Chapter 18: In Which Carter and Kevin Have a Talk

I am actually really getting into Omniverse. At first I only watched it because of Rook, but now I see real potential for the show. I wonder what happened to Julie though. I never really liked her-too perfect in my eyes- but I am curious to see if she pops up in the show.

Also, I like Ester. She seems a little naive, but she's also pretty kick ass.

Kevin was in serious trouble.

"So what do you think about Sam?" Kevin groaned as the armor slowly melted off his body and Carter's magical glowing hands went towards the nearest wound.

"Why do you wanna know?"

"Sam's my best friend, and I was curious to see what you think of her so far." Carter was a very good healer; already the pain in Kevin's shoulder was fading.

"Well, she seems pretty wise for someone her age, and I guess she's considerate, because whenever I talk about cars she doesn't look bored and ask stupid questions…" Kevin trailed off, a smile on his face, as he remembered the date they had at the auto show, right after they had dropped off Ben and Carter at the Pier. Sam knew how to work her way around an engine, but she didn't know much about car styles. When they had stopped in front of a red first generation Chevrolet Corvette, Kevin had went on and on about the design and engineering behind it. Sam had listened attentively even though she wasn't particularly interested and she even seemed to understand what Kevin was blathering on about.

Carter nodded, finishing up the boy's shoulder. "Anything else?"

"Well, she's got a temper." Kevin shuddered at what happened at the Verdona incident. He had seen how Sam's hair went from looking like fire to actually being fire, how her teeth looked like sharp fangs, and how thin her pupils had become in her eyes. Sam had launched herself at Verdona with such animalistic ferocity that even Verdona had looked scared. If Gwen hadn't gotten in the middle of it, Sam would have broken Verdona in two.

"Evan, Sam, and I have been together all our lives," Carter explained. "We're like each others' family. If one of us gets hurt, we'd go crazy."

"I guess I understand," Kevin admitted. "Um…can you tell me why Sam didn't seem worried about me when you found me earlier?" Carter looked to see Kevin avert his eyes. So he wasn't that much of a tough guy after all.

"She was worried; you could see it on her face."

Kevin stared back at her, surprised. "Really?"

Carter raised an eyebrow. "Sam wasn't going to make a big deal out of it because she knew I was there. She also knows that if she showed any unnecessary concern for you, it might ruin your tough guy act."

"It's not an act."

"Keep telling yourself that. Where else does it hurt?" Kevin gestured towards his back, and with Carter's help he was turned around with his back to her.

"Are you sure you're okay? You look kind of paler than usual." Kevin tried to look back at his Goth friend only to have her force his head back to the front.

"I'm a little tired," Carter admitted, "but if I rest up later I'll be fine."

A silence followed; neither knew if it was comfortable or not. After a bit, Kevin worked up the courage to ask, "Why are the three of you so close?"

"I told you, we've been together all of our lives."

"I know that, but I'm getting the feeling there's more to it." Carter bit her lip, contemplating telling Kevin. He seemed to pick up the vibe. "If you don't want to tell me-"

"The three of us used to get bullied back when we were kids."

"Wait, what?" Kevin spluttered, trying to turn his head to look at Carter. She forced his head back.

"We were…different from the other kids. I was a Goth even back then, and I was reading Edgar Allan Poe while all the other girls were playing with Barbie dolls. Evan loved to read-he would always bring these giant books to school and read them in the middle of class. The other guys didn't read and they teased him for being smart. And Sam…"

Kevin once again tried to look at Carter, only to have his head roughly turned back to the wall by cool hands. "What about Sam?" he said carefully, not completely sure if he wanted to know the answer.

"Some of her ancestors were psychotic, and everyone knew it. So they thought that Sam must have been psycho too."

"But that doesn't prove anything!" Kevin whirled his entire body around to face Carter, who couldn't stop him. Kevin was shocked by what he saw. Carter was sweating profusely, her face somewhat grayish, her hands shaking with the effort of lifting them. Even then her hands were glowing cerulean, still healing the last of Kevin's wounds.

"Stop already, you're tired!" Kevin pushed her hands away and was thankful to see them stop glowing. Carter still looked like a zombie though.

"Do you have any idea how horrible it was for Sam to grow up with that 'psycho' label?" Carter continued, looking at Kevin with her fierce wolf gray eyes. Even though her limbs felt like lead and it was a problem to speak, she had to say one last thing to Kevin.

"Do you have any idea how horrible it is to be judged like that without anyone bothering to get to know you?" Carter answered her own question. "It completely destroys your self-worth. And now Sam thinks she's psychotic even though all the evidence and tests points to her being normal! Even though we've told her that it wasn't true, even though we joked about it like it couldn't be true! Because it can't! Don't you get that?" Carter glared at Kevin with such ferocity that Kevin shirked back. He was speechless, all because of this passionate display from someone who usually seemed cold and aloof. It was like Carter wasn't seeing Kevin at all, but all the awful kids who made Sam feel like a monster.

"Of course it can't," Kevin said softly, cautiously grabbing Carter's arms. Some color was returning to her face, and there was a feverish blaze in her eyes. The hatred and anger she was spewing was giving her life, and she looked like she was about to beat some sense into the enemy she was seeing.

Carter scoffed. "What do you know? You don't know her like Evan and I do." Okay, now that stung, even though it was true.

"I know she can't be psychotic because… because I was insane once." Carter looked at Kevin, eyes wide. "If an Osmosian drains too much energy, they seek out more of it. They go after the people they care about and hurt innocent people for the fun of it." Kevin looked straight into Carter's eyes. "If she was psychotic, I would know. Trust me on that."

Carter nodded her head once in understanding, right before she nodded again, her eyes glazing over. "Uh, Carter, are you okay?" Kevin asked worriedly.

"S….sleep…." she slurred, her eyes closing. She slumped in Kevin's grasp. He shifted around and put Carter next to him, leaning her against him for support. She was breathing softly, and she looked like she was sleeping, save for the gray face.

When the others found them, Carter was back to normal, though she was still sleeping against Kevin. "What happened?" Ben asked him, immediately going to his love interest's side.

"She got like that after she fixed me up," Kevin explained as Ben picked Carter up bridal style. Kevin stood up and winced as pain shot through his back.

Apparently, Carter had not finished what she started.

"Let me see the wounds," Sam said, pulling down some of the cloth on Kevin's shoulder. Instead of a bloody, gaping hole, there was just a small purple bruise. But Kevin wasn't interested in that. He was looking at Sam's face, how her brow was furrowed, her front teeth biting her lower lip, the worry in her eyes.

So she was the type to reveal her emotions through facial expressions instead of words. That would save a lot of confusion in the future.

Carter groaned and her eyelids fluttered. "You feeling okay?" Ben asked her softly as her glazed eyes searched his face.

"Why are there three of you?"

"…I think you need to go back to sleep," Ben said, a smile forming on his face.

But Carter ignored him and stared at the others. "Did Cordelia make me play with one of her new toys?" she asked, her voice disoriented.

"New toys?" Gwen asked Evan, who smiled sheepishly.

"Whenever Cordelia brings home a new invention, she has us test it out. Of course, they've been already tested on adults by then, she just wants a younger person to test it out," Evan added quickly when he saw Gwen's appalled face.

"And one of the side effects is that?" Gwen pointed a finger at Carter, who had fallen asleep on Ben's shoulder by that point.

"Well, there was this one thing that was extremely powerful, but it drained a lot of energy out of you," Sam explained. "I was one of the testers, and the results are kind of similar, and they only lasted a few minutes. But in Carter's case, she's going to be like that for a while."

"We'll take her home," Evan said, turning to Sam. "Do you have her card?"

"I thought I gave it back to her." Sam and Evan looked at Carter, who was sleeping peacefully in Ben's arms, to a certain boy's happiness.

"What card?" Kevin asked.

"A subspace card, but I guess it doesn't matter. We can just call someone." Evan was about to get out his phone when Gwen asked, "What's subspace?"

Lo Soledad, 1950

"Are you sure your experiment is going to work, doctor? Your…time machine has cost the US government a pretty penny," said a seasoned general behind a glass wall. He was in a laboratory, watching as the scientist and his assistant began their experiment, a giant donut-shaped quartz machine with cords and mechanics attached to it.

"The chronologorith is hardly a time machine, in a sense of a vehicle, but rather a subatomic drill designed to burrow tunnels in the fabric of space time," said the British scientist on the other side of the glass wall. He and his assistant were working out the last few formulas of the chronologorith machine, and they were eager to get started.

"As to your cost, I believe the alleviation of untold human suffering throughout history is ample justification, general." The scientist walked up to the glass wall to face said general, who was with two other scientists who were keeping track of the experiment behind safety glass.

"It'll also give our Red buddies overseas something to think about," the general said to his companions, who grinned at him. They all put on their safety goggles.

"But to answer your first question," the British scientist continued, "there is only one way to find out." He put on his own safety goggles as his assistant pulled down the lever to start up the machine. A hum noise started from the machine just as it began to glow. Wind began to suck into the hole of the giant circular device, and it was glowing even more brightly than before.

"Your certain we're safe, doctor?" his assistant inquired, worry prominent in his voice.

The doctor-who was right in front of the machine and the most likely candidate to get hurt if something were to go wrong- scoffed. "I'm not certain of anything, Hugo. But the chrono-magnetic field we've generated should protect us."

The chronologorith's center was beginning to show the fabric of space time by this point. Hugo walked up to the doctor and said in a shaky voice, "Doctor, I'm-I'm frightened!"

The scientist dismissed this by holding up a paper bag. "Have a gum ball; it'll calm your nerves."

His assistant backed away, not that the scientist noticed. Everything seemed to be going fine until the scientists behind the safety glass gasped. They looked up to see the doctor being sucked into the chronologorim, his equipment slowly stretching out and going into the gaping hole in the machine. The doctor began to scream, but it was lost in the overpowering hum of his experiment as he was sucked into it.

And then…something appeared out of the chronologorim, something huge and loud. The general, who had seen a lot of terrible things in his time, was scared speechless as he gazed at the monster before him.

Present Day

"You guys didn't need to come," Kevin growled at the four kids packed into the backseat of his car. "Sam and I could have handled this alone."

"Where Sammy goes, we go!" Evan cheered as he was squished next to Carter.

"Oh, sure, just yell in my ear. I don't need my eardrums at all," she said sarcastically, but that would never deter Evan.

"But what is this thing, anyway?" Gwen asked, ignoring Evan (which is a pretty hard thing to do).

"It's nothing, really."

"Doesn't sound like nothing," Ben said. "Weird noises, unearthly lights, rumors of weird creatures out here." By then Kevin had pulled up at their destination and they all got out.

"Yeah, well, the dudes I heard it from aren't exactly reliable," Kevin admitted as they walked up to the decrepit wall.

"Isn't that like a big bad boy thing to do?" Gwen asked. "Come out here to the ghost town to drag race?"

"How should I know?" Kevin said his salesman smile plastered on his face. "I just know them from auto shop."

Everyone looked to the right, where the words Kevin Rules! were painted onto the wall in red spray paint.

Ben decided to change the subject. "Grandpa Max used to say that Lo Soledad used to be a big military base back in the fifties. Some kind of research facility."

"Must have been some pretty serious research." Kevin gestured to the walls surrounding the place. "Fifty years later and there's still no way in."

Everyone looked to the left, where two gigantic, gaping holes were in the supposedly impenetrable wall.

"No way," Kevin gasped, hands on his head. "These weren't here."

Kevin drove them into the abandoned military base, where all the wooden buildings were decrepit, the windows shattered, the doors-if they had any- rotten and crumbling.

When Kevin parked and everyone was outside again, Carter said out loud, "Did those holes in the wall look vaguely human shaped to you?"

"I don't know; maybe someone burned through it," Ben suggested.

"I don't think so," Sam countered. "I didn't see any burn marks anywhere. And with the amount of time it had to have taken to go through that wall, there would have to be some evidence left behind. And it would take too much time to cover up."

"And what's with all these trails?" Evan said, kneeling down to examine the weird gray dust. Said trails were everywhere, none going in any particular direction. And then he saw the animal bones littering around the erratic trails.

"A bird and a lizard," Evan mused, picking up the bird skeleton. "No burn marks, and the skeletons look like they've been fossilized."

"That's not the only thing," Carter said, pointing to a nearly destroyed telephone booth. On further examination, the slate was completely dissolved save for two adult male footprints. "Whoever was standing here turned the slate into sand," Carter hypothesized.

"He was probably on hold," Kevin deadpanned.

Ben walked around the booth. "The trail goes to that police station"-he pointed to it-"then those, I guess they're apartments."

"Just to review: someone stood here a million years ago, and walked to those buildings that were built fifty years ago?"

"Over fifty years ago," Sam corrected Kevin, "and no, I seriously doubt that's what happened."

"This could be the sign of serious DNAlien activity," Ben began.

"DNAliens are not doing this," Gwen interrupted. She pointed behind them. "Does that look like a DNAlien to you?"

Something was coming near them, making strange noises as it did. The thing was humanoid, with blue lights emanating from its body, outlined with black. As it travelled, the grass near it shriveled up and died.

Kevin knelt down to absorb the ground. "Finally something worth the gas." Gwen's hands glowed with pink energy, Ben turned into Chromastone, and the Pride got out their favorite weapons. As they were about to attack, the blue monster swerved away from them and hit its shoulder into a building. As the heroes chased after it, the building began to fall down.

Evan's eyes glowed green, and a rock shield was above all of their heads in seconds. The building crashed over them, and when Evan finally dismantled the shield, the monster was gone.

As Chromastone turned back into Ben and Kevin put away his armor, Gwen said, "At least the building it destroyed wasn't the library."

"You really love the books, don't you?" Sam didn't mean that in a mean way.

"I think she means that we can get information," Evan explained to her. "We need to know what that thing is. The only thing we do know is that it's looking for something here on the base."

In the rundown library full of moldy books, Gwen was sifting through old files on the library's severely outdated computer. "These files are really corroded," she told everyone. "It looks like this place was built for some time experiment called Project Paradox." Gwen clicked on to the next file, which showed a small black and white picture of a handsome young scientist in a white lab coat and safety goggles around his neck.

"Who wouldn't use the desert outside Bellwood to do top-secret research?" Kevin asked rhetorically, because it was pretty ridiculous to think about.

"They built it here because of the huge quartz deposits," Evan explained.

Kevin mulled it over. "Quartz…time…maybe they were trying to build the world's biggest wristwatch?"

Gwen stopped looking through the files. "Sam?"

Sam elbowed Kevin in the gut. "OW!"

The others snickered immaturely while Gwen just smiled. "Thank you."

Once they finally calmed down, Ben looked at the file. "His name's been censored. Whoever he was, his paradox theory was the basis of some kind of experimental tunnel through time." A warning bell chimed through Carter's head; where had she heard about something like that before?

Evan looked at her. "Didn't Isaac say something about this?"

"Actually, yes. I think it was a few years ago." Carter furrowed her brow. "When the experiment happened back in 1950, it caused a major energy malfunction to happen in Bellwood. The hospital was left without any power; even the backup generators weren't working. And even though they had state-of-the-art technology, without power, they still lost a lot a people that day."

"Wait, 1950? Your grandfather doesn't look a day over twenty-five!" Ben protested, much to Gwen and Kevin's surprise. When did he meet Carter's grandpa?

"My grandparents are both around 5,000 years old. They obviously picked up on a few tricks to make them seem younger."

"So, what, your grandparents are vampires?" Kevin eyed her suspiciously.

Carter rolled her eyes. "Just because they're technically immortal doesn't mean they suck blood."

"Anyway," Sam interjected loudly. "Did Isaac say anything about the experiment working?"

Carter thought for a moment. "He didn't say anything because it was top-secret information, but he implied that something happened."

When they arrived at the research facility where the Paradox Project happened, they saw that four machines had been stretched out by impossible means to form four pillars that disappeared into the machine's giant hole.

"Looks like my place after that big party I had last weekend," Kevin joked. He heard a loud gasp behind him, and he turned around. There stood Evan, who looked indignant as he glared daggers at Kevin.

"What?"

"You had a party and you didn't invite me? That is so wrong!"

"I-"

"No!" Evan held up a hand. "I shun you!" And then he walked briskly away from Kevin, nose in the air.

Kevin turned to Sam, who shrugged. "Yeah, he can be a real drama queen. He'll get over it soon enough."

"Will you guys be serious? That thing's been here too." Gwen pointed to the funny trail on the floor that seemed to lead out of the round time experiment.

"One trail," Ben said, standing in it the middle of it. "Either it came out of here and vanished…"

"Or it was born here," Carter finished for him before they heard a horrific noise. They all turned to the broken safety glass window as the inhuman screeching noise continued. And then the ground underneath them shook.

Ben immediately turned the dial on his Omnitrix and turned into Swampfire. He ran into the extra room and said "Gotcha!" Only it wasn't the thing they were after.

It was the scientist who led the Paradox Project, looking just like he had in the picture, only with brown hair that was slicked back and smiling blue eyes.

"Swampfire," the scientist said nostalgically. "That takes me back. Or is it forward? It's so hard to tell, Ben. Have we met?"

Swampfire slowly let go of the strange man. "How do you know my name?"

The scientist wiped the dust off his tan tweed vest, brown slacks, and white lab coat. "Have we met yet, I suppose the question was."

Kevin, decked out in his metal armor, yelled out, "Hey, it's that dork from the photo! The Paradox guy." Ignoring him, the others walked into the room.

"You haven't changed at all, not in fifty years," Gwen remarked as she studied the man before her.

"Oh, considerably more than that," the scientist said, taking out a paper bag from his pocket. "Gum ball?"

"No thanks," Swampfire declined. "Who are you? What's your name?"

"Didn't you read my file? I was hoping you could tell me. It slipped my mind several hundred years ago."

"Did he just say several hundred years?" Kevin looked at Evan, who held up a hand to Kevin's face.

"Did you just say-hey!" Evan cried, for the scientist had disappeared.

"You didn't happen to see a space time anomaly around here, did you?" the scientist said from ten feet away from his original spot. He held up an arm to shoulder height. "About yea big, incredibly destructive and unstoppable?" He stared into their stupefied faces. "No? I must have been thinking about another moment. Ta-ta!" And he walked briskly out of the room.

Kevin ran after him and stopped when the next room was empty of human life. "Where'd he go?"

Sam walked into the room and looked out the window to see the scientist leaning casually against a rusty light post just across the street. "He's right there!"

"He's obviously connected to that creature," Ben said from the doorway. "We need to talk to him."

"Oh, yeah, we'll talk to him," said Kevin right before he smashed through the wall, leading to the outside. "Right after the pounding!" The scientist looked bored as Kevin ran up to him threateningly. He merely walked past the pole and disappeared. Kevin looked around it, confused, right before he saw the scientist wave from the doorway from a house two feet away. He closed the door in Kevin's face.

Undeterred, Kevin barged through the door, splintering the aged wood. The others, who had just exited the lab, watched as Kevin destroyed the house, blasting holes through walls, throwing a chair through the roof, all to find one crazy man.

…Who happened to walk up in front of the house, strolling past the others. He turned to them and asked, "Was I in there?" And then he ran away from them.

As the scientist reared the corner past another building, Sam and Swampfire blew a giant hole through it to capture the guy faster. "That was public property, you know," the scientist said calmly as he stood behind the six of them, no longer running for his life.

"How does he move so fast?" Swampfire asked the others. Not like they had the answer.

"You mean, how do I move so quickly," the scientist corrected him from across the street. He leaned against an old building casually. "It's called walking." As if to demonstrate his point, he walked to the back of the building, only to turn up next to Carter and Kevin. "Strolling, really."

"That's better," Kevin snarled as he grabbed the man's lab coat.

"Easy on the jacket, it's 1200 years old!" the scientist said. "Anyway, thanks."

"Thanks for what?" Swampfire asked.

"Well, I figured if you made a loud enough racket, he'd show up." And then they could all hear a metallic screeching noise, signaling the return of the blue and black creature from the time experiment.

"Finally, something we can hit!" Kevin cheered, letting go of the scientist.

"Oh, I really don't think that's such a good idea!" he warned the young boy.

Gwen, who was watching the creature, gasped. "Those trails, they aren't burn marks, they're…age. The creature accelerates time!"

"Sam could have told you that if you'd just ask her," the scientist said, making the fiery redhead look at him.

Ignoring everyone, Kevin yelled out, "Not so fast, ugly!" He ran towards the creature and hit it, actually stopping it in its tracks for a moment. But the result was disastrous: Kevin's brick armor fell away, and his young skin began to wrinkle. With a cry of pain, Kevin fainted as veins began to pop out of his skin.

"Kevin!" Sam cried as the five of them ran up to him. When she turned him over, she sucked in a breath.

Kevin no longer looked like a healthy sixteen year old. Instead, his back was stooped, his face was pasty, his skin was wrinkled, and his black hair had turned white.

"I still shun him," said Evan.

Evan: he's the story's drama queen.

So what do you think about that little tidbit of the Pride's past? I feel for Sam-I'm a horrible person for putting her through so much shit, but she's a DuBaer; even if her family wasn't crazy, she'd probably be called a murderer or something else because of what they do.

I command thee to review! Please?