A/N: Shoutout to those of who were able to identify Zavgath's species, you're real ones :)
III
"We have to fight army with army." Ben said.
"It really has to be like that?" Danny asked, subconsciously knowing the answer even before anyone spoke.
"If Zavgath's usual method of engagement is direct incursion then we have to assume he'll do the same here." Blossom said as the aforementioned alien's hologram disappeared.
"I'd have to agree with Blossom, from the reports we've received he's never shown an ounce of fear or hesitance when he invades a planet, especially in the time he's been searching for the crystals." Max added, folding his arms.
"Aren't you like super popular across the universe or something?" Danny turned to Ben. "Would he still just barge in here knowing this is where the wielder of the omnitrix lives?"
"That'd probably excite him if anything, I've got freaks trying to steal the omnitrix every month." Ben answered.
"We can strategize later, first we actually need to build an opposing body of fighters." Blossom proffered.
"And we don't even know how long we have."
"We have constant surveillance on any craft movement that zeroes in on Earth," Max placated Danny. "So at the very least, we'll know when he's close."
"That's good enough, we can't afford to be blindsided." Blossom said strongly.
Something on Max's desk beeped, he turned away from the others to push on a button and a fourth voice suddenly permeated the room.
["Magister Tennyson."]
["What's up Donovan?"] Max answered.
[The packages from Ringa Morr just arrived in the containment unit.]
["Oh,"] Max uttered, with a noticeable rise in the tone of his voice. He cleared his throat and continued, ["I'll be right there."]
He let go of the button and turned back to the heroes. "Sorry, just a, um... special delivery."
"I wonder from who, does their name rhyme with Irene?"
"Back to the matter at hand," Max enunciated, cutting a smirking Ben off. "We have a few agents on off-world missions, but a sizeable number of the battle faction is still on ground, that's what you can be sure to get from the Plumbers."
"Thank you, Mr Tennyson." Blossom nodded in gratitude.
"No need for thanks dear, we're protectors of this planet too you know. It's our job, and please, just call me Max, same goes for you Danny." he said with a collegial smile, to which the two nodded back with smiles of their own.
"Alright then, I'll be right back I just—"
"Have to go get those 'special packages' right?" Ben finished for him. "It's okay, we'll fill you in on any further plans when you come back."
Max threw a soft glare at his chuckling grandson before exiting the chamber.
Danny looked to Ben immediately the door slid closed. "Your grandpa's dating an alien?" he asked with clear disbelief.
"They're on and off."
"You can't be serious?"
"I mean, she's pretty hot actually."
"Gross! Wait, was that racist?"
"Very much so, do better man."
"Are you two done?"
The males turned to meet Blossom's unimpressed visage.
Ben slowly raised a finger, before pointing it at the Puff, who arched a brow at him.
"Blossom's an alien." he said, eyes flicking back to Danny.
The halfa blinked at Ben, then turned to Blossom whose eyes were now on him.
"I mean yeah, but she's... you're different, you know? You look—" Danny stopped, mulling over what he was about to say. That deadly brow arch from Blossom was now being directed his way, pending the completion of his sentence...
"I should probably stop talking." he said instead.
"Smart." Blossom commended.
"Okay, back to recruiting fighters." Ben said with a grin, deciding he'd had enough fun. "You guys got anyone in mind?"
"Well, lots of ghosts are my allies now, there's a lot of them I know would help us if I call in a few favours." Danny answered immediately, desperate to move to another topic.
"As far as numbers go, I only trust one other person from Townsville to get involved in this kind of potential battle... and asking her would take so much of my pride." Blossom offered, her face twisting in almost anticipatory dread.
"We're going to need more." Ben said, eyes staring straight into nothingness as he did. His expression had gotten serious again. "We've got to go outside our regular circles."
"You're talking really build a team of heroes?" Danny inquired.
"Why not? Just the three of us clearly aren't going to be enough, and there's heroes all over the world." Blossom stated.
"Some of them are in already established teams." Danny challenged.
"Some of them aren't." Ben pitched in.
"But what about secret identities? Not all heroes are out in the limelight like the three of us you know." Danny retorted again.
"We don't have to ask any of them to go public, we just need to convince them to help, they can make their own decisions after, but without their help we might not even have an after." Ben replied.
Danny let his thoughts swim around for a second before speaking again. "How do we know they'll even listen to us? Or want to do this?"
"We don't." Blossom said, and Danny's glowing eyes swivelled to her. "But after what happened two years ago... we have to try, you know we do."
"Besides, we're not the only ones who lost something then. If I had to guess, I'd say there's definitely a few out there who are just as incentivised as we are." Ben textured.
And Danny was quiet again, looking between his super powered colleagues before his gaze shifted to the long, hexagonal window on the wall above Max's desk.
"Danny, I know you feel responsible for what happened last time, but so do we. Leaving other heroes out of this wouldn't be protecting them, I'm sure they wish they were prepared then too." Ben said softly.
"If it ends up being a onetime thing then so be it, but we need a united front to match the might of Zavgath's army," Blossom added. "If more heroes were unified two years ago like Ben said, then we all probably wouldn't have lost so much..." she finished with a somber tone.
Danny's eyes continued to bore into the window a moment longer before he faced Ben and Blossom again.
"When did you learn how to use 'incentivised'?" he said to the former.
Ben chuckled. "Dickhead."
Danny released a small laugh himself and looked to Blossom who was equally grinning at him.
"Okay." he said. "You guys are right, so what's the next step?"
"Divide and conquer," Blossom said. "Go to heroes you think would want to help us, we'll start with the ones we know."
"Sounds like a plan," Ben smirked. "I have a couple people in mind."
"Same." Danny said, with a little less enthusiasm than Ben did, but neither him nor Blossom seemed to catch it.
"Good." Blossom nodded. "I have a nominee in mind as well, I'm going to Russia."
"Russia?"
"Russia?!"
Danny and Ben exclaimed respectively, with the former noticing the incredulousness in the latter's voice.
"You know who she's talking about?" Danny asked him.
"You know he's never going to do it, he's probably too busy disembowelling a mutant or trying to perfect time travel." Ben said with a frown.
"What?" Danny said with widened eyes.
Blossom simply grinned at Ben. "Wouldn't hurt to try, right?"
SAINT PETERSBURG, RUSSIA.
Blossom zipped across the sky, thousands of meters above the famous Atlantic Ocean. She arced her trajectory north, whizzing past cities of countries she vaguely recognized on her route to the Baltic Sea.
As she soared past the Gulf of Finland, she knew she was close. And in-fact gradually began to dip as she neared her destination, she saw a row of ships lined up across a port, they looked as small as Lego pieces from where she was in the air but now, she knew to dip even further down.
What happened next might have caused some to stop and stare, but it was nothing she hadn't seen before. About half a mile off the dock, a spot in the sea began to open—yes, quite literally like an elevator door—and Blossom slowed down slightly as she flew through it. The rushing waters that rained inside the opening began to straighten out again as the opening shut just as fast as it opened.
Blossom continued to fly through a tunnel, only slightly illuminated by spotted lights on the wall, which also showed the car track beneath. She followed the lights at her side until she neared the other end of the tunnel, where another quadrilateral door slid up as she neared.
When she flew through this one, she emerged in a somewhat enclosed space, nothing over twelve feet in width. There was a single, vertically protruded metal-plated seat with a black tinge in the middle of the darkened room, spotted lights prominent all over its surface.
Blossom sat without a second thought and a blueish light instantly projected itself onto her eyes, it moved over her entire body slowly and disappeared at the same moment she did.
She reappeared in another containment object, this one a bit wider from the one she'd just been transported from. A hatch began to open up a few inches in-front of her, she floated through, what met her on the other side made her lips curl upwards.
Sometimes Blossom wondered how he'd managed to install a thirty-acre laboratory underground. Or how he managed to keep full ownership of it legally.
She floated past a plethora of inventions even someone of her immense level of intellect had trouble identifying, including some the size of large buildings. She recognized a couple, like the hulking pair of hourglass shaped objects with beams connecting to a metal pod in their middle, his Hydro-Cosmetic Accelerator.
As well as the pretentiously designed giant robot he infamously dubbed as the Robo-Dexo 3000, a name she didn't even try to hide her amusement at.
Or one of her personal favourites, the yellow scaled, fourteen feet dinosaur Blossom simply referred to as "Pooch".
Said dinosaur heaved excitedly at the floating redhead as she neared it, making an attempt to move towards her but was held back by the mechanical leash on it neck. Blossom smiled fondly at its enthusiasm, instead drifting closer to it to lovingly stroke its head.
"Hey Pooch," she chuckled as the dinosaur stuck its tongue out while wagging its tail.
Blossom continued deeper into the lab, crossing even more size-varied inventions and giant robots, until she drifted into what was likely the midpoint of this subterranean mega-lab. There she met a catalogue of multiple screens displayed on a large background, of which a control system laid at the bottom in the form of a slim, larger than average computer.
Sat behind it was the person she'd come to see, his curly red hair the only thing visible from behind his tall leather chair.
Blossom descended onto the smooth surfaced floor behind him and cleared her throat.
"Normally when someone pays another a visit it is usually at the host's place of residence." the male voice behind the computer voiced out in a blended Russian-American accent.
"I'm in the right place then, I doubt you know if your appliances at home even work with how often you're in here." Blossom retorted.
The male redhead scoffed. "As far as functionality is concerned, you're well aware that I am flawless in that regard."
"I wouldn't say your social life is functioning all that great." Blossom said with a teasing smirk.
"Callow indulgences do not pique my interest, you of all people should know how monotonous the... less capable can be."
"I'll try convincing you to touch grass some other day, right now we need to talk, Dexter."
The man now known as Dexter ceased typing and spun around to face the Puff, revealing more of his curls that fell onto his forehead, hanging above his wayfarer glasses. He was clad in a simple white dress shirt that was held together by a slim black tie. Adorned with equally black pants and expensive looking dress shoes. Finishing off his look was the calf-length lab coat draped over his shoulders and the indigo-coloured gloves on his hands.
"Something tells me I will not like this very much." he said pointedly, staring at Blossom with a staid visage.
MIDDLETON, WISCONSIN: BUENO NACHO.
Danny had floated down into an alleyway while invisible, wanting to avoid as much attention as he possibly could. He went back into human form and stepped out onto the sidewalk casually.
The light was thankfully passing him before he even got there, Bueno Nacho was just on the other side of the crosswalk, but he should've known he wouldn't be so lucky to go two minutes unrecognized in public.
He threw a friendly smile to a few people who'd spotted and now waited for him on the other side of the road, a few civilian selfies later and he was pushing open the glass doors of the popular Tex-Mex open. The person he'd come to see was already waving at him from a booth, Danny's smile grew more genuine at the sight of the chirpy dark skinned girl awaiting him.
"Boy you are one stroke of eye liner away from lookin' like a 80s guitarist." said the afro haired girl said with a teasing smirk as Danny approached her.
"Yeah I've had it, I'm definitely losing the jacket." Danny retorted, eliciting a laugh from the girl as she stood to give him a welcoming hug.
"How are you, Monique?" Danny smiled at her when they separated.
"You know I'm all about the work now." Monique smiled back as she answered.
"Yeah I heard you style Naomi Osaka now, that's nuts." Danny said as he sat.
"You know that's right," she replied proudly. "You lucky to catch me, I'm heading out of town to go see her tomorrow."
"Thanks for coming really, I know it's short notice."
Monique waved a dismissive hand. "Park all that, you're my fam. Besides, I always got time for a celeb."
It was Danny's turn to wave his hand disapprovingly. "Stop that." he requested as Monique chuckled.
"Okay, so what's the OT? I know you didn't call me out here so we could talk about how I got my clients poppin' on the carpet."
Danny's lips fell into a thin line as he sat up a bit, propping up his elbows onto the table.
"How's Ron?"
"How do you think?" Monique replied instantly, Danny's face fell in a frown. "He lost the love of his life, he's... different."
Danny had seen Kim's statue smack in the middle of town on his way here, looking over the landscape in her hulking marble form. He'd only known her and her crew of family and friends on a personal level for roughly eighteen months before the Exonite event, but that'd been more than enough time for him to make genuine friends of them.
He had his own personal losses he was dealing with, but losing Kim made it no easier, it greatly affected him too. He could only imagine what it had done to Ron.
"We're all still mourning Kim, in our own ways you know. But if I had to pick one of us who her passing has changed the most, it would definitely be Ron." Monique said, drawing Danny from his musings.
"Her parents and brothers?" he asked.
"They been in Germany for a minute now, her dad got a job there."
"What about Wade?"
"God knows where he is right now, he's always on the move, being a co-owner of one of the biggest tech companies in the world and all."
Danny nodded slowly. "Where is he?"
Monique suddenly got uncomfortable, not physically, but emotionally, as she pursed her lips at Danny's question.
She settled her eyes on him after a few seconds. "Last I heard he was in Japan, on a job." she answered, finger quoting the last word.
"What kind of job?"
Monique didn't respond.
"Monique?"
The girl reached a hand over the table and placed it on Danny's. "Danny, I don't know if you're here because something's wrong, but if you're here to get Ron, promise me he goes with you."
Danny stared at a now visibly aflutter Monique, the tone in her voice had dropped significantly.
"Mo, is Ron okay?" he asked, worry now the main theme of his own voice.
She frowned. "Go see for yourself."
ANGEL GROVE, ARIZONA: ANGEL GROVE UNIVERSITY.
Located in the urban area of the city, the university of the infamous Angel Grove boasted a medium-sized college harbouring roughly seven thousand students. There was nothing particularly special about the school, it was just like any other college facility. Although it did fall into one special category, being one of the only universities on the planet that one of Earth's heroes attended.
Not that anyone knew that, though.
She'd never came out publicly with her identity, and technically, she was no longer the hero the residents of Angel Grove once knew, so maybe AG university was ineligible for the list.
Maybe.
These days she was busy with—if you asked her—far more arduous tasks than crime fighting. In fact, she was engaging in one right now, sat behind her shared vanity in her dorm apartment as she faced a gruelling, life absorbing Psychology paper she had due in a week.
She stared at her laptop screen with her cheek in her palm, it stared right back at her. She'd procrastinated all of last week and decided to at least try and get the paper started while she had a bit of time. She'd rolled out of her bed to get some brain work going at 5:18PM, her eyes flicked to her phone, she tapped the screen and the time lit up on its surface, 6:18PM.
When her eyes roamed back to her screen to see just one, short, uncompleted paragraph, she heaved a defeated sigh and leant her head back.
The jangling sound of fiddling keys from the other side of her door stole her attention, and moments later it was swung open by a sweaty brunette in a tank top.
"Hey Trini." she said with a light heave as she took her Air Pods off.
"Hey Sarah." the girl now identified as Trini replied, throwing her roommate a weak smile.
"Psychology paper kicking your ass?" Sarah said walking past her.
"Yup, and I think I'm going to take a time out." Trini answered, closing her laptop.
"Should've switched majooors, we have way more fun in Anthropology." Sarah said as she kicked off her sneakers and pulled her tank off.
"The thought of digging up hundred-year-old horses doesn't exactly rile my dopamine to be honest with you." Trini said with a wry smile.
Sarah threw her a look after throwing on a massive white tee. "You are extremely rude."
Trini laughed in good nature as she turned on the cushioned chair to face Sarah properly.
"So, you seem excited to meet Marcus later."
"Huh? What makes you say that?" the blonde said in a voice that was desperately far from casual, much as she tried.
"How about the fact that you have your shirt on backwards?" Trini replied, Sarah looked down, confirming Trini's statement.
"Whatever, okay? It's not a date he's just tutoring me." she said defensively as she sauntered to their cupboard.
"Do tutors usually let you go home with their jackets?"
"Shut up." Sarah said, Trini laughed again.
Her attention was yet again drawn to the door as someone knocked, she looked to Sarah as the latter pulled her head out of a row of hung jackets.
"You expecting someone?" Sarah asked, Trini shook her head.
"You?"
Sarah shook her head back, right before the person knocked again. Sarah threw Trini a curious look before walking over to the door, the very overdramatic gasp she released when she opened it made the latter arch a brow.
"Who is it?" Trini asked, her gaping roommate simply stepped away from the door, throwing Trini what could only be described as an 'Oh my God' face.
"I'm guessing that means I can come in?" a male voice from the other side of the door said.
Trini paused, she recognized that voice...
Ben stepped through the door and closed it behind him softly, his eyes never leaving Trini's, who was now taking her turn in gaping, albeit not as theatrically as her friend before her.
"Hey." Ben said, looking to Sarah when Trini didn't respond immediately. "Hi, I'm—"
"Ben Tennyson! Please be for real, I know who you are." Sarah said in the most unabashedly awestruck voice ever, aggressively shaking his offered hand.
Ben offered her a polite laugh. "Nice to meet you, um...?"
"Sarah! Sarah Hylander." she beamed.
"Nice to meet you, Sarah Hylander. Wow, you've got a strong grip." Ben said in-between laughs.
"So, what brings an A-List superhero to Angel Grove University?" Sarah said, still beaming so hard that Ben thought he'd soon have to squint.
"Well... I'm actually here to see Trini." Ben said, shifting his eyes behind her. Said girl followed his line of sight to a Trini who'd been trying to all but disappear.
"Oh? Oh." Sarah muttered, Trini looked up then, trying to use her eyes to tell Sarah to stay.
"If I'm interrupting something I can come back la—"
"Not at all," Sarah cut him off with a gleam. "I was just leaving actually." she said as she turned to go fetch her towel and bathroom kit from her bed, ignoring Trini's ocular signals as she did so. "Can I get a selfie?"
Trini watched in disbelief as Sarah took the pictures with Ben and exited the room, though not before throwing Trini a soundless "Get. His. Number." from behind Ben's back as she shut the door.
"She's great." Ben said with an amused grin, thumbing at the door.
"She's alright." Trini said, managing a smile back.
"Can I sit?"
Trini folded her lips in as she stared up at him, Ben simply stared back.
"Sure," she finally said. "Here though." she gestured to the chair she got off. She planted herself on her bed just as Ben claimed the chair.
"I like your hair, really badass." Ben said genuinely, referring to her blonde-dyed, short pixie cut.
Trini threw him a dinky grin at the compliment, fetching one of her pillows to keep on her lap.
"Thanks." she said, but her grin fell almost immediately as she moved her eyes away from his face. "I, uh... I'm sorry I—"
"Ghosted me? Yeah, that was pretty tacky, but it's natural right? Women are trash and all that."
Trini couldn't stop herself from letting out a shocked laugh. Ben joined in too as her expression was too priceless not to.
"Okay," she said in-between laughs. "Well, you're clearly not here about that so, why exactly are you in my dorm room?"
Ben's laughter subsided at her question, he leaned forward marginally, never taking his eyes off her—an action which was starting to make her feel a tiny bit uneasy.
"Something's coming to Earth, something I'm not going to be able stop alone, I'm here to ask for your he—"
"No."
Trini's expression had firmed now, an almost physical representation of her answer. Ben suppressed a sigh and shut his eyes briefly.
"Look, I know you said you're done with being a vigilante—"
"So why'd you bother asking?" she interjected with a bit of bite.
"Do you think I would if it wasn't necessary?!" Ben bit back. Trini met his hard gaze with a harder one. "I'm sorry," he said with a sigh, "But I'm serious, I'm trying to gather a team to prevent... to prevent what happened two years ago."
Trini's glare simmered and her eyes dropped to her pillow. "I understand that, but I couldn't help you even if I wanted to. I told you last year all the power coins are gone, destroyed."
"That's not true though, is it?"
She looked up, meeting Ben's challenging look.
"Are you serious? You know what happened with Tommy." she said with a frown, that especially curved at the last name. "The coins are gone... along with Billy and Kimberly, and we're going to have a serious problem if you make me talk about it again."
Ben sobered at the slight, almost impalpable way Trini's voice shook with a blend of emotions.
"I'm sorry, really I am. I understand what it's like to lose people you love, you know that, but I need you." Ben said in a low voice, Trini's face softened in a way that made Ben quickly rethink his word choice. "I mean your help, I need your help. And if you ask me, the people of Angel Grove probably miss having a hero."
"The police are doing fine." Trini retorted on the next beat.
"It wasn't the police that saved that little kid from a speeding truck last week though, was it?"
"You need to leave!" Trini raised suddenly, actually catching Ben off guard a bit.
He clenched his jaw as he looked up at her, she looked back at him squarely and sprung up from her bed.
"Trini." Ben called out pointlessly as she stalked past him. He stood and pranced after her, grabbing her wrist just before she reached the door. "Just listen—"
It happened so fast, she rolled her wrist out of his grip and semi-spun with a raised palm, which she planted on his chest with enough force to send him pelting into the opposite wall.
Ben grunted as he fell to the ground after bouncing off said wall, he groaned again as he dragged himself into a sitting position, his back was going to be feeling that for a while.
He looked up at the girl responsible for that pain and found her panting lightly as her wide eyes blinked at him.
Ben's lips thinned as he blinked back.
A couple seconds later he was outside the room and into the resident halls, which were luckily empty right now. He heard Trini's door lock behind him and turned just enough to look at it before sliding his hands into his jacket pockets.
His eyes lingered before he breathed in a low voice...
"You know I'm right."
And with that he pivoted and headed for the dorm exit.
Back inside the room Trini sat with her back against the door, heaving continued breaths as she heard Ben's footsteps fade away. She slid her knees up so she could place her forehead on them, before throwing a closed fist down on the floor with a loud grunt.
KYOTO, JAPAN.
Innocent bystanders had fled the scene when the shooting began, even those who'd been present wouldn't be able to give an answer to what triggered the sonorous violence that randomly erupted in the market street.
Bodies began dropping—or crashing, rather—through the windows of the tallest building on said street. Gunfire, screams and blood followed next, a traumatizing sight for any who'd been unlucky to be present when it began.
The bloody bodies littered the street, some having wrecked the fruit booths that laned the pathway, that theme continued into the three-story building, where lifeless bodies were backdropped by shredded curtains, bloody walls and what appeared to be scattered pills decorating the floor.
The police sirens were still much too far in the distance, but there was one room where a faint sound was emanating from, the closer you got the more that sound resembled jagged breathing, and upon entering the room, you'd confirm it.
Helplessly kneeling on the ground, with his hands clutching his bloody neck was a raven-haired Japanese man, trying and failing to speak.
There was a figure in-front of him, stood over his cowering, dying form with a pointed down katana held in his hand, with a much more dripping red-looking steel blade than silver.
The leather coated man rose a trembling hand towards the figure, his eyes burning with a mix of fear and hatred. His knees gave out even in that position and he fell on his back, now beginning to gurgle blood.
He was almost finished, he could feel his consciousness permanently seeping away by the seconds. With what was the last of any strength he could muster, he pointed at the one in-front of him and croaked out...
"Akuma..."
His hand fell for the final time then, and now there was truly only silence ringing through the entire street.
The figure looked to be a tall man from behind, his blonde hair was the only thing out in the open, his body was covered in a pitch black, traditional ninja attire. He sliced his katana through the air, ridding it of some blood before he cleaned out the rest on his sleeve in one swift motion.
"I wish I could say it's nice to see you—" a voice said from behind him, he didn't so much as jerk, undeterred by the new arrival.
But that was more due to recognition of the voice, rather than lack of prudence.
The ninja turned slowly so he was now facing the source of said voice, which revealed the red, half-face Oni mask that covered his nose downwards, leaving only his chocolate brown eyes visible.
"—but I'd be lying." the newcomer finished.
The ninja glared.
Danny glared harder.
"This is what you do now Ron?" Danny said, spreading his arms to gesture at the scene Ron had created.
"What are you doing here?" Ron said, his voice hoarse behind the mask.
"What am I doing here? What the fuck is this?!" Danny yelled. "What have you become?"
Ron simply exhaled at Danny's outburst. "These weren't good people, Danny."
"Oh, so that's why you took it upon yourself to murder them? Don't give me that bullshit." Danny snarled.
"I don't have to stay here and take a lecture from you, if you flew over all this way for that, then congratulations on wasting your time." Ron replied as he turned and made for an open, shattered window.
Danny's frown loosened. "Why are you doing this? This isn't you..."
"You don't know me," Ron turned just enough to look at him with piercing eyes. "Not anymore."
"I know the person I met four years ago would never turn into something like this, no matter what."
Ron went quiet for a moment, turning fully as he sauntered towards Danny until they were barely a meter apart.
"Then you never understood how important she was to me." he said in a voice that sounded... dark, a tone Danny would've never guessed could even come out of Ron.
"This isn't going to bring her back," Danny said, his frown returning. "You think this is how she'd want you dealing with it?"
"She's not here Danny!" Ron shrieked. "She isn't here to tell me, so I guess I'll never know."
"Earth could be under attack any moment from now."
Ron's eyes widened marginally. "What?"
"That's why I came here, to get your help," Danny elaborated. "Me, Ben Tennyson and Blossom Utonium are trying to gather allies, heroes who'll stand with us when the fight comes... so we avoid what happened the last time Earth was attacked."
Ron found himself taking a step back as he processed what Danny just said, his eyes fell to the floor for what felt like a long stretch, but when they rose back to Danny they were back to looking detached.
"Goodluck." He said as he pivoted again.
"Ron—"
"I'm no hero, Danny."
Cold brown eyes met angry green ones as they stared each other down, before Ron turned for what felt like the final time and headed for the window.
"She would do it, you know that. She'd have said yes in a heartbeat."
Ron ignored him as he continued for the window.
"She would hate you right now."
Ron stopped. "Watch it Danny..." he said without turning.
Danny continued. "She wouldn't even be able to look you in the eye—"
"Shut up!" Ron cried and turned an arc with his sword, slashing through Danny as he did.
Except the sword passed through Danny's torso harmlessly, as though he wasn't there.
Ron panted lightly, not looking up from his crouched stance, not until he was standing fully, meeting Danny's eyes again when he did.
A melody of police sirens disturbed the silence, sounding much louder than they did a few minutes ago, they were downstairs and would be swarming up any minute.
Ron stared wordlessly, Danny did the same. Then the former suddenly whipped his eyes away and ran for the window.
Danny watched with a frown as he jumped through, then pokily shifted his gaze to the dead body in the middle of the room.
"I see." Dexter said after mentally assimilating the information Blossom had just given him.
"And worse yet we're uncertain of his numbers, and he's got two soldiers in his command that are possibly as powerful as an Exonite." Blossom said.
Dexter nodded, eyes looking into space as he ruminated a bit longer. When he finally seemed to settle, he looked up at Blossom from his sitting position.
"You already know my answer." he said.
"And here I am asking anyway." Blossom retorted.
Dexter blinked, then stood from his chair. "I need to stay here, but I don't need to be on the field to assist you."
"I guessed as much." Blossom said.
Dexter threw her a staid look. "You never came here with the intention to recruit me, did you?"
"Why bother? Like you said, I already knew your answer before I got here." Blossom said, folding her arms.
Dexter knew that Blossom was very good at concealing what she was thinking on her expression when she wanted to, so he knew her half lidded eyes definitely coincided with the admonishing undertone in her voice on purpose.
"You are still upset with me because of my ongoing project then? I presume." Dexter asked, a bit casually for someone who'd just realized he was being chided.
Blossom's frown actually deepened at his sentence, and she took a few steps closer to him. "This isn't like one of your inventions, Dexter. You really think you can outsmart... death?"
Dexter's eyes lingered on her, then he folded his arms behind his back and looked forward, away from her. Blossom's lightly peeved frown turned into a somber one, and she stepped even closer until she was right beside him.
Most people wouldn't have been able to decipher the look in Dexter's eyes, but Blossom knew it was sadness.
"It would be the single greatest scientific achievement in human history." He finally said.
Blossom deadpanned. "Dexter, I'm worried for you. Trying to bring Dee Dee back is making you so—" she said in a worrying voice.
"Don't be," Dexter interjected. "I've assured you multiple times that my psyche is not being negatively affected by this pursuit."
"It's not exactly something you would admit, especially with you referring to it as a 'project'."
"But it is," Dexter said, looking at her now. "This is my most personal project ever, there is currently nothing in my life more important."
Blossom's eyes widened a bit, before she looked away quietly. "Understood."
Dexter realized he'd underutilized his lexicon there and opened his mouth to try and rectify that, but Blossom was already backing him.
"So, what'll be your contribution then?" she said.
Dexter stared at her back and supressed a sigh, before tenderly walking up to stand beside her. From where they stood, they could see a large portion of the lab, and most of the inventions Blossom had crossed on her way to him.
"A good number of my automatons are undergoing recalibration but dispatching five of the larger variety would be possible. It would be five of my best, simplistic but effective self-controlling AI's, internally manufactured high-grade weaponry, dramatically enhanced physical qualities, et cetera."
Blossom nodded. "Alright, it's a start."
"I have one more addition, but he has not returned from his mission yet. When he does, I shall send him over to you immediately." Dexter ensured, letting his gaze land on the Puff beside him.
"You've got something else up your sleeve? Why am I not surprised." Blossom released a tepid chuckle, eyes still on Dexter's cluster of robots. The young scientist stared at her side profile, his lips bespeaking the emotion his eyes frequently failed to.
"Blossom."
She looked at him at the call of her name, brows sightly raised in a 'What?' manner.
"It is not that I am uninterested in participating in protecting the world, you already know I engage in that routinely here in Russia. I just—"
He paused, Blossom simply blinked, waiting for him to finish.
Dexter flicked his eyes to the side. "—I am aware of how impractical it is to try and reanimate my sister... but I refuse to not make any eff—"
He paused again when the sensation of Blossom's hand on his cheek made him focus his gaze on her again. She was standing in-front of him with a clement smile on her face as she cupped said cheek.
"It's okay," she breathed. "Just promise me to take care of yourself, okay?"
It took him a couple seconds, but Dexter eventually nodded.
"I promise."
She gave him another smile as she slowly let go of his face. "When I need the robots, you'll know."
Dexter nodded again, watching as she took to the air and zoomed off towards the transportation unit, his eyes lingering on her pink streak until it faded into nothingness.
One perk of being a member of the plumber surveillance unit? Your job description was essentially to just chill until your monitor beeped—signifying that an object had come within five hundred miles of Earth, notify a Deputy of its presence, and let them handle the rest.
A low effort designation the large-eyed, diminutive, peach skinned alien currently sat behind the surveillance monitor enjoyed very much. He had his legs casually thrown up on a beam beside said monitor, treating himself to a bowl of what a human would probably call slithering worms, and doing it greedily, licking his fingers clean to show just that.
The tracking field the plumbers had set up was flawless, so he wasn't bothered about taking his eye off the monitor to enjoy some lunch.
He should have been, because less than a mile away from the Plumber HQ a rift tore open into existence, spitting a pyramid shaped ship out, that went invisible as soon as the rift closed.
Back in the surveillance room the small male alien jerked as the monitor beeped... for just a second. As soon as it came, it was gone.
He looked to the monitor with confused eyes, dropping his bowl to his side and dropping his legs as he set the monitor to do a three-sixty scan.
Nothing.
He typed in a few things onto the holographic screen and from a top point of the HQ structure fluttered out a mildly visible radio wave. Except it was no radio wave, it was a highly advanced sensor pulsation.
But when the results popped up on his monitor, it showed him nothing was out there. A glitch in the system probably, he thought before reclaiming his bowl and licking his lips in anticipation.
It wouldn't be visible to the ordinary eye, or as it seemed, even Plumber sensory technology, but a triangular hollow, with pulsating energy around it floated quietly past the HQ, completely undetected.
That happened to be ship that had just hyper jumped into the Earth's proximity. Inside one of the few rooms in the ship—sat in two rows of seven—were fourteen Lowardians, patiently awaiting orders from the only one amongst them who stood.
A recognizable one.
"I suppose I overestimated the Plumbers, seeing as simple high-grade stealth technology could evade them." Warjin scoffed.
"We are approaching Earth's atmosphere, coordinate locked in on a remote mountain area." said a voice from what appeared to be the cockpit meters in-front of where Warjin stood.
Warjin grunted his approval as the ship descended into and past the atmosphere, where it sped up slightly as it approached a snowy mountain range, slowing down just before it touched atop one of the many mountains in the area, melting the snow beneath it instantly.
The ship's stealth was deactivated as it seemed to blink into existence from nowhere, Warjin brought a square shaped gadget he had in his hand up to his face, there was a small orb like figure connected to it, which looked to contain a swirling red energy.
"Where are we?" he inquired without taking his eyes off it.
"We are in a subregion of a country called Australia," confirmed the voice of who was likely the pilot from the cockpit.
The device Warjin held computized a full map of the planet, three beeping dots appeared on different locations on the map shortly after.
"The tracker picks up three similar energy signatures to the crystal here," Warjin said, then hummed. "The last two crystals eluding master Zavgath could both be on this planet?"
His eyes hardened as he turned to the sitting warriors, who all reflexively stood upon his gaze.
"What is our next course of action, commander?" a female Lowardian said from Warjin's left, holding her two-bladed spear firmly in-front of her.
"We shall split into groups of three, each will take a pod to one of these locations," he said, raising the tracker for emphasis. "If you come upon a crystal, retrieve it by any means necessary, if you cannot, use your accumulators to store as much of its energy as you can." he finished and took a step closer to his warriors.
"Failure is not an option."
"Understood commander." the male Lowardian on his right said.
Warjin's eyes passed over his determinedly poised kin one last time, before he turned to back them with a heavily purposeful look in his eyes.
"For The Great Blue."
END.