Chapter 15: Encountering a Female Thug and Meeting Vilgax
It was still a clear, peaceful morning. The early sun cast a pale yellow wash over the dusty landscape and the scattered buildings of the roadside town, while the crisp songs of birds echoed from the lush green trees lining the highway.
The Rustbucket, having driven through the night, sputtered and rolled to a temporary stop at a local gas station. The fuel gauge had been hovering on empty for miles, so Max decided it was the perfect time for everyone to stretch their legs and take a short break.
Boom!
A deafening explosion shattered the morning quiet. A gang of heavily armed thugs roared into the station on customized motorcycles. Dressed in heavy leather biker gear and wearing ridiculously oversized, aggressive helmets, they wielded high-tech energy rifles that looked entirely out of place for a random street gang. They began casually blasting the surrounding buildings to rubble, wantonly tearing into cash registers and stealing money. Hovering just above them were two saucer-shaped mechanical drones, their red optical sensors sweeping the area as if searching for something specific.
"This is so much fun!" the gang leader, a tough-looking woman in spiked armor, laughed mockingly as she fired a blast into a nearby storefront.
Leaning against the side of the RV, Klein watched the chaos unfold with half-lidded eyes. "Ben," he said faintly.
Ordinary street thugs? He could not even be bothered to lift a finger to deal with them. As for the hovering mechanical drones, his brief assessment concluded that they were utterly useless pieces of scrap metal.
"Hero time!" Ben shouted, never one to pick and choose his battles. He slammed his hand down on the Omnitrix dial.
A brilliant emerald light flashed across the gas station.
"Oh, man! How annoying! I wanted to transform into Four Arms, not Heatblast!" Ben groaned. He looked down at his hands, which were currently made of cracking magma and roaring fire, and sighed before charging forward helplessly.
"What kind of freak is this?" The thugs did not even flinch at the sight of the walking bonfire. They simply raised their heavy energy guns and opened fire.
"Losers! Those toys can't even scratch me!" Heatblast sneered. He raised a blazing hand, superheating the atmosphere until the air rippled and distorted around him. He unleashed a massive, roaring pillar of fire that easily swallowed the incoming energy rays, pushing right through them and striking the pavement in front of the bikers.
Boom!
The explosive shockwave of the flames blew the thugs entirely off their feet, sending them tumbling across the asphalt and knocking their ridiculous helmets clean off their heads. Without missing a beat, Heatblast pointed his hands at the sky and shot out two concentrated streams of fire, instantly melting the two mechanical drones into slag.
Heatblast dusted his hands off and turned around to look at the groaning thugs lying scattered on the ground. He froze. Long hair spilled out from beneath their discarded helmets.
"Wait, you're all women?!" Heatblast stammered, completely dumbfounded. His raised, blazing hands unconsciously lowered to his sides. "I don't hit women!"
"Well, thank you very much!" the female thug leader snarled. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed her heavy energy rifle by the barrel, and swung the solid metal butt directly into Heatblast's jaw, sending him flying backward across the concrete.
"Ouch!" Heatblast cried out in pain, tumbling head over heels.
"Ouch!" echoed a second voice immediately after.
The female thug leader barely had time to register the sound before she quickly followed in Heatblast's footsteps. Klein, who had silently materialized right behind her at some point, delivered a sharp, fluid kick to her back, sending her skidding several meters away.
"I hit," Klein stated flatly. He walked over and stepped firmly onto the female thug leader's left hand just as she was desperately reaching for her fallen energy gun.
However, as she struggled against his weight, no one noticed her right hand blindly flailing and accidentally brushing against the smoldering remains of one of the destroyed mechanical drones. The shattered mechanical eye of the drone lit up with a sinister red glow for a brief moment, pulsing silently before dimming entirely.
"I hit too! I'm already a girl, so it doesn't count!" Gwen shouted from the sidelines. Her eyes glowed with a vibrant pink light as she tapped into her Anodite heritage, using her mana to conjure glowing energy ribbons that swiftly bound the remaining female thugs to the ground.
Soon after, the wail of sirens filled the air. The local police finally arrived, looking entirely out of breath. It seemed they had been delayed by a card game at the station again.
The officers quickly escorted the restrained female thugs into the back of their cruisers. With the mess handled, Klein and the others piled back into the Rustbucket, resuming their cross-country journey.
Inside the moving RV, Gwen sat at the table, looking across at her cousin with a conflicted expression. "Uh, Cousin, did you really just hit a woman back there?" she asked, seeming genuinely concerned about his complete lack of hesitation.
"Don't worry, I would never hit you," Klein replied smoothly, assuming Gwen was worried he might turn his martial arts on her one day.
Gwen's breath hitched. Her delicate little face instantly flushed a dusty pink, and she quickly looked out the window to hide her reaction.
...
Hours later, the Rustbucket was winding its way up a steep, narrow mountain road.
"Hehe, the next stop will definitely make you extremely happy!" Grandpa Max announced from the driver's seat, once again keeping their destination a closely guarded secret with a wide grin.
"Grandpa, it's not going to be another boring amusement park filled with alien freaks, is it?" Ben groaned from the passenger seat, expressing his deep concern. He no longer had any expectations for the so-called surprises his grandpa kept hyping up.
In the back, Klein and Gwen exchanged a knowing glance and silently nodded in agreement.
"Of course not! I guarantee—" Just as Max was about to defend his road trip itinerary, a deafening rumble shook the vehicle.
Boom!
Massive boulders tore loose from the mountain peak above, crashing down the cliffside directly toward the roof of the Rustbucket.
Klein moved instantly. He slapped the faceplate of the Another Omnitrix, and a quiet, deep blue light washed through the cabin.
"Diamondhead!"
Diamondhead kicked the side door open and leaped out of the moving RV, slamming both of his crystalline hands directly into the asphalt. Jagged spikes of pale green diamond erupted from his arms, shooting up the mountainside and weaving together in seconds. They solidified into a massive, impenetrable diamond wall. The falling boulders smashed against the barrier, shattering into harmless dust and gravel.
"What in the world is going on?!" Ben yelled as he, Max, and Gwen scrambled out of the parked car to stare at the towering crystal barricade.
"You didn't tell me... I'm not doing this!" a strained voice echoed down the pass. Diamondhead tilted his head, his enhanced crystalline hearing faintly catching a one-sided argument coming from higher up the mountain.
"There are people up there!" Diamondhead reminded them. He stomped his foot, conjuring a sweeping staircase of solid diamond that spiraled up the cliff face, and immediately began running up the mountain.
Seeing this, Gwen quickly transformed into her glowing pink Anodite form, her body turning into pure energy as she took to the sky to follow him.
"There's an enemy, right? Good! Let Stinkfly teach these freaks a lesson! Hero time!" Ben shouted, excitedly slapping the Omnitrix dial.
Once again, Ben's greatest archenemy—the random selection feature—struck.
A green light flashed, and a humanoid mass of black and green techno-organic circuitry appeared on the road.
"Oh! How annoying! Little broken watch, what country are you even from?!" Upgrade looked down at his liquid-metal hands and complained wildly at the sky.
High up on the mountain ridge, the female thug leader—now heavily mutated and possessed by the mechanical drone's cybernetics—glared down the slope. She saw a towering crystal alien and a glowing energy being rushing toward her. Knowing she was outmatched, she immediately swiveled a massive laser cannon mounted on her shoulder, pointing it backward to use as a makeshift thruster, and prepared to run away.
"See ya, freaks..." she sneered.
The cyborg leader had barely been flying in mid-air for a few seconds when she was suddenly peppered by a volley of razor-sharp diamond fragments. The shards punctured the casing of the laser cannon on her left shoulder. Sparks showered from the damaged thruster, causing her to lose all control. She flew unsteadily, wobbling and spinning wildly as she plummeted down the side of the mountain.
Down below, Upgrade was having a miserable time. "Hey, hey, hey... God knows how much further it is!" he complained, his liquid body struggling to find grip as he climbed the smooth diamond stairs conjured by Diamondhead. He stopped midway, tiredly supporting himself on his knees, panting heavily.
"Ahhh!" A terrified scream rapidly approached from the sky.
Upgrade snapped his head up and saw the cyborg female thug leader hurtling directly toward him. Acting on pure instinct, he quickly jumped off the stairs and grabbed her mid-air. The moment his hands touched her armor, Upgrade realized he could merge with her cybernetics. He immediately melted his techno-organic form into her suit, attempting to possess the machinery and stabilize her flight.
Strangely, before Upgrade could even establish a connection to control her, a violent surge of alien code rejected him. He was forcibly expelled from her armor, falling backward into the open air as if he had gone completely limp.
Just as Upgrade was about to fall from a great height and suffer a terrible fate, a smooth, angled slide of green diamond materialized right beneath him, catching his liquid form and safely funneling him back down to the road.
The Omnitrix timed out, leaving Ben groaning on the asphalt.
"Ben! Are you alright?!" Max quickly ran over and helped his grandson sit up.
"Ugh... My head hurts so much!" Ben winced, supporting his weight on one arm while aggressively holding his throbbing head with the other.
Boom!
High above, the female thug leader finally crashed into a distant rocky peak because she could no longer control her damaged flight path. A massive fireball erupted into the sky as her stolen tech exploded.
At this moment, Diamondhead and Gwen finally reached the crest of the stairs.
"I guess, at least we don't have to worry about her anymore," Gwen said unconsciously, staring out at the plume of black smoke rising in the distance.
Back in the safety of the car, the adrenaline began to fade.
"Grandpa! Just now, when I touched her... I saw a flower-headed guy in my mind, and he said he wouldn't let me off." Ben, still fighting a vicious headache, rubbed his temples. He looked up and suddenly saw Max's face turn extremely gloomy and pale. Ben could not help but ask worriedly, "Grandpa! Are you afraid of him?"
"No... it's nothing, let's get going," Max replied, his voice tight. He chose not to answer the question directly. Although he had already told his grandchildren about his past identity as a Plumber, his excessive, deep-seated vigilance toward his old adversary, Vilgax, still prevented him from speaking the truth to Ben.
Sitting in the back, Klein recognized immediately that Ben was talking about Vilgax. But unlike Max, he was not worried in the slightest. Instead, he felt a little excited. Fighting the conqueror of ten worlds should be quite a fun way to kill some time. And of course, if Vilgax decided to play dirty and 'cheated', Klein could always just choose between crushing him with Way Big or tying him into humiliating knots with Spidermonkey.
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