I'm so sorry it's taken so long to update, this chapter was really hard to write for some reason. Unfortunately I can't promise faster updates right away because Camp NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, so I'll be putting all my effort into another story. I do know where this is going though, so updates should be more regular after that.

Things were slow going in the lab. Ben watched from the doorway as Kevin dug through the wiring inside the robotic arm, the two galvan lab techs watching from the rim of the arm's opening. Kevin was muttering something about Ghostfreak, probably in response to all the damage Ben's Ectonurite form did to the R. circuitry. Well, there was nothing he could do about that now. He left, hoping that the techies could find the information they needed despite the fried wiring.

Gwen sat on the ground in the hall outside the lab, a textbook in her lap. She didn't look up when Ben passed. "Any luck?" she asked.

"Not yet."

She nodded and returned her full focus to her work. Ben stayed put for a few seconds, waiting to see if Gwen was willing to talk to him. She didn't even notice him standing there. With drooping shoulders, he continued on. Maybe Rook would be willing to go out on a quick patrol with him. He needed something to distract him from this mess.

But Rook was nowhere to be found. He wasn't at his truck, or in any of the main rooms, or in the prisoner containment unit. He wasn't even in the employee lounge. Eventually he gave up, decided to text him instead. He hated texting Rook—the Revonnahgander always insisted on typing with perfect grammar, so it took forever for him to reply—but that was his best bet.

hey rook, he typed, where r u?

Ben fiddled with the Omnitrix to pass the time. Five minutes later, his phone vibrated. He read the other's response.

I am in my quarters bathing. I will be free to speak in fifteen minutes.

He groaned and shoved his phone in his pocket. He didn't know what Revonnahgander bathing entailed, and he wasn't too keen about walking in on Rook to find out. That meant fifteen minutes with nothing to do.

Well, nothing to do but think, that is. But that was the last thing he wanted.

So he passed the time by walking down the winding halls of Plumber Headquarters and thinking about everything but the Psyphon situation. Sumo Slammers. New Whampire strategies. Whether Ester would be willing to go on another date with him after that Nyancy Chan fiasco. But he could still feel his darker thoughts pushing against the other ones, fighting to break through and steal his focus. He had to mumble his thoughts out loud so that he could have something tangible to distract himself as well. If anyone had seen him like this, pacing around and muttering nonsense under his breath, they would have thought Ben Tennyson finally cracked.

He slowed to a stop when he heard a familiar screeching noise coming from behind a nearby door. He unlocked it with his Omnitrix—thankfully he had the clearance level to enter—and peeked inside.

The room was full of strange alien medical apparatus, but what caught Ben's attention was the glass incubator near the center of the room. Inside was the larva, laying on its side and clutching Gwen's sun talisman to its belly. Its injured leg was coated with shifting blue slime, most likely medical nanobots. When the Necrofriggian saw Ben, it rolled onto its stomach and shook its wings in exuberant joy.

At first, Ben considered leaving. He feared being around the larva would only make his worries more persistent. But he entered anyway and crouched beside the incubator so he was at eye level with the baby bug. Its big green eyes had a pacifying effect on Ben; he decided it was as good of a distraction as any.

Ben pulled up the most stool-like piece of equipment in the vicinity and sat next the the larva. He rubbed his finger over the glass lightly in front of its face. "Coochy-coo!"

It crossed its eyes and bobbed its head to follow the finger. Noticing the pattern, Ben began to drag his finger all over the glass pane, and the larva continued to snap its head around to track it. Every time it saw movement it grew more excited, and soon it was twitching its wings and slapping its arms against the floor. The more enthusiastic it became, the larger Ben's smile grew. The thing was just too darn cute.

Ben moved his finger in a wide loop and the larva jumped at it, flipping over and landing sprawled on its back. It screeched again, and Ben recognized the sound as one of joy. He couldn't stop laughing. "Look at you!" he exclaimed, leaning in further. "Aren't you a little cutie?"

Every other time he had been alone with the larva, he had been preoccupied by either embarrassment or panic. Now that he was calm, he had the chance to to take a long, objective look at the baby. When they hatched all of them had looked just about the same, but there was something odd about this one. Its markings were darker than Ben remembered, and more jagged. One of its cheek stripes branched up and went up and over its bottom eyelid. There was a dark, curving line running down the larva's stomach. At first he thought it was a scar, until he noticed similar faint trails on the wings.

His eyebrows shot up with concern. Was it sick? Well, if it did have some condition causing the physical changes, it wasn't fast-acting. Behavior-wise, it seemed healthy as could be. He decided that if there was something wrong with it, it could be addressed later. He had more pressing things to worry about.

Actually, no. He didn't want to worry right then at all. There was nothing he could do before Kevin finished analyzing the arm, so until he got the call to come back, it was just him and the baby.

He tried making some funny faces at the larva, pushing his nose right against the glass as he did so. It giggled and clapped its hands together. He was only able to keep it up for a minute before he was laughing too hard to continue.

"You know, you need a name," he said to it, leaning in to scrutinize it. "What should we call you..."

"Where's Ben?"

Kevin shrugged at Gwen's question. "I called him five minutes ago, he said he'd be right up."

"Which means he probably won't be up for a while." Although she sounded annoyed, she was secretly thankful; maybe she could get some work done while they waited. She began rifling through her physics textbooks to find the magnetism practice problems.

As soon as she was ready to get to work, the door opened and Ben waltzed in.

"Sorry I'm late," he announced. "Got sidetracked."

"With what?" Kevin asked.

Ben shrugged and rested his hands on the table which the arm sat on. "Figure anything out?"

Based on his refusal to answer, everyone present assumed that Ben had been with the larva, and that assumption was correct. Kevin smirked and was about to comment, but Gwen cut him off with a glare. "Blukic and Driba managed to extract the instructions that the bot was running on. It was supposed to take the larva to some specific coordinates on the planet Yutande. Probably where Psyphon is hiding out."

"Yutande?" Ben furrowed his eyebrows in thought. "Where's that?"

"Right smack dab in the middle of Plumber airspace," Kevin answered, taking out his Plumber badge and bringing up a hologram of the planet. "It's a neutral planet, mostly used for trade and diplomatic meetings.

Ben examined the model, noting the space stations orbiting the planet. Definitely Plumber operated, based on the huge emblems decorating their hulls. "Sounds like a dumb place to hide."

"That's what we thought," he replied. "Until we realized that there's a huge treaty signing going on at the planet's capital. Security is tight all around the city, but the rest of the planet is virtually unguarded right now."

Gwen shrugged. "You've got to admit, it's the last place any of us would think to look."

"Well, if the place is already swarming with Plumbers, does that mean we're done?" Ben took a step away from the table. Something had been bugging him to leave since they had started talking about Psyphon.

"Don't get too excited." Gwen flicked her hand across the hologram, spinning it so that Ben could see the capital city. Floating over it was an awfully familiar spaceship.

He leaned in, eyes wide. "Incurseans? I thought you said this was a peace treaty."

"It is," she said with a tone of dry humor. "The Lewodans are convinced that they're going to break though to the Incursean's 'better nature' somehow. Needless to say no one's expecting it to end well, so all Plumber personnel in the area are wrapped up in battle preparations."

"Plus I doubt either side would be too thrilled about a secret Plumber mission happening on their treaty signing planet," Kevin added. "The Plumbers are obligated to share the activities of all their galactic agents to the diplomats, so the Lewodans and Incurseans would no doubt find out. But technically us three count as local Earth agents, so the Plumbers don't have to tell anyone squat if they send us."

Ben's shoulders drooped. "So it's all up to us again, isn't it?"

"I though you'd be psyched," Gwen said.

"I dunno." He shrugged. "I guess I was looking forward to a day off."

While Kevin busied himself with planning their travel route on his badge, Gwen pulled Ben to the side and spoke to him in a low voice. "That doesn't sound like the Ben Tennyson I know. Everything alright?"

"Yeah," he said, but his downcast eyes betrayed that answer. He wasn't sure, to be honest. There had been a vague stress growing in his stomach ever since that morning.

"Is this about Big Chill's other kids?"

He tried to say no, but he knew she would see right through him. Of course it was about the larvae. He stayed silent.

She put her hand on her cousin's shoulder in a comforting gesture. "Look, if Psyphon has them, we'll free them. If he doesn't... well, we can find them another way. Whatever happens, I promise I'll do everything I can to help."

Ben glanced back up at her, then smiled slightly. "Thanks." It didn't make his anxiety fade completely, but was good to hear nonetheless.

"So I have a question." Kevin, apparently oblivious to that last exchanged, approached his other teammates. "Assuming Psyphon does have the other Necrofriggians, what do we do once we get them?"

"We bring them back into the sun's orbit where they belong," Gwen said. "Maybe keep them at Plumber HQ for a while if any of them are injured."

"I'm pretty sure they've still got a daycare here," Ben added. He remembered Grandpa leaving him there once back when he was 11, but he didn't want to mention that incident. "The larvae can stay there until they're all ready to go back out together."

"And what about the one we've got?" Kevin asked. "We leaving it here or bringing it along? It could make pretty good bait."

Ben glowered at the other boy. "We're not using Jack as bait." He waited for a response, but the others had fallen into silence. He raised an eyebrow, confused. "What?"

"Jack." Kevin stared at him in disbelief. "You named it?"

Ben's shoulders drooped as he realized what he had just let slip. He put the back of his hand to his mouth and swore to himself. "Maybe," he admitted.

He expected the other to start taunting him again, but Kevin didn't have that same smirk on his face. In fact, he was starting to look annoyed, angry even. Kevin opened his mouth to say something, but Gwen stopped him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Alright, you named it," she said, turning on her mediator voice. "But... why Jack?"

Ben put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. "You know, like Jack Frost. I mean, we've gotta call him something, right?"

Gwen sighed. "Fine, okay. His name's Jack." He glanced at Kevin again to make sure he had calmed down. "Anyway, I agree with Ben on this one. He's just a baby, we can't use use him as bait."

Before Kevin could ask another question, the doors wooshed open and Rook entered. He was slightly damp, but fully dressed, armed, and rearing to go. "The Proto-TRUK is ready whenever we decide to leave."

Ben smiled, thankful for the excuse to leave. "Awesome. Let's go."

As they filed out of the room and towards the docking bay, Rook fell back beside Ben and spoke a little too loud for Ben's liking. "If you're curious about where your child will be kept during the mission, it has been placed in an isolation chamber while its leg heals. Once it is able to move about comfortably, it will be transfered to the daycare and looked after by the staff there."

"Um, awesome," Ben replied, trying to ignore Kevin snickering in the background.

"Now that I think about it," Gwen interjected, "how are you going to make sure it stays in the daycare? I mean, can't it just phase through walls?"

The group stalled at the entrance to the docking bay, and Rook took a moment to open the door with his badge before answering. "Magister Tennyson says that Necrofriggians cannot phase through solids until they are at least three years old, Ben's larva is not nearly old enough."

Admittedly that fact did help Ben relax a bit; at least he didn't have to worry about Jack flying off. Before he could be content with having found a bright side to something in this mess, he realized that if Jack couldn't phase, none of the other larvae could either. And if Psyphon had the others...

"Yuta-whatever's not far, is it?" he asked as they all filed up the loading ramp into the Proto-TRUK.

"It's Yutande," Gwen corrected, "and the map said that it's a half hour journey with the kind of warp drive Kevin has."

Rook sat in the driver's seat, a smug little smile on his face. "We will be there in fifteen minutes."

"Good." Ben sat in the nearest seat and turned his head towards the window, ignoring whatever techie bickering just started up between Kevin and Rook. Fifteen minutes was alright, but it still felt like too long. He just wanted to kick some ass already.

Ten minutes into the flight, Kevin and Rook were still arguing about warp drives, Gwen had her face buried in a textbook, and Ben was going to ruin his pants if he didn't go to the bathroom soon. So much for waiting until he got there.

Ben gave up on his current round of Fruit Ninja, stuff his phone in his pocket, and walked over to the Proto-TRUK's pathetic excuse for a restroom. Even though Ben was scrawny compared to Rook, it was standing room only with little breathing room. He entered and closed the door, the bottoms of his pant legs barely avoiding being caught it in, and began to futz with the wide-flexible tube he was supposed to do his business in. This was why he hated space travel.

After a good two minutes of scrambling, he finished. Unfortunately, the relief was short lived, because when he moved to back out of the room, his elbow bumped against something coming out of the wall.

Something cold.