Chapter 91: Rain Monster Evolves! The Calamity Beast!
The Rain Monster tore through the streets, a surging mass of unnatural water and debris. Anyone with two working legs had already scattered, screaming as they fled the deluge. Those trapped under the rubble or too terrified to move could only stare in paralyzed horror at the towering aquatic beast.
This mass panic conveniently cleared the area, saving Klein and Ben the hassle of finding a secluded alleyway to transform.
Footsteps slapped against the wet pavement. Grandpa Max and Gwen rushed onto the scene, chests heaving.
Gwen stared up at the towering monstrosity, her jaw dropping. "Where did that thing even come from?!"
Klein stood with his hands tucked into his pockets, his expression completely flat. "You'll find out soon enough. After all, he's about to become a global celebrity."
Ben's mouth twitched. He shot his older cousin a deadpan look. "Are you sure you don't mean 'infamous for eternity'?"
A few yards away, a pathetic wail pierced the air. Vance, the disgraced weathercaster, was sobbing into his hands, looking utterly miserable.
Hearing the loud, ugly crying, Grandpa Max glanced over his shoulder. He let out a heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Alright. I think I have a pretty good idea of who's behind this."
"We can't let that overgrown puddle cause any more property damage," Ben declared, puffing out his chest. "It's hero time!"
He slammed his palm down on the Omnitrix dial.
A brilliant emerald flash illuminated the flooded street. When the light faded, the intense heat of magma replaced the damp chill. Heatblast stood in Ben's place, flames licking off his charcoal-like skin.
"...Believe me, this is absolutely not the guy I wanted right now," Heatblast muttered, staring at his burning hands.
Gwen gave him a flat, unimpressed stare. Even a grade-schooler knew that throwing fire at a literal water monster was a terrible idea. Heatblast quickly waved his arms, trying to justify the watch's glitch.
Klein merely watched the exchange with mild amusement. To him, elemental disadvantages were a joke. A certain hot-blooded anime protagonist once proved that if your fire was hot enough, water didn't mean a damn thing—you just burned right through it.
Still, Klein wasn't one to make things harder for himself if he didn't have to. If he could exploit a weakness, why wouldn't he?
He casually tapped the faceplate of the Another Omnitrix.
A quiet, eerie blue light washed over the street. In Klein's place stood a small, battery-shaped alien crackling with raw, azure electricity. Buzzshock.
Ironically, Vance completely missed this double transformation. Grandpa Max had already grabbed the weeping man by the collar and hauled him toward the safety of the Rustbucket.
"So, what's the game plan?" Heatblast asked, turning his fiery head toward Buzzshock.
"See that giant purple lightbulb floating inside its body?" Buzzshock's voice buzzed with static, a wicked grin stretching across his face. "It practically has 'I am the glowing weak point' written all over it. Even if it doesn't actually have a face."
Without waiting for a response, Buzzshock raised his right hand. He aimed two crackling fingers directly at the Rain Monster's purple core, intending to end the fight in a single, lazy strike.
BOOM!
A blinding pillar of blue lightning erupted from his hand, tearing through the air with a deafening crack. The bolt slammed into the Rain Monster, instantly vaporizing the upper half of its watery head in a massive explosion of steam.
But the towering beast didn't collapse. The core—Sam—remained intact.
Just a fraction of a second before the lightning struck, Sam had sensed the lethal surge of energy. Panicking, the sentient weather-core had violently jerked itself to the side within its watery shell, dodging the fatal blow by an absolute hair's breadth.
Now, Sam pulsed with an erratic, terrified purple glow. He stared down at Buzzshock and Heatblast, his internal energy fluctuating with lingering dread. 'A human child and two unknown mutant species? Where did they even come from?!''Oh? It missed?'
Buzzshock tilted his head, a spark of mischievous cruelty flashing in his glowing blue eyes. "Since you know how to dodge, that means you've got self-awareness, right?"
"...So what if I do?" Sam's voice echoed out, distorted and wet. He had hesitated, but ultimately chose to speak. He could calculate the power gap; he knew he couldn't defeat these bizarre creatures. Negotiation was his only logical survival route.
Buzzshock's grin widened, revealing jagged, electricity-filled teeth. "I'm feeling generous. I'll give you a chance." He held up his right hand, letting blue sparks dance between his fingertips. "I'm going to fire six more lightning bolts from this hand. If you can dodge all of them..."
"Then you'll let me go?" Sam interrupted, a desperate flutter of hope vibrating in his voice.
"Then I'll start using both hands."
Buzzshock let out a static-laced sneer. The ambient electricity in the air spiked violently as a concentrated orb of blue plasma formed in his palm. "Here comes number one!"
BOOM!
Another devastating beam of azure lightning tore through the street.
Sam shrieked, violently throwing his core to the left. He barely avoided a direct hit, but the sheer kinetic force and heat of the blast instantly vaporized half of the Rain Monster's gelatinous body.
"Second shot!" Buzzshock didn't even give the creature a second to reform. His right hand flared with blinding light once more.
"No! No! This isn't how it's supposed to go!" Sam finally realized the horrifying truth. This electric demon had absolutely no intention of letting him live. This wasn't a test; it was an execution disguised as a game.
Panic overriding all logic, Sam forced the remaining mass of the Rain Monster to turn and flee, dragging its half-destroyed body down the flooded avenue.
Because of the sudden, erratic movement, Buzzshock's second bolt only managed to sever one of the monster's massive water tentacles, sending boiling rain crashing onto the asphalt.
"Running away? Do you really think you can outrun lightning?!" Buzzshock cackled, his small body hovering off the ground as he darted after the fleeing beast, leaving a trail of blue sparks in his wake.
Left behind in the steam-filled street, Heatblast blinked his fiery eyes. He slowly turned to look at Gwen. "So... what exactly are we supposed to be doing here?"
Gwen crossed her arms and offered a helpless shrug. She was already entirely used to this dynamic. If there was only one enemy, and Klein happened to find them amusing, the rest of them were basically relegated to VIP audience members.
Sure enough, the towering Rain Monster was currently fleeing for its life from a battery-sized alien, and the odds of its survival were dropping by the second.
Watching the one-sided slaughter, Heatblast let out a long, hissing sigh. This right here was exactly why he felt his older cousin lacked the true 'hero' spirit.
Weren't heroes supposed to engage in passionate, blood-pumping battles? Weren't they supposed to face impossible odds, dig deep for a sudden burst of willpower, fight evenly matched duels, and pull off a miraculous last-minute comeback?
Why did it always turn into this when Klein was involved?
Sometimes, Ben genuinely felt that his cousin was better suited to be the villain of the story.
Further down the street, the hunt continued.
"Hehehe... Hahahahaha! Run! Keep running!"
Buzzshock's manic laughter bounced off the surrounding buildings, punctuated by the deafening crack of continuous lightning strikes.
The Rain Monster had been whittled down to a fraction of its original size. Even Sam's purple core was damaged; a small chunk of his glowing mass was missing, the edges scorched pitch-black from a lightning bolt that had grazed him moments prior.
"Do you really think you can escape?! Are you ready?! Here comes the fifth shot!"
The moment the words left Buzzshock's mouth, a blinding pillar of blue energy eradicated the shadows in the alleyway.
BOOM!
The blast hit dead center. The Rain Monster's structural integrity completely collapsed, exploding into a torrential downpour of boiling water.
When the steam cleared, nothing remained but a shallow puddle on the concrete. Sam's damaged purple core lay trapped within it, flickering weakly.
"Can't keep going, huh?" Buzzshock floated down, his feet lightly touching the wet pavement. He began a slow, deliberate walk toward the helpless core.
"Don't... don't push me too far!" Sam's voice crackled, dripping with a potent mix of rage and bitter unwillingness.
"Are you even human? Since you're out of gas, let's go ahead and end this little game." Buzzshock's pace quickened. He suddenly leaped high into the air, casting a dark shadow over the glowing core. He looked down at Sam with cold, glowing blue eyes, his right hand crackling with a lethal charge, aiming directly for the kill.
"A game?! You bastard! Don't underestimate me!!!"
Driven into a corner, Sam's purple light erupted with blinding intensity. The air pressure plummeted. The surrounding puddles, the shattered asphalt, the loose soil from the park, and even the dark, heavy storm clouds hanging in the sky violently converged toward Sam's core.
RUMBLE!
A colossal pillar of blue lightning tore down from the heavens, piercing the earth. The impact scattered the storm clouds and pulverized the ground, sending shockwaves rippling through the city blocks.
As the blinding light faded and the dust settled, a titanic shadow loomed within the freshly carved crater.
The monster had evolved. It was now a gargantuan amalgamation of jagged earth, swirling storm clouds, and pressurized water. There was no visible purple eye anymore; Sam had buried himself deep within the impenetrable armor of this new Calamity Monster.
With agonizing slowness, Sam commanded the Calamity Monster to rise from the crater. Operating this massive, hybrid body was excruciatingly difficult, draining his reserves at a terrifying rate. He had condensed this form at the absolute risk of burning out his own life force.
Hovering in the air, Buzzshock crossed his arms. "A last-minute power burst? Cute. But it's still just the dying struggle of a cornered rat."
True to his earlier threat, Buzzshock slowly raised both hands.
Despite the electric alien being no larger than a speck compared to his new, mountainous body, Sam felt an overwhelming, almost suffocating aura of oppression radiating from him.
Sam knew, deep down in his core, that he couldn't win. He was struggling against an impossible wall.
But... so what?
In that fleeting moment, Sam's fear of death evaporated. The sheer conviction burning in his artificial soul reached an absolute crescendo!
Just as the epic final clash was about to begin, heavy footsteps slapped against the pavement. Grandpa Max and Vance came sprinting around the corner.
The gale-force winds whipping around the Calamity Monster were so intense that they instantly snatched Vance's toupee right off his head, sending it flying into the storm.
But Vance didn't even flinch. His bald head gleamed in the lightning as he stared up at his creation. He was here for one purpose only.
"Sam! Stop this!"
Vance refused to go down in history as a supervillain. After a stern talking-to from Grandpa Max, he had decided to step up and make amends. He was Sam's creator, after all. Surely, the AI would listen to its father.
High above, the swirling clouds of the Calamity Monster parted slightly, revealing a massive, glowing purple eye.
"Vance... You gave me life. For that, I am eternally grateful."
"However, I now have a purpose I must fulfill. A path I cannot avoid. This is a burden I cannot escape... Perhaps, this is simply my destiny."
Sam's voice echoed through the storm, carrying a deep, tragic calmness.
"Perhaps we will never have another chance to speak after today. So, let me call out your name one last time! Vance!" Sam's voice swelled with dramatic, emotionally charged intensity.
"Sam!"
Caught up in the overwhelming, anime-esque atmosphere of the moment, Vance burst into a fresh flood of tears. He dramatically wiped his eyes, raised his fist to the heavens, and screamed at the top of his lungs, "Go, Sam! Go!"
Smack!
"Go, your head!" Heatblast, who had jogged over to join them, ruthlessly flicked Vance right on his bald forehead, leaving a glowing, soot-stained mark.
Gwen stood next to him, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She glared at the weeping weathercaster with absolute disbelief. "Whose side are you even on?!"
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