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'Jailbirds at the Bottom of the Sea was the wiki's January 2026 featured episode! |
Jailbirds at the Bottom of the Sea is the twelfth episode of Polytrixes. It covers the cordial reintroduction of Paul, Amy, Victoria, and Al, while exploring Al's identity.
Summary[]
Paul and Amy awake in a holding cell at the bottom of the sea, still unable to use their pseudo-Omnitrixes. Victoria and Al shortly join them. Meanwhile, Viihan and Neb work on building a base.
Bookmark[]
Last time on Polytrixes...
- All the way back in episode 1, Al shot down the Retaliator over Paul's home city. Paul later discovered the Retaliator's "dying" "corpse" and was tasked with destroying the other pseudo-Omnitrixes.
- Viihan, the wielder of the Petrosapien pseudo-Omnitrix, the Terretrix, arrived in Paul's hometown, where he met Nebosja (Paul and Al's contact, the Biotsavartian Omnimorph).
- Paul killed the Pyronite Omnimorph.
- Paul and Amy (wielder of the Aeritrix) were apprehended by a Pisciss Ceti-Ship.
- After ditching her family and wiping their memories, Victoria and Al - the mysterious boy with a penchant for pseudo-Omnitrixes that has claimed to have killed Azmuth - were apprehended by a separate Pisciss Ceti-Ship that negated their abilities.
- Roaming the city looking to kickstart a revolution, Viihan and Nebosja got McDonald's.
Plot[]
PAUL X[]
Paul did not remember falling asleep; nor did he remember being moved. The last thing he remembered was floating adrift in the ocean, playing Jonah and the Whale with the strange brunette girl at his side, waiting for his Omnitrix to recharge.
When he awoke, he was in some sort of strange chamber, and could only guess where. The floors were made of some oily black metal? that could have been almost mud or stone instead, and the walls were made of similar stuff, glistening with a strange sheen. There were window-like gaps and a hatch on the ceiling that looked to have the texture of cerulean gelatin, and from where he slept at the floor of the chamber, they were decently out of reach.
Hot and wet with sweat and seawater, Paul peeled himself off of the floor. His clothes were still soaked through and wet, weighing him down. Again, he silently lamented the dampening of his phone and wallet, though now he realized replacing them would be much further off.
Looking across the floor, he saw the Aeritrix girl laying there, similarly passed out like he had been moments ago. For a second, just based off of her posture and build and the way her wet clothes clung to her hips, he thought she looked like Aphrodite or one of those other Renaissance painting girls. He was brought out of his fantasies when he remembered she’d just been nabbed, too, and that she was just as sea-wrought as he was.
He’d been an RA once, and remembered that if someone was going to puke (namely a drunk - but perhaps it was transferrable), it was better to push them to their side so that they might not choke. Without wondering if he owed it to her, he crawled over to her and jostled her, rolling her over. As her head turned away from him, her body violently spasmed. He looked up over her side to see her choking up seawater on the cobbled floor. It thankfully lasted for only a second or two before she was done, and then she was recovering, sitting up like him. Her pallid flesh raised in goosebumps and she began rubbing her arms, as if wishing to make her clothes dry before their time. Eventually, she must have realized it was a pointless endeavor, so she pulled back her wet frosty hair and turned around. Her eyes caught his.
“Well, good morning to you, too,” she said, before shaking with another shiver. “How long was I out?”
“I don’t know. Probably as long as I was, maybe honestly a little less.” He knew he wasn’t much of a help.
“That’s great,” she sighed, curtly. “I don’t remember any of it.” Defeated, she stretched out on the floor for a moment, before soon shriveling back up as if to cuddle in on her own warmth. Her head lolled back and she looked at the great circular blue “hatch” on the ceiling. “God, I’m fvcking cold.”
I can fix that, Paul instantly thought to himself, pulling up his arm and readying a transformation… Or he would have, if his Omnitrix didn’t flash and yell at him for simply trying.
INSUFFICIENT POWER.
Still? God, must not have been out that long.
“Mine works now,” she suddenly piped up, having heard his device speak, but she soon caught herself. Buck teeth peeked out from beneath her upper lip as she open-mouth conveyed her doubt. “I dunno, though. I don’t think I’m using it.”
You’re not? The dankness and assumed depth of this place made it seem like they were liable to freeze to death here. “Might I ask why?”
She paused for a moment, shuffling her arms around. “It’s just hard to trust people these days.” Her eyes rolled around, judging him, but probably (hopefully?) finding no threat. “How’d I know you didn’t lure me into this trap as some contrived way to git me?”
“I don’t think I did,” Paul said. When he looked over again, he saw her head fall into a chuckle. Half-wet locks of dark brown hair brushed against her plump cheeks.
“I suppose you’re right. Well, I’m just holding off…” She looked upwards again. His eyes followed. “Because I don’t know where this room is getting air from.”
Paul slowly nodded, but really, he hadn’t thought of that. He guessed it was only natural to think about that, assuming the Aeritrix had as much to do with air that the Pyretrix had to do with fires - probably even a possible reliance. Did these devices’ names have meanings? Al had suggested as much, but he hadn’t gotten a chance to get much more information out of him beyond that. For a second, he wondered what the Omnitrix meant, what beta had to do with it… and on the subject of names, he realized he’d never caught hers.
“I don’t think I know your name.”
She looked at him again, less judgmentally this time. “Amy.”
Amy and the Aeritrix, Paul thought to himself. I can remember that. It had a nice ring to it.
“Why? You getting all sentimental, think we’re gonna die down here?” Amy said with a half-chuckle, her head falling to the floor to gaze at the damp cloth dress suspended across her lap. Then she raised it again, and looked back over at him. “What’s yours?”
“Paul.”
“Well, nice to meetcha, Paul. Wish it could be under different circumstances.”
“Likewise,” he found himself saying.
She looked over at him with a charged look. “So… What do you think the circumstances are, exactly?” She must have sensed his confusion, because she continued, pressed further. He soon realized it was to clarify, but the shadowy intent around her gaze did initially unease him. “Y’know. Where and when?”
Paul thought on it for a second. Again, his life and choices seemed limited by his lack of information. He wondered if he would ever stop finding himself caught in situations where he was in over his head.
“I think… We’re probably at the bottom of the sea,” he answered. When he looked up and into the cylinder of open space above him, he saw no freedom but endless black metal as far as the eye could see. “Whoever grabbed us there probably took us here.”
She didn’t give him any response to that, maybe because he was stating the obvious. In any case, she didn’t refute him. She rubbed at her sides, still trying to warm herself up, before she stopped and let her arm fall. She gazed down at her wrist where her Aeritrix still sat, waiting, fully-charged.
Either my Omnitrix recharges, Paul thought, or she’s my only ticket out of here.
NEB VII[]
“You have some salt in your mustache.”
Viihan turned around, raising his eyebrows under the streetlight.
“Sorry,” Neb explained. “It’s simply been bothering me.”
“No worries, friend. I understand,” Viihan turned around and kept walking forward. Presumably, he also licked at his lip, for Neb saw no arm-raise and knew that Viihan would want to hide the shame. It had taken enough prodding to go get him to eat in the first place. McDonald’s was the perfect place - Viihan explained - because they could lavish gifts and tips upon the poor, harnessed, oppressed working class that served them there in their bondage, and perhaps earn their sympathies and sway them towards liberation. Nebosja was not sure where this whole scheme placed them on the revolutionary spectrum (perhaps Chinese food, or Mexican, or anything other than corporate, might have aligned better with their loftier ambitions?), but he did not want to worry Viihan with such considerations. In any case, shortly after the pimple-faced night shift workers explained that they could not take tips (yes, even in the form of solid gold), Viihan was wont to leave expeditiously, hence the hasty exit.
Now, they wandered through the streets of the town, beyond the McDonald’s, beyond the Chinese restaurants, beyond the Mexican restaurants. They passed a mall, passed streets of sleeping storefronts yearning for daylight to display their wares once again, passed bright-light ATMs. When they met any other individuals, homeless or not, whether or not Neb knew them, Viihan dispensed them some currency or gold or jewels or scrap metal. He means well, Neb thought to himself, but he does not understand the intricacies of this land. The gifts he peddles are either too strange, too pointless, or just plain too meager to raise any of them out of poverty for long. Then again, Neb thought to himself - I have been here for years, too, and even I do not think I could explain America.
Their cash quickly ran dry, as did their gifts. Neb did not make any attempts to try and slow or stifle Viihan’s generosity. Neb knew that any suggestion of perhaps that person is not entirely deserving of our help would be met with a scoff, and he also knew deep down himself that all were deserving on help on some level, no matter how much they lied or tried to extort more from Viihan. Neb felt solace that Viihan seemed to think that, too, and might even know it to the fullest extent deep down. Still, he could not shake the instinct that the good times could not go on forever, that help was finite - eventually, the goose might lay its last golden egg (or worse, that the egg might be rotten).
But Viihan insisted that time was not now, and the gold was pure, well-intentioned, incorruptible. So long as they were only helping people, Neb was inclined to agree.
The moon had since reached its zenith and now began its descent across the sky. Their march through what might have been a shopping district led them to stretches of cracked streets, walled with broken homes.
Though his body was practically stainless steel, Neb felt that his joints might still ache and rust. He did not have to ask his companion to slow down; Viihan gradually did that on his own. With every driveway and doorframe that the two passed, Viihan turned his head.
At last, he came to a stop, in front of a burned-down, broken, disrepaired stretch of rowhomes. He turned, looked at the broken-down, empty doorway, and turned back to Nebosja with a wide smile and open arms.
“This shall be our home - the beginning of our great project. Ground zero. Home base. The center of a new village.”
“Here?” Neb said. He did not want to be rude, but it was a bit of a fixer-upper, among many other issues. It looked like construction had stopped and started on this place several times, and that it had been raided or otherwise plundered or perhaps squatted in at one point. The roof had seemingly caved in and there was not even a front door attached any longer. “Don’t you think it’s a bit… Out of the way?”
“Perhaps. I had thought it might be better to build in the center of town, where all could see us, but… Well, here is also not so bad.” He extended his arms and gestured widely at the houses down the street. Neb was not sure if they were occupied, either. “The poor will come to us naturally,” Viihan explained, “But these people are the ones we will truly have to win over. When they see us building a practical Eden in their backyard, they will have no choice but to enlist.”
I am not so sure about that, Neb thought. But I suppose here is a good place as any. Besides, if anything went wrong, he could still head back to the other boy’s apartment. He could still find his way back - right?
Without a response from Neb, Viihan turned and entered the home.
PAUL XI[]
Paul didn’t want to seem rude, but he was getting impatient.
It felt like it had been an hour or so, and his Omnitrix hadn’t recharged, and she kept looking down at her wrist pondering what to do. When she wasn’t doing that, or looking at the ceiling, she was making eyes at him. He guessed he was making eyes at her. It was the world’s most awkward staring contest at the bottom of the sea, Paul thought, but then he remembered that there were also submarines about. At least they know when their deployments should end, he chewed.
“Sorry, but… Are you ever going to use that thing?” He finally asked.
She finally relented and explained her hesitation with a sigh. “Maybe. It’s just… Well, if I use this thing to try and break out of here… Well, when this thing turns on, it sucks all of the usable air out of the room.”
Oh. “Oh. Wonderful.”
She smiled at that. “I do have a pretty damned surefire way out of here, though. I just don’t really want to risk your life. I figure I owe that much to you.”
“Thanks,” Paul said, still impatient despite the newfound risk to his condition. “I appreciate it. I really do. But… You have to think about yourself, too.” He did not want to pressure her into anything irrational, but he did not know how else to get out of here, considering the fact that his watch seemed to be completely drained and not regaining any charge any time soon.
“I know,” she replied.
“We stay down here long enough, in our wet clothes, we’re prone to catching a cold. Or worse, hypothermia,” Paul explained.
She simply shrugged off the urgency. “Believe me, I won’t let it come to that,” she replied. Paul wasn’t so sure - she didn’t seem to be taking any of this seriously, besides… Well, that whole murderous intent against the girl that attacked him. Paul chewed on that for a second.
Eventually, Amy spoke again. She must have been soured on the stale mood and still air, too. “I don’t think I ever asked you why you came here, did I?”
Well, I didn’t actually want to come here, Paul thought, but assumed imprisonment was besides the point. “I’m not sure.”
She nodded slowly. “Right. Well… I spilled the beans. I told you how my secret watch works. You owe some info for me. Capisce?”
Paul thought that was fair. “I’m… Chasing someone.” Her eyes went wide. He clarified. “Chasing information. Looking for more information on these Omnitrixes.”
She would have some information, Paul thought. Gods, he was so dumb. But, it wasn’t his turn to talk yet…
“Cool. All I’ll tell you is that there’s a few of ‘em, and some people don’t like that, so people are going around killing them and trying to collect-em-all,” she said, adding a lighthearted intonation at the end.
Paul nodded. That was his original prerogative, he thought, remembering the dying robot. He figured he owed something to that guy… Or not. That man had essentially dosed him with poison, turned him into patient zero to spread harm and monsterdom to all of his loved ones, and, seemingly, the rest of the planet.
“Honestly, I think that’s what I was supposed to do,” he admitted, scratching the back of his neck to seem more casual as he confessed to something close to murderous intent. “I dunno.”
Her eyes went wide and she blinked at that. “Well, here’s a tip - don’t. Don’t kill people,” she told him with a pointed expression. “I know that sounds rich coming from me. I wanna kill this one girl, and I’m going to, next time I see her, I think. She’s killed before and will kill again.” Still sitting, she tucked her knees up close to her chest. “You know, there’s that old saying about how killing a killer doesn’t change the amount of killers in the world? Well, I think it does. I’ll kill her and then I’ll stop. I’ll have my vengeance… For whatever it’s worth,” she said. She clenched her fist and let it go. Paul thought it looked like she’d defeated herself.
“I’m fighting for someone else, too. You know,” Paul added. He felt compelled to say something, to justify the robot’s goal. Even if he wasn’t sure that he agreed with it, he still felt the need to rationalize it. He felt responsible for it on multiple levels. “These Omnitrixes, they can mutate people. Other people. Did you know that?”
“I don’t know that I do,” she said, at first, before shrugging. “Maybe. I might have heard something like that. Does it matter?”
“What do you mean, does it matter?” Paul responded, inspired (and not in a good way).
“So what if you get mutated? Like, so what if I get cancer? I mean, that’s life. Those are the terms and conditions. No one gets to exist in a void,” she gestured wildly with her hands, fingers spread.
Paul watched her, thinking on what she was saying. Maybe she did have a point - even people who get dealt a losing hand still deserve the option to play their cards, he thought. Sometimes getting a bad card is unavoidable. The nearly-headless man seemed to be having a good time… But, compare that to the Pyronite Omnimorph, going on a rampage trying to hurt people.
A pang of guilt hit him. Did he do the right thing by killing them?
He looked down at his Omnitrix, at his hands. There was metaphorical blood on them. His eyes eventually wandered up to her. She was tugging at her sleeves, pulling them down. When she saw that he’d caught her, she tried to cover her tracks.
“I’m just saying… Everyone deserves a chance to see their life play out.”
“Even people who hurt people?” Paul asked in turn. He was not so much testing her as he was asking for his own interest.
“I don’t know. I… God, do you think people hurt people willingly?” She answered her own question. “Not always, no. But… sometimes, yeah, I guess. Sometimes people are just plain evil.”
“You’re going to kill someone - do you think you’re plain evil?”
“God, I don’t know. I think there’s capacity for good and evil in all of us, and… I think I need to stop her before she kills again. I might be covered by extenuating circumstances. You think Saint Peter has a clause for that?”
She threw her head back in defeat, or disgust, or perhaps just to try and stare up and see if she could see the sky. A minute passed before she continued.
“The worst part is that I’m selfish. I don’t think I would care about doing her in any other way, if she had been killing anyone else, but… She killed my friend, Paul. Or… Not even my friend, really.” She started to tear up. “He was just a weird guy. But he was kinda like a mentor to me. Creepy, and weird, but that was what made him cool. He was an… Entomomolologist? Weird guy obsessed with bugs. Studied bugs.” She paused again. “You know, when we first met, I was worried I was gonna end up like one of those other great big fat girls in Silence of the Lambs. But no, he was… He was cool enough. And she took him from me.” She pounded her fist in her hand, but it soon faltered and unfurled back into fingers, and she continued. “I guess I normally wouldn’t care. Things come and go from my life and that’s normal. Murder happens and r@pe happens and there’s a lot of bad apples in the world but I don’t think I’m gonna go spend my life going around Spider-Manning those other creeps. But… She’s out here, cutting us down. People like us. Isn’t that scary? Isn’t that… Lonely? Doesn’t it make your world a whole lot smaller?”
Paul felt bad for her - she was clearly going through it, but he was not sure what else to say. It wasn’t like he had a dry tissue to offer. He figured giving her a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on might be good enough, considering the circumstances. He let her talk.
“I’ve always pretended to not care about other people, what they think about me, whether or not they exist in this world with me. But I do, Paul. I like knowing that there are other people out there like me. It makes me… Hate myself a little less.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this, or how it’s relevant, but… God, I need to tell somebody.”
“You can tell me,” Paul offered meekly.
“You know - I wanted to be an air stewardess. Before the Aeritrix. Long before the Aeritrix,” she laughed to herself. Her laugh was deep, vivid, authentic. “It sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Not a job for smart girls. Not a job for weird girls. It’s a job where you get to go around flying, being eye candy, telling people to watch the same dumb movie over and over. I think I’d eventually go insane, racing against the timezones, but… That’s what I want.
“I want to wake up each day in another city. Maybe even each morning in some other lover’s bed. At least, maybe, on a friend’s floor. There’s so much out there to life, man, and… I just get this one shot to try and get to all of it. So I figure that’s the best way to do it, you know? See the world. And yeah, if it means helping some rich old f#cks, well, that’s just a part of life too.
“But you know what? I’m not cut out for it. Not conventionally pretty.” Paul didn’t believe it. “Hips a bit too wide. Bones a little too big. Way too fat. People finding me pretty… That’s a whole other thing. I just wanted to fly.
“For a few months I hated myself. I hadn’t wanted to be an air stewardess originally, yeah, there was other stuff - so I guess my heart wasn’t broken there. It had been broken before.”
As she stopped, for a moment, Paul saw that there were a few tears streaming down her face, but she ignored them, not even giving them a sob.
“But it still hurt. And I still think, okay, f#ck that, then, right? I mean… I don’t think seeing the world means anything if I don’t have someone else to describe it to, y’know? That’s why I love these trixes, Paul. That’s why I’m glad there are others out there, and that I have people like you to share this f#cked up body-changing experience with. It’s like, who would want to go through puberty alone, again?”
“I… I think I know what you mean.”
She looked over him, giving him a slight look, before she burst out into a cackling laugh that disrupted her tears. “I don’t think you do. But that’s okay - it’s good enough. It makes me happy to be alive.” Frustrated, she rubbed at her face with her hand until her pallid face turned pink. “I’m sorry, Paul. I’m sorry my weird vengeance quest got us trapped down here at the bottom of the sea. I’m sorry you have to be in weird sea jail with a crazy lady who won’t stop talking about how much she hates and loves herself.”
“You know, I’m… not sure it did,” Paul responded, offering a smile. He could at least absolve her of some of the blame. “And I don’t think you’re totally crazy. Besides, you… You’ve got a nice voice. And… What’s happened to us is what’s crazy.” At that, she returned his smile. “It’s nice to talk to someone about this,” he admitted. He hadn’t really had the chance since his mom; Al hadn’t really been prone to conventional, logical conversation that wasn’t about his vested special interest in technology (and even then he didn’t give up much). “Someone that can understand.”
He had almost gotten so caught up in all of those thoughts about her and her story and her conflicted emotions that he forgot his own motives…
Her own introspection and self-conflict really made him reflect on his own. He felt like a Shakespeare character - okay, not really. He’d never really studied the Bard - despite being his native tongue, English was not really his subject of excellence - but there was a great sense of “to x, or to y?” about all this. To honor his commitment to the dying robot, or to forsake the pseudo-Omnitrix crusade? To spend his time giving Omnimorphs second chances, or to evict them from the Earth?
He felt stumped.
“Can I ask you something, Amy?”
“Yeah.” She sniffled, smiled. “Yeah, I figure you’ve earned yourself a few.”
Paul noodled on it for a second before he worked up the nerve to ask it. It was a bit of a curveball. “Do you think we could… cure the Omnimorphs?”
Amy considered it for a second. “What are those - the mutated monsters?” she asked, evidently not entirely familiar. Paul nodded. Amy considered it for another second more. “I dunno. Maybe - I guess. I mean, anything’s possible. The sky’s the limit.”
The sky’s the limit, Paul thought to himself. Yeah.
He looked up, at the great globby blue ceiling. His eyes narrowed as he saw a shadow descend, gaining form as it accelerated and lost distance. Two silhouettes, now, actually, both increasingly familiar. Was that…?
VICTORIA XII[]
When Victoria awoke again, she was falling through the air. No - she was being pushed, down, riding a column of water. Eventually, the water gave way into a chamber of dirt or rock or metal or some other slick mineral, and she was deposited on the floor with a burst of water.
She got up her hands and knees and started to cough and rub her eyes and clear her throat, but before she could gather her senses, someone else was upon her, likely falling from above. No, no, they had fallen beside her…
The person who was on top of her was now beating her down, further into the floor.
Victoria instinctively rolled around and tried to knee them up in the stomach to get her off of them. She forced her own eyes to open wider, though found them still flush with water. Her hand went to her wrist, but as she tried to activate any transformation, she was met with a TRANSFORMATION DENIED .
“You’re - gonna - die - you - f#cking - b#tch!” Her assailant pounded on her, still from above. Victoria kneed her in the crotch. No, more accurately, she kneed her in the stomach and kicked her in the crotch. It didn’t get her off of her the way she wanted, but her assailant still faltered. From the hanging locks of hair and fabric, Victoria assumed it was another girl attacking her, though she still hadn’t the foggiest idea of why. In any case, she gripped on the other girl’s hair and began to tug.
“Yes! Get her!” A hoarse voice shouted from the corner - a familiar voice?
“No, Amy - get off of her!” Someone was trying to pull her assailant - Amy - off of her. It was another familiar voice. Amy’s hands yanked at Victoria’s hair and they tried to pull each other off and away from each other, just to cause as much pain or to get the other to submit. Neither really won.
“I told you, Paul - I told you I was gonna kill her.” “I know, but you said that you wouldn’t, and we want her alive…” “We want her alive?”
That second voice - Paul! The boy from before, the boy she'd tried to murder a few short days ago. Paul was here… And he was on Victoria’s side! But for how long? And how deeply did his ambitions go? Oh, god - he was torturing her, wasn’t he? Was he the one holding her captive?
“Yes! Kill her! Eliminate her! Only one of us shall survive this encounter today!”
All of them stopped to turn their attention to the man in the corner. It was the boy from before - the boy she had been captured with, the punk boy from the battle against the Pyronites. He was soaked through like the rest of them, but a little worse. His black hair was fading white, and his body had been inked an eerie gray, like an impromptu dye-job had been stripped out half-way-through.
“What? Don’t stop. Keep going! The winner will challenge me and the Alpha Omnitrix, where I’ll prove once and for all that Albedo is the scientist supreme!”
Albedo. Where had Victoria heard that name before..? She didn’t have much time to think.
Paul let go of Amy. She fell forward a good few inches, but Victoria held her off. Amy still applied force - they were still fighting, but it was an uneasy truce. For now, it was more like they were just holding each other rather than trying to hold each other down or back.
The two feuding girls watched as Paul walked over to the punk. He rolled back his sleeve, and before the kid had a chance to realize what was going on, he walloped him across the face. He spat out a tooth on the ground. Paul kicked him once, and then stopped.
Amy was stunned for a moment. Victoria recovered, and reached up to scratch at her face. Soft. Chubby. Not hardened like I am… Victoria grit to herself.
“What the f0ck was that for?” the punk boy asked, choking through tears and spitting out a bloody tooth next to Victoria. She rolled her head to dodge a punch from Amy, and her hair nearly mopped up some of the crimson substance.
Paul spoke next. “You know what it’s for. You don’t get to play games with people’s lives.”
Victoria punched next, aiming to hit Amy in the face with the Omnitrix. It might not be working, but the metal corners of the wristwatch could still be used like a bludgeon… It didn’t connect, though. Amy caught Victoria’s fist, and pushed it away, down on the floor. Victoria went to knee her in the stomach-crotch again, but Amy predicted that, too, and rolled with it.
“God, don’t act so heartfelt about the homeless, Paul. You realize I’m practically one myself? S’not like I’m punching down,” the punk boy sobbed, recovering from Paul's suckerpunch. “You’re the one who is.”
It was now Amy’s turn for an attack. She punched downward with her pseudo-Omnitrix. (Victoria hadn’t realized she had one for now. That was a mistake. Mental note for later, to never forget, ever…) Victoria foresaw the attack coming, but couldn’t really move out of the way, so the attack hit, almost right in Victoria’s eye, but not quite.
“We slept in the homeless shelter together, Al,” Paul defended himself. Amy looked back for a second, a little distracted by that comment. Good. Get distracted, Victoria smiled to herself. She sent her free hand up to Amy’s neck wildly, either to choke or scratch.
“In fact, I’m homeless…” Paul stalled. He turned. Victoria put two-and-two together, but she couldn’t go anywhere, and couldn’t really meaningfully react in any other way, either. She tried to turn, but Amy had her held down good. When Paul’s foot connected, it hit her in the stomach like one brief stomp. Victoria gasped, sucked in, winded.
“Because of this one,” Paul growled.
Amy sat up off of Victoria as she recoiled on the damp, slick floor, clutching at her stomach. She tried hard not to close her eyes, though part of her wanted to just kind of sleep off this pain. F#ck - does he wear steel-toed boots or something?
“So she is the one going around murdering Trixers?” Amy surmised, as if there was any doubt. So she’s a shoot-first-ask-questions-later type-of-gal? Victoria noted, already prepping for round two.
“Nooo, that’s Albedo! He’s the Omnitrix user extraordinaire!” the punk kid shouted from the corner.
“I guess him too," Paul considered, gesturing towards the kid he'd just wailed on. "He keeps talking about killing Azmuth... things to that effect.”
Victoria’s eyes went wide. Yeah, that’s right - again. Her whole life’s work… For nothing? But no… Azmuth was smart. He was a genius, even in comparison to her. There was no way he could be beaten so easily, right? Not by… Not by some nobody?
Then it hit her.
“Albedo... Azmuth... His... Azmuth's old lab assistant Albedo?” Victoria croaked.
“No! NO! Albedo was not Azmuth’s lab assistant, you crying monkey!” the kid screeched. In a few moments, he was also making his way over to kick at her, but Paul restrained him.
“Okay, you definitely can’t say that.”
“Albedo? Azmuth? All I know is an, uhh… Adwaita?” Amy suggested, nervously.
“Adwaita?” For a second, the Albedo fanatic sounded almost more offended than the earlier comparison. Almost. “No - no, none of that worthless made-up fool idiot stupid false fabricated magic. We’re just talking efficient, ruthless, scientific Galvan science.”
“You talk an awful lot about Galvan science for a fellow human,” Paul noted. Al grumbled.
Then it hit Victoria. The odd hair, the strange skin, the… personality complex and obsession with Albedo and Azmuth. Hell, even the name. Hadn’t Paul just dubbed him “Al”?
Victoria sat up a bit on the floor. Amy went to move to strike her down again, but stopped.
“Here… Don’t hit me,” Victoria requested, on her hands and knees once again. “Just a good guess, but, I bet, if any of our Omnitrixes worked, that he’d probably be giving off some strong Omnimorph vibes.”
Victoria watched as Paul and Amy traded looks. Amy raised her wrist and tapped at her pseudo-Omnitrix. Surprisingly, it did power on, and less surprisingly, Victoria was right.
OMNIMORPH IDENTIFIED: HUMAN.
That reveal was not so important to Victoria; as always, even lying on the floor beaten and bruised, Victoria still sought to one-up her opponents.
So her Omnitrix works. Whatever the Pisciss Volann Ceti-Ship had used to lock down Victoria and Al’s Omnitrixes must not have affected Amy's. That name she’d mentioned - Adwaita - was someone that didn’t exactly ring any bells for Victoria, but Albedo had immediately clocked it as magical. That must be it - the pseudo-Omnitrix that Amy wore on her wrist was magical in its make. Good to know.
While she stewed on that, the others were still dealing with the fallout of her identity discovery.
“So this is an Omnimorph?” Amy asked, gesturing at Albedo and turning to Paul. “I don’t know… His life doesn’t seem to suck that much. Hey, Al, do you like your life?”
“I’m sorry, who is the human Omnimorph?” Al asked for clarification, innocently enough.
“He’s kind of… Crazy,” Paul responded to Amy. “See? Even the ones that turn out okay are still a little… Off.”
Al didn’t like that. “I am not. And hey, for the record, I am not an Omnimorph. I’m a normal human. I remember being hatched just like the rest of you.”
Well, Victoria smiled to herself, that pretty much confirms it.
“He’s probably dealing with his Galvan brain being reduced…” Or enlarged. Shrunken? By any terms, his brain was dealing radically different biology. “From Galvan to human. There’s probably some sort of Algernon effect going on… in addition to the trauma of a changing body.”
Amy opened her mouth as if to make some smart remark, but she stopped herself short of that and reeled the worst back in. “So you’re telling me this isn’t human?”
“No - it’s an approximation,” Victoria confirmed. “Or, not even an approximation. A lucky mutation.”
“There was no luck involved in my conception. From tadpole to man-ape, I got here through the power of Galvan ingenuity,” Al Bedo grimaced. “I am flawless design personified. When my glorious creator Albedo made me, he made me right.”
“So Albedo is the guy that made you?” Paul asked. Still clueless.
“No, Albedo is my employer. He invented the Omnitrix-Alpha, no matter what that fool Azmuth might say, but it’s okay, because I killed him.”
“You killed Azmuth?” Victoria asked from the floor. She knew it was not exactly in her best interests to goad him on, but she wanted confirmation.
“Well, no, Albedo killed Azmuth. All glory to Albedo, you know. So on and so forth.”
“And where is Albedo now?” Victoria confirmed.
“Umm, it doesn’t matter?” Albedo countered pointedly. “He’s probably off cooking up a new Omnitrix for me in the lab. The Omnitrix-Alpher. It’ll kick all of your @ sses and prove he’s the best Omnitrix inventor, and wielder, too. You’re all dead meat when he’s done.”
“Hey, but… Don’t you do your own inventing?” Paul thought, his brow furrowed. “And you said your name was Albedo, too?” He regarded them all with opened eyes. “This explains a lot.”
“No. I said my name was Al. Little Al. Lalbert, if you will. Albedo gave me that name, after himself, like a father names his own son, because he is such a good and noble and legendary icon.”
“And how did he name you? When did he name you? How does he employ you?” Victoria pushed. Maybe if she pressed the right buttons, he would break. It would put her in harm’s way, but a prison riot was one way to get herself out of here…
“He lives in my head…” Al said, tapping his furrowed brow. “And he tells me what to do.”
Victoria audibly guffawed. “By what? By way of synapses? He is in your head, you loser, because he’s you! You’re Albedo! You murderous, crazy, half-wit freak! You killed the smartest genius Galvan in the galaxy, and you don’t even know who or what you are!”
Her laugh continued on the floor. Half of it was genuine - this situation was absurd. To think that Azmuth had perished at this Omnimorph’s hand - and that there were the motives and the signs that it was the case - was insane. The other half of it was to manipulate him and coax a reaction out of him.
“I am not! I do not! I do, I do, I do!” Al Bedo responded, stomping his foot on the ground like a petulant child. Yes, tantrum more… Rage, rage, rage at the bottom of the sea…
Victoria laughed even harder, swooping lower so his anger might rise higher. “Albedo couldn’t even make a proper working Omnitrix on his own, but oh my god, he did manage to make a pretty f#cking good Omnimorph, for whatever that’s worth,” she laughed again.
Al grumbled for a few seconds, but then stopped, as if he’d found something golden to grapple on in what Victoria had just said.
Not the goal, Victoria, she reprimanded yourself. You’re Azmuth’s best and brightest, not a career coach or some motivational speaker. So, she forced herself to laugh even harder, even throwing in some finger-pointing for good measure, until her stomach hurt and her cheeks were red.
She even got a chuckle out of Amy, too… Which impressed her, until she suddenly realized Amy was laughing at her, not with her. The chuckle ended quick, and Victoria tried to reel her own back in. She looked up at the damp, zaftig, boho brunette whose expression was turning sterner by the second.
“You think it’s funny, do you? To make fun of this poor kid’s… condition?”
Victoria didn’t have a response, particularly because she did think it was funny. It was absurd.
“Oh, you’ll point fingers and call him a murderer, alright, but you? How many people have you killed?”
Victoria couldn’t stop herself. “Just the one,” slipped out. She knew she should bite her tongue, but… Well, memories of murders were flooding back, and she wanted to stop them. Just focus on the one, whatever she’s accusing her of.
“Liar!” Al Bedo yelled. “She hit me with a dead body earlier!”
“Didn’t kill that one. I was just burying her at sea.” That much was true, to an extent.
“You tried to kill me and burned my house down!” Paul responded. Okay, that one was true… But she could spin it.
“You burned your own house down, first of all,” Victoria reminded him. But he did have a point. She just had to bury the truth deeper, muddy the waters… Hell, maybe she could just take advantage of him outright and play him for a fool. They all were, in comparison to her. “And how do you know that I tried to kill you? You didn’t exactly ask.”
That did catch Paul for a second. Hook, line, and sinker…
“And where’s your proof that I killed your friend like you said, anyhow? Don’t I get a fair trial?” Victoria pressed.
Amy shot a look over at Paul, and then looked back at Victoria. By now, Victoria was sitting up, readying herself for whatever she spun this situation into. Maybe she could play them against each other.
“People that go around burning down people’s houses and tossing bodies off boats don’t exactly get to walk free of character evidence,” Amy spat.
“Touche, I guess. But you’re so convinced that I killed your friend, you’ve gotta have some sort of dossier on me, right? So, what, pray tell, do you have? Where’s your smoking gun?”
Paul looked at Amy. Amy sighed. “I only knew him online. Image boards. He told me he was meeting up with another person just like us. Cute girl, like me. Smart. College-educated, like him. He was a professor…” Amy turned around and looked to Victoria. “But you know this. You’ve got to know this.” Victoria vaguely remembered this, but she knew it wouldn’t matter either way. Amy was beginning to crack. Her lip was quivering, her legs quaking. “He studied entomology. You really tried to lay on the sweetness. He was all excited to talk about his theories on bug life, about how ancient bugs might be related to alien bugs, or some sh#t like that. I didn’t care, I didn’t believe it. But you bought into it, you told him, and he told me.” Amy clenched a fist.
“She posed as, like, HR to get into my house,” Paul said. Not the time, Paul. Be a useful idiot…
“She posed as a sick lady in the hospital but then got better before I could kill her,” Al Bedo chimed in. Good - not helpful and not even true!
Paul and Amy looked at Al Bedo. Noticing their confused faces on him, he felt excited to share more.
“Oh, I was going to kill her because she works for Azmuth! She’s got the real deal Azmuth phonytrix vanilla on her wrist. More like chocolate sh#t. I wanted to show off mine and beat hers.” He crossed his arms. “I still do,” he muttered as an aside.
Paul looked back at Amy. Oh, CUH-MON. They weren’t seriously going to listen to this guy, right?
“The robot told me to destroy the pseudo-Omnitrixes. If this Azmuth guy is the real inventor of the Omnitrix…”
“Albedo is!” Al Bedo interrupted with a finger, “but Azmuth is his number-one counterfeiter,” he conceded.
“Then I bet she’s doing what the robot wanted me to do - to go around and destroy all of the other Omnitrixes,” Paul accurately ascertained. She would have to think about that robot again later - for now, she had more pressing things to think of.
“That still doesn’t mean anything,” Victoria spat out. “You don’t have proof that I killed your friend.”
“You said you killed someone before,” Amy countered.
“Does she have a wallet? It might have, like, student ID. Or, just, ID. It’d be wet, but…”
Victoria had to hide a smile. When she had played the old college card to kill a ‘trixer, she’d never given out her real alma mater. And even on top of that, there were extra layers of security. She would surrender her ID, and even her phone, but they would never get anything out of it. When she first got the watch, upgrading that security was one of the first things she’d done - it was too useful an item to leave at home when transitioning between her work and civilian lives. (And of course, it was now waterproof.)
She played along, and drew her phone-and-wallet from her pants pocket.
“Fine. Here you go. See what you find.”
Before Paul or Amy could take it, Al Bedo gripped at it, and the security systems kicked in. A great shock overtook his body, lightning spewing from the tech, and he was left convulsing on the floor.
NEB VIII[]
“This place is not so bad,” Viihan surmised, as he worked to lift debris around the building they had occupied as their new ‘house’. Neb helped, of course, pulling nails and even screws out with his mind like it was now second-nature, but he was not so much of use with the drywall or plaster or wood or concrete. His fingers felt stiff since the transformation, though maybe that was just because of the added distance from his body.
“No house ever is,” Neb reminded him. “A roof over our heads to shrug off the rains and walls to keep out the cold winds.” He regarded the walls and the gaps in wood where glass should be with a turn of his head. With no neck, he was able to move his head around without turning his body. He supposed it must look offputting.
Viihan looked up from what he was doing and smiled. “Ah. I had almost forgotten. Summer will be here soon,” he smiled. “But perhaps, yes, tomorrow I will fill the windows with glass.”
Summer. Neb smiled. It was usually a kinder time… When the heat was not trapped in the city, at least.
“You intend to stay here that long?” Neb inquired.
Viihan grinned again. “Perhaps, yes, for a time. As long as it takes. But, even if I leave, I will leave this place better than I found it.” He spread his arms wide. “I will fix this place up for you, and for others, my friend.”
Neb was not entirely satisfied with that answer. Yes, perhaps, while you are here, you can do good. Neb believed that. But when you are gone, who will keep the peace? What will keep the vultures away?
“I hope you do not mind my asking, but… Where you go, you leave gold and jewels in your wake, yes. But what keeps it from fading to sand? What happens to the homes you leave?”
Viihan did not seem to like that question. Neb struck gold.
“I am not sure I wish to answer, but…” Viihan stumbled… but recovered. “But since you’ve asked, my village - my home - it has never been better. The people are rich and healthy, and there is plenty for all to take. No man has to hoard. They are safe, and… Yes, they are armored. They have much to give and nothing to fear. Mostly by my hand, yes, but they are self-sufficient now.”
I do not believe this for more than a minute, Neb thought. The world was not naturally unfair, but made that way by the powers-that-be. Viihan came from a village, he said, yes, but he also came from a nation. At some point even El Dorado would invite politicians, military, economic interest. That would put an end to the peace and tranquility of paradise.
But Neb did not want to poke the bear. He was getting a home now, he reminded himself. Friends, a home and a healthy body were better than he’d had weeks ago, and he wanted to savor them as long as he could. He decided that he was in no position to be critical or choosy.
But he was still worried.
“Whoever claims to own this house will eventually return,” Neb informed Viihan.
“Then let them come. Let them gaze upon all we’ve made in wonder. Whether they meet us with awe or with ire, it will fuel our starting revolution.”
And that was that.
They went back to working, albeit with more tension than before. Debris was repurposed, dust was wiped away. Viihan removed walls where he could, taking the row of individual houses into one long chamber. (Nebosja made sure it was reinforced, with all the ribbing a proper skeleton would need.) They worked efficiently, and effectively, and after a few hours more, Nebosja did believe that Viihan could build a working paradise here in their city.
At least, until others tried to take it from them, Neb caught himself thinking. But he kept silent.
Viihan eventually broke the rhythm of work and the quasi-silence that came with it.
“Say, friend - you may know America better than I do, but… I am no fool. Tell me. American robotics has not gone that far, has it?”
“What?” Neb asked. His head came down from the lofty ceiling to Viihan’s side. (His body shortly followed).
Where Viihan knelt on the floor was a great metal behemoth of a man, albeit more of a militaristic and technological bend to it. Circuits clung to its great bulbous limbs like they were the pelts worn strapped on by a hunter… Though, given its damaged state, it had since instead become the hunted.
“I am no great mechanic - but I don’t think it’s functional any longer,” Viihan ascertained.
“No,” Neb agreed. You did not have to be a surgeon to realize that the great gore coming through its chest would be fatal to man or machine.
Viihan looked to the ceiling and traced his hand down to where the metal corpse lay on the floor. “He must have fallen and made that gaping hole in the ceiling. Then someone must have tried to cover it up. Maybe it, in its dying moments.”
Viihan moved some more of the debris aside. Yes, perhaps - perhaps the artificial man had tried to find comfort in using sheets of drywall and particleboard as blankets. Crazier things have happened, Neb thought with a silent laugh echoing around inside his floating tin head.
But as Neb laughed at the absurdity of it all, Viihan’s brow furrowed deeper. He wrenched a hand into the hole. Neb moved his head in to look. Laying amongst the body must have been a dozen or so strange devices, all emblazoned with glowing icons, just like Viihan’s Terretrix.
“Omnitrixes,” Viihan diagnosed. “I already have one of my own, but… They will prove useful for our cause here.”
Neb stayed silent. He backed his head away from the hole.
“Would you like one, friend? Perhaps they can fix…?”
“No,” Neb found himself saying.
“You seem scared.”
Yes, maybe I am, Neb thought to himself, walking away from the corpse.
“I had better get back to our work. You figure out what you’re doing with those.”
I am scared, Neb silently admitted to himself. Even metal men can die.
TO BE CONTINUED...
NEXT TIME ON POLYTRIXES[]
In a distant time, the wielder of the Omegatrix looks through the past.
Characters[]
- Paul Egbert
- Amy Lamartin
- Viihan
- Nebosja
- Victoria Ingols
- Retaliator
- Pyronite Omnimorph (mentioned)
- Amy's friend (mentioned)
- Al Bedo
- Azmuth (mentioned)
Trivia[]
- This is the first introduction of the real name for Victoria’s Omnitrix - the Omnitrix-Vanilla.
- Albedo is not intended to have any real-world psychological disorder, but more of the “brain shock” I imagine you would get mutating from a Galvan brain to a human one. This is alluded to by Victoria's assertion of the "Algernon effect".
- The episode's title was inspired by the Homestuck track "Pumpkin Party in Sea Hitler's Water Apocalypse".
- This is the last episode before a (hopefully brief) hiatus where I’ll design some new aliens and focus on my grad school homework.
- The Pisciss cell being constructed of "oily black metal" is a reference to oily black stone from A Song of Ice and Fire.