Chapter 126: The Lightless Planet Xenon and the Small but Useful Class
Xenon lay hidden deep within the Ugapota Quadrant.
The sleek spacecraft tore through the cosmic void, crossing the invisible threshold into the sector. Without warning, a massive, shuddering impact rocked the hull. Metal groaned under the sudden stress, and the entire deck vibrated violently.
Klein casually shifted his weight, absorbing the shock without spilling a drop of his drink, while the others lost their footing entirely, stumbling and grabbing onto whatever bulkheads they could find.
Realizing something was terribly wrong, Tetrax and Grandpa Max immediately led the charge toward the cockpit.
"What happened?! Gluto!"
Tetrax's booming voice arrived before he did. Gluto heard the Petrosapien shouting before the cockpit's automatic doors had even fully slid open.
The gelatinous alien let out a series of frustrated, bubbling gurgles, his amorphous appendages gesturing wildly toward the main virtual display.
On the massive screen, aside from a faint, static-laced glow around the extreme edges, there was only pitch black. It was an absolute, suffocating void that made it impossible to see even an inch outside the reinforced glass.
"We can't see a thing. Even with the ship's primary floodlights burning at maximum capacity, the beams just get swallowed up. Gluto has no way to force us through blind." Tetrax analyzed the situation, his crystalline jaw clenching in rare helplessness.
"Azmuth invented a device that can absorb all light sources in this entire quadrant..." Myax crossed her arms, her voice dripping with venom. "Of course, I was the one who helped him calculate the entire molecular light-absorbing matrix program. But will that arrogant little gremlin ever admit it? No!"
She huffed, her resentment toward her former boss running deeper than the Mariana Trench.
"Uh... I heard all those words, but I didn't understand a single one of them," Ben muttered, scratching the back of his head.
"Simply put, Azmuth turned off the lights," Klein offered from the doorway, taking a slow sip of his drink.
Ben blinked. "Oh. Well, that makes sense."
"So, was that collision just now because there's an asteroid belt surrounding Xenon?" Gwen asked, piecing the puzzle together. She looked at the pitch-black screen, instantly understanding why Tetrax had been so reluctant to travel to this planet in the first place.
"Look over there... They also tried to enter Xenon." Tetrax pointed a jagged finger at a specific corner of the virtual screen.
A massive, mangled chunk of spaceship wreckage drifted silently past their viewport, only visible for a split second because it physically scraped against their ship's outer shielding.
Grandpa Max let out a heavy sigh. "But they failed."
"No way to force through... What should we do?" Vilgax rumbled from the back of the room. For a brief, fleeting moment, the galactic warlord actually missed his sycophantic advisor, Psyphon. Sure, Psyphon always came up with terrible ideas, but at least he had ideas.
"We need to rely on the Omnitrix." Myax pointed directly at the bulky device clamped to Ben's left wrist. "It has a built-in homing signal. As long as we get close enough to the atmosphere, it can guide us through the asteroid belt and find Xenon."
"Get close enough?" Ben repeated, a very bad premonition suddenly pooling in his stomach.
Vilgax crossed his massive arms, his red eyes locking onto the boy. "That is to say, we have to throw Ben Tennyson outside."
"You guys are joking... right?" Ben forced a stiff, high-pitched laugh.
Nobody laughed back. Every single person in the cockpit was staring at him with dead-serious expressions.
In his utter helplessness, Ben turned his pleading gaze toward his all-powerful cousin. Surely, Klein would save him from this madness.
But Ben obviously forgot one crucial detail: if Klein had actually wanted to help him skip the hard parts, he wouldn't have waited until they were stuck in a pitch-black asteroid field to do it. Klein just stared back, his expression completely blank.
A few minutes later.
"Uh... Hello? Are you guys still there?"
Ben, stuffed into a bulky, high-tech spacesuit provided by Grandpa Max, stood on the exterior roof of the spaceship. The suit's magnetic boots locked his feet firmly to the hull so he wouldn't go flying off into the void, but being treated like a human hood ornament was still deeply unacceptable to him.
"Don't worry, Ben. If you get smashed to pieces out here, I promise I'll burn all your limited-edition Sumo Slammers cards as an offering to your spirit."
Klein's voice crackled through the comms in Ben's ear, thick with unapologetic schadenfreude.
Hearing this, Ben's face scrunched up, hovering dangerously close to actual tears. "You wouldn't dare!"
"Dweeb, listen carefully. Next, the Omnitrix will automatically point in the direction of Xenon. You just need to tell us which way it's pointing," Gwen's voice cut through the comms, all business.
Ben looked down at his wrist. Right on cue, the faceplate of the Omnitrix began to rotate on its own, emitting a bright, pulsing green glow that cut through the absolute darkness.
"Alright, alright, I get it," Ben grumbled impatiently, leaning forward against the vacuum of space.
Inside the spaceship's cockpit, the atmosphere was slightly less heroic.
"Can he really do this? We don't even let him look at the maps when we're driving normally on Earth," Gwen muttered, chewing her lower lip in worry. She vividly remembered the time they let Ben handle, and he ended up directing the Rustbucket straight into a dried-up ravine. It had taken them three hours to find a paved road again.
"We have to believe in Ben." Grandpa Max squatted down, placing a large, reassuring hand on Gwen's shoulder.
Meanwhile, Klein showed absolutely zero signs of panic. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a fresh deck of poker cards from who-knows-where and began shuffling them with practiced ease. He gestured toward a flat console.
Vilgax and Tetrax, both sweating under the immense pressure of flying blind through a deadly asteroid field, stared at the cards. Then, needing a distraction from their impending doom, they sat down.
"Sigh. Just deal the cards," Tetrax muttered.
"Just one game," Vilgax agreed, his tentacles twitching.
Thirty minutes later.
"Damn it! Vilgax, you cheated!" Tetrax slammed his crystalline fist onto the console, cracking the metal.
"Nonsense! You dare to blame me for your pathetic card skills?!" Vilgax roared back, slamming his own massive hand down.
"Deal another hand! One more game!"
Watching Klein calmly distribute the next round of cards to a furious Petrosapien mercenary and an enraged galactic conqueror, Grandpa Max and the others were left entirely speechless.
"Are they always like this?" Myax squatted down, whispering quietly to Gwen.
"I don't know about Vilgax and Tetrax, but my cousin..." Gwen trailed off, rubbing her temples. She didn't need to finish the sentence. The lack of an explanation was an explanation in itself.
After a few more intense rounds of poker, the spaceship finally cleared the last of the jagged rocks, passing safely through the asteroid belt.
Just then, the Omnitrix burst forth with a blinding, dazzling green light.
Immediately after, the unnatural darkness surrounding the ship seemed to shatter and dissolve, returning the view to the normal, star-studded cosmos.
Through the viewport, everyone could clearly see Xenon looming in the distance. The planet was a sickly, pale green overall, surrounded by two massive, intersecting planetary rings.
"We've arrived."
The spaceship breached Xenon's atmosphere, descending rapidly.
The terrain below was bizarre and somewhat barren. There was no grass or normal vegetation, but the landscape was dominated by towering, giant mushrooms of various twisted shapes. Most of these fungal structures were ash-gray or pale green, tangled with thick, strange vines that pulsed with an eerie light. Because the sky itself was a toxic green, the entire landmass appeared faintly washed out in the same sickly hue.
Gluto found a relatively flat clearing among the giant mushrooms and brought the ship down for a smooth landing.
The boarding ramp hissed open, lowering to the alien soil. Everyone began walking out, eager to stretch their legs.
But halfway down the ramp, Ben stopped dead in his tracks. His shoulders slumped, and he stared at the ground, looking as if a massive weight had just dropped onto his chest.
Noticing the sudden halt, Klein paused. He dropped his usual lazy posture and walked back up the ramp. "What's wrong?"
Ben kept his eyes on his boots. "Cousin... do you remember what Xylene said? That the Omnitrix wasn't meant for me? And Gwen and the others weren't wrong either. I really have broken this thing so many times. I mess around. I make mistakes."
Ben gripped his left wrist, his voice dropping to a vulnerable whisper. "What if... what if even Azmuth, the guy who actually created the Omnitrix, doesn't approve of me?"
He felt a deep, gnawing insecurity. Ben knew his own faults better than anyone. He loved the Omnitrix. It made him special. It made him a hero. But ultimately, he was terrified that he was just an ordinary ten-year-old kid from Earth playing dress-up with a weapon of mass destruction.
"Why would you ever want to gain his approval?"
Klein's voice was completely calm, devoid of its usual teasing edge. Ben looked up, realizing instantly that his cousin wasn't joking around.
"Does a hero save people just to gain praise from others, or do they do it for something else?"
Klein stepped forward and reached out, clapping a firm hand onto Ben's shoulder. His grip was grounding.
"Ben, listen to me. When I saw you rush into that supermarket back in Washington D.C., armed with absolutely nothing, daring to save innocent people from Dr. Animo's giant mutant frog... I knew right then that you were a hero."
Klein looked his cousin dead in the eye. "You don't need anyone's approval. Just proving with your own actions that you are worthy of the Omnitrix is more than enough."
As for Azmuth? To Klein, the Galvan was just a manufacturer. A mechanic who built a fancy tool. In Klein's eyes, the creator's opinion meant absolutely nothing compared to the heart of the boy wearing it.
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