Chapter Text
BRINGGGGG
The school bell rang out signaling the end of the day.
“Finally!” Onyx said he grabbed his bag and began to leave the building. He walked through the halls where the excitement in the air could be felt. It was the last day of school, and every student was ready for summer break.
Onyx smiled to himself as he walked through the halls. The sound of students laughing filled the air as they talked about their plans for vacation
Vrrrrr
He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, he pulled it out and checked his notifications.
Sis: Me and Gwen are waiting outside.
“Right… the summer trip,” he grumbled. His family thought he needed to bond more so they had planned a summer trip between him, his older sister and cousin. “Ehh maybe it won’t be so bad” Onyx followed the crowd out of the school, looking for his family.
“Onyx” he felt someone grab his shoulder. He was pulled around and came face to face with his cousin Gwen. She was 2 years older than him, making her 12. She had pink hair and wore a blue shirt that matched the color of her eyes with a cat emblem printed on the front.
“Oh there you are,” Onyx said.
“Come on,” Gwen said. “Your sister’s waiting.”
Onyx nodded and followed his cousin. His sister was waiting for them in an RV she called the Rustbucket.
“About time you got here,” she said as Onyx and Gwen entered. When Onyx entered he was able to catch a glimpse of himself in a mirror.
He had messy silver hair that fell into his pink eyes in uneven strands and depending on who you asked they would describe him as either looking permanently tired or sad. His outfit consisted of a blue zip up hoodie with a dark purple shirt underneath to contrast it and black sweat pants to complete his look.
He stared up at his sister who was looking back at them from the driver's seat. Unlike Gwen and Onyx, she was a full grown adult at 25. She had long black hair and green eyes. She wore a black jacket with a grey undershirt and slung across her neck was a necklace with a green hourglass symbol that hung from the chain.
“Hey Azlin,” Onyx said
“Hey little bro,” she said.
Onyx took a seat at one of the tables and Gwen sat across from him.
“Alright!” Azlin said brightly as she turned back to the steering wheel. “Let's get this trip started!”
After they had been on the road for a few hours, the sun began to set.
“So,” Gwen said, “It’s been a while since I've seen you Onyx.”
“Yea,” he responded. “What have you been up to?”
“Oh you know, not much. I just got my green belt in karate,” she responded.
Onyx just smiled. Gwen smiled awkwardly back.
‘Crap’ Gwen thought to herself. ‘We’re supposed to be bonding and I'm messing it up. Me and Azlin where the ones who wanted to go on this trip, don’t mess it up now Gwen’
“Listen Onyx. I know we haven’t exactly been close for a few years, but that's what this road trips all about. Me and Azlin really do want to get to know you. We want to be your family for real.”
“She’s right,” Azlin spoke up. “I'm your sister, but I barely talk to you.”
“Mhhhh,” Onyx grumbled while he shifted uncomfortably.
‘It's not like I intentionally pushed them away,’ he thought. ‘It's just… I don't know, it always felt like something was missing. Like I wasn’t meant to belong.’
“Just think about it,” Gwen said.
“Yea, sure,” Onyx said quietly.
Azlin and Gwen smiled softly.
They finally arrived at a campsite in Yosemite. It was the middle of the night and while Azlin was making a campfire Gwen started setting up their food.
Once they set up camp, they all gathered around a fire.
“So Onyx,” Gwen said. “Tell us about yourself.”
“U-um,” Onyx stuttered. It had been years since he had actually interacted with Gwen in anything other than one word conversations or little waves. Now that he thought about it, it had been a while since he had full fledge conversation with anyone.
“I don’t know what to say,” he responded. “I don't do much. Don’t have many friends, never felt like I really fit in anywhere.” They looked at him with sympathy. “I felt like…. I don’t know, it felt like no matter what I did I just pushed people away.”
Gwen stood up and pulled her cousin into a hug.
“It's ok,” she said. “We’re here for you now”
“U-uh y-yeah,” Onyx pushed himself out of Gwen's arms. “Um, I’m gonna take a walk.” He quickly excused himself from the situation and walked into the forest.
“I think the hug might have been a little too much,” Azlin said.
“Huuu,” Gwen sighed and hung her head.
Onyx walked through the forest, the leaves crunching beneath his feet.
“Ugh,” he groaned. “How am I supposed to bond with them if I can’t even hold a conversation with them?” He slumped against a tree and buried his face in his hands. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
WOOSH
“Huh?” he looked up just in time to see something fly across the sky. “A shooting star?”
WIZSH
Suddenly the object curved heading straight towards him.
“OH CRA—"
KABOOM
The blast impact knocked him back slamming him against a tree.
“GA GK,” he coughed, spitting out a little blood. He stood up groaning, his body ached from the impact, his back was especially sore from taking the brunt of the hit but it didn’t feel like anything too serious. He looked to the massive that was now in front of him. Purple energy emanated out of it. The ethereal glow seemed like it was calling to him. “What is that?”
He inched forward slowly and peered down into the hole. Inside he saw a gray pod that had opened to reveal what looked like a watch laying inside, the source of the glow.
“What would a watch be doing in outer space?” Onyx questioned. He began to reach towards the pod, but like it had a mind of its own, the watch jumped out of the pod and latched itself onto him.
“What the—!” He stumbled back falling to the ground. The device no longer resembled a watch but was now a dark black ooze. It slithered around his body going down his arm and swirling around his torso before extending up to his right hand. It wrapped itself in multiple layers around his hand before solidifying and turning back into its original form.
“Get off!,” Onyx screamed and tried to pry it off his hand yelling in panic the entire time but the device refused to budge. Eventually after his throat had gone sore from screaming, he gave up and dropped to his knees.
Left without much choice he diced to actually see what had attached itself to him.
Unlike a normal watch it had strapped itself to the back of his hand rather than his wrist. The watch itself was purple with a black dial on the top inside the dial was a pink glowing hourglass design.
“What is this thing?” Onyx noticed a pink button on the side of the watch. Out of curiosity he pressed it. The face plate raised and the hourglass icon changed to a humanoid looking figure engulfed in flames. He looked around before shrugging and slapping the face plate of the watch. It sank back down creating a massive flash of purple light.
When the light faded Onyx had changed. He had turned into a glowing flaming creature.
“WHAT THE HELL!!!!” Onyx scrambled. He was about to start panicking, afraid of the fire that he thought would kill him when he realized the fire wasn’t burning him, it didn’t even hurt. He felt nothing. “I'm on fire and it doesn’t hurt?”
Tentatively Onyx began to flex his fingers. A couple sparks flew off his hand but other than that nothing happened, his body responded like normal. His face of panic turned into a smile. He waved his hand, fire shot off of it blasting forward and destroying some trees.
“Cool” he said. But the blast he shot off didn’t stop, it struck multiple trees igniting them and allowing the flames to grow rapidly engulfing more of the forest.
“wait stop!” Onyx called out in a panic but it was too late the entire surrounding forest had caught fire.
BEEP
BEEP
BOOP
There was a flash of red light, and Onyx changed back into his human form.
Back at the campsite Gwen and Azlin had gathered around the camp fire to roast marshmallows.
“Should we go looking for Onyx?” Gwen asked. “He’s been gone for a while.”
“Yea,” Azlin said standing up. “Let's go. I wanna make sure he isn’t hurt.”
They began to walk towards the tree line at the beginning of the forest, but as they walked forward they saw a massive cloud of smoke rising from behind the trees.
“Isn’t that where Onyx went?” Gwen asked quietly.
Both Gwen and Azlin looked at each other in a panic before running towards the forest calling out for Onyx.
“ONYX!” Gwen cried out, She ran through the inferno surrounding her. “ONYX WHERE—Oof.” Gwen collided with her cousin who was stumbling through the burning forest in a daze. Once she got her bearings Gwen smiled and quickly pulled her cousin into a hug.
“We were so worried!” she exclaimed. “Come on, we gotta go.” Gwen quickly pulled her cousin with her, the two of them running back to Azlin.
“Onyx!” Azlin exclaimed upon seeing the two of them “thank god your—" Azlin’s eyes caught a glimpse of the watch strapped onto her brother's hand, her eyes immediately narrowed. “Where’d you get this?” she grabbed Onyx’s arm pointing at the watch.
“Is that really the most important thing right now!?!” Gwen yelled, motioning to the blazing forest around them.
“Right. Come on, let's go.” Azlin started to pull Onyx along with her, but he resisted, tearing his arm loose from her grip.
“No,” he said, “We have to do something to help. This… this fire is my fault”
“What?” Gwen asked. “What happened?”
“I—Here just let me show you.” Onyx activated the watch by popping up the dial. Onyx smacked the watch causing another purple flash which again transformed him.
Instead of turning into the fiery alien this time, he had a hard metallic red body with blue tubes of water coming out of his arms connecting to a giant tank of water on his back.
“What the—" Gwen shouted in surprise.
Azlin’s eyes widened. “Onyx?” She questioned.
“See,” he said, “it's this watch. It keeps turning me into things. Last time I transformed into some fire guy and started all this!” Onyx pointed around at the forest.
Gwen still couldn’t believe her eyes, but Azlin was taking this situation surprisingly well.
“Gwen,” she said, “Calm down, we need to focus.”
“Uh y-yea,” Gwen stuttered.
“But for now,” Azlin looked at Onyx, “those tubes look like they're filled with water. Put out this fire Onyx,”
He nodded, “right.”
It had taken about 30 minutes but Onyx had finally put out the fire. Now Azlin, Gwen and Onyx were all gathered around in their camp. Onyx had told them the story of how he found the watch and what it did. Obviously they had a lot of questions.
“So…” Gwen asked “what was it like? Turning into those monsters?”
“Not monsters.” Azlin said “Aliens.”
Both Onyx and Gwen looked at her confused.
“I mean look at them!” She quickly said “what else could they be!”
“I guess,” Onyx said.
He looked back down at the watch and began to fiddle with the dial.
“Don’t mess with that thing too much we still don’t know what it really is” Azlin looked out towards the forest. “I'm gonna go check out that crash site.”
Floating out in space just outside of earth was a massive ship. Inside was one of the most feared people in the universe. Vilgax. He was floating motionless in a glass tube, thick orange fluid swirling around him were seeping into and healing the multiple wounds that were scattered across his mutilated body. A recent battle had cost him dearly,
One of his arms as well as a leg was fully blown off, his remaining arm was severely damaged with chunks missing from it while his last leg had been cut in half with tendrils hanging from where his foot once was.
Around the chamber, robotic drones worked in absolute silence, adjusting machinery and monitoring his regeneration process .
“Report” He growled.
“We have triangulated the omnitrix’s position” one of his robotic soldiers said “should I send drones to retrieve it?”
“RRRR” Vilgax growled the fury in his eyes burning. “If it wasn’t for Azimuth I wouldn't be stuck in this regeneration tube relying on these weak machines. Send the drones, retrieve the omnitrix at any cost.”
“Yes lord Vilgax.” The robot nodded before turning back to the computer.
Back on earth Onyx was messing with the watch again trying to figure out how it worked. Fiddling with the different buttons until eventually he got the ring dial of the watch to pop back up.
“Hey, I think I figured it out!” He exclaimed.
“Hm?” Gwen questioned. She was sat up against the Rustbucket and up until now had just been watching her cousin pace back and forth while he fiddled.
Onyx held up the watch proudly. “You press this button on the side then when the dial pops up twist it until you find something you want, hit it back down and you’ll transform into 1 of 10 aliens”
“Well you heard Azlin you shouldn—”
VWHOOSH
Suddenly five red pod shaped drones tore through the trees of the forest flying into the camp sight, interrupting Gwen.
“What the hell!” Gwen jumped to her feet.
The underside of the drones opened up and deployed the barrel of what appeared to be some kind of gun.
“You said you knew how to use that thing now?” Gwen questioned, backing away from the drones that were aiming at them.
“Yea” Onyx nodded.
“Then use it!”
Onyx slapped the watch and transformed in a brilliant flash of light. His body changed now being made out of jagged green razor sharp crystals he looked like a living stone, the moon light reflecting off his diamond hard skin.
BAM BAM!
BAM BAM!
The drones opened fire, Lazers blasting out of their weapons.
Onyx acted fast, raising his hands green crystals sprouted from the ground and formed a dome shape around him and Gwen easily deflecting the blasts.
“How’d you know to do that?” Gwen asked
“I don’t know.” Onyx’s voice sounded deeper and rougher now. “It was just instinct” he looked down and his hands “lets see if this’ll work”
He clenched his fist making crystals shoot out of the dome and slice threw the forest and a couple of the drones. He continued the onslaught of projectiles until the dome was completely gone.
“Three left” Gwen said hurriedly
“Im on it” Onyx raised his hands and started to shoot a volley crystal spikes at the drones. The drones began to weave through the air twisting and turning to dodge the attacks and countered with their own rapid blasts whenever they could.
Onyx dived out of the way of a laser and quickly rolled to his feet before shooting a precision strike at one of the drones. The crystal spike flew threw the air and sliced one of the drones into two blowing it up
‘Two left’ He thought to himself..
Once again relying on instinct he commanded his body to move like it never had before. Morphing one of his arms into a crystal blade he jumped into the air and slashed at one of the drones. His blade carved straight threw the Robots circuitry he landed on the other side of it while the drone fell to the ground with a loud thump!
When Onyx landed the last drone fired on him, he raised his hand a shield forming out of his palm that reflected the energy blasts back at the drone destroying it.
Azlin came running out of the forest hearing the commotion; she wasn’t expecting a pleasant sight, only to freeze when she saw the rubble left over from the fight. “What happened!?” She asked.
“Some kind of drones attacked me and Onyx” Gwen said
BEEP
BEEP
BOOOP
The watch flashed red, transforming Onyx back to a human.
“Hmmm” Azlin hummed and picked up one of the leftover shards from the drones. “We should move, it's clearly not safe he—"
KABOOM
A massive explosion shook the ground making the three of them stumble.
“What was that!?” Onyx asked. He looked to where he thought the sound emanated from and over the treeline he saw a giant robot rising up. It started blasting around it wildly, screams and panicked cries could be heard from whatever camp sight had been unlucky to be at its landing location.
Onyx and his family stared in shock. Onyx started backing up in fear not knowing what to do. That's when Gwen spoke up.
“We have to help them” she said
“What!” Onyx exclaimed “are you insane we have to get out of here”
“Think about it. That things probably after the watch it's looking for you”
“Gwens right” Azlin said “it’s our responsibility to stop that thing”
Onyx looked between the two before sighing in defeat.
“Fine,” he said.
He followed his cousin and sister into the forest arriving at another campsite. There the robot was standing tall and reeking havoc; many had already died and others were injured.
“Onyx!” Azlin yelled
“Im on it!” he said. He popped up the dial and twisted it until he saw an icon of an alien with Four Arms. “Let's try this one!!”
BZZZSH
He slammed down on the watch and in a flash of purple light he had transformed into a big red alien with Four Arms and eyes.
“So what does this guy do?” Gwen asked
“Let's find out” Onyx charged in with a battle cry.
Off in the distance hidden on a mountain two people watched.
One of them , a girl, had silver hair that flowed down her back in a long pony tail and purple eyes. She wore a pink robe that flowed all the way down to her legs paired with purple leggings and on her hip was a some kind of bag that had a face stitched into it.
They watched as Onyx charged in and started to tear the robot apart. Ripping off its arms and using them as weapons.
“I've never seen a creature like that,” she said.
“Indeed,” the second person said. He had a white pale face that looked more like a skull than anything else and wore a black and red robes.
“Uncle Hex?” the girl asked “what do we do”
“Nothing” he said “the final charm is here this creature is of no consequence” Hex began to walk away
“But uncle!—"
“Do not question me Charmcaster!” Hex yelled.
Charmcaster lowered her head and shrunk in on herself.
“Yes uncle, sorry uncle”
“Good. now come we have work to do”
Charmcaster gave one last look towards the battle before following her uncle.