Chapter 106: Substitutes Come On and Win the Game
Back at the stadium, the Cannons were lined up and marching back into the arena. At the players' entrance, two security guards stood by the metal detectors, tasked with running the standard safety checks.
At first glance, everything seemed perfectly normal. The front half of the Cannons consisted of a group of scrawny, energetic ten-year-old kids in oversized baseball jerseys. But as the line moved forward, the guards noticed something entirely off about the back of the formation.
Trailing behind the children were two towering, twelve-foot-tall, crimson-skinned behemoths with four heavily muscled arms each.
The two security guards froze, their jaws practically hitting the floor as they stared up at the absolute mountains of alien muscle casually strolling toward the gate.
"What? Got a problem with that?" Ben crossed his lower arms while resting his upper hands on his hips. He had slapped his recharged Omnitrix the moment they were out of sight, eager to match his cousin's towering form. "We're only ten years old!"
Beside him, Four Arms Wrathful Dragon simply lowered his massive, spiked head, casting a dark, heavy shadow over the two trembling men. He did not say a word, merely raising a single, thick brow.
The two security guards immediately shook their heads like rattles, their eyes wide with sheer terror. They stepped aside, pressing their backs flat against the wall.
Without breaking stride, Four Arms Wrathful Dragon and Four Arms ducked through the entrance, smoothly making their way into the competition venue.
Out on the field, the stadium speakers crackled to life. "The game continues! The Cannons have replaced their original pitcher, opting to bring in a substitute from the bench. Let's see what kind of spectacular... what the heck!"
Up in the broadcasting booth, the commentator dropped his microphone. His eyes bulged out of his head as he watched Four Arms Wrathful Dragon lumber out to the pitcher's mound, leaving deep footprints in the dirt, while Four Arms casually crouched down behind home plate in the catcher's position.
Fumbling to pick up his microphone, the commentator cleared his throat nervously. "...Ahem, I have just received news from the officials that these two... uh, the Cannons' substitute players are indeed registered as ten years old, so they technically meet the league standards. The game continues."
Even as he spoke the words, the commentator felt his soul leaving his body. There was no way anyone was buying this.
Down in the dugout, the coach of the Gentlemen slammed his clipboard onto the bench. "Are your eyes blind?!" he roared at the umpires and the broadcast booth. "Where in the world do those two things look like ten-year-old kids?!"
The commentator, valuing his own life far more than the opposing coach's complaints, completely ignored him. "Play ball!"
The players from both sides scrambled to their respective positions.
Behind home plate, even with Four Arms fully crouched down in the dirt, he was still a full head taller than the Gentlemen's batter.
Four Arms flashed a wide, toothy grin at the opposing player. "You don't need to be nervous. It will be over soon."
The batter did not respond. He simply stared straight ahead with dead, unblinking eyes, completely devoid of human emotion—a perfect, silent robot.
Out on the mound, Four Arms Wrathful Dragon stood completely still. He reached into his glove and pinched the baseball between two massive fingers. To him, the regulation-sized ball looked like a tiny white marble. He did not bother with a wind-up. He did not lift his leg or twist his torso. He simply flicked his wrist and threw it.
A sharp crack echoed across the stadium. The baseball cut through the air with such terrifying velocity that the friction ignited a trail of sparks in its wake.
The Gentlemen's batter, possessing robotic reflexes, swung the aluminum bat with mathematical precision. He made perfect contact. It did not matter.
The sheer kinetic force of the pitch proved too much for the metal. The bat instantly bent backward, wrapping around the baseball like wet clay. The ball tore right through the warped aluminum with almost zero loss of momentum and slammed directly into the oversized catcher's mitt on Four Arms's hand.
A shockwave kicked up a cloud of dust around home plate.
"Uh... Strike!" the umpire squeaked, his voice cracking.
The commentator sat in stunned silence. He did not know what to say, but factually speaking, the ball had crossed the plate.
After three blindingly fast pitches, the inning flipped. It was the Cannons' turn to bat.
"I just received news that the Cannons' batter has also been replaced..." The commentator's tone was entirely flat now. He had already accepted reality.
Sure enough, Four Arms stomped out of the dugout and took his place in the batter's box, casually swinging a bat that looked like a toothpick in his massive grip.
The Gentlemen's pitcher wound up and threw his fastest fastball.
Four Arms swung.
The deafening boom sounded like a cannon firing. The baseball shot upward at an impossible angle, tearing through the clouds and vanishing completely from sight. Forget about retrieving the ball—if you blinked, you missed its entire trajectory into the stratosphere.
Watching the ball disappear into orbit, the Gentlemen's coach realized the game was entirely lost. Normal sports tactics were useless against these monsters. He turned sharply to the robot standing next to him, currently disguised flawlessly as the President of the United States.
"Go directly and eliminate the President!" the coach hissed.
Their original plan had been elegant: win the championship game, use the victory ceremony to get close to the real President, quietly eliminate him, and smoothly swap in their robotic duplicate. But the situation had completely unraveled. They had to act by force.
The moment the command left the coach's lips, the entire Gentlemen roster abandoned their human disguises. Synthetic skin tore away, revealing gleaming metallic endoskeletons. The robots leaped out of the dugout, charging straight toward the VIP stands.
Screams erupted across the stadium. The spectators scrambled over seats, fleeing in all directions as total chaos broke out.
Up in the VIP box, the Secret Service agents immediately drew their weapons, forming a protective wall around the real President and dragging him toward the emergency exit.
Seeing their target retreating, the Gentlemen's coach drew a weapon and led the President duplicate in hot pursuit.
The rest of the robotic baseball team tried to follow, but their path was suddenly blocked by a wall of red muscle. Facing down two towering Tetramands, the androids had only one destination: the scrap heap.
Four Arms Wrathful Dragon did not even bother dodging. He stepped directly into the swarm. Every casual punch he threw caved in a metallic chest cavity, sending gears and wires flying across the grass. When they tried to swarm him, he simply raised all four fists and slammed them into the ground. The resulting shockwave shattered the earth, launching a dozen robots into the air like broken toys.
A few yards away, Four Arms was having the time of his life. He grabbed one robot by the ankles, swinging it like a massive steel club, and smashed it directly into three others. The sheer force of the impact caused their internal power cores to rupture, resulting in a series of fiery explosions that lit up the infield.
"Dweeb! We're here to help!"
Four Arms Wrathful Dragon and Four Arms glanced over their massive shoulders. Grandpa Max and Gwen were sprinting across the field toward them.
Gwen had already shifted into her Anodite form. Her body was composed of pure, crackling pink mana. She raised her hands, unleashing a massive wave of magical energy that swept across the grass, instantly dismantling a large cluster of approaching robots into floating debris.
Grandpa Max slid into a firing stance, holding a heavy-duty laser rifle. He displayed his exquisite marksmanship, picking off the stragglers with precise, lethal bolts of plasma. "Where did these robots come from? What exactly do they want?"
Hearing the question, Four Arms suddenly remembered the surveillance footage they had found in the abandoned factory earlier. The image of the politician on the laptop screen flashed in his mind. "It's the President! Their target is the President!"
Grandpa Max's expression hardened. "Where did Mr. President go?! We have to save him!"
Gwen's glowing pink eyes darted toward the stadium tunnels. "Grandpa, I saw the Secret Service dragging him toward the equipment room just before the panic started."
"Let's go take a look!"
Without missing a beat, Grandpa Max bolted toward the stadium corridors, firing his laser rifle to clear a path through the remaining androids. Gwen floated closely behind him, hurling spheres of mana, while Four Arms charged forward like a runaway freight train.
Four Arms Wrathful Dragon followed at a much more unhurried, leisurely pace, stepping over the burning wreckage of the robot team.
When the group finally kicked open the heavy metal doors of the equipment room, they were greeted by a bizarre sight. The President's Secret Service bodyguards were all unconscious, scattered across the concrete floor. Standing in the center of the spacious room were the Gentlemen's coach and two completely identical Presidents.
"Uh..." Four Arms scratched his oversized head, looking back and forth between the two men in identical suits. "Which one is the President?"
Four Arms Wrathful Dragon stepped into the room, rubbing his massive chin. He looked at the duplicates with a deadpan expression. "Just beat both of them to a pulp. You'll figure out which one is the robot pretty quickly."
"No!" Grandpa Max and Gwen yelled in unison, immediately stepping in front of him to block his path.
"All right, all right," Four Arms sighed, cracking his knuckles. "That Gentlemen coach probably isn't human either. You go deal with the clone problem, and I'll handle him."
With that, Four Arms lunged across the room, tackling the coach. He drove a massive fist into the man's jaw. The coach flew backward, crashing into a row of metal lockers. As he slumped to the floor, his synthetic skin peeled back, revealing the metallic skull beneath.
Just as expected, the coach was a machine. Grinning, Four Arms charged at the exposed robot to finish the job.
On the other side of the room, Four Arms Wrathful Dragon raised a hand and slapped the dial of the Another Omnitrix resting on his chest. A brilliant flash of emerald light illuminated the dim equipment room. The towering red behemoth melted down into a puddle of liquid metal and glowing green circuitry, instantly rising back up as Upgrade.
Upgrade slid forward, extending his arms into long, fluid tendrils. He placed one hand on the left President's shoulder and the other on the right President's shoulder. Without warning, his liquid-metal body lost its shape entirely, flowing directly into the pores and seams of the President on the left.
The possessed duplicate suddenly stiffened. Its eyes flared with bright green, glowing circuitry.
"This one is fake," Upgrade's synthesized, mechanical voice echoed out from the robot's vocal cords. He looked directly at Grandpa Max.
The real President, standing just a few feet away, pressed himself against the wall. He had seen a lot of classified, top-secret phenomena during his time in office, but the sheer volume of impossible things happening in the last five minutes left him completely speechless.
A loud crunch echoed from the corner as Four Arms literally tore the robotic coach in half, tossing the sparking pieces aside. A second later, the fake President's chest cavity violently expanded outward as Upgrade forcibly dismantled it from the inside, bursting out in a shower of sparks and shredded metal.
The real President swallowed hard, stepping forward to express his deep gratitude to the strange group of saviors.
But before he could speak, the Omnitrix symbol on Four Arms's shoulder began to flash a rapid, warning red.
"We're leaving, Mr. President," Grandpa Max said sharply.
Knowing the transformation was about to time out, Grandpa Max quickly grabbed his grandchildren and ushered them out the back exit, disappearing into the stadium corridors before the Secret Service agents could wake up and start asking questions.
A few minutes after the room had fallen completely silent, a new group of individuals stepped through the doorway.
Enoch stood in the center of the equipment room, his golden mask gleaming under the flickering fluorescent lights. He looked down at the shredded, sparking wreckage of his robotic infiltrators. His fists clenched so tightly his leather gloves creaked.
"I swear on the Forever Knights," Enoch hissed through gritted teeth, his voice dripping with absolute venom. "The Tennyson family will pay with their lives!"
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