Chapter 139: Stealing a Wedding? Have You Asked Me?
The clatter of fine silver and shattered porcelain echoed through the banquet hall. Knives, forks, bowls, and plates cascaded to the floor in a chaotic chorus as the elegant reception descended into madness.
The head chef, who had been quietly managing the buffet just moments ago, suddenly sprinted into the center of the room. His face was twisted in rage. "Camille! I won't stand by and watch you marry that hateful Earthling!"
'Crashing the wedding?'Klein raised an eyebrow from his spot near the dessert table.'Interesting... No, wait. Getting out of the blast zone is the priority.'
Taking full advantage of the crowd's shock, Klein quietly slipped away, melting into the background shadows.
A guttural roar ripped from the chef's throat. His human disguise melted away, his flesh dissolving into a bubbling, viscous mass of acidic green slime. He had transformed into a Polymorph.
Camille gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. "He's my ex-boyfriend! How did he even find out about the wedding?!"
Watching from his safe vantage point, Klein had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop from laughing out loud. He shot a highly amused glance toward Gordon. 'Good heavens, so you're the third wheel in this drama.'After all, if Gordon hadn't swooped in, how would the ex-boyfriend have become an'ex' in the first place?
The jilted slime monster thrashed wildly, his gelatinous limbs expanding to smash the beautifully decorated tables and ice sculptures around him.
"That must be the thing that attacked me earlier!" Ben hissed. Seeing the Polymorph rampaging, the Dweeb's eyes lit up with the promise of payback. He didn't hesitate, diving straight under a draped banquet table.
A second later, a brilliant, blinding flash of emerald light bled through the white tablecloth.
By now, the ex-boyfriend had stretched out a massive, muddy tendril of slime, wrapping it tightly around Gordon and hoisting him into the air.
"We don't have our gear!" one of the older Plumbers shouted. "We're sitting ducks!"
Gordon's family could only watch in absolute panic, their hands empty of any Plumber tech.
"If I can't have Camille, neither can you!" the ex-boyfriend bellowed, his voice bubbling with acidic rage. "You stinky Earthling!"
The slime tightened, preparing to crush Gordon's ribs.
A volley of razor-sharp crystal shards sliced through the air, cleanly severing the ex-boyfriend's extended slime arm. Gordon plummeted to the floor, gasping for breath as the severed sludge splattered harmlessly beside him.
The ex-boyfriend whipped his amorphous head around. Standing amidst the ruined tables was Diamondhead, his right arm still raised and smoking slightly from the volley.
"Get lost! You overgrown booger!" Diamondhead growled. The Petrosapien's tone was laced with pure venom; he was clearly out for blood.
"A Petrosapien?" The ex-boyfriend's glowing eyes narrowed. Recognizing the threat, he decided to gauge the newcomer's allegiance first. "What are you doing here?!"
"I'm with the groom," Diamondhead stated bluntly.
The groom's side?!
"Then you're dead meat!" the ex-boyfriend roared, swinging his reformed, massive sludge fist directly at the crystal alien.
Diamondhead threw himself into a tight roll, dodging the heavy, wet impact that shattered the floor tiles where he had just stood. Popping back up, he morphed his right arm into a crystalline cannon and unleashed a relentless barrage of diamond shards.
The projectiles struck dead center, piercing the ex-boyfriend's chest. But instead of drawing blood or causing damage, the sharp crystals simply sank into the viscous, muddy body with a series of dull, wet thuds, completely absorbed by the slime.
Diamondhead stared at his own hands. "Uh oh."
He had definitely picked the wrong alien for this matchup.
Seizing the moment of hesitation, the ex-boyfriend lashed out. His right arm elongated like a whip, the heavy sludge wrapping securely around Diamondhead's crystalline torso.
With a violent heave, the Polymorph launched Diamondhead across the room. The Petrosapien was sent flying like a ragdoll, smashing straight through three solid stone pillars and blasting a hole through the far wall before finally tumbling into the estate's indoor hot spring room.
Instead of pressing the advantage and chasing Ben down, the ex-boyfriend immediately pivoted back to his original target. He lunged straight for Gordon, his body expanding into a tidal wave of suffocating mud.
Before the slime could make contact, a sudden, bone-piercing blast of arctic air swept through the hall.
The temperature plummeted in a fraction of a second. The ex-boyfriend, caught entirely in mid-air, was instantly flash-frozen into a solid, grotesque ice sculpture.
"Want to crash the wedding?" a chilling, ethereal voice echoed from above. "Did you bother asking me first?"
Hovering near the vaulted ceiling, Big Chill exhaled a wispy cloud of frost, his moth-like wings folded like a dark cloak around his skeletal frame.
"A Necrofriggian?!" Gordon gasped, staring up at the icy phantom in sheer disbelief. "What in the world is going on here?!"
"Come at me again! I can do this all day!"
A loud crash echoed from the broken wall as Diamondhead leaped out of the hot spring room, fists raised and ready for a brutal round two.
He had been waiting in ambush inside the steam room for entirely too long, but the ex-boyfriend had never followed him in. Frustrated, he had no choice but to charge back out.
Diamondhead aggressively scanned the ruined hall. He spotted the frozen, suspended ice sculpture of the ex-boyfriend. Then, his gaze drifted up to Big Chill floating lazily near the ceiling.
His crystalline shoulders slumped. "It's over already?"
Big Chill didn't even bother replying. He simply phased straight through the ceiling, disappearing into the night sky.
The remaining guests, still trembling from the chaos, slowly turned their collective gaze toward Diamondhead. The silence in the room was deafening.
"Oh, man. This is so annoying," Diamondhead muttered. Turning on his heel, he sprinted back through the hole in the wall and vanished into the darkness.
Later that night, outside the mansion.
The air was thick with tension as the two families argued fiercely on the manicured lawn.
"We absolutely cannot cancel the wedding!"
"Are you crazy? What if more aliens attack?!"
Gordon's Plumber relatives and Camille's family were locked in a bitter stalemate.
Fanny Jean stepped forward, her expression tight. "At the very least, you have to let us bring our Plumber tools to the ceremony."
"No! Absolutely no weapons allowed!" Gordon waved his hands aggressively, shutting the suggestion down. "This is a wedding, not a warzone!"
"Relax," a calm voice cut through the bickering.
Klein leaned against a nearby stone column, his arms crossed over his chest. "I already called in my subordinates. Tomorrow, my people will lock this place down and keep watch."
The adults exchanged skeptical glances. Aside from Ben and Gwen, everyone else assumed these 'subordinates' were just neighborhood kids Klein played pretend with. After all, who in their right mind would believe a teenager had a private security force capable of handling alien threats?
Ben and Gwen, however, knew better.
Gwen sidled up to Klein and poked him curiously in the ribs. "Cousin, who exactly did you call?"
Klein offered a mysterious, razor-thin smile. "You'll see tomorrow."
Later, inside the Rustbucket.
"Cousin, I've studied square dancing for three years," Gwen offered, pulling out a pair of boots. "I can teach you."
Gwen wasn't the type to get petty or jealous over every little thing; she honestly wouldn't mind if Klein danced with the other guests. But she absolutely refused to let him embarrass himself on the dance floor just because he didn't know the steps.
More, she secretly wanted to share a dance with him herself.
Naturally, Klein didn't refuse. He was more than happy to learn a few steps if it meant avoiding the massive headache of dealing with memory erasure protocols later.
The next morning brought bright, cloudless skies.
Sunlight sparkled across the gentle river surrounding the outdoor wedding venue, where several white swans glided peacefully over the rippling water.
"The venue is fully prepped."
"The pastor has arrived."
"Everything is ready to go!"
The staff and families were buzzing with nervous energy, rushing around to finalize the details.
Everyone was busy—except for Klein.
He stood casually on a grassy knoll a short distance from the altar, his hands in his pockets, staring up at the clear blue sky.
Gwen and Lucy stood flanking him. Lucy, practically vibrating with energy, kept firing off a rapid stream of curious questions.
Klein barely registered her, offering noncommittal grunts of agreement while occasionally tapping the faceplate of the Another Omnitrix to check the time.
Suddenly, his eyes locked onto a speck in the clouds. "They're here."
Lucy blinked, looking up in confusion. "What's here?"
A violent, roaring gale swept down from the heavens, flattening the manicured grass and whipping the guests' hair into a frenzy.
Everyone shielded their eyes and looked up. A massive, heavily armored spacecraft was slowly descending from the atmosphere, blotting out the sun.
Someone pointed a trembling finger at the ship's open cargo bay. "Look! What is that?!"
A colossal dark shadow plummeted from the ship.
With an devastating crash, the figure slammed into the ground just a few yards away from Klein, kicking up a massive cloud of dirt and pulverized rock.
Klein lazily raised a hand to wave away the dust. "Nice. I always appreciate a dramatic entrance."
As the smoke slowly cleared, the terrifying, towering silhouette of a galactic warlord was revealed to the crowd.
"Vilgax?!"
"How the hell is Vilgax here?!"
"We don't have our weapons! We're doomed!"
Total pandemonium erupted. Guests screamed, knocking over white folding chairs as they scrambled away from the altar.
"What are you all panicking for?!"
An entirely out-of-place, exasperated voice cut through the screaming.
The crowd froze, turning to see Klein casually strolling straight toward the dreaded conqueror of ten worlds.
Lucy gasped and reached out to grab his shirt, trying to pull him back from certain death. But Gwen, who had already pieced the puzzle together, gently caught Lucy's wrist and held her back.
Vilgax stood at his full, imposing height. He ignored the terrified crowd entirely, his glowing red eyes fixed solely on the teenager approaching him. "I am not late, am I?"
"Almost," Klein smirked. "A few more minutes and I would've turned you into a flower arrangement."
Without missing a beat, Klein reached out and casually patted Vilgax's massive, armored calf.
Holy cow! Is he insane?!
The sheer audacity of the gesture sent a collective shockwave through the wedding guests. Their jaws practically hit the grass.
"I have arrived!"
Suddenly, a massive Tetramand leaped out from the nearby tree line, landing with a heavy thud that shook the ground.
"How did a Tetramand get here too?!" Gordon clutched his chest. He had always imagined he would die in the line of duty on some distant battlefield, but he had never, in his wildest nightmares, imagined dying at a wedding.
"Relax, everyone. These two are my subordinates," Klein announced, waving a hand dismissively at the terrified Plumbers as if they were overreacting to a spilled drink. "Allow me to introduce my left and right hands. My personal enforcers!"
Right on cue, Vilgax and the Tetramand crossed their arms and flexed their massive, terrifying muscles in perfect synchronization.
Klein turned to face the crowd, crossing his own arms with a supreme, arrogant smirk. "Now, let's see who dares to ruin the wedding today!"
The entire venue fell into a stunned, suffocating silence.
"..."
Finally, an older Plumber broke the quiet, his voice trembling. "Kid... if you were this awesome the whole time, why didn't you just tell us?"
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