Another chapter, right on time!
Thanks to the two people that reviewed (Cookies for MysteryAgain for the advice, and to Fikri B. M for the compliments!). Anyway, once again reviews are appreciated.
Let me know what you think of this chapter, because if I get good responses I can edit it.
I have mixed feelings about the middlish/end part.
Read on!
Chapter 2: A Whole lot of Trouble
Jack felt like he was dying.
Actually, scratch that. He wished he was dying. The second Casey hit the thing on Jack's wrist, pain flared through every nerve in his body, sending him crashing to the crater floor in agony. Jack heard someone screaming; belatedly, he realized it was him.
It took a few agonizing moments, but slowly Jack started getting used to the pain. But the second he felt like it was under control, a new sensation presented itself; an itching under his skin, one that was impossible to scratch. Abruptly, the feeling centered on the wristband, paused for a second, then exploded outwards from the device on his wrist. This time though, instead of just pain, it felt like something was stabbing him, stabbing up through the skin and closing into an impenetrable barrier over it.
This is how I die… Jack thought sluggishly. His screaming petered out to small whimpers. Everywhere the stabbing affected him, the pain was gone. His vision flickered for a moment, tinting everything slightly yellow, and he felt two more giant flares of pain from his shoulder blades. Then it was over.
Slowly, Jack staggered to his feet. He felt too heavy, almost like he'd gained a few thousand extra pounds. He dropped to his knees, nerves still tingling from their recent trauma, and tried to put his face in his hands to have a good cry.
Except, it no longer was his face or his hands.
Jack froze, staring at the two huge, crystalline appendages that used to be his thin, dexterous hands. They looked weirdly joint less, and with a couple quick flexes of his new fingers, he noticed that they felt insanely strong and flexible for being made of whatever this crystal was.
"What… what- what the hell are you!" The football player shouted from across the crater. His posture was belligerent, with his calloused hands held in fists at his sides and glaring defiantly and the thing that used to be Jack. But in his brown eyes, fear lay hidden behind his mask of bravado.
"You're some kind of freak!" Casey yelled.
"Freak? You're calling me a freak? I didn't chase someone through the woods for the ENTIRE DAY just because they stained their jacket!" Jack shouted back.
"Yeah? Well…" Casey trailed off for a second. "I'm still a normal human!"
"Yeah, not until something hits that thing on your wrist." At Jack's words, the football player instantly turned a few shades paler, and his face morphed into an expression of shock. An instant later, it was gone, and replaced once more by a mask of anger.
"I don't ever have to press that button. You, on the other hand, are going to be a monster forever! Not even your own parents will want y-"Casey cut off his sentence with a yelp, followed by a wheeze. The reason? Jack's hand was closed around his tormentor's throat.
"You wanna say that again?" Jack growled. His face was about two inches from Casey's, and if looks were bullets then there wouldn't have even been a blood stain to mark Casey's passing. Jack held up the wrist that held the device, thumb hovering over the gray spiral.
Casey flashed a cocky grin 'No way this nerd has the guts to do it', he thought. "Your parents won't-"Jack thumbed the button.
Another flash of green lit the crater, and once again the night was rent with screams. However, Casey felt a different pain. It started the same, with general agony spread across his entire body, but then it changed. The unfortunate human felt like his head would split open. He felt his scalp burning, his eyes bugging out, and then a squeezing, like every cell in his body was being pushed back into eachother…
Abruptly it was over, and Casey raised his head from the dirt, only to be struck by a dizzying headache. His thoughts felt, for the first time since he had stopped trying in school, loud. Half remembered memories were crystal clear, concepts snapped into place that he'd been struggling with for the past year, and a huge vocabulary seemed to blossom in his head.
Casey's vision focused, and for the first time in his life, knew what it felt like to be looked down on.
"You do realize that if the circumstances were different, I would be busting up laughing." Jack commented. His tone was completely neutral. He felt disgusted with himself. 'That was completely unwarranted! Why did I do that? Did this transformation increase my aggression response?' he thought frantically. Unknowingly, Jack was very close to the truth. The DNA transplant was rewriting his very genetic code, including that of his brain, into being half petrosapien. In short, in the moments after the first transformation, he was very unstable.
"Laugh all you want. It won't change this." Casey said, motioning to his body in general. Jack, already barely able to contain himself, actually started shaking, and then finally couldn't hold it anymore. A sound like a continuous rockslide emanated from the petrosapien. Seeing Jack's doubled over form, Casey accurately guessed what the sound was; laughter.
"Hey! You said you wouldn't laugh!" Casey yelled at him indignantly.
"I- I'm sorry, but you- you're just so-"
"SO WHAT!?" Casey screamed.
"Your voice is so high!" Jack managed, before collapsing onto his back in a crystalline heap and trying to roll around in laughter. Unfortunately, the giant spikes on his back stabbed into the ground, sticking and leaving him unable to get up.
Casey began rubbing his chin with a four fingered hand. "Now that you mention it, my vocal cords must have shrunk, rendering my voice several octaves higher." Abruptly, the laughter stopped. Casey rolled his new, giant eyes and glared at Jack. "What is it now, oh great stuck one?"
"That last sentence was actually… smart." Jack said. Giving up on trying to push his way out of his self-made imprisonment, he let his limbs rest on the ground. "And now that I've got that compliment out of the way, a little help? Please?"
Casey rolled his eyes again (he was really starting to like that!). "Fine, but only if you stop joking about my voice."
"Deal!" Jack agreed quickly. The spikes were starting to ache, almost as if they had nerve endings. 'Weird… crystal with nerves? I'm almost surprised.' "Can you be quick about it please?" He urged.
"When I give the word, roll about 90 degrees to your left. Not right. LEFT." Casey said while checking angles and calculations. Jack mumbled something. "What was that?" The newly created genius snapped.
"Nothing, nothing. I was just wondering how you are planning on getting me out of here." Jack said.
"As trite as this is, leverage is the word you are looking for. A simple application of pressure in the right area can easily free you." Casey rambled, still looking for a likely area. Jack groaned internally at the reference. "There we are."
He crawled under Jack's back, avoiding the two thick spikes and the four smaller spines lower on his back. Except for the protrusions, a thin looking layer of blue clothing stretched across his upper body, almost like a V-neck tank top, while a similar black material covered the lower body, including the boots.
"Alright, get ready to roll. Remember, LEFT." Casey stressed, harboring no illusions about what wouldn't be left of his body if something of that mass would drop on it. Luckily for him, the application of force to a point near Jack's armpit combined with Jack's new strength was enough for him to rip free of the ground, leaving deep indents.
The newly freed teenager glanced at the holes, and then turned to get a good look at Casey. "Remind me never to do that again," he deadpanned. "Anyway, I'm not sure we actually properly met." Jack held out his massive hand to the football player. "I'm Jack."
Casey daintily shook the end of Jack's pointer finger. "Casey. Now, would you care to tell me what exactly I am?" he demanded, still miffed about his size.
"Well, as hilarious as you look right now, I think I have some answers. You know those aliens that have been on T.V. recently?" Jack asked.
"Yeah, what about them? I never saw either of… whatever we appear to have transformed into." Casey responded.
"On every single one of them, the same symbol appeared. Look, its right here," Jack said, pointing to a strange hourglass symbol on his chest. "You have one too. It's on your back."
"What? Where?" Casey exclaimed. He twisted his neck around and, out of the corner of his eye spotted the weirdly familiar symbol. "The… Omnitrix?"
"Huh? You lost me."
"I don't know!" Casey snapped. "It just popped into my head… Diamondhead?" Suddenly, Casey curled over clutching his head, gasping in pain. Then, just as suddenly, he stood straight up and looked directly into Jack's yellow eyes. "Diamondhead. That's what you are."
"I'm sorry, but since when are we naming each other? You know, if you get to name me completely randomly, you get to be -"
"It wasn't random. It felt… right. Just like that symbol represents the Omnitrix." Casey held up a hand when he saw Jack taking a breath. "No, I don't know what it means either."
"Well in that case, how about… Grey Matter. I think it fits you." Jack said after a few moments of deliberation.
"Agreed. Now, the million dollar question… how do we-"Casey began, but a beeping sound interrupted him. "What's that?"
"Huh? What's what?" Jack asked. He bounded to his feet and glanced around hurriedly. "I don't see anything," he said with a shrug.
"No, there's a… beeping. Or something. Are you sure you can't-" Casey cut of mid-sentence as the Omnitrix symbol on Jack's chest flashed green, then emitted a hologram of the same symbol, floating in the air and rotating between the two.
"What is it with these things and interrupting-"
"Shhh!" Jack rumbled, once more interrupting his fellow half-alien.
A toneless male recording began speaking in random languages before settling on English. "DNA received by hosts. Bonding successful. Initiating user interface… Error. User interface offline. Initiating voice command… Error. File corrupted. Attempting debugging program… Success. Please stand by for-
Another voice broke through the computer. This one sounded like an over exuberant child's, much to Jack and Casey's surprise "Hi! I'm Ben Tennyson. Sorry to keep you guys waiting, the stupid watch wasn't letting me talk to the inhabitants of whatever planet we landed on. So, as you've probably guessed… wait… Where are we? The Omnitrix symbol suddenly grew a cartoon face, complete with ridiculously oversized eyes, which narrowed as they scrutinized Jack. It floated right up to his face, before backing off and doing the same to Casey. "These were supposed to be sent off planet, not remain on Earth! This stupid stupid stupid stupid-"
"SHUT UP!" Jack shouted. He actually started a few rockslides around the edge of the crater, not that anyone noticed. Both Casey and the synthesized personality of Ben Tennyson were staring at him, wide eyed. "Now. Since we've got your attention, and you seem to know what is going on, could you please tell us?"
"Sure! Those bracelets you guys are wearing used to be part of the Omnitrix, an awesome watch thingy that could ERROR ERROR ERROR.
…
…
What. Was. That. Anyway, it's an ERROR."
…
…
"STUPID WATCH!" The hologram yelled in fury. "It doesn't want me telling you anything." Ben explained apologetically.
"Ummm… wait this thing is sentient?" Casey asked, new intellect already fanboying at the thought of studying a real AI!
"Well… now it is. See, I used to wear it, and… well, let's not talk about that. Basically, it somehow copied my personality and stuck it into the place where the debug software used to be. So, since I think I'm sentient, the watch is too!" Casey recoiled a little as the hologram's mouth morphed into a freakishly huge grin, before all expression on the floating symbol abruptly vanished and it returned to being a rotating green hologram.
"All systems functioning. Assist features shutting down." Spoke the monotone machine voice from before.
"Wait! We need more-" Jack sighed as the hologram went dark.-"Information…" he trailed off. "I don't suppose you have any idea why that happened?"
"Nope. Not a clue. But that's not important. How do we change back?"
"Well, that should be simple. Omnitrix, revert DNA sequencing!" Jack commanded. He waited a few seconds, then sighed and slumped over dejectedly. "Great. What are the odds of us being able to wait it out?"
Casey scrunched up his overlarge eyes and put his brain to work. "About one in 2,104,823. Roughly." Jack shot him a glare. "Hey! I'm just being realistic! These devices have altered our cellular structure right down to the DNA; I don't think it was meant to just revert." Casey explained.
About a second after finishing the sentence, the symbol on Jack's chest beeped and blinked red.
"What-"Casey began, but was interrupted as once more, as screams once more filled the crater.
Yes, Ben is technically alive! Yay! Unfortunately, until they figure out the fragments, he won't be speaking to them for a while.
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As always, review and peace out!
-sonyaxe