A few minutes later, three shadows slipped out of the house, melting into the deep blue and purple of the pre-dawn sky. They moved quickly and quietly over the damp grass, heading straight for the Rust Bucket parked at the edge of the lot.
Rio led the way.
Beside him, Ben's heart hammered a frantic, excited rhythm against his ribs. This is it. This is what the summer is supposed to be about. His mind raced ahead, picturing heroic confrontations and the awesome story he'd tell later. Fear was there, but it was utterly drowned out by the roaring thrill of the unknown.
Gwen, however, hugged her arms tightly around herself. The chill she felt had little to do with the night air. Her sharp mind was already calculating the myriad ways this could go horribly wrong.
"Okay, what's so important in the RV that we had to risk getting caught?" whispered Gwen .
"Just a little insurance," Rio replied, digging a pair of keys from his pocket. "I'd feel a lot better if we weren't going up against a potential alien threat empty-handed."
He unlocked the door and pulled it open, "Come on."
Inside, he went straight to a locked compartment under the main table. On a soft cloth inside lay several small, metallic orbs.
"Here," he said, turning to his cousins.
He handed three spheres to Ben and three to Gwen. The spheres were cool and surprisingly heavy for their size.
Ben rolled one around in his palm. "What are these? Ball bearings?"
"No," explained Rio. "They're for keeping you safe. If you're cornered, throw them. They need to land in a rough triangle. Once they activate, they'll create a temporary energy barrier. It won't last long, but it should buy you a few seconds."
This was the best Rio could cobble together from scrap. The truly advanced defensive tech required components he simply didn't have access to.
The main problem was a stable power supply. He had two from Vilgax's robots, but they were too big to use.
Rio was still in the process of deciphering their structure to fit Earth's tech.
Next, Rio moved to their bunk beds and pulled out three brightly colored water guns.
Gwen stared at the water gun in her hand, then at the taser pistol tucked into her waistband. "You're giving us these? We have tasers."
"Ben said the thing smoked and ran when water touched it," Rio countered, loading a water reservoir into his own gun with a firm click. "If that's its weakness, a spray of water is better than a couple of electric shocks. The tasers are plan A. This is plan B. Now fill them up."
-----
In Grandma Vera's room, she was sleeping quietly, her hand falling out of the covers, hanging on the edge of the bed.
Just then, the same substance that attacked Marty when the crew just arrived at the retirement complex suddenly slithered out from somewhere.
It then slithered up her arm, suddenly waking her up as the slimy goo continued to do as it did with Marty, completely covering her head and face, making her faint before she could even scream or warn everyone in any way, shape, or form.
-----
Three children stood in the oppressive silence of Marty's living room. They were our Tennyson's Rio, Ben, and Gwen, going on their night hunt.
The air inside the room was stale, and the only sound was the frantic tick-tick-tick of a clock, counting down the seconds.
Using the flashlight on his phone, Rio swept the beam across the room. It was unnervingly normal.
"See?" Gwen murmured, her own water gun held tightly. "Nothing. It's just a creepy old house."
"Keep looking," Rio said, his voice low. "Don't touch anything. Just look for anything that feels... off."
He was about to move toward a cluttered desk when a transparent wireframe overlay instantly materialized on his phone.
>Not to interrupt your breaking and entering, but a minor environmental anomaly has been detected.
>Cross-referencing with cached visual data from previous visit, 17:32 hours. A stack of papers is now present on the central table. This object was not present during our initial break-in.
Rio's gaze drifted to the cluttered table. A neat stack of papers sat there that definitely hadn't been there earlier.
He slid them closer, flipping through them one by one. Bills. Coupons. A diner menu with a smiling cartoon waffle on the front. Normal stuff. Then, his fingers brushed against something different: a glossy, long slip of paper.
He held it up to his light.
The paper was in the name of the "Sunny Meadows Retirement Community." It seems to be some kind of receipt, but the only thing on it was a massive quantity of industrial-grade duct tape and heavy-duty plastic sheeting, nothing else.
A bad premonition went through Rio's mind. But before he could share his findings, a flicker of movement outside the window caught his eye–just a flicker in his peripheral vision.
But Rio acted instantly. He snapped his hand down, killing the phone light and plunging them into near-darkness.
"Get down!" he hissed.
They dropped below the windowsill. Peering over the ledge, they saw a figure shuffling down the street. It was an elderly woman in a housecoat, carrying a bag big enough to fit a person.
She paused under a streetlamp, looked around with a jerky motion, then darted into the shadows between two houses.
As she disappeared, Ben said, "She's heading toward the dumpsters."
-----
The fake Marty and another male senior were waiting by the dumpsters as the housecoat-wearing woman walked up to them.
"Is the food supply ready for transport?" She asked.
Looking closely in the faint light, she turned out to be Vera, or more accurately, an alien slime transformed into Vera.
"The pods are in the final stages of gestation." Fake Marty replied. " You brought one of the old ones. What about the young ones?"
"Too chewy." The fake Vera sighed and shook her head. "They need to age more before they get nice and tender."
"I'm not talking about eating. The brown hair one had seen me, and they might already suspect too much." The Fake Marty remarked.
To that, the other senior nearby came up with an appropriate plan of action before giving an evil smile.
-----
The three Tennysons stood in the cold, open air, facing the three large dumpsters behind a mangled wire gate.
The scene was illuminated by the flickering pale glow of a single security light.
Foul stenches permeated the air. The stench of rotting garbage, rusting metal, and stagnant water.
It had taken a heated, whispered argument back in Marty's living room to get here.
"Are you insane?" Gwen had hissed. "We found the receipt! That's enough! We take this to Grandpa now!"
"And say what?" Ben shot back. "That we broke in and found a receipt for tape? He'll think I'm making up stories! We have to see what's down there!"
"It's a trap, you moron!"
"No! This is how we bust this whole thing wide open!"
Rio had let them argue, his own mind working. Gwen was right; it was the logical choice. But Ben was also right; without proof, Max might dismiss it.
"Enough," Rio finally cut in. "We're going. But we do it my way. We stick together, and the second I say we leave, we run. Understood?"
With a frustrated sigh, Gwen nodded. If it were Ben in her spot, he would have already thrown his hands up in exasperation. Though she finally accepted as she knew that once Rio decided something, they weren't going to change it.
Now, standing before the dumpsters, the reality felt much heavier than it had inside Marty's house.
The wire gate was still mangled. Behind it, three large dumpsters sat exactly as Ben had described, but the oppressive atmosphere made them look like sleeping beasts in the dead night, waiting to just wake up and pounce on anyone who dared approach them.
"Which one was it?" Rio asked, his voice low.
"The middle one."
Hearing Ben's answer, Rio moved first. The others followed close behind, their eyes scanning the surroundings for any movement.
"Ready?" Asked Rio, reaching the middle dumpster.
Ben nodded, raising his taser pistol. Gwen positioned herself to watch their backs, her knuckles white on her own gun.
With a grunt, Rio pushed. The dumpster rolled aside with a metallic shriek. Beneath it, set into the concrete, was a heavy metal door, shut tight as though no one could open it.
Rio tried to pry it open, but it wouldn't budge. It was either locked from the inside or too heavy.
"Ben, come help," Rio called.
Together, they managed to pull one side of the door up just enough for Gwen to slip under and help open it from the other side.
As the door opened, a wave of cold, damp air washed over them, carrying the foul smell of a gutter.
"Stay sharp," Rio murmured. A set of crude metal rungs descended into utter blackness. "I'll go first. Gwen, watch our backs. Ben, right behind me."
He climbed down into the darkness. The air grew colder with each step, the smell intensifying. After about twelve feet, his feet touched solid ground.
"Clear," he called upward.
Ben scrambled down after him, then Gwen.
Rio activated his phone's flashlight. They stood in a narrow concrete tunnel, pipes running along the ceiling dripping with condensation.
"What is this place?" Ben whispered as he took in their surroundings.
"Some kind of maintenance tunnel," Gwen said, her voice tight. "But it's been... modified."
They moved forward slowly, Rio's light illuminating ahead to reveal a junction where the tunnel branched off. Just as the kids were making heads and tails of which path to take, a voice echoed from behind them.
"Looking for someone?"
The voice made all three of them spin around at once.
A green blob of human shaped slime stood at the tunnel's mouth, blocking their only exit. His form was continuously bubbling around, shimmer and distorting.
As if on cue, two more of the slimes oozed from the damp walls, cutting off any hope of retreat.
"You children are too curious for your own good," the lead one gurgled, its voice bubbling out of its body without anything resembling a mouth.
Ben's bravado surged. His grip tightened on the taser gun Rio had made for him as he shot back.
"Oh yeah? Curious? You haven't seen anything yet!"
Without hesitation, he raised the taser gun Rio had given him and fired a shot directly at the nearest creature.
The result was deeply unsatisfying. The electric charge simply disappeared into the creature's body with a pathetic fizzle.
The slime didn't even twitch. Instead, the attack seemed to make them even more furious as multiple tentacles formed on their bodies, reaching for the groups.
Ben's face fell. "You've got to be kidding me." The confident grin wiped from his face as the creature's attack oozed forward menacingly.
"Gwen—take this!"
Rio shoved his phone into her hands. The flashlight beam swung wildly as she fumbled to catch it.
Before she could say a word, he was already moving—pulling three metallic spheres from his pocket and throwing them with quick flicks of his wrist.
Two bounced across the ground, rolling into position. The third clung to the ceiling with a soft metallic chk, completing a rough triangle around them.
Then came the flash—bright and unmistakably blue.
In the blink of an eye, Rio was gone.
What replaced him hit the ground with a thuh:
It was Wildmutt—his coarse orange fur bristling with small, sharp quills. Even his shoulders looked strong enough to plow straight through a steel door. His long, hooked claws gouged deep lines into the concrete as he braced himself.
His head lifted, the gill-like nostrils at his neck flaring wide.
[RHHHRR-RAAAGH!]
His jaws opened and a deep, bone-shaking growl rippled through the tunnel, shaking dust loose from the ceiling.
"Whoa!" Ben gasped, fear momentarily replaced by awe.
Rio—now fully Wildmutt—didn't hesitate. He lunged. One claw slashed through the gelatinous creature's whipping tendrils, stopping them from reaching his cousins.
While his other claw landed on the lead slime, though the slime reformed around the claws, the push alone shoved it back several feet, buying them precious seconds.
From Gwen's trembling hands, the phone spoke in its cool, unbothered tone:
[Barrier spheres charged. Activation ready. Activating in 5… 4…]
"Hrrrak!"
Wildmutt reacted instantly. He launched backward and bounded toward Ben and Gwen.
"Grrnnh!"
With snarl he signaled toward his back with his head before dropping low to the ground in front of them.
"Get on!" Immediately understanding Gwen shouted, scrambling onto his back and yanking a still-staring Ben up beside her.
"The water guns, Ben! Use the water guns!"
"Oh! Right!" Ben fumbled for the water gun, and together they fired. Twin jets of water arced forward, splashing the advancing slimes.
The creatures recoiled immediately, sizzling and shrieking, retreating from the spray like it was acid. The smell was awful, like burnt algae and chemicals.
[…2…1.]
The spheres opened with a sharp crack of energy.
A ray of light or more precisely a laser came forth from all the balls, the lasers collided at the center of the tunnel as a translucent barrier surged to life between them, sealing the tunnel between the kids and the slimes completely.
The wobbly creatures slammed against the glowing field. with frantic, furious screeches attacking with various methods—but the barrier held them back.
With his cousins secured on his back, Wildmutt turned toward the left-hand tunnel.
"Hrrrm?"
He lifted his head, sniffing deeply from the grills on his neck. Beneath the rotting smells, he caught it—something metallic, alien.
"Hrrrak!"
He let out a low growl.
And then he ran—charging into the dark with Ben and Gwen clinging to his fur—following the scent straight to the source.
Straight to the heart of the invasion.
-----
-----
Author's Note
Your Lovely, dovely, handsome Rio Man here.
I've got about 2 or 3 weeks left before final exams…. I dunno, They start in the first week of December, and I absolutely refuse to open a calendar and do the math. If any of you want to figure it out, go ahead—save your Rio Man from basic arithmetic.
Ahem. Ahem….
Right, back to the point. I'll be stepping away again. Between endless classes, assignments, and life trying to trip me every morning, like a wildmutt is grabbing my head and slamming it on the ground again and again.
this tiny week of vacation was the only chance I had to drop an update.
Once exams are over, I can finally sit down and write like a civilized human again. Though during the break, I'll also be plotting where this story marches next.
yes, planning… or at least staring at the ceiling dramatically until inspiration smacks me. If god allows I will do so in the exam hall too. Though I hope I won't have to or my ass gonna be wiped at home. 😭
So please, don't get super duper hyper mad or sad when your beloved Rio Man disappears for a bit.
Think of it as a temporary retreat—like a hero going off for training, except the villain is called "Final Term."
I'll be back soon. Probably stronger. Hopefully not sleep-deprived or ill.