Azmuth's Plumbing is the seventh Short of Back in Action: Alien Universe.
Story[]
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[Max’s Plumbing, 8AM on a weekday: The “Closed” sign flips over to “Open.” Standing at the door in a stout, round-headed, distinctly Asian human disguise is Azmuth. His outfit consists of a Hawaiian shirt, reminiscent of Max’s signature one, but in a teal-green hue. He also wears brown cargo pants and deep brown loafers.
He crosses his arms at the service desk and stares out into the small convenience and hardware store. A small television on the countertop has a local news story covering rising homelessness in a growing Bellwood.]
He turns around to a wall of photos with Max and a variety of regulars to the store.
The front door jingles. A dog with a small pinwheel hat floats up onto the counter. Azmuth pets them.
Azmuth makes out an inch of the people entering the shop down the aisle ahead.
It turns out to be two Plumbers – Magister Patelliday and the visiting Magister Rook Blonko.
Rook nods.
Patelliday pets Pascal on the way into the bathroom.
Flush.
[For some time, the morning continues with only Plumbers coming in. Some stop and buy snacks, leaving Azmuth to rage over the primitive point-of-sale systems in the store, which he spends the rest of the time until noon upgrading to something more to his liking.
Just after the upgrades are complete, an alarm begins to sound as red flashing lights fill the room. With untold swiftness, Azmuth still in fear, three Plumbers and two Bellwood police officers soon descend upon the store, weapons drawn. Pascal beeps, like a dog barking, to the commotion.]
Azmuth tears out the futuristic cash register, disabling the alarm.
Every cop and Plumber lowers their weapons. One of the cops steps up to Azmuth as everyone disperses.
The officer scoffs and heads out.
[For the following hour, Azmuth downgrades the cash register into the same outdated format Max began with then reinstalls it, being very careful so as not to trip the one cable tied to the alarm system.
Boom, the doors fly open. A sticky creature with 9 legs comes through the door, knocking over aisle stands and signs, as a Plumber races in with their weapon drawn, firing incessantly at them. After successfully making a mess out of everything possible in the room, the fight escapes back onto the streets – using the window as an exit.
Azmuth sighs.]
[Azmuth sets out to clean up the mess, starting with sweeping up the broken glass. When all is set, he boards up the window but continues to keep up a sign that says “open” hung on a nail he haphazardly affixed to the frame of the front door.
He spends the rest of his time, alongside Pascal, lifting up the aisles using a tractor beam-like technology built into his disguise. This disguise allows him to look like he’s lifting something, but underneath the disguise, it’s this tech that’s lifting anything – including the cash register before.
When a single aisle is left to stand up, a wide and very hairy Plumber comes inside with sunglasses on. He sees the empty cashier desk and peers over to see Azmuth in the aisles. He steps over to the desk, opens a compartment underneath, and presses a button. Everything in the room dissipates. It becomes a plain white, before it all reassembles all the pieces by bending and reshaping much like a Polymorph.
Everything smooths out into form within minutes, and the boards fall off as the pieces of the glass pane from the broom fly out and recombine outside. Even the “Open” sign leaves the front door, but it tries to go inside the store, knocking for lack of strength. Azmuth walks over and opens the door for it. Animated, it nods its thanks before flying into place at the window.]
Azmuth drops onto his back, the front door still open. The Plumber proceeds into the toilet transporter.
Azmuth continues to lie on the floor.
[As afternoon descends into evening, different shifts of Plumbers swap in as Azmuth paces the room. Pascal curls up in a corner to sleep at some point, Azmuth snatching a mat from off the shelf, removing it from the store inventory, and sliding it under the disguised Voliticus biopsis for comfort.
At around 6PM, the door jingles. A tan man, completely bald, in a slightly dirtied gray shirt, along with a brown jacket, sweats and loafers, comes in while Azmuth watches a very small television on the tabletop, tuned to a report from Anchorwoman Whitney Brist on the state of unrest many are living in with the presence of aliens and the unpopular Plumbers.]
He puts the glasses back on his face and looks at Azmuth, grinning.
The man raises a brow.
He thinks to himself, he has no clue what the tools in the room are. The Galvan have streamlined all of their tools. Nothing they have could possibly resemble Earth ones anyhow – Galvan ergonomics are different.
But no, surely he could handle something so simple. It’s but a small Earth storefront.
The man called Ley gestures for Azmuth to follow, and so he does, into an aisle with hammers, screws, nails, power drills and other such hardware.
The man begins to just play with the tools, looking around randomly and placing his fingers on things.
Azmuth looks again at the stained clothing about him. Maybe it’s laundry day – he’d heard of that.
It would come to his attention that his understanding of a “plumber” was somewhat lost on him. On Galvan Prime, such a position didn’t exist when toiletries for quite some time could repair themselves.
He walks down the aisle and turns the corner to the next. Azmuth, bewildered, follows him.
Azmuth turns around to see Ley at the other end of the room, very close to the bathroom, petting Pascal, who is wildly uncomfortable with this until he finds the sweet spot.
He chuckles.
If Azmuth was human, his blood would be boiling right now. Not sure how Galvan guts work, but whatever that’s made of is probably boiling right now.
Azmuth gasps, noting the misstep.
He thinks for a second about what they call them on Earth.
Azmuth tries not to correct him on why he’s at the hardware store, or his origins.
Azmuth turns the television. The reflection of another photo on the wall behind him – of Max with his arms around Ben’s shoulder – is quite prominent.
Ley stands up and walks over to some tools and shoves them into a hand basket he had on the floor. He returns to the cashier and hands him a piece of paper.
Ley walks out.
Azmuth analyzes the paper – which is nothing more than an “I.O.U.”
Realizing he’d just been had, he goes running out the door riding Pascal – which to anyone else looked as though a very small man was riding a flying brown labradoodle.
They follow him around a corner into an alleyway. Azmuth gets off Pascal, and gestures for him to return to the store. Within his disguise, Azmuth double-checks the charge on his tractor beam – already nearly empty from the heavy lifting earlier, but ready to use in a pinch for self-defense.
At the end of the alley, a wall glows from a light at the right of its intersection with another alley. Azmuth hugs the corner as he peers out to view Ley dropping the tools and quickly trying to put together a wooden cover for a small, makeshift home.
In the middle of his build, Azmuth starts down the alley towards him.
Azmuth pictured the streets of Galvan Prime. Homes varied in size and fortunes varied in number, but none were without a roof over their heads.
Azmuth raises a brow as Ley kicks over a hand-drawn blueprint.
[Max’s Plumbing, interior, hours later: Rook departs from the bathroom to see Pascal hovering at the desk assisting a customer.]
Pascal’s dog form shrugs.
He steps outside, wearing a cloak to mask his identity, only to find a small line of people lined up on the sidewalk and ascending a wooden stairwell to a newly-built second story of Max’s Plumbing. He speaks to someone in the line.
The man merely mumbles something, so Rook shoves through the line, to get to a room built at the size of the store with decent heating and sets of beds. The walls are painted inside, and it’s cozy enough that everyone has their space. Ley and human Azmuth stand proudly at the door welcoming everyone in. Azmuth is surprised to see Rook.
Rook looks out to the line of people.
[Azmuth and Rook depart. Ley continues assisting people, even when the very last bed is left. His last veteran is young, decades younger than Ley, who’s no less than 60 years old. He gives him the bed without question, walks downstairs, and continues to take up the less comfortable pieces of a home he’d built in the alleyway.]
Synopsis[]
Azmuth, disguised and working out of Max's Plumbing, bonds with an older army vet who chit-chats about service.
Characters[]
- Azmuth
- Ley
- Rook Blonko
- Pascal
- Magister Patelliday
- Other Plumbers (S7A-B)
- Bellwood Police Officers (S7A-B)
- Man S7B
Trivia[]
- The episode was released on (American) Veteran's Day.
- This is so far the only episode or Short in Back in Action: Alien Universe without any Omnitrix transformations or Ben.
| Created by COLOR | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Alien Universe (BTAU - BiA - SiC) - Clad in Darkness - Benjection - DC's Hero of Heroes | |||
| Unique Aliens in Back in Action: Alien Universe | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| First used by Super Ben (Assault Omnitrix) | Obsorber - Nigester - Plastikitee - Anos - Streak - Bugbite - Muckslide - Autosassin - Ultimate Upchuck - Clinger - Healding - Alkamine - Brawnoceros - Combustiball - Cardstruct - Dreadsense - Frisbit - Koldiak - Plasmodic - Seismix - Wavelength - Warrock - Fetterwing - Suctionrupt | ||
| Majestic Forms | TBD | ||
| First used by Dawn (Alphaline Omnitrix) | Vertigo - Starhavoc - Slyt - Blankslate | ||
| First used by Future Ben | Atomhammer - Ultimate Brainstorm | ||
| Characters in Back in Action: Alien Universe | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Squad | Ben Tennyson - Gwen Tennyson - Kevin Levin - Julie Yamamoto - Chelsey Tennyson - Max Tennyson - Cooper Daniels - Ken | ||
| Villains | Future Ben - Thep Khufan Commander - Scarogus - Dawn - Vilgax - Albedo - Malevolence - Darkstar - Sii - Elena Validus - Dr. Animo - Cyanne - Mistress - Hurricane Vance - Project Inferno - Nightcaster II - Clancy - Metalink | ||
| Supporting Characters | Professor Paradox - Azmuth - Charmcaster - Eunice - Verdona - Rex - Sir George | ||
| Other Timelines/Possible Futures | Gwen 20 - Upgrade Ben - Altrazon - Jennifer-Mercedes Tennyson | ||
| Groups | Second Gynurans (Eli Griswold - Aion) - Omega Squad - Plumbers (Karin Frikton - Io) - Thep Khufan Armada - Board of Galvan | ||
| Others | Chili - Moira Yourouguaduan | ||