Nightmare In Paradise, part III


Gwen


"We are going to help your wife, Moriz," Lucky Girl said, very determined. She wasn't really sure she could, but her mind was spinning with ideas. If the healing spells and potions she knew didn't work, they could try regular medicine - taking Moriz's wife to S.E.C.T. - or Gwen could take her to Grandma Verdona, who probably knew even more powerful spells.

The spider-chimpanzee believed in her sincerity, and used the keys to free Lucky Girl from her collar and Watch Boy from his bracelet, allowing them to freely use their powers again.

"But first, we have to rescue the rest of our friends. Four Arms will open their cell doors with ease." Ben dialed the Omnitrix, "Going hero!"

But when he slammed the watch, instead of turning into a twelve-foot tall red-skinned alien, he turned into a five-inch tall grey-skinned alien… Grey Matter.

"Oh, no, I mistransformed again!" Grey Matter complained.

Lucky Girl chuckled. "Don't worry, Ben. We can still get the keys from the squids." she pointed at the unconscious Vilgaxians on the floor.

"You gave me an idea!" Grey Matter then searched the bodies of the Vilgaxian soldiers, and found something similar to a walkie-talkie.

"I can easily alter this device so we can broadcast a message to Director Steel," he said, tampering with it. Meanwhile, Lucky Girl freed Max, Molly and Elliot from their cell.

Grey Matter's great intellect could more than make up for what he lacked in size and physical strength. In no time, he had already modified the Vilgaxians' communicator to fit his purpose. "Done. Director Steel, can you hear me? It's us, the recon team."

"I can hear you," Steel said, a few seconds later, from the other end of the line. "I'm glad you're ok. Did you find the hostages there? We are working on a plan to rescue you soon and-"

"We did find the hostages, Director, but you can't send anyone here…" Grey Matter then proceeded to tell him the new developments about the island, the Vilgaxians, Dr. Animo and his latest creation, the Ultimate Root Shark, a monster that dwarfed the other root sharks - Lucky Girl, Molly, Elliot and Max were left in shock by this new intel too. Ben concluded saying that the island was indeed a trap to S.E.C.T.

"I understand, but I can't just stand by and do nothing," Steel replied.

"Sir, I agree with Watch Boy," Molly said, "I'm sure the squids have anti-aircraft artillery that could destroy any ships that gets too close to the island. And going in by the ground would be impossible because of the root sharks and the spider-apes. You have to trust us to handle things here."

"Do you at least have a plan to rescue the hostages and get out of there?" Steel asked.

Molly looked at Grey Matter.

"We have to show the spider-apes that the Vilgaxians are playing them. If we get their help, I think we can defeat the bad guys," Grey Matter answered.

"Ok… I want your word that if things get ugly, you will request help anyway," Steel said.

"You have it, sir," Molly Gunther said, and then Grey Matter turned off the walkie-talkie.

The spider-chimpanzee Moriz still had a skeptical look on his face. He wasn't believing that the Vilgaxians were the true enemy.

Before any of them could say something about it, Lucky Girl saw Bazard's spy-drone around the corner. There weren't many Vilgaxians there, so probably the drone was patrolling the area as a security protocol and would warn Bazard of any problem. It would spot them soon.

"The drone is coming! Come here, all of you!" Moriz, Grey Matter, Molly, Elliot and Max all approached her, as she crouched near the two unconscious Vilgaxian soldiers.

"Invisibilitas!" Lucky Girl chanted, making all of them invisible.

She just hoped the drone wouldn't notice the complete absence of guards there.

After the drone passed, Grey Matter jumped on its back and crawled inside it through a breach. A few seconds later, he left smiling as the drone started to follow him.

"It's ok, you can show yourselves, my friends." Grey Matter made a thumbs up gesture. "I've reprogrammed this drone. And the best part, it also recorded Animo creating the monster with Bazard's support. This will be the proof we need to convince the spider-apes."

The drone showed images of Bazard, Animo and the Ultimate Root Shark, and Moriz finally seemed to believe it now.

"Great. We can get out of here now," Molly Gunther said.

"Wait, not so fast. We have to free Tomyx first," Grey Matter replied. "He's in a special cell not very far from here."

"You are not seriously suggesting that we risk our necks and compromise the entire mission to save Vilgax's wayward son who is hiding things from us," Molly said with a glare.

"Take it easy on him, Agent Gunther. Imagine if you were Adolf Hitler's daughter, I guess you wouldn't want anyone to know it," Grey Matter said, defending his friend. "We all fought together before, remember? Teamwork?" After that, the Omnitrix timed out, turning Grey Matter back into Watch Boy.

Even though Lucky Girl herself didn't fully trust Tomyx, Ben had a good point.

"Fine." Molly sighed. "You're right, let's save the squid-boy."

Soon after, they found Tomyx cell, protected by two Vilgaxian guards.

"Ok, we need a distraction," Molly said as the team hid behind a wall. "Then Elliot and I take the one on the left, and Max, Watch Boy and Lucky Girl take the one on the right."

"I can provide one. Camouphlat Vaporis!" Lucky Girl whispered the spell with her hands pointed in the Vilgaxians' direction. A thick blue steam began to form, clouding the guards' vision. Before they could react, the agents knocked them out cold. Gwen's years of karate lessons were pretty useful.

With the guards' keys, they opened the cell and found a very weakened Tomyx. The cell had some kind of big heater that kept the squid-alien dehydrated. Max and Watch Boy put Tomyx's arms around their shoulders, giving him support so he could stand up, and carried him out of the cell.

Meanwhile, Elliot was breaking a water pipe. "Done!" The brown-skinned man said, "Bring Tomyx here so we can get him hydrated again."

After a few seconds of the 'bath', Tomyx smiled and stood up on his own. "Thank you, my friends!"

"Don't thank anybody yet, squid-boy," Molly said, "You still got some serious explaining to do after this is over."


The agents split up. Molly ordered Lucky Girl and Watch Boy to go with Moriz to help heal his wife honoring the deal they had made with him before, while the rest of the agents would try to talk to King Harpor and show him the footage from the reprogrammed spy-drone to convince him that the Vilgaxians were the real threat. Both teams had the walkie-talkies with them, and Molly said that if Harpor didn't listen to them, she would message Lucky Girl and Watch Boy to get out of there.

When they arrived at Moriz' tree-house, protected from the eyes of the spider-apes with Lucky Girl's invisibility spell, they finally met Moriz's wife, a female spider-chimpanzee named Netila. Luckily, Moriz was an overprotective husband, and Netila wasn't at death's door as Lucky Girl was expecting her to be. The young sorceress prepared a healing potion, with some help from Ben's XLR8 to get the ingredients, and then they waited to see Netila's recovery.

But suddenly, a sour faced grump spider-gorilla broke into the house, surprising them before Lucky Girl had time to cast the invisibility spell again.

The big pale blue furred spider-gorilla snorted, and started talking to Lucky Girl and Watch Boy. "Your friends convince King Harpor about squid-people evil… Come with Zaru."

Zaru definitely seemed unpleased with his current task.

"Is there a problem, Zaru?" Ben asked.

"Me know you humans are evil too… No better than squid-people… But King Harpor too innocent… Zaru knows best for apes is humans and squid-people dead," Zaru said, foaming with rage.

"Well, I'm glad you're not the king then, Zaru," Ben smirked. That dweeb, never losing an opportunity to make fun of someone, not caring how dangerous that could be. Lucky Girl sighed inwardly.

Before they left, Lucky Girl smiled at the sight of Moriz holding one of Netila's hands as she rested in her bed of leaves, already looking a lot better than she did before.


When they arrived at King Harpor's tree-palace, Agent Molly Gunther discreetly called the team - Ben, Lucky Girl, Max, Elliot and Tomyx - to a more reserved place, away from the crowd of spider -apes.

"Do we have a plan to face this Ultimate Root Shark? It's great that the spider-apes are at our side now, but even though there are hundreds of them, I'm still not confident. Just imagine three hundred unarmed people against a single man with a machine gun with infinite bullets," She said with a somber tone.

Of course, in Molly's metaphor the monster was the man with the infinite machine gun while the agents and the apes were the defenseless people.

"I think Dr. Animo controls the monster, right?" Elliot said, "If we kill or knock Animo out, will the monster stop?"

"No," Grandpa Max answered. "I know Animo's monsters. They're mindless wild beasts without him to control them. That may be even more dangerous to us."

"I have a plan," Ben said. "My tenth alien will get the job done."

What? What alien was Ben referring to? He mentioned once to Gwen that he had ten aliens on the watch. She had seen Four Arms, XLR8, Ripjaws, Wildmutt, Diamondhead and Grey Matter in action, and he had also told Gwen about three others - Heatblast, Upgrade and Stinkfly. Then she realized Ben never told her anything about his tenth alien.

"I'm pretty sure an irrational beast won't be able to resist my alien's power." Ben said. "Remember the 'suicide dive' strategy we discussed some time ago, Agent Tennyson?"

Suicide Dive? Gwen didn't like that name AT ALL.

"No..." Grandpa Max said with a very worried look on his face, "That's too risky, we can't do it."

"Nah, the chances of me actually getting hurt are like, less than one-in-three. I'll be fine," He said, shrugging. His words obviously brought no comfort for Gwen. Those chances were still WAY too high for her. "Besides, Molly is in charge here, remember?" He said with a smirk. "And I think she is ok with this."

"Does anyone else have a better plan?" Molly asked. Everybody remained silent. "I guess we are going with Ben's 'suicide dive' then. Let's get ready for when Bazard and the Vilgaxians come knocking at King Harpor's door."

After Ben exchanged a few words with Grandpa Max, it was Lucky Girl's turn to talk to him. Max gave the two teenagers privacy.

"It's beautiful, isn't it? Looks like a paradise," Ben said. The day was dawning, and from outside of King Hapor's tree-palace, they could see the orange sky above, most of the wood constructions of the spider-apes below and the beautiful forest in the distance.

"It is. But this paradise is a nightmare too," Lucky Girl replied. "And I can't really appreciate anything when there's a one-in-three chance of my partner dying. To make things worse, it looks like you're actually enjoying all this danger."

"As someone said, 'You're not alive unless you're almost dying'." The Doofus chuckled, "But of course I don't want to die. And… well... you're the Lucky Girl, you can actually help me with my odds of survival." Watch Boy said, his red eyes locked with Lucky Girl's violet ones, as he placed his hands on her cheeks.

"If I had the Charm of Luck here with me, I would give it to you, but I don't, and I also don't know any spell that can transfer-"

He cut her off with a kiss.

On the lips.

He brushed his lips against hers for a few seconds, and even used his tongue a little bit, but it was still a quick kiss, and before Lucky Girl could react, he pulled away.

She just stared at him dumbfounded.

"A kiss for luck," he said, with a wide toothy grin. Then he closed his eyes and protected his head with his hands, as if he was expecting her to hit him.

Lucky Girl remained speechless. She had been kissed by her cousin. Gwen was still processing that. She didn't know exactly what she was feeling, but she also knew she wasn't disgusted or repulsed by it. She should be disgusted and repulsed by it. But the butterflies in her stomach…

"I'm so sorry, Lucky Girl. I shouldn't have done that. You told me you want us to be just friends, and you already have a boyfriend. Crap, I messed up, I know…" He said, lowering his head, "But I lied before... I'm not over you. That's why I didn't want to be your partner. I knew that being so close to you, I would eventually end up doing something like this. I'm really sorry." He started to walk away from her.

"Wait," she pulled him by his arm. The last thing she wanted now was for Ben to get distracted from the battle they had ahead of them, thinking that she was mad at him. "It's ok. I'm not mad. We will talk about this later. Just survive ok? I need you to survive," She said.

Before he could say anything, they heard Bazard and the Vilgaxians arrive at the wooden bridge in front of the tree palace. Lucky Girl counted 17 of them, including Bazard. They were probably all the Vilgaxians on the island, and they were greatly outnumbered by the spider-ape's army.

"King Harpor, we need your help to catch the humans who want to destroy," Bazard said, and then stopped when he realized the agents were right there.

"You owe us explanation!" King Harpor said angrily.

"King Harpor, don't believe a word of what those humans may have said to you…" Bazard tried to defend himself.

"We didn't say anything! We showed them the truth," Max said. Then the spy-drone that Grey Matter had reprogramed projected the footage of Dr. Animo, Bazard and the Ultimate Root Shark on the tree-palace's wall.

"You squid-people work with evil humans… create more monsters to hurt us…" King Harpor snorted.

"Ok, the hard way it is then..." Bazard then signaled some device on his wrist. Seconds later, they saw the gigantic Ultimate Root Shark leaving the military building and approaching the tree-palace, and who was riding the beast was Dr. Animo himself.

"ANIMO!" King Harpor screamed in anger, clearly recognizing the mad scientist.

"I created all of you! You would be nothing more than stupid monkeys if I hadn't mutated you!" Animo shouted, sliding from the creature to the top of the wood bridge where Bazard and the Vilgaxians were, "You should be grateful for what I did to you! No pain, no gain!"

Bazard then said, "You can see this beast here. If you choose to fight against us, it will destroy your homes and kill your elders and children. But if you choose to fight the battles we will eventually order you to fight, your families will stay here under our protection and no harm will come to them."

"APES… WILL… NEVER… BE… SLAVES… AGAIN!" King Harpor screamed.

"Such a waste," Bazard said, and then nodded to Animo, signaling that it was time for the Ultimate Root Shark to attack.

Ben slammed the watch and turned into a ghost-like alien with a gaseous appearance and claw-like hands. He had grey skin with black lines running all over him. "GHOSTFREAK will show you all what a real monster is like," He said, with a scary voice that creeped Lucky Girl out.

Ghostfreak dissipated himself in a black mist that moved itself across the air and entered inside the monster through its mouth. The monsters' red eyes turned black with white pupils.

Dr. Animo was trying to shout orders to the Ultimate Root Shark, but the creature wasn't in his control anymore.

The monster seemed to be smiling, and started circling Animo and the Vilgaxians, looking like a snake waiting to attack. The frightened Vilgaxians pointed their guns at it, while the Ultimate Root Shark possessed by Ghostfreak opened its mouth…

"No, Ben, don't kill them! Focus, don't let Ghostfreak's instincts overcome your mind!" Max shouted, and then he addressed the bad guys, "And you don't even think about attacking him, otherwise he will kill you. Drop your weapons and surrender."

Animo, Bazard and the Vilgaxians soldiers threw their arms up in defeat and complied.

"We kill them," Harpor said.

"No, we defeated them for you. We do this on our own terms," Molly said. "We will take them with us and we promise you will never see these guys again."

"Do not listen them, Harpor! Apes kill all enemies!" Zaru said. Definitely that spider-gorilla was out for blood.

Harpor gestured for Zaru to calm down. "They prevent many apes' deaths today. We listen them."

The Spider-Apes and the agents restrained the Vilgaxians and Dr. Animo. But first, Max punched Animo in the face. "Ah, I feel so much better now," He said with a smirk.

Bazard turned to Tomyx and began speaking to him in their native tongue. Lucky Girl quickly whispered, "Comprehendere sermone", casting a spell that allowed her to understand a conversation happening around her in a foreign language. The spell had limitations - it couldn't make her understand a written text or a recorded audio - but for that situation, it was perfect.

"S.E.C.T. knows who you really are now, Tomyx." Bazard said, "They will never trust or respect you. And imagine how many agents lost family and friends because of Lord Vilgax... Do you really think some of them won't try to kill Vilgax's son as revenge? You will never be safe with them."

"Bazard is trying to manipulate Tomyx." Lucky Girl said.

"You shouldn't have left him out before, Agent Tennyson," Elliot then punched Bazard in the face, "He deserved one of these too."

After that, the gigantic Ultimate Root Shark laid his head down on the floor of the tree-palace.

"King Harpor, your spider-apes can kill it now," Max said, with the same worried look on his face from earlier.

Lucky Girl froze. That is why Ben had called this a 'suicide dive'. He was possessing the Ultimate Root Shark so the apes could safely kill it.

Her heart skipped a beat as the spider-apes stabbed the Ultimate Root Shark's head with their wooden stakes. She went more and more desperate with every scream of pain the monster uttered as the apes breached through its exoskeleton. Some minutes later, to her relief, the black mist left the lifeless monster's mouth and turned back into Ghostfreak, and then into Ben.

But Ben looked so pale...

"See, I told you," he said, smiling, "The suicide dive is pretty safe and-"

Then he fainted.


Author's notes

In my original plan for the spider-apes arc, Zaru was suposed to be a main villain alongside Dr. Animo. I had to change some stuff and another OC, Bazard, served as the second villain in this arc, while Zaru ended up as a secondary character. But maybe we can revisit the spider-apes' island in Season Two or Three...

Thanks to my beta readers and to all my readers, especially those who are favoriting, following, reviewing and giving support to this story. I wouldn't be writing this if it wasn't for you :)

Next chapter: Ben will find out Lucky Girl's secret identity! How is he going to react?