Chapter 21: The Arrival of Vilgax
In the dead of night, the Rustbucket sat parked in the quiet suburbs, a lone silhouette under the moon.
"Ah!"
A sharp gasp shattered the silence. Ben Tennyson shot upright in his bed, his T-shirt clinging to him, soaked through with a cold sweat.
"What's wrong, Ben?" Klein and Gwen, jolted awake by the commotion, leaned over from their bunks, their faces etched with concern as Ben scrambled out from under his covers.
"Did you have another nightmare, Ben?" Grandpa Max walked over, his voice a low, comforting rumble.
"Grandpa, I dreamed of him again," Ben said, clutching his head as if to keep the images from spilling out. "That… that squid-faced guy. He said… he's coming for me."
Grandpa Max had been about to dismiss it as a simple bad dream, ready to soothe his grandson and return to bed. But at Ben's words, he froze. The easygoing grandfather vanished, replaced in an instant by a seasoned soldier. His expression hardened, his eyes becoming sharp and serious.
"The situation's changed," he declared, his voice tight. "We're leaving. Now!" Without another word, he spun on his heel and strode toward the driver's seat.
"But it's three in the morning!" Gwen complained, the protest muffled by a yawn. Once the Rustbucket was moving, any hope of a decent night's sleep was gone.
…
Morning light streamed through the windows, but the Rustbucket was still barreling down the highway.
"Hey, Grandpa, where are we rushing off to?" Ben asked, unable to sit still after hours of non-stop driving.
"I plan to reach Mount Rushmore before dark," Grandpa Max answered, his brow still furrowed in a deep, worried line.
"Mount Rushmore? What's there?" Ben pressed, his curiosity piqued.
"Weapons," Grandpa Max said grimly, deciding there was no point in hiding things from the grandkids who now knew his secret. "Plumber equipment and weapons."
"Grandpa, are you hiding something else from us?" Gwen asked, her tone serious. She'd thought his Plumber identity was the biggest secret of all, but this sudden, desperate need for armaments suggested something more. "Why would you suddenly need weapons?"
"Yeah! Grandpa, is it because of that squid-faced guy? Are you— Ah!" Ben was about to join Gwen in her interrogation when the Rustbucket was rocked by a violent, shuddering impact that threw him against his seat.
Peering out the window, they saw the source of the attack: a swarm of mechanical drones, their metallic bodies glinting in the sun. They were countless, a buzzing horde of destruction. And looming behind them, blotting out the sky, was a warship of truly colossal proportions.
"It really is him…" Grandpa Max's voice was a strained whisper. He caught a glimpse of the immense vessel in the rearview mirror, and his foot slammed down on the accelerator. The Rustbucket's engine roared as it surged forward.
"Grandpa, let me handle these guys! It's hero time!" Ben slapped his wrist, ready to activate the Omnitrix, but Grandpa Max's voice cut him off.
"Wait, Ben!" he shouted, his tone sharp with an urgency Ben had never heard before. "Trust me on this! You don't want to go head-to-head with Vilgax!"
Hearing this, Klein, who had been observing the rising panic with a detached calm, felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward. 'Grandpa, trust me,'he thought wryly.'Vilgax is the one who doesn't want to go head-to-head with Way Big.' Of course, he had no intention of escalating things to that level just yet.
He kept the thought to himself. He could see that the old man was already terrified. Even if Klein announced he could transform into a planet-sized Toku'star, it wouldn't ease the deep-seated fear in Grandpa Max's heart. In fact, Max already knew Klein could become Way Big, but his mind was so consumed by the traumatic memories of his last encounter with Vilgax that the fact had been completely erased from his immediate recall.
It was a stark reminder of Vilgax's fearsome reputation. After all, Grandpa Max had only earned his legendary status among the Plumbers by being the one who had, against all odds, defeated him.
"Alright," Klein said, finally standing up from the sofa, his voice cutting through the tension. "Grandpa, we can't outrun them forever. Ben and I will stop Vilgax. You and Gwen head to Mount Rushmore."
"Awesome! Let's go, cousin!" Ben leaped to his feet, fists clenched in excitement. "Time to pound that Vilgax creep!"
"Cousin! I'm coming too—" Gwen started, determined not to be left behind.
"No, Gwen," Klein interrupted, his tone gentle but firm—a rare instance of him flatly refusing her. "You go to Mount Rushmore with Grandpa. He needs your protection." He had to phrase it that way. If both he and Ben ran off to fight, did anyone seriously think Grandpa Max would just drive away? The old man would turn the Rustbucket around and charge Vilgax with nothing but his bare hands.
Gwen's lips formed a tight line, but she didn't argue further. She simply looked at Klein, her eyes filled with worry.
"Trust me, Gwen," he said, meeting her gaze with a reassuring calm.
"Wait! You two—" Grandpa Max began to protest, but it was too late. Klein and Ben had already slid open the side windows and leaped from the moving vehicle. Helpless, Max could only grip the steering wheel tighter and press the accelerator to the floor. The only way to save his grandsons was to get those weapons, and fast.
Outside, the air crackled with energy. A flash of quiet blue light and a blinding flash of green. Klein transformed into the sleek, manta-ray-like form of Jetray, while Ben became the magma-skinned Heatblast.
Jetray shot forward, a blue blur streaking towards the drone swarm. Green neuroshock blasts erupted from his eyes and tail, lancing through the air. Every drone struck by the beams instantly detonated in a shower of sparks and shrapnel.
Meanwhile, Heatblast propelled himself on twin jets of fire from his hands, rocketing into the thick of another cluster of drones. He unleashed a nova-like burst of flame, a miniature volcanic eruption that incinerated everything around him. Moments later, he flew out of the billowing black smoke, leaving behind nothing but a rain of molten debris.
"Ben! Let's go take down the big guy!" Jetray called out, seeing only a few stragglers left. He banked sharply and accelerated toward Vilgax's massive warship.
Hearing the call, Heatblast casually lobbed a few fireballs to vaporize the remaining drones before blasting off in pursuit.
Jetray halted a short distance from the warship, hovering in mid-air. He unleashed a continuous, focused beam of green energy from his eyes and stinger, slicing through the ship's hull like a plasma torch.
Nearby, standing on a platform of solidified fire, Heatblast thrust his hands forward. Twin pillars of intense flame roared to life, blasting into the warship's engines and superheating the metal until it glowed cherry-red.
"Man, when I get around to upgrading my own ride, I'm definitely importing some raw materials from this guy," Heatblast grumbled, impressed by the sheer durability of the warship's armor. It was taking them far too long to dismantle just a few of its thrusters.
"No, you won't!" a deep, metallic voice boomed from the ship.
A gigantic, spiked sphere—a meteor hammer—launched from a hidden bay, hurtling directly at Heatblast. With a yelp, he dodged just in time.
BOOM!
The massive weapon smashed into the forest beside the road, gouging out a crater over ten meters wide. With a hiss of pneumatics, the sphere split open, revealing a hatch. The hatch swung open, and a three-meter-tall, squid-faced goliath stepped out, his armored form casting a long, menacing shadow.
"Because you won't have a future," Vilgax growled, his gaze locking onto Heatblast.
Even with a major enemy standing before them, Jetray couldn't help but mock the warlord's sense of style. 'Who travels in a meteor hammer?'he thought. But that was irrelevant. What mattered was that this hulking brute looked strong. He ought to be very durable.'Let's start with a laser.' Twin beams of green energy shot from Jetray's eyes, screaming toward Vilgax.
Seeing his cousin's attack, Heatblast raised his hands and launched two massive fireballs. "Yeah! Who do you think you are, you ugly squid-face?" he taunted. "If that's the best threat you've got, then my answer is, bring it on!"
BOOM!
A deafening explosion rocked the landscape. When the smoke cleared, the crater Vilgax stood in was several meters deeper. The meteor hammer pod had been blasted into unrecognizable scraps of metal. Vilgax, however, was still standing. He had raised his right arm to block the assault, and while two smoking holes had been punched through his gauntlet by Jetray's neuroshocks, the flesh beneath was already writhing and sealing itself shut.
"You two brats," Vilgax snarled, his voice a low rumble of fury. "I don't know how a second Omnitrix came to be, but since there are two of them… I'll be taking them both!"
He bent his knees slightly, muscles coiling like powerful springs. Then he launched himself into the air, clearing over a hundred meters in a single bound, charging directly at Jetray.
…
On the other side of the conflict, Grandpa Max and Gwen finally reached Mount Rushmore.
The Rustbucket drove straight towards the iconic monument, pulling to a stop on a seemingly normal patch of ground at its summit. A moment later, the ground beneath them began to descend. As the platform lowered into the earth, Gwen stared in wide-eyed astonishment. A massive, cavernous space opened up below them, a hidden base dozens of meters high, lined with enormous storage cabinets.
Inside them, she could only presume, were the "weapons" Grandpa had been so desperate to retrieve.
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