The National Mall was, to put it charitably, a disaster area.
The frog crater alone was forty feet across and twelve feet deep, a perfect amphibian-shaped depression in the historic stonework that would keep the National Park Service busy for months. The hamster crater was smaller but somehow worse, because hamster fur had gotten everywhere—great tufts of mutant hamster fluff drifting across the Mall like the world's most disgusting snowfall. The cockroach skid marks stretched the entire length of Constitution Avenue. A lamppost was missing. Several trees had been rearranged. The Reflecting Pool now contained one (1) unconscious mad scientist, floating face-down in a lab coat, surrounded by confused ducks.
Emergency services had arrived within minutes—police, fire, ambulances, and several unmarked black vehicles that Max recognized with a grim nod and that he quietly directed away from his grandchildren. Dr. Animo had been fished out of the pool by two very tired paramedics and was currently handcuffed to a gurney, ranting about the Verities Award to no one in particular.
The mutant animals, stripped of their technological headbands, had begun reverting to normal size. The frog was now a regular bullfrog, sitting in the middle of a forty-foot crater and looking profoundly confused about its life choices. The hamster was a regular hamster, buried in a pile of its own shed fur. The cockroaches were regular cockroaches, which meant they had immediately scurried into the nearest storm drain because cockroaches were survivors above all else.
The parrot had not returned. It was presumably still flying at maximum speed in whatever direction was "away from Gwen."
In the middle of all this chaos, Max Tennyson was trying to convince a park ranger that no, he hadn't seen any aliens, the damage was clearly caused by the giant animals, which were also gone now, so really the whole thing was just a freak incident of mad science, happens all the time, nothing to see here.
He was also trying to keep an eye on his grandchildren.
This was proving difficult.
"We should go back to the museum," Gwen said.
They were sitting on a bench near the Natural History Museum, which had been Dr. Animo's target and was now surrounded by police tape and confused security guards. Gwen was in her human form—small, orange-haired, ten years old, the Omnitrix dim on her wrist, recently timed out. Ben was sitting next to her, maintaining a carefully calculated distance of exactly one bench-slat between them.
"The museum is closed, Gwen. There was a giant frog attack."
"Not the WHOLE museum. Just the front part. The exhibits inside are probably fine."
"There's police tape."
"Police tape is a suggestion."
"It is LITERALLY not a suggestion. It is the OPPOSITE of a suggestion. It is an ORDER. From the POLICE."
Gwen was not looking at Ben. She was looking at the museum. Specifically, she was looking at the museum's entrance hall, visible through the glass doors—a grand, marble-floored space with high ceilings and dramatic columns and, most importantly, approximately zero park rangers because they were all outside dealing with frog craters.
"The dinosaur exhibit," she said. "I want to see the dinosaur exhibit."
Ben stared at her. "You—what?"
"The dinosaur exhibit. The one with the T. rex skeleton. It's supposed to be one of the best in the world." She paused. "I read about it online. Before the Omnitrix. When I still... read things that weren't about the Omnitrix."
This was, Ben realized, the first time in nearly two days that Gwen had expressed interest in something that wasn't the watch, wasn't him, and wasn't the intersection of the two. She wanted to see dinosaurs. Like a normal kid. Like the old Gwen.
"...Okay," he said slowly. "Yeah. Dinosaurs. Sure. Let's go see dinosaurs."
"Really?"
"I mean, the museum's closed and there's police tape and Grandpa's going to be mad, but—"
"Great. Let's go."
She was already walking.
Getting into the museum was easier than it should have been, which said unflattering things about the Smithsonian's security protocols during a crisis. The front doors were technically locked, but a side entrance used by staff was propped open with a rubber doorstop—someone had left in a hurry during the frog attack and hadn't bothered to secure it. Gwen and Ben slipped through the gap and into the museum's service corridor like they belonged there.
"This is breaking and entering," Ben whispered.
"This is unauthorized accessing of a public institution during irregular hours," Gwen corrected. "Totally different."
"How is that different?!"
"It sounds better on a college application."
The service corridor led to the main exhibit halls, which were—as Gwen had predicted—mostly intact. The frog attack had focused on the exterior; inside, the displays stood untouched, cases gleaming, artifacts undisturbed, the eternal silence of a museum at rest filling the halls like invisible cotton.
It was actually kind of magical. The museum without crowds was a different place entirely—vast and hushed and private, the exhibits existing solely for them, every skeleton and specimen and gemstone waiting in the dim security lighting like actors on a stage between performances.
Gwen led the way through the Hall of Human Origins (she didn't stop this time, but she glanced at the displays, which was progress), through the Ocean Hall (she looked up at the whale, briefly, and said "huh" in a tone that was almost—almost—appreciative), and into the Dinosaur Hall.
And stopped.
The Nation's T. rex stood before them in the center of the hall—a complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, forty feet long, thirteen feet tall at the hip, its massive skull frozen in an eternal snarl, every bone meticulously mounted and dramatically lit. It was one of the most complete T. rex specimens ever found, and it dominated the hall with the same casual authority it had presumably dominated everything sixty-eight million years ago.
"Whoa," Ben said, because some things transcended his cultivated apathy.
Gwen was quiet. She stood in front of the skeleton, looking up at it, and for a long moment she wasn't thinking about the Omnitrix. She wasn't thinking about Heatblast or Four Arms or XLR8 or transformation timeouts or Ben's hair or the comparative softness of various alien chest configurations.
She was thinking about dinosaurs.
"The T. rex could bite with a force of approximately twelve thousand eight hundred pounds," she said softly, and it was her voice—the old Gwen voice, the know-it-all voice, the voice that couldn't encounter a fact without sharing it. "That's enough to crush bone. They didn't just eat their prey—they pulverized it. Ground it into paste. Their teeth were designed for—"
She stopped. Caught herself. The Omnitrix pulsed on her wrist—a soft, green reminder—and she glanced down at it, and Ben could see the moment of tension. The pull. The constant, gravitational pull of the device, dragging her attention away from seventy-million-year-old bones and toward the promise of transformation.
But she fought it. Visibly, deliberately, she pulled her eyes back to the skeleton.
"—designed for maximum impact," she finished. "Like... like Four Arms' fists."
"...Did you just compare a T. rex to your alien form?"
"I compared biomechanical principles. There's a difference."
"There really isn't."
But she was smiling. A small, human, Gwen-smile. And she was looking at the dinosaur, not the watch.
Ben let himself relax, just slightly. Maybe this was okay. Maybe they could have a normal moment. A cousin moment. A museum moment. Two kids looking at a dinosaur skeleton in an empty museum, being normal, being—
The Omnitrix pulsed.
Not the passive, background pulse of a device in standby. A bright pulse. An active pulse. The kind of pulse that meant—
Gwen looked down.
Green light. Steady. Full.
Recharged.
The change was visible in real time.
One second Gwen was looking at the dinosaur with genuine, unfiltered, non-Omnitrix-related interest. The next second, her eyes were on the watch. The dinosaur ceased to exist. The museum ceased to exist. The entire Smithsonian Institution, one of the greatest repositories of human knowledge and achievement in the history of civilization, was instantaneously demoted to "room where the Omnitrix happens to currently be."
"Gwen," Ben said carefully. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't do what you're about to do."
"I'm not about to do anything."
"Your thumb is on the faceplate."
She looked down. It was. She hadn't even noticed it moving there.
"That's... that's a coincidence."
"Gwen."
"It's just resting there."
"GWEN."
"I'm not going to—I mean, we're in a museum. That would be irresponsible. I'm a responsible person. I got the Responsible Student Award in fourth grade. I wouldn't just—"
"You're pressing it."
"I'm not pressing it."
"You are ACTIVELY pressing it RIGHT NOW."
"My thumb has a mind of its own—"
Click.
The dial popped up. The holographic display appeared—silhouettes rotating in a green circle, alien forms arrayed like a buffet, and Gwen's hand was already moving, already spinning the dial with the automatic precision of someone who'd done this in her sleep (she had, in fact, done this in her sleep—Max had found her sleepwalking at 3 AM two nights ago, turning the deactivated dial in her dreams).
The dial spun past XLR8. Past Four Arms. Past Diamondhead.
Landed on Heatblast.
"Gwen, we are inside a MUSEUM. A museum full of IRREPLACEABLE ARTIFACTS. You CANNOT be HEATBLAST in a—"
She slammed the dial.
This time, the transformation was slow again.
Not the instantaneous, emergency-driven explosion of the Four Arms transformation during the frog attack. This was the original speed—the languid, luxurious, savoring pace that Gwen's body seemed to prefer when there wasn't an immediate threat to Ben's life. This was the transformation she enjoyed.
And enjoy it she did.
The warmth started in her wrist. That familiar, beloved warmth, spreading up her arm like honey being poured through her veins. Her skin darkened, shifted, began to glow—first faintly, then brighter, the magma-lines tracing across her fingers, her palm, her forearm with lazy, golden precision.
"Oh," Gwen breathed, and her eyes fluttered half-closed, and the small, blissful smile that appeared on her face was the smile of someone coming home after a very long trip. "Oh, yes. There you are."
"Gwen, we're standing next to a TYRANNOSAURUS REX SKELETON—"
"Shh."
"It's made of BONE. Bone is FLAMMABLE—"
"Shh."
The transformation rolled across her shoulders and down her torso, and as it went, her body began its now-familiar expansion. Her frame stretched upward—one inch, two, six, twelve—her posture straightening, her neck lengthening, her perspective rising as the museum floor receded beneath her growing form. Her shirt dissolved. Her shoes melted. The heat was building, rippling the air around her, making the display cases shimmer.
Her hips widened with the slow, ponderous inevitability of geological time. Her thighs expanded outward, pressing together, grinding softly with that uniquely Heatblast sound of shifting tectonic plates. The museum floor beneath her began to scorch—faint, dark footprints appearing on the marble.
Her chest swelled forward. That chest. The chest. The one she'd written approximately three pages of comparative analysis about, the one that had scored thirteen stars and a rating in scientific notation, the one that she considered the single greatest achievement of the Omnitrix's engineering.
It was back.
All of it.
And it was glorious.
"Oh, I MISSED you," Gwen murmured, running her massive, glowing hands down her own sides with the tender appreciation of someone reuniting with a beloved pet. "I missed you SO MUCH. My beautiful, warm, perfect—"
"GWEN. THE DINOSAUR."
She opened her eyes—blazing white, incandescent—and looked at the T. rex skeleton.
The T. rex skeleton was fine. For now. But the ambient temperature in the hall was climbing rapidly, and several of the informational plaques nearest to Gwen were beginning to curl at the edges. A display case containing fossilized eggs was developing hairline cracks from the thermal stress. The sprinkler system in the ceiling was making ominous clicking sounds.
"Oh, relax," Heatblast-Gwen said, waving a dismissive hand. "I have perfect temperature control. I would NEVER damage a museum." She paused. Considered. "Well. Not INTENTIONALLY."
"Your FEET are MELTING the FLOOR."
She looked down. The marble beneath her massive, bare feet was indeed softening, her weight pressing shallow, glowing footprints into the stone.
"...I'll stand on something."
"WHAT WOULD YOU STAND ON?!"
"Shh." She turned to him. The full force of the Heatblast personality shift was back—the warmth in her eyes, the adoration, the absolute, single-minded focus on Ben that treated everything else in the universe as stage dressing. "Shh, shh, shh. Ben. Come here."
"No."
"Come here."
"We are in a MUSEUM, Gwen. A CLOSED museum. That we BROKE INTO. And you are a SEVEN-FOOT FIRE ALIEN. And the FLOOR is MELTING."
"All the more reason to come here," she said, extending her arms. "The floor is melting, which means it's DANGEROUS, which means you need to be OFF the floor, which means you need to be—"
She gestured at her chest.
"—HERE."
"ABSOLUTELY NOT."
"Ben, this is a SAFETY issue. The floor is literally LAVA—"
"THE FLOOR IS LAVA BECAUSE OF YOU!"
"—and the safest place for you is right here, against my chest, where the temperature is perfectly regulated and nothing can hurt you and your face can be—"
"I am NOT putting my face in your—"
"IN MY WARM, SOFT, PERFECTLY PROPORTIONED—"
"STOP DESCRIBING YOUR CHEST!"
"—CHEST, which I will remind you scored THIRTEEN STARS in my comprehensive evaluation and has a SOFTNESS RATING that defies the material properties of volcanic rock—"
"HOW IS LAVA SOFT?! HOW?! THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!"
"Love doesn't have to make sense, Ben."
"THAT'S NOT—WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT LOVE—WE'RE TALKING ABOUT YOUR LAVA CHEST!"
"Same thing," Gwen said simply, and she meant it. With every fiber of her volcanic being, she meant it. Her chest and her love for Ben existed on the same plane of reality—both impossibly large, both defying rational explanation, both things she wanted to wrap around him at every available opportunity.
She took a step toward him. The floor squelched.
Ben took a step backward. His back hit the T. rex's leg bone.
"You're cornered," Gwen observed, with the tone of someone pointing out an interesting fact rather than someone who had been steadily maneuvering her cousin into a position from which escape was geometrically impossible.
"I am NOT cornered, I'm—"
He looked left. Display case.
He looked right. Stegosaurus skeleton.
He looked behind. Tyrannosaurus rex.
He looked forward. Seven feet of volcanic Gwen, her chest approximately at his eye level, her arms opening, her smile incandescent.
He was cornered.
"Gwen. Don't."
"Shh."
"GWEN."
"It's okay, Ben. It's going to be okay. Just relax. Let it happen."
"That's the CREEPIEST thing you've EVER—"
She scooped him up.
It happened with the practiced ease of someone who'd done this many times before—which she had, technically, across multiple alien forms, refining her technique with each iteration. Her left hand went under his arms, her right hand supported his legs, and in one smooth motion he was off the ground, cradled against her like a baby, rising upward as she straightened to her full height.
"GWEN! PUT ME—"
She pressed him against her chest.
FWUMPH.
Silence.
Or rather—not silence. The sound of Gwen's heartbeat. Which was not a heartbeat exactly, but a deep, rhythmic pulse—the throb of magma moving through channels of living rock, slow and steady and warm, transmitted directly into Ben's skull through the medium of approximately six cubic feet of impossibly soft volcanic tissue.
Bu-bum. Bu-bum. Bu-bum.
Ben's face was fully immersed. Not partially, not halfway, not "resting against." FULLY. He was IN IT. Surrounded on all sides by warmth and softness and the gentle, pulsing glow of Heatblast's magma-skin. He could feel the heat—not burning, never burning, exactly 78 degrees at the contact surface because Gwen had memorized his optimal temperature—enveloping his face like a heated blanket made of living geology.
He couldn't see. He could barely hear. He could definitely not breathe through anything except the small gap Gwen maintained at the base of his immersion—a carefully calculated air channel that she'd evidently designed through extensive theoretical modeling, because Gwen Tennyson did not do anything without a plan.
"There," Gwen sighed, and the word reverberated through her chest, through Ben, through the fossilized bones of creatures that had been dead for sixty-eight million years and had never had to deal with anything this ridiculous. "There. Perfect. You're perfect. This is perfect."
"Mmph."
"Are you comfortable?"
"Mmph mmph."
"I can adjust the temperature. Are you too warm? Too cool? I can go up by half a degree. I can go down. I have VERY precise control. I practiced."
"MMPH."
"That sounds like you're comfortable. I'm going to interpret that as comfortable."
"MMPH MMPH MMPH."
"And that sounds like you're saying you love me. Thank you, Ben. I love you too."
"THAT IS NOT WHAT I'M SAYING!"
"Shh. Enjoy the chest."
"I AM NOT ENJOYING THE—"
"Your heart rate is dropping."
Ben went very still.
"I can feel it," Gwen said softly, and there was wonder in her voice—genuine, awed wonder. "Through my chest. I can feel your heartbeat. And it was going really fast when I picked you up—like, REALLY fast, stressed-fast, scared-fast—and now it's slowing down. It's calming."
She paused.
"You're relaxing, Ben. Whether you want to admit it or not. Your body is telling me that this is EXACTLY where you're supposed to be."
Ben said nothing.
His heart rate continued to drop.
Gwen stood in the middle of the Smithsonian's Dinosaur Hall, a seven-foot pillar of volcanic warmth and impossible proportions, her fire-hair casting dancing light across the skull of the Tyrannosaurus rex, her arms wrapped around a ten-year-old boy whose face was buried in her chest and whose protests were getting quieter by the second.
The floor continued to melt beneath her feet. The sprinkler system continued to click threateningly. A display case containing a Triceratops horn cracked from thermal stress and would cost approximately forty-seven thousand dollars to replace.
None of it mattered.
Five minutes passed.
Ben had stopped struggling. Not because he'd given up—he would maintain this to his dying day—but because struggling required energy and his energy had been... redistributed. Redirected. Converted, somehow, by the warmth and the heartbeat and the gentle, steady pressure of Gwen's arms, from "active resistance" to "boneless acceptance."
He was, and he would deny this with his final breath on this earth, comfortable.
The magma-skin of Heatblast's chest was soft. It had no business being soft. It was technically volcanic rock. But wherever it contacted Ben, it yielded—not like a pillow, not like a cushion, but like something that had been designed to accept him. Like a custom-molded cradle of geological impossibility, shaped exactly to the contours of his face and head, warm to precisely the right temperature, pulsing with a heartbeat that his own heart was slowly, traitorously synchronizing with.
Bu-bum. Bu-bum. Bu-bum.
His heartbeat. Her heartbeat. The same rhythm.
"Gwen," he mumbled into the warm surface.
"Mm?"
"We're in a museum."
"Mm-hmm."
"The floor is melting."
"I know. I moved to the less historically significant section."
He opened one eye. Tilted his head slightly—Gwen's chest shifted to accommodate the movement, because of course it did—and looked around. She had, in fact, moved. At some point during his... his not-enjoying-himself, she'd walked from the center of the Dinosaur Hall to a corner near the emergency exit, leaving a trail of glowing footprints in the marble. The dinosaur skeletons were now a safe distance away. The nearest display case had been gently relocated by one of Gwen's free hands.
She was being careful. Even in the grip of full Heatblast personality, even with Ben's face in her chest and every neuron in her volcanic brain screaming THIS IS PERFECT NEVER STOP, she was being careful. Responsible. Managing her heat output. Protecting the exhibits.
She was being Gwen.
"The T. rex is fine," she said, following his gaze. "I ran a thermal calculation. At my current output, the nearest skeleton is outside the damage radius by approximately twelve feet. The display cases are safe. The sprinklers haven't activated because I'm keeping the ambient temperature just below the trigger threshold."
"You did thermal math."
"I did thermal math while holding you. I can multitask." She paused. "I also counted your breaths. You've taken forty-seven since I picked you up. The first twenty were fast—stressed. The last twenty-seven have been slower. Calmer. You breathed out through your nose on breath thirty-one and it tickled."
"You're counting my BREATHS?"
"I'm counting everything about you, Ben. Your breaths, your heartbeats, the tiny movements of your fingers against my arm. You gripped my arm on breath twelve and you haven't let go."
Ben became aware, suddenly and mortifyingly, that he was indeed gripping Gwen's arm. His fingers were curled around a ridge of magma-skin, holding on. Not tightly. Not desperately. But holding.
He let go immediately.
"I was NOT—"
"It's okay." Her voice was warm. Not teasing. Not triumphant. Just warm. Like the rest of her. "You can hold on. I want you to hold on."
"I don't WANT to hold on."
"Your fingers are already back."
He looked down. They were. His hands, apparently operating under their own authority, had re-gripped Gwen's arm the moment he'd released it.
Traitor hands.
"I hate you," he muttered into her chest.
"I know, sweetie."
"Don't call me sweetie."
"Okay, honey."
"DON'T CALL ME HONEY."
"Okay, my precious little—"
"JUST BEN. CALL ME BEN."
"Okay, Ben." A pause. "My precious little Ben."
"I am going to SCREAM."
"You can scream into my chest. It's soundproof."
It was, actually. The acoustic properties of Heatblast's chest were apparently sufficient to absorb the full volume of a ten-year-old boy's frustrated shriek, converting it into a warm vibration that Gwen described as "pleasant" and "basically a massage."
Ten minutes passed. The museum remained standing. The dinosaurs remained unscorched. The floor had accepted its fate.
Ben had stopped talking. Not because he'd been defeated—he would maintain this position aggressively—but because there was nothing left to say. He was in Gwen's chest. He had been in Gwen's chest for a meaningful percentage of his afternoon. The warmth had soaked into him like sunlight into stone, and his bones felt like warm honey, and his brain had gently, treacherously disconnected from the part that was supposed to be outraged about all of this.
He was, and the universe would collapse before he'd admit this, almost asleep.
Gwen could tell. Of course she could. She could feel his breathing—slow, deep, the breathing of someone on the edge of sleep. She could feel his heartbeat—steady, calm, synchronized with her own. She could feel the weight of him, settled against her like he'd always been there, like the contours of her body had been waiting for exactly this shape.
"Ben?" she whispered.
No response. A slow breath. A tiny shift.
She looked down at the top of his head—the only part of him visible, a tuft of brown hair poking out from the landscape of her chest like a small, adorable island in a sea of volcanic warmth.
Her fire-hair dimmed. Not extinguishing—just softening. The roaring mane of yellow-white flame that usually cascaded from her head settled into a gentle, flickering glow, like embers in a fireplace at the end of a long evening. The light it cast was warm and golden, and it painted the dinosaur skeletons in honey and amber.
The Smithsonian's Dinosaur Hall, empty and vast and ancient, had become something it had never been in its institutional history.
A nursery.
"I've got you," Gwen murmured, adjusting her grip—minutely, infinitesimally, so that his head was at precisely the right angle and his neck was supported and the air channel at the base of her chest was exactly wide enough for comfortable breathing. "I've got you, Ben. Go to sleep."
He made a sound. Not a word. Not a protest. A small, formless sound that might have been acquiescence, or contentment, or the final surrender of a boy who had been fighting a losing battle against the most comfortable prison in the known universe.
Gwen held him.
The dinosaurs watched.
Beebeep.
Gwen's eyes snapped open.
She hadn't been asleep—she hadn't let herself sleep, because sleeping meant lowered temperature control, and lowered temperature control meant potential harm to the exhibits, and potential harm to the exhibits meant being irresponsible, and being irresponsible was the opposite of what she was.
But she'd been resting. Standing in the dim hall, holding Ben, eyes half-closed, her systems running on minimal. Conserving. Existing in that perfect, warm space between consciousness and bliss.
And now the watch was beeping.
"No," she said.
Her voice was quiet. Not the roaring fury of previous timeouts. Not the desperate, anguished fighting. Just... quiet. Tired. Sad.
"Not now. Please. Not now."
Beebeep. Beebeep.
"He's asleep," she whispered to the watch. "Do you understand? He's asleep. In my chest. He fell asleep because he felt safe. Because he felt warm. Because for the first time since this whole thing started, he stopped fighting and just... let me hold him."
Beebeep. Beebeep. Beebeep.
"If you change me back, I'll get small. And cold. And I won't be able to hold him like this anymore. And he'll wake up, and he'll pull away, and he'll pretend this never happened, and I'll be standing here in my stupid human body with my stupid human arms that can't even reach all the way around him, and—"
Her voice cracked. Magma cracked. Light spilled through.
"—and I'll lose this. This perfect, beautiful, impossible thing. This moment. Where he's safe and warm and mine and everything is exactly right."
The Omnitrix beeped. It didn't care about perfect moments. It was a machine. It had protocols.
"Please," Gwen said, and she was begging now. A seven-foot fire goddess, proportioned like something from a myth, holding a sleeping boy against a chest that scored thirteen stars—begging a watch for more time.
"Just a little longer. Just—let him finish sleeping. Let him have this. He deserves—"
BEEBEEP. BEEBEEP. BEEBEEP.
She closed her eyes. Her flames guttered. The red light was coming—she could feel it, building in the device, the tide she couldn't hold back, the end of the dream.
She adjusted Ben in her arms. Carefully. Gently. Shifted him so that when she shrank—when the warmth went away and the softness disappeared and the chest that cradled him collapsed back into the flat, narrow frame of a ten-year-old girl—he would land softly. He would be held, even in a smaller embrace. He would be kept.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay. Take me back."
She didn't fight.
For the first time, she didn't fight.
Flash.
Gwen Tennyson. Ten years old. Standing in the Smithsonian's Dinosaur Hall, holding her cousin.
He was too big for her now. Not that he was large—he was exactly her size, maybe slightly bigger, a perfectly normal ten-year-old boy. But she was no longer seven feet of volcanic everything. She was four-foot-nothing of human nothing, and her arms barely reached around him, and her chest was flat and narrow and offered nothing to sink into, and she was cold.
But she held him.
Her small human arms wrapped around him as tightly as they could, which wasn't very tight, which was terrible, which was the worst thing about being human, the worst thing about being small. She held him against her flat, inadequate, stupid human chest and pressed her face into his hair and breathed in the smell of him—not the enhanced, alien-spectrum analysis of scent that Heatblast could do, just regular human smell, limited and imprecise and pathetic.
He stirred.
"Mm... warm..." he mumbled.
"Shh," Gwen whispered. "Go back to sleep."
"...Gwen?"
"Shh."
He blinked. Opened his eyes. Looked around. Saw the dinosaur skeletons. Saw the dim emergency lighting. Saw Gwen's face, inches from his, small and human and wet-eyed.
"You're... small again," he said.
"Yeah."
"We're in the museum."
"Yeah."
"Was I... was I asleep?"
"Yeah."
He processed this. Looked down. Saw her arms around him. Saw how tightly she was holding on. Saw the way her fingers were digging into his shirt, gripping like she was afraid he'd float away.
He didn't pull away.
For a long, quiet moment, in the empty Dinosaur Hall of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, surrounded by the bones of creatures that had ruled the earth for a hundred and sixty-five million years, Ben Tennyson let his cousin hold him.
"...You're cold," he said.
"I'm always cold now."
"That's because you keep being on fire. Regular temperature feels cold by comparison."
"Regular temperature IS cold."
"It's seventy-two degrees in here."
"Exactly. Freezing."
A pause. The T. rex watched them with empty eye sockets and infinite patience.
"Ben?"
"Yeah?"
"...You fell asleep in my chest."
"I was TIRED. From being GRABBED. It was EXHAUSTION. STRESS-related exhaustion."
"You fell asleep in my chest and you were SMILING."
"I was NOT—"
"I could feel it. Through the magma. Your face muscles shifted into a smile configuration at approximately breath thirty-nine. I have VERY precise tactile sensitivity as Heatblast."
"That's—I was having a DREAM—"
"About my chest?"
"ABOUT DINOSAURS."
"About dinosaurs in my chest?"
"ABOUT REGULAR DINOSAURS IN A REGULAR MUSEUM WITHOUT ANY CHEST INVOLVED."
"Mm-hmm."
"I'M SERIOUS."
"Mm-hmm."
They stood there. Gwen holding. Ben being held. Both of them cold in the way that only humans could be—the regular, mundane, unremarkable cold of being alive and small and impermanent.
"Gwen?"
"Yeah?"
"...The T. rex was really cool."
Gwen smiled. Human-smiled. The small one.
"Yeah," she said. "It was."
"And the—the Heatblast thing—the chest thing—it was—"
He stopped. Struggled. His face was red—visible even in the dim lighting.
"It wasn't terrible," he finished, very quietly, as if the words were being extracted from him under duress.
Gwen's arms tightened around him. Not Heatblast-tight. Not Four Arms-tight. Just Gwen-tight. Small and inadequate and desperately, achingly enough.
"Let's go find Grandpa," she said. "Before he sends the National Guard after us."
"...Yeah. Okay."
They walked out of the museum together. Not holding hands—they weren't THERE yet, no matter what the Omnitrix had to say about it. But close. Shoulder to shoulder. A ten-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl, walking through the bones of ancient giants, the green glow of an alien watch pulsing softly between them like a promise.
Like a heartbeat.
Bu-bum. Bu-bum. Bu-bum.
That night, Gwen did not add an entry to her notebook.
She didn't need to rate the experience. She didn't need to score it. She didn't need to compare chest dimensions or calculate warmth differentials or rank transformation durations.
She just wrote one line, in small, careful handwriting, at the bottom of the last page:
He fell asleep.
He felt safe.
That's a 100/10 for everything.
TO BE CONTINUED...