Would You Look At The Time! (Worm/Ben 10)

"OMNIMATRIX VOICE COMMAND SETUP INITIATED. NEW USER IDENTIFIED. GENERATING USER PROFILE ZERO-ZERO-ONE. USER IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED - PLEASE STATE NAME."

You blink slowly, a hand hovering above the controls of the... Omnimatrix, as it apparently calls itself speaks up to you with a highly synthesized voice. You stay silent for a brief moment, rolling the watch's statement over in your head.

The watch wants you to give it a name for it to call you. Obviously, you could just give it your name, but there is the danger that it might end up using your name while you are transformed or something and end up revealing your identity. Which given that you already have people after you would only make things worse.

Yet... What else are you to do?

"Taylor Anne Hebert." You mumble quietly, hoping that you aren't making a mistake.

"USER IDENTIFICATION ACCEPTED. PROFILE ZERO-ZERO-ONE REGISTERED AS 'Taylor'. WOULD YOU PREFER TO REGISTER A NICKNAME TAYLOR?" The machine asked, repeating your own voice back to you.

"Uhh..." You quietly intone out, "Yes. Please call me... Zero-One while out in public."

"USER NICKNAME AND PREFERENCE REGISTERED, TAYLOR. CURRENT SET AND AVAILABLE COMMANDS ARE AS FOLLOWS:

ORDER COMMANDS CAN BE GIVEN TO EITHER OMNITRIX OR OMNIMATRIX, EITHER NAME IS ACCEPTABLE

ACTIVATE VOICE COMMAND - AUTHORIZATION CODE ZERO ONE ZERO - ACTIVATES THIS SYSTEM
COMMAND CODE ZERO ZERO FOUR - ACTIVATES THE OMNITRIX DECOUPLING SYSTEM
DISABLE VOICE COMMAND - DEACTIVATES THIS SYSTEM
VOICE COMMAND SETTINGS - BRINGS UP THE VOICE COMMAND SETTINGS MENU

THERE EXIST OTHER COMMANDS, HOWEVER THOSE COMMANDS ARE CURRENTLY LOCKED DUE TO ORDERS FROM USER ZERO-ZERO-ZERO. PLEASE CONTACT USER ZERO-ZERO-ZERO FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO GAIN ACCESS TO ADDITIONAL SYSTEMS.

USER SET UP IS NOW COMPLETE. SIGNING OFF VOICE COMMAND.

HAVE A NICE NIGHT TAYLOR."

You stare at the watch for a moment more, as you try to ignore the soft shiver that just ran down your back. The watch's voice may not have changed in volume or tone, but all the same it felt like you were being weighed and measured.

It's a silly thought, you know that, but it doesn't change the fact that there is a tiny bit of you that wonders if you have been found wanting.

Yeah, that's a silly pointless thought. Shaking your head, you climb back to your feet and head back down to the kitchen to start dinner. Between everything that has happened over today and last night, you really don't feel like cooking anything particularly complex.

So, time for the staple food of terrible chefs everywhere.

Macaroni and Cheese with sliced hotdogs.

yaaaaay

It only takes a couple of minutes for you to start the water boiling and the noodles into the pot, when you hear the front door creak open. There is a moment of silence before you hear the familiar sound of your father's voice. "Hmm... I could have sworn that I locked up this morning..." You can hear the door close, followed by another few moments of silence. "God... it looks like shit in here. I really need to get this cleaned up before Taylor gets back from camp in the morning. Wouldn't want her to get the wrong idea..."

So on the one hand, not only does your dad sound like he isn't nearly as bad as you worried that he might be, he's also aware of how terrible the living room looks. On the other hand, he seems to think that you are coming home tomorrow morning, so he's also clearly not doing as well as you had hoped that he was.

..."Uhh, Dad?" You call out, barely managing to avoid laughing as he responds, entirely by instinct.

"Yes, honey?"..."Wait, aren't you supposed to be at Summer Camp." He calls from the living room.

"No! Well, Yes. But also No." You call back, while standing in the kitchen. It's... absurd. Really. It would probably be easier on the both of you if either of you actually decided to just move to the other room so that you can talk face to face, but you aren't going to move. Neither is he. It's familiar and comfortable, and just a bit silly.

Most of all, it's home.

"It's Saturday, isn't it?" Your dad follows up, as you hear him move through the living room.

"Yeah?" You respond, unsure of where he is going with this.

"Weren't you supposed to be getting back tomorrow?" He asks, as the door to the Kitchen opens up, your father coming in with a full trash bag in hand.

"No?" You question, unsure where he got that idea.

Your father points, not at you, but besides you. Turning, you spot the very familiar cork board that the two of you keep all the various family notes on. More importantly, hanging from the board is a calendar, a mildly distressing image of a kitten hanging from a branch and a jaunty slogan of 'Hang in there' written in cartoonish letters.

More importantly, you can see that tomorrow is circled, not just once, but seven different times in the colors of the rainbow.

...

Yeah, you know what.

That's on you. "Oh..." You say quietly, even as heat rushes to your cheeks. "I... uh, guess I circled the wrong day." Dad's laughter doesn't help the embarrassment rising from the depths of your chest. "So..." You quickly divert, "If the living isn't what it looks like it is, then what is it?"

"Well..." Dad starts, "you remember Tobias? Tall, skinny, pale as a sheet with hair like a perpetual rat's nest?"

"That really skinny guy who always looks like he's going to break in half when he moves stuff?" You respond, nodding. You've heard stories about him, the guy is built like a weed, with ratty black hair that he wears a bit long, and dark eyes. You've heard more than a few jokes between Dad and some of the other Dock Workers about how he's sweet on some gymnast girl. Rachel, you think her name is.

"Yeah." Dad starts, putting the trashbag into the can, and grabbing another bag so that he can continue working the living room. "He finally proposed to Rachel the other day, and last night was the party."

"Good for him." You say as you share a smile with your dad. Then, he goes back to working the living room, and you work on finishing up the food. The rest of the night is quiet, but it's the comfortable kind of quiet.

Of course, not even the quiet is perfect. There is a gap, a hole where you can almost hear the joke that Mom would have made. And yet... while it does hurt, it's not the sharp, tearing pain that it was a year ago when the loss was fresh.

You wonder if this means that you are, not getting over her death, but maybe... just maybe things are starting to get better. At least when it comes to Mom. Things have just gotten confusing when it comes to Emma...

The way that she acted, and the things that she said still confuse you. Maybe... Maybe Dad will have a different point of view of it all? Do you tell him about what happened between you and Emma earlier?
[ ][Emma]Yes
[ ][Emma]No

...And thinking about that brings up the other thing that you haven't talked to your dad about... Do you want to tell him that the summer camp was attacked by giant robots? Do you tell him that the robots were looking for something? That you know what that something is and where it is too?

Do you tell him about the watch, or about what it can do?

The thing is that your father can be a bit of a worrywart at times, and he might just demand that the two of you go and show the watch to the PRT.
[ ][Danny] Tell Danny about what happened to the Camp
[ ][Danny] Tell Danny that the Robots were looking for the Watch
[ ][Danny] Tell Danny about the Omnitrix
[ ][Danny] Tell Danny about the Attack and the Watch, but not the connection
[ ][Danny] Tell Danny about everything

---

It's kind of amazing how quickly one can fall back into old routines. Perhaps it was, in part, due to having to wake up at nearly the same time while away at camp thanks to being a Councillor in Training, but you wake up just a few moments before your alarm clock goes off.

A quick shower gets you down stairs in time to eat with your Dad before he needs to head out to work.

That is when your day truly begins.

You wash up after breakfast, before heading down into the basement. You barely reach the last step before you activate the Omnitrix, quickly clicking through the different images on the watch.

You click past the different forms that you have already tested out, forms that you really need to start thinking about names for, especially if you are thinking about possibly trying to be a hero. Eventually, you stop on one that you haven't tried out yet.

You can't tell much about it from the silhouette, but you haven't been able to tell much of anything from any of them. Of course, that is kind of the whole point of you testing out each of the forms ahead of time.

You don't even bother trying to keep the grin from stretching across your face as you slowly press down on the dial, engulfing your world in a flare of green.

As always, the light lasts but for a moment, only this time as the light fades it reveals a world so similar and yet so completely different than the world that you were in but a second ago. It is a change so stark and direct that it dwarfs the small differences that the other alien forms grant you, and is enough to almost make it feel like you are on another world completely.

Your once familiar basement has transformed, the stairs behind you now a towering mountain crafted of plateaus each as tall as you yourself. The room itself now seems vast and unknowable, almost cavernous in shape and size. You glance down at the pebbly three fingered hands that you now bear. "Fascinating," You muse aloud, "It seems that this form is far more slight of stature than I had anticipated. Though the existence of cognizant lifeforms at this size is a data point that prompts the questions of biological constraints of size."

Your head is filling up with so many thoughts, coming to you so quickly. It's... difficult to explain in sentences that contain less than thirty syllables. Thoughts and ideas and concepts are just filling up your mind. A quick glance around the room and you can pick out a dozen different odds and ends that you could slap together to create a rudimentary laser pistol.

Very, very rudimentary. Given the state of the suspension coil that looks like it was pulled out of a tractor, the gun would only be able to fire off a single shot before the entire thing overheated and turned to useless slag. At the same time, you bet that you could end up taking apart that old bicycle, that broken toaster, the suspension coil and that box of wiring to create a signal amplifier so that you could get an internet reception strong enough that you wouldn't need to wait ten minutes for a page to load.

That's just two ideas, among hundreds, if not nearly a thousand different idea to craft a prototype device of one kind or another. While rationally, you understand that the concept of a Tinker Fugue is a capefic creation that doesn't really have any relevence to the reality that you exist in, you think you may understand what it is that people think that it's like.

Now, it's not to say that you aren't intelligent, in fact the lowest grade that you got last year was a solid B-, but this is a whole different level of intelligence. You can almost feel theories of how the universe works percolating in the back of your head like a coffee machine. Ideas of how gravity works and comparisons to the accepted theories, comparing and contrasting and throwing away that bits that are obviously wrong, seriously, this is simple.

It takes you a few seconds to realize that you have been standing at the bottom of the stairs for a short while now, so enraptured by the way that your consciousness has expanded and adapted and become so much more than it was.

No.

That's.... That is most certainly not correct. That is not what is happening, it is a much simpler matter than that. You already have a habit of getting caught in your own mind, trapped as your thoughts wander away with you, and now they are doing the same thing, but there is so much more horse power under the hood of this slight, amphibian form than there is in your natural mammalian form that you are struggling to keep yourself in check.

It's like you suddenly went from a 50cc moped that can barely manage thirty miles an hour to a 250cc motorcycle that can easily hit one hundred miles an hour. While transformed into this new form it takes so much less to do so much more. This alien form has the potential to be one of your more useful ones, even with the inherent physical limitations given it's size, but you are going to have to work to master it first.

Which, funnily enough is the reason that you came down here in the first place after all. Jogging towards the center of the basement, you keep an eye on your surroundings, in part because you want to start training yourself to stay focused on whatever you are actually trying to do instead of getting distracted by the various things around you and what you can use them for. Mainly, it's because you really need to find something shiny so that you can see your own reflection. Note to self, make sure to get a mirror down here before you do any more experiments.

While it is overtly obvious to anyone whom so much as glances at you that you are no physical powerhouse by any definition of the word, you quickly start to realize that you aren't as weak as one would think from a cursory examination. You hop towards an old dinner table that has been down here for as long as you can remember, a hand catching hold of the thick white sheet that covers it. Hand over hand you scale upwards, cresting the top of the table in only a few moments, and finally you reach your goal. The object that caught your eye.

A toaster. It's a little dusty and grimy, and more than a little dinged, but it is a simple enough matter to grab an old cloth from elsewhere on the table and wipe the old thing till it shines. More importantly, you wipe it until you can get a clear look at yourself and what you look like now.

...It is at the same time exactly what you had expected, while being nothing like what you thought you would look like. An odd sentence to think if ever there was one.

What does stand out however, is the fact that you have the Omnitrix stuck on your back. It isn't out of reach, but it is out of sight, and there is a part of you that wonders if that might be on purpose - given that the machine itself stated that there are features that you have not been given access to. So instead, you spend the next few minutes checking over the rest of yourself to see if there is anything about this form that you have missed. In the end, there is one other thing of note about this form that you discover. Well, two, but the fact that your skin is sort of slimy doesn't really count, you are an alien frog.

Mind you, the fact that you have a very long, and remarkably strong and prehensile tongue is much the same kind of thing in the being a frog category, but it is very interesting all the same. So, as you hear the watch on your back begin to give off it's warning that the timer is running out, you take a charging leap from the table, transforming back into yourself as you land.

---

So I ended up coming up with an idea for what to do with the Danny scene that I didn't originally plan for, and the votes there can have a notable effect on the plot and the second half of this update, so I'm going to cut it here and pick it back up after the votes.

Also I'm going to bed, so I'll handle the updates to the sheet and the bbcoding in the morning.