Viral Chapter 1: Trade

"Station, do you copy?" "Yeah, James. Kyle here." "Any news on bike gangs?" "What?" "Motorcycles." "No, not since the noise ordinance and that business with the bugs. Why?" "Some 'ruffians' (chuckles) reported down on the Bellwood end of things, going out into the desert." "Huh. Strange. Any units in that area?" "Not at this time'a night." "Can you head down there?" "Yeah, why not. Got nothin' better to do. Over and out." -- Radio Conversation, Elderby County Police

Heavy metal blared loudly out of the high-quality speakers. Bass thumped, electric guitars screamed, and frontmen poured their hearts out to the world. As the ninth grader grimaced at the heavy stream of cuss words, he wondered if he and the driver of the car – who was, at this moment, about three inches from the boy's nose – could be any more different. Hell, he was even weirded out by the fact that they were the same species.

The driver poked into the boy's thoughts. "You not likin' the tunes, hero boy?"

It was creepy how he did that. The fifteen-year-old looked up from the window to the general direction of the front seat. "Why?"

The driver shot his signature smirk into the rearview mirror, which the boy easily spotted. "Dude, you look like you just crapped your pants and then had to wear it around town. Little bit obvious, man."

The gross, but accurate, metaphor made the boy knit his eyebrows. His grimace simplified into a sheepish frown. "Well.. n... yeah."

His smirk turned back to his (also trademarked) pugnacious scowl. "Huh. Well, get used to it. Loser."

The boy's gaze returned downward. He hated riding in this guy's car. Mostly because of the guy driving it. You see, it's incredibly awkward to be around somebody who you want to turn in to the police. Especially when that very person wants very much to drain every ounce of power from your body. So, you see, awkward relationship, right?

It was at that moment he heard his cousin's voice in his head. "Just try and get along with him, please? He's changed; he's not the same eleven-year-old psychopath."

The boy thought a retort to the imaginary family member. "No, he can just drive now."

Now, he glanced momentarily outside his window once again. As it turns out, the conversation wasn't imaginary. The relative in question floated outside his window at pace with the speeding vehicle. A purplish aura surrounded her, which convinced the boy that she actually hadn't left her post in front of the car. He got hit with an icy glare as the cousin spoke in his mind once again. "Just try and not be an ass for once."

"Whatever," he responded.

The driver turned around in his seat with a grin and a stare. His voiced softened in a fake way and his expression turned to a pout. "Oh, come on, Ben. We might become friends."

Oh, well, that tore it. He knew how the driver seemed to be reading his thoughts. The teenager pointed his finger in a "one-sec" way and said, "Excuse me, please." He pressed a button recessed into the passenger door, unlatched his seatbelt, and stood up through a sunroof. His shoulders rose just above the metallic covering, so he stretched his arms out and stuck out his elbows like a chicken to hold himself up.

The boy cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Gwen, would you please not relay my thoughts to your boyfriend anymore? Kinda' creepy, I keep some stuff up there that's private business. Thank you."

He expected what was coming and ducked slightly as a purplish-pink lightning bolt sizzled just above where his nose just was. His hair singed slightly. Ben pulled himself back up, and yelled. "Aw, come on, it's a joke! If you can laugh at my thoughts when you want to, why can't I make a joke once in a while?"

Her voice snuck into his mind again, while the real girl spun around slightly and shot the glare again. "Shut up or I'm going to make sure there won't anything left for me to relay!"

He laughed, and flipped his cousin the bird. "How threatening! Do you take classes?" Ben ducked back inside and closed the sunroof.

The driver once again turned around. "For the record, that whole absorbing your powers stuff stopped once I figured out it couldn't be done without two copies of myself."

Ben glared confusedly. "... but me?"

"I'd would've taken my chances," was the response.

Ben Tennyson crossed his arms, bit his tongue, and sat back in the sticky leather seat.

Kevin smirked again and ran his fingers over the dashboard, wishfully touching the button that would knock his backseat passenger fifty feet in the air over the car. One day, if he had any sort of luck.

It was shortly over three hours later. Time was deepening into the late night. The air was dry to the point where breathing felt hot. The ground had radiated almost every drop of sunlight it had soaked up during the fiery day, and the temperatures consequently descended.

Now was the time for waiting, and that was that. The car sat cooling after a long day of baking under the sun. The trio was entirely alone. The desert expanded clearly for miles and miles except for a rock here and there.

The entire slab of tar was illuminated by a single light. Everything glowed orange and clear.

Ben Tennyson sat cross-legged on the pavement, chewing on the end of a ballpoint pen. He had unzipped his jacket a long time before, and was furiously scribbling into a notebook.

Gwen was in the corner of the pavement, creating pink gleaming spheres in the dark. Every couple of minutes, she would snap her fingers and the balls of magic would detonate. A small puff of sand would leap about two yards in the air and settle back down.

Kevin was screwing with his car, as usual. The radio softly played as he lay on his back under the machinery, toying with some unknown component and humming alone to the tune. The relative quiet was broken by his eternally laid-back voice. "One of my suppliers should be here any second with the equipment. There's some camping junk still in the trunk from when we last pulled an all-nighter. Gwen, you're welcome to grab it at any time."

Ben looked up for a second from his work, noticing the intentional lack of his name. "Tennyson," Kevin preemptively replied, "you'll be good on your own."

Ben bit the inside of his cheek. He closed his notebook, retracted the tip of his pen, and shoved it all back into his knapsack. He stood up and walked over to Kevin's car, opening the side door to put his bag in. Very deliberately, he slammed the door as hard as he could. Very promptly, the vehicle's owner scurried out a couple of inches so that the green-jacketed hero would trip as he trudged away from the car.

Throwing a dirty look over his shoulder, Ben went back to his previous spot and lay down on his back to stretch out. He closed his eyes and relaxed for a couple of minutes.

Without any warning whatsoever, all hell broke loose. It started with a light buzz that turned to a roar. Trucks and bikes screamed up the road leading to the dead end. The occupants of those vehicles screamed and whooped. Gwen detonated the last of her magical exercises and didn't wait a second to spin around toward the action.

Kevin rolled out from under his car and jumped to his feet in a single notion. He sniffed the air for a moment. He spoke again, this time yelling. "Damn it! This wasn't the deal!" After stating the obvious, the ex-con sprinted to the aforementioned trunk and yanked it open. He pulled out some sort of foreign (read: not of any terrestrial recognition) weapon and strafed away from his car. Ben shouted, "Who are they?!"

The edges of Kevin's face turned downwards. His muscles twitched ever so slightly, and his voice came out in a half-croak. "I think... that's one of my suppliers."

Gwen's voice was just as uneasy. "... one?" After a nod to the question, she quickly jumped into a battle stance.

The cars and hogs puttered and growled into the parking lot. Motors clicked off, headlights dimmed, doors slammed, and feet stomped. A leader immediately emerged from the pack. Those surrounding him were dressed informally in button-up shirts and shorts. They also toted quite large (but still human-made) weapons.

Kevin sneered; his assumption was correct. "What the hell are they doing here?" Deep inside his weapon, a dark green glow started.

The leader appeared to be human in appearance. His hair was dark and spiky, while his teeth were impeccably brick-like. He wore khakis in contrast to the rest of his thirty-person posse. Even in the darkness of the night, each of the group wore sunglasses. As he smiled, his help up his Caucasian hands defensively. The leader spoke with a faint Australian accent with an overly excited tone.

"Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyy, man! Calm down, now. No need for anger, I just got me some protection with out here."

It looked like Kevin was ready to kill each and every one of them. "Do you have what I asked for?"

The unknown talked scoffed and looked around at his group incredulously. "This guy's a joker! Naw, I decided I'd like to have you tracking me around the country. No, seriously, though, I have it right here."

He walked over to one of the vehicles and pulled something out of the passenger side window. He looked it over for a second, then brought it back over to where our trio stood.

Kevin's look softened a bit. "Ah, the Transmuter." He gratefully took it.

"That's right, my friend. Now, you mentioned some sort of compensation."

"Well, about that..."

The smile was lost in about a millisecond. "About what? You expected me to get this nice and ready for you, and you don't return the favor. Now that's the exact the reason I got this team around me. Why don't I just..."

He didn't get to finish the sentence. "Now, wait a minute, man. That was not was I said." The muscular mutant walked over to his own car and popped the trunk. He opened it and subsequently hid himself. He turned his head backwards at his friends, motioning for them to come over.

Looking at their opposition for a second, they turned and walked quickly over to the car.

Gwen hissed. "What do you need? Just get what you had for them..."

Kevin stared to grin a bit and looked at her. "Yeah, you see, I kind of..."

Ben snorted. "Lied?"

Kevin shrugged.

"Big shocker."

"So what do we do?"

Kevin screwed up his face. "I was just going to make a run for it..."

"... but he had reinforcements."

"Right. So you think they'll look at what we give them?"

Ben spat, oozing sarcasm, "No! They'll just blindly trade Plumber tech for..."

"... your backpack."

"No way! That's my English paper!"

Gwen elbowed her cousin in the ribs. "That's no way to go about this, so..."

"Okay," Kevin groaned. He slammed the trunk, almost crushing Ben's fingers.

He shrugged towards the traders and shouted, "It's gone! Somebody must have taken it." Kevin instantly remembered that he had left his only weapon in the trunk while trying to break Ben's fingers (that'd show him). "Whoops," "Too late for that," and "Screw it" were all thoughts that rapidly ran through his head.

Their leader frowned in a creepily happy way and clucked loudly. "Oh, that's right, is it? You see, I brought these guys hearing the rumor going around that you play dirty."

For the first time ever, Kevin visibly gulped.

"So, I've decided to keep the Transmuter. You aren't going to pull one over on me! And, thinking of all my other comrades in the business, anybody else for that matter."

Kevin screwed up his face. "Just try and take it back from me!"

The leader chuckled and pointed both of his thumbs and forefingers into the air, making two imaginary guns. The creepy guy fired two shots in the air, and then pointed them at the trio. He made the imaginary motion again, and the attack started.

Although the posses' weapons looked human-made, they most certainly were not. Vibrant flashes and beams lit up the desert night, all aimed directly at Ben, Gwen, and Kevin.

All three sprung into action. Kevin had slowly inched himself towards his car during the conversation, and in a single fluid motion threw open the door and jumped inside. Gwen summoned her powers and rose above the fray, using the technique she had practiced mere minutes before. Ben dropped to the ground to avoid laser fire and crawled under the car.

So, not really an offensive set of moves. Gwen was doing what little she could, but her guerrilla magic attacks were almost instantly noticed and she ended up fending off returning fire. Ben decided to take the same route as his cousin, and activated the Omnitrix.

A/N: Yeah, I'm back, but only slightly. Just to get something out of my head. Anyway, this is kind of a spiritual recreation of Infection (Remember it? Glad you don't) because I hate it so much. Anyway, this is a bit of a preview, but my R&R requirements still apply. BTW, I'm giving up on Paradox, so if you want any of its 4 or 5 storylines, they're up for grabs.