to know if it had attacked anyone or not before, Harry asked, "So Captain, do you know if this Krakken has attacked anyone in the past?"
"No, not yet." Shaw admitted, before his hands balled into fists and a glint of madness appeared in his eye, "But it's only a matter of time! I tell you boy, it's only time before it attacks someone."
As Harry looked at the man sadly, to be so obsessed to lose his mind like that…
Never the less, what Shaw told him made him more concerned. If it had never attacked before, why attack now? Did it see him - Four-Arms - as a threat, like he suspected, or was there another reason for the attacks? As he was thinking this, he was pulled away by Grandpa Max.
As he was pulled off to one side Max knelt down to him and said, "Harry, I don't want you to get your hopes up with what Captain Shaw saying, I don't think he has both of his oars in the water if you know what I mean."
"I understand Grandpa." Harry nodded to Max, "but he is the only one with leads as to where this Krakken could be. And I for one want to know if this Krakken is a danger or not, and if it is we have to find a way to deal with it for the sake of the people here." Seeing his Grandpa's eye glowing with hope, Harry knocked that down quickly, "Oh I'm not doing this to be a hero, I'd just feel responsible if someone here got hurt." Without another word Harry went to the front of the boat to keep an eye out for this Krakken.
As the boat went along the lake, they had to stop as the way was blocked with what looked like official banners that said 'Do Not Enter!'
As the boat stopped, Max came up front to see what was going on, and say the banners too, and as he got there, Shaw saw them too and asked, "Do Not Enter? What the hell is going on?"
"Don't know," Max admitted, "look official though. Maybe we should turn back."
"Nonsense, this is my lake and I'll go wherever I want to-" Shaw began, only to be drowned out by a loud voice.
"Fishing boat, stop where you are."
As they turned around they say another boat with the letters F.O.F on the side of it, and a brown haired man standing on the deck, clearly the man who'd just spoken as he lowered the microphone in his hand. "I'm Jonah Melville, founder of Friends of Fish. We have closed this area of the lake for environmental study, so I have to ask for you to turn your boat around."
"Suppose you make me, fish hugger." Shaw challenged Melville.
Not wanting any trouble, Max said, "Seeing that I hired the boat for the day, that makes me in charge, right Captain?"
Shaw just muttered to himself as he went back to the wheel of the boat, although Harry could understand why his Grandpa was doing, and he wasn't happy that they were leaving. So he asked, "What about the Krakken? I was hoping to find it."
"The Krakken?" They heard Melville say as he laughed, "Not that old fish story, I'm a marine biologist, and anyone that tells you that there is a monster in this lake is casting without a hook." And then he walked off.
As he did so, Harry muttered to himself, "So much you know..." Before turning to Max, "Can we come back later tonight?"
Max didn't want to, it was a dangerous idea, but like Harry he wanted to see if the Krakken was real, and stop it if need be.
"We'll see," said Max, "if these guys aren't around we can."
"Thanks Grandpa," Harry thanked his Grandpa, as the boat moved with the F.O.F boat following them.
As they are escorted back by Jonah, Shaw's sonar picks up an object heading towards their boat. "We've found something, it's on the stern end!"
"Or something found us!" Harry exclaimed as he and his Grandpa looked at what it could be. Immediately they saw a fin which, at first glance, appeared to be like one seen on sharks. But they realized that couldn't be it, as this wasn't a lake that could support a shark.
Just as the Fin went into the lake, Shaw's salty voice broke the silence, "It's the Krakken!"
Harry's eyes widened as something huge swim under the boat, making the boat rock and make waves.
Shaw's eyes sharpened as he followed the shadow beneath the surface, "It's headed for the docks!"
Sure enough, whatever it was, was indeed headed that way, in fact that's when Harry and Max realized something, and at the same time yelled, "Gwen!"
o0OoO0o
Meanwhile, with Gwen:
For the last hour Gwen Tennyson was having a relaxing time, no need to worry about aliens or monsters attacking her or her family. Or having Harry try to prank her like he had been doing. Don't get her wrong, as much as she hated to admit it, apart for the awful food, and the alien attacks, she was having a good time. She was even having a good time talking to Harry when he wasn't fooling about. If she was ever honest herself, she would say that he livened things up on the trip, but she wasn't going to tell him that, it would go right to his head. Either way, for the last hour she was able to catch up with some reading she was hoping to do before her cousin and Grandpa got back.
After reading for an hour, Gwen was at the end of the docks catching the rays of sun. As she was sitting there, she was thinking about the latest prank Harry tried to pull, the so called lake monster prank. She had, admittedly, seen some weird things over the last week, but a lake monster in this lake? That seemed implausible. She wasn't ruling it out and calling it outright impossible, not after seeing such strange things, but if there was such a thing, you would think there would be more talk around the area about it.
However, as she was relaxing there, looking out at the lake, she saw a shark-like fin coming at her. "Oh come on Harry, do you think I would fall for such an old trick?" Gwen whispered to herself, thinking that Harry and Grandpa Max had returned from their fishing trip and Harry was up to his tricks again. However, moments after seeing the fin, she and everyone else heard a horn going off, like a warning to them, and all of a sudden the fin came out of the lake to reveal a huge monster of some kind, fitting the description Harry had given far too accurately to have been a prank.
'Oh… kay, so Harry was right about the lake monster.' Went through Gwen's head as the lake monster destroyed the dock she was sitting on, knocking her and a few others into the lake. Any suspicion that the monster was actually another alien in Harry's watch was discarded and Gwen felt genuine fear for her life filling her.
o0OoO0o
Back on the boat:
When the Krakken appeared, Shaw shouted out in excitement, "I told ya, its real! The Krakken lives!"
"Drive now, gloat later!" Max barked. He leaned over and whispered to Harry, "Someone has to rescue those people."
Feeling responsible for this, at least to a degree, Harry immediately jumped overboard. As he did, his plan was to turn into the only alien that he hadn't change into yet, the fish-like alien. However, as he pushed the button, the motion must have thrown off the dial, because when he hit the water he had instead taken the form of XLR8.
"Damn it!" Harry exclaimed angrily from within his helmet.
He didn't have time to dwell on it though, because Gwen and about a dozen other people were in danger. Harry had only one hope and that benched on XLR8's ability to either run or kick his legs so fast he could move like a speed boat. "Here goes nothing," Harry muttered as he tried to run.
Shockingly, or perhaps not, it was actually rather easy. At first he just kicked his feet and used his tail to steer, but one he got going fast enough and cleared the water he found his feet were moving fast enough that his footfalls didn't break the surface tension of the water, meaning he could effectively run on the surface of the lake.
Gwen screamed as a tentacle dove down to attack her, only to grunt as she was bodily picked up, taken somewhere very, very fast, and then dropped onto a sandy surface.
"Thanks for the save..." Gwen thanked Harry, already knowing what had happened.
"No problem, gotta save the others before they become fish food, though." XLR8's hissing voice came from the angular helmet before the blue lizard gave a mock salute and sped off, kicking sand onto Gwen as he left.
He laughed as he heard Gwen cry out, "You did that on purpose!"
'I totally did.' He giggled.
It took two trips to save the eight people who were in the lake, taking roughly eight and a half seconds each trip.
By the time he finished the monster had already turned its attention to the F.O.F. boat, who had the right idea in hightailing it out of there.
Before the Krakken could make its first attack, XLR8 used his speed to make a water whirlwind. It was poorly aimed, but with an attack of that size 'precision' was replaced by 'general area' without much fuss.
It was doomed to failure though as the beast ducked under the water and went for the deck, where it ripped the cover off a crate and tried and pull it into the water.
XLR8 was already there though, and was punching and kicking so fast he left friction burns on the tentacles, which quickly retreated. At least they did long enough for Melville to appear and do his best to secure the crate onto the ship again.
When the tentacles loomed for another try XLR8 hopped up onto one of them and shot towards it's head. Using his tail as a brake, the blue alien flipped onto his back and hammered the balls of his feet (literally, in this case, since the bottom's of XLR8's feet were in fact balls) into the beasts chin as fast as he could.
The monster roared before finally retreating, slapping the water with it's tentacles in anger as it did.
"Thanks for the hand, and the err, feet too." Melville declared as he and his crew walked up to XLR8 .
"It's nothing, but what's so important that you would risk your life like that?" XLR8 asked.
"Some expensive equipment needed to help with our studies here at the lake." Melville answered in a strangely wooden manner.
Since his visor had been flipped up to talk, Harry's reflexes weren't fast enough to stop the tentacle that suddenly burst from the water and slammed into the crate, sending it plummeting to the water below. He took a runner's stance, ready to take off like a shot, only for his heart to suddenly skip a beat at the dreaded sound of the Omnitrix powering down going off.
"Sorrygottarun!" He hurriedly told the crew of the F.O.F. boat before he ran off, hoping to get to 'his' boat in time.
The effort was… mostly successful. He timed out about fifty feet from Shaw's boat and ended up flying ass over end when he retained his momentum after turning back. His human body didn't possess the ability to step fast enough to stay above the water, and in a nauseating flip and massive spray of water Harry found himself floating on his sore back and looking up at his grandpa, who was looking down at him from the side of the boat's deck.
"Man overboard!" Max called out, "Shaw, Harry's in the water, don't start the boat!"
Shaw, one hand already on the accelerator and the other aiming the crude harpoon aiming controls, could do nothing but grumble as he saw the monster he'd been searching for years sink back into the depths.
"Next time you're in my sights, Krakken, you won't be so lucky..." He muttered.
Nevertheless, he'd been hired for the day, and he was nothing if not loyal to the contract - now that the Krakken was definitely gone anyway. He tossed a life vest at Max, who in turn tossed it down to Harry so he could stay afloat while they fished him out. After that was accomplished the three headed for the remains of the dock, where they met up with Gwen.
To Be Continued!
Author's Notes: Here ends the first part of two of The Krakken, I hope you like the story so far and the changes that I've done - sure not big, but they are there. They'll be a bit bigger in the next chapter. I would like to apologize for the long delay, but although I'm following the TV show of Ben 10, my muse for this story left me. So once again I apologize for the delay. Either way, I hope that you enjoy this chapter, and I hope you give me a few more minutes of your time and leave a review for this chapter.
Now as you review though, I would like to ask that you think about the following, as I would like your thoughts about this:
A reviewer thought that I should make Harry into an anti-hero in this story, and so after some thought I decided I might do that. But I would like your thoughts about how Harry could become this, and how he should act and look - clothes wise and maybe appearance too.
Co-Writer/Beta Reader Needed: After some thought, I've decided to ask for help writing this story, not only to check my spelling, grammar and sentence structure, but also to help me with ideas and thoughts you might have to make the story better. So if you would like to become a Co-Writer to this story, and think you can add your own thoughts and ideas into it, please let me know. I'm asking for a Co-Writer, not only for help with ideas, spelling, grammar and sentence structure, but to help with updating faster, making the story better and making it longer.