Chapter Text
At a campsite clearing surrounded by woods, under the coat of a starry night. Gwen blew her hair out of her face as she stared down her laptop, She squinted at it willing and hoping to wake back at her own room, organized and clean with a bag neatly packed near the door with all that she might need and want with her parents getting ready to send her to camp instead.
When nothing happened Gwen hissed a sigh looking up through to the darkness in the trees and wishing that maybe a black bear would appear and eat her, then maybe her parents would actually listen to her instead of always spinning their words of wisdom and lording their requests over her.
Behind her in the breaking down RV appropriately named 'The Rust Bucket', Max bumbled about the kitchen excited in not only getting to spend some time with his granddaughter but also introduce her to a whole new world of cuisine.
Taking out mealworms, Graham crackers and marshmallows, Max prepared the stokers and thought back to the good ole' plumber days. Ah, the days of comradery and action, how fun, he wondered which alien encounter would scare Gwen just enough to keep one eye open at night but not enough to disturb her sleep, He learned his lesson with his sons.
Gwen looked over at the sound of her grandpa stepping out the RV announcing dinner, her parents words ringing in her head about this road trip being an enriching experience or whatever. She didn't quite listen over the sound of her carefully crafted (and color- coded) plans being shattering into a million little pieces.
Now, this isn't to say that she hates spending time with her grandpa Max, it's just that he can be quite overzealous about his cooking.
"Chow Time!" accompanied by wriggling ooey-gooey bugs, Case in point. An earthworm(?) slipped out and took a break for freedom. Gwen watched in envy as it made a dash and mentally catalogued her food supply of some rice cakes and hard candy, the future looked bleak indeed.
"In case, you're wondering, these are Marinated Mealworms" so the ooey-gooey earthworm has a name, wonderful, Gwen cursed her older brother Ken for getting to skip out and leave her alone like this.
"Hard to find em' fresh in the states, You know they're considered a delicacy in some countries" Max replied in delight much to Gwen's consternation. "And totally gross in others" she offered with a sweet smile.
Her smile fell as soon as Grandpa Max scooped up an escaping mealworm and slurped it down, filled with nausea and the desperate urge to gag, Gwen stood and offered her Grandpa the sweetest of smiles before making off towards the woods "I'm going to need some time alone to myself, you know to take in nature and be wild for a bit, all part of the enrichment experience I'll be back in a bit"
"Ah ok don't wander too far however, you don't want to get lost in the dark", "Don't worry I'll just be nearby", Max watched as his granddaughter left with a grimace on her face and looked back down to the marinated mealworms, did he start out too fast for her? Hmm, He'd have to cook that sheep's tongue after all it seems.
━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━
Taking a walk eased her mind and though Gwen hated to admit it, this might have been better than camp. She looked back towards the general direction of the campsite with a fresh set of eyes, she was still angry but leaving like that made her feel empty for some reason (The idea of having made Grandpa sad stung). The foliage crushed underneath her feet and she looked through the canopy at the stars twinkling just like those stock images she needed once for a presentation.
A shooting star flew by and Gwen heart lit up with a glimmer at the fantastic sight, with a smile Gwen started to set off back to camp but stopped to look back to the sky to savor the stars once again when she noticed that the trail didn't end and inste-AD IT TURNED TOWARDS HER DIRECTION.
Gwen turned to run with only one thought going through her mind, that she was so going to put bugs in Ken's room. Her thoughts cut off just as a boom envelops her ears and she ends up flying off the ground from the sheer force of the blast just behind her feet.
As the dust settles, her ears stop ringing leaving her in a dazed state, she moves to stand but stumbles backwards into the crater falling headfirst consequently hitting her head on something vaguely egg shaped. Her eyes fall close just as a green light starts filling her vision.
━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━
Max looked out worriedly towards the woods, on the table a steaming sheep's tongue lay waiting to be eaten. He looks up at the stars to remind himself of Gwen's maturity but instead found a smoke trail.
Max immediately felt aggravated at campers leaving without properly dousing their fires, with a sigh he stands and feels his knees pop just as the realization hits, Gwen is still out there.
━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━
A fire extinguisher goes off just as a "Gwen, Where are you?" rings among the flames. A sudden overpowering green flashes through the trees guiding Max to a crater, where he finds his Granddaughter and a naked boy encased in a metal frame lay.
━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━
B3N - 010
OPTIMAL TEMPERATURE
REBOOT.....
LOADING OS
SYSTEM INITIALIZATION
CHECKING BIOCOMPONENTS … OK
CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT … OK
LEFT OPTICAL UNIT ONLINE
RIGHT OPTICAL UNIT ONLINE
VISUAL ANALYSIS SOFTWARE … OK
THERMAL REGULATION SYSTEM ONLINE
INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS … OK
INITIALIZING AI ENGINE … OK
BATTERY STATUS … 98%
MEMORY STATUS … OK
READY
B3N opened his optical units to a grey surface area, his audio processors picking up alight electrical hums and squeaky voices, B3N laid motionless still trying to make sense of things before a creature stepped in his line of sight. B3N startled and startled once more at the feel of a lot more appendages than the last time he was active.
B3N moved his new appendages and marveled at how they followed his command instead of anyone other. Before he could try to find more functions some Galvanic but not grey fingers were now snapping infront of his interaction panel, B3N immediately whipped his head (wow what a feeling) towards the creature in question being met with another smaller and malnourished(?) one at its side.
The creature was seemingly trying to communicate with B3N with the tinier one interjecting in at times, B3N moved his optical units around taking in the strange contraption of amalgamated technical parts that looked to be a project of an extremely young Galvan before he followed the electrical waves to one slim one laying on a table.
Hoping to found information B3N lunged knocking about lots of things and falling unceremoniously on his curiously bipedal limbs, his audio processors picked up surprised shrieks a before he was hoisted up by the big creature, B3N looked up to the creatures face and found it contorted into a strange mixture different from before, B3N wondered what it conveyed in its species but it needed to get to the slim device first.
B3N looked back down to the creatures appendages and found them to have a gentle grip still holding him, B3N was never handled gently he was only ever handled by the cold technical hands of his creator or the greedy hands of conquerors.
He was however interrupted in his musings by the tiny ones noise and was reminded of the slim device, he jolted into action running or rather what he considered running from his time of being attached to bipedal creatures. He hit the table and an electrical jolt hit the middle portion of his being erupting an odd cry and wetness from his interaction panel.
He crumbled into the seat but managed to reach to the device, receding his outer layer to better connect to the odd (dare he say inferior? he could find this device as a plaything for Galvan children only) device and was instantly flooded of information of 'School Notes' particularly interesting was 'Biology' and 'Geography' and a 'color-coded calendar'.
With new eyes, actually this was too weird he's just going to refer to them as to what they actually are, before he could truly comprehend his new body and DNA he found the laptop snatched from under his hand (what a novel concept he found himself happy to have thumb bearing ones, such mobility and dexterity).
He whipped his head over to who he now knows as 'Gwen', feeling gratitude towards her laptop for the well of information he spells out "Thank you" in a very accented tone.