Chapter 10

Ben had a sour expression like a little kid who had been promised candy, and gotten a lemon-head instead. Some people like lemon-heads, but no little kid is going to appreciate getting their expectation of a sweet skittle betrayed.

Betrayed. That's what Ben felt right now, and he made sure to project it as hard as he possibly could at every gray within reach. Amusingly, it worked, and they had been clutching their heads in pain, which Ben now cherished as a good memory.

Some part of him realized his mind had been fundamentally altered, because he was now thinking like a child, which is to say in terms of candy and how big of a brat he could be.

Then, they'd brought out a bunch of little silver circlets that they rested on top of their swollen, fat heads. Ben could only assume it was some sort of device that blocked psychic effects, because they stopped wincing, and they started saying everything out loud. They did not like saying things out loud, which pleased Ben. Still, the only thing he'd accomplished was being an inconvenience, which did not please him.

So, Ben sat on his [Extremely Tiny] butt, his knees pointed towards the sky, and his arms crossed across his chest, giving everyone and everything a death-glare. He was still encased in the holographic orange shell, which was positioned in the center of what would be a large magic circle, still under construction by the grays.

“Grays,” Ben muttered to himself, “this was predictable. They're untrustworthy little garbage peddler clones with shitty space-ships.”

“Our species have literally never met,” the tall gray said, still holding the staff he'd used to imprison Ben. From the way the tiny orange gem set in the top was glowing, Ben liked to imagine the tall gray had to continually maintain the effect.

“Liar, we know alllllll,” Ben really stretched that 'all' out, and he wondered if his new size was affecting his personality, “about you people. You're a bunch of clones, and your DNA is all fucked up, and you transfer your minds from one body to the next, but every generation of clones is a little worse than the last! So you teamed up with a bunch of space lizards who promised you a solution for your problems, but ended up enslaving your people instead! You aliens, you xeno-scum! You! . . .” Ben was searching for more derogatory ways to say alien, but came up short. He made a mental note, should he survive, to think of better insults.

The tall gray looked at Ben with a complicated expression.

“I only know of humans because of what The System has told us; about why The Empire betrayed our alliance and began to consign our civilization, planet by planet unto The System.”

“Oh yeah? ” Ben asked, voice defiant.

“Apparently a single ship of ours entered the Dead Galaxy and, against all probability, crashed on Earth. For that, all of us were branded enemies, and it was only after we were here that we found out why.”

“I knew it!” Ben jumped up and pointed at the alien, “the Roswell crash was real! Yes! I didn't waste my youth, I was right!” Ben was breathing hard, then crashed down.

“I am amazed at how much information, however impure, your people were able to glean from a single encounter. The Empire may have been right to do what they did. I would prefer it if you died in silence,” the tall gray said, his alien features still conveying exasperation.

“I would prefer it if I didn't die at all,” Ben countered, and the alien didn't respond.

“Hey, Buddy,” Ben said, “because that's your name now, it's 'Buddy', Buddy,” Ben said, making unnecessary air-quotes. “Looking a little tired, looking like that staff's sucking the life right out of you.”

“It is not, the Town Crystal has the ability of mana storage, and is sustaining the spell.”

“That's useful, is it just you, or is it anyone within range?”

“Be quiet,” the tall gray said, and he looked visibly irritated, which Ben both took as a good sign, and as an answer to his question.

“I bet that Town Crystal is really valuable,” Ben said, looking over at it and judging distance and size.

“It is unbelievably valuable. When this town was founded, the crystal was what allowed us to establish our foothold on the Lost Continent. Further, it has recently been upgraded at great expense to Graycapital 1, allowing us the resources to capture a quasar class soul. Your kind is an unbelievable boon, as quasar class souls are typically only found in the most powerful and dangerous of the monsters located in the deepest caverns.”

“Oh yeah,” Ben said, stalling for time while his mind wrapped around a few new concepts, “Bet you're going to use that other person you murdered for some big powerful weapon. Or to power some kind of city-wide enchantment. Or to fuel some really big, impossible spell. Or summon-”

“Yes, any one of those things, now be silent or I will give you pain. Vocalizing like this is extremely aggravating.”

“Oh, ok,” Ben said.

“Say,” Ben continued, voice quieter, more demure, “Did you already sell the other container?”

“What?” the tall gray was visibly angry now.

“This is the last thing, then I'll die quietly. You already pulled this off once, right? I just wanted to know if you still had the,” Ben searched around his memory for the words they'd used, “the soul gem?”

“It does not matter, but I will allow you to use your feeble mind to determine the logistics of transporting something of such great value and come to your own conclusion,” the gray said, then the sphere around Ben shrunk by a tiny fraction. “Be completely silent now, or I will make it even smaller.”

Ben nodded, then got up off his butt and started stretching his new, tiny body. He fluttered his wings and bumped against the top of his prison, leading him to think the wings enabled magical flight, rather than anything physics would get into bed with.

The wings were, unfortunately, very pretty. They looked like something a very eager six year old girl would have designed, with bright, vivid colors and patterns that would have looked good in an adult coloring book. Not a pornographic coloring book, but a coloring book literally meant for adults.

His body, which was completely naked, still looked pretty good. He hadn't lost any muscle, well, he had, but he hadn't lost any proportional muscle. He had lost a good amount of body hair, which was, like, whatever man. He was a fairy now.

This was such complete bullshit. First chance he got, he was going to write The System a profanity laden message and let that fucker know how he really felt. 'Make your expectations much smaller,' real funny you fucking devil-ass looking motherfucker.

No, that's for later. Now is the time for focus.

Ben took a deep breath and ran through the rules for the utility pouch to make sure he wasn't about to do something that would kill him. He really wasn't sure if he would survive this, but it was better than getting turned into a soul gem, whatever that meant.

He started to make a utility pocket over his face, then began to spread it all over his body. Within a second, he felt his mana drop perilously low, then regenerate just as fast.

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The Town Crystal flickered.

“Good,” Ben said, then opened a second utility pocket in the space in front of him and began pushing as much sea-water as he could, as fast as he could. At the same time, the utility pocket that covered his body was set to produce a suction equal to the force of the first pocket.

This was, to Ben, a simple equation for burning as much of the Town Crystal's mana as physically possible all at once.

One, creating a utility pocket with a complex shape would increase the mana cost associated with its use.

Two, ejecting material from the utility pocket cost more mana based on how hard the material was ejected.

Three, giving the utility pocket a suction effect increased the mana cost based on how powerful of a suction was created.

One, two, three, and Ben would be free, or so the logic went. He could not see through the maelstrom of water that was circulating in his prison, but if he could, he would see the Town Crystal visibly dimming. Ben started rapidly thrusting his limbs in and out of a portal pocket, just to ramp the cost as much as he could.

The sphere began to rapidly shrink, and Ben abandoned all restraint, pushing the utility pocket harder than he ever had before. There was a sudden pop, and water spilled across the ground. Ben canceled his utility pockets, feeling a headache coming on.

Everything was silent for one single second.

Crack.

The grays took their eyes off of Ben all as one, and to be fair, Ben turned his head as well; but he was also starting to fly away.

The town crystal was no longer a shining, beautiful blue color. It had a huge crack, and was starting to melt. Ben was floating away, but he couldn't take his eyes off of the strange scene below.

He thought they would chase after him, but they were frozen in place, universal expressions of horror on their faces. Their loss, he guessed, and flew higher.

From above, he could see Grayport 3 in all its circular, bland glory. The town was divided into quadrants with the former Town Crystal in the direct center. If the town were a compass, and if north was facing the ocean, and south were facing the enormous primeval forest, then Ben had entered the western gate.

The south west quadrant seemed to be devoted to the disgusting, but admittedly sci-fi cool food vats. The entire area was laid out like a grid, like a checkers board, and everything fit in its own square.

The northwest quadrant was devoted to what looked like a small shipyard, for wooden ships, again with apartment buildings scattered throughout.

The northeast quadrant contained the majority of the docks, which were occupied by a crowd of grays shooting at a super pissed off looking great white shark. Even from this distance, Ben could tell who was winning the fight, and who was getting eaten by a great white shark. The docks were. . . they needed repair.

Finally, the southeast slice of the pie seemed to hold what looked like a barracks, though what made it look that way to Ben was a complete mystery to him. Chalk it up to over sixty-billion years of constant warfare by his ancestors. It also held a building that looked like it would be where the important people made the important decisions.

Chalk that one up to instinct too.

Ah, why does it matter what Grayport 3 looked like, considering what's about to happen to it.

From above, the canopy of the forest almost resembled broccoli because of how tightly clustered the foliage was. Ben would be surprised if there was a single shaft of sunlight that came down anywhere in that endless green wood.

The trees shook, the sound of the leaves rustling was audible even from however high up he was hovering. Weirdly enough, not a single bird flew away, and silence followed.

Then, Ben heard it.

“Uuuuuuuuuuurrrrraaaaaaaaaaaa!” The same freaky, weird scream Ben had gotten when the Gremlins spotted him on the beach mere hours ago.

The cry was taken up, then taken up again, then again, and again, and over and over. It wasn't just the weird scream, there were screams of rage, and screams of glee mixed in as well.

Ben was glad to be flying.

First, it was a single brown, furry shape that emerged from the tree line. It was made dramatic, to Ben, because of the total coverage of the trees, making it seem as though the gremlin had come from nowhere.

“Oh, this is like a top-down RTS,” Ben said, because from his perspective, it looked exactly like that. Real time strategy game, for those who don’t know.

The grays killed it with bolts of green light, easily. Then, four ran from the woods and got a little farther, but were also killed.

Minutes passed, and it seemed like every Gray in Grayport 3 was on the walls. Ben could feel strong bursts of psychic communication, the feeling like licking a battery. He didn't know what they were saying, but he could guess.

Thirty-six? Ben counted, it was easy because of how the Gremlins rushed from the tree cover. They were in six groups of six, each group a pentagon, with a gremlin in the center.

The five gremlins looked like standard gremlins, but the sixth one, the one in the center, he was bigger. It was hard to make out the details but the center one was obviously larger and had a mace, which looked like it was made from black iron.

The monsters attacked, and got farther than the previous two waves, making it to the walls before they were slain.

“That's not so bad,” Ben said, then swallowed his words when he heard the laughter.

The screaming had been a little freaky, but the. . . the. . . there's no better way to describe it, the dark chuckling that came from the woods was terrifying. Ben couldn't put a number on how many monsters he heard, but he would describe it as-

A tide of gremlins surged from the woods, and the laughter became interspersed with yelling, with the sounds of battlelust, dozens and dozens of unique monster types pouring out of the forest, each looking more dangerous than the last.

“Uhh,” Ben said, not quite regretting that the grays were being instantly overrun so much as realizing he was responsible for it happening in the first place.

Ben began to fly lower, not to get a better view; he'd rather not be seeing what he could already make out. No, he began to fly lower to get closer to the docks so he could warn Short Bus and tell him to abandon the area.

“Hey, Short Bus!” Ben shouted, both with his voice, and with his mind.

“Hi, Ben!” Short Bus mentally shouted back, “I've been negotiating for your release!”

“It worked, they let me go!” Ben said, laughing.

“Nobody likes getting eaten, it's the ultimate bargaining chip!”

“Speaking of, get the hell away from land, there's some kind of beast-tide of monsters coming out of the forest.”

“Do they look tasty?” Short Bus shouted, but Ben could clearly see him swimming away from the docks.

“No, they look nasty,” Ben said, then squinted when he saw something on the horizon.

“What the. . .”

The sky was turning purple, spreading like watercolor across a dry blue canvas. Soon, most of the sky above them was purple, and a feeling of dread welled up in Ben's gut.

There was silence, all combatants had stopped and were looking towards the ocean. The water drew back, first a little bit, then a lot.

“Aaaaaahhh!” Short Bus yelled, caught up in the rushing water.

Then, the water came back, all at once, in a big pile that had a few names in a few different languages.

In English, they called it a tidal wave.

The water crashed over the shore, swept over the town, and slammed against the massive treeline. Ben heard snapping, the loudest snapping he'd ever heard, but none of the trees fell.

The water came and came, but eventually it slowed down and stopped, and what was left on land poured back into the ocean.

Grayport 3? Gone, just a little visual smear from where the foundations were set into the ground. The monsters? Gone, destroyed. There were a few bodies on the ground, but they vanished in flashes of purple light.

Ben didn't dare look out at the water, he didn't dare see if he could catch a glimpse. He felt it, though. Oh yes, he felt it out there as it searched for survivors.

The purple in the sky began to retract, and then, it rushed away, and Ben was finally out of its shadow.

“Short Bus?” Ben shouted, only when he was sure the monster was well and truly gone. He hated himself as a coward, but he did not regret waiting. 'Please,' he thought to himself, 'I don't want to be out here all alone.'

Alas, there was no response.

Ben was alone.