Chapter 19: Ten Year Old Warnings
To EduTorresD: Sorry if the fight scenes aren't up to par. I'm still a novice writer, and a lot of the fights are taken from the show. I'm trying to make them more awesome, but after posting them and reading them again, they do sound kind of flat. It may just be my style of writing, though. Also, fights in stories aren't going to have the same punch as the ones on TV; humans are a visual species, after all. But still, I'm glad you like the story despite that. It makes me happy. :)
"Just touching that thing aged him, what, sixty years?" Ben had his arms around Grandpa Kevin, who was still unconscious after he hit the time monster.
Evan took a good look at Kevin and said, "Time is not going to be kind to him. Do you think Isaac will share any of his youth serums with him?" He looked at Carter, who shrugged.
"Will you guys stop that?" Gwen yelled at them. "We need to get him to a hospital!"
"And what will we tell them? 'Our friend here is really sixteen; he just had the youth sucked out of him thanks to some time monster.' Yeah, how do you think that'll blow over?" Evan shook his head at Gwen's foolishness.
Kevin chose that moment to wake up. "Get off me! What do you think you're doing?" He even sounded old.
"We need to get you some help," Sam said, concerned.
"I don't need help; I need to kick that thing's ass!"
"Dude, that thing turned you into an old man," Carter said tactlessly.
"Huh?"
"Do you feel young?" Ben inquired.
"Actually, my back is killing me, my legs ache, and what's up with these shoes?" Kevin pointed to his combat boots. "Is it too much to ask for a little support?"
"He's like a real, irritable, short-tempered, crotchety old man!" Sam said, making Grandpa Kevin yell, "Why are you whispering?"
"In other words, aside from the male-patterned baldness, he's pretty much the same as ever," Evan said as he snickered at Kevin's expense. Kevin glared at him.
"Since when did Ben know how to drive?" Carter asked Gwen as Ben took the keys from Kevin.
"Grandpa Max taught me," Ben answered for his cousin. "And besides, it's an emergency." He suddenly glared at Kevin, who was trying to take his keys back from the teen.
"Your nearsighted, arthritic, your reflexes are shot, and you're trying to unlock a cactus."
Evan nearly burst his gut laughing.
Ben sucked at driving. The trash cans he rear ended were proof.
"This isn't a bumper car!" Kevin cried out warningly from the back seat.
And then the monster that turned Kevin seventy came barging through the building next to them, warbling that horrific, human-like noise again.
"Back up, back up, back up!" Carter yelled out from the passenger seat. Ben put the car in reverse and put his foot down on the accelerator, trying to get as far away from the time monster as he could.
But the monster followed, though it disappeared after Ben turned a sharp corner. It reappeared behind them.
"On your right!" Carter ordered.
Trying not to panic, Ben slammed on the brakes and made the car go sideways, and then switched to drive. He drove quickly past the thing and into an alleyway, only to have the blue and black thing follow. Ben drove through a building in hopes of getting away, getting the car dented and scratched with bricks and old glass.
"How is this car still running after that?" Sam asked Kevin, who was next to her in the backseat. Kevin would have answered, but then Ben accelerated again, making all four teens in the back jerk their heads forward.
And then Carter saw the time monster touch the car with a single tentacle- why was it always tentacles? - and the car turned from green to rust, the windows cracking.
"Not the car!" Kevin moaned. "Why is it always the car?"
There was a ramp up ahead made of broken pieces of wood and some old trash cans. Carter looked at Ben, alarmed. "You're not gonna-"
"Hang on!" Ben accelerated the car one last time, driving onto the ramp. With the speed and height, they landed on the roof of a stable building with a sound crash, the tires of the car shot, the car destroyed, and smoke billowing out everywhere thanks to Ben's awful driving.
Kevin was not pleased.
"You are never driving my car again!" he yelled at Ben as he and Sam carried him away from the disaster. Ben was going to retort back with something nasty, but then the car suddenly decided to commit suicide, exploding a little and leaning dangerously to the left. Ben decided that whatever he was going to say wasn't worth it.
"Where have you been?" They all turned to see the crazy scientist from before standing in front of them, holding a pocket watch. "You were supposed to be here six seconds ago. Or is this thing running fast?" The scientist poked the watch experimentally.
"Who are you, anyway?" Evan asked. He was not in the mood for more of this guy's crazy talk. "What do you want?"
"What is that creature?" Gwen.
"Can you fix my car?" Kevin.
The scientist walked up to Kevin. "There's something different about you. Is it your hair?"
"Oh, yeah, I'm parting it down the middle now," Kevin said sarcastically. "Oh, and I also got real old!"
"Don't talk to me about old," the scientist said creepily. "I walk an eternity."
Kevin shook his fist at him. "Well, you better start running an eternity!"
"Hmm, you might slow us down." The scientist smiled. "I need to fix that. You'll come back right over there." He pointed to the corner of the building where the entrance to the roof was. As the others stared they saw the scientist walk past it from the shadows followed by sixteen year old Kevin.
Ben and Sam looked at the space where Kevin should have been and noticed the lack of old man. "Kevin, your back!" Sam ran up to him and tackled him in a hug.
"Well, not completely," he said. "My back still hurts a little. If I just lean on you…" Sam pushed him away gently, a happy grin on her face.
Now serious, Kevin turned to the scientist. "Okay, Professor, if you wouldn't mind fixing my car…"
"And how do you expect me to do that?" The scientist looked at him like he was crazy. "I'm a time traveler, not a body shop! Regressing a car would break all the chrono-laws of space time-"
"Okay, enough, I just want answers!" Ben stopped him, getting sick of all the big words the time traveler was using.
"Same old Ben Tennyson," the scientist said fondly, reminiscing. "Though, it'll be a good thing when you grow up a bit more, for the safety of the future, which, for obvious reasons, I can't tell you about."
"You want me to hurt him?" Kevin cracked his knuckles for emphasis.
Gwen opted for the diplomatic approach. "What can you tell us, Mr… Paradox?"
"Paradox!" the scientist said. "Oh, yes, that'll do. That'll do very nicely. Let me tell you my story in a way you can understand, with a beginning, middle, and end." Paradox took out his pocket watch. "Let's start in the middle."
Flash back time!
"Lo Soledad was built entirely for my project, an ingenious theory. A time tunnel with the properties I discovered in quartz crystals, which would allow us access to past and future events."
"Well, for a genius, it looks like you really blew it-OW! Stop hurting me!"
"Be nice, Kevin," Sam shushed him. "Let the man talk about the science experiment he blew up."
"You don't know the half of it," Professor Paradox continued. "Some tiny miscalculation on my part destabilized the experiment and ripped a hole in the fabric of reality. I was hurled into the event horizon.
"I must have spent one hundred years there. I didn't need to sleep, or eat, just…exist. At first I went mad, but after a few millennia of that, I got bored. I became sane, very sane. I began to learn."
End of flashback
"I now have complete understanding of the space time continuum." The professor snapped the cover back onto his pocket watch with a satisfied click. "Allowing me to travel anywhere any-when I want; within reason, of course."
The Slayers blinked their eyes. Where they just on some sort of serious acid trip? Why weren't the others acting the same way?
"So where's your time machine?" Kevin asked.
"He doesn't have a time machine," Evan realized. "He has a map in his head."
"Exactly." Paradox winked. "Oh, and in case you were wondering, none of you were, as you say it, on a serious acid trip."
Ben's team looked at Evan, who looked just as confused as them. How did he know what he was thinking?
"I know where the shortcuts are," Paradox went on, oblivious to the awkward tension he just created. "I've spent a dozen lifetimes crisscrossing the time stream, making it a better place."
"And how does that pay?"
"At the moment, not even in job satisfaction," he answered Kevin before turning away. And suddenly, they were in a classroom with old fashioned desks and a chalk board to boot. How did the Professor do that, anyway?
"I recently discovered that an extra-dimensional creature is going to wreak havoc in your universe."
"So? The way you talk, you take monsters like this all the time," Ben reasoned with the professor. "Why's this one so bad?"
Paradox picked up a piece of chalk and drew a perfect circle on the chalk board with a sideways arrow entering it. "Because unlike all the other foes I've faced over the years, this extra-dimensional creature came into existence when my experiment went awry."
"So…it's your fault," Sam picked up. "Wow. It must suck to have that on your conscience."
"This creature couldn't have been around for very long. We would know about it," interjected Carter.
"Time is like a river," Professor Paradox began to explain. "It moves and bends. Fifty years ago I accidentally set off a depth-charge into that river. The creature I released blasted fifty years through time to your present." He drew a large river on the chalkboard and then drew a large squiggly line through it. "This is what it's doing to your future."
"All its doing is messing up an old army base," Gwen pointed out. "How exactly is that bad? Why not leave it alone?"
"That's a question better answered for the man on the moon."
"Who's the man on the moon?" Ben asked.
Paradox pointed to himself. "I am!" And in half a second, all seven of them were on the moon.
"We're on the moon." For some reason, Ben was no longer surprised.
"No, we're on the moon in your distant future."
"What? How are we not suffocating?" Kevin asked. That was a pretty good question, actually.
"That's not remotely the point," Paradox told him, which earned the professor a glare from Kevin which he chose to ignore.
"I've brought you here to show you what Earth would look like in two hundred years if that time creature were to be set loose, aging everything and turning everything it touched to dust. For those of you with no imagination, the Earth is up there."
They all looked out in front of them to see the enormous Earth, but it looked wrong. The cerulean oceans were a bloody red, and the every single continent was a smoky gray color, showing no sign of plant or human life.
"You two can already feel the effects of the creature's destruction on the planet," Paradox told Evan and Carter.
They looked at each other before looking back at the time traveler. "Actually, no," Evan admitted. "We feel the effects just like any normal human would."
"Really? I must be thinking of different versions of you." Paradox looked back at the devastated Earth again. "A shame, though. If I fail to stop that creature, this will be the best possible version of the future. What are you doing here?" Everyone looked to see another Paradox standing just a few feet away from them.
"I'm allowing myself to feel the full impact of my failure," the other Paradox said.
"Okay, who's he?" Kevin asked, exasperated over all this time travel crap.
"I'm guessing that's a parallel Paradox," Ben answered.
"Young Ben has an innate sense of trans-temporal metaphysics, which will serve him well in his future, or should I say past." The parallel Paradox glanced sadly at the black Earth.
"And I can drive good, too," Ben said, taunting Kevin.
"We can breathe in the moon in the future but you can't fix my car?" Kevin asked, still pretty pissed about that.
"What should I do?" The Professor asked his parallel self.
"Obviously not what I did," Parallel Paradox said. "But whatever you do, you better do it quickly, because time is running out." Paradox got out his pocket watch and with a flash of blue light all seven of them were back in Lo Soledad.
"Why travel back here?" Gwen asked. "Why not travel back in time and stop the experiment from ever happening?"
"Isn't it just like an energy being to think outside temporal conventions," Paradox said with a sly smile on his face.
"I am not an energy-"
"The experiment that releases the creature also un-sticks me in time," Paradox quickly explained. "And that must happen because, in all modesty-"
"You've saved the world dozens of times," Evan realized.
"Hundreds, actually. In fact on one occasion Ben and I team up together to save the entire uni-oh, never mind," Paradox stopped himself when he saw the freaked out look on Ben's face. Taking out his pocket watch, Paradox said, "It should be hear any minute…" And at just that moment a metallic, inhuman screeching noise could be heard, signaling the time creature's approach.
"You can put your watch by it," Paradox said, because everyone clearly hadn't had enough of this time crap yet. (Where did Sam keep her chainsaws again?)
Just as the creature began to demolish the building across the street, aging it into oblivion, Ben turned into Jetray. He flew up into the air and began to hit the monster with green lasers from its tail. When that didn't work, Paradox reached into his pocket and grabbed a handful of gum balls and threw it at the monster. Miraculously, it stopped moving in its tracks.
"They hit it?" Jetray asked as he swooped down in front of the monster. He asked Paradox, "Doesn't everything it touches age into oblivion?"
"Gum balls last a really long time," he said. "Check under your desk at school. Now get out of there!" Jetray flew out of the way just as the creature began to move again.
Gwen was about to use her powers to stop it when Paradox jumped in front of them all, actually grabbing the thing around its waist and stopping it in its tracks. Paradox, being the immortal that he was, couldn't age into oblivion by touching it. Instead, his body started to stretch itself out like a river, flowing in and out of proportion.
"Take us back to the accident!" Evan ordered Paradox, who was a bit tied up at the moment. He still managed to take them all to fifty years in the past in a flash of blue light; they could tell because all the buildings looked new.
"Guys, to the lab, quick!" Evan ordered. "Paradox, keep that thing occupied."
"Keep it occupied?" Paradox asked incredulously as the teens ran away. "I'm a time traveler, I don't keep things occupied!"
"You sure this thing is gonna work, doctor?" the army general asked behind the safety glass. "Your time experiment has cost the US government a pretty penny." He didn't notice the six teenagers trespassing past him into the experiment room.
"As to cost, I believe the alleviation of untold human suffering in history is ample justification," the human Paradox told the general, safety glasses on.
"Why would it use the phone?" Evan asked the others, whispering.
"What?" Ben asked.
"It tried to use the pay phone, then it went to the police station, then the dorms," Evan explained. "It didn't act like some uncontrollable, trans-dimensional creature. It did everything a normal person would do."
"If they suddenly found themselves in an abandoned military base," Gwen said, catching on. And then the experiment turned on, the golden quartz ring emitting a blue light from its center. Just as the light became too much, the assistant stepped back too far, damaging the controls with his elbow and making the machine blow itself up.
"Look there, the assistant!" Ben shouted over the noise. And then the experiment went wrong. Metal appliances stretched themselves out to impossible lengths as they were sucked into the event horizon, and Paradox himself was sucked into his own machine.
But that wasn't the end of it. The assistant was also being dragged in through the vacuum, and he grabbed onto the metal pillars for dear life. The blue light began emitting a white light as it tried to suck the young man in.
Ben quickly crawled towards the machine while the others hung onto the wall for their lives. "Ben! You'll get sucked in along with him!" Carter cried out as a root from the ground wrapped around her waist like a safety belt. Evan's doing, no doubt.
"I need to put on a little weight," Ben quipped as he slammed the dial down on Humungousaur. The alien reached out towards the young man, who had let go of the pillar at that point. Screaming, he felt a giant rough hand wrap around his torso. He screamed again at the monster that was saving him.
"Trust me!" Humungousaur said. "This beats the alternative!" With a last effort, he pulled the two of them away from the vacuum to safety. Gwen stood up despite Evan's arms around her and shot pink energy volts at the machine, destroying the machine and finally stopping it.
Outside, the black and blue light from the time creature slowly faded, and Paradox's old assistant was in his arms. "Hugo, of course! If it were a snake it would have bit me!"
That was when the six heroes walked up to them, Evan looking especially happy for outsmarting a time traveler. "Oh, don't look so smug!" Paradox told him. "I would have figured it out eventually."
"You had a hundred thousand years!" Evan protested as the blue light enveloped them and transported them back to their own time, leaving Hugo the assistant very confused.
"I have to admit it, I'm impressed. All those centuries trapped in the event horizon and it never occurred to me that the accident wasn't my own fault." They were all outside the library in their present time, or in Paradox's case, the past. Or was that future?
"I'm glad that you're still as smart now as you are in the future," Paradox continued.
"Uh, thanks, I guess." Evan didn't really know what to say to that.
"Hey, what about me?" Ben demanded. "I was the one who pulled the guy out of the experiment."
Paradox sighed. "You eventually become smarter in the future."
And Ben's ego deflated yet again. The snickers his friends were causing didn't help.
"Whatever happened to your assistant?" Carter asked once she had calmed down.
"I…lived my life," said an old man with a cane, who was walking towards them. How'd he get here?
"Hugo!" Paradox cheerfully greeted him. "How are you?"
"Well, you look the same, and I haven't seen you in fifty years," Hugo said.
"Well, I haven't seen you in a hundred thousand years, but you don't look half bad." For some reason, Hugo did not act surprised at the professor's remark. He was probably used to such strange talk.
"How was your life?" Paradox inquired politely.
"Good, a good life," Hugo answered. "I'm…I'm sorry about the experiment. I ruined everything. I never got to time travel."
"Would you still like to?"
"Yes," Hugo said slowly. "I'm not afraid anymore."
"Good to hear it." Paradox grabbed his shoulder and took out his pocket watch. "How about I give you a behind the scenes look at eternity?" The open pocket watch glowed blue, and a small hole in the fabric of time opened up behind them. Paradox led the fearless Hugo through the portal, and it closed up in a flash.
"At least he's got company now," Sam said, happy for the two of them.
"Oh, and, uh, thanks for stranding us here in the middle of nowhere!" Kevin yelled out, clearly not letting that go.
"Come on, we can call someone to drive us all home," Carter said, leading the others out of Lo Soledad.
Nevertheless, they were all happy to see Kevin's car waiting for them, good as new.
"Awwww, stoked!" Kevin said, running up to the car like a child who got the toy he wanted for Christmas.
"It looks as good as new!" Sam pointed out.
"It doesn't just look like it's new, it is new. Its factory new from thirty years ago." Kevin looked up at the night sky. "Paradox, I take back everything I was about to say about you."
Kevin suddenly looked at Evan, who held up a hand in a shunning motion. Kevin sighed. "What do I have to do to make you not mad at me anymore?"
"You give me driving lessons in your new car."
"LIKE HELL!"
Sam glared at him, her eyes flashing red. "If you don't, he'll whine and complain about you for a week. And that'll make me angry. Do you want to see me angry?"
Kevin glared at Evan. "If you get so much as a scratch on it, I swear to God-"
"Deal!" Evan said, finally breaking the shunning of Kevin Levin.
"Hey, there's a note," Ben said suddenly, taking the slip of paper from under the windshield. "'Kevin, keep in mind that if this car comes into contact from anything else that comes from 1975, it will explode like antimatter. Enjoy! Paradox.'"
"He's kidding, right?" Kevin asked as everyone got into the car. "You know, like a time travel joke?" Kevin started the car and drove away. "Isn't it? Guys?"
Kevin wasn't the only one who got a little piece from advice from the neighborhood time traveler. When Ben finally got home, a slip of paper was on his desk. In Paradox's messy handwriting, it read, "Ventus has been very compliant, but soon he's going to want to take over. The Slayer Gods usually only take over when their vessels are in mortal danger. It's happened enough times for the others, but you have the Omnitrix. He's anxious to use his powers in the mortal world and see it with his own eyes. The wind cannot be contained, Ben. Tread with caution.
P.S. Do try to keep Carter from using her powers near electricity. The results could be disastrous.
That's it? That's what the time traveler wanted to tell him? Sure it was pretty good advice, especially that bit about Carter, but what good it would do? Ventus had been pretty quiet these last few weeks. He hadn't made any demands or said anything at all.
The wind cannot be contained, Ben. Ben could understand why Ventus would want to take over. He hadn't been outside of his human host in years, probably not since the last vessel. But why did this particular bit of the letter sound so ominous?
You called for a god?
Ventus! Where have you been?
Oh, you know, loitering around in the astral plane, occasionally checking up on you. How's your progress with Carter?
T-That's not important! I mean you don't need to know! Ben was very glad Ventus couldn't see him blush. Besides, he had more important things to ask.
Ventus, do you ever get tired of being stuck in my body all the time?
Well, yes. I haven't been in the mortal world for so long. I want to see how it's changed. Why?
Just…it seems pretty boring inside my head. Do you want to take over, at least for a few minutes?
No. The stern tone of Ventus's voice surprised Ben. I can only come out when you're in mortal danger. It's too much of a risk to take over out of the blue.
You sure? I promise no one will find out. Ben tried to lay it on extra thick, since he was worried about the ominous tone of Paradox's letter.
Tempting, but no; it wouldn't be right. I'll talk to you later Ben. And Ventus signed off with that, leaving Ben to worry about the professor's note all night long.
That night, Ben remembered something.
For ten year old Ben, it had been a week since the Slender-robot tried to destroy downtown Bellwood. The hype had finally died down, especially about that diamond alien that destroyed the monster.
All week, Ben had been on the lookout for Carter Valentine, trying to find the Goth girl in town or around his neighborhood. So far, he didn't have any luck. Now it was Saturday, after Mr. Daniel's music class. Ben's mother had told him that she would be really late in picking him up, so she had given Ben some money so he could walk around town for a bit. Sandra was always worried about her son, but she figured that he would be okay, since he was usually a smart boy.
After stashing his guitar and drumsticks in the studio, Ben walked to downtown Bellwood, looking for the hole in the road Slender-robot had created. Construction workers were finally filling it up, after a week of tourists trying to get pictures of the remnants of the alien attack.
Ben turned to see a flash of black on his left. Eyes widening, he followed the blur as it made its way down the sidewalk. Ben nearly lost her a few times, as he had to dodge shoppers walking in the opposite direction, arms full of purchases.
In the corner of his eye, Ben saw Carter walk into a used bookstore, some old building with a burnt-out sign saying Powell's Used Books. Normally Ben would have abhorred going into such a place, but he really wanted to talk to Carter and get to know her. So he went in.
The bookstore was orderly with shelves upon shelves of books, all put in different genres. The lighting was dark, and the inside smelled a little musty. There was a cashier to Ben's left, and a bathroom in the back.
To his right, Ben could see Carter walking into the manga section of the bookstore, all the way to the back. Without a moment to lose, Ben went after her, not even taking the time to think up some excuse for why he was in the store in the first place.
When he got to the manga section, he was pleased to see some used copies of Ultra Boy on the shelves. "Sweet!" Ben cheered, forgetting he was in a bookstore.
He heard a sharp intake of breath, and he turned to see Carter staring at him in shock, gripping the book in her hands so tightly her knuckles were turning white.
"What are you doing here?" she squeaked, looking totally terrified.
"Looking for Ultra Boy." Ben pointed to the cover. "How about you?"
Calming down some, Carter held up the manga in her hands. "I was looking for the next volume of Bleach. I've never seen you here before." Now, instead of looking scared, she looked at Ben accusingly.
Ben was drawing up a blank, so he blurted out, "I was exploring, and came here."
Carter snorted. "More like you followed me. I knew someone was." She said that last bit more to herself.
Knowing he had been found out, Ben admitted, "I've been looking for you. I want to talk."
"About what?"
"Well, you know, who are you, how you got your powers, stuff like that."
"I'm not telling."
Ben raised an eyebrow. "How do you expect us to talk then?"
"Simple; we don't." Carter was full on glaring at him now, arms crossed, brow furrowed, a scowl evident on her face. It was like she was trying to scare Ben away, and she was nearly succeeding too.
"Are your parents Plumbers?" Ben asked nonchalantly, thumbing his finger in a Ultra Boy book and looking idly at the pictures.
"No, my grandparents are," Carter revealed, her voice barely above a whisper.
Ben looked up from his book and looked at Carter, who wasn't glaring at him anymore, but still had her arms crossed defensively.
"Did they teach you how to fight like that?" Ben was referring to how she took out Slender-robot earlier.
"Yeah."
"What was that thing anyway?"
Carter sighed. "It was a training robot for me. Something went haywire in its circuits and it went after the city. I was dispatched there to destroy it."
"You're grandparents must be amazing to teach you how to fight like that."
Carter smiled, instantly making her look less frosty. "Yeah, they are."
Ben blushed slightly and cursed himself for it. "W-who are they, anyway? Maybe my grandpa knows them."
"They go by Cordelia and Isaac Valentine. Who's your grandpa?"
"Max Tennyson."
Carter's eyes widened. "Max Tennyson is your grandfather? That's insane!"
Ben blinked. "It..it is?"
"Well, yeah. Max Tennyson's famous. He's rumored to be the greatest Plumber in the Milky Way galaxy."
"Really?"
"You didn't know?"
"My grandpa never really talks about his Plumber days," Ben said bitterly.
Carter cocked her head to the side in a bird-like manner. "I guess he doesn't like talking about it. Being a Plumber is dangerous work."
"Yeah, but its also totally awesome! You get to save the world and do cool stuff!"
Carter shook her head. "It sounds cool, but it's like being a police officer. You can die and leave a family behind."
That kind of brought Ben back down to Earth. "Oh, right."
Carter sighed through her nose. "How do you expect to be a Plumber if you can't remember that?"
Ben was instantly on the defensive. "Like you should talk. You're not a Plumber either."
"True, but then again, I'm not training to be a Plumber."
"What?"
"There are two branches of the Plumbers," Carter explained seriously. "There are the normal Plumbers like your grandpa, who arrest criminals and get all the glory. And then there are the Slayers, a separate branch who follows its own rules and execute criminals on the spot."
"Execute?" Ben repeated, not quite getting it.
"Meaning we kill bad guys on sight. The Plumbers hate us for it, so our two groups are always fighting each other."
"But that's wrong! You're part of the same team; why can't we just get along?"
Carter smiled bitterly. "Because the world doesn't work that way."
"But that doesn't have anything to do with us, does it?" Ben asked hesitantly.
Carter looked at him sadly. "We're too different, Ben. If you want to become a Plumber, you'd better stay away from me."
AN:Oooh, cliffhanger!
What? I can't always promise an action-packed chapter.