Chapter 43: Collateral Damage
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The corrupted ground exploded like a minefield of nightmares.
Orange vines, thick as anacondas and covered in thorns that gleamed like broken glass, erupted from every direction. They moved with predatory intelligence, whipping through the air with enough force to shatter bone.
One caught Bobby Drake across the chest, sending him sprawling before he could even form an ice shield. He spat out blood in what looked like quite the painful manner.
"SCATTER!" Grandpa Max shouted, diving left as a vine the size of a tree trunk slammed where he'd been standing.
I rolled right, feeling the wind from another vine missing my head by inches. The air filled with that oily, wrong smell as more corrupted matter burst from the earth. It was as if this wasn't just an attack but the planet itself turning against us.
The three minions descended on their hovering platforms, surveying the chaos with what I could only describe as religious ecstasy. The small green one with six arms chittered excitedly, its bulbous eyes reflecting our struggle like some twisted entertainment.
"The unworthy writhe!" it squealed. "The Great One's garden grows!"
Jean Grey screamed, blood now flowing freely from her nose and ears. Kitty Pryde had her arms around the older woman, trying to keep her upright while phasing them both through the worst of the vine attacks.
"Jean's completely out!" Kitty shouted. "Whatever that thing is broadcasting, it's frying her brain!"
Without their teacher, the younger X-Men looked lost. But then Jubilee stepped forward, jaw set with determination.
"Screw this!" She thrust both hands forward. "Time to light it up!"
The air erupted in a cascade of plasmoids. Brilliant spheres of pink, yellow, and blue energy that lit up the corrupted landscape like the Fourth of July. Each explosion sent shockwaves through the air, the concussive force enough to splinter the smaller vines.
I couldn't help but whistle despite the situation. Jubilation Lee, mall rat turned X-Man. In my past life's memories, she'd been criminally underused in most adaptations. But here, watching her unleash what looked like miniature fireworks from hell, I could see the potential.
Those weren't just pretty lights. They were pure plasma, hot enough to melt steel if she really pushed it. And couldn't she even cause Atomic Blasts if trained enough? Unless I remembered wrong.
Her barrage hammered into the minions' platforms, creating a spectacular light show that would've been beautiful if it weren't so deadly. But as the smoke cleared, I was hardly surprised. Shimmering energy shields surrounded each platform, her attacks fizzling harmlessly against the advanced defenses.
"Primitive creatures," the slim Leader Alien said. "Quit your needless struggle and let yourself be purified by the Great One."
"Nah, not before my turn." Roberto DaCosta's voice carried an edge of fury as he stepped up beside Jubilee.
"Try not to fry me, Sunburn. These boots are limited edition," the girl said.
The transformation was instant and dramatic. His body became a living shadow, darker than the void between stars, with solar energy crackling around him like captured lightning. The temperature jumped twenty degrees just from his presence.
Sunspot, I thought, watching him channel pure solar radiation into devastating blasts. Brazilian hothead with the power of a star. His beams struck the axe-wielding buff minion dead center, the force enough to knock it off-balance. But the creature was impossibly agile, using its warping weapon to literally cut through space and reposition itself.
"Is that all you got?" Roberto snarled, pouring more power into his attacks.
But I could see what they couldn't. These minions had probably conquered hundreds of worlds. They moved with the easy confidence of veterans facing children. Every attack was anticipated, every strategy countered before it could fully form.
A vine caught Roberto from behind, thorns piercing his solar form. He screamed, his concentration breaking as the corruption tried to burrow into his energy matrix. Jubilee spun to help him, leaving herself open to another vine that wrapped around her ankle.
"Mein Gott!" Kurt Wagner's voice cut through the chaos. "Hold on, meine Freunde!"
The blue-furred mutant became a one-man rescue operation. BAMF! He appeared beside Jubilee, severing the vine with a stolen Park Ranger's knife. BAMF! Now he was pulling Roberto free, his natural agility letting him dodge the worst of the thorns. BAMF! BAMF! BAMF!
"Thanks for the assist, Nighty. Remind me to buy you a churro later," Jubilee said, winking at him.
Each teleportation left a trail of sulfurous smoke, but Kurt didn't slow down. He'd push himself to the limit and beyond if it meant saving his friends. That was just who Nightcrawler was – the swashbuckling hero with a heart of gold, even if his body was already showing the strain.
"I'm ending this!" Kurt declared, his golden eyes fixed on the hovering minions. "If we take out their leaders–"
"Kurt, don't be stupid!" I shouted, but he was already moving.
BAMF!
He appeared directly behind the six-armed Interpreter, wrapping his arms around the creature in a flying tackle. The alien shrieked in surprise as they both plummeted from the platform. Kurt teleported away at the last second, leaving the Interpreter to crash into the corrupted ground where its own master's vines immediately began to entangle it.
"One down!" Kurt grinned, but I saw what he didn't.
The Leader alien had already calculated his next move.
As Kurt began his teleportation to take out the second target, the creature shot a beam from its forehead at where he was, but at where he was going to be. The beams cut through dimensions themselves, creating a violent spatial disruption right in Kurt's path.
The result was catastrophic. Kurt materialized halfway, his teleportation violently interrupted. The backlash sent him flying like a ragdoll, his body contorting in ways that made my stomach turn. He hit the ground hard and didn't get up, blue fur matted with blood.
"KURT!" Kitty screamed, but she couldn't leave Jean.
"Fall back!" Grandpa Max's voice cut through the chaos with military precision. "Form a defensive perimeter! Ben, we need you to—"
"Yep, I know." I was already moving, slamming my hand down on the Omnitrix. I was curious how strong these kids were. That was why I hadn't intervened yet. I'd seen enough. The transformation washed over me in a wave of expanding muscle and bone. My perspective shot upward as I grew to twelve feet tall, clothes shredding as four massive arms burst from my torso.
"FOUR ARMS!" The battle cry erupted from my throat as I intercepted the charging brute Enforcer Alien.
We collided like freight trains, the impact creating a shockwave that flattened the corrupted vegetation around us. This thing was strong. But not as strong as Hulk. While I was the peak version of a Tetramand.
I blocked its incoming axe with one hand and yanked it free. I threw it aside and grabbed two of its arms with my upper hands while my lower fists hammered into its torso. Every punch sounded like thunder, but the creature just laughed, its hide barely denting.
The laughter died when I began to use my upper arms.
Behind me, I heard Gwen engaging the Leader alien who shot beams from his head. She'd learned from watching the others fail. Instead of brute force, she used precision. Invisible threads of telekinetic energy wrapped around the minion's limbs, not trying to crush but to bind. Smart girl.
Grandpa Max reinforced her strategy, firing high-tensile energy binders from his Plumber weapon. When did he pull that out? The golden ropes merged with Gwen's telekinetic threads, creating a hybrid restraint that even the alien's powerful beams couldn't easily cut through.
But even as we gained ground against the minions, I could see the real problem. The corruption was spreading faster now, reaching for Kurt's unconscious form, creeping toward the injured students. We were fighting the symptoms, not the disease.
"They're just keeping us busy!" I roared, ducking under the brute's wild swing. "The real problem is that thing!"
I grabbed the brute with all four arms who were all bruised and bloody now, muscles tight as I lifted it overhead. With a grunt of effort, I hurled it directly at its leading companion. They collided in mid-air with a satisfying crunch, groaning in pain as the both of them tumbled from the sky.
I clicked the Omnitrix and returned to human for a brief second. The Omnitrix was already glowing again as I made my choice. There was only one form that could handle this, one alien with a personal stake in this fight.
In the cartoon, Ben had tried all 10 original aliens to break that Tick. There was a whole cool sequence scene of him going from one alien to another, but the Tick remains unbothered. It had its own offensive capabilities, after all.
Although I was 8 years older than the original cartoon Ben, and so my aliens were stronger too, why risk it when I knew the solution to this problem already?
Green light washed over me as I shrank down, my body compressing into a spherical shape. Armor plates clicked into place as I became the last son of a murdered world.
"CANNONBOLT!"
The remaining conscious worshipper – the six-armed Interpreter still struggling in the vines – screamed in a mixture of rage and absolute terror. "No! The Arburian Pelarota! It must not defile the Great One! This is blasphemy! BLASPHEMY!"
I ignored its cries, tucking into a perfect sphere.
The corrupted landscape that had been our enemy became my highway. I bounced off bio-mechanical spires, using each impact to build momentum. Faster and faster, until I was less a rolling ball and more a guided missile.
The Great Tick loomed before me, a mountain of corrupted flesh and alien technology. Up close, I could see the pores covering its hide, each one secreting acids that hissed and bubbled. But they were also weak points. Entrances into its body.
I aimed for the largest one and dove in.
The sensation of piercing through its hide was indescribable. Like punching through wet leather filled with battery acid. The smell hit me even through Cannonbolt's alien physiology, decay and ozone and something fundamentally wrong.
But once I was inside, something primal took over.
A feeling belonging to 'Cannonbolt' and not quite 'Ben.' This thing had destroyed Arburia. It had murdered every Arburian Pelarota in existence, turning a peaceful species into cosmic history. And here I was, wearing their DNA like a memorial, inside the creature that had committed genocide.
The satisfaction that flooded through me wasn't entirely my own. Some part of it came from the DNA itself, a genetic will of justice finally served.
I became a pinball of pure destruction.
The Great Tick's interior was a cathedral of horror, full of pulsing organs the size of houses, bio-luminescent conduits carrying energy like corrupted blood, walls of flesh that quivered with each impact. I didn't hold back.
I ricocheted off what might have been its primary heart, the organ exploding in a shower of orange ichor. My next bounce severed a major conduit, sending sparks of alien electricity arcing through the creature's body. Every bloody impact was calculated chaos, using the monster's own anatomy against it.
Deeper I went, following some instinct I didn't fully understand. There, at the center of it all, I found it. A massive cluster of neural tissue, protected by rings of bone and metal. The brain, or whatever passed for one in this abomination.
I didn't hesitate.
Building up as much momentum as possible, I slammed directly into it.
The neural cluster exploded like an overripe fruit filled with fireworks. The psychic backlash should have been devastating, but Cannonbolt's simple nervous system just shrugged it off. Around me, the Great Tick's body began to convulse, its death throes shaking the entire park.
I rolled out the way I'd come, bursting from the creature's hide as it began its death spiral. But instead of exploding like I'd expected, it did something else. It shriveled, like a grape becoming a raisin in fast-forward. The bio-mechanical shell cracked and crumbled, turning to dust that scattered on the wind.
As the last of it disintegrated, a wave of emerald green energy pulsed outward. Everywhere it touched, the corruption receded.
Orange turned back to brown, twisted vines became normal plants, and the very air seemed to clear. In seconds, Yellowstone looked as if the nightmare had never happened.
The Omnitrix flashed green, leaving me human and exhausted in the middle of a pristine clearing. I stood on shaky legs, taking in the impossible sight. Where the Great Tick had been, only a circle of enriched soil remained, already sprouting with new grass.
Around me, the surviving X-Men stared in various states of shock. Roberto was helping Kurt sit up, the teleporter conscious but clearly concussed. Kitty still cradled Jean, whose nosebleed had finally stopped. Bobby was already creating ice packs for the injured.
And then there was Jubilee.
She pushed off from the tree she'd been leaning against, trying to look casual despite the awe written across her face. Her yellow jacket was torn, revealing a Dazzler concert tee underneath. She popped her ever-present bubblegum, the sound sharp in the sudden quiet.
"So," she said, sauntering over with a confidence that didn't quite hide how impressed she was. "That was insanely impressive."
She stopped just inside my personal space, close enough that I could smell her strawberry lip gloss mixing with the lingering sulfur from Kurt's teleportation. Her dark eyes traced from the dust that had been a planet-killer to my face, a slow smile spreading across her lips.
"Got to ask though," she continued, voice dropping to something almost purring as her eyes skid across my newly gained cheat muscles. "What's your number? You know, in case we run into more world-ending monsters. Purely professional interest…"
The problem was dealt with. The world saved. The Avengers should thank me.
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Author Note: We've met the goal wonderfully, standing at Top 5 right now. Tomorrow's goal would be Top 3 since one story will slip down as he only updates once a week. Still, all the players ahead are hard players. Emmanuel's Lion King already got 2k stones which is CRAZY. Let's go guys, start voting for double chapters tomorrow!
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