Chapter 138: Almost Killed as an Alien Monster
Ben took one look at the approaching threat. Realizing the people driving the truck were clearly the bad guys, a wide, playful grin stretched across his face. He didn't hesitate. Sprinting straight toward the speeding vehicle, he slammed his hand down on the Omnitrix dial.
A brilliant flash of emerald light erupted, illuminating the area. In Ben's place stood the bulky, armor-plated form of Cannonbolt. Tucking himself into a tight sphere, he revved up and shot forward like a bowling ball from hell.
The rogue truck was barreling dangerously close to the outdoor wedding venue. Tires squealed against the dirt, but Cannonbolt was faster. He intercepted the heavy vehicle with the force of a runaway freight train, slamming directly into its front grill. The impact was deafening. Metal crumpled, glass shattered, and the entire truck was obliterated in an instant, erupting into a massive fireball.
"Oh yeah!" Cannonbolt cheered, uncurling from his armored ball. "I am terrifyingly awesome!"
As the thick black smoke began to clear, the bulky alien could be seen doing a ridiculous victory dance right on top of the smoldering wreckage. He pumped his heavy claws in the air, completely caught up in his own hype.
However, the intense heat radiating against his thick hide and the loud crackle of burning wood quickly snapped him out of his celebration. Cannonbolt slowly turned his massive head, his celebratory grin melting into a grimace.
"Uh oh."
The explosion had sent flaming debris everywhere. The pristine wedding venue was now a blazing inferno. Elegant white ribbons and floral arrangements were rapidly turning to ash.
Panic set in. Cannonbolt waddled over to a burning chair, puffing out his cheeks and blowing frantically in an attempt to extinguish the flames. Instead, the gust of air only fed the fire, making it flare up twice as high.
Desperate, he curled back into a ball and began rolling wildly over the burning furniture, hoping to smother the flames with his armored shell. Wood splintered and snapped under his immense weight. When he finally uncurled, the fire was still raging, and now the beautiful seating arrangement was reduced to a pile of burning kindling.
"Completely useless!" he groaned, slapping his forehead. "I need water! Lots and lots of water!"
Just as the words left his mouth, a lightbulb went off in his head. He glanced past the burning wreckage and spotted the wide, rushing river that bordered the edge of the venue.
Without missing a beat, Cannonbolt tucked himself back into a sphere. He revved his momentum to the absolute maximum, tearing up the grass as he launched himself off the riverbank and high into the air.
"Depth charge coming!" he bellowed, plummeting straight down.
He struck the water's surface like a meteor. The sheer kinetic force of his impact displaced tons of river water, sending a colossal tidal wave rocketing into the sky. The massive column of water hung in the air for a split second before crashing down over the entire venue in a torrential, artificial rainstorm.
The deluge soaked the grass, drenched the remaining decorations, and hissed loudly as it smothered every last ember. The raging fire was completely extinguished.
Dripping wet and panting heavily, Cannonbolt dragged his bulky frame toward the muddy riverbank. His heavy claws dug into the soil as he hauled himself up. But before he could even catch his breath, the distinct, high-pitched hum of charging energy weapons echoed in his ears.
He looked up to find two high-tech laser rifles aimed squarely at his face.
"Oh my," Cannonbolt quipped, raising his heavy arms defensively. "The lifeguards around here look awfully familiar."
Squinting through the dripping water, he recognized the shooters. It was Gordon and his wife, Betty—the groom's parents.
"An Arburian Pelarota," Gordon stated, his voice cold and clinical as he identified the alien species.
"Alien wedding wrecker!" Betty snapped, her finger tightening on the trigger. "Speak! Who sent you?!"
The older couple stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their eyes narrowed with lethal intent. They looked entirely prepared to blast him into glowing green ash without a second thought.
"Whoa, hey! No one sent me! I swear!" Cannonbolt waved his massive claws frantically, trying to look as harmless as a giant armored bowling ball possibly could. "I didn't even want to come to this stupid wedding in the first place!"
Naturally, a massive explosion followed by a localized tsunami tended to draw a crowd. Gordon and Betty were no longer the only ones on the scene.
"What happened?!" Joel, the groom, shouted as he sprinted toward the riverbank.
Right behind him came Grandpa Max, Gwen, and Klein, all rushing through the soggy grass to see what had caused the disaster.
Gordon didn't lower his weapon. He shot a hard glare at Joel while keeping the barrel fixed on the alien. "This alien tried to ruin your wedding!"
"I was just saving this wedding!" Cannonbolt protested loudly. He absolutely refused to take the blame for this mess. He had just put out a fire, for crying out loud!
"Uh... what he said actually seems to be true," Grandpa Max interjected. He scratched the back of his neck, his eyes darting up and to the left as he tried to defuse the situation with an awkward, forced chuckle.
"No matter what, we'd best not take any chances," Betty replied coldly, completely ignoring Max's attempt to smooth things over. She wasn't about to give the old man any face.
Gordon remained silent, but the rising whine of his energy gun charging to maximum power made his stance perfectly clear.
Seeing that Ben was seconds away from becoming target practice, Klein let out a quiet sigh. He shifted his gaze to Gwen. Catching his eye, she gave a subtle, knowing nod.
Her hands moved in a fluid motion as she softly chanted an incantation. Almost instantly, a dense, unnatural fog rolled in from the river, rapidly expanding to blanket the entire riverbank in a thick, blinding white haze.
"Shoot! Quickly! He's going to get away!" Betty yelled.
Gordon and Betty opened fire, sending a barrage of searing red energy bolts tearing through the mist. The blasts hissed as they struck the muddy ground and vaporized the river water. But by the time the magical fog finally dissipated, the riverbank was completely empty. They hadn't even managed to singe a passing bird.
Joel stormed forward, his face flushed with anger. He grabbed the barrel of his father's rifle and forced it toward the ground. "Put that thing away! This is a wedding, Dad! Not a shooting range!"
"But that thing is still out there," Gordon argued, his grip tightening on the stock. He clearly wasn't ready to let the matter drop.
"That doesn't matter!" Joel snapped, entirely out of patience for his family's militant paranoia. "You are going to guarantee me right now that for the rest of this weekend, you won't bring a single weapon into this venue. Do you understand?"
Meanwhile, on the far side of the estate.
Cannonbolt, having successfully rolled away under the cover of Gwen's fog, was catching his breath in the shadows. Suddenly, a squelching sound caught his attention. He peeked around a corner and spotted a grotesque, shifting mass of purple sludge slithering away into the darkness.
Curiosity overriding his exhaustion, he quietly trailed the mud monster. He rolled past the splintered remains of a double-leaf wooden gate, handling between two flickering streetlights. He eventually reached a large flowerbed near the back door of the catering restaurant.
He stopped and uncurled, scanning the area. The squelching had stopped. There was no sign of the sludge creature anywhere.
"Huh? Where did he go?" Cannonbolt muttered, scratching his armored head in confusion. The alley was dead silent.
He glanced down at the pavement. His eyes widened. A long, unnatural silhouette was stretching out from within his own shadow, rising up behind him.
Realizing the ambush a split second before it hit, Cannonbolt threw his massive weight forward, curling into a tight ball and rolling out of the way. A massive, heavy hand made of dense purple sludge slammed into the concrete right where he had been standing, cracking the pavement.
Using his momentum, Cannonbolt bounced off a nearby wall and ricocheted straight toward the mud monster, ready to flatten the creature.
But as luck would have it, a sharp, high-pitched beeping echoed through the alley. The Omnitrix symbol on his chest began flashing a bright, warning red.
The familiar sound caused him to hesitate for just a fraction of a second. It was all the opening the creature needed. The mud monster swung a massive, gelatinous arm, slapping the alien mid-air with the force of a wrecking ball.
A blinding flash of red light engulfed him. Cannonbolt reverted back into Ben just as he was sent flying backward. The boy crashed hard into the damp grass, groaning as the wind was knocked out of his lungs.
By the time Ben managed to push himself up on his elbows, the mud monster was already gone, having squeezed its amorphous body down through the grates of a nearby sewer manhole.
Later, back inside the safety of the Rustbucket.
Grandpa Max tossed a dry towel over Ben's head, violently rubbing the boy's damp hair.
"I suppose I forgot to mention a few details," Max sighed, leaning against the counter. "The groom's parents, Gordon and Betty, are retired Plumbers. And the bride's family... well, they're all aliens."
Max finally began to explain the bizarre situation and exactly why a seemingly normal older couple was packing military-grade energy rifles.
"Aliens?" Gwen frowned, pulling her knees to her chest on the sofa. "They don't look like aliens."
She was genuinely confused. Her own grandmother, Verdona, had always appeared in her pure energy Anodite form when revealing her true self. Gwen had assumed that her own ability to look human was strictly because she was half-human. The idea that a full-blooded alien could perfectly mimic a human form without a disguise was new to her.
"That's because they're shapeshifters," Max explained, his expression turning serious. "They wear human skin as a disguise. But in reality, they belong to one of the fiercest, most brutal, and bloodiest alien species in the entire galaxy."
Max picked up a glass of water, taking a slow sip before continuing. "They are Lenopans—often called Sludgepuppies. They've been the hereditary enemies of the Plumbers for generations. It was a blood feud. But a few years ago, Joel and Camille met. They fell in love, and their relationship actually managed to promote a fragile peace, forcing a truce between the two sides."
Klein, who had been leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed, raised an eyebrow. "Two mutually hostile, blood-feuding families producing a pair of star-crossed lovers? Doesn't that sound a little too much like Romeo and Juliet?" he drawled, unable to resist pointing out the cliché.
"Don't interrupt," Max chided gently. He set his glass down. "This is the first wedding between a human and a Lenopan in recorded history. If everything goes smoothly, it might finally put an end to decades of hatred and bloodshed."
"Yeah, well, it seems like someone out there really doesn't want it to end," Ben muttered from under his towel, recounting his brief brawl with the mud monster in the alleyway.
Max nodded grimly, his jaw tightening. "Then we'd best stay vigilant. I have a very bad feeling that the trouble around here has only just begun."
Later that evening, during the rehearsal dinner.
The seating arrangements were strictly divided. The adults sat at a large, formal table near the front. The atmosphere between Gordon and Betty and Camille's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mann, was thick enough to cut with a knife. Every polite smile looked strained, and every passing comment carried a heavy, unspoken tension.
Over at the children's table, Klein, Ben, and Gwen were finally introduced to Camille's cousin, Lucy.
She was a strikingly pretty and overwhelmingly enthusiastic girl with long, flowing blonde hair and large, expressive pinkish-purple eyes. Honestly, out of all the girls Klein had encountered since arriving in this universe, Lucy easily ranked in the top three. The only reason it was a contest at all was simply because Klein had crossed paths with some genuinely beautiful girls—Gwen, Charmcaster, and Sunny were all tough competition in their own right.
The only issue was that Lucy's energy levels were absolutely off the charts. She was practically vibrating in her seat.
"I am just so excited to be a flower girl!" Lucy squealed, throwing her hands up in the air. She suddenly leaned across the table, locking her bright eyes directly onto Klein. "Do you know we get to dance in front of everyone later? Isn't that just the greatest?!"
If you want, I can absolutely let you dance alone, Klein thought dryly.
Before his transmigration, Klein had never danced a day in his life. He had zero rhythm and two left feet. If he ever actually stepped onto a dance floor, it would only be out of sheer, shameless audacity. Still, he kept his mouth shut. Voicing that thought aloud in the middle of a wedding dinner would be incredibly rude.
Unfortunately for him, his naturally striking, almost sinfully handsome face was already doing the talking. Its inherent charm was working overtime. Lucy seemed completely captivated just looking at him, her cheeks flushed with excitement.
Driven by a sudden burst of courage, Lucy stood up and boldly asked Klein if he would share the first dance with her.
Klein blinked, his calm facade cracking for a fraction of a second.
"Uh... well, about that..." He cleared his throat, his mind racing for an excuse. "Oh, right. My cousin broke a chair earlier today. I actually need to go back to the RV and beat him up for it. So, I'll be taking my leave first."
Without waiting for a response, Klein immediately pushed his chair back and stood up. He had no intention of making a fool of himself on a dance floor.
Besides, he reasoned internally, having to wipe the memories of this many guests just to hide my terrible dancing would be way too much of a hassle.
"But... isn't your cousin sitting right there?" Lucy asked, tilting her head in confusion as she pointed a finger directly at Ben, who was currently stuffing a dinner roll into his mouth.
Klein froze. The table fell completely silent.
Klein slowly turned his head to look at Ben. Ben stopped chewing, staring back at Klein with wide, innocent eyes.
The unspoken communication between the two boys was loud and clear.
Klein's glare: Why are you still here?
Ben's silent, indignant response: Am I not even allowed to eat dinner anymore?!
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