Chapter Text
“And what did my mom say to convince you this was a great idea?” Gwen inquired as the Rustbucket pulled up to Ben's school.
“She didn't have to say much, just her and your dad wanting you outside and not in any more classrooms until the school year starts back up again.” He answered easily, slowing down and driving beside the school grounds to figure out where Ben was waiting for them. Gwen had to hold back a snort, seeing the first great image of her summer– Ben, hanging by his tighty whities with some other poor kid hanging beside him all glum.
Okay, she thought, maybe I can enjoy a bit of this summer. Despite everything…
She wasn’t looking forward to her and Ben’s first shared vacation in years and, evidently with the immediate response at seeing her being “What is she doing here?” like Grandpa Max had personally betrayed his trust, neither was Ben. It was going to be a long, long three months camping with the king of doofuses.
And nothing got better when Grandpa Max revealed their first dinner of the summer; a big salad bowl of meal worms and a reheated plate of smoked lamb's tongue. God did she wanna barf…She and Ben just faked a flare up of road sickness making them nauseous, meaning they got out of a plate full of Nasty at the cost of not eating anything. Maybe she could convince Ben to go on a hunger strike with her, that might get them an actual normal meal sometime over the summer and not something only Ben’s dog would eat. Honestly, the dog would probably turn its nose too. Ugh.
“I’m going for a walk.” She decided, but not before calling back to Ben as she got to the tree line. “And don't touch my computer, Ben!”
Ben, who was mid-sneak back into the Rustbucket, froze and gave an utterly unconvincing “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Ben.” Grandpa Max chided.
“Alright,” and he sat on the steps up in a huff, pulling his Gameboy out again to play on that instead.
Gwen really doesn’t know what she wants out of her walk, it ends up hodge podge of wants in retrospect. She wants to avoid Ben, for one, because he’s an annoying little jerk and the more time she isn’t with him the better her summer can get. She doesn’t want to see Grandpa disappointed or worried that she and Ben aren’t eating, cause then she’ll feel bad and her stomach doesn’t need another knot in it on day one. And, really, it's a nice night and there's a wonderful lack of mosquitoes trying to bite at her. The stars look a lot better out here too, she realizes as she looks up, seeing a shooting star pass overhead.
Then the star beelines for her, and she turns on her heel to run away screaming as it slams like an asteroid into the ground just behind her, knocking her forward to fall on her face.
Spitting out a leaf, she looks over her shoulder back at the smoking impact site, sitting up to get a view of the bottom. In it, nestled right in the center, is a weird metal thing that looks like a roly poly all balled up.
Getting closer, standing at the edge now to get a look at the rapidly cooling metal, the scorched dirt crumbles under her feet and sends her sliding into the pit with a surprised yell. Shes only three steps from it if she got up closer to it, which she does, tapping one of the rocks that dislodged from under her to test its hotness before tossing it at the thing in front of her, unwilling to touch the hot metal at that point. The upper half uncurls and opens up to reveal a weird watch, a neon hourglass symbol glowing inside.
“What’s a watch doing in outer space?” she pondered aloud, reaching to pick it up and inspect it. A weird goopy, shifting sound comes from inside the pod-thing, the watch moving like tar with its black strap before jumping up on Gwen's wrist, molding itself to her and clamping down into a snug fit. A yell ripped itself out of her throat again, seeing her through all sorts of panic as she ran stumbling up and out of the crater, calling for her grandpa and more fright as she grabbed a weighty rock mid run o stop and try and bash the watch off her wrist because it definitely wasn't normal. Normal watches don’t just jump on people's wrists!
She braced her arm against a tree trunk and hit it once, and she thought she was knocking it loose when a bit of it popped up, then brought the rock down again, this time harder, only to be blinded by that same neon glow but turned up from Nightlight to Surface of the Sun levels of bright. Every sensation that followed happened so quickly, she could hardly discern when one stopped and another began.
It felt like she was on fire, flung into the sun with how quickly a fever washed over her, and then numb as her skin broke out in rocks, starting at her wrist and travel up and over her entire body before breaking apart and she shot up in height where her skin (and definitely her bones) snapped and shifted like tectonic plates. When the light was gone, she was on fire. Literally! Her head was on fire!
Another yell rang out, this time raspier like her esophagus got cooked into charcoal like the rest of her body. “I’m on fire!” She panicked, despite feeling no pain. “I’m on fire! I’m–” not in pain?
“I’m… fine?” Peering down at her hands, the rocky formations ended at where her wrists would be— or what her wrists are now? — and left her now four-fingered hands as solid, burning fire. Or coagulated lava? “How am I fine?!” She mused incredulously, aloud. Clenching and unclenching her flaming hands into fists and then out again, making sure she was in control of her body, but one time opening her hand yielded a fireball sitting in it, its appearance making her jump in shock, holding her arm far away from her body. She closed that hand again, seeing the fireball shrink and then disappear into her hand like nothing.
“Huh,” opening the hand again, the fireball didn't reappear in her hand, and nothing else happened as she rubbed her fingers together, testing how her weird not-skin hand felt. It had the same pliability as her normal hand, like there were hypothetical muscles and bones inside it, but still near-solid lava.
Thinking too long on it, she snapped out of her thinking as she heard crackling like a fire and back away from the tree, looking up at the source of the sound to see the flame coming off her head and stretching far up had caught the branches on fire and were quickly overtaking the other trees as they climbed over to them.
“That's bad.” She grabbed the branches and broke them off, surprised more than a little that she was tall enough to reach a lot of them now, but the breaking points left behind just lit up too, and any attempt to stamp out the branches she wrenched them down and onto the ground to stomp on. It only succeeded in drying and then setting the grass on fire, making everything worse as Gwen froze up. “That's really bad!”
— — —
“Hey, what’s that?”
Max turned from getting the leftovers packed up and back inside the Rustbucket, which was everything he didn’t eat, at Ben’s questioning, following his gaze to a stream of thick smoke coming from a ways into the forest. He shook his head, “Looks like the start of a forest fire. Probably some darn fool campers playing with stuff they shouldn’t.” He shook his head disapprovingly, heading inside to put the food in the fridge and grab his phone. “I’ll call the rangers and tell them a fire’s getting out of hand.”
While looking for the number in the brochure, Max could spot Ben still sitting outside looking at the smoke. The boy looked on for a moment more, then shot up and ran into the RV, grabbing Max by the arm and immediately started tugging him out the door. “Gwen is still out there!”
Max’s eyes snapped open wide, rushing out with Ben, but grabbing his shirt collar before he could run blindly into the start of a forest fire. “Hey! We have to help!” He protested, trying to wrestle himself out of his grandfather's hold or, failing that, the shirt he was holding him by.
“We’ll be some real help with these.” Handing Ben an extinguisher from the emergency kit and grabbing one for himself, he ran in with his grandson to get his cousin and help put the fire out where they could. “Pull the pin, aim the nozzle, squeeze it while aiming at the fire's base and sweep the area.” If he didn’t say the instructions, he doubted Ben would have read it in the rush into the fire. Precarious as the situation was, he had to keep a cool head on his shoulders and make sure Ben was using his.
Ben rushed in quick, feet carrying him well ahead and snuffing out any fire in his way as he called out for Gwen. Max was slower to the punch, getting the little fires Ben was leaving behind and making sure they stayed that way.
He ended up well ahead, shooting at the fires in his way as he got closer to what seemed to be the real inferno that had been spreading out. He got two, three, and then four more fires before aiming at a short tree that seemed to have gotten the brunt of it— but then the thing shrieked.
“What was–”
“AAHHH!” Ben raised the extinguisher up and hit the rock-person-thing in its shoulder.
“Ow! Watch it, Ben!” It scolded him, head bursting back into flames with it flickering high up with rage.
Confused, he lowered the extinguisher instead of going for another hit. “Gwen?” He asked, and it— Gwen — nodded, “What happened to you; Are you okay?” He asked, tilting his head and leaning to the sides to get a look and try and wrap his head around what happened to her. She looked wicked cool.
“I’m fine, I think. This pod thing fell out of the sky and there was a watch inside it, and when I got close to it it jump onto my wrist and when I was trying to get it off it turned me into this lava-monster and none of it hurt, somehow, but my head had a lot of fire on it and I didn’t realize until it was already burning some of a tree–” In the midst of trying to explain the circumstances of how she’d accidentally caused this massive fire, they both heard Grandpa Max catching up, seeing his granddaughter as some fire-freak and almost twice as big as she was a moment ago and Ben looking up at her in confused awe.
“Ben, are you alri– What in blazes?” Ben managed a snort at the pun, turning to his grandpa.
“Look what Gwen turned into.”
Gwen waved, sheepishly smiling but unaware how much of that was actually shown on her face. “Hey Grandpa.
“Gwen? What happened to you?”
Gwen opened her mouth— does it open still? She can’t really feel whatever is making up her face right now move or shift. — and started reexplaining what happened as she just was with Ben, but then saw him tugging at his collar uncomfortably, overheating standing next to her and stepping away, so she saved her explanation for later. “I’ll tell you in a sec, but first we have to get this fire under control. I can’t put it out, everything I touch just gets reignited again.”
Grandpa Max looked around, thinking before settling on an answer. “Backfire. Start a new fire and let it burn into the old fire. Think you can do that, kid?”
“On it.” And she was running out of the area of the fire, keeping her head low and ducking to avoid setting more branches alight as she maneuvered to a portion where the burning trees path would lead. Hyping herself up, she focused on that feeling of making fireballs in her hands and aimed ahead, watching all her literal firepower stream out in concentrated blasts and force their way into the old fire before it could go any further out.
Ben and Grandpa Max ran back to the RV, with Grandpa ducking in to find some tinfoil and laying it out in layers over an old log.
“Uh, Grandpa. What's that for?” Ben questioned.
“For when Gwen gets back, she needs to sit down and explain exactly how all this happened.” He added another layer, tucking ends of the foil under the log and making a bit of a placement on the ground for where her feet would rest.
Ben nodded, “Any way I can help?”
“No, no just–” Max drew a hand down his face, sighing and lifting his head to look at the growing smoke thoughtfully. “How did this happen?” The question was one he meant to ask in his head, but Ben was thinking the same thing. Looking on at the same plume of smoke, he wondered how his cousin got mutated into some freaky fire person and if she was stuck like that forever.
A little voice in his head started thinking up jokes and names, mostly rude and nothing that would help anything, but the rest of his brain got imaginative. Going from, My cousin’s more of a frak then normal and internally laughing about it, to My cousin has super fire powers!
The smile on his face was infectious, growing as he saw her emerge from the tree line while being careful to not burn up anything else.
— — —
“So you're saying it just jumped up and clamped on your wrist?”
“Yeah,” Gwen answered, picking with one of her fingers around the edge of the badge the watch had turned into on her chest. “And when I tried to get it off it turned me into this.” She motioned to herself, earning a sympathetic and thoughtful look from her grandfather and the slack-jawed attention of her dumb cousin.
“That’s so cool! You think it's parasitic? Like how in Sumo Slammin’ Adventures #32–”
“This isn't a comic, Ben. We don't know what this is.” Grandpa Max snapped, seeing how his granddaughter had quickly gotten uncomfortable with the question.
Deflating, Ben murmured a soft Sorry.
After a beat of silence, he asked another question. “Think she's gonna stay a monster forever?”
“She’s not a monster. She’s an alien.” Both his grandkids stared at him, confused at his serious answer.
“I, I mean, look at her. What else could this be?” He covered his slip-up, visibly convincing Gwen while Ben looked blankly at his grandfather for a moment, and then his eyes filled with stars at the implication.
“A superpowered alien from outer space!” His voice delved into more of a delighted squeal with every word, but his smile quickly dropped when Gwen started laughing. Ben turned back to his cousin with a scowl, "What's so funny?”
“You, dweeb! You’re totally fanboying!”
“Am not! You’re– this is just a cool situation!” He defended, motioning up and down at Gwen.
“This is so not a cool situation!” Gwen fired back, “How am I supposed to take judo next year? Sit in class, do my homework or even open my textbooks when everything I touch gets set on fire?”
“Dont worry, Gwen. We’ll figure something out.” Grandpa Max placated, trying to think up solutions himself when the badge at the center of her chest started beeping and flashing red on the hourglass symbol, then that same flash Gwen described enveloped her again and left her the same ten-year-old girl she was an hour ago, if only confused and with the watch still on her wrist.
“Aw man…” Ben bemoaned, but Gwen was ecstatic to be back in her body, and very intent on keeping herself in it as she went to try and tear the watch off again, struggling as he did so, the device stuck to the skin of her wrist.
“No, no.” Grandpa Max laid a hand on Gwen's forearm, stopping her from continuing her separation attempt. “Better not fool with that until we know exactly what we’re dealing with. I’ll go check out the crash site. You two stay here.”
Standing up and heading off with a flashlight, leaving the two alone by the campfire as Ben scootched closer to his cousin to look over her shoulder, looking at the now red icon of the watch. He poked at it, causing Gwen to flinch it, and herself, away. “What’s your deal?!”
“Think there's other aliens? How cool would that be?”
“I don’t care and I don’t wanna know,” Gwen crossed her arms, turning away from her cousin as he kept pestering her about all his ideas and theories and every weird comic reference that came to mind when it came to shapeshifting. Eventually, and rather quickly, she got tired of all his badgering and stormed off in a huff to the other side of the camper. Sitting herself down against it, and far enough away from Ben he wouldn’t see her, she pondered some of his questions herself.
What else could she turn into? If any at all. And how did she do it before?
She stared at the watch stuck to her wrist for a while, thinking how she’d done it and what else she could do with it, and sat there thinking so long the red of the icon faded away into a blank white. Noticing a green button lower on the strap, she pressed it, and the watch face popped up again like it did when she was hitting it. It showed a black silhouette of the fire thing she turned into before and, when she went to hold the face and accidentally turned it a notch, a different silhouette appeared. She notched it a few more times to the right, seeing it change from one form to the next, cycling through a total of 10 definitely alien or monster types.
Can I turn into all of these?
“Caught ya!” Ben yelled in her ear, having snuck up on her in thought.
Gwen jumped, keeping her arm far and away from her body and him so she didn't accidentally transform again. “What the heck, Ben!?”
“You said you didn’t care and Grandpa said not to mess with it. Liar! You do wanna see what's in there!” He goaded her, and it took a lot of willpower out of her not to shove her idiot cousin.
“Do not! I just wanna know how to not transform into that lava lady again!”
“Liar liar, set the forest on fire.” He singsonged, mocking her. Gwen did not have the willpower to not try and push past him in her agitation, hoping to just round the RV again, go to bed, and wake up from this stupid nightmare. Only, the face was still popped up, and when it hit Ben’s arm it slammed back down and the same light blinded both of them.
Once again, it was all of a sudden and happened in the span of that flash of neon. Her arms tensed and burned with a stabbing sensation that should have felt as painful as a bunch of needles forcing their way out of her skin, but passed as something that was just happening and not as anything she really felt. Her head deformed, her spine bent to the point she had to hunch forward and fall onto her arms as they grew longer, and when she tried to open her eyes she didn’t feel like she had any. She wanted to blink away whatever was obscuring her vision, only to not feel her eyelids, left only to scratch at her face and the rough fur in the way, howling like a bear in distress.
“Woah,” Ben exclaimed next to her, his voice way too loud and— oh god, did she just scratch her ears with her feet??
“Man, if you weren’t butt ugly before, you sure are now.” He laughed, still too loud and also too Everything Else. He smelled like cheap chemical deodorant, smoke, and gross boy sweat. A gruff sound escaped her mouth— or, maw, really —and she bounded away from her even louder, even smellier cousin.
“Hey, wait! Gwen!” He called after her, feet thudding against the ground behind her as they both ran, just with her being much faster now. “Gwen!”
But she just kept running, smelling the difference of the dirt and the trees and the dampness of rocks that didn't get dried out by the fire and its suffocating stench. How she wasn’t running into it felt like a miracle, but as she kept breathing and feeling the gill-like folds of her neck expand to let the air pass through, she realized why all her smelling and hearing was so out of control. It was the only way this alien knew how to see. It was completely blind, and so was she now.
Fear prickled at her new spine, all the way down to a tail she was just now realizing she had as it tapped rhythmically to the ground, feeling the vibrations for anything dangerous nearby on instinct. When nothing turned up, she sniffed, and there was the faint, acidic smell of a battery and metal up in the air behind her, just as something sounded like it was charging up.
She leaped, and felt the heat of a beam just behind her before she heard it, exploding the tree she was by. Whatever it was kept firing at her, and Gwen kept leaping. Her paws now able to sink into the bark of the trees she grabbed onto to gain a height advantage with their large, sharp claws. Steadily she got higher and the thing closer, and she sniffed the air one more time for that metallic-battery scent, and leapt at it with a shrill battle cry. Jeez, what animal did I turn into?
The thing fired wildly, blowing up and leaving scorched tree bits below and around them as she wrestled with its body, tearing into it and breaking off limbs with her claws as she swiped and dug in. It all culminated in it losing the ability to stay aerial, falling down as she bit in and stretched its wires until they snapped in her teeth, leaping away with them still in her mouth as the thing crashed onto the forest floor. Panting, slobbering with wires and metal in her mouth, she spat them out and stomped on them in a rage– then suddenly the beeping came much faster and she was back to herself again, able to see her hands beating into the ground where the metals were with a fury until her breath evened and she calmed down.
Her body slumped with exhaustion, looking back where the robot had crashed to see it still have life in it, aiming a still working blaster from its body at her. She closed her eyes, bracing for the pain, and heard metal crunching. Opening them back up again, the rest of the robot splattered under a rock and Ben was heaving from exertion, obviously having picked the stone up and used it to smash the droid in.
“Never,” He huffed, trying to catch his breath. “Threaten my family. Jerk.” He gave the blaster arm that had been aimed at her a kick as he passed it by, stopping in front of Gwen and offering his arm.
“You okay?”
Gwen looked at his hand, then him, and took it as she stood back up. “I am never turning into that canine thing again.”
“Pssh, you didn’t look that much like a dog.” The comfort was unconvincing, so Gwen leveled him with a glare. “Okay, you looked like a dog. Slobbery one too, ew.”
Gwen cringed, she didn’t like this day one bit.
— — —
Grandpa Max stood before her, mad.
Gwen twiddled her fingers at the table, unused to getting lectured by her grandpa. Or lectured by anyone for that matter, she was fine when her and Ben weren’t at each other's throats. Which was most the year, seeing as they always were fighting when a family gathering came up and they both went. Other than that she was a good kid, and she was happy being that kid. Why did her parents have to send her on this stupid vacation? If it was just Grandpa Max and Ben, one of them would have found this stupid alien watch instead, and she'd be normal at home while Grandpa was smart enough to call the rangers in before getting close to the darn thing and Ben… maybe it was best Ben didn’t get the watch, he would’ve actually burned the whole forest down.
“This is why I told you not to mess with it until we know what the heck it is.” He reiterated, fists on his hips in the universal disappointed parent look. Ben sat opposite of her at the table, arms crossed and looking not at all as pleased as he should be at his cousin getting reamed out for the first time for something she (technically) did against Grandpas rules. She’d expect him to be smiling.
Gwen shrunk in on herself under Grandpas disappointed look and scolding, apologizing, but quickly telling him she had figured out how the watch worked. Mostly. “All you do is press this button, turn the face around until you find the silhouette you want, and then you turn into that alien. I guess it has a timer too, but that just means none of them are permanent. Right?”
Grandpa Max shook his head, “Maybe, but we shouldn’t be risking it. I don’t want my grandkid turning into some–”
“Mayday! Mayday! Somebody help us!” Max’s radio chimed in. “We’re under attack by some sort of, oh I know you’re not gonna believe me, but robot!”
“The things that were attacking me.” Gwen realized aloud, rising to her feet. “Those people are being attacked by the things looking for the watch!”
“We need to go help them!” Ben chimed in, about to follow his cousin out the door when their grandpa grabbed them both by the shoulders.
“Now wait a minute, you aren’t going to just–” But Gwen interrupted him, yet another thing she wouldn't normally do but this summer seemed to be a big season for change.
“They’re in trouble because of me, I’ve gotta help.”
“I hate to say it Grandpa, but Gwen's right.” Grandpa gave Ben a hardened look, “I mean, what’s the point of superpowered aliens if you don’t use their powers to help? Right, Gwen?”
Gwen gave a nod to her cousin's words. Goodness, this day just keeps getting weirder…
Max stood there for a second, looking between his grandkids' resolute faces, before closing his eyes and sighing. “If you’re gonna learn how to help, we’ll have to help you get the hang of all those aliens.” He let them both go and hopped into the driver's seat, starting the engine to head to where the radio had called in from. “Let’s go.”
— — —
Everything the robot saw, it fired on.
RV’s parked around the camping spot, trees, and wherever the moving targets its sensors picked up on as Homo Sapiens were headed with the understanding that wherever the Omnitrix was, it would show itself among the rubble.
“Hey! You wanna pick on somebody?” A voice rang out, calling its attention away from the fleeing Homo Sapiens. Turning its head, its scanners picked up on the Petrosapian woman standing proud between the damage and the treeline, then caught the mark of the Omnitrix as a badge over the left of its chest and changed targets. “Try me on for size!”
At its illogical request, it fired its wrist laser and sent it flying back into the temporary mobile lodging units, stalking towards where it landed to acquire the Petrosapien and remove the Omnitrix from its chest.
“Ookay,” Gwen muttered to herself. “Still got lasers on it.” She looked at her crystalline hands, and got an idea.
Running out and under the spider-like legs of the robot, she baited it to turn and follow her. “You want me? Come and get me!” It’s insectoid designed eyes began to glow, and Gwen raised her palms to face it, and when the robot fired and pushed her back with the sheer force of the blast, she struggled but flexed and angled her palms just so that the laser reflected back towards the massive robot, cutting through it twice as it toppled and exploded.
“All right!” Ben’s delighted cheers came from behind her, “Way to go–” and as Gwen turned around, she could see the exact face of realization Ben had that he probably shouldn’t out her secret identity on the first adventure. Like a true comic nerd.
“Uh, way to go Crystal lady!”
Gwen smiled at that one, and smiled brighter when she saw her Grandpa punching the sky too. Ben started mouthing something, like ‘whip’ or ‘qui–’ Ohh.
“Well, all in a day's work.” Gwen— Crystal —quiped, with her fists on her hips in a classic hero pose before running off.
— — —
Max carried the cooler up to the door of the Rustbucket, scanning the camp area as Ben got out of the RV to haul in one of the chairs. “Have you seen your cousin around?”
“Not since breakfast, and also; Yuck on the meal worms, Grandpa.”
“Well, at least someone is trying my cooking. Can’t say the same with–” A bright blue and purple with black stripes zoomed by him and out of the Rustbucket a few times over, eventually stopping behind him in the dirt to reveal a new alien of Gwen's. This one raptor-like look, from the tail to the angular head that opened its facial plate now that she was out of motion. Her cat shirt shining through on this alien just as much with coloration like it did with Crystal yesterday, this time accompanied by the lighter blue of her shirt taking over her shoulders into the darker blue of the body armor. The dark lining around her eyes sharper than any Kineceleran Max had ever seen and twisting at the top ends like human-teen mascara. Guess the human traits shine through, he thought.
“Pretty cool, right?” She asked with that now raspy, almost dehydrated voice of a Kineceleran.
“Wicked cool!” Ben exclaimed, “How fast can this one run? You were just going, like, a million miles an hour.”
“Real fast,” Gwen answered. “Fast enough to get some things I forgot to pack.” That last one she said with a wink, and the timer chimed and flashed that red color, leaving a not at all exhausted Gwen as she climbed back up into the Rustbucket with Ben trailing behind. He started asking all sorts of questions, and Max smiled, happy to see those two getting along. If not for long, then at least off to a good start with the trip.
Though he has no idea what Gwen forgot, or where the still steaming muffins came from, but it’d be rude of him to ask and ruin the rare good morning those two were sharing.
— — —
Natalie scratched her head, looking at her muffin tray until her husband walked by in a hurry for work. “Honey?”
“Yes dear?”
“Did you happen to eat any of the muffins I made?” Her husband gave her a quizzical look, as if actually thinking over if he had eaten her muffins and forgotten. His firm's new case must really be running him ragged…
“No? I mean, I don’t think I did.”
“Nevermind, not like I’ll be going hungry this morning.” She waved the question off, deciding it wasn’t a big deal. Frank obviously needed something to eat before heading out.
“Just don’t overwork yourself today if you’re forgetting things, dear.” She punctuated that request with a kiss on his cheek, and then he was out the door and off to work. Natalie sighed, wondering how her daughter was doing. Hopefully she hadn’t ripped her cousin's throat out yet.