The Plumbers radio came on just after breakfast.
Same flat voice as before. Different coordinates. The words this time were large non-human entity, residential outskirts, multiple structure damage, two civilians injured, situation ongoing.
Max turned the dial off and sat quiet for a second.
"What is it?" Gwen asked.
"Drathian," Max said. He said it the way you say the name of something you recognize from a long time ago. Not afraid. Just placing it. "Big reptilian species. Intelligent. Peaceful by nature." He paused. "Until something frightens them."
"How frightened are we talking?" Ben said.
"Frightened enough to take apart a lumber yard apparently." Max checked the coordinates against the road map on the dash. "Two exits up."
Ben and Gwen looked at each other.
Max turned in his seat and looked at both of them properly. His expression was settled and serious.
"I'm not leaving you in the truck this time," he said.
Ben blinked. That wasn't what he expected.
"But you both listen to me," Max continued. "Everything I say, the moment I say it. No improvising, no going off on your own, no doing anything before I tell you to. Clear?"
"Clear," Gwen said immediately.
Ben nodded.
"I mean it, Ben."
"I said okay."
Max looked at him for a second longer. Then he turned back to the wheel and pulled onto the road.
"The Drathian's name is Korrv," he said as he drove. "I dealt with his species once before, years ago. Good people when they're calm. Right now Korrv is not calm. Something spooked it and it's been in survival mode since last night." He glanced in the mirror. "That means it's not thinking. It's just reacting. Our job is not to fight it. Our job is to slow it down long enough for it to start thinking again."
"How do we do that?" Gwen asked.
"We contain it. Give it a space where it can't go anywhere and nothing can get to it. Once the running stops the fear starts dropping." He looked at Ben specifically. "If it gets out of control I want you to transform. But Ben, I don't want to hear you screaming in pain, don't transform unless there is absolutely no other choice. Understood?"
Ben looked at him. Something in Max's voice made him not argue.
"Understood," he said quietly.
"Good. And if you do transform, go for Diamondhead. Barriers and walls. Build a space around it, not a trap. Something that closes off directions without making it feel cornered. Can you do that?"
"I will try."
"Don't worry because I'll tell you exactly what to do," Max said. "You follow my lead, both of you. We do this together."
The exit came up. Max took it.
They smelled the lumber yard before they saw it.
Smoke and broken pine, the sharp green smell of split wood and something underneath it, musky and animal and large. The road into the outskirts of the town was empty, people having cleared out fast the way people clear out when something big starts breaking things. A few cars abandoned at odd angles. A fence on the left side of the road pushed flat.
Max slowed the Rustbucket and rolled it to a stop two hundred meters from the lumber yard entrance.
Through the windshield they could see it.
The lumber yard was a wide open space surrounded by a chain link fence, stacked timber on three sides, a small office building at the back. Half the timber stacks had come down. The office building had a hole in one wall the size of a car. And in the middle of it all, moving between the fallen stacks, knocking things over without meaning to, too big for the space, was Korrv.
Ben stared.
Korrv was enormous. Eight feet easily, maybe more. Dark green scales that caught the morning light, a long thick tail sweeping behind it, arms that were proportioned for something used to climbing and pulling. Its head was broad and angular, eyes large and amber, and those eyes were moving constantly, scanning, reading, looking for the next threat that its brain had decided was certainly coming.
It knocked over a timber stack without looking at it. The crash made it spin around, defensive, ready. Nothing was there. It turned back.
"It's scared," Gwen said quietly.
"Very," Max said. He was watching it carefully. "See how its crest is flat? On a calm Drathian that sits up. Right now it's pressed down completely." He turned to them. "Okay. Here's the plan."
They both looked at him.
"Gwen. You stay to my left. When I give you the signal I want you to put a barrier up on the east side of the yard, the open side, where the fence came down. Nothing aggressive. Just a wall it can see that says that way is closed. Can you hold something that size?"
Gwen looked at the gap in the fence. Calculated. "Yes."
"Good. Ben." Max looked at him. "Watch Korrv. When it moves I'll tell you where to put the walls, not a full cage yet, just redirect it toward the center of the yard away from the residential side. Build fast and build solid. When it breaks that one, rebuild it immediately. Don't stop. The point isn't to trap it. The point is to run it out of directions until it has nowhere to go and nothing left to charge at."
"What if it charges me directly?" Ben asked.
"Step back and rebuild behind it. Don't meet it head on." Max looked at him. "You're not fighting it. You're redirecting it. Big difference."
Ben nodded.
"And if something goes wrong and it gets past both of you, we pull back and you call it," Gwen said.
Max looked at her. "Exactly." He almost smiled. "Alright. Let's go."
They came through the broken fence quietly.
Korrv heard them immediately. It spun around, crest flat against its head, a low sound rolling out of its chest that Ben felt in his feet rather than heard with his ears. It was looking at all three of them at once, eyes moving fast.
Max raised both hands slowly. Open palms. He started making sounds, low and rhythmic, not words exactly, something older than words. Tonal. Patient. Like a frequency designed to mean I am not a threat in a language that didn't need translation.
Korrv didn't buy it.
It charged.
"Gwen, east wall, now," Max said, already stepping to the side.
The pink-white light came out of Gwen's hands and hit the gap in the fence and a barrier went up, solid and bright, six feet tall, covering the opening completely. Korrv saw it, veered away from it, and came left instead.
"Ben."
Ben hit the Omnitrix.
The green flash came and the transformation rolled through him and he braced for it, the bones, the reshaping, all of it, and it was bad but less than before. Still sharp. Still real. But quicker, like the body was learning the route and taking it faster each time. He came up as Diamondhead in under four seconds and the blue crystal of him caught the morning sun and scattered it in every direction.
"Left side, wall from that timber stack to the fence post, now," Max said.
Ben drove both hands into the ground.
Blue crystal erupted from the earth in a line, fast and jagged, growing upward, connecting the fallen timber to the fence post in a solid barrier six feet tall. Korrv hit it at full speed.
The crystal cracked down the middle.
"Rebuild, further right this time, cut off the gap."
Ben pulled the cracked wall back into the ground and pushed a new one up three feet to the right. Korrv hit that one too. It held.
"Good. Gwen, shift your barrier inward, push it toward center."
Gwen moved her barrier. It wasn't physical, she walked it forward like pushing something heavy, both arms extended, the light of it steady. Korrv moved away from it instinctively, deeper into the yard, further from the residential side.
"Ben, north wall now. Close off the back."
Another wall. Blue crystal rising from the ground behind Korrv, cutting off the direction it had come from. Korrv spun around. Saw the wall. Spun back. Gwen's barrier on one side, Ben's wall on the other, Max standing in the remaining open space between them with his hands still raised and those low rhythmic sounds still coming.
Korrv charged Max.
"Hold," Max said. Calm as anything.
Ben's hands came up anyway.
"Hold, Ben."
Korrv stopped three feet from Max.
They stood there. Max with his hands up, looking at the creature directly without flinching. Korrv breathing hard, crest flat, amber eyes reading this strange small being that hadn't run and hadn't attacked and was making those sounds.
Max kept making them.
Korrv's tail swept sideways. Hit a timber stack. The crash made it flinch. It spun, and the walls were there. Gwen's barrier was there. Everywhere it looked something said this way is closed.
It turned back to Max.
"Ben," Max said quietly, not taking his eyes off Korrv. "Full cage now. Solid on all sides. Leave the top open. And make it wide, give it room."
Ben looked at the space. Calculated the way Max had been teaching him without either of them naming it as teaching. He drove both hands into the ground and pushed.
Blue crystal rose in a wide ring, not tight, not a trap, a proper enclosure twenty feet across with plenty of space inside. Walls solid and smooth, nowhere to grip and pull apart. Korrv watched the walls rise and made that low chest sound again and turned in a circle inside the space.
But it didn't charge.
The walls were there. They weren't coming in. There was nothing left to run from and nowhere left to run to.
Korrv stood in the center of the cage and breathed.
Max walked to the wall.
"Open a door," he said to Ben. "Just big enough."
Ben pulled a section of crystal back and Max stepped through. Ben closed it behind him.
Gwen appeared at Ben's shoulder. Neither of them said anything. They just watched through the blue crystal walls as Max walked slowly toward Korrv and Korrv watched him come.
Max stopped five feet away. Kept his hands open. Kept making the sounds.
Korrv's crest moved. Just slightly. Not up. But less flat than before.
Max sat down on the ground.
Just sat down. Right there in the dirt of the lumber yard with a creature eight feet tall standing over him and sat down like he had all the time in the world and nowhere else to be. He kept talking. Low and rhythmic and patient.
Korrv looked down at him.
Then it sat too.
Not gracefully, it went down heavy, tail curling around, a long slow exhale coming out of it that made the air around it shimmer faintly. The amber eyes were still watching Max but differently now. The constant scanning had slowed. The reading-for-threat had dropped.
The crest lifted. Just a little.
Gwen let her breath out.
Ben watched Max talking to the creature through the blue crystal walls and said nothing. He'd watched Max defuse a crowd at a park disaster. Watched him hold a mother back from running into a falling Ferris wheel. Watched him sit in a clearing with his hand pressed over a heartbeat he thought was gone.
This was the same thing. Different shape. Same Max.
He was very quiet watching it.
After a while Max looked back over his shoulder at them through the crystal.
"It's alright," he said. "You can bring the walls down."
Ben let the transformation go and came back human in a green flash. Less painful than before, the body landing cleanly, no stumbling, just a breath and then standing upright. He noticed. Didn't say anything about it.
Max was on the Plumbers radio by the time they reached him. Short conversation, coordinates given, a confirmation tone at the end.
"Two days," Max said, putting the radio away. "There's a transport. Old contact owes me a favor." He looked at Korrv, now sitting calm and still in the open lumber yard, crest fully raised. "It goes home."
"Does it understand that?" Gwen asked.
"I told it," Max said. "Whether it fully understood I'm not sure. But it stopped being afraid. That's enough for now."
Ben was looking at Korrv. The creature was looking back at him with those large amber eyes, steady and direct.
Ben had been looked at like that once before. In a park, by a small girl with tear-streaked cheeks, right after everything.
He looked away first.
"What scared it?" he asked. "In the first place. What started all this?"
Max was quiet for a second. "Hard to say for certain. Could have been people who found it. Could have been something else entirely." He glanced at the Plumbers radio. "Could be that things are getting less safe out there for species trying to stay hidden." He didn't say more than that. But something in the way he said it closed off further questions.
Ben filed it. Said nothing.
They walked back to the Rustbucket through the broken fence, the morning still bright around them, the lumber yard quiet behind them.
At the gate Ben looked back once.
Korrv was still sitting in the open yard, crest up, watching them leave. Not afraid anymore. Not angry. Just watching with those steady amber eyes the way intelligent things watch when they're trying to understand something they haven't figured out yet.
Ben turned back to the road.
He thought about what Max had done inside that cage. No Omnitrix. No alien form. No power at all. Just old words in an old language and the patience to sit down in the dirt and wait.
He didn't say anything about it.
But he kept thinking about it all the way back to the Rustbucket and for a good while after that.
That evening they made camp early. Max cooked something that smelled better than it looked and they ate outside as the sun went down behind the trees.
At some point Gwen looked up from her food.
"Grandpa," she said. "When you helped relocate the Drathians before. How long ago was that?"
"Long time," Max said.
"Were we born yet?"
"No."
She thought about that. "How many things like that did you do? Things like that, things we don't know about?"
Max looked at the campfire. "Enough," he said.
Gwen looked at him. "Are you going to tell us?"
"Some of it," Max said. "When it's relevant." He looked at her. "Some of it I'll probably never tell you. Not because I don't trust you. Because some things are better left where they are."
Gwen seemed to accept that. She went back to her food.
Ben was looking at the fire. "The Plumbers HQ," he said. "How far?"
"Day and a half," Max said. "Maybe two."
"And this contact of yours. He'll know about the Omnitrix?"
"He'll know more than I do. Which isn't hard." Max looked at the green glow on Ben's chest. "Azmuth built that device. My contact has spent thirty years studying Azmuth's work. If anyone alive can tell us what it's doing to you and why it chose you then it's him."
Ben looked down at the Omnitrix. The steady green pulse of it in the firelight.
"Okay," he said.
They ate the rest of the meal in comfortable quiet, the fire going orange and low, the trees dark around the campsite, the stars coming out one by one overhead.
Tomorrow the road again. Two more days and then answers.
For tonight this was enough.