The next day, several dozen miles south of Dairyville, the Rust Bucket sat parked beside a crystal-clear lake beneath a bright, cloudless sky.
It was the sort of morning that should have inspired peace and relaxation.
Naturally, none of them were using it properly.
Gwen sat cross-legged near the open side of the RV, buried in her spell book with the same level of focus she usually reserved for something far more important than a summer vacation. Ben, meanwhile, had claimed a seat nearby and was completely absorbed in his little game console, his thumbs moving almost nonstop as if the fate of the universe depended on whatever he was doing.
Little Golshi was crouched beside them with a Rubik's Cube in both hands, still stubbornly trying to solve it. Her brows were knit together in concentration, but the cube remained as scrambled as ever.
Orfevre sat a little apart from the others, eyes closed and posture straight as she meditated. Now that she had better control over her Aura, she was trying to refine it further, carefully drawing it in and settling it down with each slow breath.
Evan sat nearby with a notebook open in front of him, a pen spinning rapidly between his fingers as he stared at the page. He had been trying to come up with new upgrade ideas for a while now, but nothing had felt right yet. Every time he thought of something promising, he would end up crossing it out before it had a chance to become anything useful.
On the kitchen counter beside him sat yesterday's newspaper.
The front page featured a blurry image of Spiderthing in action, accompanied by the rather dramatic headline: Harangue Nation: Who is Spider-Thing?
The article had come out not long after Spiderthing had dealt with the stone monster that the public had quickly and unhelpfully dubbed Cinderblock. Evan had glanced through it once, but the writing style had left a strange impression on him. The whole thing sounded oddly familiar.
For some reason, he couldn't shake the feeling that the publisher reminded him of someone.
He just couldn't remember who. He did remember that the name had started with J. There had been a J in the middle too, if he was remembering correctly. And the last name had also started with J.
Or maybe it had just been J.J.J.
Evan frowned a little, then tapped the end of his pen against the notebook.
"Gotta love summer vacation," Ben said in a relaxed tone, his feet propped up on the table as he leaned back in his seat. "Nothing to do all day long but sit around and- BWAH!"
He yelped and nearly fell out of his chair when a large, strangely soaked hand suddenly landed on his shoulder.
The Tennyson kids all looked up at once.
Max stood there in his bathrobe, his head completely covered in shampoo, looking thoroughly annoyed despite his otherwise calm expression.
"Grandpa, what gives?" Ben asked, blinking at him in confusion.
"What gives," Max repeated, sounding just as irritated as he looked, "is that I ran out of water in the shower. Again."
He grabbed a cloth from the counter and started wiping the shampoo off his head. "It's your job to keep the tank full, Ben."
"I will…" Ben muttered, already reclining back into the game again. "Just… later."
"Sure," Gwen said with a dry look. "The same way you're going to make your bed or take out the trash?"
Max's gaze shifted to her, and his tone sharpened. "You're not one to talk, young lady."
Gwen stiffened slightly.
Max pointed toward the sink, where a pile of dirty dishes had been sitting long enough to suggest they had become a permanent fixture. "You think those dishes are just going to clean themselves?"
"Well…" Gwen hesitated, then quickly looked for an escape route. "What about Evan, Orfevre, and Gold Ship? What have they done lately?"
"Yeah," Ben added, clearly willing to drag someone else into the argument if it meant saving himself. "Couldn't we let Evan refill the water tank? He has Waterhazard and can generate water at will."
Gold Ship immediately perked up at that, one hand on her hip and the other held out in mock offense. "Golshi might cause trouble, but Golshi cleans up after herself."
Orfevre opened one eye, clearly unimpressed. "I clean the outside of the RV three times a week by myself."
Then she closed her eye again and resumed focusing on her Aura.
Evan, still spinning the pen between his fingers, gave a small shrug without looking up from his notebook. "I just do whatever Grandpa told me to."
That was, unfortunately, a much more meaningful answer than it sounded like at first.
Because of Evan stepping in to fill Stay Gold's shoes when it came to taking care of his siblings, the other Gold siblings had slowly picked up the habit of doing things for themselves. Some of it came from respect, some of it from pride, and some of it simply came from not wanting Evan to end up carrying everything on his own.
The youngest, Feno and Golshi, would occasionally start chores before making a mess and then cleaning it up again when they realized they had made things worse. The older ones usually tried harder, at least enough to make sure Evan wouldn't need to fix their mistakes afterward.
Oru, being competitive by nature, absolutely refused to let her work look sloppy to her brother. If she was going to do something, then she intended to do it properly.
Journey and Festa, on the other hand, had their own kind of pride. As older siblings, they weren't about to let their younger brother do everything for them when they were perfectly capable of handling it themselves.
Max watched all of this with a strangely stern expression.
"Golshi at least cleans up after herself. Oru finishes her task already. And Evan shouldn't be doing everything around here."
His voice had sharpened more than usual, and for a moment it sounded less like a complaint and more like genuine concern.
He understood very well that if nobody stepped in, the chores would eventually pile up until Evan was the only one left doing them.
As a grandfather, how could he just stand by and let everything fall onto Evan?
Ben folded his arms and leaned back farther in his chair. "Lay off, Grandpa. If we wanted to do chores, we could've just stayed at home."
Max opened his mouth to reply, but suddenly, the radio crackled. Then a cheerful, overly enthusiastic voice burst through the static.
"Y'all ready for a little fresh air? Want a chance to commune with the animals? You know someone who needs to learn the value of some good ol' fashioned hard work? Then sign your whole clan up for a week at Dairyville's Family Fun Farm Camp! And experience life on a real working farm!"
The silence that followed was short, but heavy.
Max's face slowly shifted. A grin crept across his mouth. It was not a pleasant grin.
Ben noticed it immediately and narrowed his eyes. "...How did we get a local advertisement on a satellite radio?"
...
"Trust me, you're gonna love it!" Max said with far too much cheer for someone driving the kids out to the middle of nowhere. The Rust Bucket rumbled along a dirt road cutting through endless fields of green and gold, the horizon stretching out in every direction until it seemed like the world itself had run out of places to go. Ahead, standing alone in the middle of all that open land, was a farm that looked as if it had been there long before the road was ever paved.
"When I was a kid, I spent every summer on my uncle Jedidiah's farm," Max continued, clearly trying to sell the experience. "This kind of work builds character."
Whether or not that was true, he certainly looked like he believed it.
The RV bounced into a muddy driveway and came to a stop near the barn. Max climbed out first, then turned and waved the others down with the kind of energy that suggested he had been waiting for this moment all week.
The first thing the kids noticed was a broad-shouldered woman in overalls standing near the yard, scattering corn across the ground in practiced handfuls. A flock of chickens immediately rushed toward her, pecking and clucking over the feed. Beside her stood a farm boy who looked like he had been dragged there against his will, clutching a small pet pig to his chest as if the animal were the only thing keeping him grounded.
The woman straightened and gave them a firm, appraising look before breaking into a welcoming smile.
"Welcome," she said. "I'm Joan Maplewood. This is my son, Todd." She tipped her chin toward the boy beside her. "You must be the Tennysons."
"That's right," Max said, stepping forward and shaking her hand with a grin. "Call me Max. And these tenderfoots are my grandkids. Ben, Gwen, Evan, Oru, and Golshi."
"Hey," Ben and Gwen said at the same time.
"Hi…" Todd added, his voice thin and uncertain.
His pig gave a small snort from under his arm, and the pair of them seemed to shrink a little under the attention.
Oru's expression had already managed to make both of them stiffen. It was not really her fault. She simply had a difficult time adjusting her face to match the mood of the room, and the look she usually gave her brother, flat, sharp, and just a little too intense, which had a way of making strangers think she was seconds away from disapproving of their entire existence. It was the kind of expression that did not translate well when meeting new people.
Joan clapped her hands once, decisively.
"Well, enough chitchat," she said. "You're here to work, so let's get to it. Start by unloading that truck full of feed over there."
She pointed toward a pickup parked nearby, its back packed so high with burlap sacks that it looked ready to buckle under the weight.
Ben stared at it in disbelief. "Hold on. Did you just make up this whole farm camp thing so people would pay you for free labor?"
Joan didn't even flinch. "No. But the checks are already in the bank, so there's no point complaining about it now."
Max laughed like he found that answer perfectly reasonable. "C'mon, kids. It'll be good exercise."
That was the moment Gold Ship decided to help.
Unfortunately, her definition of "help" turned out to be standing on tiptoe and trying to lift two sacks at once, which immediately ended with both bags toppling over and burying her from the shoulders down. There was a muffled yelp, a flurry of motion, and then Evan calmly reached down and lifted one bag away as if it weighed nothing at all, freeing his little sister from the pile.
A moment later, he reached for a second bag, then casually carried both of them, one tucked under each arm. Orfevre, not to be outdone, did the same beside him.
Joan blinked, then let out a low whistle. "Well, I didn't expect the three of you to be built like that. You make those bags look light."
Gold Ship, to be fair, could manage one bag without much trouble and still dance around with it like she was showing off. As for Evan and Orfevre, there was really no need to explain themselves. The two of them had already proven more than once that they were the sort of kids who could put a hole in reinforced glass with a kick if they got serious enough.
The rest of the Tennysons, however, were not so lucky.
With obvious reluctance, Ben and Gwen trudged toward the truck while Max hoisted the first sack from the bed and passed it to Ben. The second it landed in his arms, Ben nearly went face-first into the dirt. The bag was so heavy he could barely hold it at chest level, forcing him to haul it awkwardly against his body just to keep from dropping it.
Gwen fared only slightly better. She tried to swing hers onto her shoulder, only to immediately regret it as the weight pressed down on her with a miserable strain that ran straight through her back.
"Oh, man," Ben groaned after the first few trips. "There's gotta be, like, a thousand of these things."
His hand twitched toward the Omnitrix with a conspiratorial look, as if he were already preparing to escape responsibility.
"Ben 'I'm-too-lazy-to-fill-a-water-tank' Tennyson," Max said, intercepting him with one large hand before he could make a move. "And only him, if you know what I mean."
Ben froze. A faint chill ran up his spine, and he quickly backed off with a nervous nod. The look in Max's eyes had been enough to make it clear that this was not the kind of day where transformation would save him.
A few moments later, Max turned away and went right back to collecting more feed, looking completely unfazed.
Gwen let out a long, exhausted sigh. "Why do I get the feeling the fun part of our summer vacation is suddenly over?"
An hour passed. Then another stretch of time that felt much, much longer. By the end of it, the pickup truck was finally empty, and a chaotic mound of feed sacks had been assembled in the barn, stacked in a way that suggested no one had bothered to care whether it would remain standing or not.
Max dusted off his hands and surveyed the result with satisfaction. "Well, that's the last of it. Nothing like a good day's work, right, kids?"
He got no answer.
Ben and Gwen were too busy nursing their aching arms, both of them hanging at their sides like they had been inflated by exhaustion and then promptly deflated. Gold Ship, meanwhile, had started trying to climb the mound of feed bags as if it were a mountain built specifically for her amusement. In the background, Evan and Orfevre had somehow started trading kicks with each other again.
Then, from somewhere inside the farmhouse, a bell rang.
A moment later, Joan's voice carried out across the yard.
"Come and get it! Supper time!"
...
Having a proper meal did wonders for Ben and Gwen. The hearty farm-cooked dinner quickly washed away the worst of the exhaustion that had built up from hours of hauling feed bags under the afternoon sun. Their aching muscles were still sore, but with full stomachs and a chance to finally sit down, they felt far more alive than they had an hour ago.
The same couldn't exactly be said for the Gold siblings. Not because they were exhausted, but they simply never reached that point to begin with.
Compared to Ben and Gwen, Evan, Orfevre, and Gold Ship possessed physical abilities that were absurdly beyond what children their age should have. Carrying heavy sacks of feed for an entire afternoon had barely counted as a warm-up for Evan and Orfevre, while Gold Ship had somehow managed to spend more energy causing trouble than actually working.
Max leaned back in his chair with a satisfied sigh before patting his stomach.
"Mmm, good grub, Joan," he complimented warmly. "Tastes just like the meals Uncle Jedidiah used to make."
Joan gave a small smile as she collected a few empty plates. "Glad you enjoyed it."
"Yeah," Gwen added with an exaggerated sigh of relief. "And for once there weren't any actual grubs in it."
Ben visibly shuddered at the memory. "Please don't remind me."
Max simply chuckled to himself while Joan raised an eyebrow.
"So..." Ben said after a moment, glancing around the dining room. "No TV. No computers. No malls. What do you guys even do around here for fun?"
Todd's eyes immediately lit up. "Well, last night I saw-"
"Now, none of that." Joan's calm but firm voice cut him off before he could finish.
Todd immediately deflated.
"No one's interested in your tall tales," she continued. "Now let's get these dishes washed and then it's off to bed."
"What?!" Ben nearly jumped out of his chair.
He spun toward the window, only to find the evening sky still glowing with the orange hues of sunset. The sun hadn't even disappeared below the horizon yet.
"But it's still light outside!"
"That's farm life," Joan replied matter-of-factly. "The sun comes up early, and so do we."
Max nodded in complete agreement.
"Trust me," he said with a knowing grin. "You'll be thankful you got the extra sleep tomorrow morning."
Once dinner was over, everyone pitched in to wash the dishes. Ben grumbled the entire time, Gwen silently accepted her fate, while Max happily scrubbed plates with enough enthusiasm to make it seem like washing dishes was somehow a recreational activity.
Before long, Todd motioned for the group to follow him.
"C'mon," he said quietly. "I'll show you where you'll be sleeping."
The children followed him outside.
The warm evening breeze swept across the fields as they walked along a narrow dirt path illuminated by the fading sunset. Crickets had already begun their nightly chorus, while the occasional firefly drifted lazily above the tall grass.
Eventually, they arrived at a modest guest house standing a short distance away from the main farmhouse.
Todd led them upstairs to the second floor.
Inside were half a dozen wooden bunk beds lined neatly against the walls. The room itself was simple, containing little more than the beds, a few small windows, and enough floor space to walk between them.
Then the smell hit.
Ben's face immediately twisted. "...Whoa."
Gwen pinched her nose. "Oh... wow."
The room carried the unmistakable scent of chickens. Not just because it was near a chicken coop. It is the chicken coop.
The upper floor had simply been converted into a guest room while the chickens occupied the level below, allowing the smell to drift upward without mercy.
Max, however, didn't seem bothered in the slightest.
Instead, he took a deep breath through his nose. "Ah... brings back memories."
Ben stared at him in complete disbelief. "...Grandpa, I think you're the only person alive who can say that."
Todd gave an awkward shrug. "You kinda get used to it after a while."
"I really hope I don't," Gwen muttered.
After giving a brief tour that mostly involved pointing at beds and explaining nothing complicated, Todd excused himself and headed back toward the farmhouse, leaving them alone in the quiet creaking stillness of the building.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Ben frowned.
"…Hey."
Gwen glanced at him. "What?"
"Where are Evan, Orfevre, and Gold Ship?"
The question hung in the air for exactly half a second.
"Bawk! BAWK! BAWK!!"
An explosion of frantic clucking erupted from outside.
All three Tennysons rushed to the open window.
Below them, chaos had already fully taken form.
Gold Ship was sprinting across the yard at full speed, grinning like she had just discovered the meaning of life itself. Behind her surged a full flock of enraged chickens, wings flapping, dust kicking up, voices unified in furious avian outrage.
"I'M SORRY!" Gold Ship shouted through laughter. "I DIDN'T KNOW THEY'D TAKE IT THIS PERSONALLY!"
"You absolutely knew!" Evan's voice cut in as he chased after her, keeping pace with surprising ease.
A few steps behind, Orfevre ran with controlled precision, though the faint tightening around her eyes suggested she was only moments away from abandoning dignity entirely.
"Gold Ship!" she called sharply. "Stop antagonizing the livestock!"
"I'm not antagonizing them!"
A chicken launched itself toward Gold Ship's head.
"…Okay, maybe a little!"
The flock somehow doubled in intensity.
Ben stared down at the scene in absolute disbelief.
"…How do you even manage to start a war with chickens?"
Gwen exhaled slowly. "At this point, I'm convinced she doesn't start problems. She just… attracts them."
Max let out a long sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose as he watched Gold Ship slip, recover instantly, and continue running like falling was part of her strategy.
"The Golds…" he muttered.
He paused as another wave of clucking surged upward.
"...are certainly keeping true to themselves."
He watched as Gold Ship somehow tripped over a bucket, rolled across the ground, got back onto her feet in one fluid motion, and immediately resumed running with the chickens still in hot pursuit.
Still, he made no move to stop them.
After all, this wasn't exactly unusual.
Chaos had a habit of following the Gold wherever they went. As long as they cleaned up whatever mess they created afterward, and nobody got hurt, Max had long since accepted that trying to prevent it was usually more trouble than it was worth.
Besides... The chickens seemed to be getting plenty of exercise.