They found him three streets from the park.
A quiet side road. Closed shops on both sides, one streetlight at each end, no people around. Just the dark and the sound of distant sirens fading as Max turned the corner.
The headlights swept across the road and found him.
He was sitting under an oak tree by the pavement. Two legs stretched out in front of him, all four arms resting in his lap, head hanging down. His eyes were closed. The red and white of Fourarms' body caught the yellow streetlight weakly.
He wasn't moving.
Max stopped the Rustbucket and cut the engine. For a moment neither of them did anything. They just looked through the windshield at the huge still figure under the tree.
Gwen got out first.
She walked across the road and stopped in front of him and crouched down.
"Hey," she said.
All four eyes opened slowly. They found her face.
"Hey," she said again. Softer.
Max came and stood behind her, hands at his sides, looking down at his grandson without saying anything.
Fourarms lifted his head. He looked at Max. Max looked back at him. No words needed.
Then the Omnitrix flashed green.
Fourarms was gone. Ben sat in his place on the pavement, small and pale, in his clothes, blinking in the streetlight.
For about two seconds he just knelt there.
Then he doubled over and was sick on the pavement. There was blood in it. Gwen took a sharp breath. Max dropped to his knees beside Ben immediately, one hand on his back, saying his name low and steady.
It lasted maybe thirty seconds.
Then it stopped. Ben sat back on his heels, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and stared at the ground.
Max kept his hand on his back.
"I'm okay," Ben said. His voice was rough.
"I know," Max said. He didn't move his hand.
Gwen sat down on the pavement on Ben's other side, close enough that her shoulder touched his. None of them said anything for a while. The streetlight hummed above them. The sirens in the distance had gone quiet.
Ben looked at the ground and the Omnitrix glowed its slow green on his chest and after a little while his breathing came back to normal.
Max helped Ben to his feet and they got back in the Rustbucket. Ben took the seat behind the cab. Gwen sat beside him. Max turned around in the driver's seat to face them both, one arm over the headrest.
"I owe you both some answers," he said.
Neither of them argued.
"Have you ever heard of the Plumbers?" he said.
They hadn't.
"It's an organization," Max said. "They've been around for a long time. Longer than most governments on Earth. They deal with things regular authorities can't handle. Alien threats. Technology from other worlds. First contact situations." He paused. "I was one of them. A long time ago."
Gwen stared at him. "You were a what?"
"A Plumber. A field agent. I retired about fifteen years back."
"Grandpa." Gwen's voice was flat. "You told us you worked for the parks department."
"I did say that."
"The parks department."
"It was a good cover."
"It was—" She stopped herself. "Okay. Keep going."
Max looked at Ben. Ben was watching him, quiet, waiting.
"The thing on your chest," Max said. "I saw it once before in a classified file years ago. They called it a Prototrix Shard. A device built by an alien scientist named Azmuth. It was made to store DNA from species across the galaxy and let the user transform into them." He stopped. "The file said it was destroyed. It wasn't."
"So it's alien," Ben said.
"Yes."
"And it's keeping me alive."
"Yes."
Ben nodded once. Like he already knew and just needed to hear it said out loud.
"Why did it pick Ben?" Gwen asked.
"I don't know," Max said. Simple and honest. "The file didn't cover that. Nothing I was ever told covered that."
Gwen was quiet for a second. Then she held up her hand and looked at it.
"What about me?" she said. "What I did back there at the park. The light. That wasn't normal."
"No," Max said. "It wasn't."
"So what was it?"
Max took a breath. "Your mother's side of the family has something in the bloodline. A kind of energy — old, not alien, something different. It usually comes in slowly over years. Quietly." He looked at her hands. "But sometimes something can shake it loose early."
Gwen looked at him. "Like watching Ben die."
Not a question.
"Yes," Max said quietly. "Like that."
The Rustbucket was silent for a moment.
"Can I learn to control it?" Gwen asked.
"Yes. With time."
She nodded and put her hands back in her lap. Then she looked up at Max.
"Okay," she said. Firm and decided.
Max looked at both of them. His granddaughter with light in her hands and his grandson with an alien device where his heart used to be.
"There's a Plumbers facility not too far from here," he said. "Old contact of mine runs it. If anyone knows more about that Omnitrix and what it's doing to you, it's them." He paused. "If we go there, We'll get proper answers."
"When?" Ben asked.
"Tomorrow, we'll hit the road" Max said. "Tonight you both sleep."
He turned back to the wheel. Gwen unfolded her bed. Ben went to the back and sat on the edge of his bed and looked out the dark window for a while.
Then he lay down.
The Omnitrix glowed faint green in the dark above his chest. He watched it for a bit. Then closed his eyes.
Morning came grey and quiet. Max had the Rustbucket moving before either of them fully woke up. The engine groaned, the road rocked them gently and outside the windows everything was green and damp from overnight rain.
Gwen woke up first. There was a newspaper on the small table by the kitchen — Max must have grabbed it at an early gas station stop. A coffee sat beside it, still warm.
She picked up the paper.
Read the front page.
Read it again.
"Ben," she said.
A groan from the back.
"Ben."
"Sleeping."
"You need to see this right now."
A pause. Movement. Ben came out from the back with his hair sideways and his eyes half open and dropped into the seat beside her.
She held up the newspaper.
He looked at it.
The headline said: MYSTERIOUS GIANT SAVES CHILD AT FUNLAND — HERO OR THREAT?
Under the headline was a photograph. Grainy, taken on someone's phone from far away. But clear enough. More than clear enough.
Fourarms. Standing in the middle of the park with the Ferris wheel behind him. Four arms at his sides. Four yellow eyes catching the park lights. Real and enormous on the front page of a newspaper.
Ben stared at it.
He read the article slowly. The eyewitness accounts, the descriptions, the park's statement, the question the headline was already asking the public. Hero or threat.
He put the paper down.
Looked at it one more time.
"Grainy," he said.
"Very," Gwen agreed.
"Could be anyone."
"A four armed red giant, yes, absolutely anyone."
Ben looked at the photo one more time. Something moved across his face that was hard to read. Not quite discomfort. Not quite anything with a clean name. Just the look of someone seeing themselves from the outside for the first time.
He pushed the paper away and reached for the coffee.
Max said nothing from the driver's seat. But his eyes moved to the rearview mirror for just a second, caught the newspaper on the table, then went back to the road.
Four hundred miles away, in a building that didn't appear on any map, a man sat behind a clean desk and read the same newspaper article .
The room was bare. One desk. One light. A window looking out onto an empty grey courtyard. Nothing on the walls. The kind of room that belonged to someone who had decided a long time ago that he didn't need anything he didn't use.
The man read slowly. Both hands flat on the desk, the paper between them. He didn't rush. He never rushed.
He was lean and weathered, late fifties. A deep scar ran from his left temple across his cheekbone. His left eye caught the light differently from his right — a mechanical replacement, pale grey and always focused. Dark clothes, no uniform, nothing to say who he was.
He finished the article. Then he looked at the photograph for a long time.
He set the paper down carefully, aligning it with the edge of the desk, and looked at the young soldier standing across from him. The soldier was straight-backed and waiting and said nothing.
"Bellwood," Vael said. His voice was low and even. "Start there."
"What are we looking for, sir?"
Vael looked at the photograph one more time. At the green light on Fourarms' chest that even a bad phone camera had caught clearly.
"An old friend of mine," he said.
He stood up, straightened his jacket and walked to the door. Stopped with his hand on the frame. Didn't turn around.
"Find him before someone else does," he said. "And do it quietly." A short pause. "He's been through enough."
Then he left.
The soldier stood alone in the empty room and looked at the newspaper on the desk. Fourarms stared back from the front page.
Outside the courtyard was still and grey.
Four hundred miles away the Rustbucket rolled down a wet road toward answers, its engine groaning, carrying three people who had no idea that somewhere a door had just opened that they wouldn't be able to close.