Chapter 19: Ben Gets Captured and the Forever Knights Appear
"Six stories high, a thousand twists and turns!" Ben yelled, his eyes wide with excitement.
"Plunging over two hundred feet!" Gwen chimed in, equally thrilled.
"Diving at extreme speeds, over twenty-five miles per hour!"
"Finally, everyone is thrown into a massive wave pool of over three hundred thousand gallons!"
"Welcome to the Extreme Wave Zone!" they shouted in unison.
The blistering summer heat had practically dragged the Tennyson family to the local water park. Ever since their run-in with Hex, Grandpa Max had been on edge, half-expecting the dark sorcerer to return for his magical charms. Max knew a man like Hex wouldn't stay locked up easily without his artifacts. Yet, for whatever reason, the sorcerer had remained completely off the radar.
Deciding they all needed a break from the constant alien and magical chaos, Max parked the Rustbucket and declared today a day of pure, unadulterated relaxation.
Unfortunately, Ben's relaxation hit a brick wall almost immediately.
"You're too short, kid." The bored lifeguard held up a hand, pointing a lazy thumb at the wooden swordfish sign planted next to the line.
Ben stared at the sign, then at the lifeguard, his jaw dropping. "But! It's only by a tiny bit!" he protested, standing on his tiptoes to bridge the unfair gap.
"Sorry, Dweeb." Gwen smirked, adjusting her swimsuit. "I hear the Baby Banana Boat is a real thrill ride, though." She grabbed Klein's arm, pulling her older cousin toward the towering stairs of the Extreme Wave Slide.
"Bye, Ben. Catch you at the bottom," Klein said. He didn't bother teasing the kid; he was genuinely looking forward to the massive drop himself.
Ben crossed his arms, glaring daggers at their retreating backs, his eyes burning with absolute unwillingness to accept defeat.
...
A few minutes later, Klein waded through the massive wave pool, brushing his dripping wet hair out of his eyes. He scanned the splashing crowd. "Where's Ben?"
"Uh—what?" Gwen blinked, her cheeks suddenly flushing as she looked at her older cousin. With his hair slicked back and water cascading down his shoulders, he looked entirely too cool for a family trip. She quickly shook her head, banishing the dorky thought. "I mean, I haven't seen him."
"Never mind, I think I found him." Klein narrowed his eyes, tracking a tiny, gray, frog-like figure sliding down the massive Extreme Wave tube. "Hey! Ben!"
He started wading through the waist-deep water, but before he could reach the landing zone, a scrawny, bespectacled man surfaced near the slide's exit.
"I finally caught you!" the nerd gasped, his hands clamping down firmly around Grey Matter's tiny torso.
Klein's eyes went cold. He surged forward, fully intending to pry the little Galvan out of the man's grip. With his enhanced physical fitness, snapping a nerd like that in half would require zero effort.
Suddenly, a stampede of screaming, splashing children surged through the shallow end, crashing into Klein and forcing him back a few steps.
"Watch it!" Klein shoved past the kids, his gaze snapping back to the slide.
Empty. The bespectacled man had vanished completely.
Without a word to Gwen, Klein hauled himself out of the pool and sprinted toward the nearest restroom. He knew Ben's habits perfectly. The moment the kid got denied entry to the slide, he was guaranteed to use the Omnitrix to cheat the height requirement. Calculating the time, the watch's limit would have triggered right before he got grabbed.
Which meant only one thing: the Omnitrix was acting up again, trapping him in that tiny form.
A split second later, a quiet blue light flashed inside the restroom stall.
A blue-and-black blur, completely imperceptible to the human eye, exploded out of the door. Fasttrack zipped back and forth, tearing through the water park, checking every locker room, every food stand, and every parking lot in a matter of seconds.
Fasttrack skidded to a halt near the entrance, his feline eyes wide with disbelief. 'How can he not be here?!'
This was absurd. How fast could a scrawny nerd run? The last normal human to survive something this ridiculous was Dr. Animo taking a direct punch from Humungousaur.
A blue blur swept past the wave pool, scooping Gwen up in an instant.
"Cousin, what do we do?" Gwen shouted over the rushing wind, her voice tight with panic. She knew the situation was critical, but without knowing any actual tracking magic yet, she was helpless. By the time she learned a spell, Grey Matter would be pinned to a corkboard.
"We find Grandpa!" Fasttrack replied, vanishing into the distance.
...
"So, we're flying blind." Max gripped the steering wheel of the Rustbucket, his knuckles white. The relaxing day off had officially evaporated.
"Pretty much," Klein said from the passenger seat, his tone clipped. He tapped the faceplate of the Another Omnitrix. Originally, his watch had a tracking function synced to Ben's Omnitrix signal. But thanks to whatever glitch Ben was experiencing, the signal was completely dead. 'I didn't even know that piece of junk had a shielding function.'
Suddenly, Gwen's cell phone buzzed. She snatched it up. "Hello?! Ben?!"
"Gwen, it's me!" Grey Matter's squeaky voice echoed through the speaker.
"Ben, are you still stuck like that?" she asked, her worst fears confirmed.
"The stupid watch is still busted..." Ben muttered, sounding thoroughly defeated.
"Never mind that! Where are you?"
"Okay, listen! There's clearly a tall mountain about one hundred eighty point one five miles west of this house, with an incline of exactly forty-five degrees..." Grey Matter rattled off the geographic coordinates with terrifying Galvan precision.
"Uh, Ben, I don't speak math! Is there a street name?!" Gwen rubbed her temples, completely unable to keep up with his hyper-charged brain.
"Oh! Right!" A pause on the other end. "Reeves—"
The line went dead.
"Ben! Ben!" Gwen shouted into the receiver. Nothing.
She scrambled for a physical map of the city, spreading it over the table. "Reeves Street, Reeves Road, Reeves Avenue... Oh, this is ridiculous! There are too many!"
"Then we check them all." Klein stood up, his expression flat but dangerous. "You two take the main street. I'll handle the rest."
He slammed his hand down on the Another Omnitrix. A brilliant blue flash illuminated the RV's interior, leaving Fasttrack in his place.
"I'll scout ahead. Catch up when you can." Fasttrack popped the roof hatch and vaulted out, instantly breaking the sound barrier.
Watching the blue-and-black streak tear down the highway, Max slammed his foot on the gas, steering the Rustbucket toward the Reeves district.
...
"Grandpa! Anything?"
A gust of wind rustled the trees as Fasttrack skidded to a halt in the overgrown front yard of an abandoned house on Reeves Street.
Max and Gwen were crouched in the tall grass. Max held up a silver flip phone. The screen was cracked, but the display clearly showed a blurry, zoomed-in photo of a terrified Grey Matter pressed against a glass jar.
"Found this," Max said grimly. He tapped a few buttons on the keypad, pulling up the internal data logs. "If I can isolate the ping from this phone's last call, we can triangulate their exact location."
Gwen watched Max work the ancient tech like a supercomputer. "Grandpa, I am constantly amazed by how sneaky you are."
...
A few miles away, Klein, Max, and Gwen crouched behind a thick hedge, staring up at a massive stone structure looming at the edge of the city limits.
"That's not a house," Gwen whispered, staring at the towering parapets and iron gates. "That's a medieval fortress."
"They're called the Forever Knights," Max explained, his voice dropping to a serious, authoritative register. "A secret, heavily funded organization dedicated to hoarding and weaponizing illegal alien technology."
Klein and Gwen exchanged a brief look. Knowing Max's true history as a Plumber, neither of them found this revelation surprising.
"That makes twice," Klein muttered, his tail flicking in irritation. "Fasttrack missed the target twice."
For someone who preferred to laze around and let things play out, being outmaneuvered by a bunch of cosplaying nerds was highly offensive.
"Gwen, stay here and watch Grandpa's back. I'm going in." Klein slapped the Omnitrix symbol on his chest. He needed to vindicate this alien.
A blue blur shot through the iron gates before Max could even object. Max and Gwen shared a helpless shrug, then immediately broke cover to follow him inside.
...
Deep inside the fortress corridors, Grey Matter sprinted as fast as his tiny legs could carry him, constantly glancing over his shoulder. He had managed to pick the lock on his cage, but the entire castle was on high alert.
"Gotta hide, gotta hide—"
Thud.
Grey Matter bounced off something solid and landed hard on his rear. He looked up, ready to scream.
"Ben?"
Fasttrack stood looking down at him, blinking in surprise. He had just torn through the main laboratory, finding nothing but an empty cage. He had assumed he missed the kid again, only for the little Galvan to literally run into his boots.
"Cousin!" Grey Matter practically wept with joy. "You finally came! Get me out of here, they want to dissect me!"
The trauma of being treated like a science experiment had completely overridden Ben's logic, making him forget that Fasttrack could easily dismantle everyone in the building.
"Relax. Let's get you to Grandpa first." Fasttrack scooped the tiny alien into his palm and vanished.
...
"Cousin!" Gwen called out. She and Max were hovering a few feet off the ground, riding on a pair of confiscated Forever Knight anti-gravity pads. They touched down just as Fasttrack materialized in the courtyard. "You got him?"
"Yeah." Fasttrack opened his hand. Grey Matter stood up, cheering, but suddenly, the hourglass symbol on his back began to flash violently red.
With a burst of red light, Ben Tennyson dropped to the stone floor, completely naked and shivering.
"We need to move, now!" Max ordered, tossing Ben a spare jacket from the Rustbucket. "You and Gwen made enough noise knocking out their guards. The whole garrison is coming."
Fasttrack listened to the heavy clanking of armored boots echoing from the corridors. He remained silent for a second, then gave a curt nod.
He grabbed Gwen under one arm, hoisted Max onto his back, and let Ben cling to Max like a terrified monkey. In a fraction of a second, the entire family vanished from the courtyard, leaving the arriving knights swinging their laser lances at empty air.
...
Late that night, the moon hung high over the Forever Knights' fortress. The guards patrolling the battlements gripped their energy rifles, still on high alert from the earlier breach.
A sudden gust of wind blew through the courtyard. Fasttrack stood in the center of the stone plaza, his glowing green eyes locked onto the main tower.
"My cousin might be an annoying brat," Klein muttered to himself, his voice echoing slightly in the quiet night, "but he's my annoying brat. Nobody gets to put him in a jar."
He reached up and slammed the dial on his chest.
A blinding pillar of green light erupted into the sky, forcing the knights to shield their eyes. The ground trembled. The stone walls cracked under the sheer weight of the entity materializing before them.
Towering hundreds of feet into the air, dwarfing the highest parapets of the medieval castle, Way Big looked down at the fortress.
"I heard you guys have a thing for small aliens," Way Big's voice boomed like thunder, rattling the very foundations of the earth. He slowly crossed his massive arms, the metal fins on his forearms glowing with volatile cosmic energy. "Let's see how you handle the big ones."
An apocalyptic beam of pure blue cosmic energy erupted from his crossed arms, slamming into the fortress. Stone shattered, metal melted, and the entire structure was instantly reduced to a smoking crater of rubble.
As for the bespectacled nerd? Klein didn't think he deserved to die. The guy had technically helped Grey Matter escape his cage earlier, and his pathetic desire for fame was just human nature.
But Klein was a man who valued family over reason. The nerd had tormented his little cousin.
So, Way Big carefully plucked the screaming Howell Wayneright from the collapsing ruins and hung him by his underwear from a streetlamp three miles away. He could stay there until morning.
...
Hours later, a sleek black town car pulled up to the smoking ruins of the fortress.
A man stepped out, his face hidden behind a gleaming, golden mask. Enoch, the leader of the Forever Knights, stood in absolute silence, staring at the devastated remains of his multi-million dollar base.
He didn't scream. He didn't rage. He simply walked back to his car and picked up a high-tech tablet.
On the screen was a paused security feed from earlier in the day. It showed an old man in a Hawaiian shirt, a red-haired girl, and a young boy running through the courtyard. Klein had remained in his alien form the entire time, leaving no human trace.
Enoch tapped the screen, his voice cold and measured.
"Find out exactly who these three are. I want everything."
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