'No, no, no!'

Rook ignored Mr Baumann's screech and plunged his fist into Liam's stomach - the avian flew backwards and let out a spluttered cluck as his elbows glanced across a shelf filled to the brim with baked beans, causing them to ricochet and fall to the floor in a clash of noise. Before the sound could fade, Rook followed up his punch with a quick summersault into the air, his leg springing out from the roll into a streamlined kick that flattened the comb of Liam's head. Liam wobbled for a moment under the pressure, his eyes wide beneath the new fringe of red Rook's boot had forced down against them, before Rook twisted again to deliver violent pinch to the same area of the neck he had seen Ben's relative, Clyde, massage once before with his nimble fingers. The effect wasn't quite the same; for one thing Liam didn't flop over like a well-stroked cat. But he did collapse at Rook's feet. And that was a clear victory, as far as Rook was concerned

'No!'

Rook looked up as he fastened the cuffs round Liam's wrist, just in time to see Molly Gunther whack Corvo over the head with her blaster and send him careening into the shelves – shelves which he promptly knocked over, a few large purple eggs smattering with a resounding crack onto the floor.

Mr Baumann let out a wail at the sight of their green yolks, and the next moment stared out in disbelief as the wall to his shop suddenly burst open, water flooding in through the broken bricks and pieces of plaster in a swirling cascade that would not have been out of place in a disaster movie scene. Rook's eyes widened and he quickly sprung to the top of one of the still-standing shelves, hauling Liam up by the neck onto the dry wood a moment later.

'Mr Baumann!' he called out, only to see the shop-owner's head pop up above the waves like a boiled egg - one that was not smashed. Though the glower on his face was far from reassuring.

'My wife is an aquatic alien who spends the majority of her time underwater,' he pronounced through gritted teeth. 'I think you'll find that I can swim, thank you very much.'

'Wow, what do you want, a medal?' Corvo grumbled, his wrists slung over the top of a floating plank and held in place by a set of shimmering handcuffs. From the other side, Molly growled at him and brandished her weapon with her free hand.

It was at that point that Magister Patelliday poked his head out from behind the soggy sign announcing a discount on lima beans. There were a couple of scorch marks running over his face and Rook noticed one of the lens in his glasses had cracked.

'Well, looks like Ben was righ',' the Magister sighed. 'There was a sweet little watering-hole of a bathhouse attached to that warehouse and several crates of stolen fruit. Key word bein' 'was.' Too bad Fistrick set up some kinda pressure-pad bomb system in place. Blew me clear off ma feet.'

'And the wall of my store,' Mr Baumann practically hissed.

Patelliday looked a bit shame-faced at that. 'Our apologies.' Then his head, much like a owl's, swivelled round to face Rook head-on. 'There was no sign of any of that Amber Ogia though. Must have stashed it elsewhere.'

Rook sighed in annoyance. All this, for a wild moose chase; Fistrick was nowhere to be found. And he doubted Liam had him on speed-dial. Corvo might do, but that was a long-shot at best.

Now: what to tell Ben?

'Classic,' Ben said, a clear smirk in his voice. 'The universe strikes again.'

Rook sighed. 'Why are you being like this? Not once, not once, did I utter the words 'What could go wrong' or 'at least things cannot get any worse' at any point in the events I have just narrated to you.'

'Dude, chill.' Ben voice descended into his ear, still sounding strangely jubilant. 'Just let me bask in the fact that for once someone other than me trashed Mr Baumann's stuff.'

'Several someones actually,' Rook murmured. 'And it does not change the fact that Mr Baumann accused us all of having been around you too much. Something about 'rubbing off' on us, which I am pretty sure is not true. If it is, I will be quite upset that you have been sharing more body contact than is necessary with Plumbers other than myself.'

'No, no, that's just an...'

Rook waited with a smile as Ben remembered the slight tease that had ran through his voice moments before.

'You're messing with me, aren't you?'

'Your mother has made enough comments regarding her hopes that certain aspects of my behaviour will 'rub off' on you for me to be able to recognise the remark as an expression, yes.'

'Figures,' Ben muttered. But the next second his voice took on a breezy tone, one airy enough for Rook's frown to slam down in worry in response. 'Guess we'll have to go with a good old-fashioned 'prison-break' then.'

'Ben...'

'Not to worry!' Ben reassured him in a tone that, to Rook's ears, was far from reassuring. 'I have everything under control. Or I will, as soon as you explain to me a few things...'

All it had taken was a single line to get her to agree.

'Hey, Sunny, want to get back with your boyfriend again?'

'Um, yeah, duh.'

And Ben grinned.

Guard Mullock was having the usual boring day. Patrolling slime-infested corridors, checking the time-stamp on camera, wheeling out trays of what seemed to him to be full of inedible food...yawn. What he wouldn't do for some excitement.

And it was just as this thought passed through his head, that a loud bang shot off outside of it. Cautiously, he yanked out his baton from his belt, fiddling with the buttons on its hilt; blue for an ice-plasma discharge and red for a surge of taser-inspired electricity. There had been arguments from some of the Plumbers recently that this was a barbaric tool, designed to incapacitate with no regard for a species' susceptibility to either one of these elements. Frankly, Mullock thought they should all just take a hike. They didn't know what it was like to work in such a gloomy place, with nothing but the dripping of unidentified slime slinging itself down from greasy pipelines. No, not them with their fancy uniforms and universal blaster-guns...

Letting his complaints shift into a circulating grumble within his own head, Mullock followed the 'bang' to its source, realising that a shrill voice had imposed itself over the silence the initial noise should have left behind in its wake.

'Hey, like, guards, my lame-o cousin needs help! He's collapsed. Humans do that – they run out of energy so fast, it's freaky.'

She didn't sound too broken up about it, Mullock reflected wryly. But then that was energy beings for you; they floated around like they were so superior, all high and mighty in their naked glowing silhouettes that you just wanted a black hole to swallow all of them and their arrogance down...

His thoughts now taking up a spiral of hatred towards Sunny and all those like her beneath her fleshy covering, he raked his thumb across the scanner next to Ben's cell and waited for the shifting gleam of the door to pull away. Heaving down a sigh at the sight of Ben Tennyson slumped down on the floor, he couldn't help but conjure up the following headline; Hero Struck down too Young. And whose fault would it end up being, no doubt? That's right, Mullock's. Somewhat moodily, he used his baton to roll the little ape onto his back.

'Yo,' he said, prodding him once, then twice. 'You're not dead, right?'

'Nope!' said the mouth that a moment ago had been lax and partway open. 'But 'yo' yourself!'

And the human's left hand shot up, straight into the end of the baton, his right hand reaching up as though to dial for one of his alien forms. Too late Mullock realised that this was an impossibility, the metallic clamp surrounding the white gleam of the Omnitrix, a clear testament to that fact. But he had already reacted to the perceived threat, his fingers reflexively ramming down on both buttons in his fear.

Ben grimaced, his mouth falling open in a yell as electricity danced over his form, tucking itself round each writhing twist of movement with crackles of white glee. But despite the pain, his left hand remained glued to the end of the baton with what seemed to be nothing more than stubbornness, the colour of the manacle taking on a slight blue haze under the flickers of steam. Wasting no more time, Ben turned and rammed his wrist down on the floor, the electricity disappearing with a last grasp of tiny white fingers into the creases of his clothing. But the pain had been worth it; the gauntlet cracked and then shattered as though it had become as frail as ice. Turning his head over his shoulder to give Mullock a pained wink, Ben then rammed the Omnitrix against the floor once again, hard enough for a very familiar surge of green light to flash across the cell.

Meanwhile, from her position near the entrance to her cell, Sunny huffed.

'Urgh,' she said, as she heard a rather loud thump and then a muffled groan coming from next door. 'This is taking foreeeever...'

'Well,' puffed out Ben as the large hand of Humungousaur slammed against the screened door of her cell. 'Excuse me for getting tasered.'

He eyed the access panel on the wall in front of him briefly, before yanking Mullock up by the arm to press the guy's thumb as lightly as he could against it. Flaring with a yellow light, it let out a beep and then Sunny was stepping out with a grin and a twirl in her step.

'Much better,' she declared with a wink, before she held her wrist up to Ben's eyes with a pout. 'Can't you do something about this mean old bracelet though?'

Ben shrugged, conveniently leaving out the suspicion he had that the icy plasma would probably be enough to help shatter it. Rook had been right about the fact that it would be enough to help free the Omnitrix after all.

'Sorry,' he said, 'no can do; unless you want the bones in your wrist crushed too. Humungousaur's not too good at fine motor control, at least not with anything smaller than a crowbar.'

Sunny made a face. 'So what? I have to stick with you til...?'

Ben sighed impatiently. 'Til we both find somewhere safe,' he lectured her, feeling uncomfortably like Rook as he did so. 'Now I'm all out of ideas and since I came out with this break-out-of-jail one, it's your turn to deliver.'

He grimaced as a few guards began to show up.

'Now why don't you think it over while I take care of these guys?'

It wasn't exactly a foolproof strategy. But Fistrick was in the wind and Sunny was probably the one person who might have some inkling where he was. And given how...obsessed she was at the idea of being star-crossed lovers with someone, it stood to reason that she'd want to reunite with him as soon as possible. Of course as a full-blown Anodite she could have tracked down his mana in a second. But Ben doubted he could get her to play ball as soon as she had access to her powers once again, so it looked like they would be stuck with each other for the unforeseeable future.

Ben punched a guard that came up to his knee and hoped this idea wouldn't blow up in his face.

'Lame,' Sunny huffed not six minutes later as Ben shoved her inside a small space cruiser that was docked into the side of the prison.

'Shut it,' he muttered, wincing as a blast of purple energy hit him in the shoulder. He quickly kneed the guard in the lower chest area, right against the cracks the fist of his Humungosaur form had crunched out earlier, letting a smile of satisfaction rise to his face as the guard grunted and dropped. The armour they were wearing was durable no doubt, hard enough to deliver a harsh slap of pain against his knee, one he could just visualise turning into a bruise later on; but it also left them a little slow, limited by the rigid weight of the metal. He made a mental note to ask Rook whether Proto-armour would ever be considered for distribution to organisations outside the Plumbers, before shoving his fist against the button near the door and watching with relief as it sealed off his view of the rest of the prison.

Sunny huffed again. 'How do you drive this thing? It doesn't have any shiny buttons.'

Ben rolled his eyes. 'Let me guess; you fly everywhere using your Anodite powers? Yeeeah, see this is why I have a driver's permit and a bus pass. In case, you know, I have to actually drive somewhere.'

Now it was Sunny's turn to roll her eyes. 'Yeah, permits and passes for boring earth-bound vehicles! And I mean that term like, literally! Those things have no soul, they're limited, trapped by the weight of gravity from your puny planet. Or at least-' she stopped, letting out a jubilant laugh as another blast from outside rammed its way against the door. '-that's what my boyfriend says.'

Ben raised his eyebrows, as he fiddled with a random array of button and gear sticks. No matter what Rook or Sunny said, driving a small space-ship wasn't that much different from a car. You still had the stuff for acceleration and braking and steering...it was just rearranged in a way that didn't make a lot of sense, that's all.

'Put your seatbelt on,' he said with a forced calmness. The engines fired up under the touch of a green button and he gripped the handles in front of him, the wavy ridges riding into his human skin like blunted teeth. 'It's gonna be a bumpy ride.'

Sunny gave him an evil look - but she did what he said none the less.

Six hours later, Rook was staring at the star-speckled map on the holo-viewer in front of him. A crazy line consisting of sharp turns and curves that doubled back on themselves wove its way out from the prison's dock before it dove off into deep-space with a sudden straightness that spoke of Ben's fumbling around with the control panel until he found the light-speed function.

Rook sighed and rubbed his brow. At least Ben had been nice enough to pick out the small purple space-cruisers Rook had told him to go for rather than the sleek grey pods that could jettison into alternate solar systems with a flick of a button. The tracking systems on those were still a bit wonky. On the craft Ben had chosen though...

Rook smiled and let his finger casually drift along the line Ben had left for him to find. There was sure to be a trial of destruction in its wake, one that being a Plumber-trained detective was sure to aid him in trailing.

Not half an hour later Rook was frowning again as he arrived at the place the trail had cut off with a blinking dot. No one was here. And the only thing that was left to announce the fact that anyone had been, was the smoking remains of a wrecked prison cruiser, hovering above a scorching star that should have been a planet flourishing with life. Or, as Gwen or Charmcaster would have put it, mana.

Notes: Okay, now shit has hit the fan.