Max Tennyson had seen a lot of things in his life.
He'd seen the inside of a Chimera Sui Generis warship during a hostile boarding action. He'd seen a Loboan mid-transformation under a full moon, all teeth and fury and hair that would make a shampoo commercial weep. He'd seen Phil try to expense a forty-dollar steak dinner as "tactical provisions." He'd arm-wrestled a Tetramand—twice—and won once, which was one more time than anyone else in the Plumbers could claim. He'd watched a Galvanic Mechamorph merge with a toaster and produce toast so perfect it made three grown men cry.
He'd seen weird. He'd lived weird. Weird was his baseline. Weird was his Tuesday.
So when a seven-foot-tall female Pyronite with proportions that could only be described as "architecturally ambitious" walked out of the burning tree line carrying his ten-year-old grandson like a baby, Max Tennyson did not scream. He did not faint. He did not reach for the Plumber weapon he definitely did not have hidden in a secret compartment under the Rust Bucket's dash that he would deny the existence of under oath.
Max Tennyson looked at the spectacle before him. He looked at the burning forest. He looked at the glowing footprints melted into the campground's gravel path. He looked at Ben, who was being cradled against the fire alien's chest and wearing the expression of someone who had been kidnapped by affection.
Max sighed.
It was a deep sigh. A veteran's sigh. The sigh of a man who had hoped—really hoped—that this summer would be the normal one. The uncomplicated one. The one where his biggest challenge was convincing his grandkids to try his smoked centipede casserole. He'd been so careful. He'd picked campgrounds far from any known alien activity. He'd avoided three states entirely because of Plumber intel about Ectonurite migration patterns. He'd even disabled the Rust Bucket's deep-space scanner to avoid temptation.
And yet.
"Grandpa Max!" the fire alien said, and it was definitely—unmistakably—Gwen's voice, just filtered through several thousand degrees of volcanic enthusiasm. "We're back! I made sure Ben didn't catch cold!"
"I'm not cold! I've never been cold! It's JUNE—"
"He was out there in just a t-shirt, Grandpa. Can you believe it? What if he got sick?" Heatblast-Gwen shook her massive, flame-crowned head in disapproval. Several nearby bushes ignited from the motion. Neither she nor the fire noticed each other.
Max looked at Ben.
Ben looked at Max.
"The watch was in a pod," Ben said flatly. "It fell from space. She touched it. This happened."
"I see," Max said.
"She's been like this—" Ben gestured vaguely at the totality of the situation, "—the whole walk back."
"I see," Max said again. He folded his arms across his Hawaiian shirt—tonight's selection featured parrots wearing sunglasses, a garment so loud it constituted noise pollution—and studied Gwen with an expression that was carefully, deliberately neutral.
He recognized the device on her wrist. Of course he did. He'd seen schematics. He'd read reports. He'd sat in briefings where men and women with more medals than personality had used phrases like "Level 20 Technology" and "existential implications for the galactic balance of power" and "for God's sake, Max, stop eating during classified presentations."
The Omnitrix.
On his granddaughter's wrist.
On his ten-year-old granddaughter's wrist.
His ten-year-old granddaughter who was currently a seven-foot-tall fire alien who appeared to have been designed by someone whose only reference for female anatomy was "more."
Max sighed again. It was becoming a motif.
"Gwen, sweetheart," he said, in the calm, measured tone he'd perfected during hostage negotiations and parent-teacher conferences, "can you put Ben down?"
"But he might get cold."
"It is literally seventy-two degrees."
"That's almost freezing."
"That is not almost freezing. That is not near almost freezing. Put your cousin down, please."
Heatblast-Gwen pouted. It was a remarkable sight—a being of living magma and geological fury pouting like a child told to share her favorite toy. Small flickers of flame danced along her lower lip, which jutted out in an expression of theatrical reluctance.
"Fine," she huffed, and set Ben down with a care and gentleness that suggested she was handling nitroglycerin rather than a ten-year-old boy who regularly ate dirt on dares. She placed him on the ground, then immediately positioned herself right behind him, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating off her like a space heater set to "surface of the sun." Her massive hands hovered near his shoulders—not touching, but ready. Ready to scoop him up at the first sign of a breeze, or a cloud, or a slightly aggressive squirrel.
"Gwen," Max said, approaching slowly. The heat rolling off her was significant—his shirt was starting to feel like it had just come out of a dryer. "What happened out there? Exactly?"
"A pod fell from space," Gwen said. Her voice, even in its deep, furnace-warm register, took on the cadence of someone giving a book report. Old habits died hard. "Ben found it first because he was wandering around in the dark like an unsupervised child—"
"I am an unsupervised child. We're both unsupervised children. That's the whole situation—"
"—and I went to make sure he was safe, and I accidentally touched the watch, and it attached to my wrist, and then I pressed the button, and—" She looked down at herself. Down, and down, and down, because there was a lot of herself to look at. A smile spread across her face like sunrise over a volcanic plain. "—and now I'm this. Isn't it wonderful?"
"Wonderful," Max repeated carefully.
"I'm strong, Grandpa. Really strong. I can feel it. And I'm warm, and I can protect everyone, and—" Her blazing eyes dropped to Ben, and that look was back. That terrifying, all-consuming, completely unprecedented look of total adoration. "—and I can keep Ben safe. From everything. Forever."
"Okay, that's—that's very sweet, Gwen, but—"
"I burned a tree," she added happily. "It was an accident but it was also really cool."
Max pinched the bridge of his nose. In thirty years of Plumber service, he'd never seen a Pyronite that looked like this. The species was typically lean, angular, sharp-edged—built like living flames, all points and flickers. Gwen's Heatblast form was... none of those things. She was all curves—curves that seemed to generate their own gravitational field, curves that tested the structural tolerances of bipedal locomotion, curves that had curves.
This was going to be a long summer.
"Gwen," Max said, and something in his tone must have carried the weight of authority, because she actually focused on him fully. "That device on your wrist. It's... it's very powerful. And very complicated. We need to be careful with it. Do you understand?"
"Of course, Grandpa." She nodded seriously, and her mane of fire-hair swayed with the motion, throwing dancing shadows across the campsite. "I'll be very responsible with it. I'm always responsible. Remember my science fair project? I got first place and a commendation from the judges for organizational excellence."
"I remember. That's... not quite the same—"
"I'll be even more responsible with this. I promise." She placed a massive, glowing hand over her chest. Given the topography of her chest, this was a gesture that covered a significant surface area. "Tennyson honor."
Behind her, a tree that had been smoldering finally gave up and toppled over with a crash. Nobody acknowledged it.
"Right," Max said. "Well. Why don't we all sit down and—"
Beebeep.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Gwen's entire body went rigid. Every flame on her form—her hair, the veins of light tracing her body, the ambient glow of her eyes—flared from warm orange to furious white. She looked down at the Omnitrix with an expression that, on a human face, would have been homicidal. On a face made of living magma, it was downright apocalyptic.
"Not again," she hissed.
"What's it doing?" Max asked sharply.
"It's trying to change her back," Ben said. He'd already taken several steps away, having learned during their walk that the beeping preceded a tantrum of geological proportions. "It did this in the forest. She, uh. She fought it."
"She fought it?"
"She fought it."
"Successfully?"
"...Yeah."
Max looked at the watch. The green hourglass was flashing again—green, yellow, green, yellow—with that insistent, metronomic urgency. The standard timeout function. Every piece of intel the Plumbers had on the Omnitrix mentioned it: a built-in safety feature that reverted the user to their base form after a set period. Automatic. Unavoidable.
Theoretically unavoidable.
Beebeep. Beebeep.
"No," Gwen said. Her voice had dropped an octave, rumbling like an earthquake's warning. "No, no, NO. I just got this. I just—I feel so good, I feel right, I'm not—I won't—"
"Gwen." Max stepped forward, hands raised. "Gwen, listen to me. If the device has a timeout function, it's there for a reason. You need to let it—"
"Let it WHAT?" She rounded on him, and for a moment she was terrifying—seven feet of molten fury, her fire-hair a roaring pillar, her eyes twin stars of defiance. The air around her warped and shimmered. The gravel beneath her feet began to glow cherry-red.
Then she saw the look on Max's face—not scared, just concerned, grandfatherly concerned, the same look he wore when she stayed up too late reading—and the fury dimmed. Just slightly. Just enough.
"I'm sorry, Grandpa," she said, and her voice cracked—rock cracked, light spilled through the fissures. "I don't want to change back. I don't—you don't understand. When I'm like this, everything feels... right. Like I've been wearing shoes that were too small my whole life and I finally took them off. Like I've been holding my breath and I can finally breathe."
BEEBEEP. BEEBEEP. BEEBEEP.
"I'm more like this," she whispered, and her voice was so small for someone so enormous. "I'm better. I'm strong enough to protect—to take care of—" Her eyes found Ben again, and the desperation in them was palpable. "Please. Please don't make me go back."
"Gwen—"
The Omnitrix didn't care about please.
The red light came. Not gradually this time—it came like a switch being thrown, a hard red pulse that washed over the green hourglass and began to spread. Gwen gasped—a sound like a furnace being shut down—and her body flickered.
She fought. God, she fought.
Her flames surged. Her body blazed. She grabbed the Omnitrix with her free hand and squeezed, as if she could physically prevent the mechanism from engaging through brute force and sheer bloody-mindedness. The veins of light across her body pulsed faster, brighter, a body at war with itself—half of her trying to revert, the other half burning hotter than ever in defiance.
"NO!" she roared, and a shockwave of heat exploded outward. Max shielded his face. Ben ducked behind a camp chair. The Rust Bucket's paint job, already questionable, developed several new blisters.
But this time—this time, the watch had been ready.
The red light pulsed again, harder, and Gwen felt it—felt it like a tide she couldn't hold back, like trying to stop the ocean with her hands. The heat was being pulled out of her, sucked back into the device like a vacuum cleaner for fire. Her flames guttered. Her glow dimmed. The cracks in her magma skin widened, darkened, cooled.
"No no no no NO—"
Her voice was rising in pitch. Getting smaller. Getting younger. The deep, resonant rumble of Heatblast was being replaced, syllable by syllable, with the higher register of a ten-year-old girl.
Her body shrank. The impossible curves deflated. Her towering height collapsed downward like a building in reverse, seven feet becoming six, five, four-and-a-half. The magma-skin retreated, replaced by freckled human pale, and her fire-hair was suddenly orange and pulled back in a blue clip, and—
Flash.
Gwen Tennyson stood in the campsite.
Regular Gwen. Human Gwen. Ten-year-old, four-foot-nothing, flat as a board, skinny as a rail, completely and utterly normal Gwen Tennyson.
She was wearing her regular clothes—blue shirt, white capri pants, sneakers—which made no sense given that they had been incinerated, but the Omnitrix apparently had Opinions about conservation of matter and chose to apply them selectively.
For exactly one second, everything was quiet.
Then Gwen looked down at herself.
The scream that came out of Gwen Tennyson was not the scream of someone who had been rescued from a terrible situation. It was not a scream of relief. It was not the sound of a girl grateful to be returned to her normal, safe, human body.
It was the scream of someone who had been robbed.
"NO!"
She grabbed at herself—her arms, her legs, her torso—as if checking for wounds, except the wound was normalcy. Her hands patted frantically at her ordinary human body, and each confirmation of its ordinariness seemed to cause her physical pain.
"No, no, no—I was—I was just—" She looked at her hands. Small. Pale. Human. Ten-year-old hands with chipped nail polish and a friendship bracelet she'd made at camp last year. She stared at them like they were alien appendages—which, given recent events, was ironic.
"I was big," she said, and her voice was shaking. "I was—I was warm and strong and—" She whipped around to face Ben, and her expression was wild, almost frantic. Not the adoring warmth of Heatblast-Gwen, but not the old dismissive Gwen either. Something in between. Something confused and desperate and grieving.
"I could protect you," she said to Ben, and it sounded like an accusation directed at the universe. "I was keeping you safe."
"I didn't need keeping safe—"
"You ALWAYS need keeping safe!" she snapped, and there it was—the old Gwen sharpness, but repurposed, redirected. The disdain that used to be aimed at Ben now aimed at anything that might threaten Ben. "You wander into the woods in the dark! A meteor almost hit you! You were going to grab an alien device with your bare hands! You need—you need someone to—"
She stopped. Blinked. Shook her head like a dog shaking off water.
For a moment—a long, visible moment—Gwen Tennyson stood in the middle of the campsite and looked confused by her own emotions. Her brow furrowed. Her mouth opened and closed. She glanced between Ben and Max as if trying to reconcile two completely different sets of feelings that were fighting for control of her brain.
"I... what was I..." She pressed her palms against her temples. "Why do I feel so... wrong?"
"Wrong how, sweetheart?" Max asked carefully. He'd moved closer during the transformation, and now stood a few feet away, his flashlight forgotten in one hand, his full attention on his granddaughter.
"Wrong like—like I'm missing something. Like I took off something I was supposed to be wearing. Like—" She looked down at herself again, at her perfectly normal ten-year-old body, and her face crumpled into an expression of such profound disappointment that it would have been comical if it weren't genuinely concerning.
"I'm so small," she whispered.
"You're ten," Ben pointed out.
"I was seven feet tall."
"Yeah, and you were also made of lava—"
"I know!" Gwen shouted, and it came out as half a sob. "And it was perfect! Everything was perfect! I could feel—I could feel everything, Ben, the heat and the power and—" Her voice dropped. Softened. Got very, very quiet. "—and I could feel how much I wanted to take care of you. And it didn't feel weird. It felt like the most natural thing in the world."
Ben stared at her.
Gwen stared at Ben.
"...That's weird, right?" Gwen said after a moment, and a ghost of the old Gwen surfaced—the analytical Gwen, the logical Gwen, the Gwen who categorized and evaluated and judged. "That's—that's super weird. Why did I—why do I still—" She faltered. "Why do I still want to make sure you're warm enough?"
"Because you're a weirdo?" Ben offered.
"I'm serious, Ben!"
"So am I!"
"ENOUGH."
Max's voice cut through the campsite with the practiced authority of a man who'd once commanded a squad of intergalactic peacekeepers. Both kids went quiet instantly.
Max looked at Gwen. Really looked at her. His granddaughter, standing in the middle of a campsite surrounded by scorch marks and smoldering vegetation, one hand clutching the Omnitrix on her opposite wrist, eyes red-rimmed and confused, her entire body practically vibrating with the desire to slam that dial back down and transform again.
He looked at Ben. His grandson, standing a few feet away, dirty and bewildered and watching Gwen with an expression that mixed concern with the deep discomfort of a boy who had, fifteen minutes ago, been called "sweetie" by his worst rival and then kissed on the head.
Max made a decision.
"Gwen," he said gently. "Step away from the watch."
"What?"
"Don't touch the dial. Not yet. I need you to take a breath and let me explain some things."
"But I can just—" Her left hand was already drifting toward the Omnitrix faceplate. Already reaching for it. Her fingers twitched with anticipation, and there was a hunger in her eyes that Max recognized. He'd seen it before. In Plumbers who'd gotten a taste of alien tech. In soldiers who'd worn powered armor for the first time. The intoxication of more—more power, more strength, more self.
"Gwen." Firmer now. "Hands at your sides."
Gwen's hand stopped. Trembled. Her fingers curled into a fist, inches from the dial.
"I don't want to be this," she said, and gestured at herself—at her small, ordinary, human body—with a disgust that was startling. "I want to be—I was better. I was—"
"You were a Pyronite," Max said, and both kids' heads snapped toward him. "A species from the star Pyros. Living fire beings. Very powerful, very volatile, very—" He paused, choosing his words with a diplomat's care. "—not typically shaped like that, actually. But that's a conversation for another time."
"You know what that was?!" Ben demanded.
"Grandpa, how do you—" Gwen started.
"Another time," Max repeated. "Right now, what I need both of you to understand is that the device on Gwen's wrist is—" He stopped. Sighed. Rubbed the back of his neck. How do you explain the most powerful weapon in the galaxy to two ten-year-olds?
"It's very important," he settled on. "And very dangerous. And it's going to attract attention. The wrong kind of attention. Gwen, I need you to promise me—promise me—that you won't activate it again until we've had a chance to talk. Really talk. About what it is, what it does, and what the consequences might be."
Gwen looked at him. Then at the Omnitrix. Then at Ben. Then back at Max.
"...Can I hold Ben's hand?" she asked.
"WHAT?" Ben recoiled. "NO!"
"Why not?"
"Because you're my cousin and you're being weird!"
"I just want to make sure you're okay—"
"I'm FINE! I've been fine! I've been fine this whole time! YOU'RE the one who got turned into a—a lava lady and started acting like—like a crazy person!"
"I am not crazy. I'm concerned. There's a difference—"
"Oh my GOD, Gwen—"
"KIDS."
Silence. Max had deployed the Dad Voice. The Grandpa Voice. The retired intergalactic operative voice. It brooked no argument.
"Bed," he said. "Both of you. Now."
"But—" they said in unison.
"Now."
Twenty minutes later, the campsite was quiet. The fires—both intentional and Gwen-related—had been extinguished. The Rust Bucket hummed with the soft mechanical sounds of an old vehicle settling for the night. Max sat in the driver's seat, staring out the windshield at the stars, a cup of coffee in his hand and the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders.
In the back of the RV, in the cramped bunk area, Ben lay on the top bunk staring at the ceiling. Below him, Gwen lay on the bottom bunk staring at the Omnitrix.
Silence.
"Ben?" Gwen's voice. Small. Human. Uncertain.
"...What."
"I'm sorry I was weird."
Pause.
"...It's okay."
"I don't know why I acted like that. I don't—I'm not—" She struggled with the words. "I don't normally feel that way about you. You know that, right? I think you're annoying and immature and your grades are terrible."
"Gee, thanks."
"But when I was—when I was her—" Gwen's voice went soft, almost reverent. "It was like... you were the most important thing in the world. Not an important thing. The important thing. The only thing. And keeping you safe wasn't a choice, it was... it was like breathing. It was just what I did. What I was for."
Ben didn't say anything for a long time.
"That's kinda messed up, Gwen."
"I know."
Another silence. Longer this time.
"Ben?"
"What."
"...I want to do it again."
He could hear it in her voice. The longing. The need. Not a child wanting a toy—something deeper, something more fundamental. Like someone describing a home they'd been exiled from. She'd been Heatblast for maybe twenty minutes, total. And the loss of it—the return to normalcy, to this small, ordinary, powerless body—was eating her alive.
"Grandpa said not to," Ben said quietly.
"I know what Grandpa said."
"Gwen."
"I know, Ben."
Silence.
Then, so quietly he almost missed it:
"...I could transform right now. While he's not looking. I could be her again in five seconds. I could—"
"Gwen."
"—I could keep you safe, Ben. I could hold you and make sure nothing ever hurts you and—"
"Gwen, go to sleep."
She went quiet. But Ben could hear it—a soft, repetitive sound from the bunk below. Click. Click. Click. The sound of a fingernail tapping against the Omnitrix faceplate. Not pressing. Not activating. Just... touching. Reminding herself it was there. Reminding herself that she was only one button press away.
Ben pulled his pillow over his head.
Below him, Gwen stared at the green glow of the Omnitrix in the darkness. It pulsed softly. Steadily. Like a heartbeat.
Like her heartbeat.
She pressed her other hand over it, cradling the device against her chest, and closed her eyes. Behind her eyelids, she burned.
In the driver's seat, Max Tennyson took a long sip of coffee, pulled out a phone that was considerably more advanced than anything commercially available on Earth, and typed a message he'd hoped he'd never have to send:
OMNITRIX LOCATED. BONDED TO CIVILIAN. SITUATION COMPLICATED.
He paused. Deleted "COMPLICATED." Retyped.
SITUATION EXTREMELY COMPLICATED.
He paused again. Deleted it. Retyped.
SITUATION GWEN.
He stared at the message for a long moment. Then he hit send, put the phone away, and poured himself more coffee.
It was going to be a very long summer.
TO BE CONTINUED...