Chapter 9: Eliminate the Limax and Save the Town
The junkyard stank of ozone and scorched slime. The Limax—disgusting, shape-shifting blobs of alien mucus—had finally been reduced to sizzling puddles across the asphalt.
Four Arms cracked his knuckles, his massive crimson hands slick with alien residue. "This way," his deep, gravelly voice echoed across the scrap heaps. He led the group toward a massive, rusted dumpster sitting in the dead center of the yard. Gripping the heavy steel edges, he shoved the dumpster aside with a screech of grinding metal, revealing a hidden trapdoor bolted into the concrete.
Four Arms kicked the hatch open, scooped Grandpa Max into his lower arms, and jumped into the dark shaft. Klein followed without a second thought, the heavy armored plating of his Water Hazard form clanking as he dropped into the abyss. Gwen brought up the rear, floating down cautiously behind them.
Upon reaching the bottom, the air grew thick and damp. Several dark, unfinished dirt tunnels branched out in different directions, disappearing into the pitch-black underground.
Just as they gathered their bearings, the Omnitrix symbol on Four Arms' chest began to blink rapidly. A high-pitched whine filled the cavern, followed by a blinding flash of red light. Where a towering Tetramand stood a second ago, ten-year-old Ben now crouched, groaning as he rubbed his aching shoulders.
"Oh, man! This is so annoying!" Ben complained, kicking a loose rock.
Beside him, the towering crustacean-like figure shifted. Water Hazard's visor gleamed in the dim light. "Pick a path, Dweeb," Klein's voice filtered through the alien armor, carrying a deep, synthesized, bubbly edge. "I don't have Wildmutt's nose, so I am banking entirely on your ridiculous protagonist aura to get us out of here."
Ben puffed out his chest, his confidence instantly returning. "Alright, Cousin. Watch and learn. We go... this way!" He marched down the rightmost tunnel with absolute certainty.
Five minutes later, they stood staring at a solid wall of packed dirt. It was a complete dead end.
Ben rubbed the back of his neck, offering a sheepish grin. "Hehe. Sorry. Guess my aura is taking a break."
Left with no other choice, they backtracked through the damp earth and picked the opposite route. This time, the tunnel opened up into a massive, cavernous underground chamber.
The sight before them was straight out of a nightmare. Countless semi-translucent, glowing green pods lined the walls like grotesque eggs. In the dead center of the chamber rested a sleek, metallic flying saucer, its hull humming with dormant energy.
Ben crept up to the nearest glowing pod and wiped a thick layer of slime off the surface. He peered inside, his eyes widening. "Whoa. There's an old lady in here."
Grandpa Max's expression darkened as he surveyed the room. "The Limax. They didn't just invade the retirement community. They captured all the elderly residents from town and brought them down here to store them!"
"Aunt Vera!" Gwen called out from a few yards away, her hands pressed against the sticky surface of another pod. "She's in this one!"
Max rolled up his sleeves, stepping up to the pod and gripping its heavy edges. "Let's get them all out of here before—"
The shadows above them suddenly shifted. Several massive blobs of green slime dropped from the cavern ceiling, morphing rapidly into towering, vaguely humanoid shapes.
"Don't even think about it!" the lead Limax hissed, its voice a wet, gurgling rasp. "This is our harvest! Our food! Quickly, put the meat back and prepare to—"
A deafening roar of pressurized water cut the monologue completely short.
Klein didn't even wait for the alien to finish its sentence. He raised his armored palms, and twin geysers of high-velocity water blasted from his hands, slamming into the Limax with the force of a freight train. The aliens shrieked as their slimy bodies were violently washed away, splattering against the cavern walls in diluted, useless puddles.
"Do you think this is some late-night B-movie?" Klein scoffed, lowering his hands as steam rolled off his armor. "Who actually waits for the villain to finish their speech?"
Seeing their vanguard annihilated in seconds, the remaining hidden Limax realized they were hopelessly outmatched against a hydro-kinetic powerhouse. They abandoned their ambush entirely. Liquefying their bodies, they slithered rapidly across the dirt and seeped into the exhaust vents of the flying saucer.
Boom!
The ship's engines flared to life with a deafening explosion of heat and sound. The saucer lifted off the ground, rotating rapidly.
Water Hazard aimed his palms upward, firing another massive torrent of water. The blast struck the underside of the saucer, denting the metal hull and shattering one of the thrusters. But the ship already had too much momentum. It accelerated violently, smashing right through the cavern ceiling in a shower of rocks and dirt, escaping into the night sky and blasting out toward the edges of the Milky Way.
Max coughed, waving away the falling dust. He looked around at the dozens of heavy, slime-coated pods scattered across the cavern and let out a long, exhausted sigh. "Well, they're gone. But we still need to move all these people. This is going to take hours. Anyone know a good intergalactic moving company?"
Ben grinned, glancing down at his wrist. The Omnitrix dial shifted from red to a bright, vibrant green. "Relax, Grandpa! With XLR8 on the job, it'll be a breeze. I promise I'll have this done in a few minutes!"
Ben slammed his hand down on the dial. Beside him, Klein casually tapped the eerie blue symbol on his chest.
A brilliant emerald flash and a haunting, eerie blue light illuminated the cavern simultaneously.
When the light faded, two nearly identical Kinecelerans stood side by side. One wore a sleek green and black suit, while the other was clad in dark, eerie blue. To an Earthling, distinguishing between two aliens of the exact same species was nearly impossible—much like the time Ben first saw another Petrosapien and genuinely thought he was looking at a clone of Diamondhead. But the distinct blue glow of Klein's Omnitrix made it perfectly clear who was who.
The cavern instantly became a blur of motion. Streaks of green and blue lightning zipped back and forth, carrying the heavy pods out of the underground hive and safely to the surface in the blink of an eye.
A few minutes later, the cavern was completely empty.
A red light flashed, dropping Ben back onto the dirt, panting heavily with his hands on his knees. A split second later, the eerie blue light flashed as Klein manually disengaged his transformation, stepping out of the glow without breaking a single sweat.
"Alright, Grandpa," Klein said, stretching his neck. "That was the last of them."
Max wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, looking at the two boys with a mixture of pride and deep nostalgia. "Incredible. As expected of the Kineceleran race. Done in just a few minutes."
Gwen's head snapped toward him, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "Grandpa, you're doing it again."
Max blinked. "Doing what?"
"Saying those weird alien names! 'Kineceleran'? How do you know that?" Gwen crossed her arms, stepping closer. "What exactly did you do when you were young? You keep saying you were just a plumber. And speaking of family secrets, how exactly did a normal plumber manage to court an alien Anodite like Grandma?"
Ben's eyes widened, his exhaustion vanishing. "Yeah! Grandpa, are you hiding some crazy secret agent stuff from us?"
Klein leaned against the cavern wall, arms crossed, his face a mask of utter indifference. Internally, he was highly amused. He still retained enough fragmented memories of the original timeline to know exactly who Max Tennyson really was, so he just watched the interrogation unfold.
Max rubbed his temples, letting out a defeated sigh. He looked at the three expectant faces and knew he was cornered. "Uh... alright. I suppose I owe you kids an explanation. I'll tell you everything once we're back in the Rustbucket. But first, we need to make sure Aunt Vera and the others wake up safely. Then, we can say our goodbyes."
...
The morning sun crested over the horizon as the sleepy retirement community finally returned to normal.
"Goodbye, Aunt Vera," Ben, Gwen, and Klein chorused, standing by the open door of the RV.
Vera smiled warmly, pulling Max into a tight hug. "Goodbye, Max. And goodbye to you too, Ben, Gwen, and Klein. Try to stay out of trouble!"
The tires of the Rustbucket hummed against the asphalt as they hit the open highway, leaving the town behind. Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was thick with anticipation. Max kept his eyes on the road, his grip tight on the steering wheel.
"When I was young, I was indeed a Plumber," Max began, his voice steady and serious. "But not the kind that fixes leaky pipes. I was a Magister in the Plumbers—the largest intergalactic law enforcement organization in the entire Milky Way Galaxy. We protected Earth from extraterrestrial threats, and we just liked to use the name 'Plumbers' as a cover..."
Ben practically bounced out of his seat, his eyes shining with pure awe. "No way! That is so cool! Grandpa, can I join the Plumbers? Do I get a badge?"
Gwen sat frozen, her jaw slightly slack as she tried to process the fact that her grandfather was a retired space cop.
Klein maintained a perfectly neutral expression, though internally, he was genuinely surprised. Max was casually dropping lore details and organizational structures that Klein didn't even remember from his past life's binge-watching sessions. He had only remembered they were powerful, but hearing the actual history straight from Max was something else entirely.
Whoosh!
The engine roared as Max pressed down on the gas pedal. The Rustbucket whizzed past a faded billboard, speeding down the desert highway, carrying the universe's most chaotic family toward their next inevitable disaster.
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