Washington, D.C. was, by any objective measure, one of the most historically significant and architecturally impressive cities in the United States. The National Mall alone contained enough monuments, museums, and memorials to occupy an enthusiastic tourist for weeks. The Smithsonian Institution housed artifacts spanning the entire breadth of human civilization. The Capitol Building stood as a symbol of democracy, its dome gleaming white against the summer sky.
Gwen Tennyson saw none of it.
Gwen Tennyson was staring at her wrist.
"Gwen, look—the Washington Monument." Max pointed through the Rust Bucket's windshield as they drove along the Mall. The great obelisk rose against the morning sky, 555 feet of marble and granite, the tallest structure in the district, a masterpiece of engineering and national pride.
"Mm-hmm."
"It took thirty-six years to build. You can see where they changed the marble source partway through—there's a slight color difference about a third of the way up."
"Mm-hmm."
"It's one of the most visited landmarks in America."
"Mm-hmm."
"It's currently on fire."
"Mm-hmm."
Max sighed. "It's not actually on fire."
"Mm-hmm."
Ben leaned over from the passenger seat and looked at Gwen. She was sitting at the dinette table in her now-permanent position, hunched over the Omnitrix like Gollum over the One Ring, her eyes fixed on the green faceplate with an intensity that could have etched glass. Her notebook was open beside her, and she was adding to what Ben could only describe as a manifesto.
"Gwen, you're in the nation's CAPITAL," Ben said. "Don't you want to, I don't know, LEARN something? You LOVE learning things. You're the most annoying learner I've ever met."
"I'm learning plenty."
"What are you learning?"
"The exact recharge cycle of the Omnitrix appears to follow a logarithmic curve influenced by the energy expenditure of the previous transformation. Diamondhead's recharge took approximately six hours. Heatblast's second transformation recharged in four. XLR8 took five. I'm constructing a predictive model."
"...So you can transform faster."
"So I can transform OPTIMALLY."
"So you can transform faster and shove my face in your—"
"So I can be PREPARED for THREATS, Ben. It's called STRATEGIC READINESS."
"It's called OBSESSION."
"It's called LOVE."
"THOSE AREN'T THE SAME THING."
Max pulled the Rust Bucket into a parking area near the Mall with the weariness of a man who had listened to variations of this conversation for approximately thirty-six hours straight. He turned off the engine. Closed his eyes. Breathed.
"We're going for a walk," he announced. "All of us. Together. We're going to see the sights. We're going to experience our nation's capital. And we are going to have a NICE TIME."
He said "nice time" with the quiet menace of a man who would make it a nice time through sheer force of will, regardless of what the universe—or his granddaughter's alien watch—had to say about it.
They walked the National Mall.
Max narrated. He was good at it—decades of travel and an encyclopedic knowledge of history (plus some classified details about which monuments contained hidden Plumber facilities) made him an engaging tour guide. He pointed out architectural details, shared historical anecdotes, and generally did his best to provide an enriching educational experience for his grandchildren.
Ben, to his credit, was at least somewhat engaged. He wasn't enthusiastic, because ten-year-old boys were constitutionally incapable of enthusiasm about anything that didn't involve explosions or video games, but he looked at the things Max pointed at and occasionally said "cool" or "huh" or "can we get hot dogs."
Gwen walked beside them with her left arm extended slightly in front of her, the Omnitrix at eye level, and she did not look up.
Not at the Lincoln Memorial, where Max explained the symbolism of the thirty-six columns representing the states in the Union at the time of Lincoln's death.
Not at the Reflecting Pool, which stretched before them like a mirror of the sky, perfectly still and luminous in the morning light.
Not at the World War II Memorial, where Max's voice got quieter and more personal, because he'd known men who'd known men who'd fought there, and some of the stories were classified in ways that had nothing to do with the military.
Not at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, which should have been exactly Gwen's kind of thing—science, technology, the history of human flight, exhibits about actual space—but which she walked through with her eyes fixed on the green glow of the Omnitrix while bumping into no fewer than six display cases, three tourists, and one very confused security guard.
"Gwen, you just walked past the actual Wright Flyer," Ben said. "The ACTUAL plane. The one from Kitty Hawk."
"Is it the Omnitrix?"
"...No."
"Then I don't care."
"It's a piece of HISTORY."
"The Omnitrix is a piece of ALIEN TECHNOLOGY that could let me be SEVEN FEET TALL and HOLD YOU."
"Those are not equivalent priorities!"
"They are ABSOLUTELY equivalent priorities. They are the ONLY priorities."
A family of tourists from Ohio gave them a wide berth.
They stopped for lunch at a food cart near the Mall. Max got something called a "half-smoke" which was apparently a D.C. specialty. Ben got a hot dog. Gwen got a hot dog and did not eat it because eating required looking at something other than the Omnitrix, and she was not prepared to make that sacrifice.
"You need to eat," Max said.
"I'll eat when it recharges."
"Gwen, you can't just not eat until the Omnitrix—"
"SEVENTY-THREE PERCENT," Gwen said, reading something off the faceplate that neither Max nor Ben could see. "It's at seventy-three percent. Based on my predictive model, it should be fully recharged in approximately—" She did math in her head. "—two hours and seventeen minutes."
"And then what?"
"And then I transform into Heatblast and find Ben and hold him."
"We're literally right here. You don't need to FIND me."
"I'll find you FASTER. I'll find you so fast you won't even know you were lost."
"I'M NOT LOST!"
"You don't KNOW that. You could be lost RIGHT NOW. You could be lost and not even REALIZE it. That's the most DANGEROUS kind of lost—"
"How can I be lost when I'm SITTING ACROSS FROM YOU?!"
"You could be EMOTIONALLY lost."
Ben put his head on the table.
A pigeon landed nearby, evaluated the situation, and left.
After lunch, they visited the Natural History Museum. Max had hoped that Gwen's love of science—her genuine, pre-Omnitrix, academic love of learning and discovery—might break through the fixation long enough for her to enjoy something.
It did not.
They walked through the Hall of Mammals. Gwen stared at the Omnitrix.
They walked through the Geology Hall, past diamonds and crystals that should have reminded her of Diamondhead and prompted some kind of reaction. Gwen stared at the Omnitrix.
They walked through the Ocean Hall, past a life-size model of a North Atlantic right whale suspended from the ceiling. Ben said "whoa." Max said "magnificent." Gwen said "eighty-one percent."
They walked through the Human Origins exhibit, past reconstructions of early hominids and displays about the evolution of the human species.
"Gwen, look at this," Max said, stopping in front of a display about Homo erectus. "This is relevant to what you're going through. Transformation. Change. The evolution of—"
"Eighty-four percent," Gwen said.
"—of form and function over—"
"Eighty-four point FIVE."
"—over millions of years of—"
"Can we go back to the Rust Bucket? I want to be closer to the transformation space when it—"
"WE ARE IN A MUSEUM, GWEN."
She flinched. Max rarely raised his voice. When he did, it meant something.
"We are in a museum," Max repeated, quieter, controlled. "A museum full of wonders. You used to love museums. You used to love learning. Three weeks ago, you begged your mother to take you to the science museum in Bellwood and you stayed for SEVEN HOURS."
"That was before."
"Before what?"
"Before I knew what it felt like to be more."
The words hung in the air of the Human Origins exhibit, surrounded by displays about what humanity used to be and what it had become.
Max looked at his granddaughter for a long moment. Then he took a slow breath and put his hand on her shoulder.
"Let's keep walking," he said.
3:47 PM
They were at the National Mall again, near the Capitol Building, when it happened.
The first sign was the ground shaking.
Not an earthquake—Washington, D.C. wasn't on a fault line. This was something else. Something rhythmic. Something biological. A heavy, organic thud-thud-thud that vibrated up through the pavement and into their feet.
The second sign was the screaming.
Not distant, campground-over-the-hill screaming like before. Close screaming. RIGHT HERE screaming. The kind of screaming that hundreds of tourists produce simultaneously when something enormous and impossible appears in their field of vision.
The third sign was the frog.
It came around the corner of the National Gallery of Art like a living nightmare—a bullfrog the size of a house, its skin a mottled green-brown, its eyes the size of satellite dishes, its throat sac pulsing with each earth-shaking croak. It was wearing some kind of device on its head—a technological collar or headband, blinking with red lights—and it was angry.
It landed in the middle of the Mall with an impact that cracked the pavement and sent tourists scattering like confetti in a hurricane. Cars were flattened. A hot dog cart was launched into the Reflecting Pool. A group of school children on a field trip broke the land speed record for organized evacuation.
And on top of the frog, riding it like a horse, was a man.
He was thin, wiry, with wild white hair and wilder eyes behind round spectacles. He wore a lab coat that had seen better days—and worse experiments. On his head sat a device similar to the one on the frog: a headband of his own, connected to the frog's collar by a beam of red energy.
"BEHOLD!" the man shouted, and his voice carried across the Mall with the theatrical projection of someone who'd been practicing this speech in front of a mirror. "I am DR. ANIMO! And today, I reclaim what is RIGHTFULLY MINE! The Verties Award committee thought they could SILENCE me! They thought they could SUPPRESS my genius! But my transmodulator has PROVEN what they refused to acknowledge—the ability to MUTATE and CONTROL any animal life form!"
He gestured grandly. Behind the giant frog, more shapes were emerging from side streets—a massive mutated hamster the size of a pickup truck, three enormous cockroaches the size of motorcycles, and something that might have once been a parrot but was now the size of a small aircraft, its feathers iridescent and its beak capable of shearing through a lamppost, which it demonstrated by shearing through a lamppost.
"THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM WILL GIVE ME MY AWARD!" Dr. Animo bellowed. "OR I WILL TAKE IT! AND EVERYTHING ELSE!"
The giant frog croaked. Windows shattered for three blocks.
Ben, Max, and Gwen stood on the Mall, approximately two hundred yards from the chaos.
Max had immediately shifted into Plumber mode—his posture changed, his expression hardened, his hand reached instinctively for a weapon that wasn't there (or at least wasn't visibly there).
Ben had assumed the standard civilian response of "frozen in place, mouth open, brain buffering."
Gwen was staring at the Omnitrix.
"Ninety-seven percent," she said.
"Gwen—" Max started.
"Almost there."
"GWEN. Giant frog."
"I SEE the giant frog, Grandpa. I'm not BLIND. I'm just waiting for—ninety-eight—"
The giant frog took a massive leap. It soared over a row of trees, blotting out the sun, and came down two hundred feet closer to them. The impact knocked all three Tennysons off their feet.
Ben hit the ground, rolled, and scrambled upright. His eyes were on the frog, which was now close enough that he could see individual warts on its skin, each one the size of a basketball. Dr. Animo was cackling from his perch, directing the frog toward the Natural History Museum with manic gestures.
The mutant parrot swooped overhead, its wingbeats generating hurricane-force gusts. The hamster—oh God, the hamster—was rolling toward a group of panicked tourists with the unstoppable momentum of a furry boulder.
"GWEN, WE NEED YOU!" Ben shouted, and started running—not away from the chaos, but parallel to it, trying to get to a position where he could... he wasn't sure what. He didn't have powers. He didn't have weapons. He had a handheld game console and a hot dog wrapper. But people were in danger and Ben Tennyson, despite his many, many flaws, had never been able to stand by and watch people get hurt.
He ran toward the museum.
He didn't see the frog's foot coming down.
The shadow fell over him like a curtain—a massive, webbed shadow that blocked out the sky—and Ben looked up just in time to see several tons of mutant amphibian descending toward the exact patch of pavement he was standing on.
He tried to dodge.
He tripped.
His foot caught on a crack in the pavement—a crack that the frog's earlier landing had created—and he went down, sprawling, skidding across the ground, his palms scraping raw on the stone. He rolled onto his back and saw the foot.
It was enormous. It was green. It was directly above him and coming down fast.
He couldn't move in time.
He knew he couldn't move in time.
"GWE—"
Gwen saw it.
She had been looking at the Omnitrix. Ninety-eight percent. Ninety-nine. Almost there. Almost THERE. A few more seconds and she could be Heatblast, she could be warm and big and strong and she could—
Movement. In her peripheral vision. Small. Fast. Familiar.
Ben. Running.
Ben. Falling.
Ben. On the ground.
Ben. Under the shadow.
Gwen Tennyson stopped looking at the Omnitrix.
For the first time in over twenty-four hours, the green glow of the alien device was not the most important thing in her field of vision.
She looked up.
She looked at the frog.
She looked at Ben, tiny and sprawled and helpless, directly under several hundred tons of mutant amphibian, and something inside her—something that had been building for four days, something the Omnitrix had amplified but not created, something that was hers, entirely and completely hers—
—ignited.
Dr. Aloysius James Animo, PhD (revoked), had made many mistakes in his life. He'd made mistakes in his research (the hamster incident of '98, the unfortunate parrot-lizard hybrid, the time he'd accidentally mutated his own cat into something that required its own zip code). He'd made mistakes in his career (threatening the Verities Award committee with a swarm of giant ants had, in retrospect, hurt his chances). He'd made mistakes in his personal life (his ex-wife's lawyer was still finding new things to bill him for).
But the feeling that washed over him now—a sudden, bone-deep, existential certainty that he had made a mistake so profound that it would redefine his understanding of the concept—was new.
He didn't know where it came from. One moment he was cackling triumphantly atop his giant frog, watching it descend toward some kid who'd been stupid enough to run into the battle zone. Standard collateral. Unfortunate but irrelevant.
Then he felt it.
A weight in the air. A pressure. Not physical—something deeper. Something primal. The feeling a gazelle gets when it realizes the tall grass isn't just tall grass. The feeling a fish gets when the shadow passes overhead. The feeling of being noticed by something that has decided, with absolute and irrevocable finality, that you are a problem.
He looked up from his frog.
A girl was standing two hundred yards away. Small. Red-haired. Ten years old, maybe. Completely unremarkable.
She was looking at him.
No—she was looking at his frog. At the foot of his frog. At the space directly under the foot of his frog, where the boy was lying.
And the look on her face was...
Dr. Animo had once, during a particularly ill-advised experiment, made eye contact with a mother grizzly bear whose cubs he had accidentally mutated. That bear had looked at him with an intensity that he still revisited in his nightmares—a gaze that communicated, with crystalline clarity, that his continued existence was now measured in seconds and that every single one of those seconds would be educational.
The girl's expression made the grizzly bear look friendly.
"Oh," Dr. Animo said quietly, and he didn't know why he said it, because she was just a girl, just a child, she couldn't possibly—
She slammed her hand down on a device on her wrist.
The transformation was not slow.
For the first time since bonding with the Omnitrix, Gwen Tennyson's transformation was not slow.
It was instantaneous. Violent. Explosive.
There was no gradual spread of changing skin, no leisurely expansion of curves, no savoring of the shift from human to alien. One frame she was Gwen Tennyson, ten years old, four-foot-nothing. The next frame she was something else entirely.
The Omnitrix hadn't selected what she selected. She hadn't even looked at the dial. She'd just SLAMMED it, pouring every ounce of her will, her fury, her terror for Ben into the device, and the Omnitrix had responded with something she hadn't tried before.
Something with four arms.
She was red.
Not the warm, inviting red-orange of Heatblast's magma. A deep, aggressive, angry crimson, like blood, like war paint, like the color the universe turns when it decides someone has made a serious miscalculation. Her skin was thick and rough—not crystal, not scales, but something dense and leathery, built for impact, built for hitting things.
She was massive. Not seven feet—eight. Maybe more. Wider than Heatblast, broader than Diamondhead, built like a tank that had been redesigned by someone who felt tanks weren't intimidating enough. Her shoulders were enormous—massive slabs of muscle that supported not two but four arms, each one thicker than a human torso, each one ending in a fist the size of a wrecking ball.
And, inevitably, inescapably, in complete and utter defiance of Tetramand biology—the curves.
Her hips were weapons. There was no other word for them. They extended outward from a comparatively narrow waist with such aggressive, physics-defying prominence that they seemed to warp the space around them. Each hip was a shelf—a plateau—of dense, crimson muscle and impossible proportion that made Heatblast's generous silhouette look conservative. Her thighs were pillars of apocalyptic thickness, each one wider than the trunk of the oak tree she was standing next to, each one containing enough raw power to kick a building off its foundation.
Her chest—four arms meant broader shoulders, broader shoulders meant a broader frame, and the Omnitrix's apparent design philosophy of "more, always more, in every direction" had taken this expanded canvas as a challenge. The result was four massive formations that occupied the space between her two sets of arms, arranged in two rows, each pair proportioned with the same absurd generosity that characterized every form. They were dense, heavy, prominent, and—
Gwen didn't notice them.
Gwen didn't notice ANY of it.
Gwen didn't notice her new body, her new height, her new arms, her new arms, her unprecedented proportions, or the fact that she had just transformed faster than any Omnitrix wielder in the device's history.
Gwen noticed Ben.
Ben, on the ground, under a frog foot.
She moved.
Not fast like XLR8—not a blur, not a streak, not faster than the eye could follow. Four Arms didn't DO fast. Four Arms did inevitable. Four Arms covered the two hundred yards between Gwen and the frog with a ground-eating stride that cracked the pavement with every footfall, her four arms pumping, her massive legs churning, her entire body a battering ram aimed at anything between her and her cousin.
The ground shook. Not with the frog's footsteps. With hers. Each impact sent spiderweb cracks radiating through the National Mall's stonework. Tourists who hadn't already fled did so now, not because of the giant frog, but because of the eight-foot, four-armed, incomprehensibly proportioned red alien woman charging across the Mall with an expression that suggested the concept of mercy had been weighed, measured, and found wanting.
She reached the frog in four seconds.
The foot was coming down. Massive. Green. Inevitable.
Four Arms-Gwen didn't slow down. She didn't stop. She didn't brace.
She went under.
She slid—slid, on her knees, the momentum of her charge carrying her across the cracked pavement like a baseball player stealing home, her body passing over Ben's prone form, and she caught the descending frog foot with all four arms raised above her.
BOOM.
The impact was titanic. The frog's full weight—hundreds of tons of mutant amphibian—came down on four hands that did. Not. Budge.
The pavement beneath Gwen's knees cratered. Her feet—her knees—sank six inches into solid stone. Her four arms trembled, her muscles—each one the size of a normal human—bulged and strained. The frog's webbed foot pressed down, the full force of gravity and mutation and Dr. Animo's mad science bearing down on a single point.
Gwen held.
Above her, a canopy of frog foot. Below her, Ben. Between them, four arms, eight hands, and a resolve that could have held up the sky.
"Ben," she said, and her voice was—
Deep. Impossibly deep. A rumble, a growl, a tectonic event compressed into speech. Every word vibrated through the ground. Every syllable carried the weight of mountains. It was the voice of something ancient and powerful and absolutely furious.
But when she said his name, it was gentle.
"Are you okay?"
Ben lay on the ground, looking up. His cousin—his four-armed, eight-foot, impossibly proportioned, currently-holding-up-a-giant-frog cousin—was directly above him, her face inches from his, her four arms the only thing between him and several hundred tons of amphibian.
"...Yeah," he managed. "Yeah, I'm okay."
Gwen smiled. Even in this form—crimson skin, yellow eyes, a jaw that could bite through steel—her smile was Gwen's smile. Warm. Relieved. Full of something that was bigger than a ten-year-old girl should have been able to feel.
"Good," she said.
Then she looked up.
At the frog.
The smile vanished.
Dr. Animo, from his perch on the frog's back, watched the four-armed alien woman hold up his frog's foot with the casual disbelief of a man watching the laws of physics file for divorce.
"That's—that's not possible," he stammered. "The frog weighs three hundred tons! No single organism could—"
Four Arms-Gwen pushed.
The frog's foot went up. Not slowly—fast. Not a gradual press—a launch. Three hundred tons of mutant frog was shoved upward, the foot lifting off Four Arms-Gwen like it weighed nothing, the entire animal staggering backward on its remaining three legs, its massive body lurching drunkenly.
Dr. Animo grabbed his frog's collar to keep from falling off. "WHAT—"
Gwen stood up. To her full height. All eight feet and change of her, all four arms, all the curves and mass and fury of a Tetramand woman who had just been given a very personal reason to demonstrate what Tetramands were capable of.
She looked at Ben. He was still on the ground, propped up on his elbows, staring up at her.
"Stay here," she said, and it was not a request.
Then she turned to the frog.
Then she grabbed the frog.
What happened next would be described in seventeen different tourist cell phone videos, three news helicopter broadcasts, two scientific papers on theoretical biomechanics, and one deeply confused police report.
Gwen grabbed the giant frog with all four arms.
Two hands seized its front legs. Two hands seized its back legs.
She lifted.
Three hundred tons of mutant amphibian rose off the ground. Its legs kicked. Its throat sac pulsed in panicked croaks that shattered windows across the Mall. Dr. Animo screamed something about his life's work. None of it mattered.
Gwen lifted the frog over her head.
The image was—there was no adequate word. Impossible, maybe. Absurd, certainly. An eight-foot alien woman, proportioned like something from a fever dream, holding a house-sized frog above her head on the National Mall, the Washington Monument visible in the background, tourists filming from behind overturned cars.
She held it there for exactly one second.
Then she suplexed it.
She suplexed a giant frog on the National Mall.
She bent backward—her spine arcing, her massive body curving with the slow, deliberate power of a siege engine—and brought three hundred tons of frog over her head and DOWN, slamming it into the pavement behind her with an impact that registered on seismographs in three states.
CRRRAAASSSHHHH.
The Mall cracked. A shockwave of dust and debris exploded outward in every direction. The frog hit the ground back-first, its legs splaying, its eyes going wide and unfocused, its technological headband sparking and crackling. Dr. Animo was launched from its back like a test dummy in a car crash, sailing through the air in a graceful parabolic arc before landing in the Reflecting Pool with a distant splash.
The frog did not get up.
The frog was done.
Gwen straightened, breathing hard—all four of her arms flexed at her sides, her crimson skin gleaming with exertion, her yellow eyes blazing.
The giant hamster, which had been rolling toward a group of tourists, stopped. It looked at the frog. It looked at Gwen. It appeared to perform a rapid cost-benefit analysis.
"You," Gwen said, pointing at the hamster with one of her lower arms while her upper arms cracked their knuckles.
The hamster squeaked.
It was not a brave squeak.
The hamster was next.
It tried to run. Credit where it was due—it tried. A house-sized mutant hamster, rolling at full speed, could theoretically outrun most threats. But Four Arms-Gwen crossed the distance in three strides, planted her feet, and caught the hamster mid-roll with a four-armed bear hug that stopped its momentum dead.
The hamster squeaked again, louder, its stubby legs pinwheeling uselessly.
Gwen suplexed it.
She suplexed the hamster.
Same technique. Same devastating, spine-arcing, earth-shattering execution. The hamster went over her head and into the ground with a CRUNCH that sent a fresh shockwave across the Mall. Its technological headband shattered on impact, the red lights dying.
The hamster lay in its crater, dazed, its fur sticking up in every direction, looking like the world's largest and most unfortunate stress ball.
Gwen turned.
The three giant cockroaches had been skittering toward the Capitol Building. They were fast—cockroach-fast, even at motorcycle size. Their chitinous legs clicked against the pavement as they scattered in different directions, clearly operating on the ancient cockroach principle of "if we split up, at least some of us survive."
They did not account for four arms.
Gwen grabbed the first cockroach with her upper right hand as it tried to dart past her. She grabbed the second with her upper left hand as it tried to flank. The third made a break for it down Constitution Avenue, and Gwen threw the second cockroach at it.
A motorcycle-sized cockroach hit a motorcycle-sized cockroach at approximately sixty miles per hour. The combined mass of mutant insect skidded down the avenue, tangled together, headband devices sparking and dying.
Gwen held up the remaining cockroach. It wiggled its legs pathetically.
She looked at it.
She suplexed it.
She suplexed a cockroach.
(Historians would later debate whether this was the first recorded instance of a suplex being performed on an insect. It was.)
The mutant parrot was last.
It had been circling overhead, its massive wings generating gusts that knocked over traffic lights and relocated several food carts. It was smart—smarter than the other animals, maybe because parrots were already smart, maybe because Dr. Animo's mutation had enhanced its intelligence along with its size.
It looked down at the carnage. At the suplexed frog. At the suplexed hamster. At the suplexed cockroaches. At the eight-foot, four-armed alien woman who was standing in the middle of it all, chest heaving, four fists clenched, looking up at the parrot with an expression that said your move.
The parrot was smart.
The parrot flew away.
It flew away very fast, in a direction that was directly away from Gwen, and it did not look back.
Gwen watched it go. Her upper arms relaxed. Her lower arms unclenched. The fury that had driven her—the incandescent, all-consuming rage at anything that threatened Ben—began to subside, cooling like magma after an eruption.
She turned around.
Ben was standing where she'd left him, in the middle of the cracked, cratered, frog-print-scarred National Mall, surrounded by the unconscious bodies of mutant animals and the smoking wreckage of Dr. Animo's technological headbands.
He was staring at her.
His mouth was open.
"You," he said slowly, "just suplexed a frog."
"Yes."
"On the National Mall."
"Yes."
"In front of the Washington Monument."
"Yes."
"And a hamster."
"Yes."
"And three cockroaches."
"One of them was technically a projectile, not a suplex."
"And the parrot?"
"It made a good decision."
Ben continued to stare. Gwen stood in the wreckage, eight feet of crimson alien, four arms hanging at her sides, her massive chest rising and falling with slowing breaths. Behind her, the Reflecting Pool glinted in the afternoon sun. In the Reflecting Pool, Dr. Animo floated face-down, unconscious, his lab coat spread around him like a lily pad.
"Are you okay?" Gwen asked.
"Am I—you just—that was—" Ben sputtered. Stopped. Tried again. "That was the most INSANE thing I've ever SEEN."
"You tripped," Gwen said. Her voice—that deep, four-armed rumble—went soft. Gentle. Concerned. "You tripped on a crack and fell and the frog's foot was coming down and you couldn't—"
She stopped. All four of her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Not in anger. In remembered fear.
"You almost got hurt," she said quietly. "You almost got CRUSHED. Because of a CRACK. In the PAVEMENT." She looked down at the cracked ground beneath her feet. "This is why I check for tripping hazards, Ben. THIS. IS. WHY."
"...Okay. You know what? Fair. That's fair. That one's fair."
Four Arms-Gwen blinked. All four arms dropped to her sides in shock.
"Did you just say I was RIGHT about something?"
"Don't get used to it."
"You said I was RIGHT!"
"I said FAIR. Fair and right are—"
"You ADMITTED that checking for tripping hazards is VALID and IMPORTANT and—"
"I admitted that THIS ONE TIME, in THIS SPECIFIC CONTEXT, involving a GIANT FROG—"
"I'M TELLING HEATBLAST-ME ABOUT THIS!"
"THEY'RE ALL YOU!"
"AND EVERY VERSION OF ME IS GOING TO CELEBRATE THIS MOMENT!"
The Omnitrix beeped.
Gwen froze. All four arms went rigid. Her yellow eyes dropped to the device on her wrist—partially merged with her crimson skin, the green hourglass flashing in that familiar, hated pattern.
Green. Yellow. Green. Yellow.
"Oh, COME ON!" she roared, and her voice shook the ground. "I just SAVED THE NATIONAL MALL! I suplexed a FROG! I deserve AT LEAST—"
Beebeep. Beebeep.
"THIRTY MINUTES! THAT'S ALL I ASK! Thirty minutes to check Ben for injuries and hold him and make sure he's—"
BEEBEEP. BEEBEEP. BEEBEEP.
"YOU PIECE OF—"
She caught herself. Breathed. All four hands clenched and unclenched.
She looked at Ben.
"Come here," she said.
"Gwen—"
"Come HERE. Before it takes me. PLEASE."
Ben looked at her. At this massive, four-armed, absurdly proportioned alien woman, standing in the wreckage of a battle she'd won to save his life, begging him to let her hold him for a few seconds before the watch stole it away.
He walked over.
He didn't run. He didn't drag his feet. He just walked, deliberately, across the cracked pavement, stepping over unconscious cockroach legs and around frog-shaped impact craters, until he was standing in front of her.
She was so much bigger than him. Even more than Heatblast. He came up to approximately her hip—her hip, which was at roughly his shoulder height, because Four Arms' proportions were aggressive even by Omnitrix standards.
She knelt down. All four arms opened.
"One hug," she said. "One. Before it beeps me out."
BEEBEEP. BEEBEEP.
"...Make it quick," Ben said.
Four arms wrapped around him. Not crushing. Not smothering. Not shoving his face into anything. Just... holding. All four arms, two from the top and two from the bottom, creating a complete enclosure of warmth and strength and safety. He was surrounded on all sides by arms that had just lifted three hundred tons and suplexed it, and they held him like he was made of glass.
"Thank you," Gwen whispered, and her deep voice vibrated through both of them. "For being okay. For being alive. For being you."
BEEBEEP BEEBEEP BEEBEEP.
"I know," she told the watch, and her voice was resigned. Sad. But not angry. Not this time. "I know. Just... one more second."
She held him for one more second.
Flash.
Gwen Tennyson. Ten years old. Arms—two of them, just two, only ever two—wrapped around her cousin on the National Mall.
She didn't let go immediately. She held on, with her small human arms, her face pressed against his shoulder, feeling how little she was, how weak, how every embrace as a human was a shadow of what it should be.
But she held on.
"...Gwen?"
"Yeah?"
"That was really cool."
She pulled back. Looked at him. Her green eyes—human green, regular green, small green—were wet.
"Yeah?" she said.
"The suplex thing. That was—yeah. That was cool."
Gwen smiled. Not a Heatblast smile, not a Four Arms smile. A Gwen smile. Small and human and real.
"Thanks, doofus."
"Don't call me doofus."
"Don't almost get crushed by a frog."
"...Fair."
That night, in the Rust Bucket, parked in a campground outside D.C. that was thankfully free of giant robots, Gwen added a new entry to her notebook:
ALIEN #4: FOUR ARMS (Tetramand)
Overall Rating: 7/10 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Power: Oh my God. OH MY GOD. I suplexed a frog. A GIANT FROG. I picked up THREE HUNDRED TONS and threw it OVER MY HEAD. I could feel the power in every arm—EVERY ARM, all FOUR of them—and it was INCREDIBLE. I am strong. I am SO strong. I am the STRONGEST thing I have ever been. 10/10.
Protection Capability: MAXIMUM. Nothing can touch Ben when I have FOUR ARMS to put between him and danger. I caught a descending frog foot with all four hands and it DIDN'T MOVE. I was a WALL. A LIVING WALL with four arms and an attitude. 10/10.
Warmth: Moderate. Better than Diamondhead (not hard), worse than Heatblast (nothing compares). Tetramand body temperature runs about 10 degrees above human, so I'm warm but not FIRE warm. When I held Ben, he was comfortable but not TOASTY. 6/10.
Chest:
Okay. Complicated.
There are... four. FOUR of them. Two rows. Upper pair and lower pair. I don't know how to feel about this. On one hand (or four hands): MORE chest means more SURFACE AREA for Ben immersion. On the other hand(s): the arrangement is... logistically complex. Where does his face GO? Upper pair? Lower pair? Diagonal? I didn't have time to experiment because the STUPID WATCH—
Deep breath.
The individual size of each is slightly smaller than Heatblast's, but the TOTAL chest surface area actually exceeds Heatblast's by approximately 40%. However, softness is reduced—Tetramand tissue is denser, more muscular. Not HARD like Diamondhead, but not the perfect volcanic softness of Heatblast either. More like... very firm pillows. Firm but not uncomfortable.
I didn't get to test facial immersion. The one hug I got before timeout was a FULL BODY hug (all four arms, perfect enclosure, 10/10 technique) but Ben's face was against my shoulder, not my chest. This is ACCEPTABLE but not OPTIMAL.
I need more data.
6/10 for now. Subject to revision pending facial immersion testing.
Holding Capability: THE BEST. 10/10. NO CONTEST. Four arms, Grandpa. FOUR. I can hold Ben from EVERY ANGLE SIMULTANEOUSLY. Upper arms around his shoulders, lower arms supporting his legs. He was COMPLETELY ENCLOSED. A perfect pocket of Gwen. Nothing could reach him. He was the safest he has EVER been.
Ben said "that was really cool" after the hug. He said my SUPLEX was COOL. He COMPLIMENTED me. While I was HOLDING him. This is the greatest moment of any transformation I have ever experienced, INCLUDING the first Heatblast transformation.
...Okay maybe not INCLUDING. But it's CLOSE.
10/10.
Mobility: Slow. Slower than Heatblast even. I am a TANK. Tanks don't need to be fast. Tanks need to be THERE, and when they're there, things need to stop EXISTING. 5/10 but I don't care.
Suplex Capability: 11/10. I suplexed a frog, a hamster, and three cockroaches. The parrot ran away. AS IT SHOULD.
Special Notes:
Ben almost died today.
He tripped on a crack and fell under a giant frog's foot and for approximately 1.3 seconds I thought he was going to die.
I have never been more scared in my life.
I have never transformed faster in my life.
The Omnitrix did the transformation INSTANTLY. For the first time—no slow build, no gradual change. One second I was human, the next second I was under the frog's foot, holding it up, and Ben was safe beneath me. It was like the watch KNEW. Like it felt what I felt and said "okay. Okay, you're right. THIS is important. Go."
I think the Omnitrix can feel my emotions. I think it responds to what I need when I need it badly enough. And what I need, always, in every form, with every atom of every alien body it gives me—
—is Ben.
He said I was cool.
He LET me hug him. He WALKED OVER and let me hold him. He didn't fight it. He didn't run. He stood there and let me wrap all four arms around him and hold him before the timeout took me.
That was the best hug of my life.
All four arms. All of him. For six perfect seconds.
Time Limit: It took the hug from me. Of course it did. But... it let me HAVE the hug. Six seconds. More than the Diamondhead leg touch. Less than I deserved. But enough.
I still hate the timeout.
But maybe... maybe it makes the seconds I DO get matter more.
...
No. I still hate it. -500/10.
REVISED OVERALL RANKINGS:
Heatblast — 100/10 (unchanged, unchallengeable, perfect forever)Four Arms — 7/10 (strong, FOUR ARMS, Ben said I was cool, suplexed a frog)XLR8 — 5/10 (fast, good lap, vibrating, hair access)Diamondhead — 2/10 (hard chest, would only use for punching, leg touch happened but was WASTED on this form)
(At the very bottom of the page, in small, careful handwriting:)
Ben called me "really cool" today.
I'm going to remember that in every form. In every body. For the rest of my life.
Even the stupid human one.
TO BE CONTINUED...