Chapter 214: Another Battle at the Docks
Ben lay sprawled across his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. One of his eyes was sporting a nasty, swollen purple bruise.
Beep, beep, beep.
He blindly groped the mattress for his ringing phone, pressing it to his ear with a weak, "Hello?"
"Ben Tennyson, did the boss pick you up yet?" Kevin's strained voice crackled through the speaker, accompanied by the distinct, chaotic sounds of a brawl—fists hitting flesh and things shattering.
"Pick me up? Wait, is Cousin coming to get me?" Ben sat up, wincing slightly as his bruised eye throbbed.
A heavy silence fell over the line. "Alright, I should have known," Kevin muttered before the call abruptly cut off.
A sudden gust of cool night wind fluttered the curtains. Ben instinctively glanced toward the window. Klein was already sitting casually on the sill, silhouetted against the moonlight. "Hello, Ben. Time to go."
"Cousin!" Ben's face lit up, but his shoulders quickly slumped. "I can't. My parents grounded me."
"Come on, Ben. Since when did you ever listen to Grandpa when you were little?" Klein hopped down from the sill, his boots tapping softly against the floorboards. He walked over and gave Ben's shoulder a reassuring pat. "You know what needs to be done. That's enough."
Klein turned back toward the window, resting one hand lazily against the frame. "As for the rest, we'll figure it out later. Right now, the hero is about to make his entrance."
By the time Sandra and Carl Tennyson heard the muffled commotion and rushed anxiously up the stairs, Ben's room was completely empty. The curtains merely fluttered in the empty breeze.
"I really didn't expect him to just run off like that," Sandra murmured, her voice laced with disbelief and maternal worry. Beside her, Carl stood with a complicated expression, his jaw tight as he wondered what on earth his son was thinking.
Meanwhile, across town at the shipping docks.
Inside a cramped, single-story warehouse, a dazzling burst of magenta mana illuminated the grime-caked windows. A DNAlien was blasted backward by the kinetic beam, its grotesque body crashing violently through the corrugated iron door.
Gwen sprinted out of the breach immediately. Kevin followed hot on her heels, hurling a heavy wooden table at the swarm of DNAliens pouring in behind them before darting into the open night air.
"What's the play here? These freaks just keep coming!" Kevin shouted, his boots pounding against the concrete.
"Let's fall back, regroup with Cousin and Ben, and hit them together!" Gwen yelled back.
In mere seconds, the two reached a tactical consensus. For Gwen, the Highbreed's true objective remained a mystery. There could be highly volatile alien tech hidden aboard the docked cruise ships; rushing in blindly was a fool's errand. As for Kevin, his reasoning was much simpler: he was tired of getting punched by mindless mutants.
Unfortunately, they had severely underestimated the sheer volume of DNAliens infesting the docks. Every escape route they took was quickly choked off by snarling, shambling figures. Within moments, they were completely surrounded, trapped like fish in a barrel.
"Ugh. If I knew I was going to bite it here tonight, I would've eaten two more burritos for dinner," Kevin grumbled, his jaw locking as he absorbed the surrounding threat.
Gwen wasn't particularly panicked. She could always manifest her mana platforms and fly them both out if things got truly desperate.
But the universe always had a funny way of pouring cold water on a solid backup plan.
A massive shadow detached itself from the upper decks of a nearby cruise ship. A towering Highbreed, resembling a grotesque, aristocratic white moth, descended heavily onto the concrete in front of them.
"Hahahaha... Do just the two of you pests dare to knock on my door?" The Highbreed sneered, its voice dripping with arrogant disdain. "Tonight, even if you possessed wings, you would not escape my grasp!"
Gwen narrowed her eyes. She was tempted to tell the overgrown bug that she could activate her Anodite form and easily mop the floor with him. However, noting the Highbreed's smug, unguarded posture, she decided it would be much more pragmatic to play weak and ambush him with a lethal mana strike when his guard was completely down.
"Minions! Tear them apart— Eh?"
Before the Highbreed could finish issuing his execution order, a blinding emerald light suddenly erupted in the night sky above.
"What is that? A meteor? Why is it getting larger...?" the Highbreed muttered, squinting upward.
A searing neuroshock beam lanced down from the heavens, slamming directly into the Highbreed's face. The resulting explosion shattered the concrete, kicking up a massive cloud of smoke and debris that instantly swallowed the alien commander.
One of the two descending Jetrays landed gracefully beside Kevin, a flash of green light revealing Ben. "Long time no see."
"Ben Tennyson, what on earth is wrong with you?!" Kevin's eyes bulged with irritation. He grabbed Ben by the shoulders and shook him violently. "If you had been even a second later, I might have been on my way to heaven!"
"Relax," Ben smirked, swatting Kevin's hands away. "Even if you died, you bastard, you'd definitely be going to hell."
His smile faded slightly as he rubbed his neck. "My parents found out about the Omnitrix and grounded me. If Cousin hadn't shown up to bust me out, I probably wouldn't have made it at all."
"Oh. Yeah, that sucks," Kevin muttered, his anger instantly deflating.
While the boys bickered, Gwen kept her glowing eyes fixed on the second Jetray hovering above.
Down below, the Highbreed waved a massive hand, violently dispersing the smoke as he stomped out of the crater. "Which insolent wretch dares—!"
Before the Highbreed could finish his furious tirade, the airborne Jetray was suddenly engulfed in a ghostly blue light. The sleek aerodynamic form shifted, expanding into a hulking, muscular bipedal tiger with fiery orange and black fur.
"Stupid big moth! Take a punch from your daddy Rath!"
Plummeting from the sky, Rath flexed his massive right arm and delivered a devastating, meteor-like punch straight down at the Highbreed.
Hearing the roaring wind, the Highbreed instinctively raised his right arm to block. The moment Rath's fist connected, an explosive shockwave rippled through the air. The sheer kinetic force of Rath's strike sent the towering Highbreed skidding backward for more than ten meters, his clawed feet carving two deep, blackened trenches into the reinforced concrete.
Seeing Klein take point, Ben and the others immediately engaged the surrounding swarm of DNAliens.
Ben slammed his hand down on the Omnitrix dial. "Big Chill!"
A flash of emerald light illuminated the docks, and the cloaked alien materialized in the air. Big Chill unhinged his jaws, exhaling a torrent of bone-chilling, absolute-zero wind that instantly flash-froze a dozen charging DNAliens into solid blocks of ice.
Kevin, having already absorbed the concrete beneath his feet, charged forward like a living battering ram, shattering the frozen mutants into harmless icy fragments with heavy, sweeping punches.
Gwen held the rear, acting as the team's artillery. Her hands danced in the air, weaving large-scale mana constructs that blasted away the densest pockets of DNAliens, keeping the boys' flanks entirely clear.
Meanwhile, the Highbreed commander finally shook off the dizzying impact of Rath's punch. He cursed the interlopers in his native tongue, his mind racing as he calculated the odds of a strategic retreat. Even with his endless supply of DNAlien cannon fodder, engaging these super-powered freaks in a direct brawl was a losing proposition.
But the cruise ship docked behind him held critical supplies for the Highbreed invasion. Abandoning it now would be a massive setback.
While the Highbreed hesitated, Rath popped the wicked black blade from his right wrist. With a savage swipe, he cleanly severed a nearby steel utility pole from its base. Grabbing the heavy metal cylinder like a javelin, Rath hurled it directly at the Highbreed's chest.
Forced to abandon his tactical musings, the Highbreed caught the flying utility pole with both hands. The sheer momentum of the projectile pushed him back another few feet, his boots grinding against the pavement.
Refusing to give his opponent a single second to breathe, Rath bent his powerful legs and launched himself high into the air, bringing both fists down for a crushing double-hammer strike.
The Highbreed's eyes narrowed. Gripping the steel utility pole tightly with both hands, he shifted his weight into a flawless baseball batting stance and swung with all his might.
CLANG!
Caught mid-air with absolutely no use, Rath took the brutal hit directly to his torso. The Appoplexian was launched backward like a furry cannonball, sailing over the edge of the docks and crashing violently into the dark waters of the bay.
Watching his most aggressive attacker sink beneath the waves, a dangerous, arrogant thought bloomed in the Highbreed's mind: What if... I can actually defeat them?
A split second later, a blinding, ghostly blue light erupted from the depths of the sea, illuminating the entire harbor.
The water violently displaced as an impossibly colossal figure rose from the bay. The towering form of Way Big blotted out the moon, casting a terrifying, mountain-sized shadow over half the dock.
The Highbreed's jaw dropped, his momentary confidence shattering into a million pieces. Are you serious, universe? I can't even entertain the thought?!
Amidst the Highbreed's utter, paralyzing despair, Way Big casually reached over, hoisted an entire parked cruise ship out of the water, and slammed it down directly on top of the Highbreed with devastating force.
From beneath the crushed, groaning steel of the luxury liner, a muffled, defeated voice echoed into the night. "Ben Tennyson was right... Oh, this is so annoying!"
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