NOVEL NEXT Chapter 19: Impact
"What's that!?" shouted Gwen.
The creature roared and thrashed, throwing furniture and debris in Gwen and Ben's direction. Its shapeless and bizarre appearance made it impossible to identify the species or to know if it had any species to be identified.
"I don't know!" Ben replied "All I know is that it's been chasing me for a long time, and when I finally think I got to hide, you show up and bring the brute into my hiding spot!"
"Oh, I'm sorry if I didn't know that some weird monster was chasing you! But I just got here and nobody told me about it!"
"What do you mean you just got here? Where did you come from?"
Gwen didn't answer. Did she say more than she should have? Maybe for Ben, this place was Bellwood. The real Bellwood. Sooner or later he will find out, but it's better to solve one problem at a time.
"It doesn't matter! Now we have to get rid of this thing!" said Gwen.
"Good luck, do you want to try it first?"
She accepted the offer. Gwen stands in front of her cousin and coats her hands with bundles of mana. Stretching her arms out in front of her body, with her hands together and fingers intertwined in a bizarrely meaningful way, she says
"Vürkthera!"
A powerful beam of energy shoots out of his hands and hits the center of the creature's chest, hurling him against the living room wall and causing him to crash into the neighboring house.
"Mr. Sullivan is going to be a real pain in the ass with you?" said Ben.
"Who?"
"My neighbor."
"We'll see about that. She takes her cousin by the arm and leads him through the living room door to the sidewalk of the house."
"Okay, stop pulling me around! Tell me, where are you going?"
Gwen put her hand on her chin and looked around. Then she said:
"I honestly don't know. Somewhere safe?"
"Really? Don't you think I've already checked?"
Although Gwen had very carefully planned the steps to enter Ben's mind, now that she was inside, she didn't know what she was going to do next. Then she remembered Charming's speech in the library.
"Ben, what do you remember?"
"What do you mean, remember? Everything."
"Before the creature chased you, what were you doing?"
"Sleeping."
"And after?"
"I woke up."
"Ben, I swear to you..." Gwen was trying to remain calm, but a small glow of mana was already beginning to appear on her right hand.
"I woke up. I didn't find anyone home. I had breakfast. I went to school. On the way I saw a cat stuck in a tree. I rescued the cat. I continued to school and was attacked."
"And then?"
"I fought the monster through most of the city. I realized that he was just coming after me, so I tried to hide. But every now and then he or one of his friends finds me and-"
"Wait! There are more of these creatures!?"
"Of course!"
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"You didn't ask... By the way" Ben points to the end of the street, where two shapeless, hairy quadruped creatures are running towards them.
From the neighbor's house, the brute monster reappears, destroying the wall, the mailbox, and the car parked in front of the neighbor's house. Already in the middle of the street, he roars toward the youngsters.
"Can I join in this time?" asked Ben.
Gwen didn't know what to say or how to act. So she just stared in astonishment at her cousin and his incoherent excitement about the situation.
"I'll take your silence as a yes," Ben extends his left arm and touches the Omnitrix disk on his wrist, activating it and making the hologram appear.
"Ben, wait!" Gwen screams, but it's already too late.
A green light coats Ben's entire body, indicating the beginning of the transformation. The glow grows in size, as does the silhouette from within the light. As the light fades, a red muscular creature with four arms reveals itself announcing its arrival:
"Four-Arms!"
The alien rushes toward the broad-trunked creature. He prepares his two right arms and hits the monster with a powerful double punch. Or is it two powerful punches? Whatever.
The creature is thrown toward one of the houses in the neighborhood and goes through several walls until it comes out on the other side of the property.
Gwen remains static, not understanding anything.
The tetramand turns toward Gwen and, with a proud smile, shows two "joins" with his right hands.
"Hey, cousin," says Four-Arms in his thick voice, "yours are coming too, be alert!"
She turns around quickly and is met with a mouthful of fangs coming towards her. Gwen projects a shield over herself, causing the four-legged monster to crash into the defense and fall disoriented behind her.
The second quadruped also jumps next, but in this case it is hit by a car still in the air, being thrown meters away.
"You're welcome," says Ben.
Gwen undoes the shield and, walking, approaches the tetramand.
Four-Arms grabs the first quadruped creature and holds it under one of his arms. Seeing his cousin approaching, he punched the creature in the face with a bottom-left hook that knocked the monster out immediately.
"Ben, you have transformed." she said.
"Yes..." It coats itself with the green glow and returns to its human form "As usual, why?"
"And... And you're feeling okay?"
"Normal. Why?"
"No pain, scream or-"
"No. Why? Actually, Gwen, I'm the one asking. Are you all right? What are these questions?"
"Ben... Do you know where we are?"
"Bellwood, down the street from my house."
"And you didn't find anything strange besides the creatures?"
"No..."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure. We are in Bellwood. The creatures are probably henchmen of some fifth-rate villain out there. If I'm not mistaken, from my vast experience, any minute now he's going to show up and give his megalomaniacal speech."
"So why are you crying?"
"What?" Ben brings his hand to his face and feels the warm wet path of tears on his cheek.
The young man falls silent, lowers his head, and faces his own hands. He watches his palms trim the tears, one by one, without ceasing. Ben sees a pair of hands invade his field of vision and gently hold his own. The tears continued to fall, this time over the back of his cousin's hands.
Without lifting his head, he says:
"We are not in Bellwood."
"No..."
"Gwen... What happened to me?"
"You've been hurt, Ben."
The bright, confident teenager of a few moments ago now showed all the fear and fragility that he had been trying to hide all this time.
"Did I die?" he said.
"No! No, Ben, you're not dead!" Gwen struggled not to let a tear well up in the corner of her eye, "and you won't!"
The young man raised his head. Gwen's last line said more than she had intended to say. Maybe he wasn't dead, but his condition couldn't have been better. The tears stopped for the moment. He looked around, trying to understand the landscape around them:
"Where are we?"
"Inside your mind."
"Are you kidding?"
"Why would I be?"
"How cool!" Ben lets go of his cousin's hands and starts running around the room, trying to touch every object he sees "Is it as if we were in a dream?"
"I don't know, I'm still learning how this spell works..."
Ben walks and twists his body with his arms open, in the best style of The Sound of Music, and says:
"If this is a dream then I am able to do anything I want here!"
A crater opened up on the ground the instant the creature fell from the sky, hurling rocks and debris into the air. Ben and Gwen were thrown by the wave of impact and fell backwards onto the asphalt. In the center of the crater, looking bizarre like the others, a tall, asymmetrical, three-armed lug begins to emerge from behind the dust that is beginning to subside.
"Oh, man…"