//------------------------------// // Making A Pesk Of Himself // Story: Pesk Control // by Estee //------------------------------// Even at the age of ten, in the middle of finding out that his grandfather had once held the coolest job ever -- even then, he'd had questions. And perhaps the most crucial had been about the name. How could the profession of locating, monitoring, and dealing with extraterrestrial arrivals -- again, the coolest job ever -- have possibly wound up with that ridiculous, mundane, and perfectly boring title? The initial answer had been less than satisfactory, especially at that age of ten: ultimately, it was about plugging the leaks. But a few years had passed since then, and he had begun to recognize some of the subtleties. For starters, the title was exceptionally convenient. Being a member of a government agency which technically wasn't supposed to exist made it a little hard to prove authority, and pulling rank was something of a problem. Outright muscling your way into an area effectively became impossible. But if you just told them what you were, by title -- then it was usually going to be a free pass. Those who guarded buildings would typically step aside, because it was a choice between letting you in through the front or risking having a tide of brown water strike them from the back. Outdoor problem? There's pipes everywhere: just ask them! You could find an excuse to be practically anywhere in the world and if that location was at sea, then it was probably going to be something about investigating fluid runoff. The title was also about practicality. You went in with the tools available and you kept working until everything was solved. It was also best to prevent people from trying to make their own repairs, because that usually just made the problem worse. Some of those post-DIY cleanup operations had come close to going global. You cleared the clogs. Kept the flow of the world running normally. It was also a job which led to having a lot of odd bits lying around: you weren't always sure what some of them did, but you hung on to everything because eventually, there was going to be a repair which required whatever-that-was and when it came along, you'd instinctively know its time had come. Plus everything they did wound up costing far more than it should have, and someone always had to pay that bill because otherwise, who was going to do it the next time around? The name had layers. But there was another truth to the job's title: something which required significant direct experience before the sheer twinned humor and horror of it broke through. And ultimately, it had taken Ben Tennyson about six years to spot the joke. Those who dealt with the presence of aliens on Earth were called 'Plumbers' for the following reasons: they were brought in when the worst of it was about to explode from the hidden underlayers, they spent their lives in trying to keep it from overflowing, and saving the world meant fighting while you were up to your neck in a rising tide of brown stuff. Trying to fight back the kind of flood which an entire universe could bring to bear against a single world, while desperately hoping not to drown. Also, if your no-longer-quite-as-retired grandfather happened to call you in on a Saturday morning because a potential problem had popped out of an invisible pipeline, then your entire weekend was clearly about to get flushed. Ben hadn't been to Mount Rushmore in a while. It was the first of the Plumber headquarters he'd encountered during that summer road trip, and that alone made it a special place. But most of what he remembered about it (beyond the fear and terror and phantom sensations of those strangely-dry facial tentacles running across his arm) was the emptiness. He'd been told it was one of the least-used facilities. And as with most of the hidden locations, it could be made to serve as a command center: every last satellite location (including the one in orbit) had to be prepared to take over for the whole thing, because it was presumed that any truly major incursion might lead to all of the others being lost. As such, it had everything. There was a communications hub, medical facilities, weapons storage -- especially weapons storage. If Rushmore ever turned into the location of the last stand, then the final fight was going to be a well-armed one. The mountain was where the Plumbers kept their final resorts: the things they didn't want to use, along with those pieces of technological flotsam and jetsam which simply weren't understood, couldn't be safely destroyed, and had to be kept somewhere. There was a well-guarded room buried deep within stone and if the last crisis was ever truly upon the little planet -- then it was understood that a Plumber would venture within, deactivate the shielding around one of the strange objects, and finally learn what this button did. But there just wasn't very much space cleared within the mountain, especially when compared to some of the other hidden places. It wasn't considered to be a priority assignment: even with the Plumbers fully active again, Rushmore typically ran at minimum staff -- and there were days like this one, where the hollowed-out high-tech corridors were just about empty. To Ben, Rushmore forever felt like a place which was waiting for the next thing to happen and when he walked its halls, what little staff there was tended to clear out ahead of him. There were several ways in which an observer could have described Ben Tennyson. The boring version was 'Teenager, brunette, green eyes, on the short side, sort of skinny, may own exactly one jacket and probably doesn't know how to put it through the laundry properly.' Those who were more knowledgeable might start with 'bearer of the Omnitrix', and the device's ability to rearrange DNA made any description of 'human' into something part-time. But the Plumbers had experience, and knew that Max's grandson proudly accepted the designation of 'Mobile Disaster Area'. When Ben was around, things Happened. It was usually best to get some distance before some of them started Happening to you. "The alarms went off at 10:57 last night," his grandfather told him, striding slightly ahead of the younger through the sterile grey corridors. "We have multiple detection capabilities in that part of the park, along with a few normal cameras. So we saw it come through the wormhole." "A wormhole," Ben carefully repeated as he maintained his pace. His grandfather was in good shape for his age, but... he was older than a Plumber should have been. If Grandpa Max wanted to take the lead, then his grandson was going to let him have it. "In National Memorial?" "I know," Max Tennyson casually noted. "It's the first one to open on that exact spot in a few years --" Ben blinked. "You get them every few years?" His grandfather stopped. Turned, with heavy footfalls echoing in the corridors. Calm brown eyes regarded Ben. "Every Plumber headquarters," the old man patiently said, "is built near or around the site of a known weak spot." Repeating "Weak spot," didn't seem to be helping. Magnetics? Lay lines -- ley? Was it something Gwen had said? He dimly remembered snickering at the 'lay' bit... "Think of a stretched-out rubber sheet, anchored with equal strength along every edge," his grandfather carefully told him. "Anything traveling through subspace, or using one of the dimensional vectors to get around lightspeed... that's a steel ball rolling across the surface. A ball which is being steered will make it to the other side. But otherwise, Ben -- it's going to roll along. Eventually, it'll lose momentum. Stop somewhere. And when it does... all of the mass is going to be pressing on one spot. Keep that up for long enough, and the sheet tears. That weight drops through to the other side. To us. And it creates a zone where something is likely to slip through again." A little more softly, with faint traces of humor, "We didn't exactly plan to have a national park built around this one. But we guard it. Just like the others. Because it's easier to come through here. Easier to set up a drop zone for warps, to use the Null Void Projector -- everything. And if there's going to be a breach, then it's likely to start in one specific spot. Which is in a clearing about six hundred yards west of the Presidential Trail. So we've got cameras there. Among other things. Sometimes we get debris. Random bits of tech, which get stored in the usual place. And sometimes we get arrivals." Ben had a way of nodding which said that he'd known a given fact all along, had just been giving someone else the courtesy of confirming his information, and it didn't work on Grandpa Max either. The old man was still looking at him. "This is all in your protocol books," the senior Plumber said. Ben was sure that his body posture wasn't defensive. His arms weren't folded or anything. "I've been reading them." Five seconds of silence. Ten. Twelve... His grandfather sighed. Turned again, and resumed the walk. "So something came through last night," Ben tried. "Yes." A payload of sheer tonal offendedness drifted through the air. "You didn't call me in." "We don't call you in every time," Max eventually said. "There's plenty of things we're capable of taking care of without you. The Plumbers were managing for a couple of centuries before Benjamin Kirby Tennyson decided to grace the universe with his presence. There's even events which wrap up during school hours, and no one calls you because you have classes --" With perfect sincerity, "-- I could drop out." That made the old man stop again. The adolescent automatically paused to match, maintaining the distance between them. "It's a joke!" "Really?" Lightly, "It's always a joke --" There was a tinge of anger in the strong voice now. "-- then let me know when it starts being funny. You've said that a little too often for the words not to have some force behind them, Ben. I've known you for your whole life, and whatever you try to laugh off with the same punchline starts turning into the truth." "School just gets in the way," Ben quickly argued. "You've seen that. I'm out in public now. Nearly everything is. I could do everything here full-time, if I just dropped --" "-- one more word," the old man softly told him, and did while facing forward. Without looking at Ben. "One more word on that sentence, and I send you home." The corridors were solid, made from a ceramic composite which was more durable than just about anything on the planet. Grey-white. Sterile. Cold. Finally, the grandson said "It came through last night." "And from what I saw in the camera footage," Max calmly continued as he resumed his stride, "it got about four steps. Four knee-sagging, rib-heaving steps. Then it collapsed. There's a lot of reasons for not initially calling you in on something, Ben. One of them is not being in a combat situation because the incursion is unconscious. We went out and got it onto a medical transport. Half of the union stayed back to secure and close off the site -- the wormhole's still a little bit open -- and the rest brought our arrival back here." The teenager was quiet for a moment. "How is it?" The old man heard the compassion and worry lurking under the mask of casualness, then carefully hid his own smile. "Asleep. It's been asleep for hours, and we think it's likely to stay that way because that's how it's recovering. We've seen this from other species. A sort of healing coma, Ben: everything else shuts down so the body can repair itself. But there were no visible wounds. From what the medics are willing to guess, the passage did something. Completely exhausted it. And since we don't know how to help it... we're just letting it sleep. For now." They don't know how to help it. They have records on what has to be dozens of species from direct contact, hundreds more on data transfer, and they don't know... Ben took a slow breath. "What is it?" "That's the first reason for you being here," Max Tennyson said. "I was hoping you could tell me." Rushmore had everything required to serve as a full control center for Plumber operations. That included the medical facilities. And the cells. There weren't very many of the latter. About two dozen. Each had to be accessed via airlock, because some aliens had different atmospheric requirements. Specialized bulbs in the cell itself allowed flexible lighting -- and, if necessary, some degree of harder radiation. And any unit could be flooded at need: you had to keep the aquatics somewhere. Basically, if an alien required an environmental condition in order to survive -- vacuum very much included -- then the cells were capable of creating it. And this one... "We did the basics," his grandfather said. "The medics managed to get some scans in. It's not having any trouble dealing with our atmosphere, or operating in Earth's gravity." "But you don't know enough to try treating it." "No." "And you don't know what it is." He felt his voice rise with excitement on the last word, was briefly grateful that it had stopped cracking some time back. "Do you?" He looked through the transparent front panels. Let his gaze cross the airlock, move into the cell, across the alien form... It almost could have been a Vulpimancer. It was close to Wildmutt's size, perhaps would have been somewhat taller if the quadruped had been standing. It was collapsed on the cold cell floor, the limbs were splayed in all directions... But he knew Vulpimancers. (Knowledge which rose from the level of instinct, after spending so much time in the form of one of the watch's ten original species.) Their fur didn't go that dark, not to that deep blue which coated so much of this alien's body. He'd never seen the sky-hued streaks which covered the lower edge of the muzzle, along with the chest and forepaws -- Not forepaws. He'd just spotted that. The back legs had proper paws, and the claws looked sharp. The fore ended in a quartet of splayed digits. Something which could be folded in to allow for the equivalent of knuckle-walking, because the alien's natural posture was that of the quadruped -- but they could also be utilized as rough hands. The head was far too elongated. Lips went almost all the way back to the neck, and he could catch glimpses of white fangs with every breath. Triangular ears shifted position as the creature slept, wide shoulders smoothly met the rib cage, and then the alien's body narrowed as it moved back towards the tail and -- -- there was another section of sky-blue at the very back of the tail. And where a tip or tuft should have been... The alien moved slightly as it slept. The grasping digits at the end of that tail pulled together into a fist, and thumped against the floor. "Do you know?" his grandfather quietly asked him. "I thought Vulpimancer at first," Ben admitted. "It's at least a little like Wildmutt. Just as blind --" "It's not blind." Ben looked at the smooth fur on the sides of the head. Checked the slanting slope of skull along the top. Nothing. "Where are the eyes?" "Look at the very front of the head -- no, move up..." He did. His breath caught in his throat. "I thought those were pinched nostrils." The old man shook his head. "No. And that little pink spot isn't fur discoloration. It's the nose." He could see it now. Optical organs within vertical inches of the mouth's front fangs. Facial features scrunched into the smallest possible space. "The medics told me that the braincase is fascinating," his grandfather said. "Do you know what it is, Ben?" "Not on sight," he admitted. "Does the Omnitrix?" He pushed back one sleeve of the battered green jacket. Looked at the upper surface of the miracle which had defined so much of his life. The Omnitrix had changed over the years, as had he. Growing up together. But the activation panel always had that touch of the hourglass to it. The inventor claimed coincidence, something entirely accidental. Ben wasn't sure. You stopped believing in coincidence, if you spent enough time as a hero. Destiny began to take its place, acquiring solidity and ever-increasing weight. He raised his left arm, held it out so that the watch's upper panel was facing the cell. The center light turned yellow, and a beam of pure inquiry penetrated that which was not entirely glass. The light moved up and down across the sleeping form. The tail's fist thumped the floor again, harder. And the Omnitrix beeped. Four tones: two rising, two falling, just before the yellow light went out. "No," Ben just barely breathed. It doesn't recognize this. I can learn about this. I can be this... "I can't get a proper scan this way," the adolescent hurriedly declared as his heartbeat accelerated. "It's just doing a visual comparison. If you let me into the cell, I can get its DNA --" "No." His grandfather had said that. The tone meant the senior Plumber was backing it up. "No? It's new! I can find out what it is through becoming it, Grandpa! We keep finding stuff that Azmuth missed, and you know he'll want the data --" "-- it's under medical monitoring," Max Tennyson said, "because from what we can tell, it's exhausted and needs to heal. It's in a cell because we don't know why it came through the wormhole. We don't have its intentions. And with a complete unknown, something where we had every union member in Level 10 hazard equipment just to bring it in here -- we do not send people into the cell. Not without the kind of protection which the Omnitrix can't scan through. Not even for my grandson." And the brown eyes went hard. "Especially for my grandson. Ben, this is still from the protocol book.--" '-- I've been reading it!" He had. The cover clearly counted. The old man said nothing. Ben pulled back from the viewing panel, dropped his arm and let go of the sleeve while muttering to himself. He'd recently taken to learning curses in exotic foreign languages for just such an occasion. His grandfather knew all of the alien ones, including that which required trying to rip off your own left ear. "So it's an official unknown," Max finally went on. "And that brings us to the other reason I called you in." The muttering teen, who couldn't think of anything even remotely as important as a fresh transformation, waited. "Communication," the old man told him. The muttering stopped. "Communication," Ben repeated, because that was a good way of buying time until people realized they needed to tell him more stuff. "It collapsed before it said anything. The medics don't want to wake it up in this state: with other species, you can't interrupt a healing sleep casually and hope it'll resume on the other side of the discussion. And since it's new, the language won't be in any records. The brain structure doesn't give us a guarantee that the translators are going to work. And we still don't know how it came through, or why. Someone has to speak with it. That's you." "How?" was a very natural question. "None of my aliens have the power to just translate! And if you're thinking of telepathy, then I don't have an unlock for Synaptak's species. Brainstorm just projects his thoughts --" "It's asleep," his grandfather smiled. "It sleeps," Ben failed to buy time. "Most aliens sleep --" "-- REM sleep," the old man added. "Near-constant. The medics verified that much. It's dreaming, Ben. And if it can dream..." Green eyes blinked. The world came back on the other side of it, so Ben ranked the move as a failure. "No." "Yes." "Oh no..." "Ben --" "Don't make me do this." "I'm not making you do anything," the senior Plumber said. "I'm asking." The teenager's shoulders went limp. There was a device on the left arm, and it only weighed about three pounds. Except for when it tried to drag him down. "Take a few minutes," his grandfather told him. "Get ready. And then bring out Pesky." He'd asked Azmuth about it once, during a basic maintenance session shortly after -- something had happened. And there were two possible horrors associated with asking a question of the Omnitrix's creator. The first was that the self-titled most intelligent being in the universe would decide it was a stupid question. And if that happened, you would know it. Because he would tell you. Azmuth would verbally walk all over you, up one side and down the other. If the little Galvan was in a particularly bad mood, then the adhesive pads on the bare feet would make it a little more literal. There would be a few extremely angry pounds of grey alien stomping across your body, because the whole of you was stupid and he wasn't going to quit until after every last cell had been made to recognize its inferiority. But the frog eyes had simply blinked. (The eyelids were on the sides, closed in towards the center. You got used to it after a while.) "Default for every transformation will match the bearer," he'd said. "So for you, that's a male equivalent. For the species which have what you could consider to be males. If there isn't a direct correlation, then you'll get as close as possible. And if that can't be done, then it'll be the base form. Why?" There were two possible horrors which could rise from asking Azmuth a question, and the second was that he would answer it. "Default," Ben had repeated. "You're trying to buy time to think again," the inventor had immediately grumbled. "It's very transparent. And annoying. And with you, generally pointless. I asked you why --" "Can't you just create -- an artificial chromosome? Add that to every species in the watch?" Azmuth had blinked again. "An artificial chromosome." "See? What does it mean when you repeat stuff? What are you trying to buy time for --" "I wanted you," the Galvan had said, "to hear that from the outside. In the hopes that it would actually reach your ears. Ben, in order to experience existence as other species through the Omnitrix, you must be as they are. Without artificial modifications like creating 'males' for those who don't naturally have them. Something which might completely unbalance their genetic structure." "But if you looked it as a challenge --" argued that part of him which wasn't really comfortable with any of the memories from What Had Just Happened. Azmuth stared at him for a few seconds. "Benjamin?" "...yes?" "Have you ever noticed that when you change... you benefit from a rather interesting feature of the Omnitrix?" "Transforming?" "No." Far too calmly for the irascible genius, "The one where you happen to remember who you are." It hadn't made any sense. "Well -- yeah. Unless I use one form way too often, but you know about --" "-- I had to build the Omnitrix so that it would truly transform the wearer into another species. This includes a full-scale change to the brain. And different aliens have different brain structures, don't they? Proportions, new centers for control of functions which a human doesn't have, and I had to make sure all of your RNA chemical traces would carry over to every result. Including with those species which don't use RNA. Or chemical traces. And then there's the ones which don't have actual neurons. Try to imagine what I had to do in order to let you do anything other than mindlessly recite trinary code as a Mechamorph, Ben, because I already did. And then I created it. I'd explain the details, but neither of us is going to live long enough to find the words which would allow you to comprehend them." "Um..." "Additionally," the alien had gone on, speaking from the heart of an exceptionally vicious inner peace and doing so while striding about halfway up Ben's thin chest, "have you ever considered where your food goes? Let us say that you drink one of your objectionable 'smoothies' while once again disregarding what the composition is doing to your lifespan. The complete contents of the largest container you can purchase. And before digesting it all, you make the rare wise decision to become a Galvan. You are carrying more fluid than our stomachs can contain. Why does it not simply erupt from any and all orifices, Ben? In fact, were you to take a Nanochip form while flush with flavored liquid chemicals, why do you not simply explode?" "Um," Ben had said, and hoped not to remember his dreams that night. "Have you ever considered that?" said the inventor from his place atop Ben's sternum. "...no." "I did. And had to solve that too." "...oh." "Did you ever think to thank me? For retention of identity, along with simply not dying?" "...no." "Well?" "...thank you." "And you want an 'artificial chromosome' on top of that," Azmuth had reminded him. "When it could unbalance the system. And lead to minor side effects. Such as exploding. Very well. Should I start on that now?" "...no." "Good. I'm running maintenance. Shut up." He'd jumped down to Ben's left arm, gone back to tinkering. "You said 'male' was the default for me. Or close to it." "I said to shut --" "-- for me. So if a girl put it on, or something went wrong --" "BEN. SHUT." Ben considered himself to be utterly secure in his masculinity. In fact, as someone who was on the short side, sort of skinny, and who'd discovered that he added muscle mass with somewhat less ease than he became highly radioactive (as NRG, for ten minutes at a time), he was so secure in his masculinity that he regularly changed himself into hulking aliens who were far larger, stronger, and more muscular than he would ever be. The bigger and tougher, the better. Humongous was fine. Humongasaur was better than that. Because that was just how secure he was. And he had absolutely never taken on a form in privacy simply for the sake of pulling down its pants. For the species which had pants. So there. ...well, okay. A few times. ...look, there were some occasions when the Omnitrix's normal time limit had been overridden for a while. He usually wasn't any given thing long enough to worry about going to the bathroom, but he'd held Bullfrag's form for days and eventually, that was going to mean investigating the Incursean version of a toilet. Getting a look was practical. He'd looked as Fourarms once. Never again. And then he'd had weird dreams about electrical outlets for a week. But he'd just assumed, when he was ten. He was a boy, so all of his aliens were going to be boys. It had made sense. He'd grown up. (Well, most of the way.) He'd still felt that made sense. And then his Big Chill form had laid fourteen eggs. He would become a male, or the closest equivalent -- if that species had males. Necrofriggians didn't, and now Ben was technically a parent. The hatchlings had automatically headed for the species' home planet, which presented certain difficulties in seeing his kids. Some species functioned without sexual reproduction. They didn't have males. Or they didn't function as Ben understood things to work. (A lack of personal experience translated this to 'poorly'.) The form which Ben, with his usual genius naming skills, had labeled as 'Pesky Dust'... that was from a species which was apparently known as the Nemuina. As a transformation... Pesky had some problems. Pesky had navy-blue 'hair', which stood up straight like a troll doll which had been dipped in glue. That was about a fifth of Pesky's height, which didn't help much because with the 'hair' included, Pesky was about twenty-two inches tall. The green eyes (because all eyes were green throughout the changes, for the species which had them) were almost luminescent. The color also took up the whole of the ocular surface, and set off nicely against the pinkish-purple spots on Pesky's aquamarine cheeks. And chin. Pesky always looked as it was in the middle of a slightly embarrassed blush. The hands were too slim. Fingers (just two) and thumb were nearly two-dimensional. The limbs had no true strength. Pesky possessed very little mass, and that was a necessity because the fragile butterfly wings on its back couldn't lift much. As it was, Pesky could fly, and the small form was fairly agile in the air... but it wasn't very fast. And it was also incredibly easy to follow, because flight produced a glowing trail of light. There didn't seem to be anything Ben could do about that. There were a lot of ways to describe Pesky. 'Fairylike' was accurate. 'Like one of those old toys, you know the ones, they got banned, you put them on a spinner and pull the cord and they fly straight up for about ten feet and then come down and either go into someone's eye or shatter on the sidewalk' required some reference material. But you could definitely use 'delicate' with complete accuracy. 'The girliest thing ever', however, would have pretty much headed off any ten-year-old's list. And in combat... Pesky didn't have a Galvan's innate resilience. Nanochips were much smaller, but they also had some density -- and anything that tiny was extremely hard to target. Pesky was just large enough to hit and far too small to hit back. In a physical fight, a Nemuina would quickly be destroyed. Which was why the species hadn't evolved to fight that way. Nemuinas produced a dustlike substance from pores on their hands and wings, a faintly-glowing trail of yellow. It was a powerful sedative. Just about anything which breathed would fall asleep within a few seconds of taking it in. It didn't last long. A few minutes at most for each dose, and that was usually more than enough time to get away. But the Nemuina had taken it further. Because while the victims slept... they entered a dream state. A Nemuina could enter dreams, using the dust as a sort of telepathic conduit. Control the environment, use it to explore the sleeper's mind. Search for answers to vital questions. Or... just maybe... communicate. The form which Ben called Pesky Dust had power: the ability to drop most creatures who made the mistake of inhaling was extremely useful. But there were factors which balanced that power. The dust had a strictly limited range. Anyone with their own air supply was going to be fine. Filters did a lot to keep Pesky's abilities out. Any AI which was sufficiently advanced enough for sarcasm tended to laugh. Some aliens didn't sleep or dream, and they didn't know if the dust worked on all of the ones which did. Pesky was small and fragile and extremely girly and Ben, who had spent multiple nights involuntarily turning into Big Chill until the reproductive cycle had finished, wasn't entirely sure the Nemuina was male. He'd never had enough privacy with the form to lift the garment and find out. (Not that all aliens had identifiable genitals.) But then there was the garment itself. Ben constantly denied that Pesky was wearing a dress, no matter how often Kevin and Gwen brought it up. (Kevin usually snickered.) The unknown alien in the cell, a creature from a place so remote that Azmuth had never found it... was about the size of Wildmutt, with claws and fangs and sheer mass added to the bonus of an extra fist at the end of the tail. Transforming into Pesky made Ben feel a lot of different things. The biggest one was vulnerable. He was in the airlock. Grandpa Max was in the hallway outside the cell, and the alien... slept. "Ready when you are," the old man told him. Ben took a deep breath. Pulled back the left sleeve, exposed the interface. Work. There were times when he felt that the Omnitrix could hear his thoughts. Mostly just before it ignored them, usually for the sake of comedy. On a bad day, it was sort of like having a permanently-attached cat. It might appear to cooperate occasionally, but it really did whatever it wanted. It loved to ignore him. And if it ever blew the landing, that was somehow his fault, plus the Omnitrix had totally meant to do that anyway. In that aspect, it was very much like its creator. He manipulated the interface. A fragile-seeming silhouette appeared. Work. You'll work because I don't want to do this. Because you know how I feel about becoming Pesky. So you'll work in order to get a laugh out of that. I don't want to do this. But it was a new alien. A new person. Someone who might be lost. Far from home, not knowing where it was or if there was any way back. Lost and -- afraid. And until it woke up, Pesky was the only way to help. Ben took a small breath. Sat down on the floor, arranged his legs because it was best to do so before they thinned and shrunk. There had been times when changing into Pesky while standing left him hovering above the floor: sitting was safer. Another breath, just to relish the feeling of air entering human lungs. He triggered the Omnitrix. When he was ten, he'd never thought about what had to be happening inside. DNA chains ripping themselves apart. Chemical traces of memory trying to find some way to exist. But if Azmuth really wanted to produce horror, he answered questions. Multiple people had asked him if the process hurt. It didn't. The first things to go in any change were the pain receptors and out of necessity, they were the last things to come back. He'd also been asked about what it felt like. To be a different species, to see through its eyes and think with its brain. (Pesky's vision ran out at the fringes of orange: anything beyond that showed up as black. The ultraviolet compensation on the other end was especially pretty, but Pesky couldn't remember what red looked like. Pesky couldn't even imagine red...) And with Gwen and Kevin, with whom he could be honest... he'd told them that he couldn't think about it too much. To become a Tetramand and think as a human was to realize that you now had four arms and no idea how to make two of them work. He'd spent his first minute as a Pyronite screaming about being on fire... You had to lose yourself in the new body. Operate on instinct, on reflex. Let the form simply... function. It understood how to survive. It led the way. You had to lose yourself in the new body. And if you stayed in it too long... ...he'd had to be Bullfrag for days... ...the alien body was sitting on the cold airlock floor. Sounds were sharper. (The 'hair' picked up vibrations, amplified ambient noise for a species which needed some extra warning. It could be trimmed, but doing so weakened the sense until it grew back.) Temperatures seemed to strike more deeply: less body mass to keep them out. Air currents roiled across the ineffective armor of skin. "Ready?" his grandfather asked. "Rrrrready --" That voice. It always shocked him, and it had only gotten worse after Kevin had played him a phone recording of it. Pesky spoke with a trill and a purr -- at the same time. Pesky had a voice suitable for the sort of toyline mascot which cancelled out testosterone through proximity. "All right," the senior plumber told him. "Give me some dust." (Crucial micro-pores opened, and yellow mist went into the air. A small sampling chamber near the top of the airlock's second door pulled it in, then sealed.) "I'm monitoring our guest for reactions and sending the data down to Medical. If they see anything adverse, we stop." The alien nodded. Waiting. The smaller airlock cycled. Yellow mist went into the cell, sunk down to the sleeping alien and surrounded the too-long head. "No reaction so far --" The stranger breathed. Pulled in the dust, and brought Pesky's soul with it. It's instinct. You can't think about it. If you think, it doesn't work. The alien needs to speak with the new arrival. So there's supposed to be an appropriate setting for that. Of course, this is usually whatever Ben considers to be an appropriate setting. Khyber got stuck in the back of the old RV, and a dreaming mind didn't see anything unnatural about being on board the Rustbucket in its glory days. That was something Ben chose because it was comfortable for him, and the hunter just went along for the ride. So this should be a place of safety and protection. Something which forms on its own. It's a jungle. The hovering little alien frowns: something which makes it feel as if several vital muscles are being strained. This isn't... It tries to alter the domain. Make it into something with a decent couch and, if at all possible, much lower humidity. Nothing happens. When Ben was ten years old, he went on a roadtrip across America with his cousin and grandpa, and that changed his life. But years have passed. He's been to other planets now, along with exploring a few more portions of his birthplace. This looks a little like South America. That could be rosewood over there, and that flowering plant -- well, if you figure that black is where the red should be, then it's probably heliconia. Except... The colors (for what the alien can see of them) are too sharp. Too solid. Everything seems to exist at a higher degree of refinement, but does so with fewer definitions. There aren't as many shades or fine hues. Green only has so many gradients available. Lines and curves feel amplified... Where is it? This is a dream. So where's the dreamer? The alien strains. Tries to change the dream itself, and nothing happens. Then it tries to think about what it's doing, and that just gets in the way. There's never been a dream which it couldn't influence. Figments that weren't outright controlled. But this is a dream, because the alien is here. And the dreamer has to be somewhere within the dream. Unless the dreamer is the jungle. "Hello?" Nothing. No response. The swaying of tall grass probably doesn't count. ...okay. The clock is ticking. Alien instincts and limited experience both insist that time can go strange in a dream -- but somewhere on the outside, the Omnitrix is counting down. There's only so much duration available before reversion. The little alien flies, and -- it's awkward. It's never had to do this before. The dream always became what the alien desires. Searching is new. It's also highly visible, because there's that glowing light trail behind it and there's still nothing to be done about that. Several vines are dodged. The garment nearly gets snagged on thorns, and that's never happened before either. And the alien is trying to count seconds (something almost reflexive to every change now, because the Omnitrix always has the clock running), but time can be different in a dream and it's sure that at least a few minutes have passed in this search, a few minutes out of no more than ten and -- -- the 'hair' vibrates. Something just crashed through wood, up ahead on the left. There was enough force to break multiple branches. Whatever's moving is big... The alien hesitates. Hovers, as light drifts down. It's just a dream. I'll be okay. It flies towards the noise. The sonic antenna twitches, helps it center -- -- and there it is. The stranger looks a lot bigger up close. Huge blasts of air somehow surge through the tiny nose -- no, it's not just the nose: the creature also does some breathing through the mouth. The eye placement seems more wrong than ever, but -- no one can help the way they evolve. And the legs kick at branches, the forelimbs pull them apart and the grasper at the end of the tail makes sure no splintered remnants come close to drawing wounds. The stranger is pushing through dense underbrush and too many low branches. The ears are aloft and twisting, it keeps gulping at the air, and the head is constantly shifting from side to side because that strange placement gives it just about no peripheral vision. In military terms, it has to keep checking its three and nine: the probing tail looks after the six. Every sense it has is on high alert. And it just keeps pushing forward... ...Ben knows what it's doing. Ben was on the receiving end of this, because that's what Khyber wanted. Okay. Just ask. The alien's wings try to pick up speed. A small body comes in high, because it may only be a dream, but -- it's not sure the dreamer knows that, and this is a dream which won't change. The alien wants to be out of forelimb range. It comes in above the stranger, and light drifts down in front of those odd eyes. The stranger looks up. "You'rrrre hunting for something," the alien says. "Can I help you look?" The huge mouth opens, and does so almost all the way back to the neck. White incisors glisten, and the stranger takes a breath -- -- there is light drifting down from the alien's hovering form. That's just how flight works for a Nemuina. There's nothing which can be done about it. Then there's more light. It's the darkest of blues, it glimmers with hints of embedded sparkles and stars, and it surrounds the little alien. Yanks, and the surprised tiny form can't break free. This is its domain. The world of dreams, where the weak body has absolute control, and that small alien is sailing backwards now, flying against its will, pulled by light as the helpless flight is steered around branches and past vines, steady descending until it comes to a stop among the tall grasses. The light winks out. And before the alien can move, a silver-clad forehoof drops onto its chest. The dark blue equine head is tilted down. Feathered wings flare out along the flanks of the powerful body, beat against the air in open frustration. The boy he was at ten would have had no trouble describing the creature. It would have instantly become the new girliest thing ever -- just so long as you expanded the definition of 'girly' to include 'is about to kick your ass'. Lips pull back from teeth, and the sharp horn is lowered that much closer to the alien's throat. "You idiot!" The alien, for whom all the rules have already been overturned, can't speak. "Do you know how much effort I had to expend in crafting this nightscape?" the equine demands. "To mold the world around one who would expect intrusion, who guards against it and strains to keep their secrets -- and then create a place where, given enough time, they would simply show me why they risked the portal? And I kept my presence secret, let Ahuizotl move as he willed, secure in his privacy -- but YOU --!" There's something about the way the equine speaks. It's like listening to a newly-graduated English teacher who spent four years in learning when to use 'whom' and five seconds on how to flunk anyone who couldn't. "-- you just alerted him, did you not? Not a single intruder moving about his nightscape with stealth, but open declaration of presence! It will take so much more to learn of his plans now, it may even be impossible, and that is all because of you --" She stops. Because there's a crashing noise off in the distance, more wood breaking as the stranger pushes on. It may even be coming towards them. But she also stops because there's another sound. A very familiar one for the alien. Descending tones of alert, and when viewed through strange eyes, the hourglass symbol is flashing black. "Your dress," the equine notes with a rather odd calm, "is beeping." The alien, who has at most two seconds remaining before the Omnitrix times out and the dreamworld vanishes, leaving a human body sitting on a cold floor -- immediately decides to use that scant time for the single most important thing. "IT'S NOT A DRESS!" The world goes white -- That was the first time Ben met the equine within dream. He would have given up the entire weekend and half a summer to have had it be the last.