"Let's talk now to our reporter Robert Newsman. Good afternoon, Robert."
"Good afternoon, Mahala, according to eyewitness reports, a blue winged creature was seen flying over the skies of Bellwood this afternoon. The witnesses claim that the creature appeared and disappeared abruptly, but always maintaining a trajectory toward the center of the city. The secretary Jhosy Portland related to us the moment when, while taking her coffee break, she saw such a creature pass in front of her eighth floor window, let's hear her."
"It looked like the creature was flying with difficulty, you know? It even seemed like it was going to fall at some moments, but then it suddenly disappeared and I don't know where it went or what happened. If it fell or kept flying..."
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Ben felt his transformation was extremely unstable. In the form of a necroffrigian, he was trying to fly and remain invisible, but even the flying part was not being possible to accomplish. The Omnitrix symbol on his chest oscillated between green and red, indicating that it might be more prudent to untransform. He was already approaching the first trees in Bellwood's Central Park.
As soon as he reached the first meter of the park's inner area, he began to reduce in height, feeling tree branches and leaves hit his face. With about four meters to go before he reached the ground, the transformation ended, leaving him at the mercy of gravity and the softness of the grassy forest floor. He crashed to the ground and rolled a few feet before hitting his back against a tree and losing consciousness for a few seconds.
He opened his eyes and stood up with difficulty, leaning on the trees. He looked at the Omnitrix on his wrist and was concerned that the alternating glow between red and green was present.
By the time I get there it will have calmed down, thought Ben.
The teenager continued walking through the forest towards the alien ships and the hostages. His aching body and racing heart were not enough reasons to stop him. There are people who depend on him right now. There are people who need the hero Ben Tennyson, he thought.
As soon as he reached the open area of Central Park, he could observe the situation on the spot. Several plumber trucks surrounded the park, with soldiers trying to keep the curious away for a few yards. Some troops were organized at the entrances to the park, preparing for an intervention at the first opportunity that would not result in harm to the hostages. In the center of the site, a circle of triangular ships held their hostages gathered at its epicenter. They were men, women, and children, who had once been strolling and enjoying the park, and now found themselves sitting on the ground with metal rings holding their arms close to their bodies. In the center of the rings, a small yellow light indicated "attention".
Ben ignored his pain and walked towards the ships. As he walked, he noticed the giant screens of the surrounding buildings began to display various angles of his approach. A few curious people in the crowd began to draw the attention of the others so that everyone could see his stupid/courageous (depending on one's interpretation) attitude. Even the Plumbers got a kick out of his attitude. Perhaps because they already knew Ben Tennyson, they chose to stay in position for the time being.
One of the ships broke away from the encirclement and flew up to Ben. The teenager stopped walking and, with his head raised, stared at the spacecraft's visor. It was a ship twice the size of the teenager, swinging in the air with the smoothness of a leaf. For a few moments silence filled the place, then Ben said:
"My name is Ben Tennyson, holder of the Omnitrix, that Galvanian technology they were looking for. Well, I'm here, now release the hostages."
Through the speakers of the spaceship, a metallic voice answered:
"No."
Again silence.
"Then take me as a hostage and let them go!" said Ben "These people have nothing to do with this!"
Again the spaceship responded:
"No."
Ben bowed his head and looked at the clock on his wrist. The light was still oscillating, and although he wasn't sure what it meant, he didn't want to try his luck. He bit his lip in frustration.
The entire crowd around him was watching intently. Ben looked at one of the Plumber leaders and gave a slight "wait, please", then turned his attention back to the spaceship.
"You sent that ridiculous message saying you wanted me to come over and give you the Omnitrix, so come on!" Ben raises his arm, pointing the Omnitrix at the spaceship "Here it is, take it, but let these people go!"
"No."
"And why?"
"Because we are not after you or this outdated technology."
"What?"
"We are after the Galvanian Albedo and the Ultimatrix in his possession."
As if by a snap, Ben's many questions were answered. Albedo, triangular ships, bizarre and powerful transformations of his copy-villain. It all made sense!
Damn it, what now? Ben thought. I have no idea where Albedo is!
"Albedo is too selfish and doesn't care enough about humans to give himself up!" said Ben.
"We know that," said the spaceship.
"Then stop this ridiculous situation and release the hostages!"
"No."
"Don't you realize that this is pointless? Albedo is not coming."
"We know that."
"Well?"
"It is you earthlings who will bring us Albedo."
Ben didn't know what to say. The spaceship turned its back on Ben and flew toward the hostages, and as it went on its way, it said:
"You have less than two minutes, Earthling, if you care about your species you'd better hurry."
"There's no way we can find him in such a short time!" said Ben.
"Sixty seconds."
The spaceship shot a beam of light toward the group of hostages, which attached itself to one of the rings like a glowing rope. The ship pulled a woman from among the people, who was screaming desperately trying to free herself. Just then a child's voice was heard:
"Mommy! Mommy!"
"Let me go!" clamored the woman.
Ben said:
"Let her go immediately!"
The ship's visor leaned slightly toward Ben, as if to look the boy directly in the eye, and said:
"Fifty seconds."
The woman struggled and screamed, begging to be released. The child forced herself against the other hostages and, also bound by a ring, tried to approach her mother, but it was very difficult for a six-year-old child to get up from the ground without being able to use her arms.
"Please don't do this," Ben said. "We can solve the situation in another way, but no-"
"Forty seconds."
The crowd outside the park was agitated, some shouting and demanding that the soldiers in front of them do something. The Plumber troops began to move, guns blazing, toward the spaceships. Their steps were calculated, alert for any reaction from the aliens and waiting for the command to fire.
Suddenly a shout echoed through the park. One of the leaders of the Plumbers ordered his troops to charge the aliens. Ben then noticed that the yellow light on the woman's ring had turned red; likewise, the light on the other hostages' rings had turned red, indicating that something would happen to all those people at the same time.
"Plumbers, stop!" shouted Ben "Stop right there!"
The soldiers stopped their advance and stared at the teenager.
"Thirty seconds," said the voice.
Ben looked in various directions for a solution. He looked at the Omnitrix on his wrist, and the light kept flashing.
"Capture me, but let them go!"
"Mommy! Leave my mommy alone!"
"Stay there, Steph, don't come!" said the woman.
"Twenty seconds."
"Mommy!!!"
"Let me go, for God's sake!"
"Help my mom!"
"Don't do this, please!" shouted Ben.
"Ten seconds."
"Mom!"
"Don't look, Steph!" pleaded the woman.
"Execute."
Ben even tried to run toward the victim, but there was nothing he could do.
An electric squeak was followed by a guttural groan from the woman as she felt the electricity go through her body. Her body trembled and her muscles stiffened.
The child's screams were the only sounds that could be heard in Central Park. Her tears streamed down her face and, using her chin and knees, the girl crawled toward her mother.
Then the shock ceased.
Ben fell to his knees next to the woman's body. His vision was blurred. He didn't know what to do. His mind became a blank. He raised his head and watched little Steph approach her mother. The teenager stared at the grated chin and knees of the child who seemed not to be bothered by this at the moment.
"Mommy! Wake up, Mom! Wake up, please!"
The hero felt the hot tears on his face. The child's pleas were the only sounds Ben could hear amidst the whirlwind of voices of hostages, soldiers, and bystanders to the misfortune of others.
"Wake up, mommy! Come on, please, open your eye! Open your eye, please!"
Again the commanding shout of the leader of the Plumbers echoed through the park. Ben then raised his head and saw the light from little Stef's ring turn red.
"Stop! Don't come any closer!"
"What do you want us to do? Let them kill everyone?"
"They will kill everyone if you come any closer! Look, the red light from the rings!"
The soldiers turned their attention to those lights.
"Find Albedo!" shouted Ben "Do whatever it takes, but find him! Only then will we be able to save them!"
"Wise decision, Omnitrix bearer," said the voice from the spaceship. "With this attitude you got another ten minutes before we execute the next one. You should hurry."
Ben turned to the spaceship and stared at it furiously.
Damned psychopaths! He thought.
"Mom?" said the little girl.
Ben turned to the fallen woman and could see that her eyes were narrowed with difficulty. Ben knelt down next to her and said:
"Breathe easy, don't worry, help is already coming."
"Interesting..." said the spaceship.
Ben kept his back to the ship, head down.
"There are few records of humans who have endured an execution."
The boy stood up.
"But there are no records of humans who have endured a second shooting" The yellow light from the woman's ring turned red.
Ben faced the spaceship and pressed the Omnitrix core.
Just as the teenager had expected, the watch pierced his skin and penetrated the flesh of his forearm, bringing with it the same stabbing pain as before.
Ben moved his arm in front of his face and watched as ghost images repeated the same movement of his member. It felt as if frames of an animation overlapped and could all be seen at the same time.
Suddenly the sound of his heartbeat resounded in his ears. Louder and louder, the systole and diastole markers echoed a rhythmic and obedient frequency: Tu-dum! Tu-dum! Tu-dum!
Then after a powerful Tu-dum, Ben felt the sound disperse throughout his body and his image multiply infinitely in front of him. Like an elastic motion, the images returned to his body all at once.
Another heartbeat and this time his image multiplied behind him and remained so. Ben turned his body to look and all his images repeated the movement with a few thousandths delay. Like a little ball hitting a wall and coming back, the images then returned to the primary Ben.
The boy looked at his hand and noticed small dots of pigment loss on his skin. The dots were multiplying and joining together, forming larger and larger hypochromic patches.
Another tu-dum!
Their images multiplied to the sides. Suddenly, the 5th image to the left and the 16th image to the right bent down with their hands on their chests. A bulge appeared in the middle of their sternum and opened the skin, making room for the Omnitrix symbol. The copies roared in pain. Then the whole row of images returned back to the main Ben, bringing with them a doubled over pain in his chest.
The boy groaned and tried to hold back the scream as he placed his hand over the Omnitrix symbol on his chest.
Tu-dum!
A dozen or so images brought their hand to his skull as it deformed and grew wider and wider. As it returned, Ben screamed at the intense pain and deformities that enveloped his head.
Tu-dum!
A hundred Ben's howled as their limbs were shortened in size through compression fractures. Return. Ben felt the hundredfold load of pain at once upon his limbs, emitting a guttural scream.
Tu-dum!
Spread over an area equivalent to a soccer field, thousands felt the skin on their forearms and legs open up circular wounds like ulcers and be filled with tiny cirrushes. In thousands more, the cartilages of their ears bent forward and bulged, forming two semispheres on either side of their skulls.
Return.
Already totally devoid of pigment and with his orbicular musculature retracted in a small line, Ben roared and cried with the full load of concomitant deformations he felt in his body. The skin of his lips grew and penetrated the inside of his mouth, segmenting itself into a circular shape and forming the typical appearance of a speaker.
Tu-dum!
Millions of images bent and tried to reach their backs as they felt the rectangular box grow and build up on their backs, attaching circuits internally and externally to their bodies. Their skins stiffened like leather, with a soft glow on the sonorosians pale, small body.
Return.
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The vehicle carrying Gwen and Cadet Fickell was approaching the entrance to Central Park. The girl watched from the window as her cousin knelt beside a fallen woman with a child nearby. Ships were flying over the hostages, and a triangular ship kept aimed at her cousin's back.
"They are called the Galvanic Guardians, if I'm not mistaken," Gwen said into her communicator. "I'm getting close to Central Park and I can already see the ships, Ben, and the hostages."
She noticed that communication was beginning to fail and her grandfather's voice was being replaced by noise.
"Grandpa, the connection is cut off!"
More noise.
"It's cutting off. What did you ask?"
"What's going on there?" asked Grandpa Max.
"The ships have taken hostages in Central Park and the Plumbers are intervening at this very moment and-"
"Miss Tennyson," said the cadet, stopping the vehicle. "We seem to have a problem, it looks like the Plumbers are pulling away?"
"What?" Gwen got out of the car, still holding the communicator.
The girl made her way through the crowd, pushing and shoving away whoever she had to, and was approaching the Plumber containment line when she saw her cousin raise her hand to press the Omnitrix core.
"Ben, no!!!"
The green light enveloped the teenager and in a matter of moments it went out. However, instead of an alien appearing in the spot where Ben had previously stood, a cluster of sonorosian bodies all at once screaming the most agonizing symphony of pain emerged from within the glow.
Powerful sound waves echoed off the alien huddle and spread throughout the Central Park area. The alien ships, caught off guard, were the first to be pushed toward buildings, trees, and vehicles on the scene. The waves pushed the hostages, who rolled around on the ground centrifugally. Plumbers and crowds of people in the vicinity put their hands to their ears and tried their best to keep the screams from piercing their eardrums. The glass of the surrounding buildings shattered and began to fall towards the pedestrians on the ground. As soon as the first piece of glass touched the ground, a great rush of people rushed to the ground trying to protect themselves from the rain of shrapnel.
The sight of her cousin reduced to a huge mass of bodies in deep pain caused panic to engulf Gwen's face. Not again...
"Ben.." she said.
Some of the ships that had been hit and were now lying near tree trunks or inside buildings began to disappear one by one, in a clear movement of retreat from the new situation. Others still tried to get up again, but were hit by another sonic wave and thrown against another object. One by one the ships were teleporting and fleeing the place.
The plumbers moved about trying to protect the people with shields and trying to shelter them or divert them from the path of one piece or another of glass that rained down on the site. The troops were trying to get closer to the hostages who lay fallen and sprawled near the side bars of the park.
Gwen tried to summon a shield over the scene, but the pink disk failed and shattered before it was complete. Unfortunately her mana was not yet fully recovered.
Sonic waves were punishing Bellwood's Central Park. The trees closest to what would have been Ben leaned with the impact of the air, and some even externalized their roots with the tilt. Cars were thrown into local stores, and a truck overturned in the middle of the street.
Gwen looked around her at the hell that had become the place. It was then that she saw a huge shard of glass fall towards a man who was trying to get out of his overturned car. The girl ran towards the man and pulled him at once, pulling him out of the path of the shard, but feeling the fine texture of the glass touch her left arm.
"Thank you, thank you very much!" said the man, though Gwen could only read his lips.
The girl finally felt the pain of the cut and brought her hand to her arm, watching the warm blood trickle through her fingers.
Then the scream ceased.
A high-pitched ringing still echoed through the area and into the ears of all present. Gwen looked towards Ben and found him standing in his human form with an expression of deep terror.
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As the green light of the untransformation ceased, Ben found himself on his knees staring at the grass below him. His body trembled in a way he had never felt before. His heartbeat resounded in his ears at an absurd speed. The boy raised his head and saw the chaos that had settled around him.
Slowly he stood up and observed the trail of destruction that his heroic attitude had become. Trees toppled over; vehicles were thrown into the interior of businesses; no glass or window could be seen whole in the surrounding buildings; Ben looked for the hostages and saw them being carried unconscious by the Plumbers to the ambulances. The image of little Steph being carried away on a stretcher, with trickles of blood dripping from her ears hit him like a punch in the stomach.
What have I done? He thought.
Ben kept looking around until his eyes met those of his cousin. From Gwen's arm, blood dripped down to her fingers and onto the floor.
N-no...
Ben shook his head and ran for the exit of the park, not listening to his cousin's shouts of his name.
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Ben was running. He didn't know where, he didn't care where, he just ran. The next thing he knew, he was in front of his house.
Sitting on the front steps, a silhouette was waiting for him.
Ben recognized him immediately, after all, it was his likeness.
"Hello, Tennyson," said Albedo, "after today's events, I think you're dying to talk to someone," a smile came to his lips.