So many ways to tell a story, and that's what makes them so interesting. Sometimes, you can never predict how they're going to turn out...
"Gwen… throw up an energy field around you and the boys, and hold on tight! And… be a good girl."
"Sorry, Ben. It's the only way to make sure they can't do to the rest of the world what they did to Ken. You'll have to take it from here, I know you can do it! I believe in you, in all of you."
...
Those last words.
Those last words had been ringing in Ben Tennyson's mind ever since that night at the Hatchery. Where he, his cousin Gwen and their… ally, Kevin Levin had saved his other cousin- Gwen's brother Ken- from being turned into one of the DNAliens that, up until that point, they'd been taking down whereever they could find them. Where they'd witnessed their grandpa Max, the term 'badass' given flesh and Ben's personal hero… vaporized in a self-caused blast from an unfocused Null Void projector, along with the Highbreed and DNAliens that had taken control of the Hatchery.
No matter what he tried to do to distract himself ever since, no matter what had happened between then and now: those last words he spoke to the four of them, the sight of him holding that unfocused Null Void projector before hitting the button, they wouldn't stop flashing in the young teen's mind.
The Forever Knights, Cash, Manny and Helen, the Incurseans, they'd all been good distractions in the moment along with everything else he'd had to deal with in his life. But whenever his mind was allowed to wander, whenever he wasn't really doing anything like he wasn't right now, sat in the back of social studies class at Bellwood Junior High and tuning out whatever it was the teacher was talking about… sooner or later, his mind would be right back at that night at the Hatchery.
When the bell rang, signalling the end of class and the end of the school day, Ben was immediately among the crowd of kids that made a beeline for the classroom door, and joined the larger crowd that began making their way out of the school building. Stretching his arms a little once he was outside and had the space to, he looked across the yard towards the gate, where he could see a familiar someone standing outside, also stretching herself a bit as she looked across the yard and met his eyes.
"School let out early for you?" Ben asked once said someone was in speaking distance, walking past her and acknowledging her following, falling into step with him.
"Yeah." Gwen replied, adjusting the position of her bag on her shoulder as she walked beside her identically-aged cousin. Looking over at him and catching the look on his face as he kicked a random pebble off of the pavement and into the empty road, she shifted slightly closer to him as she walked.
"You alright?" she asked, before pausing a second before adding "Max?"
Without even looking back at her, Ben nodded, his eyes following the pebble he kicked into the road for a couple of seconds before it came to a stop. Gwen let out a breath as she and Ben slowed their walk slightly.
"I miss him too, Ben." Gwen spoke, her softer tone catching his attention as he looked over at her. "Maybe you should try talking to someone? I'm pretty sure there's a counsellor of some kind at your school," she jerked her head backwards, in the direction of the school that she and Ben were walking away from. "Or at least there should be. You know, so you're not just bottling everything up?"
"Maybe." Ben replied, rather noncommittally. "Though I'm pretty sure any school counsellor I could talk to is gonna have a hard time believing me. What am I supposed to tell them, that Grandpa Max blew a bunch of aliens to kingdom come, taking himself out in the process, and oh by the way, said aliens want to take over the world and I'm one of the only people who has a chance of stopping them?"
"Well, you don't have to tell them the whole truth about what happened that night." Gwen replied, letting out a small sigh at her cousin's small tangent but keeping her voice even. "All that really matters is that… you know what, never mind, we'll talk about this later. I didn't come meet you to talk about Grandpa Max."
As the two cousins turned onto a different street, Gwen came to a stop, leaning against a fence as she pulled her phone out of her bag.
"Kevin got in touch just after I got out today." She remarked. "He's been doing a bit of detective work around town."
Ben's slightly sullen expression shifted into a small smile as the image of Kevin in one of those trenchcoats that detectives wore in those old movies that his dad liked crossed his mind for a second. Gwen took his silence as an invitation to continue.
"There's been something going on just outside of town, he thinks." She continued. "Kevin wasn't able to get much concrete information, but apparently anyone who heads up to the dump doesn't come back. Police are stumped."
"Right…" Ben replied, his eyes meeting Gwen's again. His left hand, currently stuffed in his pocket, seemed to twitch slightly as he and Gwen shared a knowing look with each other. Silence passed between the two cousins for several seconds before Gwen shifted off of the fence she'd been leaning on.
She then continued on her way down the street for a couple of paces, before looking back at Ben.
"Drop your stuff off at your place, then call me." she remarked. "We can meet up after, and head up there with Kevin."
"Sounds like a plan." Ben replied, nodding before beginning to cross the road before turning back to his cousin. "See you in a bit!"
Gwen nodded, waving briefly before she turned on her heel and continued on her way back towards her house, while Ben made his way off of the street that he and Gwen had been on and back towards the main road, towards his own place.
It looked like Sumo Slammers Space Wars would have to wait another night.
Line Break
"First it's swimming through stinky alien water, next it's pulling up to a literal dumpster." Kevin Levin grumbled, switching off the engine of his car before getting out. As he did so, he rested one of his hands on the hood of his car, his entire body turning the same metallic green. "Man… why can't we fight in somewhere that smells good? Like Pizza Planet?"
Gwen let out a light scoff as she got out of the passenger seat, stretching as she did so.
"That would probably be even worse, Kevin." She replied. "Though you do have a point… there's probably a reason this place is so far out of town." Lifting one of her hands up, the orange-haired Tennyson waved her hand in front of her nose: when it was away from her face, Kevin and Ben- when he got out of the car- could see that Gwen had made a cover for her mask in front of her nose, and noticed that she was breathing through her mouth.
"We should probably make this quick." Gwen remarked, making her way back Kevin and towards the dump, with the pair of guys following a couple of steps behind.
'And I thought I smelled bad as Stinkfly.' Ben thought to himself, vaguely recalling the winged insectoid he'd recalled making use of on several occasions during the first time he'd worn the Omnitrix. That fateful summer-long road trip he'd taken with Gwen and Grandpa Max… simpler times. Now that he thought about it a little more, ever since he'd put the Omnitrix back on, he'd always questioned in the back of his mind why it had given him a brand new set of aliens rather than the original batch he'd had five years ago.
Sure, it had gone through a rebooting and all after he'd put it on again, but it could've at least let him access the batch of aliens he'd unlocked the first time he'd had it on, as well as the new ten (nine useful) he'd been using recently. Just something to throw on the pile of questions to ask Azmuth, if he were to ever cross paths with the Galvan inventor again.
Slipping the left sleeve of his jacket up a little bit, so he had immediate access to the Omnitrix if he needed it, Ben stretched himself a little bit as the three made their way into the landfill, casting their eyes across the mountains of rubbish that had been deposited here over the years. Sans the sound of the trio's footfalls against the ground, and a light breeze blowing, the entire area was dead-silent.
And there didn't seem to be anyone here apart from them, either. Just rubbish, garbage, trash as far as the eye could see, piled up in mountains that bordered the dirt track (underneath which was probably also trash) that Gwen, Kevin and Ben walked down.
"This place is deserted." Kevin mused, pausing for half a second to bend down and investigate what looked like a broken TV a bit more closely, before returning to his full height and falling back into step with Ben, just a couple of steps behind Gwen. "And it stinks."
"Yeah, I don't really wanna be here any more than you do." Gwen remarked. "Though now that… hang on, there's probably a quicker way to figure this out."
Stopping and turning on her heel, Gwen raised herself a little bit into the air and outstretched her hands, attempting to sense the presence of any beings other than Ben, Kevin and herself. The glowing pink orbs that her eyes had become narrowed slightly as she let out a slow breath, before her body began to slowly turn around in a clockwise direction. She got just over halfway back around to her facing fully away from Ben and Kevin, just like had been before she stopped walking, before her rotation too came to a stop.
"There." Gwen whispered, before dropping back down onto her feet, pointing in the direction that she'd stopped rotating in, before immediately taking off in that direction. Raising a hand once she got close enough to the mountain of trash that separated the three of them from whatever was on the other side of it, a number of mana-conjured steps were summoned that she and Kevin used to make their way up and over, though Ben opted for a… quicker approach.
Kevin and Gwen heard the sound of the Omnitrix's activation behind and below them, saw the red and yellow blur flying past them at speed, felt the wind created by said speed rushing over their bodies as they watched "Jetray!" fly to the top of the mountain of trash before they were even halfway up. Ben disappeared over the top of the trash-pile for a couple of seconds, before coming back into view and floating above the pile as Gwen and Kevin made their way to the top.
"DNAliens." Ben explained, gesturing down the other side of the pile with one of his wings. "I count twelve."
Gwen and Kevin looked down, in the direction that Ben was pointing. And sure enough, down on the ground, a dozen beige-skinned DNAliens were walking between the giant piles of trash, picking through it.
"I guess even parasite-controlled monsters like to dumpster-dive." Kevin remarked, cracking his metallic knuckles before catching the look on Gwen's face. "What? You'd be surprised at what people throw away."
"What do you think they're doing?" Ben asked, rolling his red and black shoulders a little bit as he looked over at Gwen, who let out a breath. "Looking for something?"
"Whatever it is, it's probably nothing good." Gwen replied, taking half a step forward as mana gathered in her hands. "Let's go."
Ben grinned, flying forward before diving at speed down the trash-mountain, firing down at one of the DNAliens- one that looked like it was pulling something out of the bottom of a smaller pile. Before whatever it had its clawed hand grasped around could fully be pulled out, the beam Ben had fired out of his eyes as Jetray struck the DNAlien, sending it flying away from the pile. It rolled over a couple of times upon hitting the ground, before coming to a stop against another pile of trash about a dozen feet away.
The other DNAliens all turned towards Ben as he came to a stop, floating above where the first DNAlien had originally been. A couple of them immediately coughed out balls of that slime-stuff that they always did, which Ben immediately dodged along with the tentacles that some of the others flung towards Jetray.
"Save some for us, Tennyson!" Kevin called out from above, coming down on one of the DNAliens with a heavy axe-kick that knocked it unconscious immediately, before landing on the ground himself. "Hey guys! Find anything good?"
Letting out bursts of mana from her feet to slow her descent rather than simply dropping to the ground like Kevin had done, thicker ropes of mana shot out of each of Gwen's hand to wrap around two of the closest DNAliens to her, and bang them together when she brought her hands together. Letting out a breath, she brought the two shackled and dazed DNAliens towards her, her eyes narrowing slightly.
"What are you doing here?!" She asked, her eyes glowing with mana for extra intimidation. Not that she really needed it: even though they couldn't show much expression, she could tell the DNAliens she was holding were about to crap themselves… if they even could. "Why are you here?!"
"Missed me!" Ben called out several feet away, dodging and weaving between slimeballs that a trio of DNAliens fired out at him. "So close! Oops, missed again!"
As soon as he saw an opening to, Ben charged forward, dodging around another slimeball that came within inches of striking him, grabbing one of the DNAliens by its tentacle with one of his hands and spinning around a couple of times before throwing it down against the ground. Landing next to the dazed DNAlien and switching from Jetray to the six-limbed "Spidermonkey!", Ben dashed forward and jumped over the nearest standing DNAlien as it tried to slash at him from close-range with its claws.
Grabbing it with his feet, Ben tossed it towards a broken-looking couch situated about a quarter of the way up the trash-mountain that he, Gwen and Kevin had come down, firing some webbing out of his tail to keep the DNAlien stuck there, out of the fight.
"You should have a break!" Ben whooped out, dodging a couple of close-range swipes from the third DNAlien of the trio that had been originally fighting him. "Dumpster-diving must be exhausting work!"
Kevin, from a dozen or so feet away, rolled his eyes at Ben's quips as he ducked under a slimeball that a DNAlien spat at him, before charging forward towards the creature. When the DNAlien attempted to swipe at him with its claws, Kevin ducked under the creature, punching it in its lower chest to make it double over. He wrapped his arm around its neck, ignoring the claws scratching away at his metallic skin before lifting the DNAlien up into the air and slamming it back down onto its back in a well-executed suplex.
Levin followed up with an elbow directly to the suplexed DNAlien's head to make sure it stayed down, before rolling out of the way of a pair of slimeballs fired at his position by two more DNAliens before jumping to his feet. Taking a breath, he shifted towards them a little slower than he did the first one, his fists up and feet light, waiting for them to make a move. The one on the right did, sending out its tentacles from its head in an attempt to wrap them around Kevin and take him out of the fight.
The metallic young man's reactions were quicker though, dodging out of the way of the tentacles and grabbing one of them in his hand. The DNAlien that had thrown out its tentacles had leant forward slightly, and was dragged off its feet altogether as Kevin pulled on said tentacles, building up momentum to swing the creature around and around, before letting go and throwing it into its companion before it could spit out any more slime at him. The pair of DNAliens collapsed in a tangled heap on the ground, at the bottom of the trash-mountain.
"Hey, uh, guys?" Gwen called, from her position across the track as she dodged between another couple of DNAliens as they swung their tentacles in her direction, ducked under a claw-swipe from the closer of the two creatures to her and delivered a couple of quick punches to said creature to knock it off-balance a little. "We might want to wrap this up quick!"
She quickly turned towards the other DNAlien she was fighting and fired a blast of mana out of one hand at it to keep it off her, before throwing out a mana-tendril with the other hand that wrapped around the DNAlien she'd punched a couple of times, before she threw it towards a trash-pile and turned towards the remaining DNAlien.
Quickly throwing up a mana-barrier in front of her to block the slime-ball that it attempted to fire at her from point-blank range, Gwen closed the hand that she'd used to throw up the barrier to make the mana that made up the barrier morph into a large gauntlet around her fist, which she drove into the DNAlien's chin with a powerful enough uppercut to send it flying, all the way to the top of the trash-mountain that she, Ben and Kevin had originally come down.
"What's up?" Ben asked, sliding under the legs of a DNAlien as Spidermonkey before punching it a few times in the back, then jumping up to deliver one final smack to the face to knock it down. "You getting tired?"
"These DNAliens," Gwen replied, turning around as Ben landed on the DNAlien he'd just knocked down, before walking off of it and transforming back into himself while Kevin delivered two quick punches to the two DNAliens that had been tangled up with each other, to knock them out before they could untangle and continue the fight. "Weren't looking for anything at all. They were here to draw us into-"
"A TRAP."
Ben, Gwen and Kevin immediately looked up, in unison, at the familiarly raspy voice of a member of the race that they'd come across a couple of times since the former had put the Omnitrix back on. The large, white plant-like black-armed Highbreed narrowed its eyes as it glowered- if Highbreed could even glower- down at the three fighters.
"AND MY DNALIENS WERE BARELY ABLE TO ACCOMPLISH THAT." The purple-faced alien snarled. "IF EVEN THE MOST INTELLIGENT- RELATIVELY- OF YOU FILTH WERE UNABLE TO FIGURE THAT OUT, YOU MUST BE EVEN LOWER SCUM THAN WE INITIALLY THOUGHT."
Neither Ben, Gwen nor Kevin chose to verbally respond to the racist remark. Ben was the first to respond in any way at all, coldly slamming his hand down on the Omnitrix and emerging from the green transformation-flash as a certain brown and beige-skinned humanoid dinosaur.
"I thought you guys were bad enough," Ben, as Humungousaur, growled out. "But looping in innocent people just to get to us? That's just a whole other level of EVIL."
Gwen had to quickly manoeuvre herself out of the way with her mana-under-the-feet trick as Ben charged, on all-fours, towards the Highbreed. As she made her way slightly up the trash-mountain, she fashioned more of her mana into rapidly-spinning buzzsaws that she flung like frisbees towards the Highbreed, aiming for its eyes. The Highbreed moved its head out of the way of the buzzsaws, letting out what sounded like a mixture between a snarl and a mocking laugh at Gwen's attempt at an attack, but found itself letting out a screech of surprise and anger as Humungousaur barrelled into it at speed, knocking it over.
Before it could even get up, Humungousaur slid to a stop in front of it and slammed both of his fists down onto its face with enough force to shake the very ground around them, knocking some of the trash off of the piles it rested on and causing it to cascade down onto the ground. The Highbreed let out another screech, more of pain than surprise or anger, that was interrupted by it getting punched in the face again and again.
"HOW- DARE YOU!" the Highbreed yelled, between strikes. "YOU- INFECT ME- WITH EVERY- STRIKE- YOU VERMIN!"
"Good!" Ben roared back, not slowing down his punches. When the Highbreed reached up with one of its hands to try and push Humungousaur away, Ben caught the clawed hand in his mouth and bit down on it, hard. The Highbreed let out another pained screech, and reached up to Ben's face with its other hand. But before it could grab him, Gwen- who was standing on a mana platform to the side- grabbed said hand with two mana-tendrils and pulled as hard as she could, trying to keep the Highbreed's hand away from her cousin's face so he could keep whaling on it.
Under the circumstances, it was probably the best method any of them had of dealing damage to the Highbreed. Without her letting go of her humanity and going full Anodite, that is, or Ben making use of a certain alien that he'd previously sworn off of using after the first time.
She was only able to hold onto the Highbreed's hand for a few seconds, though. Strong as she was, her strength was nothing against the white creature as it overpowered her, flinging her over itself and Ben and into the air as her mana-tendrils dissipated. It was only thanks to her hurriedly forming a barrier between herself and the garbage-mountain that stopped her from something that would have most likely left her feeling dirty for the rest of her life, no matter how many showers and baths she could take.
"UNHAND ME!" The Highbreed roared, managing to get one of its legs underneath Humungousaur and kick him deep in the stomach, causing the dinosaur-like alien to let out a gasp and fly backwards, several dozen feet across the dump as the Highbreed got up. "LUCKY BLOWS, MONGROL. YOU WILL NOT GET MORE, ON MY NOBILITY AS A HIGHBREED!"
"Wanna… bet?!" Ben called back, getting to his feet as well, holding his stomach as he did so. He was breathing slightly heavily, as if the Highbreed's kick had winded him, even as Humungousaur, quite a bit. In spite of that though, he let out a loud roar of challenge in the Highbreed's direction before charging, which it returned with a screech of its own as it charged at him.
"Haven't you got a better alien for the job of deafening the lot of us, dude?!" Kevin yelled, running towards the Highbreed on one of Gwen's mana-platforms and jumping onto its back with a pair of knives that he'd found, sinking the implements into its alien flesh. The Highbreed didn't stop running at Humungousaur, but it DID let out another screech of pain at being stabbed in the back, reaching around itself and grabbing a hold of Kevin before throwing him aside while continuing to charge at Humungousaur.
Gwen, who had taken refuge on another mana-platform and had originally thrown out a larger tendril to try and slow the Highbreed down again, was forced to divert her power to catch Kevin before he could land in the trash-mountain.
"How did you find a pair of knives sharp enough to do that?" Gwen asked, her eyes cast over to the Highbreed's back, which still had that pair of knives stuck in it as it ran towards Ben.
"Like I said, you'd be surprised what you find in a dump!" Kevin replied, cracking his knuckles. "Give me long enough, I could probably find a bomb somewhere in here. That ought to annoy Tall, White and Racist a bit, at least!"
"And turn this entire area into a fire that not even Big Chill would be able to easily take care of?" Gwen retorted, thrusting her hand out to create more mana-platforms that led them down towards where the Highbreed was running. "I wouldn't."
As the Highbreed continued to charge at Humungousaur, Ben braced himself, holding his hands up and catching the plant-like creature's hands in his own. The sheer force of getting charged into by the Highbreed was enough to send Ben sliding backwards a little bit, but he held on as best he could, while noticing Gwen and Kevin coming down from behind.
"STUBBORN FILTH." The Highbreed snarled out, glaring at Ben as it pushed against him. "KNOW WHEN YOU'RE BEATEN, AND ACCEPT YOUR ANNIHI-!"
Ben drove his head forward, slamming in into the Highbreed's face and cutting off its speech, knocking it off balance a bit as Gwen jumped off of the mana-platform she was running along with Kevin, flipped over the Highbreed's head while firing mana-bolts, fashioned into the shape of blades, out of her hands at the Highbreed's face before landing on another platform she'd conjured under her feet. The summoned swords she'd thrown at the Highbreed struck the creature close to its eyes, but didn't pierce its skin like Kevin's knives did.
"AARGH… ENOUGH!" The Highbreed roared, jolted backwards a little by Humungousaur's headbutt but still able to reach forward and grab him by the waist, spinning around and throwing him away in order to get some distance between the pair of them. "MINDLESS FILTH, YOUR RESISTENCE ONLY PROLONGS YOUR OWN SUFFERING. ACCEPT YOUR INFERIORITY, AND- HM?"
Something seemed to have caught the Highbreed's attention, enough for it to stop its racist tirade about how pathetic Ben, Gwen and Kevin all were before bending down, having caught sight of something. Suspicious at what could have caused the creature to pause like it had done, Gwen lowered the platform she was standing on towards the place the Highbreed had reached out towards, gathering mana in her hands as her eyes narrowed.
The mana-wielder's eyes suddenly widened, after a couple of seconds, before she dived off the platform and tried to grab at whatever it was the Highbreed was also reaching for. But she was precious fractions of a second too late as the Highbreed returned to its full height, holding in one of its clawed hands one of a certain device that Ben, Gwen and Kevin were all QUITE familiar with…
A Null Void Projector gun. In the half-second it took for Ben, Gwen and Kevin to all process just WHAT the Highbreed had found in that pile of trash it had just reached into, they all noticed that the focusing lens was rather cracked… and smoke was emitting from the gun in places that a gun, Null Void-accessing or no, really SHOULDN'T be smoking.
"Crap!" Gwen yelled, throwing out another couple of mana-tendrils from her hands in an attempt to wrestle the device from the Highbreed's grasp, but it was fruitless. Without any visible effort, the hulking creature simply lifted Gwen off the ground by the tendrils she'd wrapped around the gun, before pulling a quick motion with its arm in order to send her flying away through the air.
Before Ben, as Humungousaur, or Kevin (who had started dropping to the ground after the mana-platform he was standing on disappeared) could do anything to stop it, the Highbreed pressed the button with its thumb, sending out a beam of energy in Gwen's direction that- to Ben and Kevin- seemed to travel in slow-motion. They could only watch as Gwen…
Was barely able to twist her body in mid-air and get out of the way of the beam of energy, missing an instant trip to the Null Void by centimetres. She wasn't completely safe, however, as the beam stopped about a couple of meters behind her, and coalesced into what looked like a red and black portal that almost immediately began to suck in everything around it. Air, trash… and-
"GWEN!" Ben yelled, immediately turning away from the Highbreed and turning back from Humungousaur into Jet Ray, and taking off at speed toward his cousin. As he flew, he saw Gwen projecting mana from her feet in an effort to both right her position in the air, and to push herself away from the portal that was rapidly pulling her in. Gwen could only let out a scream as she was sucked into the portal that, just as it swallowed her whole, was beginning to close rather rapidly.
That didn't stop Ben, however. Jetray didn't divert its course at all as it flew straight into the portal after Gwen, and disappeared.
"Gwen! Ben!" Kevin yelled out, allowing himself to roll upon landing on the ground and breaking out into a sprint towards the closing portal. The pulling force of the portal almost made the sprinting Levin trip over a couple of times as he outstretched his arm towards the portal, trying to get in before it closed… but it was all for naught, as just as his fingers were about to brush up against the opening of the portal, it closed and disappeared.
…
Kevin immediately rounded on the Highbreed that had fired the projector-gun a few seconds ago, and letting out a roar of rage the kind of which he hadn't heard himself letting out in YEARS, broke out into another sprint towards the creature before jumping for the Null Void Projector. Just as his feet left the ground though, the Highbreed turned towards Kevin and pushed the button on the Null Void Projector again, but before Levin could even think about trying to contort his body to dodge the beam… he realised that no beam was leaving the projector like what had happened the first time the Highbreed had fired the gun.
Kevin landed on the Highbreed's arm and immediately reached for the Null Void Projector, but his efforts- again- proved fruitless as the Highbreed simply grabbed him with his other hand and threw him down against the ground, with enough force to create a small Kevin-shaped crater where he landed. Dazed a bit by the sudden trip to the ground, Kevin could do little more than look up as the Highbreed attempted to fire the Null Void projector at him again: however, its efforts to do so failed again, as no beam came out. This time also, the sound of something popping came from the gun, and the smoke emanating from it became far more pronounced
Picking himself up off the ground, Kevin stared at the spot that the portal had been just a second ago, his heartbeat rapid and pounding in his ears as it washed over him what had just occurred. The enormity of the fact that Ben and Gwen had just disappeared into the Null Void… and he had no way of attempting a rescue. He didn't even notice the busted Null Void gun bouncing off his metallic body as the Highbreed threw it at him, before the pieces of it clattered against the ground.
What he DID notice, however, were some of the DNAliens that he, Ben and Gwen had spent the first part of their trip here beating the hell out of before the Highbreed showed up, getting to their feet. First a couple, then a couple more, then a fair few more, then it looked like he was surrounded by 10 or 11 of the parasite-controlled creatures.
"I HAVE NO TIME FOR THIS, ANYMORE." The Highbreed snarled, turning on its feet before giving one last command to the DNAliens. "KILL HIM."
Kevin glared at the Highbreed as it walked out of sight, but once it was gone, his attention shifted to the near-dozen DNAliens that were slowly advancing towards him… maybe for once, it would probably be worth making a strategic retreat, rather than getting himself needlessly killed.
After all, who else was around to try and defend Earth from the Highbreed and DNAliens?
Line Break
Ben barely noticed returning to his human form as he heard the portal closing behind him. Not until he found himself suddenly rolling over and over in mid-air, not flying straight like he usually did as Jetray. It was a… weird feeling, it didn't feel like his body was going in any specific direction, just continuing to roll over and over in place as the red and black vortex he found himself in spiralled and swirled around him.
He found himself reminded of a scene from one old movie that took place in space that his mom seemed to like for whatever reason. The one with the robot with that one red eye… and astronauts? Some monkeys, maybe? Ben couldn't remember much about that movie, other than it was REALLY long. Or felt really long, at least. Those thoughts, however, left his mind as quickly as they'd appeared, replaced by something a bit more pressing.
"Gwen!" he called out into the multicoloured nothingness. "If you can hear me, say something! …GWEN!"
"Ben?!"
Ben's eyes widened as he heard his cousin's voice, and he attempted to twist his body around in order to right himself as he rolled through the vortex. It took him a few seconds, but he managed to right himself and stop spinning.
"GWEN?!"
"BEN!"
Ben turned in the direction he heard his cousin's voice coming from. Sure enough, about fifty meters from where he was currently floating… flying? He still wasn't certain, but what he WAS certain of was that he could see Gwen, waving over at him with one hand as she yelled to catch his attention. Once she'd accomplished that, she thrust out her other hand to send out a tendril of mana that wrapped around her cousin's body, before retracting it back towards her and pulling Ben in. Once he was close enough, the mana-tendril disappeared, leaving the two cousins floating (or flying) together through the red and black vortex.
Gwen opened her mouth, presumably to ask Ben if he was okay, but before sound could leave her throat the colourful surroundings in which they were located began to become a lot less colourful, slowly brightening from red and black to pink and grey… and then just to full-on white. After a few seconds, the white had gotten so bright that Ben and Gwen had to cover their eyes.
After a couple of seconds of shielding his eyes with his arm, Ben saw the whiteness quickly disappearing in favour of what looked like green grass and brown dirt. He, however, only had a fraction of a second to process that sight coming at him before he felt himself slamming into the ground, which such force that he actually bounced up off the ground, travelled through the air for a second or so before coming back down, his body rolling for a few seconds before he finally came to a stop, against what felt like the bottom of a tree.
Ben could do little more than let out a groan, his entire body hurting from the sudden slamming and rolling, and his head feeling like it was spinning at a mile a minute. His stomach, as well, didn't feel particularly good, though he supposed that was to be expected with the kick he'd taken as Humungousaur from the Highbreed and all.
With there being no immediate danger in the area he seemed to have landed in, he felt just fine not moving for a bit, taking a couple of breaths and trying to stop his head from spinning. His face was down against the ground, but he raised it when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching from his left, looked up… and saw Gwen approaching. His cousin didn't look all that much the worse for wear, with some small patches of dirt on her clothes being the only blemish on her usually-perfect appearance at all.
"You okay?" Gwen asked, bending down and offering a hand that, after letting out another groan by way of reply, Ben took. With a small grunt of effort, Gwen pulled her cousin to his feet and moved around him, brushing as much of the dirt off his jacket, t-shirt and pants as she could easily manage once she'd ascertained that Ben could stand up on his own.
"I think I might…" Ben began, raising a hand and clutching at his stomach for a second, his breaths becoming heavy before he raised his other hand to his mouth, prompting Gwen to take a couple of steps away in case the unsaid came to pass. "I… ulp…! No, false alarm, false alarm, I think I'm okay… I'm okay."
Gwen let out a sigh, looking Ben up and down with concern before she stepped back towards him.
"Is the watch alright?" she asked. "Because if we have to fight…"
Ben looked down at his left hand, and blinked a couple of times as the Omnitrix's faceplate rapidly glowed green before his eyes. Ben narrowed his eyes a little at the watch's display, which began flashing up silhouettes of many different aliens, one after the other, too quickly for Ben to even register a single one. That went on for several seconds, with Ben and Gwen staring at it the whole while before the silhouette-flashing suddenly stopped, and the green glow went away.
"I can never tell with this thing." Ben replied, pulling his sleeve down and taking another deep breath before looking up, taking in the surroundings of where he and Gwen were now. Contrary to the smelly eyesore that they'd previously been fighting in, they appeared to have landed in a woodland-like area, with tall trees in every direction as far either Tennyson's eyes could see. Above the trees, the sun, and a nice blue sky shone above them.
With the exceptions of the wind passing over the leaves on the trees, and his and Gwen's own breaths, the forest was dead-silent. There weren't any signs of life anywhere, he and Gwen were completely alone.
"Are YOU okay?" Ben asked in the direction of his cousin, who was a couple of paces away with a hand raised and coated in mana.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Gwen replied, turning around to face Ben with her hand still raised, before closing her eyes. She had an unusually intense expression on her face, like she was concentrating quite hard on something. "Hmm…"
"What?"
"…"
"What, Gwen?"
"The mana in the air… all around us." Gwen replied, opening her eyes and lowering her hand. "It feels… different."
"Different?" Ben asked, tilting his head slightly. "Different how? Why?"
Gwen opened her mouth, before pausing for a second or so, trying to think of a way to explain it in a manner that Ben would understand. He didn't have the Spark like she did, so she couldn't explain it in those terms and expect her cousin to fully get it. It wasn't as if he was a total dweeb (or at least, not as much of one as he used to be), they just… had different areas of expertise.
"You know when you were hung up on the Chilli Fries that Burger Shack does suddenly starting to taste weird?" Gwen asked. "It was a couple of years ago, I remember you being pretty peeved about that."
"Huh?" Ben blinked a couple of times, before his eyes widened slightly. "Oh yeah, I remember that. I think Grandpa Max told me it was because they'd changed the oil they use to make the fries in… or at least I think it was that. And I grew on them eventually!"
"I know you did," Gwen replied, patiently. "My point is, Ben, that up until then, you were used to the Chilli Fries tasting a certain way whenever you ate them, and then the first time you had them after they changed the oil, or whatever it was… they tasted different. That's how it is for me right now, with the mana in the air back at the dump we were fighting in, and everywhere else, versus the mana in the air here… whereever 'here' is."
Ben nodded, and Gwen resisted the urge to smile.
"Okay, I think I get it." Ben replied, taking a couple of breaths. "I guess that's the how covered, but what about the-"
"Why?" Gwen cut across her cousin, turning around again. "Well I'd be lying if I said I was certain, but I only really have one theory: the mana here feels different to everywhere else in the universe… because we're not IN our universe, anymore. That Null Void projector- that busted Null Void projector the Highbreed managed to get us with- it's sent us to a completely different place from our own."
Ben blinked a couple of times, processing Gwen's statement for a couple of seconds before he looked down at the ground, kicking a random mound of dirt into dust with one of his feet and letting out a sigh.
"Of course it did." He replied. "Why wouldn't it? It's not like we've got enough to deal with without us getting smacked in the face with that curveball! And is it worth asking just how the HELL a Null Void projector just happened to turn up in an ordinary dumpster, for the Highbreed to find and use like it did?"
"I know, Ben!" Gwen replied, letting out a breath to try and keep herself calm. "I guess Kevin wasn't wrong, it IS surprising what you can find in places like that."
She took a couple of steps, closing the distance between herself and her cousin and resting her hands on his shoulders.
"But that isn't something we should really focus on right now." She continued. "I don't know about you, but I think our best course of action is to try and get our bearings regarding this place- if it's a different universe we've been sent to- and then work on trying to find a way back home."
Gwen lightly shook Ben's shoulders a little, to get him to look at her.
"Think you can do that?" she asked, her voice quietening slightly, her green eyes unwavering as she looked across into his… also, green eyes. Ben looked back for a couple of seconds before nodding, taking a step back and freeing himself from his cousin's grasp.
"Yeah." He replied, taking a breath. "I can do that. Besides, we've been through worse, haven't we?"
Gwen let out a short giggle, before immediately tensing up and looking behind her as she heard the sound of rapid footfalls. The two Tennyson cousins evidently were not as alone as they'd first thought: someone, or multiple people, were running close to their position, and judging by the sounds of their footfalls getting steadily louder, they were getting steadily closer.
Ben tensed up too, immediately rolling up his sleeve, ready to activate the Omnitrix at a second's notice. His eyes narrowed as he shuffled up next to Gwen, trying to look through the trees to see who- or what- was coming their way.
"You think we lost her?" A male voice sounded through the forest.
"Of course not, moron!" Another male voice, slightly higher in pitch, replied as the footfalls continued to sound, continuing to get louder and louder. "Did you forget that one of her teammates can sense where we are with her Quirk? We've gotta get as far away from here as possible as fast as possible!"
"And set up camp somewhere else!" A third voice, a female this time, spoke. "And just hope they end up too busy to try and track us- huh?"
Three figures burst into the area that Ben and Gwen were standing in, what looked like two males- one MUCH larger than the other- and one female. The female had black hair around the same length as Gwen's, looked to be about the same height as Ben and Gwen, if not a little bit taller, and wore a black hooded jacket with torn sleeves, and a pair of shorts. One of her most immediately striking features, though, were her eyes: all eight of them. Two of them were relatively normal-sized, but she possessed six smaller eyes, three on the left and three on the right, around her two normal-sized ones. As well as that, the sclera and irises of her eyes were a deep red. Her other striking feature were what looked like four hairy black spider-legs, two on each side, extending out of her back.
The smaller of the two males of the trio- who was about the same size as the humanoid spider to their left- had very short hair coloured a light brown, eyes a darker brown than their hair, and was wearing a dirty short-sleeved shirt and pants. They too, had striking features that a regular-looking human wouldn't have, namely a pair of brown owl-like wings furled up behind his back, and a sharp-looking beak in place of a nose.
The larger of the two males of the trio absolutely TOWERED over Ben, Gwen and his two companions. He had long, blond hair and forwent the use of a shirt, revealing his bodybuilder-like torso- and the black spots upon it- to anyone who copped a look in his direction. Their ears, rather than looking human-like, were shaped like a cat's, complete with little tufts of blond hair extending up from the tips of said ears. From their upper lip, what looked like whiskers extended out horizontally, and in place of nails at the end of each of his fingers, there were sharp-looking claws.
There was silence between Ben, Gwen and the three people that had just run up on them for a couple of seconds, before the guy with the owl-wings scoffed, glancing at his muscular lynx and spider-like companion before turning his head all the way around to look behind him.
"We don't have time to stand around! Come on!" he urged, glancing back at Ben and Gwen. "Hey kids, uh, forget you saw us, yeah? See you around!"
"Hold on, Fukuri," the spider-like woman said, glancing from her owl-winged companion to Ben and Gwen and back again. "Let's not discard a potential opportunity… maybe those kids could be useful. No way those pussy-heroes would want to risk hurting children, would they?" she turned her head back towards Ben and Gwen, grinning and revealing some very sharp-looking fangs.
"Good idea, Rediku." The large lynx-like guy remarked, looking over at Ben and Gwen with a hungry look in his eyes. "Alright kids, we gonna do this the easy way, or the hard way?"
Ben had heard enough. Rather than reply, he raised the Omnitrix and silently slammed down on it with his hand. He saw the three animal-like people all covering their eyes at the green transformation-flash, from which he emerged as- for the first time in five years-
"Diamondhead! …Wait, huh?"
"Guessing it's another fight?" Gwen asked, looking up at the crystalline alien before gathering mana around her hands. "Haven't seen him in a while, Ben!"
'Typical Omnitrix.' Ben thought to himself, as the large lynx-man almost doubled over laughing.
"What kind of name is-" he began, before letting out a noise that sounded more like a roar than a laugh, before standing back up to his full height. "Ahh, thanks for that, kid. I needed that… now where were we?" he growled, before getting down on all-fours and leaping at Ben and Gwen, clawed hand outstretched. Rather than strike Ben or Gwen, however, his claws ended up meeting a pillar of same thick, pale-green crystal that made up Diamondhead, that grew out of the ground between him and them extremely quickly, too quickly for him to have noticed it coming. He let out a growl of surprise and frustration as he realised his claws were now embedded inside the crystal, and he couldn't easily get them out.
"I'll get them!" 'Rediku' called, outstretching her hands towards Ben and Gwen and sending out what looked like silken webbing from her fingers towards the two teenagers. Though rather than her webs making contact with said teenagers, Gwen threw up a mana-barrier that the webs ended up sticking to instead.
Before Rediku even knew what had happened, Gwen sent the mana-barrier flying up into the air, prompting the spider-like woman to let out a squawk of surprise as she was dragged along the ground by her webbing, straight into a mana-enhanced backhand from Gwen that knocked her down immediately, from which she didn't get up.
"Should've brought bugspray." Ben remarked, picking up the pillar of crystal he'd created a second earlier as he noticed the lynx-man finally pulling his claws out, and trying to dive at them again.
"Spiders aren't… bugs…" Rediku moaned out, from her position on the floor before finally losing consciousness, but no-one was paying attention to her now.
"Gwen, duck!" Ben called out, spinning around to build up momentum before smacking the lynx-man in the stomach with the pillar of crystal that he'd created, sending him flying away from the pair of them. The lynx-man even crashed through a couple of trees, Ben had sent him away so quickly by the attack, before he too came to a stop a couple of dozen feet away, and also moved no more.
Ben tossed aside the crystal pillar that he'd conjured up and smacked the lynx-man with, glaring over at Fukuri along with Gwen, who had gathered mana in her hands, ready to go. Fukuri took a couple of steps back, his eyes flicking from Ben to Gwen before he spread his wings and took off from the ground, clearly trying to escape the pair of them without suffering the same fate as his comrades.
"Oh, no you don't!" Ben called out, raising one of his hands. "Gwen!"
"Yup!" Gwen replied, bracing herself and bending down as Diamondhead brought up another crystal-pillar, this one underneath her feet that stretched up into the air, almost above the trees. Just as it stopped extending upwards, Gwen jumped, sending herself even higher with the force of her own jump, plus the momentum gained by travelling atop the rising crystal pillar, while throwing out another mana-tendril that wrapped around Fukuri. Once the owl-winged man was securely wrapped, Gwen yanked him down towards her and, once he was close enough, twisted her body around in order to kick him in the face with a mana-enhanced foot, knocking him out immediately.
She then let the mana-tendril wrapped around him dissipate, switching that out for enveloping his entire body with mana and holding onto it telekinetically, while landing on a crystal-conjured slide made by Diamondhead and smoothly making her way back down to the ground, upon which she dropped the unconscious Fukuri.
"I think we ought to get out of here." Ben remarked, taking a breath as he looked around the area. "There could be more of those guys."
"Yeah." Gwen nodded. "We should find somewhere to rest up and make some kind of plan. Would've suggested here, but…"
This time, Ben was the first to tense up out of the two as he heard another set of footfalls against the ground, rapidly approaching their position. But it was just one person this time, rather than what sounded like multiple.
"They've stopped, you say?" another voice, another female, sounded through the woods. "Okay, I'll… what the hell?"
The footfalls stopped, and Ben and Gwen looked at each other as the female voice met their ears extremely clearly. It sounded like whoever had been coming towards them was right behind the crystal-slide that Ben, as Diamondhead, had made a moment ago. Sure enough, a couple of seconds later, another woman came around the side of said crystal-slide.
This woman had long blonde hair that looked mostly combed-back, though she had bangs that went down the right side of her face, and blue eyes that were covered by a tinted visor. She wore a sleeveless light-blue collared top that was decorated with three straps and a bell, a large similarly-coloured ruffled skirt, a blue and white tail, an orange belt with pockets, a silver buckle that resembled a cat's paw, large gloves on her hands that also resembled paws complete with claws, boots with vertical stripes lined with white fur, and what looked like metal cat-ears on her head.
Gwen and Ben could only blink at the woman's bizarre appearance, and she could only blink back at theirs… or more specifically Ben's, as her eyes flicked from Diamondhead to the crystal-slide he'd made, to Fukuri and Rediku unconscious on the ground a few feet away. She then raised a hand to her metal ears, which Ben guessed was some kind of comms-device judging by what she said next.
"Uhh, Mandalay? She spoke. "I've found Prowl and Itsy-Bitsy, they're both unconscious, I'm guessing Jungle Prince is close by and the same if he's not moving… yeah, and I've got two civilians here too. One's a girl, looks around school-age, other one's made of crystals, wearing black and white… I can't tell if they're a guy or a girl, okay?! Anyway, I've got good reason to think they had something to do with the Villains being how they are… mmhmm… okay."
She lowered her hand from the cat-ears comms-device, and took a step towards Ben and Gwen, the former of whom transformed back into himself in a flash of green light, which the blonde cat-woman jumped at.
"Oh! Okay…" she blinked again, before clearing her throat. "Would you mind coming with me, kids?" she asked, approaching them slowly while holding out a gloved hand, the claws of which slowly retracted. "Everything's gonna be okay, we just need to-"
"Nope!" Ben replied, immediately raising the Omnitrix and slamming his hand down on it, transforming into Jetray before the cat-woman Gwen's eyes. "Gwen, get on!"
"H-hey!" the blonde cat-woman shouted, slightly startled by the sight of Ben's sudden transformation from human into red and yellow manta-ray. "Wait!" she called out, bending down and placing her hands against the ground as Gwen quickly climbed onto his back.
Once she was securely on, Jetray immediately took off from the ground, just as the ground around them was beginning to bubble and shake from the cat-woman's touch.
"COME BACK!" the cat-woman yelled up at them. But her words fell on deaf ears as within seconds, Ben and Gwen were out of the forest, above the trees, up in the sky, and flying away from the forest as quickly as Jetray could go.
Or at least, as quickly as Jetray could go without hurting the passenger he had on his back.
"Can this get any weirder?" Ben asked, voicing both his and Gwen's thoughts as the pair of them streaked across the sky, towards the unknown.
Line Break
And now things are set in motion that cannot be undone. Ben and Gwen have no idea what lies ahead for them, and neither does the universe they have now encountered. But I of all people should know how legendary their accomplishments are and will be. Perhaps this will be the best possible future for this world. What fun it will be to find out.
Gumball, anyone?