Chapter 105: Cash, J.T., and the Robot Factory
After the first game concluded, Cash and J.T. found themselves wandering through the dense woods bordering the stadium. The shadows stretched long between the trees, making the rustling leaves sound far more sinister than usual.
J.T. kept glancing over his shoulder, his eyes darting nervously behind his glasses. "Cash, you don't think that Mummy freak is gonna come crawling out of the woodwork to grab us again, do you?"
"Probably... not, right?" Cash replied, though his voice lacked its usual bullying bravado. He tightened his grip on the aluminum baseball bat resting on his shoulder. He firmly believed his apology back then had been incredibly sincere. Surely the universe wouldn't punish them twice.
A sudden rustle of branches shattered the quiet.
Several players from the opposing baseball team, The Squires, stepped out from the surrounding bushes. Their movements were stiff, perfectly synchronized, and entirely unnatural.
The lead Squire fixed his dead, unblinking eyes on Cash. "You two. Come with us. Now."
"Get lost! You freaks!" Cash shouted, stepping back and gripping the bat with both hands. He swung it up into a batter's stance, trying to project a confidence he absolutely did not feel. "You'd better back off, or I'll—"
Before Cash could even blink, the Squire standing to his left lunged forward. A pale hand shot out, snatching the aluminum bat right out of Cash's grip. With a casual, effortless twist of his wrists, the Squire bent the thick metal bat completely in half like a piece of wet cardboard.
The clatter of the ruined bat hitting the dirt echoed in the silence. Cash and J.T. stood frozen, their jaws hanging open in sheer disbelief.
Internal screaming echoed in both their minds. I am so sick of this! Do these inhuman monsters really have nothing better to do?! Why is it always us?!
The Mummy was one thing, but they weren't the only kids who had a grudge against The Squires! Was the entire Cannon Team invisible, and only the two of them existed as targets?! They had originally thought scoring a trip to the games was a stroke of incredible luck. Instead, they had spent the better part of the day getting beaten, chased, and terrorized.
Were they really about to get kidnapped and beaten up again?!
Despite the overwhelming resentment boiling in their chests, neither boy dared to utter a single word of protest. Judging by their last traumatic experience, as long as they took their beating quietly and obediently, they might actually survive to see tomorrow.
"What did you just say?" The lead Squire tilted his head, his voice completely devoid of inflection. "'You'd better' what?"
Cash swallowed hard, a nervous sweat breaking out on his forehead. He forced a painfully awkward smile. "Uh... you'd better not drink too much of that new sports drink. It's... bad for your teeth."
"Take them away."
The lead Squire ignored the pathetic excuse, waving a hand at his teammates before turning on his heel and marching deeper into the forest. The other Squires immediately flanked Cash and J.T., shoving them forward and escorting them into the heavy shadows of the trees.
A few moments after the group vanished from sight, the bushes a short distance away parted. Klein and Ben stepped out onto the dirt path.
"Let's follow them and see where this goes," Klein said, his tone entirely casual, as if he were suggesting a trip to the concession stand. He shoved his hands into his pockets and strolled after the kidnappers. Ben nodded eagerly and hurried to keep pace.
Meanwhile, inside the Rustbucket, the atmosphere was considerably more tense.
Gwen sat hunched over her laptop, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she reviewed the video footage recorded by her camera.
"I knew it! Grandpa, look at this. I put the footage on a super slow, frame-by-frame replay." Gwen waved Max over, pointing excitedly at the screen.
Max walked over, leaning down to inspect the display. His eyes widened in shock. "Fasttrack?! Ben knows perfectly well that using alien powers to cheat in a game is strictly forbidden! I am going to ground that boy the second he gets back... Wait. What is that?"
Max tapped a thick finger against the corner of the screen.
Gwen followed his gaze. Right next to the blue-and-black blur of Ben's Fasttrack was another afterimage. It was incredibly distorted, moving at a speed that barely registered on the camera's sensors, leaving behind a distinct, dark blue-black trail.
"Even Ben's Fasttrack got caught clearly on camera, but this one didn't," Gwen muttered, her brow furrowing in thought. "Looking at the color scheme and the speed... it has to be another Fasttrack!"
The realization hit them both at the same time.
Max frowned deeply, his posture stiffening. "The only other Fasttrack within a hundred miles of this stadium is..."
"Cousin!" Gwen interrupted, looking up at Max with wide, pleading eyes. "He must have been dragged into this by Ben! Grandpa, please don't punish Cousin, okay? You know Ben is a bad influence when it comes to stuff like this."
Max sighed, shaking his head slowly. "I'm not going to punish him. My approach to your cousin's education has always been a 'free range' policy. Letting him grow at his own pace is the only way. You know as well as I do that trying to suppress him or force him into a corner will only backfire spectacularly. But... I am still going to have a very serious talk with him about this."
Gwen nodded, relieved that Klein was off the hook. Then, she tapped a few more keys, bringing up a different window. "Oh, right. Grandpa, I was getting suspicious earlier, so I started digging into the background of The Squires online."
She turned the laptop so Max could see the cascading lines of data. "When I cross-referenced their roster with the Baseball Hall of Fame database and public records, I found something weird. A lot of the players on The Squires share names with other people, but there is absolutely zero proof that these specific kids actually exist. No school report cards, no dental records, no medical history... nothing! It's like they were born yesterday."
Max stared at the empty data fields on the screen, a deep, uneasy frown settling on his face. Something was very, very wrong here.
Just then, a shadow fell over the Rustbucket's window.
Max and Gwen looked up to see the coach of The Squires standing outside. He wasn't looking at the RV. Instead, he was standing perfectly still, his head swiveling mechanically as he observed the security personnel patrolling the stadium grounds in the distance.
"Why is the coach out here casing the stadium's security layout?" Max murmured, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. "Shouldn't he be in the locker room guiding his players right before the finals?"
Gwen shook her head, a chill running down her arms. "I don't know. But I have a feeling we're going to find out very soon."
Miles away, on the outskirts of town, stood an abandoned industrial factory.
Ben and Klein crouched behind a rusted metal dumpster near the entrance, watching quietly as the robotic members of The Squires shoved Cash and J.T. through the heavy steel doors.
Ben leaned in close, keeping his voice to a whisper. "Cousin, why don't we sneak around back? Try to find a vent or a window?"
"Sneak in my ass," Klein scoffed, standing up in plain view. "We're kicking the front door down."
He raised his wrist, dialing the faceplate of the Another Omnitrix. As far as Klein was concerned, the only reason he had bothered sneaking around and following them in the first place was to locate their main base. Now that he had the coordinates, there was zero reason to play nice. If the enemy was going to cheat at a baseball game, he certainly wasn't going to follow standard heroic protocol.
He slammed his hand down on the core.
A quiet, intense blue light flared, washing over the dirt lot. In Klein's place stood a towering, terrifying behemoth. Four massive, heavily muscled arms flexed, thick draconic scales plating the crimson skin. Spikes protruded from the knuckles and shoulders, radiating an aura of pure, unadulterated hostility.
Four Arms Wrathful Dragon cracked his four knuckles in unison, the sound like boulders grinding together.
"Ben. Charge with me."
Four Arms Wrathful Dragon let out a deafening, earth-shaking roar and launched himself directly at the factory gate.
"Cousin, wait up!" Ben yelled, quickly slapping his own Omnitrix. A flash of green light illuminated the alley, and the standard Four Arms bounded after the draconic giant.
Four Arms Wrathful Dragon didn't even bother slowing down. He lowered his shoulder and slammed into the heavy steel barricade like a freight train. The reinforced metal doors shrieked, buckling inward before tearing completely off their hinges and flying across the factory floor.
Inside, the Squires had just finished tying Cash and J.T. to a pair of structural pillars.
Hearing the explosive breach, the robotic players whipped around. Without a second of hesitation, they grabbed baseballs from nearby crates and hoisted their bats, hurling the projectiles at the intruders with mechanical precision.
The baseballs cut through the air at speeds fast enough to punch through solid steel plating.
They slammed into Four Arms Wrathful Dragon's scaled chest. Ping. Ping. Ping. The projectiles shattered into dust upon impact, not even leaving a scratch on his armor. It was less than a tickle.
"Cannon fodder," Four Arms Wrathful Dragon growled, his deep voice vibrating the dust off the rafters. "Prepare to be scrapped."
Since these were mindless machines and not living beings, Klein had absolutely no intention of holding back. There would be no lectures from Grandpa Max for destroying property that was already trying to kill them.
Four Arms Wrathful Dragon bent his knees and leaped high into the air, his massive frame eclipsing the overhead lights. He brought all four fists together into a single, devastating hammer-blow and plummeted toward the cluster of Squires.
He struck the concrete floor.
The violent shockwave tore through the factory, buckling the support beams and shattering every window in the building. A massive crater, easily over ten meters in diameter, exploded outward from his point of impact. The sheer kinetic force pulverized several of the Squires instantly, reducing their synthetic skin and metal endoskeletons into a shower of mangled scrap metal.
Debris rained down from the ceiling. If Ben hadn't rushed forward to shield Cash and J.T. with his own four arms, the two bullies would have undoubtedly been crushed by the flying shrapnel.
"Robots," Four Arms Wrathful Dragon muttered, kicking a severed mechanical head across the floor. He had suspected as much. The unnatural coordination, the dead eyes, the lack of records—robots had been at the top of his conjecture list. Seeing the sparking wires only confirmed it.
"Hey!" Cash shrieked, his face pale as a ghost, his heart hammering against his ribs so hard it hurt. He strained against his ropes, glaring at the draconic giant. "We almost died just now! Watch where you're smashing things!"
Four Arms Wrathful Dragon slowly turned his head. His glowing, slit-pupil eyes locked onto Cash. The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
"Do you have a problem?" Klein's voice was a low, dangerous rumble that promised immediate violence.
Cash swallowed the lump in his throat, all the color draining from his face. "No! No problem at all! Take your time!"
Just then, the remaining Squires recovered from the shockwave and sprinted forward, their metallic joints whirring as they prepared to attack.
Four Arms Wrathful Dragon didn't even look at them. He casually reached out, grabbing two leaping Squires by their heads. With a flick of his wrists, he smashed them together. The sickening crunch of crumpling metal echoed through the room as both robots short-circuited and went limp. He tossed the sparking junk aside.
Ben, having safely deposited Cash and J.T. out of the blast zone, joined the fray. He waded into the remaining robots, dismantling them with brutal efficiency, turning the rest of the baseball team into a pile of dented scrap metal with a flurry of heavy punches.
After a few moments, the factory fell silent, save for the crackle of severed wires.
Ben casually tossed a crushed robotic arm over his shoulder and looked at his cousin. "Well, that takes care of that. Should be all resolved now, right?"
"No. Not even close," Four Arms Wrathful Dragon replied, his heavy gaze sweeping across the massive, empty warehouse. Conveyor belts and assembly lines stretched into the darkness. "This is a manufacturing plant. There is a very high probability that the handful of tin cans we just trashed aren't the only ones they produced. The real question is... where did the rest of the inventory go?"
He turned his massive head to look at Ben. "When does the final game start?"
Ben scratched his chin with one of his lower hands, thinking for a moment. "Uh, there should be about ten minutes left before the first pitch. Is something wrong, Cousin?"
Four Arms Wrathful Dragon did not respond. He simply narrowed his glowing eyes, staring at the empty assembly line as the pieces of the puzzle finally snapped into place.
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