Mina followed Azmuth out of the Rustbucket with a smile on her face. But that was short lived when the ground in front of them was blasted by laser fire.
Sixsix flew overhead towards Tetrax and his ship.
Mina wasted no time in going through her aliens, pleasantly surprised with the holographic display. "This one looks like it it can fly and is fast." She said, before picking Jetray and slamming the dial down.
She quickly looked herself over before she leapt up and took flight. She caught up with Sixsix halfway to the ship and shot a neuroshock blast from her eyes at him. He recovered from this shot quickly and turned around to face Mina, blasters in his hands.
"Really Sixsix? Still after Tetrax after all this time?" Mina asked rhetorically as she dodged each of his blasts and returned a few of her own. "Especially when it was all because of you coming after me for Vilgax that landed you in all this shit?" She landed another hit, knocking the blaster out of his right hand.
Sixsix grumbled in his language while still shooting and rushing at Mina, who kept dodging. But one shot hit her in the gills and Mina was knocked to the ground and timed out, changing back to human.
"Shit, what was that?" Gwen reacted to the sudden blaster fire, shielding herself and Max with a wall of mana. She then saw Sixsix fly off and someone, she assumed to be Mina, transform into an alien she hadn't seen before and take off, leaving Azmuth behind.
"I would say watch your language, but there isn't time for that." Max said, rushing to Azmuth. "Go help Mina, I'll get Azmuth to safety."
"Got it." Gwen replied, already running in the direction of the ship.
She catches up to the fight to see Mina get shot and fall to the ground before timing out, completely knocked out. She sends mana bolts into Sixsix, drawing his attention to her. And just before he fired at her, Petrosapien diamonds lodged themselves into his remaining handblaster, sending it flying. Tetrax behind him, sending another volley.
Sixsix screamed in his language, moving out of the crystals' way before flying back the way he came as fast as he could. He wasn't going to go solo with the Omnitrix, magic and Tetrax all at once.
"Urgh..." Mina groaned as she sat up. "Note to self, gills are a weak spot…" She said rubbing her head.
Gwen ran over to her. "You okay?" She asked before taking in Ben's new looks and voice. "Oh, Azmuth did it!" Gwen offered her cousin a hand up.
"Yeah, I'm fine…" She groaned, standing. "And yeah… Wait where's Sixsix?"
"Flew off the direction he came from." Tetrax said as he came up beside them.
"Dammit!" She cursed. "I should've went with an alien I knew better."
"Mina, don't beat yourself up, everyone's fine and Sixsix is gone." Gwen said. "Besides, you never practice anyway, so you were gonna choose that one in battle sooner or later."
Mina sighed. "I guess…"
Sixsix arrives back at his ship. He was pissed.
He makes it to the bridge and starts up the long range communicator. He was not gonna do this, but he needed backup now.
Mina was still bummed out when they got back to Max and Azmuth.
"Ah, Mina." Max said, coming out of the Rustbucket, slightly surprised by her new look. "What happened with Sixsix?"
"He got away…" She sighed. "Should've used Stinkfly or XLR8 or Mudpuppie…"
"Hey, don't beat yourself up." Max said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Everyone's alright and you can learn from this experience."
"Yeah…" She sighed again, walking into the Rustbucket.
Azmuth watched as she just flopped into a lying position on the bench seat. "You know, this seems familiar." Azmuth mused.
"Yeah… You gonna lock…" She paused to think. "Jetray for this one?" She asked dully.
"Mina. You know perfectly why I locked your Conductoid form before." Azmuth said. "If I locked an alien every time you failed with it, you'd have next to no forms left."
"Yeah, yeah…" She said, sitting up.
"Now Mina." Azmuth began. "Do you remember how I was when we first met on Xenon?"
"How could I forget?" She asked, a little annoyed at the memory. "I thought I had just lost my cousin to the feral Wildvines. Then the creator of the device that was going to explode was willing to let the Universe be destroyed because he lost faith in it? I lost it."
Azmuth nodded and sighed. "Yeah… There is a little more to it than that though." He stated. "And you should realize that, because you're going through it too."
"Wha…" Mina cocked an eyebrow, but then it clicked.
"I had exiled myself because no matter what I made, no matter how I tried to help with my inventions, the universe only saw them for their weapon potential." He said. "I tried to do good with my work, but for all the good I did, I did double the damage…"
"Azmuth…" She said, tearing up a bit.
"But you came along and your unfaltering bravery and heroism let me see that there was still good in the universe." Azmuth smiled a bit. "What I'm saying is I know what you're going through. The self image problems, the what ifs that plague your thoughts, the daily facade you put up to fool others, though mostly yourself, that everything is fine. And you have also had to deal with your gender identity as well." He continued. "And even now that I've given you what you've wanted all your life, you won't let it outweigh the bad." Mina was crying now. "There is no fast way to recover from this. I still fall back on my negative thinking. But you're a hero, you're strong enough to take the right path."
She sobbed a bit more. "How a-am I supposed to know what the right path is?" She asked.
"You walk it already, you've just strayed off of it a little." Max said, coming back into the Rustbucket. "You put yourself in danger to help others, but you hide that behind the face of a clown. You have to look out for yourself as well as others, the more you hide, the farther away from who you are you get."
She got up and hugged Max and sobbed into his shoulder.