The Other Side (PG, Rating may change)

My fanfic about Bink's story. Shall update first post later with table of contents. When I have some more contents.

Chapter 1 Part 1

Sawder stared into space, deeply puzzled.

Mere seconds ago, she had been bouncing off the walls. One too many scoops of ice cream, she guessed. (Although, to be honest, it was more like one to many bowls.) Spinning around on one foot in the center of her room, the air pushed around by her thin, wildly swinging arms somehow strong enough to stir the stacks of paper piled on her messy desk, primal noises that English doesn't even have words for escaping her lips between giddy chuckles. Two button pushes later she was settled down. Verging on tranquil even, and she may have gotten that far if it weren't for her shock at the sudden mood swing.

Her plan had been to go Pixystuck. Her logical excuse was that she would be able to burn the excess sugar faster in this form; her real reasoning was that fluttering around her room like a crazed sugar-farting hummingbird would be fun as heck. But alas, the Alternitrix once again decided that being a pain in the ass was in order. She still didn't know why she even bothered to dial in aliens at all if it was just going to go all random on her every time.

Even if she had gone Pixystuck, it wouldn't really have mattered. The rush wouldn't have carried over. She'd notice things like this every once and a while, but never on this large of a scale; for example, sometimes on an especially tiring day she would feel suddenly refreshed after a transformation, like she just woke up from a good nap, but then was just as weary as before when she turned back. In fact, it seemed like none of her conditions carried over between transformations, but they never really went away either. Like each alien was a clean slate. And then some things carried over between different transformations into the same form, like when she got that cut as Burrowyrm and it was still there- and bleeding- two weeks later when she next went him.

She wondered if the other ATD wielders had the same issue. She knew for a fact that Ben sure didn't, he had been complaining about the exact opposite a few days prior. About how after he goes Chromastone or Diamondhead and gets involved in an especially tough battle involving lots of sharp objects being thrown at him, he often shifted back to human form to find himself dotted with shallow cuts. She had no clue about the others, though. She could always ask Grant about it. Tyson too. Maybe even Jon, if he was in a good mood. As for the rest of them… she wasn't really all that close to anyone else on the team. Not surprising given her odd behavior and lack of social skills, and she didn't really have too much of a problem with it. Her lack of connection just got annoying sometimes.

She suddenly realized that she had been standing shock still in the middle of her room as Sawder for the past 5 minutes, just thinking. Not surprising, she'd gone way longer without noticing. She shrugged and decided to plop herself down on the bed, and would have if an image of her bed sheets bursting into flames from her tail heat didn't pop into her mind's eye.

Her mind wandered back to her previous subject, and pretty much tumbled everything that was gone over so far around and around in her head. She managed to come to no satisfying conclusions, so she just chalked it up as one more thing to ask Alternate Azmuth when she saw him again. IF she saw him again.

All the other ATD wielders were always complaining about how much their watches confused them. How they didn't even know who made it, or what it's connected to, or why it keeps bugging out on them. She knew all of those things about hers, and she honestly thought that her situation was harder to wrap one's brain around even with answers. She could break it down into a few vague but simple chunks, but really it was infinitely more complex than that.

To make a long story short, her Omnitrix, the Alternitrix as she dubbed it, came from an alternate universe, somewhat parallel to this one. And it got horrid reception with its alternate Primus.

Honestly, she wasn't even sure if all this was 100% correct. The one she was pretty sure was Alternate Azmuth only explained it to her once after she begged five straight minutes for it, and he gave up half way through. There was a lot more that she learned on the subject, much of which she gained from the whopping 10 minutes of extranet access she snagged when she was in the Rustbucket with Ben and a bunch of other ATD wielders. She still didn't really get it, but felt like she would if she got another look, another chance to read it all over.

She still couldn't really believe that she was contemplating all this so confidently, knowing that it was factual. She had done so before, but that was all in the name of fiction and fantasy and fun. It never really occurred to her before the Big Event that it might be rooted in reality.

She leaned her head against the wall to take a little weight off her feet, letting her mind wander back to the day of said Big Event as she closed her eyes and drifted back into her memory, for lack of anything better to do with her time.

~~~

August 14, 2010. Sofia sat on her bed, nowhere near sound asleep as tired as she was. Her legs pulsated and burned from the hurried walk home from school. "I Think Ur A Contra" played in the background. It's hauntingly surreal resonance urged her to retreat into her mind, and she happily obliged. It had been a long, hard day. She'd forgotten to bring her lunch to camp, a bunch of 7-year-olds decided that she was a better playground than the actual playground, and worst of all, people were starting to get suspicious of her. Suspicious of that thing that looked like a watch but wasn't.

They noticed that she'd been wearing for three days straight, never taking it off. One of them begged her to wear it, she obviously had to decline. He bugged her for the rest of the day about it, calling her a stick in the mud and asking what the big deal was. In retrospect she probably could have just said it was stuck, that she managed to superglue it to her wrist or something, but then he would have tried to get it off, and it would hurt, and then it would react and explode without exploding again. She felt bad enough that she had sent her brother and one of her friends to the emergency room for it already (luckily the injuries were either minor or cared for immediately, it could have been much worse), the last thing she needed was more guilt piled on her head.

She stared at the thing. Its faceplate glowed faintly green, as it did constantly. There was something deeply troubling about the glow, like it was another pent-up charge ready to detonate. She knew that someone pulling on the watch itself would cause it to go off, but she had no idea what else might. Maybe pulling anywhere on her would do it. She had been cautious of any contact with anyone those past few days, and she thought that if she isolated herself much longer it would start to take its toll. But she had no choice- she was a walking landmine, and there was nothing she could do about it.

It may be useful to note at this time that she had absolutely no idea that the watch allowed her to shapeshift into alien forms, or that the watch was of alien origin. As far as she could tell, it was a bomb, and only that. She dared not touch any of the buttons at risk of setting it off, and even three days into it she hadn't activated it yet.

The song ended, and since it was the last of the album, the music stopped and the room flooded with silence. She didn't bother to turn it back on; she was too tired, physically and emotionally. The past three days had been complete hell. Somewhere in the back of her brain, her endlessly optimistic side managed to poke its nose out of the sea of despair. It can only go up from here! it cried out. We're going to have a breakthrough any day now!

She bit her lip confusedly at the thought. She trusted her optimism- it hadn't let her down yet- but what was she supposed to do now? Sit around and wait for divine inspiration? She wasn't sure if she could wait however long that takes.

Experiment, her optimism whispered in her ear. You know it can't hurt you. Go somewhere where there's no people around and press a few buttons, see what happens.

Despite the fact that she thought it was probably right, she froze in her spot in harsh refusal. Just the thought of poking the wretched thing sent spiders running up and down the length of her spine. No way she was going to go out and start messing with it on purpose.

Pfft, wimp, her optimism huffed. She smiled in response. She knew she was a coward, but at least she was a coward with all her limbs still attached. Her optimism scowled at her and stormed off into the deep recesses of her mind. She didn't give a crap, really.

She pursed her lips at the ceiling, not entirely sure what to do with herself. Usually at this point she would have just sat and thought about stuff for a while, but she didn't like what she was thinking. Waste time online, maybe? No, the only website her parents were letting her go on at the moment was Facebook, and there she would just get bombarded with questions about what her deal was at camp. She didn't need that.

She glanced across her room at the mound of clay on the table. Usually she would sculpt something when she got bored as it was her favorite pass time, but lately due to all the stress she had found herself unable to find inspiration. Ugh. She realized how ironic that was, that her emotional turmoil was giving her art block when stereotypically that's what most artists draw inspiration from. Sometimes she just plain hated how abnormal she was.

She was about to give up and go eat something when she heard a soft but sharp beep fill the room. She stopped dead. Out of the corner of her eye she noted a now very powerful green luminosity emanating from her wrist. She moved it closer into her view. The faceplate of the watch thing that popped up and was glowing neon lime, and what seemed to be a field of little holographic dots was appearing in the field of light it generated.

She stared at it stupidly, jaw on the floor.

The cloud of light began to condense itself, forming two definite shapes, although said shapes left her even more befuddled than before. They looked kind of like people, but at the same time, not even close. The proportions were all wrong, like a 6 year old's attempt at sculpting a self portrait, adding several unfamiliar facial features that she didn't even have words for. The skin color was indiscernible since the whole picture was monochromatic green, but she could make out several near vertical columns of speckles running down their distorted faces. But the oddest feature of all were the fleshy, barnacle-like bulbs smack dab in the center of their foreheads, the flaps vibrating softly.

And then, all of a sudden, one of them spoke.

Chapter 1 Part 2

For several minutes, all I could do was stare at them.

They were like absolutely nothing I'd ever seen before. My primal, human instinct- the same one that told me that babies are cute and snakes are scary and food tastes good- screamed at me that those things were absolutely hideous, not human and therefore not to be trusted, I should get out of there, so on and so forth. As usual, I ignored it. Because these guys, they were just so freaking cool.

My mind raced so fast I could almost feel my brain tissue pounding almost as fast as my adrenaline-pumped heart. What are they? Guys in costumes? Computer animations? I don't think so, but that might just be because I want to believe it's something weird…. No, wait, I'm right, we don't have anything in our society that could pull this kind of thing off, especially the hologram, holy crap it's a hologram! So what are they? Aliens? Magic creatures? Eh, my money's on aliens. What planet are they from? Galaxy? Species name? Are they here? Do they have hyperspace travel? Just hyperspace communications? Pretty obvious they have that. Wait, they're messing with something off the hologram. Maybe they're teleporting here- wait, how'd the get the coordinates? Oh, yeah, the thing on my arm the hologram is coming out of. Did they build it? Do they know what it's for? Are they going to use it to blow Earth up? Do they even want me to have it? Maybe they can take it off! I'll ask them wait no language barrier. I wonder if they have translators, if they don't this is going to be one heck of a cluster-

"You," one of the aliens said. It shocked my so much that I practically fell out of my chair. I'll take that as a yes.

"What species are you?" he asked me.

I hesitated, praying not to make a fool of myself, then answered, "uh, human. Also known as Homo sapien. Wh… what about you guys?"

"That's none of your concern," the other one replied with a stern look.

I bit my lip, feeling kind of embarrassed that I was just shut down like that. Then it occurred to me that these aliens seem to have the same methods of emotional expression as human. Sweeeet.

"I can't find either of those terms in the database," the first one reported, fiddling with the thing off screen that I was beginning to suspect was some sort of computer.

"Odd. Find out where this transmission is originating."

"Got it." The first alien left.

"So," I began awkwardly after a moment of total silence, "I don't mean to be rude here- I'm honored that an alien race has decided to contact me- but why exactly are you calling?"

"You have something we want," the remaining alien said. "And we are willing to take it by any means necessary."

"Wait, is it this thing?" I tried to hold up the device on my wrist for them to see, but then realized that the hologram was sorta coming out of it, and doing that just moved the camera. It didn't take me long to realize this wasn't going to work. "Err, the thing on my wrist that you're contacting me though?"

"Precisely."

"Well, I'd love to hand it over," I said sincerely, "but I have no clue how to take this thing off."

"We'll take care of that," he assured me. "Seeing as you're willing to cooperate with us- which is much appreciated, by the way- this is how it will work. As soon as we figure out where you are, we'll come and pick you up from your planet and take you to our station, where we will remove the Omnitrix and destroy it. Then you will be sent back home to resume your normal life."

Honestly, the only part of that plan I wasn't completely thrilled about was being sent back. My face lit up at the prospect of what he said.

"…one moment, please." I turned around (which really didn't do much but whatever), then squeed out loud at the top of my lungs. "Eeeeee, I get to go into SPACE!" I squealed, doing a little happy dance in place. After I got that out, I resumed my normal position with my arm out in front of me so that I was actually in the hologram.

"Moving on," I said, a bit breathless but still smiling like a Cheshire Cat.

"Hey, Hinok," the alien called off screen to the other. "Got the location?"

"Yeah," Hinok shouted back, a tinge of uneasiness in him voice. "But you're not going to like it."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Well," he said, trailing off. "The Omnitrix…"

"Is where?"

"Another universe."

Silence on both ends. For them, it was stunned silence at the news. For me, it was just me wallowing in how much my day was being made right then.

The unnamed alien glanced at me. "We need to take this to Azmuth," he said to Hinok, who was just coming back on screen.

"We'll call you back in a little bit," Hinok told me. "Don't worry, it won't be long, time matches up no matter what universe you're in. Just try not to leave your current location, alright?"

"I'm assuming this means the first plan is off?" I half-asked.

The unnamed alien sighed. "No duh."

Despite the fact that it was for incredibly awesome reasons, I couldn't help but feel disappointed.

"Uh, well, okay," I finally replied. "See ya later, I guess."

And just like that, the hologram vanished.

~~~

I can't even begin to describe how inspired I felt after my first alien encounter.

I had been kneading and molding and prodding away at that mound of clay for at least two hours by then. At that point I was definitely able to recognize it as the head of one of the aliens, but some things were off. Lots of things, actually. I needed a reference picture. Actually, what I needed was to see them again, for more reasons than just accuracy in my art.

My eyes darted to the watch thing- apparently called the Omnitrix- every few seconds; my ears were tuned for the small beep and buzz that sounded right before the hologram appeared. I don't think I had ever been this okay with the fact that I had a bomb stuck to my wrist, as long as I could use it to talk to extraterrestrials.

I stopped sculpting. I had done all I could do at that moment. I had to get the basic shape down right before I moved on to the details. And oh man, I wanted to do those details. The small indentation in the center of every one of the speckles. The three ridge-like skin folds radiating out from the corner of the eye. But no, I couldn't, not until I saw them again. Which I knew I would.

Soon.

Maybe.