Chapter 185: Bait and Capture
The roaring flames finally died down to a smoldering hiss. Seeing the danger pass, Kevin exhaled a heavy breath and released his grip on the driver. The thick layer of stone armor coating his arms crumbled away, turning back into ordinary flesh.
"Hey! Freak!" a gruff voice barked.
Kevin snapped his head up. His eyes widened. A hulking, red-skinned Tetramand, a Four Arms, stood a few yards away, hoisting a familiar green muscle car high above his head.
"My ride!" Kevin screamed.
The four-armed brute hurled the vehicle straight at him. With no time to dodge and the civilian still right behind him, Kevin planted his boots into the asphalt, bracing his shoulders to catch two tons of flying steel.
"Kevin!" Ben yelled, sprinting across the cracked pavement. He slapped his right hand over his left wrist, fingers hovering over the Omnitrix dial.
Before he could press down, a blur of blue and black streaked across his vision. A Fasttrack zipped in tight circles around him, kicking up a blinding cloud of dust and debris. The sheer velocity whipped the air into a localized tornado. Ben threw his arms over his face, coughing as the gale-force winds lifted his feet right off the ground, sending him tumbling through the air.
Across the street, the impact of the car had done its job. Kevin lay slumped and unconscious, completely defenseless. Manny scooped him up by the collar with one massive hand, dangling him like a ragdoll.
The blue-black blur skidded to a halt, resolving into Helen. She stared at the civilian shivering on the ground, then looked up at Manny. "Did you just see that? He shielded the driver!"
"Who cares!" Manny spat, giving the limp Kevin a rough shake. "One of the monsters is down. This is our shot!"
Without waiting for an argument, Manny spun on his heel and sprinted toward their heavily modified truck parked in the alleyway. Helen bit her lower lip. She glanced back at the recovering civilian, her fingers twitching, before she finally dashed after her partner.
High above the street, Ben flailed against gravity. A glowing platform of pink mana materialized right beneath him, catching him like a soft trampoline. Gwen stood below, her hands glowing with residual Anodite energy.
Heavy, frost-covered footsteps crunched against the pavement. Articguana strolled over at a leisurely pace. A brilliant flash of azure light washed over the reptilian alien, leaving Klein standing in his place, brushing a speck of dust from his sleeve.
"Alright, what exactly is the plan here?" Gwen asked, crossing her arms and tilting her head at him.
She knew her cousin too well. If Klein had actually wanted to intervene, that four-armed meathead would be frozen solid right now. She had deliberately held back her own magic just to avoid ruining whatever scheme Klein was cooking up.
Klein offered a faint, approving smirk. He always appreciated the Dork's tactical restraint. "Simple. We let Kevin play the bait. They drag him back to their little hideout, and then you use your mana to track his energy signature."
He shoved his hands into his pockets, looking down the empty alley. "If my guess is right, those are the same peeping toms who were spying on us back at the sewage treatment plant."
Ben jogged over, rubbing his bruised shoulder. "Is Kevin going to be okay? That guy looked like he hits like a freight train."
"Relax," Klein said, waving a hand in lazy dismissal. "I know my subordinate. If there is one thing Kevin excels at above all else, it is taking a spectacular beating. He will be perfectly fine."
Later, inside the Tennyson residence.
Klein and Gwen sat on the edge of Ben's unmade bed, watching the Dweeb wear a groove into the carpet.
"I just don't get it," Ben muttered, pacing back and forth, gesturing wildly. "One of them was a Fasttrack, and the other was a Four Arms! Those are my old aliens! I mean, sure, Klein can still turn into them, but that obviously wasn't him. It makes zero sense!"
Ben scrubbed a hand over his face. He could not wrap his head around where these knock-off aliens had come from, let alone why they were attacking them unprovoked. And if Klein was right about them stalking the team for days, it meant Kevin was just the unlucky sap who got caught in the crossfire.
"Alright, calm down, Dweeb." Klein stood up, stepping into Ben's path to halt his endless marching. "Why don't we just go knock on their door and ask them directly? That usually clears things up."
Ben blinked. "You mean..."
"I mean it has been long enough. They should be back at their little clubhouse by now." Klein turned his gaze toward the door. "Gwen. Do your thing."
Gwen nodded. She reached over to the desk and picked up a spare leather jacket Kevin had left in the Rustbucket a few days prior. She closed her eyes, letting a soft pink aura bleed from her fingertips into the worn fabric, searching for his specific mana frequency.
It was a stroke of luck that they had the jacket on hand. It meant they didn't have to break into Kevin's rental apartment again. Truthfully, Gwen had zero desire to ever step foot in that place again. After their last visit, her curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she had looked up exactly what those strange pink things scattered around Kevin's room were. The horrifying search results had only cemented her absolute resolve to keep Klein as far away from Kevin's degenerate influence as physically possible.
The pink glow around her hands flared bright, snapping her out of her thoughts. She opened her eyes. "Got him."
Across town, deep within an abandoned industrial sector.
Kevin lounged comfortably on his back, suspended inside a glowing, spherical energy cage. He had his hands tucked behind his head, chewing on a piece of lint. He wasn't sweating the situation. His boss was going to kick the door down eventually. All he had to do was kill time.
Outside his golden bubble, his captors were currently at each other's throats.
"What is wrong with you?!" Manny roared, stomping his heavy boots against the metal floor grates. "We finally caught one! We can take out all four of those monsters at once!"
Kevin cracked one eye open. "Monster?" he echoed, his voice dripping with dry amusement. "I am going to have to stop you right there, pal. I cannot just pretend I didn't hear that. You are a twelve-foot-tall, four-armed crimson freak. How exactly do you have the nerve to call me a monster?"
Manny's lower jaw jutted out. He marched right up to the containment sphere, his four fists clenching tight. "Sounds to me like a piece of alien trash is begging to get his teeth kicked in!"
Kevin sat up, dropping the lazy act. He leaned forward until his nose was a millimeter away from the golden barrier. "If you have got the guts, drop the shield! Let us see who ends up spitting teeth!"
The two glared at each other, their faces separated by nothing but a thin layer of humming energy.
"Quiet!" Helen shouted. She slammed her hands down on a nearby console, her wheels spinning with agitated friction. She glared at both of them. "You two are acting like a pair of elementary school kids fighting over a sandbox!"
Kevin and Manny snapped their heads toward her.
"I am nothing like him!" they yelled in perfect unison.
Realizing what just happened, they slowly turned back to face each other. The glaring intensified, the mutual hatred practically sparking the air between them.
Manny lost his temper completely. He shoved his upper right hand straight through the energy shield. The barrier hissed, but his brute strength allowed him to bypass it. He grabbed a fistful of Kevin's face, pinching his cheeks and yanking hard, fully expecting to tear off a rubber disguise.
"Ow! Hey! Get off!" Kevin yelled, swatting at the massive red fingers.
Since Kevin's face was entirely his own flesh and bone, Manny's violent pulling achieved nothing but stretching the poor guy's cheeks to a comical degree.
"Manny, stop it!" Helen darted forward, grabbing his thick bicep. "That isn't a mask!"
Manny grunted, finally releasing his grip. He turned to Helen, his four arms crossing over his broad chest. "Who cares! He is an alien freak! We should just shove him into the Dustification Laser Cannon and be done with it!"
Kevin rubbed his sore jaw, wincing. "Jerk! That actually hurt... Wait. What cannon?"
Manny sneered. He pointed a thick finger toward the reinforced window. Outside, the heavy back doors of their armored truck were wide open, displaying a massive, high-tech cannon mounted in the bed.
"A decomposition beam," Manny said proudly. "It turns alien trash like you into floating dust."
Kevin followed his finger. He squinted at the heavy machinery, taking in the familiar lens array and containment rings. A laugh bubbled up in his throat.
"That isn't a decomposition beam, you blockhead," Kevin chuckled, thoroughly amused by the sheer ignorance. "That is a Null Void Projector."
"Null what-ifier?" Manny asked, his brow furrowing.
Helen blinked, exchanging a surprised look with her partner. They hadn't expected their prisoner to actually recognize the weapon. When they had scavenged the device, they had absolutely no idea what it was. All they knew was that whenever they fired it at an alien, the target vanished without a trace. Assuming it vaporized them, they had just slapped the name Dustification Laser Cannon on it.
"It probably still has a Plumber serial number stamped on the side," Kevin said, leaning back and giving Manny a smug, pitying look. "It is a museum antique, you giant pig head."
That smug grin was the last straw. Manny let out a furious roar, drew a heavy blaster from his hip, and fired point-blank at the cage.
The red laser blast slammed into the golden energy shield, scattering into harmless sparks. However, the kinetic shockwave rattled the entire sphere, sending Kevin tumbling backward onto the floor.
"Why would you do that?!" Helen yelled, staring at Manny in total disbelief.
"He is driving me crazy!" Manny shouted back, offering the most crude, straightforward excuse he could muster.
Helen shook her head, her expression tightening with doubt. "What if you are wrong, Manny? What if he really isn't an alien?"
The memory of Pierce flashed through her mind. He had voiced the exact same concern before he disappeared. What if they were hunting the wrong people?
But Manny was far too stubborn to entertain the thought. "He has superpowers! He survives getting hit by cars! He has to be an alien!" Manny growled, marching over to a nearby workbench. "I will prove it to you right now!"
He snatched up a battered recording device, the same one that held Pierce's video diaries. Slamming his thumb onto the playback button, Manny projected the holographic screen into the air.
The flickering image of Pierce, his face covered in sharp, hedgehog-like quills, appeared in the center of the room.
"I am still compiling the list of the aliens we have successfully terminated," Pierce's recorded voice echoed off the metal walls.
The video cut to a rapidly shifting montage of blurry combat footage. Different alien species flashed across the screen one by one.
"Ectonurite, Ghostfreak," Pierce's voice narrated. "Piscciss Volann, Ripjaws. Pyronite, Heatblast. Vulpimancer, Wildmutt..."
Inside his cage, Kevin froze. He rubbed his ringing ears, wondering if the blaster shockwave had given him a concussion.
What... what the heck did he just say?
Ghostfreak? Heatblast? Ripjaws?
Kevin stared at the holographic projection, his jaw practically hitting the floor. These amateur kids actually managed to hunt down those kinds of heavy hitters?!
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