Deep into the night, Ben and Blake stealthily snuck aboard the captain’s boat and ducked out of sight.
However, Ben’s clumsy shifting immediately caught the captain’s attention.
Captain Shaw strode over, ripping away the canvas sheet covering their hiding spot.
“Hey!
I don’t carry stowaways,” the captain barked.
“I wouldn’t haul you even if you were a filthy river rat!”
As the fabric pulled away, it revealed Ben curled into a ball, waving her hands in a thoroughly awkward greeting.
“Uh…
heh heh…
First Mate Ben Tennyson reporting for duty, Captain!”
Just as Captain Shaw assumed she was alone, the other half of this dynamic duo, who had accidentally dozed off, lost his balance and came crashing hard onto the deck.
“Ow, ow, ow!” Blake groaned.
Now that both of them had been busted, Captain Shaw sighed, pulling on a heavy-duty diving suit.
“The monster was probably driven deep underwater by those stinking Fish Association snobs.
There’s only one way to draw it out.” He turned back to them, eyes narrowing.
“We need live, kicking bait.”
He finished his sentence, leaving Blake and Ben standing there like absolute statues.
Ben stayed uncharacteristically quiet, while Blake was left completely bewildered.
(Wait, I thought Ben was supposed to argue her way into coming along?
Did my presence actually mess up her standard reaction?)
Before either of them could speak, Captain Shaw grabbed his heavy harpoon gun, locked his helmet, and dove straight into the dark lake.
Left alone on the deck, Blake and Ben caught sight of two spare diving suits tucked in the corner.
Sharing a silent, knowing look, they came to an immediate agreement.
Shortly after sinking beneath the surface, Captain Shaw spotted a strange, spherical object nestled on the lake bed.
He swam closer, entirely unsure of what it was.
Suddenly, sensing a presence closing in fast from behind, the paranoid captain spun around and fired his harpoon gun into the murky depths.
Fortunately, it was only Blake and Ben in their spare suits.
As they gathered around the object, Blake recognized the glowing cluster immediately.
This was the Kraken’s nest, and the spheres were her eggs.
(Right, the pieces of the plot are coming back to me now.)
Realizing the adult creature wasn’t in the immediate vicinity, Captain Shaw signaled them and began swimming back toward the surface.
The moment they breached and pulled off their masks, they were surrounded by men wearing professional diving gear.
“Don’t you know night diving is incredibly dangerous, you crazy old man?” a voice sneered.
“Unless, of course, you brought some friends along with you.”
Surprisingly, Captain Shaw didn’t sell them out.
He kept his eyes locked on the guards.
“Nope.
Just me.
I don’t have any friends.”
Two of the divers grabbed the captain’s arms, pinning him, while a man who appeared to be their leader stepped forward.
“You’ve got it all wrong.
I’m just trying to gather some field research.
Tell me, old man…
what exactly did you see down there?”
Captain Shaw refused to break under the pressure, remaining stubbornly tight-lipped.
“Didn’t see a thing.
Same as always.”
His defiance was met with a brutal, heavy punch to the jaw, knocking him flat across the deck.
The attacker violently ripped off his own diving mask, revealing himself to be the lead official from the Friends of Fish Association they had encountered earlier that afternoon.
“Fine.
I guess I’ll just have to go down and verify it myself,” Jonah Melville muttered.
He gestured to his crew to drag the captain aboard their patrol boat for further interrogation, then tossed a timed explosive onto Shaw’s vessel to destroy the evidence.
“We’ll come back with the mini-sub later to harvest the remaining eggs.”
Watching the scene unfold from the cover of the docks, Ben and Blake were anxiously waiting for their watches to finish recharging.
Fortunately, luck was on their side – Ben’s Omnitrix hummed to life first.
As her dial popped up, Ben glanced at Blake’s wrist, noticing his watch was still flashing a recharging red.
She hesitated, looking thoroughly worried about leaving him behind.
“Go save him, Ben,” Blake urged quietly.
“My watch should be ready any second…
probably.”
With a final nod of encouragement from Blake, Ben slammed her hand down on the dial, transforming into Stinkfly before rocketing into the sky to give chase.
Left behind in the water, Blake tilted his head back, letting his body float lazily with the gentle currents.
(Man, I really hope I don’t drift off to some weird part of the lake.)
Out on the open water, the smugglers immediately spotted the incoming threat.
Melville pointed up at the massive insect.
“It’s a giant bug!
Get the harpoon gun!”
A chaotic skirmish broke out.
Realizing their mounted machine guns couldn’t hit the agile flyer, Melville frantically ordered his crew to hurl explosive barrels into the air.
The concussive blast caught Stinkfly off guard, knocking her squarely into the lake.
The moment her wings became waterlogged, she found herself entirely grounded.
“Ugh, how annoying!
My wings are completely soaked, I can’t fly!”
As the saying goes, misfortunes never come single file.
Melville wasted no time, steering the heavy patrol boat directly toward the stranded alien, intending to run her over and finish her off once and for all.
Just as the massive bow was about to crush her, a blue-and-black streak blurred across the water.
Blake, now transformed into XLR8, snatched Ben out of the path of destruction, carrying her instantly back to the safety of the shoreline and ducking behind a thick cluster of trees.
“What the hell was that?
A lightning bolt?” one of the smugglers barked.
Since they had already crossed paths with XLR8 earlier that day, Melville assumed it was the same creature.
The only subtle difference, which none of the crooks noticed was that Blake’s XLR8 form was slightly leaner and more aerodynamic than Ben’s version.
Finding no sign of the creatures, Melville scanned the shore with a powerful spotlight.
When the beam failed to locate them behind the foliage, he turned back to his crew, looking utterly ruthless.
“Looks like we need to dump some dead weight overboard.”
Without hesitation, the smugglers hurled a bound Captain Shaw over the railing into the deep water.
By now, Ben’s wings had dried off enough to function.
She launched herself back into the sky, diving sharply to scoop the drowning captain out of the lake just in time.
With the smugglers speeding away, Ben carried Captain Shaw through the air, heading back toward the Rust Bucket.
However, her internal timer wasn’t on her side.
Just as they neared the clearing, the watch timed out, flashing red as she reverted back to her human form mid-air.
“Oh great, not again!”
Fortunately, Blake was already moving.
Utilizing XLR8’s extreme speed, he intercepted them flawlessly, catching Captain Shaw in one arm and scooping Ben up with the other before sprinting back to the RV.
It was a completely standard rescue carry, but Blake failed to notice that his hand was resting firmly against Ben’s chest.
Perhaps it was because she was entirely flat-chested, or perhaps it was because his brain was still stubbornly treating her like a guy – either way, Blake remained blissfully oblivious to the awkward placement.
Ben, however, was a different story.
The howling wind made it impossible to speak, and given their extreme velocity, she didn’t dare thrash around or ruin his balance.
She had no choice but to endure the entire trip with her face burning a brilliant, furious scarlet.
The physical contact brought her mind flashing back to the conversation she’d had with Gwen right before they left the RV.
*(Flashback)*
“Hey, mega-dweeb,” Gwen had sighed, crossing her arms.
“Have you seriously not noticed that he doesn’t even view you as a girl?”
“Wh-What?!
So what if he doesn’t?!” Ben had shot back defensively, crossing her arms and pouting.
“I’m just being myself!”
Seeing her cousin’s completely oblivious, carefree attitude, Gwen could only shake her head, knowing Ben was going to end up crying about it later.
She placed a sympathetic hand on Ben’s shoulder.
“Man, you really are a hopeless dweeb.
Do you seriously not care about how he sees you at all?”
Ben had paused, scratching her head as she let the words sink in.
She mumbled quietly to herself, “How he sees me…”
She had fully intended to claim that she didn’t care about anyone’s opinion, but for some bizarre reason, the thought of Blake’s perception of her made her throat tighten.
She found herself entirely tongue-tied, unable to utter a single word.
Noticing the sudden silence and the faint pink hue creeping onto Ben’s cheeks, Gwen easily deduced exactly what was going through her cousin’s head.
She offered a meaningful, knowing smirk.
“Look, Ben…
if you actually *do* care, you’d better start making a move soon, you big dweeb.”
*(End of Flashback)*
Driven by XLR8’s incredible velocity, Blake brought Ben and Captain Shaw back to the campsite in a matter of seconds, where Grandpa Max and Gwen were already waiting to receive them.
“Perfect landing,” Blake murmured.
After handing the captain over to Grandpa Max, Blake pulled his visor down, intending to use the remaining seconds of his transformation to run a quick errand.
He wanted to use his speed to check in on his parents’ house from a distance.
An hour later, Blake returned to the Rust Bucket in his human form, sliding into the lounge to join the group’s discussion.
Under normal circumstances, Ben would have been chattering away at a mile a minute.
Instead, she was sitting entirely alone outside the RV, staring up at the moon with a deeply existential expression, looking as though her entire reality had been shattered.
Left with no alternative to keep the plot moving forward, Blake took over her role, clearly explaining the smugglers’ operation to Grandpa Max and Gwen.
Gwen quickly pulled up a database on her laptop, identifying the leader of the poachers.
“His name is Jonah Melville.
He claims to be an advocate for marine wildlife, but it’s a total front.
He’s actually a notorious black-market animal trafficker.”
The revelation made everything fall into place.
The Kraken hadn’t been attacking the lake out of random malice; it was desperately trying to recover the eggs Jonah Melville and his crew had stolen from its nest.
Hearing this, Captain Shaw pushed himself up from the bench, determined to head back out.
“I don’t care what your excuses are!
A monster is a monster, and even if that beast is a mother, I am going to bring it in!”
With the captain marching off to prepare his backup vessel, Grandpa Max and Gwen quickly followed to keep an eye on him.
Blake, however, lingered by the door, his eyes drifting back to the solitary figure of Ben sitting motionless on the steps.
Feeling a twinge of concern, Blake walked out and knelt down beside her.
“What’s wrong, Ben?
Are you feeling sick or something?”
Noticing that Grandpa Max and Gwen had walked a significant distance ahead, Ben finally lifted her head.
She stole a brief, guarded glance at Blake before looking back down at her shoes, her voice a tiny whisper.
“Blake…
do you…
do you honestly just think of me as a guy?”
“???
Huh?”
Blake tilted his head, completely thrown off by the question.
He didn’t quite follow her train of thought, mostly because in his mind, Ben Tennyson was *supposed* to be a guy.
But as he stared at her in the pale moonlight, his eyes took in her soft, pale skin, her striking emerald eyes, and the long, sweeping ponytail cascading down her back.
When he actually stopped to look, she was undeniably a girl.
After an awkward silence, Blake’s eyelids twitched, and he offered a thoroughly strained, sheepish smile.
“Uh…
wait.
You’re actually a girl?” (Talk about an absolute disaster of a response.)
“QAQ!”
Ben’s heart completely sank into her stomach.
Her worst fears had just been confirmed in Blake’s eyes, she didn’t possess a single ounce of feminine charm.
It was a staggering blow to her self-esteem.
If anyone else had said it, she wouldn’t have cared in the slightest.
If she were the type to worry about public perception, she wouldn’t have spent her entire life acting like such a tomboy.
But hearing it from him cut deep.
(Ugh…
I guess I’m going to have to ask Gwen for advice after all.)
*(Preview of the Next Chapter: Resolving the Kraken crisis!)*