Chapter 19: A Day at the Park and an Abduction
"Six stories high, a thousand twists and turns!" Ben's voice echoed with excitement.
"Plunging over two hundred feet!" Gwen added, her own voice just as eager.
"Diving at extreme speeds, over twenty-five miles per hour!" Ben shouted.
"And it all ends when you're thrown into a massive wave pool of over three hundred thousand gallons!" Gwen finished with a flourish.
"Welcome to the Extreme Wave Zone!" they yelled in unison.
Indeed, today was a day for the water park.
After Hex's capture, Grandpa Max had spent a few days on edge, worried the sorcerer would return to reclaim his powerful magical artifacts. He found it hard to believe that a man of Hex's caliber could be so easily imprisoned without his talismans. But for reasons unknown, Hex never reappeared.
So, to finally unwind, Grandpa Max decided to treat the kids to a day of sun and fun.
However, it didn't take long for Ben to run into his first obstacle of the day.
"You're too short," the lifeguard stated flatly, stopping Ben and pointing to the swordfish-shaped height chart beside the slide's entrance.
"But it's only by a tiny bit!" Ben protested, looking at the lifeguard in disbelief. The tip of his hair barely missed the line.
"Sorry, Ben. I heard the Baby Banana Boat is pretty fun, too," Gwen said, a smug grin spreading across her face as she pulled Klein along towards the towering Extreme Wave Slide.
"Bye, Ben. See you later," Klein added. He didn't bother teasing his cousin; he was genuinely curious about a slide that long himself.
Ben could only watch them go, his eyes burning with frustration.
…
"Where's Ben?" Klein asked, slicking back his dripping hair as he looked over at Gwen in the wave pool.
"Uh… wh-what?" Gwen's face flushed a bright pink at the sight of him, water clinging to his frame. She quickly snapped out of it when she registered his words. "Oh! Never mind, I think I see him."
Klein followed her gaze and saw a tiny, gray-skinned figure sliding down the Extreme Wave Slide. It was Grey Matter. "Hey! Ben!" he shouted, preparing to wade over.
But just as Grey Matter splashed into the pool, a hand shot out of the water and snatched him up. "I finally caught you!" a man with thick glasses exclaimed, surfacing with the tiny alien held firmly in his grasp.
Seeing this, Klein immediately moved to intervene. With his enhanced physique, he was more than a match for some nerdy-looking guy in spectacles. But before he could take more than a step, a wave of children his age, caught up in the fun, jostled past him, pushing him back.
"Where did he go?!" Klein spun around, but the bespectacled man had vanished without a trace.
Without a word to Gwen, Klein scrambled out of the pool and sprinted towards the restrooms. He had to transform and find Ben, now.
Knowing Ben, he would have transformed the second he was told he couldn't go on the slide. Calculating the time, his transformation would have been ending right around when Grey Matter was caught. That could only mean one thing: the Omnitrix was on the fritz again.
Moments later, a blue and black blur, too fast for the human eye to follow, zipped through the water park, scouring every corner.
'How can he not be here?!' Fasttrack thought, an uncharacteristic bewilderment slowing him for a fraction of a second. This bespectacled man was an anomaly. How had he managed to get out of the park so quickly? The only other person this abnormal was Dr. Animo, who had somehow survived a direct punch from Humungousaur.
"Cousin, what should we do?" Gwen had caught up, her face pale with worry. She knew the situation was serious, but she felt powerless—at least until she learned some magic that could actually help. By the time that happened, Ben would have already been turned into a lab specimen.
"Let's find Grandpa first!" Fasttrack said, scooping Gwen into his arms before disappearing in another streak of blue and black.
…
"So, all we can do is search everywhere," Grandpa Max said, his brow furrowed as he gripped the steering wheel of the Rustbucket. He had wanted a relaxing day at the water park, but now his mood was worse than ever.
"It's the only way," Klein replied, frustrated. Normally, the Another Omnitrix had a positioning function that could track the original's signal, but for some reason, the Omnitrix was malfunctioning and its signal was completely gone. 'I didn't even know it had a signal-shielding function,' he thought grimly.
The Rustbucket hadn't gotten far when Gwen's phone rang.
She answered it immediately. "Hello? Is that you, Ben?"
"Gwen, it's me!" It was, indeed, Grey Matter.
"Ben, you haven't changed back yet?" Gwen asked, confirming her suspicion.
"The stupid watch is still busted…" Grey Matter's voice sounded small and dejected.
"Never mind that for now! There's a tall mountain approximately one hundred eighty-point-one-five miles west of this house, with an incline of about forty-five degrees…" Grey Matter began rattling off coordinates.
"Uh… I don't understand. Is there a street name?" Gwen didn't for a second think she was smarter than Grey Matter, but realizing she couldn't keep up with his train of thought, she cut straight to the chase.
"Oh! Right!" Grey Matter paused, looking out the window at the surrounding buildings. "Reeves…" But before he could finish, the line went dead.
"Ben! Ben!" Gwen yelled into the phone, but the call had already been terminated.
"Reeves Street, Reeves Road, Reeves Avenue…" Gwen pulled out a map and began scanning it. "Ugh, this is so annoying! How are we supposed to find him with so many options?"
"We'll have to search them one by one," Klein said, seeing no other choice but the simplest, most brute-force method. He pointed to the first street on the map. "You two search this one. I'll handle the rest."
With that, he tapped the faceplate of the Another Omnitrix. A quiet blue light flashed, and Fasttrack stood in his place.
"I'm going ahead. I'll find you later," he said, throwing open the window and leaping out of the moving vehicle.
Watching the blue and black blur vanish into the distance, Grandpa Max pressed down on the accelerator, steering the Rustbucket toward Reeves Street.
…
"Grandpa! Any luck? Where's Ben?" A streak of blue and black lightning resolved into Fasttrack, who skidded to a stop in the yard of a suburban house on Reeves Street.
"Look at this," Grandpa Max said, gesturing for him to come closer. He and Gwen were crouched in the grass, examining a clue they had just discovered. He held up a flip phone, its screen clearly displaying a picture of Grey Matter with a terrified expression.
Grandpa Max tapped a few buttons, bringing up the call log. "If we can trace the signal from this call's location, we should be able to find them."
"Grandpa, I'm getting more and more impressed by your cunning," Gwen couldn't help but remark.
…
A short while later, Klein, Gwen, and Grandpa Max were crouched behind a patch of overgrown grass, observing a structure that looked like a medieval European castle looming in the distance.
"That's no ordinary house," Gwen whispered, her eyes wide. "That's a fortress."
"They're a super-rich, secret society called the Celestial Energy Organization," Grandpa Max explained in a low voice. "They dedicate all their resources to finding and acquiring powerful alien technology."
Knowing their grandpa's true identity, neither Klein nor Gwen found this revelation particularly strange.
'Twice now! Fasttrack has failed to find the target twice!' Klein's agitation was growing. For someone who valued his leisure time, being led on a wild goose chase was the most infuriating thing imaginable.
"Gwen, you protect Grandpa. I'm going in to find Ben," Klein said, his voice tight. He transformed into Fasttrack again. This time, he was going to restore his alien's reputation.
The quiet blue blur shot towards the fortress. Grandpa Max and Gwen exchanged a look, shrugged, and then quickly moved to follow.
…
"I have to get out of here!" Grey Matter muttered, scurrying down a hallway while casting nervous glances over his shoulder.
Suddenly, he ran headfirst into something solid and fell to the ground with a squeak. "Ah!"
Before panic could set in, a familiar voice spoke. "Ben?" Fasttrack, who had just been wondering if he had missed him, looked down in surprise.
He had just searched the castle's laboratory where Ben was supposedly being held, only to find it empty. Ben had already escaped, and Fasttrack had, once again, just missed him.
"Cousin! You finally came to save me! Let's go, quickly! They want to turn me into a specimen!" Grey Matter was so traumatized that he momentarily forgot Fasttrack could move through the fortress with impunity.
"I'll take you to Grandpa and Gwen first," Fasttrack said, gently scooping the tiny alien into his hand before vanishing in a blur.
A moment later, they reappeared on an upper level. "Cousin!" Gwen, who had just flown up with Grandpa Max using her budding Anodite powers, looked at the suddenly appearing Fasttrack in surprise. "Did you find Ben?"
"Yeah," Fasttrack nodded, opening his palm to reveal an ecstatic, nearly crying Grey Matter. He quickly set his cousin down as the Omnitrix symbol on his back began flashing an urgent red.
"Then let's get out of here!" Grandpa Max urged. In the short time they'd been inside, Fasttrack and Gwen had already taken down a considerable number of the organization's guards.
Fasttrack was silent for a moment, then gave a firm nod.
He picked up Gwen, hoisted Grandpa Max onto his back, and let Ben cling to his grandpa's shirt. With his passengers secure, he became a blur once more, leaving the castle behind.
…
Late that night, Fasttrack returned to the Celestial Energy Organization's fortress, appearing before the very soldiers who had discovered his earlier intrusion.
"My cousin might be a dweeb sometimes," Fasttrack's voice was cold and flat, "but he's not someone just anyone gets to bully." He tapped the symbol on his chest.
A blinding flash of light erupted, and where he stood, a new figure began to grow. And grow. And grow.
"Way Big!"
Towering over the castle, Way Big appeared outside its walls, casting a shadow that blotted out the moon.
He crossed his massive arms, his gaze fixed on the fortress below. "I heard you guys like collecting small aliens," his voice boomed, shaking the very foundations of the structure. "I wonder… do you like big ones?"
A powerful cosmic ray shot from his crossed arms, slamming into the fortress and shattering it into a million pieces of stone and steel.
As for the bespectacled man, Klein didn't think he deserved to die. After all, he had inadvertently helped Grey Matter escape the organization's clutches, and his desire for fame and fortune was, in a way, understandable. However, Klein always sided with family over reason. Ben had complained at length about how the man had tormented him, so a little payback was in order.
He left the man hanging by his underwear from a lamppost for the entire night.
…
Sometime later, a man in a polished golden mask—clearly the leader of the organization—returned from his trip. He fell silent, his car idling as he stared at the smoldering ruins of his fortress.
Sitting in the back seat, he swiped through images on a tablet, his finger stopping on a picture of Grandpa Max, Ben, and Gwen. Klein, having been in his alien form the entire time, was conspicuously absent.
His voice was a low, menacing growl.
"Investigate the backgrounds of those three. Thoroughly."
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