Chapter 13: Free Bird
Undisclosed Location
Santa Mira, California
Wednesday, November 21st, 2000
6:36 PM.
All Max heard was screaming.
It didn't stop until someone slapped him, hard. Hard enough that it jerked his head to the side. Then a voice screamed his name as loud as it could, and small hands that were so strong shook him by the shoulders until he opened his eyes.
Or he tried to, anyway, but there was something on his face that kept them closed.
Something that felt like he had a lifetime's worth of sleep on them, all at once. Wet sleep that stuck like glue and he couldn't wipe away. Not when he couldn't move his hands, couldn't even feel them because they were tingling so badly and that was a nightmare all its own until he heard a voice tell him. "Hold on." It was a gentle woman's voice that sounded like it came from a speaker, and her touch was even kinder as she wiped his face clean with something that felt as soft as cotton.
Max wanted to trust her. He really did, but he knew better. So he barely moved, barely breathed until she was done. "Open your eyes. Please." The voice begged him. They still felt sticky, even after the rubbing, and he knew he'd only see lies.
He forced them open again anyway.
Max Tennyson blinked several times and stared into a small Plumbers helmet, the faceplate showing a blurry reflection of a worn down old man with matted-down hair from something like too much mousse and too many ugly red lines of pucker marks. They ran around his forehead and down his neck before they disappeared into his hair and under his shirt and he couldn't take his eyes off of them.
"Grandpa?" The short woman behind the helmet asked as she knelt there in front of him with what looked like one of his old hankies in her hand. It stayed in her hand, too, as she reached up for her helmet and pulled it off before she let them both drop down onto the ugly orange-brown industrial rug next to the spilled-out Plumber's First Aid kit that was already there. Even with his whole body feeling like his legs usually did after he'd been driving for too long, he grabbed for the red cross-marked box while she was distracted. Or he started to, anyway, before he saw the sweat-darkened red hair spilling loose down over the shoulders of the woman's custom-fitted Plumber's suit and just froze. He froze and drew in a ragged breath that hurt. God, did it hurt. His throat felt like agony, and the skin there must have been bruised terribly.
But it didn't hurt as much as what he saw.
"Tennyson, Maxwell. Captain. Air Force. Service Number 3682490FR," He wheezed one more time, not trusting his eyes. He couldn't. This was just another illusion, another lie crafted by the Xenocyte that the DNAliens had shoved onto his head to get him to reveal what he kept hidden from its mental probing. "Tennyson, Maxwell. Captain. Air Force. Service Number 3682490FR."
"Oh, Grandpa." The thing that looked just like how he always imagined his wife would have if he'd met her earlier choked out before she swept him up into a hug, and he croaked as he felt her Plumber's suit squish against his sweat-stained Hawaiian shirt. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We came as soon as we could, I swear."
"Not real." Max wheezed, although a trickle of doubt began to flow in his thoughts. Where was he? Not in Bellwood. Not somewhere safe. They were somewhere cold. Somewhere that looked like a - like the office of some kind of a warehouse, or a factory. A normal one, too, except for the flipped-over cot and the alien thing that was knocked over beside it. He didn't know what it was, but he didn't like the tendrils that came out of it or the way the ends of them matched the aches in his right arm as they leaked some kind of fluid out on the dirty linoleum floor. "Another lie. Not going to fall for it, you Xenocyte scum."
"Xenocyte?" Gwen pulled away from him and made a face, before reaching a hand up to touch his. He winced as the fingertips on her gloves went over tender skin that shouldn't have been tender. "God, is that what was on your head?"
He blinked, too rattled to process it completely. "What?"
"We know it's trouble. It went after Ben when we pulled it off of you." Her face darkened into a hateful scowl, even as Max panicked anew. If this was real, if this wasn't another lie - he jerked his head around, terrified at what he would see.
"Ben?!" He rasped, and there was his grandson, also dressed in a Plumber's suit but with one custom-fitted sleeve for the Omnitrix. The Omnitrix. Ben was wearing the Omnitrix. The Xenocyte lay smoking and still on the ground beside his grandson, who was knocked on his ass and rubbing a terrible and familiar red welt around his throat. It was the same marks Max saw around his and that he remembered seeing on Joan Wheels' when they'd tried to get the parasite off of her.
They tried and tried. The eggheads swore that they still were, and considering the medkit he was pretty sure that he was only free because of what they'd learned from her, but why- ?
"I don't think that the Omnitrix likes to share," Ben huffed at Max's look as he flattened down his hair with his right hand and glared down at the device on his left wrist. But the glare didn't hide the slightly dazed look in his eyes as they all watched the device flash an angry and unfamiliar sequence of red-to-green-to-blue series of lights before finally settling on green again, and returning to normal.
There shouldn't have been any way that the aliens could have copied that, the attitude or the look that Ben got from his cousin for saying it. It was a look that came with Gwen reaching for him instead. "You doofus! You said - "
The rest of her words came as fast as her hands as she checked him over, only instead of swatting her hands away like he used to, Ben just sighed as she checked him over until he surprised her with a kiss on the tip of her nose and a teasing, "Stop worrying. I get worse shocks than that from you every day, Dweeb," as he caught her hands and held them still over his heart like he thought she'd be able to feel it beat through his Plumber's uniform. And maybe she could, considering the color her face turned before she nodded…
It wasn't them, Max thought even as he fought down a smile and looked away. Not the them that he remembered anyway. Not the them that the aliens would know about. He really wanted to believe that…
But this could all still be a lie, the seasoned professional in his heart thought. The Xenocyte could have engineered this all as one final illusion, a Hail Mary to get him to crack. It knew about Ben and Gwen, it had known that Max knew where the Omnitrix had gone to after Azmuth removed it this past summer, it could be grasping at straws.
That terrible thought died hard when Heatblast came storming into the small office, looking harried and worried. "I think they know we're here!" The alien shouted and tossed out a blast of fire that caused DNAlien shrieks to rend his ears. Max trembled at the sound he was now very familiar with, and his eyes locked on the glowing green disc on the alien's shoulder.
The shoulder? Wait. No, if Ben was here, then…And Ben's Heatblast had the disc on its chest. Whoever it was, it wasn't Ben.
"This is real?" He blurted out, dazed.
"Shake it off, Mr. Tennyson!" The Heatblast yelled at him, grunting as he took a hit of foul-smelling gunk to the arm and fell back into the room, closing the door and using some very fine fire control to spot-weld the steel door shut in its frame. The gunk burned on the Pyronite's skin and flaked off as ash. "It's getting thick out there, you two!"
"Who are you?" Max demanded, because if Ben had the Omnitrix, then that left only one possibility that remotely made sense for the presence of another Heatblast.
"He's Alan," Ben said, getting up and helping Gwen pull Max up on his feet. "His dad was a Plumber."
Alan. Alan Albright. Oh, God. Max's frenzied mind instantly connected the dots. Merlin had actually done it. Oh, he was going to wring that miserable old bastard's neck when he got out of here…
Something heavy hit the sealed door and bounced off of it with another shriek, pulling Max out of his head. If they got out of here, was a more apt sentiment. He took a breath and shoved it all down, packing it away for later. Survival first. And he wasn't alone, at least. He had his team with him now, his real team. And Albright's son to boot.
"How long's it been, where are we, how did you find me, and tell me you had a plan?" He asked, as calmly as he could manage.
Ben's face was as relieved as Gwen's, and he chuckled while Gwen grabbed for a huge and familiar duffel bag that she must have dumped on the floor when they found him, unzipped it, and revealed a cache of gear - including his old Plumber's suit.
"Suit up, Grandpa. We'll tell you while you get ready."
- o - o - o - o - o -
Five days.
He'd been captured and held and interrogated by the DNAliens and the Xenocyte they'd stuck on his head for five days. And they still got it off? The vaccine worked that well? Or were the aliens just delaying as they looked for answers? His head swam at either idea and at the thought that the same night that he'd been ambushed at the RV Park, Alan had lost both parents because of a raid on their house. Max could see the pattern and swore inside of his head because he knew what it meant. All the time that they'd been nailing one DNAlien operation after another, the DNAliens had been closing in on them.
He should have been so angry at Ben and Gwen for getting involved, after everything he had done to keep them out of the fight. After he'd vowed blood vengeance if Merlin ever did anything more than keep the two of them under observation.
His suit's seals hissed and connected into place as he jammed his feet into the heavy boots and between the familiar feeling of that, the numbness in his body fading, and the slamming of the enemy against the door drumming out an ominous cadence he almost felt like himself again.
Especially since none of the noise fazed Gwen's recounting at all as she finished tying her long hair back into a tight ponytail while she talked. Not when Ben had one hand twitching and turning the Omnitrix dial already and Alan had one arm up bracing the other pointed at the door like he was supporting a gun with heavy recoil. Given the firepower a Pyronite could bring to bear, maybe it wasn't that far off. "...And I know we're going to be in trouble for running off, but we had to, Grandpa. You've always come for us when we were in trouble."
"Don't worry about your parents, Gwen. If anyone's going to feel the heat, pumpkin, it's going to be me." Max reassured her, sliding his gloves back into place with a wheeze from his still-aching throat. Those seals came to life with a twist that clicked the connectors into place, and finally, all that Max had left was his helmet. He didn't put it on immediately, though. If Whiskey Team was truly wiped out…
"And Alan." He heard himself say and the boy turned into a Pyronite flinched and looked over his shoulder at the sound of his name. He looked and when Max saw his face he just wished he could give him a hug instead of just words, even if he meant each and every one of them. "Your father was on my team. He was a good man, and we thought we were done with this mess. I'm sorry he's gone. I'm sorry you lost him and your mother, and nothing I can say can make that hurt any less." Alan's fire dimmed with every sentence he uttered, and Max braced himself before pressing on. "But I know that if he saw you now he'd be proud of you."
"Why? Because I'm fighting like he did?"
"No." Max quickly shook his head at that notion, flinching. God. What would Merlin turn him into, if that old son of a bitch got a hold of him and whispered words and half-truths into his ear? "There are a lot of people who can fight, Alan. He was proud of you because you always stood up for the right reasons. The same way I'm proud of my grandchildren, even if they did give me every gray hair I have." Alan stood up a little straighter when Max finished, and tried to hide his smile behind a stiff nod and a turn of his head. Grateful for the praise, but too proud to thank him for it. Just like his old man.
"Hey." Ben protested, and Max smiled as he finally slipped his helmet on and clicked it into place. The final seals hissed and the HUD in his helmet came alive, running a suit diagnostic first before examining his vitals and throwing up warning flags about dehydration, low blood sugar, and damage to his chest and throat. He was already moving for the medical controls when he saw the sheer number of nanites that his suit already detected in his system. "How much of the kit did you give me?"
Both of his grandkids' faces went red at that, and he saw them share a look even as Gwen flushed and fidgeted like she always did when she thought that she was in trouble. "It said - "
"All of it?" Ben finished as he shoved a nervous hand through his hair, but his eyes didn't flinch away. Not even a little.
"All?" Max echoed, goggling at the idea even as he made himself take a sip from the straw that connected to his emergency water pouch. Between the cool drink and the nanites, the worst of his throat pain finally eased off. No, the worst of all of his aches and pains was easing off. Even the one in his back that he'd learned to live with years ago was melting away, but with that many of the little alien bugs in him…
"You should have saved some for yourselves, just in case, but… I have to admit that I've always wondered what would happen if somebody did that," Max chuckled as he stretched and he realized he felt better than he had in years as he watched them both relax. He let himself revel in it as he shoved all the warnings that the techs and docs back at Avalon had given against doing just that away. If any of their worries about the nanites getting over-rambunctious once they were done fixing the actual problems ever actually came true…
Well, he'd live with it when it happened. If he lived through this. If any of them did, which they wouldn't if he kept standing there wool-gathering.
That was the thought that got him moving again as he started strapping on all the gear that the kids had brought along. It was more than he ever would have expected - he had no idea that they'd been paying that much attention to his kit over the years and he didn't know if he should be worried or proud that they had - and he swallowed down the feeling that it still wouldn't be enough even as he swung the duffel with the last item in it behind his back without even touching it.
He didn't dare. Not when even looking at it chilled his blood after what happened last time, what it almost cost him. "I thought that the Null Void Projector was broken, Ben." He said, and he hoped his voice sounded steadier through the suit's speakers than it did to him.
It must have been because Ben looked over but he didn't wince and he didn't apologize. "Yeah, I had to go Grey Matter and Upgrade to piece it back together, but it won't blow up on you just for using it now. You'd have to force it to overload."
"And what made you think it was a good idea to bring it along?"
"It's not like I could just let my Dweeb tie up everybody. She'd just start talking school at them if she did, and it didn't seem fair to put the bad guys through that," Ben teased his cou - his girlfriend, who just rolled her eyes as he smirked at her even as she reached over for his hand. His smirk got a little bigger when she did - and he glowed when he took it - and then it faded away as he scowled. "And I sure as hell wasn't going to leave it behind. Not with all the Army guys crawling around this town. I would have brought the whole not-Rustbucket if I could."
"Language," Max said automatically. And then he went on high alert, glancing around as if he could see through the walls as the rest of his grandson's words sank in. "The Army's here?"
"Yeah. They've got the whole town surrounded, Grandpa. It was weird as he - heck."
Max had long since learned to trust the funny feelings that he got, and right now his gut was screaming at him. He didn't know why, but he knew it wasn't good. And he wanted his grandkids out of this mess, and Alan with them. But he knew they'd never walk away. Ben and Gwen wouldn't. Couldn't. They were Tennysons, and just like their grandfather, they always ran toward danger.
Until today.
"It doesn't matter," Max told them both. Told them all. "It's not our problem. We've got to go."
"But - " Ben started, his face twisting into a frown even as he reached for the Watch.
Which was the whole reason that this was all happening. Max wasn't sure of the why yet, but he was sure of that and what he had to do now. "No buts, Ben. We have to - "
And that was as far as he got before he was interrupted by the distant squeal of feedback, like someone had rigged up the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound and forgotten to set the levels right, and then an authoritative voice boomed through the town of Santa Mira, muffled but still audible through the outer and inner walls of the building they were in.
"This is Colonel Hallam. By order of the government of the United States of America, the United Nations of Earth, and in accordance with the Galactic Code of Conduct, this is your only warning. Lay down your weapons and end your invasion of this planet. Any resistance will be met with lethal force. Hallam out."
Ben went pale, and Gwen sucked in a breath of air like she'd been punched. Alan twitched and looked at them. "Hallam? Isn't that…"
"Michelle's dad," Gwen confirmed shakily. "What is he doing here?"
"If I had to guess, he's following orders from Plumber HQ," Max told the three kids grimly. And if he was, then the army wouldn't have come alone. Which meant…
"Come on, Wes," he whispered as he brought up his HUD and tried to reconnect to the global communications network that the Plumbers used, but a message blared over his visor in angry letters.
"Grandpa? What's wrong?"
"My suit. It won't link up to the network. It won't give me access to the Plumbers database. I'm locked out!" He saw all three kids start at the words and give each other the same look he knew was plastered on his face right then as he ran through all the implications. He couldn't listen in, he couldn't communicate, he couldn't download or upload. He was cut off - had they cut his permissions after he was captured? "No matter. Problems for later," he resolved and focused on the bigger problem. What had brought the Army here?
It didn't add up. How would they even know where to find the DNAliens? Gwen and Ben, he could understand - Max had seen magic do a lot of things in his years and he'd heard plenty more horror stories and miracles - but…
There was a sudden blink and then Max tore his right glove off, pushing up the sleeve of his suit. He looked at his watch, a piece of custom Plumbers equipment designed to look like a normal digital watch, but rigged with enough gear to make James Bond envious.
In the corner of the readout, a small red light was blinking. "Someone activated my distress beacon." Max spat out, shoving his sleeve back down and putting his glove on. "The aliens activated my distress beacon."
"Why would they do that?" Alan asked, confused.
Max waved at the wall where the voice seemed the loudest. "To bring in the troops. I don't know why, but it can't be good. These aliens are smart, they aren't penny-ante slavers and thieves like in the old days. It almost feels like back when Vilgax was giving us a run for our money." He saw and felt Ben's flinch at the name, but Max pressed on. "We have to figure out what their plan is, or a lot of good men are going to die for nothing."
All three of the kids in that sealed-up office straightened up at his announcement, and Max was simultaneously proud and incredibly guilty about it. Kids shouldn't act like hardened soldiers. But they were. And so was he. No matter how much he wished he wasn't right now as he looked at his grandson and thought of all the men and women that must be out there right now. Out here looking for him, never knowing...
The pounding at the door had slowed during the announcement but it was picking up in earnest, and by the sounds of it they were finally beginning to make some progress. The walls were cinder-block, not drywall, but there was some pounding there as well.
"We need an exit," Max said, exhausted beyond words as his mind raced through their next moves even as he picked up Gwen's helmet and made sure his granddaughter put it on and sealed it up. No way in hell was he giving another Xenocyte the chance to do to her what one had done to him. "Preferably not through the door, they'd be expecting it."
Ben, helmet-less in his own suit but not really needing one with the Omnitrix, let out a gleeful cackle as he finished turning the dial to an unfamiliar green holographic image. "You want a door? I can make a door. Alan? Stay behind me and blast the hell out of them. Gwen, stay with Grandpa, make sure he stays out of trouble."
"On it," Alan said, his fire burning hotter as he braced himself while his Dweeb just nodded once and took up position next to Max while a wild pink glow filled her gloved hands. Max prepped his two plasma pistols and raised the shoulder-mounted laser guns from the back of his suit as he set it for full battle-mode.
"Woah, Grandpa! Where did you get those?" Gwen asked, and even through her helmet, he could tell that her mouth was gaping at the sight just from the sound of her voice.
"Tech boys and I have been tinkering," Max told her with a little proud smile as he watched them all.
"If we're showing off the new stuff," Ben cut in, his hand held high above the Omnitrix's dial. "I've been waiting to try this one out…" His grandson chortled, and he slammed his hand down in a flash of green light.
And when the light faded and Max found himself looking up at a Vaxasaurian despite it all he couldn't help grinning. "What are you calling this one, Sport?"
"That's easy, Grandpa," Ben's dinosaur teeth shone with his laugh as he spun around and before it died down it was joined by the sound of crumbling brick and mortar, surprised shrieks, and a warcry fit for battle.
"HUMUNGOUSAUR!"
- o - o - o - o - o -
Azmuth's Secret Laboratory
Undisclosed Location, Milky Way Galaxy
Azmuth was old, but he hadn't thought he was on the edge of dying yet. At least, not until young Benjamin had put the Omnitrix back on and he found himself suffering heart palpitations. Every sensor linked into his uniflex suit told him that his cardiovascular system was functioning properly. The sensors had to be wrong. Tennyson was planning on driving him into an early grave.
"Five days. You've had it on for all of five days, what in the name of Galvart's Guide to Differential Analysis are you doing?" He muttered to himself since he couldn't rightly ask Benjamin the question. Or the other question that he didn't dare give utterance.
What are you fighting?
The alert he'd received not more than five Earth minutes ago was what had terrified him. Thank goodness that Albedo was off the clock because there were some things the genius inventor preferred to keep hidden from that intern's infernally curious mind. He still had that little window, minimized and pushed off to the side of his holographic displays, up just so he could check it every now and again to confirm what he'd dreaded to see.
WARNING: Genetic Overwrite Detected - Foreign biological source. Countermeasures deployed. Genetic Overwrite unsuccessful. Default genetic template intact. No templates affected.
Someone had tried to do a Genetic Overwrite of Benjamin Tennyson, and they'd used a particularly virulent and nasty-looking biological parasite to do so. A genetically modified parasite. Someone had made the ugly, one-eyed pulsating mass of tentacles and the brief simulations that he'd had time to run from the scans that the Omnitrix had taken of the thing during the micro-rotation it had been in contact with Benjamin indicated that the genetic overwrite wasn't even the worst of it. No, the true horror was in the neuro-synaptic interference relays that filled the creature. Relays that would allow cerebral contact and then domination of any carbon-based lifeform which lacked sufficient defensive measures long before any of the other changes began.
A bog-standard human wouldn't have stood a chance. The Omnitrix, thankfully, had been up to the task.
Not for the first time in the past five Earth days - and he was still deferring to Earth time, what was wrong with him - Azmuth found himself wishing that he'd bothered to order more alcohol. Or at least kept the meager supplies away from Albedo, who'd been going on quite the bender, one Galvan cup at a time, since the diagnostic and user reports started rolling in again. Azmuth had told his intern that he'd have to take up drinking if he was going to keep working here. It was supposed to be a joke. Only it wasn't.
He had strained the uplink between the Omnitrix and his systems as much as he dared just for the chance at receiving more data from the device about the dangers that boy was throwing himself headlong into, but that hadn't stopped the sporadic 'static' which seemed to short out the connection every so often and leave him blind to what was going on. Whatever Ben was being exposed to that kept making his tech hiccup, it didn't affect the inner workings of the Omnitrix. Repeated diagnostics made that clear. A problem for another day when Ben wasn't fighting.
And the boy was most definitely fighting. He'd morphed into the Vaxasaurian form he'd scanned about half an Earth Revolution ago and was currently wading through a mess of creatures that set off further alerts similar to the parasitic creature which had tried to overtake Benjamin earlier. That thought left Azmuth more than a little nauseous - there were more of those things and they'd taken other victims already.
"The Omnitrix doesn't make you invincible, child. Be careful, for once in your life." Azmuth called out. He fell silent, stunned and apprehensive even before the bio-readings flashed red before they disappeared in a burst of static.
One that didn't clear up as soon as it started, and that was the final burst of stimulus that he needed as he tried to imagine what forces it would take to affect a Vaxasaurian's thick hide so.
"Enough. Activate communications," the Prime Thinker of the galaxy said, his mouth dry as he waited for the alarms he was sure were coming from his own suit as he said a name and used codes he hadn't in over a century. Not even when he lost the Prototype. "Connect me with the Specimen Prime. Ultra-Violet pri - "
And then Ultimos' designation disappeared from even his tremendous mind along with every other thought as he watched the interference clear and another alert flared. It was from one of the algorithms he'd reprogrammed to gather more environmental data from around the Omnitrix even though it pushed the device's sensors well past operational tolerances.
"Oh." Azmuth breathed out, his heart thundering fast once again as he watched the detected energy surge in an exponential curve that he knew even though it was only possible if someone disabled every safety feature and could only end one way now.
"Benjamin, what have you done?"
- o - o - o - o - o -
Santa Mira
Ben had forgotten how good this felt.
Well, sure. They were still outnumbered and the bad guys were still ugly, but this time Ben was grinning as he charged forward because this time Alan wasn't so exhausted that he could barely move and now he knew moves. Now he was right at Ben's side as they charged forward. And sure his Dweeb was still watching their backs, but now she wasn't their only ace in the hole. Now she could focus on kicking bad guy butt instead of just trying to save theirs. And they had Grandpa back, even if he was looking a little wobbly.
But most importantly, Ben had the Omnitrix. It was just like that first summer all over again. No, this was even better!
"You guys don't stand a chance!" He bellowed as he crashed through the wall and the aliens who were on the other side of it. Man, if he'd known that being the linebacker of dinosaurs felt so good he would have gone Humungasaur way before today. He heard more noises to his left and swung around just in time to see another group of aliens stop dead in their tracks. He saw them and grinned and man-o-man did he wish that he had a mirror because this body came with fangs and those always made him look so much cooler as he snarled, "If those really are brains you're wearing and not just ugly-ass hats, then you know you should just run."
They didn't, and between him and Alan it was just as much fun as he knew it would be as he plowed through the creatures like they were bowling pins while Alan flew overhead in the factory space and blasted away with rays of flame and exploding incendiary bombs that sent packs of them flying.
"That's right, who else wants some?!" Ben roared as he swelled up and punched his chest. He didn't know just how literal he was being until he felt his head slam into the fake ceiling overhead and when he realized he was eight feet tall now, he just blinked and grinned. "Woah. Cool."
"Not cool! Not cool! Pay attention, Doofus!" he heard his Dweeb shout through the cloud of cement dust that surrounded them as one of her pink energy shield's snapped up in front of him just in time considering the number of blasts coming his way. If the bad guys had any brains - and you better believe he smirked when he thought that - they would have run then, but they didn't.
But they weren't stupid either and they proved it then as Ben watched them dart into the other offices in the hall for cover. Which only made this more fun.
"Is too! It's way cool!" Ben shouted back, almost giddy as his girlfriend dropped the shield just as he went charging down the hall because she knew him and they'd done this together so many times. One tail sweep knocked the three squid-headed monsters off their feet, and he snatched two of them in his hands before smashing their heads together, knocking them out with an ominous slap of flesh and the crack of hidden bones. "And so much more fun than last time."
"Last time?" he heard Grandpa echo behind him, which meant that this body came with pretty good ears, too. Not the best. Blitzwolfen was way better. He would have heard what Grandpa Max said perfectly instead of almost losing him in the hum of machinery that came down the hall and the rumble of explosions and gunshots that were muffled by the thick walls. Big explosions and lots of gunshots. He wished he knew if that meant that the army was winning or losing, but he didn't.
Not any more than he knew why Grandpa sucked in a breath after Gwen told him, "Five or six the night you disappeared. They looked like police officers and weren't anywhere near as well armed, thank God."
He didn't know why, but he sure knew what it sounded like when the gears in his Grandpa's head started turning. "Were they the same team that got me?"
"I don't know!" Gwen snapped as she threw up another shield as she blew the hair out of her eyes, the speakers in her suit catching every disgusting second of it and Ben wished he still had his tape recorder. "Ben said that some of them were when he was following their scent as - Hey! Only I get to smack my Doofus like that, you jerk!"
"Lucky shot," Ben growled as he rubbed the scorch mark on his cheek and turned back to the fight. Which didn't even hurt that bad. So Humungasaur was just as tough as he looked. Which was good for him and bad for the brain-head who didn't know that.
The monster didn't know how much pain was coming when his Gwen sounded like that either. It didn't take him long to find out though. Honestly, the smack that Ben gave him right after was almost a mercy. That cinder block was as big as his Dweeb's head and it looked like it hurt when she sent it flying at the bad guy who got him like a glowing fastball. "That's what happens when you get her mad, dude. Trust me, I know."
"Can you two stop flirting for five seconds?" Alan asked, his voice nowhere near as hot as the fire he was sending down the hall because these guys just wouldn't stop coming.
"Maybe?" Ben allowed, still grinning as he looked at the door he just ripped off the hinges and the aliens on the other side. The aliens who were backing away even as he broke the thing in half and flung the pieces at them. The only thing that would have been better than the look on their faces was if his Dweeb could have seen them, too. "Don't know. Never tried."
He didn't think so, though. It would have been like Grandpa stopping the wheels inside his head once they got going, and they were still going now. He could tell just from listening to the man talk behind him even as they kept fighting even if he was only half-listening. Maybe a quarter. "It was either the same team or the DNAliens - " Those words were a mumble that disappeared with a sucked-in breath. The ones after were so much louder. "Ben, we've got to get back to Bellwood!"
"Doing our best, Grandpa," Ben called back as he and Alan charged another group of the bad guys that just wouldn't get a clue.
"I know you are, Sport," Max rasped out, and he didn't like the sound of that at all. But he couldn't focus on it either. Not when he saw the size of the gun that the brain-heads were trying to set up down by the double doors at the end of the hall without them noticing….
- o - o - o - o - o -
The fight kept going even after they exploded out of the hallway, inside and outside the building.
Ben tried to ignore the ominous drumbeat of thunder that was so much louder now that they were out of the offices and into the giant room that they'd seen when they were checking out the building. The one that just screamed trap with all of the pipes and vats that were around and the DNAliens were already scurrying behind.
And was that what Grandpa was really calling them? DNAliens? Lame. It didn't sound like him at all. No, that was something nerds would come up with, and not cool ones like his Dweeb. He'd have to think of something better when he had a chance. If he had a chance.
"You okay, man?" Alan asked, the worry clear in his voice as he looked Ben over.
And Ben made himself smile and take his hand off of his shoulder even though it still hurt. "Yeah, just stings a little." He knew that that big bazooka thing would be trouble. Maybe tanking the shot hadn't been his best idea, but it sure was sweet when he sent it and the one-eyed freak who shot it through a wall with one swing of his tail. Still, that wasn't the only burn that hurt. The aliens' regular rifles didn't do more than sting, but he'd been hit so many times that they did more than that. Maybe Gwen and Grandpa were right and he did have to be smarter.
Starting now.
"Plenty of room in here, Hotshot. Take to the sky."
"Hot - ?" Alan said, making a face as he did just that. "Matchstick is better than that!"
"Everyone's a critic," Ben grumbled as the DNAliens started firing again and he charged forward just to give them something better to shoot at. He was even almost stealthy despite his size as the hum of the machinery he'd heard this whole time turned into a roar as pumps as big as his mom's care worked their magic on pipes he would have had a hard time pulling himself over if he was still just his regular old human self. Pipes that seemed to run everywhere between the vats until they all went outside.
And the second he saw them, he knew somebody would get curious. He just didn't think -
"Grandpa!" He heard his Dweeb shout with a tone she usually saved for him. It seemed so wrong that Ben couldn't help glancing back. It only took him a moment to find her still sticking close to their old man, her hands burning bright as she kept casting even though she looked like she would have been pulling out her hair if it wasn't for her helmet. Ben couldn't see her face through her visor, but he could almost feel the heat of her glare anyway as she stared up at Grandpa while he -
He climbed one of the ladders that were on the side of a vat. And it didn't look like he was looking for a better place to shoot from either. "Grandpa?"
"This must have been an old brewery before!" Grandpa Max yelled back. Ben's voice sounded like thunder, but his was almost lost in the fighting and so deep in thought that he had to strain just to hear what the old man said next as he grabbed for his helmet and yanked it off. "Or a refinery. I've seen setups like this before and - "
"It's a fishery!" Gwen shouted at him, exasperated and worried as she stomped her foot. "And put your helmet back on! You're as bad as Ben, I swear!"
"Hey! I'm so much worse and you - "
"Can't. Sensors are locked out too and what do you mean, it's a - ?"
"That's what the sign on the fence outside said. Ben thought we could sneak in if we waded through the ponds outside, but…" She didn't finish, but she didn't have to. She'd made it perfectly clear what she thought about that plan when he came up with it, and that was before she waved Alan's way.
Honestly, though. Ben thought she was overreacting and the water didn't look that bad. It was just kind of musty like the swamp Grandpa insisted that they see once and they were in suits anyway.
"A fishery?" The man echoed, his frown cutting deeper lines in his face as he peered into the tank as if they hadn't found the bad guys hiding in weirder places.
"A fishery!" Gwen shouted again and Ben couldn't help grinning as he turned back to the bad guys because he knew that tone, too. He knew it and he loved it. He loved it so much that he laughed out loud as he stared down the DNAliens which were still coming even as Gwen intoned. "That means that these things are full of water and that means… Undas facias!"
Ben felt the wave of magic through his bones as he grinned at the bad guys. "You guys don't know just how screwed you are."
"Undas facias!" His Dweeb intoned again and all of the vats started glowing as the aliens stopped and stared.
"Undas - " Gwen started for the third time as the water started rising from the open tops of the vats.
"Gwen, no! The vats are full of Xenocytes! They're - !" Grandpa Max shouted just as something jumped out of the water at him. Something he just barely managed to swat away in time as he hung from the ladder by one arm.
Something that Ben couldn't see before the man disappeared behind another shield, but he didn't need to. Not when more of the one-eyed-brain things started jumping out of the vats around him, too, as the water surged. Tiny ones, most of them not even as big as the dial on the Watch. Baby ones, but that didn't make them any less gross as dozens of them rained down.
"Fall back!" Alan shouted as he dove down and unleashed a tidal wave of fire. One that cooked most of the brain bugs and drove back the DNAliens even as Ben stumbled away swatting off the ones that got close until he was back with his family.
Not that he was sure he'd be any safer there.
"Why does everything we fight have to be gross!" He watched his Dweeb all but scream as she shoved a couple of the things off of her suit. Her fury literally burned in her eyes even with her helmet on as she cast a shield that shoved the rest of the things away.
Only Grandpa didn't take a step back after that. Only he kept thinking, his eyes studying the room around them. "If the babies are in here, then the pools outside would be filled with - "
His eyes went wide, but it was Gwen who gasped and turned that glare on him before the man could finish. "I told you that was a bad plan, Doofus!"
"You're the one always saying I need a bath!" Ben shouted right back as he stuck his tongue out at her because he couldn't help it. Man, he missed watching her nerd out almost as much as he missed watching her fight. And this. He missed all of this, he realized as he charged the next bad guy and heard it scream.
And then the fun stopped.
"Theirs isn't," Grandpa Max muttered as he dropped off of the ladder and stared down the length of the dimly lit building, taking in the more than 20 tanks that were in there. Some even bigger than the one he'd been hanging off of and if they were all full and so were the pools outside…
"It's a trap," the man whispered and that was when Ben realized that Grandpa was afraid. Ben had seen him angry and worried - and sure, scared - before, but not like this. Not so scared that he went pale, which only made the red lines of sucker marks around his face and neck look even gnarlier. Not terrified. Like it was too big to deal with. "These tanks, this whole building is rigged to blow and release a flood of these things."
"We're going to have to face more?" Ben groaned.
"It's worse than that, Ben. If this goes off when the army gets here…" Grandpa said as he waved his hand at the open doors at the other end of the building. Doors that looked big enough for two semis to drive through at the same time side by side and were more than enough for them to see the river that wound its way past the building and cut right through the middle of Santa Mira…
"They're going to take the whole army," Alan breathed.
"And whatever Plumbers are with them," Grandpa agreed as he nodded dumbly.
"But that's - " Ben started when a screech and the sting of a laser bolt along the back of his neck cut him off and he spun around and leapt. He didn't even know he could, but he jumped across the fifteen feet between them and scooped up the DNAlien by the neck. The thing clawed at his muscular dinosaur arm as Ben choked it and glared. "Hey! I am TALKING to my Grandpa right now!" He screamed at it before hurling it at a pack scrambling into the building from an open loading dock. They were knocked backward like so many bowling pins, but there were more scrambling in every second. Alan swept in and laid down a massive salvo of firebombs that went off one after the other and kept them from advancing very far. Ben leapt after him, making himself a shield against the few that still opened fire, soaking their hits and throwing them back like rag dolls.
"I think they called for reinforcements!" Alan hollered as the building burned bright and he took to the sky again.
And then Grandpa said the worst thing he could.
"Kids, I need you to cover me." He said. "We have to keep this place from going off and unleashing a tidal wave of Xenocytes." A bubble shield quickly surrounded him as he unzipped the bag and pulled out the Portal gun that Ben had spent forever patching back up again, and Gwen dashed to join Ben on the defensive line. "And I'm sorry to undo your hard work, Ben."
Oh. Ben's stomach sank at that apology. He wanted to look back, but the enemy in front made that impossible. "You're gonna make it blow up."
"Yeah, I am. And it's gonna take this place with it when it does. Just like the hole that hollowed out Mount Rushmore. Be ready to move when I tell you!"
Ben nodded stiffly, watching more and more of the creatures scrambling into the building. Probably the ones from outside who'd been fighting the Army, charging back to where the real fight was. Too many for him to handle, and he was already at nine feet tall, having grown a little more for the added reach. "Alan! We need another fire line!" He ordered, and the fire kid didn't waste any time, screaming in with both hands unleashing hell on the battered concrete floor. The DNAliens screeched as they were stopped ten feet into the loading docks of the old building, unable and unwilling to advance through the fifteen-foot-tall curtain of flames. Cut off, unable to do more than watch with their singular angry red eyes, they formed up into a squad three dozen strong, staring at the defenders as Grandpa yanked off the focusing array at the front of the Null Void projector and started fiddling with the controls on what was left.
Alan landed and kept up the heat, pouring more and more flames into the wall of fire to sustain it. "I can't keep this up forever, Mr. Tennyson! Hurry up!"
"It's set!" Grandpa called back, and Ben risked a glance over his shoulder in time to see him stand up and back away from one of the tanks. He'd shoved the alien gun underneath one of the vats full of alien babies, and the thing was already sparking ominously and beginning to hum and rattle in a fashion that set Ben's teeth on edge. "We've got three minutes, gang!"
"More than enough time." Ben boasted even though he knew he only had two on the watch timer he always counted down inside his head, but he could make more leaps like the one he just did. Leaps that were almost as good as flying then…
"No. That's not enough time at all." A deep, dark, menacing voice full of power and the promise of pain echoed through the warehouse, and Ben jerked his head toward the source.
On the other side of the curtain of fire, the DNAliens parted and left a path for something larger and more dangerous than they were. A snow-white figure of inhuman proportion, easily double the height of the DNAliens, strolled up to the wall. It had what looked like two sets of red eyes on its chest and four more in a diamond shape on its head. Black lines ran in striations along its chest and down its arms and legs towards hands and feet that were stained the color. Hands that flexed into fists as it paused to consider the fire barrier before it just stepped through.
"Oh, hell," Max said. "Of course, there'd be one of you here." If Grandpa had been afraid before, he was terrified now. But his guns whined as they built up a charge. That was all Ben needed to know, and he clenched his fists, growing in size until he was at the same level as the big white and black alien.
This was the boss monster that showed up at the end of the video game, the thing that was in charge of all the bad guys they'd fought through so far. The way the DNAliens were respectful of it made that clear enough, even if a few of them exchanged looks when it commanded in a thundering voice without once looking back, "See to the lines. It would not do if they were overwhelmed this soon. Not with our final victory finally in our grasp. I'll deal with this vermin."
"We take him down together," Max ordered, keeping the shaking in his voice down as he watched the DNAliens obey. "Nobody fights alone, not now."
Ben looked down at Gwen, hidden in her Plumber's suit but glowing bright pink. He looked up to Alan, hovering in midair and burning bright. And he felt Grandpa and all of his Plumber guns walk up beside them.
The alien had stopped on their side of the firewall, observing them, sizing them up. Waiting, not threatened in the least if the way it stood tall and open with its arms hanging low at its sides meant anything. Its skin wasn't even crisped from walking through Alan's fire.
"We set a trap for meaningless insects, and instead it has brought the Omnitrix straight to us." The thing observed coldly. "If you'd had any sense, you would have stayed hidden away."
"Big talk there, fella." Ben taunted the thing. "Worse monsters than you have tried taking it from me. And they lost."
The thing laughed, a laugh full of the promise of pain and dark purpose. "I am not the monster here, Abomination."
Ben moved first, but the giant alien moved faster.
- o - o - o - o - o -
Loading Dock
T-Minus 1 Minute, 53 seconds
They put up one hell of a fight, Max and three children who should've never been there to begin with. But no Plumber unit had ever gone up against the bigger white and black 'Overseer' aliens and won. The best Max and Whiskey Team had ever managed was a tactical retreat with lots of air support being called down to keep the big brutes from chasing after them. That dark day in Panama had cost them an F-18 for the price of their unit's survival. Other teams who'd run into the Overseer aliens hadn't been anywhere near as lucky.
He had hoped that maybe Ben and Gwen (And Alan, who fit in better than he ever would have imagined) could succeed where Whiskey Tango Foxtrot had failed. His grandkids were his best team. Had been for two years now. Magic and alien transformations and a natural talent for fighting that the both of them had been developing through their karate lessons, on top of all the firepower and sheer grit that Max could bring to bear.
It hadn't been enough. Maybe nothing was against the juggernauts.
Alan had been the first one to go down. Max had expected the Overseer alien to go straight for Ben as the biggest threat, probably the other three had as well. Instead, the big bastard's first lunge had turned out to be nothing but a feint to give him room to lunge skywards, rocketing towards the Pyronite on pure muscle power. Alan had let out a yelp and thrown out an enormous blast of firepower as he tried to veer out of range, but the thing was too close and too determined and it caught the boy by his glowing, forge-hot ankle. It caught Alan and whipped him around like a ragdoll as it threw him down towards the ground.
A quick bubble shield spared Albright's son the worst of the impact, bringing him up dazed instead of out cold, but as soon as the thing hit the ground it was on top of Alan again, punching at Gwen's shield and cracking it apart in one hit.
Ben was on the thing an instant later, grappling the Overseer from behind and locking its arms. Max rushed around to try for a clear shot that wouldn't threaten Ben. Alan, terrified after the attack, forgot about his other forms of mobility and tried to run for it. He got a kick to the back for his trouble that sent him tumbling ass over teakettle before he hit one of the Xenocyte-filled tanks, hard enough to dent the thing and make it start leaking. The spray of water on top of his injuries was enough to finish the job, and Alan screamed until he was clear of the spritz before collapsing, his flaming rocky skin absent of its usual fire cracks and his flame just barely hanging on.
Humungasaur roared and swelled up to an even greater height, rushing up to a fifteen-foot stature that had his head up above the gantries of the second floor. The added bulk allowed him to pin the monstrous alien and hold him tight, and Max used the opportunity to blast away at the DNAliens on the other side of the flagging curtain of fire with impunity. Without Alan feeding it, it was just a matter of time before the barricade fell and they were not going to get overwhelmed on his watch. The creatures shrieked and either scattered out of the building or went down with smoking holes through them, leaving perhaps a half dozen who'd managed to duck for cover and were out of harm's way.
Max whirled back around in time to see Gwen close a shield spell around the thing's head as she slammed the creature's torso with chunks of concrete and steel bigger than Max's chest while the larger Humungasaur kept the thing from striking out. Between the two of them, it should have been enough.
It wasn't.
The Overseer just roared and drove its head back into Ben's face with everything it had, shaking Ben enough that he lost his grip and dropped the alien back to the ground. As soon as the thing had its feet back under it, it spun around and smashed a fist into Humungasaur's gut, center mass, folding the dinosaur like a piece of paper and sending him stumbling back before crashing into another tank. The object dislodged completely and fell to the ground, cracking open and spilling its foul contents over the floor behind him. When Humungasaur hit the ground, he started shrinking until he was only ten feet tall again. Ben groaned and pushed himself onto one hand in time to see the enormous alien lining up for a kick that would hurt, but that was before a blast of lightning smashed into the monster from behind and locked it into a rictus of pain. Max had never seen that spell before, but he knew that Gwen was using her best right where they were needed most.
Max didn't waste any time shouting out a warning or calling for the thing's surrender. While the alien was frozen up from the shock of his granddaughter's lightning spell, he unloaded everything he had from his shoulder cannons and his plasma pistols, peppering the creature with enough firepower to decimate a unit's worth of alien mercenaries. To his horror, the damage it caused proved to be nothing but surface deep. The moment that the Overseer alien regained its senses, it raced right for him and wrapped a clawed hand around his torso, dragging him across the ground hard enough to crack and break the shoulder-mounted laser cannons.
"You think you can hurt me with toys, you miserable little PEST!" The thing snarled, smoking from its wounds. He'd hurt it, Max knew that, but it wasn't enough.
"I think I can distract you." Max countered through grit teeth, ignoring the blaring warnings of compromised suit systems and the aches and bruises he was feeling as he drew and fired his plasma pistol right in the thing's face at point-blank range. The creature snapped its free hand up to cover its face and then smashed downwards, knocking the pistol out of reach. The fist descended with enough force to probably crater him into the ground, but Gwen's shield snapped up in front of him just a blink of an eye before the blow could come. The shield cracked, but it held this time, and Max jerked his head over in time to see his granddaughter standing out in the open, both arms extended with her hands blazing pink to match the shield. She was giving it everything that she had. "We can," he amended. "For the next two minutes.
"What?" And that was when the thing finally noticed the sound of the ever-building overload. "A bomb?" It asked, surprised for the first time as it took a step towards the projector.
And that was as far as it got.
Ben was on top of the thing with a roar, and the dinosaur and the white and black horror were wrestling scrambling demons. Claws gouged at a thick orange scaly hide, massive bruises soon blossomed like weeds over the Overseer's seemingly impenetrable skin. Max heard bones crack as they slammed each other into steel and concrete, and still, they fought on.
Gwen raced over to his side, helping Max back up on his feet. "What the heck is that thing? Nothing's taking it down!"
"They're the bosses of the DNAliens. Tough as nails, and when one shows up it usually means the Op is a bust. We have to keep it from hurting Ben or stopping the Projector from overloading." Max checked the timer he'd set on his suit. 90 seconds to go.
"You…won't…WIN!" Humungasaur shouted, backhanding the creature to give himself some space and whirling around to blindside it with a tail sweep. The enormous white and black alien caught the tail, absorbing the hit in its side and pinning the thing before digging its claws in and swinging Ben around like he was an enormous hammer throw at the Olympics. Ben let out a scream as he was thrown face-first into the outer wall, breaking through the drywall and brick construction in a cloud of dust and stone. Hurt, but still standing, the creature seemed to finally breathe as it felt its wounds, trying to give itself a moment to recover.
Gwen screamed Ben's name and raced for the alien, hands burning with pink light, Max hot on her heels. The alien didn't even glance back to consider the threat, it just waited until Gwen got close enough and then lashed out with a kick faster than Gwen had ever done in any karate tournament, sending her tumbling out and away. Max, half a step behind her, raced to her side. Oh, God. Not like this. Please be okay. Please. With his suit's communications down he couldn't even get a reading from hers.
"Gwen? Pumpkin?!" He shouted when he rolled her over and sucked in a breath when he turned her over and saw the kaleidoscope of cracks in her faceplate.
Her eyes were already fluttering when he pulled her helmet off, but he hit the sequence on her suit's wristband so it would auto-inject healing nanites into her anyway, and was rewarded with a pained groan. "Oh, thank God. Thank God." He breathed.
"Ow." Gwen moaned and then that little sound turned into a gasp. Max spun his head around in time to see the alien pick Humungasaur up by the neck - Ben's new alien had shrunk to seven feet, his size must have been linked to his stamina - and the Overseer pummeled the alien dinosaur on the head, one ferocious punch after another that turned the dinosaur's face into a bloodied mess.
"Surrender! Darkness must not fall again. The Abomination must be destroyed!" The Overseer alien spoke those words like they were a prayer or a mantra for living.
And then, Max heard it. A sound that was never good in the heat of battle.
A steady beeping as the Omnitrix dial started flashing red. "No." Humungasaur moaned, and the alien stayed its fist, perhaps wondering what was happening. "No, no, no!"
The sudden flash of red light blinded everyone and when it died down his grandson hung, unharmed but powerless, in the grip of an alien who had killed countless men as Max's suit flashed forty-five seconds.
An alien who suddenly hesitated. "A child?" It uttered, incredulity apparent in its usually ominous voice. "You put the Abomination on a child?" It looked over to where Alan lay unconscious on the floor and back to Ben again, who struggled in its grip.
"Let go, you alien freak!" Ben screamed. The creature didn't, but it did bring up its other hand - a hand coated in Humungasaur's blood - and Max saw it shake for a moment before it clenched into a fist. And Max knew it had found its deadly resolve again right as the angry whine of the overloading Null Void Projector hit its final cycles.
"You will be dealt with later, child. Your makeshift bomb comes first." The alien hissed, letting its hand drop, spinning around, and marching off to the device tucked beneath a still undamaged vat as Ben swung still fighting in his grip.
Max had been lucky enough in his life to live through several moments where all of his thinking crystallized and time slowed down to a crawl to allow it. Moments where he knew exactly what he had to do, regardless of the cost. Alan was unconscious. Ben, caught and helpless. He was injured and down most of his weapons. Gwen had taken a heck of a hit and even her best stuff had only slowed it down. He couldn't kill it, but if he did nothing, the alien would disable the Projector's overload, the Army would get swarmed, and his grandkids…They would lose. There was only one play that made any sense, and he hated it. But he accepted it.
He was going to miss Thanksgiving, but his grandchildren would live. A fair trade.
And once he decided that, the rest was just a matter of training. Not from the Plumbers or even NASA. No, older than that. He remembered the lessons that were drilled into him from the first time he took to the skies in a plane so old that it was hand-started.
No matter how bad things got, panic wouldn't help. Make a plan and follow it no matter how much it hurts. That was the only way you even had a chance. That and if…
The jets in his boots fired just like he hoped they would. The Highbreed looked like a brick wall. He felt like one, too, as Max slammed into him so hard that the left half of his body went numb. But it was enough.
Enough to make the monster forget all about the Projector and Ben both as they all went flying together and then the Highbreed dropped Ben as it turned into Max's tackle and reached for him instead. If this was a clean fight, he knew it would be over in another second.
Max didn't give him a second. He just let the thing go and sent it flying into one of the heavy vats hard enough that the thick steel split. The only thing that was louder was his shout of "Ben!" as he spun around and checked on his grandson.
His grandson, who looked like he'd had his bell rung just as hard when he hit the floor. Rung, but he wasn't out. "Oww…" he whispered as he reached for his head even as he tried to pick himself up.
"Hold on, Sport! I'm - " Max called out.
"You are going to die!"
Those words were the only warning that Max got, but they were enough as he ducked the Highbreed's swing and drew the one weapon he'd never gone without ever since his very first alien encounter back in 1965 - a knife. But this was no emergency combat knife from his fighter jet kit. No, this was a present from a better friend than he deserved, even if it was outlawed in more star systems than he could count. No, all that it mattered now was the noise that the thing made after he squeezed the handle. It was a sound that he could only describe as the shriek of a demonic dentist's drill as it powered up and the cutting edge disappeared into a blur.
And the edge stayed a blur as he slashed it at the Overseer's ankle, right where the Achilles would be on a human. The thing's skin was tough, but against a sharp edge instead of blunt force, with the blade superheated to that narrow cut, it was no better than a ship's armored hull or a reinforced door. And Max had cut plenty of those over the years, but it was always hard, messy work.
So was this.
If it was a clean fight - if the thing had just stopped - then that would have been the end of it. That should have been the end of it as the Overseer alien let out a grunt of surprise and collapsed to one leg, but Max saw the giant reach for his grandson again and he knew nothing about this would be clean.
Before it could react, Max leapt into the air and unspooled the monofilament wire from his belt usually employed for climbing. He wrapped it around the thing's neck in a double loop and pulled, slamming between the thing's shoulder blades and hanging on for dear life.
"Gwen!" He shouted out, straining as the creature bucked and struggled under him. "Take them and go!"
"What?!" His granddaughter shouted, not believing her ears even as she pushed herself up.
Max wished that he had the time to explain, the time for so many things, but the Highbreed was already moving again. Already reaching back with an arm that looked as big as a telephone pole as it grabbed for him with its three fingers, all of them tipped with claws that looked at least as sharp as his knife.
A knife that he drove into the monster's shoulder again, earning a fresh howl of pained rage and causing its arm to go limp as Ben finally got enough of his sense back that he scrambled back on his butt, staring with dazed green eyes.
Verdona's eyes.
"RUN!" Max screamed. His suit blared a warning. 20 seconds left. He dared a glance over and saw the Null Void Projector beginning to shake and smoke, glowing brightly underneath the vat just out of reach. The alien, still gagging, struggled towards it. Max buried his knife into the thing's collarbone, and it stumbled to its knees again. He couldn't kill it but he didn't have to. He could make it bleed and slow it down.
"Go, Gwen! Take them and RUN! I'm right behind you!" She finally shook it off and conjured up a shield spell under her feet then, veering around and scooping up Ben and Alan before flying out one of the huge doors.
Fifteen seconds. They were gone.
Max hung on.
- o - o - o - o - o -
T-Minus Twelve Seconds
"W-what are you doing?"
Gwen barely heard Alan call out from her feet. She barely heard everything over the thunder of gunfire all around them now that they didn't have the thick cinder block walls muffling the terrible noise.
She couldn't even spare a glance down after she felt him shift his weight that she even spared a glance down even though she knew that she should check on the boy who'd just woken back up, on both of the boys at her feet as she clawed her way into the sky. It was a sky crowded with fire as she took in the real size of the battle going on in the town all around them. A town that was burning, the flames reaching high into the sky and illuminating the dark shapes that cut through the night above her.
Some of them she knew. Some of them she'd seen before when Michelle's dad had taken her on a tour of the base, but only one came anywhere close as it tore through the night not a mile away with what looked like a hundred rockets streaking away from its wings out at something in the distance.
Attack Helicopters.
Helicopters which were fighting for their lives in the sky above her just like soldiers were fighting for theirs below and she couldn't help any of them.
She couldn't even help herself.
They were halfway over the river when she felt the magic falter, the endless drumbeat pain in her head stealing away her concentration. Not all of it, just enough that she knew that she wouldn't get them any higher, but she didn't give up.
She turned her attention instead and dove for the ground and the trees on the other side of the river with everything she had and this time….
This time instead of crawling, they flew as she tried a trick that she'd learned on her grandfather's knee and from all the nights she'd spent playing video games with her Doofus. She sacrificed height for speed.
But she wouldn't give up anything else.
"We have to go back!" Alan screamed at her, fresh fire bursting through the rock of his skin and trailing after them like her hair was as he tried to push himself back up. "Fine! Then I'll - "
"No," Gwen whispered, as she willed her shield to change, to wrap around the burning boy so he couldn't.
Until Alan was just a head wrapped in violet and a mouth that howled, "We can't let them do it again! We can't let them take him, too!"
"They won't!" Gwen whispered, tears running down her face as she made herself keep looking forward because she had to as they raced into the trees and it didn't matter how much she ached to check on her Ben - who was barely moving on the platform in front of her - or just look back. "He's Grandpa! He - "
- o - o - o - o - o -
Ten Seconds
The giant alien was crippled, bleeding, and gagging against the wire around its neck choking it, but it still struggled towards the Projector.
Ten seconds.
"You cannot stop us. The Highbreed will - " The alien rasped, choking on the words.
"I can't, but they will." Max retorted before it could finish. The creature snarled at that.
"You think mere children - ?"
Four seconds.
"I almost did, and they're better than I ever was," Max vowed, keeping the knife dug into the creature with his right arm draped over its shoulder, the rest of him hanging behind its mass by the wire around its neck. "You don't stand a chance."
The creature growled again, bucked as things that looked like wings unwrapped from its chest in an explosion of movement, but it didn't help. Maybe on its home planet, they would have, but here….
Here Max just dug his knees into the Highbreed's back and pulled harder. Hard enough that the alien clawed at the wire with its good hand, any thought of the bomb gone.
Three.
Max didn't let go, didn't ease off, but he did close his eyes in those last few seconds. There was just enough time for one last thought before the light claimed him, claimed everything, and burned.
"I'm coming home, Starshine," he whispered the words he wanted to tell her for so long. The ones that he knew he'd be telling her soon enough. He just never expected an answer while he was still alive.
Max….
- o - o - o - o - o -
Two Seconds
Ben felt his Dweeb's legs pressed against his stomach as she knelt low against the wind that was howling past them, but he didn't dare look up at her. He didn't yell back at Alan either, not even after what he'd heard the burning boy say.
He didn't have time.
"Come on," Ben whispered, his head still ringing as he smacked the watch. "I can save him!" He had to save Grandpa. He had to! If the stupid Watch would just work already! He pounded on it as he dared a look back over the river at the fishery that they'd just escaped, only now there were two of the huge buildings and everything else, but no sign of Grandpa in the empty sky behind them. "Work, damnit! Wake up!"
And then all of his attention flew back to the watch as the dial, solid red, started flashing from the hits from his fist, chiming and bleeping and warbling, and then started flickering from red to green.
Please, please. Please.
Precious seconds later, the dial finally went back to green when it should have had no reason to. He reached for the activation button, his fingers already twitching for the number of clicks that it would take to reach XLR8 on the dial.
The night disappeared behind them, and every sound suddenly stopped.
Ben jerked his head around just in time to witness an enormous spherical explosion of light that soundlessly swallowed up everything. The fishery. The pools. The river in front of it and the road behind and for a second he was sure it would take them, too, and then it was gone and so was everything else. Gone like somebody took an ice cream scoop to the world.
Including the man Ben knew was right in the silent heart of it.
The sound came back a heartbeat later as a wind howled up from out of nowhere and shrieked as it raced past them. It was worse than the hurricane they'd been in, worse than a tornado he'd jumped into in Chicago and more than strong enough that it tore them all right off of the glowing platform that never failed them before.
And it kept tearing at them, even after they hit the ground. He didn't know how many times he rolled before he stopped. Before everything stopped.
Everything stopped but the river that was already pouring into the crater when he finally made his body look up.
Everything stopped but his Dweeb, who somehow found him even if she did do it on her hands and knees. She even had the strength to hug him and check him over before her shaking hands found the wrist controls for his suit. Then and only then did she look past him at the river, her eyes searching for the spot where the fishery used to be. "G-Grandpa? Where's - ?"
But Ben didn't have to tell her. She must have seen it written on his face right before hers disappeared into his shoulder with a sob.
There weren't any more words after that, just the dull roar of the world as it tried to fill the hole left behind…