The group hurried back toward the Rust Bucket and climbed inside as quickly as they could. Max started the RV at once and pulled away, driving toward the Stratosphere Tower with the engine rumbling hard beneath them.
Inside, Gwen had gone quiet. Her Lucky Girl mask was off now, and she sat there staring down at it with a look that was far less angry than disappointed. After everything that had just happened, all she could focus on was the part where she had tried to step in as a hero and still felt like she had become dead weight.
"What a great return..." Gwen muttered sarcastically, letting out a long sigh as she lowered her head. "Some hero I turned out to be."
"Right now, all you should care about is stopping Hex before he recreates all those other charms," Ben said, trying to keep her from spiraling any further. He did not sound harsh, just serious in the way he got when the situation was bigger than his usual jokes.
"Ben is right, Gwen," Noir said through the mouth on Charmcaster's stomach. "Not all heroes are perfect. If you really wanted to help, then help in your own way, in a way you can. Borrowed power is just borrowed power. Do not let whatever power you borrowed decide what kind of hero you are."
Charmcaster glanced down at the strange mouth, then gave him a small, uncertain look.
"Hey," she said awkwardly, "can you, like... taste with that mouth?"
There was a brief silence.
"Actually," Noir replied, sounding far too calm about the whole thing, "when we bonded, we became one. Anything that happens inside you, I feel. Anything I feel, you feel too."
Charmcaster blinked once, then slowly looked down at herself again.
"So... does that mean... we are basically exchanging saliva right now?"
Everyone: "..."
A beat passed.
"Well," Noir said after a moment, "when you put it like that, you are not wrong. Our mouth is connected and all."
Charmcaster immediately turned red.
"Ew!" Ben blurted out, recoiling in disgust.
Gwen's expression twisted as she looked away, though for some reason she also looked a little bothered in a way she could not explain. Max, meanwhile, kept his eyes on the road and refused to even glance at the whole situation, which was probably for the best.
Trying to change the subject, Gwen pointed at Charmcaster's outfit.
"Say, what exactly happened to her original clothes now that you bonded with her?"
"That..." Noir said. "I am her outfit right now. But I can also change shape and color to fit whatever style she wants."
That got everyone's attention immediately.
"Wait, seriously?" Charmcaster asked, looking down at herself.
"Yeah," Noir replied.
To prove it, her current outfit shifted and smoothed out, turning into a simple casual shirt and jeans. Charmcaster stared for a second, then looked up again, a little more curious now than embarrassed.
"Can you turn into a dress?"
Her clothes changed again, this time into a magenta and purple summer dress with a large sun hat sitting neatly on top of her head.
Charmcaster's eyes widened.
"Okay..." she said slowly, now sounding genuinely surprised. "How about a school uniform?"
Noir shifted again, matching the request almost instantly.
Charmcaster looked herself over, and this time the joy on her face was impossible to hide. After a second, she actually smiled. It was small at first, but it was real.
For someone who had spent so long under her uncle's control, being able to choose something as simple as her own outfit clearly meant more than it would have to anybody else. It was not just about clothes. It was a choice. It was the freedom to choose and decide what she wanted, even if only in the smallest way.
Gwen watched her for a second, then crossed her arms.
"Okay," she admitted grudgingly, "Noir is kind of too cool."
Charmcaster kept testing different styles with visible excitement while Noir changed with her, and for a while, the whole thing was almost enough to lift the tension inside the RV.
Soon, the Rust Bucket pulled up in front of the Stratosphere Tower. Max had to swing the RV around to avoid a crowd of people running out of the building, all of them looking panicked as they tried to get away from whatever was happening inside. The sky above them was already darkening, and the eclipse was beginning to take shape overhead.
They got out quickly.
"We are running out of time," Max said, looking up. "The eclipse is only a few minutes away."
Gwen sighed and looked toward Ben, Charmcaster, and Noir.
"Guess it is all up to you guys," she said, sounding disappointed, though not angry anymore.
"We are on it," Charmcaster and Noir said together, already lifting off the ground and heading toward the tower.
Ben then turned toward Gwen and held out a hand a little awkwardly.
"I'm going to need some help," he said. "Still feeling lucky?"
Gwen hesitated. "What am I supposed to do without my powers?"
Ben's expression softened a little.
"The one thing we need you to do," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder, "is help Charmcaster and Noir. Right now, they are working together to take down Hex. The least we can do is make sure they succeed."
Gwen looked unconvinced. "But do they really need us?"
"They do," Max said, answering before Ben could. "Hex is still Charmcaster's uncle, even if he is not much of one. He is still her family."
Ben's eyes widened. "Wait, are you saying she is going to betray Evan?"
Max shook his head. "No. I am saying that I do not know. That is the problem. We do not know what Charmcaster thinks about Evan, Hex, or any of this. We do not know enough about her to make that call."
He glanced up at the tower with a serious expression.
"All we can do is stay close enough to help if things go bad."
They started moving again, making for the entrance, only to see a man rushing toward the building before being blocked by a security guard.
"The elevator is out," Max said with a frown. "We are going to have to find another way to the top."
He looked up and saw flashes of magic, electricity, and fire bursting from the upper floors of the tower. The battle was already raging up there.
Gwen followed his gaze and swallowed a little.
"How are we supposed to get up there?"
Max pointed toward a window washer's platform that was still hanging nearby while the worker ran off in a panic.
"We take that," he said. "It should get us straight to the top."
...
At the top of the Stratosphere Tower, the magic duel was already in full swing.
Hex and Charmcaster stood at opposite ends of the rooftop, the wind whipping around them as the eclipse slowly darkened the sky above. Even with the boost from the Keystone of Bezel, Hex was still not in control the way he wanted to be. And now that Noir was bonded with Charmcaster, she was stronger, faster, and far more dangerous than before.
Hex lifted his staff and summoned several glowing magical orbs around him. With a sharp motion, he sent them flying straight toward her.
Charmcaster narrowed her eyes and observed the attack. Between the processing power she had gotten from Grey Matter and her own understanding of magic and mana, she could see exactly how Hex was doing it.
So she responded with the same thing.
She brought both palms together, formed her own set of magical orbs, and fired them forward. The two attacks collided in a burst of light, canceling each other out before they could do any real damage.
"Listen to me, Hope!" Hex roared, his voice echoing across the rooftop as he released a powerful shockwave toward her. "Stop this foolishness! I am your uncle! Your only family left! Without me, you will never become a Master Magician!"
Charmcaster thrust her hands forward and matched the shockwave with one of her own. The two forces slammed together and held for a moment before fading out.
"Quit your talking," Noir's voice rang out from the mouth on her stomach. "You had more than one chance to make things right. More than one chance to treat her like family. You are only saying this now because you finally saw what she could become."
Hex snarled and swung his staff in a wide arc, sending a sharp magical slash toward her.
Charmcaster raised her hand and absorbed it before it could strike.
"If you ever truly respected and loved her as your niece, then a single hug should have meant more than all these words when she needed it." Noir continued, his voice firm and almost cold with certainty. "Even when your brother sacrificed himself to save both you and his daughter, you never once gave her the comfort she needed."
The words hit harder than Hex wanted to admit.
They hit Charmcaster too.
Because Noir was not just talking. As a symbiote bonded to a host, he had access to the host's memory, feelings, and the truth buried beneath old pain. He could dig things up that others would rather keep hidden. He was not mocking Hex. He was cutting straight to the wound.
Charmcaster, or Hope, as her real name was, finally started to feel again, felt her heart tighten. But this time it was not fear.
Noir's words were sincere. She could feel that. There was no trick in them, no hidden angle; he meant every word of it.
That made her face heat up, and she controlled the symbiote to shift up over her lower face to hide it.
Then she threw her arms out, and several swords of light formed around her. With a sharp flick of her hands, she sent them all toward Hex.
Hex tried to dodge, but the blades moved too quickly. They slammed into him one after another, stabbing into his robes and pinning him in place before he could recover.
His gaze shot upward toward the eclipse, and real frustration flickered across his face. He could see the timing slipping away. The moment of alignment was slipping away, and with it his chance to do the ritual and restore the other Charms of Bezel.
Left with no other choice, Hex drew both arms upward and began chanting with renewed urgency.
Charmcaster charged at him, but Hex's staff floated up on its own and blasted the ground in front of her, creating an explosion that forced her back.
"Praesentia Malum, Vigilate et Expergefacere!"
Three glowing magic circles appeared across the surface of the rooftop.
Above them, the sky above them rippled.
A black rift tore open in the air, as if something on the other side was forcing its way through. The mana around the tower began to drain violently, forcefully drawn out, pulled toward the opening. The whole roof seemed to shudder under the pressure, and then something opened inside the rift.
A massive eye opened inside the rift.
It was enough to make even Charmcaster and Noir feel the evil of it immediately. That presence was wrong, ancient, and cold in a way that made the skin crawl.
Then the eye emerged completely.
It floated in the air like a monstrous orb, with a blue iris, a dark pupil, and thick red veins and capillaries on the back that trailed behind it like writhing tentacles.
The eye drifted above them in eerie silence, circling slowly as if it were studying its prey.
Hex fell to one knee, breathing hard, but a satisfied smirk spread across his face anyway.
"Behold!" he declared, his voice swelling with triumph. "The Eye of Terror, the ancient evil from another dimension! The Eye of Cthulhu!"
The massive eye stared down at Charmcaster and Noir.
Then smaller floating eyes, each about the size of a watermelon, drifted out after it. Servants of Cthulhu. They moved in fast, closing in on them from all sides.
Charmcaster tried to cast her magic again, but then froze. Realizing that her mana was completely drained. The only reason she didn't collapse was because Noir was holding her up.
Hex chuckled at her reaction. "You are still too naive, my dear niece. Did you not see? The magic circles I placed around us drained the mana from this entire space to summon the Eye. Without your magic, how do you plan to face me now?"
Before he could finish, crystal shards flew through the air and stabbed into the incoming Servants of Cthulhu, piercing them and knocking them out of the sky in an instant.
"Who said they were alone?"
Diamondhead stood behind them, with Max and Gwen right beside him.
Hex's eyes widened. The sudden arrival of backup had stripped away the advantage he thought he had.
With the Eye of Cthulhu now in play, Hex backed away and sat down to meditate, trying to recover the mana he had already spent.
Noir's voice rang out again from the mouth on Charmcaster's stomach. "Charmcaster, fall back for now. Ben and I will handle the eye."
Charmcaster did not argue. She took a step back as Diamondhead moved forward.
Hex's own spell had drained the rooftop clean. That meant the spell holding her and Noir together had finally lost its grip.
The black living substance began to separate from her body. Charmcaster flinched a little at the feeling, feeling the separation which make her heart ache. Her outfit shifted back into her normal clothes as Noir pulled away and took shape into a humanoid form.
He turned back toward her, Max, and Gwen, then gave them a sharp-toothed smile.
"Thanks for the help," he said. "Now let us handle this."
He tapped the Omnitrix dial on his chest.
A golden flash burst out around him, and when it cleared, a taller figure stood where he had been. Green and black muscular body, one massive white wing rose from his back with a sharp tail, and his right hand had become a crimson dragon head.
"Flame Wingman."
Charmcaster stared at his broad back for a long moment. The fear she felt from the Eye of Cthulhu was still there, but underneath it, something else had started to grow.
Something she didn't fully understand.
"Stay safe," she said in a low voice, almost a whisper.
Gwen caught the tone immediately and turned to stare at her.
Max noticed too, though his expression softened instead of sharpening. For a moment, he looked almost nostalgic, as if he had seen that same kind of feeling before back in his early years, and back when Stay Gold first introduced him to Oriental Art, then Dear Wink, then Point Flag, and then De Laroche...
Okay, maybe he has taken a wrong turn while raising Stay Gold in that department.
But then again... he can't exactly judge her since, well... he also has a relationship with Verdona, his ex-wife, and Xylene, his ex. Even though they are separated, if they are interested, he isn't going to refuse them.
Max scratched the back of his neck and muttered, "Hmm… maybe her twisted idea of family came from me after all."
He did not get much further before he decided not to follow that thought too deeply. Right now, there is something more important than his past love life.
Back on the battlefield, Flame Wingman and Diamondhead stood side by side, facing the Eye of Cthulhu.
"Let us do this, partner!" Diamondhead said, sharpening his hands into crystal blades.
Flame Wingman lowered himself into a stance, both arms raised forward, fist clenched, before speaking calmly.
"With this treasure... I summon!"
Darkness spread beneath him.
"The Mayan god of Death. Protector of the Temple of Ek Chuaj. Ah Puch!"
Then Ah Puch rose out from Flame Wingman's shadow. The same Mayan guardian Evan had once defeated now stood under his control.
Thanks to [The One Who Rules Over The Dead], Evan could now control and summon defeated undead and spiritual beings that he had subdued. Ah Puch fell into the category of being the guardian spirit that protects the Sword of Ek Chuaj. The summon drained energy from the Another Omnitrix, but due to the enormous energy reserves built up by Evan, the cost barely mattered.
Ah Puch immediately charged straight toward Hex without hesitation.
Hex widened his eyes in alarm before quickly trying to defend with the small amount of mana he had just recovered.
"Wow. Since when can you do that?" Diamondhead asks, his eyes widening as he looks at Ah Puch, currently chasing after Hex and beating him up.
"Since the Temple of Ek Chuaj's incident." Flame Wingman replied.
Then they quickly shifted their focus upward toward the massive Eye of Cthulhu floating above the tower.
AN: Here is a sneak peek of a later dialogue.
Someone: "Wrrryyyy!"