Late at night inside the Rust Bucket, the already limited sleeping space had become even more cramped with the addition of Orfevre and Gold Ship.
Blankets were scattered everywhere, bags were shoved into corners to make room, and someone had apparently lost a sock somewhere near the kitchen area.
"AAAAAHHHH!!"
Ben screamed in pure terror and rolled straight out of bed, crashing onto the floor hard enough for the back of his head to smack loudly against it.
"OWW!"
Grimacing while clutching his skull, Ben quickly sat up and looked around wildly.
He was still inside the Rust Bucket.
The RV was dark except for the faint moonlight coming through the windows, making it obvious it was still the middle of the night.
Gwen was asleep in the bottom bunk, completely undisturbed somehow. Grandpa Max was passed out on the couch snoring loudly enough to shake the entire RV. Orfevre and Gold Ship were asleep in the upper bunk together, with Gold Ship clinging onto Orfevre like a koala.
As for Evan...
He was literally floating in the air while asleep.
Ben stared upward blankly for a moment.
...
The next morning, the Tennysons and Gold siblings hit the road early.
But unlike everyone else, Ben looked absolutely miserable. He sat slumped near the window with half-lidded eyes, yawning every few minutes while staring outside like a sleep-deprived zombie.
"Ben… Ben…" Max called from the driver's seat.
"Earth to dweeb!" Gwen snapped before smacking him over the head with the pamphlet she had been reading for the last half hour.
"OW!"
At least it worked. Ben finally blinked himself back into reality.
"Clean the wax outta your ears!"
"You okay, son?" Max asked.
"Ah… yeah…" Ben muttered tiredly. "I'm still kinda weirded out by that Ghostfreak nightmare."
"Maybe that's what happens when you inhale two mega enchirittos before sleeping," Gwen scoffed while returning to her brochure.
"Sounds like a skill issue. Golshi also ate two mega enchirittos." Gold Ship commented casually from the back while twisting a Rubik's Cube rapidly in her hands. "And Golshi slept perfectly fine."
Ben looked offended.
Gold Ship turned back to continue solving the cube Evan had bought for her with his allowance. After all, each one of the Gold siblings has their own allowance, and due to this allowance, they can't exactly ask their parents to buy them anything outside of birthdays or holidays. If they want something, I use their own money or ask their siblings.
Nearby, Orfevre was sitting beside Evan while turning the dial on his Another Omnitrix curiously, scrolling through the newly unlocked alien forms he had obtained during the summer so far.
Meanwhile, Evan himself was quietly staring at his right hand. A small cut had been made across one finger.
Instead of dripping normally, the blood floated upward into the air and slowly sharpened into a thin crimson spike.
Practicing and testing out his new [Blood Manipulation]. Evan casually dispersed the blood back into his body like it was nothing.
"Or Ben's imagination is just acting up again," Gwen said dismissively. "Personally, I'd rather focus on our visit to Bancroft Academy."
Without warning, Ben leaned over and snatched the brochure right out of her hands.
"Hey!"
"Why do you even wanna visit this stupid school?" Ben scoffed while looking over the pamphlet himself. "It's full of snobs and posers."
"Bancroft Academy is one of the best schools in the country," Gwen argued immediately.
"Yeah. For snobs and posers."
"Private schools and expensive colleges are mostly scams anyway," Orfevre said, looking up from her brother's watch. "They trick people into spending huge amounts of money for information you can literally learn online for free. Then you spend twenty years drowning in debt."
The entire RV went quiet for a second.
Ben slowly pointed toward her. "See? She gets it."
"Please do not encourage her," Gwen groaned.
"I'm warning all of you," she continued while yanking the brochure back out of Ben's hands. "You better not embarrass me during the campus tour."
Both Evan and Orfevre immediately snorted.
"Believing Gold Ship can behave is like believing Nakayama Festa isn't addicted to gacha games," Orfevre said with a grin while glancing toward her brother.
"Golshi can behave," Evan added calmly. "Under very specific conditions."
"Hey!" Gold Ship protested dramatically. "Gold Ship can absolutely behave!"
Nobody believed her.
"Honestly," Gold Ship continued proudly, "I think you should be more worried about big bro and big sis starting another fight on school grounds."
"Don't get your shorts in a twist," Ben said while rolling his eyes. "I'll be on my best behavior."
"Grandpa," Gwen groaned while looking toward Max with pleading eyes, "can we just drop them off somewhere until the tour's over?"
Max chuckled warmly from the driver's seat.
"Oh, don't be like that, Gwen," he said. "Leaving them out would just be unfair, wouldn't it?"
Right on cue, Gold Ship somehow got herself stuck inside the cooler while trying to grab one of her brother's sodas.
"HELP! THE FRIDGE IS ATTACKING GOLSHI!"
Evan, Orfevre, and Ben immediately burst out laughing.
Gwen slowly covered her face with both hands. "…I'm so doomed."
...
Bancroft was exactly as pretentious and stuck-up as they had expected, and maybe even worse. In some ways, it felt almost ridiculous, like someone had taken every stereotype about a rich private school and turned the dial all the way up just to see how far it could go.
Every student they passed wore the same immaculate academy uniform, and every single one of them seemed to look down their nose the moment the group stepped through the doors. It was like they could smell the difference between themselves and everybody else and had already decided that the Tennysons, along with the Gold siblings, were beneath them.
Their tour guide, Tiffany, was no different. She walked with the kind of posture that made it very clear she thought she was doing them a favor just by speaking to them at all. Even the way she looked at them carried that same annoying superiority, like guiding them around the school was some cruel punishment she had been forced to endure.
Evan suspected she was only doing this because she needed the credits.
She seemed like the type who had more money than brains.
Ben leaned toward Evan slightly. "I think one of them just looked at Grandpa's shirt like it personally offended him."
"I heard that," Gwen muttered.
"And recently, Bancroft Academy was awarded the prestigious solid gold Minkov Trophy for top-rated prep school on the East Coast," Tiffany said with obvious pride, as if the trophy had been handed personally to her. "So you can see why we're very picky about who we admit."
Evan narrowed his eyes and glanced down at Gold Ship, who was currently being kept in check by the leash he had placed on her back. For some reason, Gold Ship is also holding the other end.
"Are you walking me, or am I walking you?" Evan asked flatly.
Gold Ship looked back at him, then down at the leash, then back at him again. "This is a team effort."
Tiffany shot them both a spiteful glare for not paying attention to her, then kept talking anyway.
"So many people delude themselves into thinking they're Bancroft material," she said, her voice dripping with mock pity. "It's honestly rather sad."
"Well, I have a 4.2 GPA," Gwen blurted out in a rush, clearly trying to prove herself before Tiffany could dismiss her too. She started counting off on her fingers as she spoke. "I'm president of the computer club, treasurer of the science society, I volunteer at several local charities, and I'm a member of my school's jujitsu team."
Tiffany gave her a bored look, then forced out the most obviously fake smile anyone had ever seen.
"How nice for you."
Gwen visibly deflated.
Ben let out a quiet snort of laughter, which made Gwen glare at him out of the corner of her eye as they started moving again.
Then Ben suddenly stopped. He froze in place, his expression shifting for just a second as if he had heard something no one else had.
A soft, raspy voice brushing against his ears.
"Ben…"
He looked around quickly, suddenly feeling like the air had turned thick around him. The memory of the Ghostfreak nightmare was still fresh in his mind, and for a moment he felt like the hallway had closed in around him. He even thought he saw a shadow shoot across the sky outside, darting past the flagpole and toward the school clock tower like a black streak.
"Ben…"
"Do you have a question?" Tiffany asked in her snobby tone, snapping him back to reality.
Ben blinked hard, forcing himself to think. He had to say something. Not just because he did not want to look insane, but because he had promised Gwen he would be on his best behavior. As much as he hated this place, Gwen clearly cared about it, and he was not going to ruin that for her.
"Uh, yeah," he said quickly, looking around at the other students in their uniforms. "Why are there so many kids here during vacation?"
"Attending our prestigious summer school session," Tiffany replied, once again putting on that smug voice of hers as she tried her best to pull away from them.
"Summer and school," Ben muttered as he caught up to the others. "Those are two words that should never be used together."
Gwen shot him a nasty look.
"What?" Ben asks.
Tiffany led them down a narrow corridor lined with arched pillars. Every few steps, their shadows stretched across the floor and climbed the walls in long, weird shapes before snapping back into place as they passed under the next pillar.
Ben frowned. For a second, he thought his shadow had changed.
It looked taller. Thinner. Almost stretched out into some narrow, unnatural silhouette for half a breath.
Then he looked again and it was normal. He rubbed his eyes hard.
"Get it together, Ben," he muttered under his breath. "You're just sleepy, that's all…"
He hurried forward to catch up as the group entered one of the rooms. The place was filled with beakers, test tubes, glass containers, chemical jars, and enough equipment to make it obvious they had walked into a science lab.
"And this is our science lab," Tiffany announced. "Bancroft Academy boasts the latest equipment in every scientific field."
"Is that supposed to be an electron microscope?" Gwen asked, pointing toward a bulky machine mounted into the wall.
"Yes." Tiffany said sharply, giving Gwen such an irritated look that Gwen immediately quieted down.
Meanwhile, Gold Ship calmly wandered farther into the room with absolutely no concern for the expensive equipment around her. Somehow she had managed to get her hands on an oversized white lab coat and now wore it like she owned the place.
She grabbed a few test tubes filled with different liquids and powders and was ready to mix them together with the confidence of someone who had never once been told not to touch anything.
"Hey! Stop that, those are not toys-" Tiffany snapped.
But Evan and Orfevre had already moved in and were dragging Gold Ship away before she could turn the whole lab into a disaster.
Ben wandered around the room on his own, peering at the equipment with the curious eye of someone who could not help but poke at anything that looked even slightly interesting.
That was when he stopped in front of a beaker sitting over a burner.
The liquid inside had begun to bubble. Then bubble harder.
Then, out of nowhere, a purple eye surfaced in the middle of the fluid.
"Let me out!"
Ben stumbled backward in horror. "Leave me alone!"
He slapped the beaker right off the table. The glass shattered across the floor, splashing chemicals near Tiffany's feet.
Tiffany turned and gave him a look of absolute disgust while the others stared in shock.
Gwen reacted instantly, stepping in with a fake laugh as she threw her arm around Ben's neck in a desperate attempt to make it look like he had just been joking.
"That's my cousin," Gwen said anxiously. "He's always kidding around."
She said it like that somehow made anything better. And just when it seemed like things could not possibly get worse, every burner in the lab suddenly flared to life.
The flames shot higher.
The chemicals in the beakers started heating up all at once, bubbling violently as the glass finally gave way and shattered across the room.
Everyone yelped and backed away as shards flew everywhere.
Evan quickly pulled both his sisters back out of the room before anything else could hit them.
"Ben, what are you doing?" Max asked.
"I didn't do it!" Ben insisted. "It was Ghostfreak!"
As if the universe had been waiting for the perfect moment to make his life worse, the alarm suddenly blared across the room and the sprinklers kicked in.
One of them happened to be directly above Tiffany.
Water poured straight down over her perfect hair and spotless outfit.
The look she gave the Tennysons could have frozen the entire room.
"This is not going to look good on your application," she said coldly. "Bancroft is a no freak zone."
Then she stomped out of the lab, dripping wet and furious.
Gwen ran after her immediately, clearly desperate to fix things before they got even uglier.
"I am so sorry about my cousin!" Gwen called as she caught up to Tiffany. "A-actually, we're not really related. I think his parents found him at a zoo or something."
Gold Ship looked genuinely disappointed by that one.
"Wow, that's way too far," she said with a disappointed frown. For someone with five siblings, she understood perfectly well how often families fought and bickered, but they never lowered each other on purpose just to look better themselves.
Evan, Orfevre, Ben, and Max stepped out behind them.
"Ugh… at Bancroft Academy, it's as important who you are as what you've done," Tiffany said with obvious contempt, glaring at Ben as if he had personally offended the school by existing. "You know, as a person from a quality family."
That was the final straw.
Tiffany turned and walked off before Gwen could even get another word out.
The redhead spun around and clenched her fists so tightly they practically shook.
"Benjamin Kirby Tennyson, I'm gonna-"
She was cut off by a loud crash from the gymnasium to their right.
Ben's head snapped toward the sound. For the first time since they had arrived, he looked relieved.
"I better check that out," he said immediately, then took off running like a bat out of hell.
Everyone else stared after him.
Then Orfevre slowly turned to Evan. "Where is Gold Ship?"
Evan paused. Then looked down. Seeing that the leash in his hand was empty. The other end was left on the ground with no one attached to it.
Both siblings looked forward at the same time.
Far down the hall, Gold Ship was already running away at full speed in the opposite direction.
"Goddamn it," Evan muttered.
Without another word, the twins sprinted after their little sister before she caused any trouble.
...
The first thing Ben noticed when he stepped into the building was the trophy case on the far wall, or rather, what was left of it. The glass had already been smashed, and a few trophies were missing from the display, leaving behind dusty gaps where they had once sat.
Before he could even ask what happened, a wicked cackle echoed from the gymnasium.
Ben hurried in and immediately spotted the security guard tied up in the rafters, hanging helplessly above the floor.
"You again!?" Ben shouted.
"Uhh, do we know you?" Thumbskull asked, sounding genuinely confused.
"Get lost, brat!" Frightwig snapped. "You wanna get it?"
"A little Heatblast action should light a fire under you freaks," Ben said, slamming the Omnitrix down.
A green flash burst around him, and for a second he felt confident.
Then the light faded.
Ben looked down at his hands and froze.
"Ghostfreak?" he hissed. "I didn't pick you."
Thumbskull grinned and walked over to the bleachers, ripping loose several wooden planks before hurling them straight at Ghostfreak. Acid Breath sprayed acid over the boards, melting them after they crashed into him.
"But we ain't scared of no ghosts."
Then Ghostfreak suddenly reappeared right behind them.
"You should be!"
At that moment, Gwen and Max finally rushed into the gym after hearing the commotion, just in time to see Ghostfreak lunge at the circus freaks.
"It's those circus freaks!" Max realized immediately.
Acid Breath fired a blast of corrosive spit at him, but Ghostfreak faded into the floor beneath the gym mat and slipped under it. A moment later, he lifted the mat up and smashed it right into Acid Breath, knocking him out cold.
Thumbskull came at him from behind next, but Ghostfreak sensed him coming. He phased right through Thumbskull's body, disappeared again, and then reappeared behind him before unleashing a burst that overloaded his senses and dropped him to the ground.
Frightwig tried to catch him off guard by whipping her dreadlocks around his arm, but Ghostfreak phased straight down through the floor, dragging her off balance and slamming her face-first into the mat. He repeated the move twice more until she finally went limp.
Max frowned, clearly unsettled by what he was seeing. "Something's wrong. I've never seen Ben this vicious before. Only Evan's ever looked like that."
Gwen immediately ran forward, furious. "You're wrecking the whole place! Are you trying to ruin my chances of getting accepted here?!"
Max stared at her, honestly thrown off by that. "That's what you're worried about right now?"
"Ben, answer me!" Gwen demanded.
Ghostfreak slowly turned toward her and stared without blinking. The air around him felt colder all of a sudden, and Gwen shivered as he leaned forward and spoke in that awful, raspy voice.
"Ben is not here..."
Before anything else could happen, Thumbskull suddenly managed to throw a punching bag at Ghostfreak from the side and land a direct hit.
That gave the others just enough of a chance to recover. He grabbed Acid Breath and Frightwig, then stumbled out as the three of them scrambled out of the gym in a panic.
"These freaks didn't learn their lesson!" Ghostfreak shouted as he chased after them.