"I'll Break through your entire arm!"
Arctiguana's voice carried that distinctive icy echo, cold and absolute. His reptilian eyes gleamed with predatory focus as he opened his jaws wide, frost billowing from his mouth like dragon's breath.
"Ice Spear!"
The temperature plummeted instantly. Moisture in the air crystallized with a sound like shattering glass, CRACK-CRACK-CRACK, as thermal energy was ripped away. What emerged from Arctiguana's mouth was no ordinary frozen projectile.
It was a masterwork of frozen death.
The ice spear stretched nearly eight feet long, tapered to a needle-sharp point that seemed to distort the air around it. Its surface was perfectly smooth, gleaming with an almost translucent blue-white sheen that reflected the city lights like captured starlight. Intricate frost patterns spiraled along its length, not decorative, but structural reinforcement that made it harder than tempered steel.
FWOOOOOOSH!
The spear launched with explosive force, accompanied by a sonic boom that shattered nearby windows and sent pedestrians stumbling backward from the shockwave. It didn't just fly, it carved through reality, leaving a trail of crystallized air particles in its wake that sparkled like diamonds before sublimating into nothingness.
The raw power behind it was terrifying.
From his position on the street, Clancy watched the spear approach with growing horror. His cockroach giant form towered at over twelve feet tall, thousands upon thousands of mutated insects merged into a single biomass, their individual bodies fused together into muscle, sinew, and exoskeleton that gave him strength beyond human limits.
And yet...
"It's just a spear!" Clancy's voice boomed from the giant's throat, actually dozens of cockroach voices speaking in unison, creating an unsettling chorus. "Made of cold air! I can smash it with one punch!"
Confidence surged through him. After all, this enormous form had demolished reinforced walls, crushed cars, and terrified everyone who saw it. What was one ice spear compared to that?
The giant's massive fist, composed of hundreds of cockroaches compressed into a single striking surface, drew back, then rocketed forward with bone-crushing force.
THOOM!
Fist met spear tip head-on!
But the expected sound of shattering ice never came.
Instead...
Silence.
Clancy's fist had stopped.
Not slowed. Not deflected.
Stopped.
The ice spear's tip had punched directly into the center of his massive fist, and for a single frozen moment, nothing happened. Time seemed suspended, as if the universe itself was holding its breath.
Then the frost spread.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-CRACK!
It started at the point of impact, a white crystalline pattern that raced outward like lightning frozen in time. Individual cockroaches shrieked in agony as ice formed inside their bodies, freezing their hemolymph and rupturing their internal organs from the inside out. The frost didn't just cover the surface, it penetrated deep, turning living tissue into brittle, frozen sculptures.
Within three seconds, Clancy's entire right fist, thousands of mutated cockroaches that formed his hand, had become an ice sculpture.
A beautiful, grotesque ice sculpture filled with frozen death.
"It... it seems I can't kill you with one move," Arctiguana observed from below, his small reptilian form looking almost contemplative. "But I'm satisfied with crippling one of your arms. That'll have to do."
His tone was clinical, analytical, like a scientist observing an interesting but ultimately doomed experiment.
Everyone watching could see it clearly now.
Dr. Animo, hovering on his anti-gravity platform above the battle, stared in disbelief.
Ben and Gwen, standing safely behind the police barricade, watched with wide eyes.
Even Vilgax's surveillance drones, scattered throughout the city, captured every moment with crystal clarity.
That terrible ice spear...
It hadn't stopped.
BOOM!
The frozen fist exploded.
Thousands of ice fragments burst outward like shrapnel, each one containing the frozen corpse of a mutated cockroach. They scattered across the street in a deadly spray, embedding themselves in walls, car doors, and pavement. Some struck the police barriers with enough force to crack the reinforced plastic.
The remaining cockroaches in Clancy's arm, the ones not yet frozen, tried to flee. They swarmed away from the spreading cold like rats abandoning a sinking ship, their individual voices chittering in panic.
But the ice spear didn't care.
It continued its trajectory unimpeded, drilling upward through the giant's arm like a lance through butter. The supernatural cold spread with every inch it traveled, freezing joints and tendons and carapaces. More cockroaches died screaming, high-pitched insect shrieks that sounded eerily human in their terror.
CRASH!
The spear burst through the giant's shoulder from the inside, exploding outward in a spray of frozen biomass and crystalline shards!
What remained of Clancy's right arm, now nothing but a frozen sculpture from shoulder to fingertip, hung for a moment in grotesque stillness.
Then it shattered.
SMASH!
The entire limb, all four feet of mutated insect flesh, broke apart like dropped glass, raining down onto the street in thousands of pieces. Frozen cockroach bodies clattered against the pavement like macabre hailstones, each one perfectly preserved in its final moment of agony.
Clancy's giant form staggered backward, eyes wide with shock.
The pain was... wrong. Not the sharp, immediate agony of injury, but something deeper, a wrongness that echoed through his psychic connection to every cockroach that had formed his body. He'd felt thousands of his children die simultaneously, their life forces winking out like extinguished candles.
His remaining left arm clutched at the stump where his right shoulder used to be. Ice crystals still sparkled there, creeping slowly inward.
"This... this can't be..." Clancy's voice, normally so confident, so filled with megalomaniacal certainty, now trembled with genuine fear.
How could the power gap be this enormous?
He'd been winning! Just minutes ago, he'd had Dr. Animo's mutations, his cockroach army, his towering strength! He'd felt invincible!
Now he was missing an arm.
"This idiot's going to die here," Dr. Animo muttered from his hover platform, pale green eyes narrowed behind his goggles. "I'm not staying to be buried with him!"
His hand slapped the Mechadroid's metallic head, one of his personal hover drones. "Get me out of here! Now!"
WHIRRRRR!
The platform's anti-gravity generators kicked into overdrive, lifting him rapidly upward. Dr. Animo cast one last glance at the battle below, at Clancy's desperate, doomed struggle, and felt no pity whatsoever.
Take advantage of chaos and run.
Cash in when you're ahead.
At least he'd recovered that genetic variable from the underground lab. That made this entire debacle almost worth it.
The hover platform shot away into the night, disappearing between buildings before anyone could stop him.
BOOM!
Not long after Dr. Animo fled, the ice covering Clancy's shoulder burst outward in a violent explosion!
The frozen stump shattered completely, sending a spray of crystalline fragments and dead insects across the battlefield. What remained wasn't an arm or even a proper stump, just a ragged crater in the giant's torso where thousands of cockroaches had been ripped away by explosive freezing.
Clancy stumbled, nearly falling.
His remaining hand pressed against the wound, trying to seal it with fresh cockroaches from his internal reserves. But his numbers were depleted now, between Buzzshock's earlier electrical massacre and Arctiguana's surgical ice destruction, he'd lost tens of thousands of his mutated insects.
His giant form was becoming unstable.
"N-now the other arm," Arctiguana said casually, his reptilian eyes tracking Clancy with predatory precision. He took a small hop forward, clawed feet scraping against frozen pavement.
His tone wasn't cruel, it was matter-of-fact. Like a teacher explaining the inevitable conclusion of a failed math problem.
"Just luck!" Clancy's voice cracked with desperation, the chorus effect breaking into discordant notes as individual cockroaches panicked. "Just luck! I don't believe it! I DON'T BELIEVE IT!"
Madness crept into his voice, the sound of a shattered mind refusing to accept reality.
His remaining arm drew back, every muscle (or rather, every compressed cockroach cluster forming muscle) tensing with desperate strength. This time he wouldn't be careless. This time he'd put everything into it.
The giant's fist began to transform mid-swing.
Hundreds of cockroaches repositioned themselves, their bodies interlocking in complex patterns. Sharp edges emerged, serrated mandibles and hardened wing cases arranged to form a massive drill bit at the front of his fist. It spun with a horrible grinding sound, individual insects rotating at incredible speed to create a whirling blade of chitin and fury.
The wind around his fist began to howl as it picked up speed, gaining momentum. Buildings shook from the displaced air. Car alarms screamed. Glass in nearby windows cracked from the pressure differential alone.
WHOOMMMM!
The drill fist rocketed toward Arctiguana with enough force to pulverize concrete, enough speed to create a visible shockwave in its wake!
If it connected, even Arctiguana's enhanced durability might not be enough.
If it connected.
"Do you really think that'll stop me?" Arctiguana asked, his voice carrying a note of genuine curiosity mixed with disappointment.
The terrifying cold erupted from his body once more, but this time, it took shape.
The temperature plummeted so rapidly that Ben's suit sensors screamed warnings. Gwen felt her breath turn to frost in her lungs. Police officers stumbled backward, driven away by the supernatural chill.
And from that impossible cold, something magnificent emerged.
The ice dragon.
It wasn't small. It wasn't subtle. It was enormous.
Twenty feet from snout to tail tip, coiling through the air like something out of myth given terrible, beautiful reality. Its body was composed of crystalline ice so pure it seemed almost translucent, you could see the frozen air currents flowing through it like blood through veins. Four clawed feet dangled beneath it, each talon sharp enough to pierce steel. A crest of ice spikes ran down its serpentine back, gleaming like blue diamonds.
But the head...
The head was the most terrifying part.
It looked intelligent. The eyes, formed from deeper, denser ice, held a predatory awareness that shouldn't exist in frozen water. The jaws gaped wide, revealing rows of crystalline fangs, each one sharp as a surgeon's scalpel. Frost billowed from its throat like smoke from a furnace.
The dragon didn't just look powerful.
It radiated an aura of ancient, primordial dominance, the feeling you'd get standing before a force of nature that existed long before humanity and would endure long after.
"Ice Dragon's Wrath!" Arctiguana said softly, almost reverently.
The words weren't spoken for Clancy's benefit. They weren't a battle cry or a taunt.
They were an epitaph.
ROOOOAAAAAR!
The ice dragon surged forward with a sound like an avalanche given voice!
It moved with impossible grace for something so massive, coiling, twisting, its crystalline body reflecting the city lights in dazzling patterns. The drill fist that Clancy had put all his desperate strength into seemed pathetic by comparison.
The dragon's jaws snapped forward!
CRUNCH!
Crystalline fangs closed around the drill fist like a predator biting prey!
The rotating chitin drill, which moments ago had seemed like an unstoppable force, ground to a halt. Individual cockroaches shrieked as they were crushed between ice fangs. Others tried to escape, to burrow away from the cold, but there was nowhere to go.
Frost spread across the drill formation in spiraling patterns.
Within two seconds, the entire fist, from fingertips to wrist, had become solid ice.
CRACK!
The dragon's jaws clenched tighter, and the frozen fist shattered into a thousand glittering fragments!
"AAAAAHHH!" Clancy's scream was raw and primal, thousands of voices united in agony.
But the ice dragon wasn't finished.
It released the destroyed fist and coiled around the giant's body like a serpent crushing its prey. Everywhere the dragon's body touched, frost spread. Cockroaches died by the hundreds, frozen solid before they could even attempt to flee.
Whooooosh... whooooosh... whooooosh...
The dragon spiraled up the giant's torso, leaving a trail of frozen devastation in its wake. Where there had been living, moving biomass, thousands of mutated insects working in perfect synchronization, now there was only motionless ice.
Clancy's massive form began to shrink.
Not because the ice was crushing him (though it was), but because huge portions of his body were being destroyed. Each coil of the dragon's body eliminated thousands more cockroaches, freezing them to death and leaving nothing but brittle ice sculptures in their wake.
Twelve feet tall became ten.
Ten became eight.
Eight became six.
The giant that had terrorized the street minutes ago was being systematically dismantled by a force of nature made manifest.
"This technique..." Arctiguana's voice was contemplative, almost academic, as he watched his creation work. "Ice Dragon's Wrath. I developed it myself. Arctiguana's base abilities are limited, primarily the ice breath. But when the Omnitrix enhanced my energy reserves, it gave me something more important than raw power."
He paused, his small reptilian form standing perfectly still as the dragon continued its deadly work.
"It gave me endurance."
Gwen understood immediately. "That's the difference," she breathed, watching the ice dragon coil tighter. "It's not just about how hard you can hit, it's about how long you can fight at that level. Sustained power output. Strategic application of overwhelming force."
Ben nodded slowly, his helmet's heads-up display still analyzing the dragon's structure. "Most aliens have one or two big moves, then they're exhausted. But if Arctiguana can maintain something like this..." He trailed off, genuinely awed.
His cousin had created a sustained ice construct of massive complexity and was barely showing signs of effort.
That level of control was... frightening.
And inspiring.
"That's the dragon," Ben murmured, his voice filled with wonder. "A real dragon. Just like in the movies..."
He'd seen dragons in fantasy films, in video games, in stories Grandpa Max told around campfires. But those were fiction. Imagination. Computer graphics.
This was real.
Real scales (even if they were ice). Real claws. Real intelligence in those crystalline eyes. Real power that could level buildings if it wanted to.
The ice dragon's body continued to shrink as it finished its work, the coils tightening as Clancy's biomass decreased. Where once there had been a twelve-foot giant, now there was barely six feet of desperately struggling insect matter.
But that six feet was still fighting.
Clancy wasn't dead yet.
His consciousness, split across the remaining thousands of cockroaches, clung to survival with desperate tenacity. Individual insects tried to burrow away from the cold, to escape the dragon's deadly embrace. But wherever they fled, frost followed.
Crack... crack... crack...
The dragon's body was literally melting away as it completed its task. Ice sublimated directly into vapor, creating clouds of frozen mist that obscured the battlefield. But even as it shrank, even as its form diminished, it continued its purpose.
Complete and total annihilation of the target.
Finally, with a sound like distant thunder, the ice dragon dissolved completely, evaporating into nothing more than cold air and memory.
What remained on the street was pathetic.
Clancy's "giant" form had been reduced to barely four feet tall, a misshapen lump of frozen insects held together more by ice than by any conscious will. His remaining cockroaches were sluggish, dying, their internal systems shutting down from prolonged exposure to supernatural cold.
He collapsed to his knees with a wet thud, arms (what remained of them) splayed out on the frozen pavement.
His face, what passed for a face in this horrific biomass form, looked up at Arctiguana with an expression that transcended fear.
It was despair.
Pure, absolute despair.
Before meeting Asher, before encountering Dr. Animo's mutations, Clancy had thought himself unique. The only person in the world with genuine abilities. He'd imagined himself invincible, untouchable by ordinary humans, capable of anything.
Dr. Animo had been... acceptable. Another scientist. A peer, perhaps, even if Animo lacked abilities himself.
But this?
This creature, this impossibly powerful being who wielded ice like a living extension of his will, who created dragonsfrom frozen air and destroyed everything Clancy had built with casual ease?
This was beyond his comprehension.
Clancy's mentality shattered like glass.
He wasn't invincible.
He wasn't unique.
He was nothing.
Just another failed experiment on the street, waiting for the inevitable end.
Ben and Gwen jogged over from their position behind the police line, their expressions a mixture of relief and lingering awe.
"That was..." Ben started, then paused, trying to find adequate words. "That was incredible! The ice dragon alone would be amazing, but the control, the precision, the, "
"We get it, you're impressed," Gwen interrupted, though she was smiling. "But yeah. Asher, you're really good with Arctiguana."
She'd been "slapped in the face" today by her own assumptions. She'd thought Arctiguana was just another transformation, useful, sure, but not particularly special. Cold manipulation seemed straightforward compared to some of the other aliens they'd encountered.
But watching that ice dragon...
Watching the perfect control, the strategic application of power, the way Arctiguana had completely dominated a threat that would have given most heroes serious trouble...
Arctiguana wasn't weak.
She was weak.
Well, not weak. But definitely not as strong as she should be. If Asher could do this much with ice manipulation, what could she accomplish with magic if she actually pushed herself? If she stopped treating her abilities as convenient tricks and started viewing them as genuine combat tools?
A lot, probably.
She needed to train more. Way more.
Wee-ooo! Wee-ooo! Wee-ooo!
Sirens echoed through the streets again, closer this time. The police response was catching up to the chaos.
Clancy, still kneeling on the frozen pavement, felt a spark of desperate hope.
Yes! The police!
Just like this afternoon when he'd been saved from Four Arms!
They'd arrest him, sure, but that was better than being killed! He'd escape again somehow, he always did! Then he'd find another chance, regroup, come back stronger!
Survival was all that mattered now!
But then...
"The fate of this guy," Arctiguana said softly, turning his reptilian gaze toward Ben and Gwen, "I'll leave to my ice dragon to decide."
The words were casual. Almost gentle.
But they carried the weight of an execution order.
"You... what are you doing?! NO!" Clancy's voice cracked with terror.
Arctiguana opened his mouth once more.
Cold erupted, not the controlled precision of before, but raw, terrible power channeled into pure destruction. The temperature plummeted so rapidly that frost formed on everything within thirty feet. Windows frosted over. Metal became brittle. The air itself seemed to crystallize.
Another ice dragon coalesced from the impossible cold.
This one was smaller than its predecessor, only twelve feet long instead of twenty, but it was no less terrifying. Those crystalline eyes held no mercy. No hesitation. Just cold, absolute purpose.
"WAIT! PLEASE! I, "
ROOOAAAAR!
The dragon lunged forward with the speed of a striking cobra!
Clancy tried to scatter his remaining cockroaches, to disperse into a cloud of insects that might escape. But he was too slow. Too damaged. Too cold.
The dragon's jaws closed around his entire torso!
CRUNCH!
The sound was wet and terrible, thousands of insects being crushed and frozen simultaneously. Clancy's scream cut off instantly, replaced by the sound of shattering ice.
The dragon's body wrapped around what remained of the insect giant, coiling tight. Where it touched, flesh became ice. Movement became stillness. Life became death.
Within five seconds, it was over.
The ice dragon released its prey and dissolved into mist, its purpose complete.
What fell to the pavement wasn't Clancy anymore.
It was an ice sculpture.
A frozen monument to hubris, depicting a man-sized cluster of mutated cockroaches caught in their final moment, wings splayed, mandibles open in a silent scream. The ice was so clear you could see individual insects perfectly preserved inside, like amber trapping ancient creatures.
Beautiful, in a horrific way.
CRASH!
The sculpture toppled sideways and shattered against the pavement, breaking into dozens of large fragments and thousands of smaller shards. Frozen cockroach bodies scattered across the street like macabre confetti.
Clancy was dead.
Completely, utterly, irreversibly dead.
Ben and Gwen stood in stunned silence for a moment.
They'd known this was coming. Arctiguana had said he was leaving Clancy's fate to the ice dragon. But seeing it actually happen, watching someone die right in front of them, even someone who'd been trying to kill them minutes earlier, was different from knowing it intellectually.
Neither of them protested, though.
Clancy had killed people. Multiple people during his rampage this afternoon, more during his attack tonight. He'd merged with those mutated cockroaches and used them to murder innocents without hesitation or remorse.
This wasn't a tragic villain who'd made poor choices.
This was a killer who'd been stopped.
Still... it was unsettling to process.
"By the way," Arctiguana said, his tone shifting to something more casual, "where did Dr. Animo go?"
Only now did he remember the mad scientist who'd been orchestrating this entire chaos.
Looking around, scanning the rooftops and empty air where the hover platform had been...
Dr. Animo was gone.
Completely vanished.
"He ran," Gwen said flatly, crossing her arms. "The moment things turned against Clancy, Animo bolted. Didn't even try to help his 'partner.'"
"Coward," Ben added with disgust.
Arctiguana made a small sound that might have been a sigh. The sirens were getting closer, probably less than two blocks away now.
"The police are almost here," he observed. "We should head back to the restaurant. Grandpa Max is probably wondering where we are."
No need to stay and deal with police questions. No need to provide statements or explanations. They'd done their job, stopped the immediate threat, saved lives, prevented further destruction.
Let the authorities handle the cleanup.
Arctiguana turned and began walking back toward the Chinese restaurant where they'd been eating before this chaos started. His small reptilian form moved with surprising grace across the ice-covered street, clawed feet finding purchase easily.
Ben and Gwen followed without argument.
Behind them, they left a battlefield.
Frozen blood painted the pavement in irregular patterns. Shattered ice sculptures, the remains of mutated creatures, littered the street like fallen statues. Cracked buildings. Broken windows. Car alarms still wailing.
And in the center of it all...
The shattered remains of Clancy's ice sculpture, glittering under the streetlights like crushed diamonds.
When the police finally arrived at the scene, securing the area with yellow tape and evidence markers...
All they found was ice.
Ice, broken buildings, and thousands of frozen cockroach corpses scattered across three city blocks.
The insect man who'd terrorized the city, who'd murdered innocents, who'd defied arrest, who'd merged with Dr. Animo's horrific mutations to become something beyond human...
Clancy was gone.
Shattered and scattered to the wind.
Just ice.