“Oh, look, JT!
Come see who this is,” Cash sneered, his voice dripping with loud, exaggerated sarcasm.
He sauntered forward, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Hey, boss.
It’s Ben Tennyson.
But looking at that dye job, maybe we should start calling him Grandpa Ben Tennyson.”
JT snorted, pushing his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose with a stupid, mocking grin.
“No kidding!
I mean, it’s surprising.
Guy looks like he aged about fifty years in a week.”
The two burst into loud, obnoxious laughter, practically slapping each other on the back at their own weak joke.
Albedo stood perfectly still, his crimson eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at the two teenagers.
He felt an immediate, overwhelming sense that these two were possibly the least intelligent lifeforms he had encountered since arriving on Earth.
He stared at his freshly bought chili fries, mentally calculating the exact amount of heat they were losing while he stood here listening to this nonsense.
Deciding he truly didn’t have the time or the patience to engage with Earthling primates, Albedo took a step to the right, planning to simply walk around them and find a quiet park bench.
But Cash and JT quickly shuffled sideways, deliberately blocking his path.
Albedo let out a slow, sharp exhale, the irritation finally beginning to simmer.
It appeared that some lifeforms were simply incapable of learning.
If his inherited memories of Ben’s life were correct, Tennyson had already taught these two a lesson months ago.
They should have learned to keep their heads down.
Yet here they were, actively seeking out a confrontation.
Unfortunately for Cash and JT, Albedo did not possess Ben Tennyson’s human morality or his soft-hearted tolerance for idiots.
“Hey, I’m talking to you, weirdo,” Cash snapped, taking a step closer, his hand reaching out aggressively to shove Albedo in the chest.
“What’s with the red eyes?
You think—”
Cash never finished the sentence.
Before his hand could make contact, Albedo stepped inside his guard with blinding speed.
He grabbed Cash by the wrist, twisting it sharply while sweeping a leg behind the teenager’s knees.
Cash hit the pavement with a heavy, breathless thud.
JT’s eyes went wide.
He tried to throw a clumsy, panicked punch, but Albedo lazily sidestepped it, grabbed JT by the collar of his shirt, and tossed him face-first into a nearby row of trash cans.
The entire physical exchange took less than five seconds.
Are you kidding me?
Albedo thought, adjusting his jacket collar as he stepped over a groaning Cash.
I was a top-tier graduate of the Plumber Academy.
How could I ever let two pathetic, unevolved Earthlings lay a hand on me?
Without sparing the two bullies a second glance, Albedo continued down the street.
He found an isolated bench by a small, man-made pond, sat down, and finally enjoyed his meal in absolute peace.
Once he finished the last chili fry and tossed his empty smoothie cup into a recycling bin, Albedo decided it was time to return to his base.
He walked off the main path, finding a secluded alleyway hidden from security cameras and casual pedestrians.
He raised his left arm, activating the Ultimatrix.
The holographic dial sprang up, and he quickly spun it to the avian-class combat section.
A dazzling flare of red light engulfed him, shifting his anatomy in a rapid surge of hyper-evolution.
“Jetray!”
His human body was replaced by a sleek, deep-red alien form.
Two sharp yellow horns extended upward from the sides of his head, and broad yellow wing membranes stretched out from his underarms down to his tail.
He crouched low, then leaped effortlessly into the sky.
He didn’t just fly; he glided on electromagnetic currents, pushing his speed past the sound barrier in a matter of seconds, leaving a faint red contrail in his wake as he soared back toward the wilderness outside Bellwood.
It only took him minutes to cross the distance back to his hidden Galvan vessel.
He descended smoothly, banking hard to shed his momentum as he approached the clearing where his ship was cloaked.
But as he grew closer, Albedo’s crimson eyes narrowed sharply beneath his horns.
The ship was exactly where he left it.
But the optical camouflage had completely failed.
More alarming, the vessel’s incredibly durable, high-density alloy airlock door was completely gone.
Looking closely at the jagged edges of the frame, he realized the door hadn’t been unsealed or hacked—it had been violently, physically ripped outward from its hinges.
“What in the universe is going on here?” Albedo hissed, anger flaring hot in his chest.
“Who the hell dared to tear apart my ship?!”
He touched down heavily in the dirt a few yards away, slapping the Ultimatrix dial on his chest.
In a flash of red, he reverted to his human form, standing tense and silent as he analyzed the scene.
The massive spaceship sat completely dark, stripped of power, resembling a massive, dead beast resting in the woods.
Albedo stepped forward cautiously.
The crunch of dried leaves beneath his boots sounded unnaturally loud in the dead silence of the forest.
He crossed the threshold of the torn airlock, stepping into the absolute pitch-black interior of the vessel.
The primary lighting arrays were completely dead, forcing Albedo to rely entirely on his spatial memory to navigate the dark, metallic corridors.
He carefully felt his way along the cold bulkheads, slowly advancing toward the central bridge to reboot the primary power grid.
When he finally stepped onto the bridge, he found the central control console intact.
He let out a quiet breath, reached out, and slammed his palm onto the manual override sequence.
Instantly, the emergency generators kicked online.
Blinding, high-intensity white lights flooded the bridge, banishing the shadows.
Albedo turned around—and a massive, razor-sharp broadsword taller than he was came swinging directly at his head.
The blade cut through the air with a terrifying, hollow whistle.
At that range, and with zero warning, Albedo simply didn’t have the time to dodge or manually dial his Ultimatrix.
He could only watch as the heavy steel edge descended to cleave him in half.
But in that exact millisecond of fatal danger, the Ultimatrix’s automated life-preservation protocol triggered.
Without a word from Albedo, the device erupted in a blinding flash of crimson energy.
Just as the greatsword swung down to take his head, a deafening, metallic CLANG echoed through the bridge, sounding like two freight trains colliding.
The killing blow had struck a solid shield of jagged, glowing green crystal.
As the red transformation light faded, a tall figure stood in Albedo’s place.
His arm had seamlessly shifted into a massive, indestructible crystal blade, catching the broadsword mid-swing.
With a sharp grunt of effort, he twisted his crystalline arm, forcefully parrying the massive blade and sending the attacker stumbling backward from the raw kinetic rebound.
“Diamondhead!” he shouted, instinctively calling out his form.
Standing tall, Albedo finally got a clear look at the intruder in the harsh lights of the bridge.
When his crystalline eyes focused on the towering figure in front of him, an indescribable wave of pure shock rolled through his mind.
“Vilgax?!” Albedo yelled, his voice thick with disbelief.
“What the hell are you doing here?!”
Standing roughly ten feet tall, the infamous galactic warlord glared back at him.
Vilgax’s bulky, emerald-green body was clad in thin, high-tech dark armor that shimmered menacingly under the lights.
His face—a terrifying mess of red eyes and a tentacled, octopus-like mouth—twisted into a snarl of pure hatred.
On his left hand, he wore a heavy golden gauntlet embedded with a bright ruby crystal.
And in his right hand, he tightened his grip on the massive broadsword he had just tried to bury in Albedo’s skull.