I own nothing but my fics. This will be a chapter fic. This is set in an alternate sort of timeline, starting off from the point between the original series and AF when the Omnitrix finally comes off of Ben's wrist. This is a reimagining, if you will. Consider it AU, sort of. This is what could've happened. In my imagination. Happy reading!

The wind was blowing something fierce that day. As Gwen looked up bleakly at the sky, she blinked several times against the chill that came along with these winds. She had a feeling arise within her chest, also. It wasn't a good feeling. Perhaps the wind blowing up over the ocean they were standing by was an omen of sorts?

"Ben," she said, shaking her head somewhat as her shoulder blade-length hair blew in the breezes. "I don't know if we should keep doing this. Grandpa told us on the phone that we might as well just wait for him to come back to town before we try to remove the Omnitrix."

"He said 'we might as well' - he didn't say we had to. School starts again soon - high school, Gwen. I don't really want to waltz in there with this watch still on my wrist. Something tells me that wouldn't be a good idea."

Sighing, the redheaded, fourteen year old Gwen licked at her lips nervously, before closing her eyes and moving her hands toward her cousin's wrist, her fingers wriggling as she did so. "Alto - Sarvo - Relinquisho!" she murmured, before opening her eyes to peek as strange, purple-colored sparks arced from her slender fingertips.

Also watching the device on his wrist closely, Ben - also fourteen - stared, unblinkingly, at it. He and his cousin both watched with great anticipation as the Omnitrix twitched and shook, tremoring. Was it finally going to come loose, freeling itself from Ben's wrist?

"Apparently not," Ben murmured, rolling his eyes as the watch stopped twitching at all. "Wanna give it another try?"

"I dunno, this is kind of tiring," Gwen replied, though determination was in her eyes. "But I guess I can give it one more go. Eighteenth time's the charm?"

And soon the cousins soon found themselves looking down at the Omnitrix once again. It was trembling and shaking on Ben's wrist as Gwen applied her spell once more, the purple waves and arcs of power emanating from her fingertips, glowing. "Maybe it'll work this time," she said, eyes and tone of voice eager.

Glancing away in the next moment, Gwen then took notice to the winds about them, as they began to pick up again, whirling and spinning higher and further and more fiercely than they had been doing just seconds earlier.

"What's going on?" she asked, her eyes blinking rapidly once more against the harsher breezes. "I didn't think my spell would cause the weather to go haywire like this."

"Maybe it has nothing to do with the spell - the weather, that is," Ben offered. "But either way, I wouldn't let up. I think this one will do the trick, and take the Omnitrix right off."

And so Gwen continued on working her spell, despite any possible alternative side-effects. "Gah!" Ben would cry out every so often, lifting his arm upward slightly as he did so; as the watch was pulled away, it also pulled on his skin, burning and tearing at him.

"I'm sorry it hurts, Ben," Gwen said to him. "I'm really sorry it hurts. Do you want me to stop?"

"No, we're almost there," Ben said with a grunt, the watch still detaching itself with some force. "If I have to, I can jump into the water here, to cool off the burn on my wrist afterward."

"Oh wow, it's actually burning you?" Gwen exclaimed, before adding as an afterthought, "I'm sorrier still, but, jumping into the ocean in the middle of an upcoming storm seems like a terrible idea either way."

"Oh, you worry too much," Ben said to her, before gasping painfully for breath as the watch further unwelded itself from his skin, bit by bit. "We've almost got it."

Making a fast, harsh pulling motion with her hands, Gwen soon pulled the Omnitrix away via her purple-waved telenkenesis; it was soon fully off of her cousin's wrist, landing instead on the dock beneath their shoes.

"Thank you! Finally!" Ben called out, his eyes darting to stare at the raw, near-bloody ring left around his wrist in wake of the Omnitrix's absence.

"Yes, we did it!" Gwen cried out happily, before jumping as a clap of thunder echoed loudly throughout the skies above her. In her moment of fright, she stumbled a pace or two backwards, slipping and falling, hitting her head on the edge of the dock. The winds were whirling as fiercely as ever in the skies above.

"Gwen!" Ben exclaimed, watching as her now unconscious form fell directly down into the ocean water below; not knowing what else to do, he jumped in after her, grabbing onto her as the currents stirred by the ever-so-violent winds picked up speed.

"Gwen, wake up, come on!" he shouted, trying to keep his head above water and hers too; it wasn't a simple feat, and the way the water kept pulling them both away from the dock certainly wasn't helping either - the water was both too deep where they were, and too willfull and strong. "Gwen, you gotta wake up now! Come on and help me so we can get back to the - the dock!" She simply was not responding.

His eyes widening in fear, Ben watched as a large wave of water crashed over their heads. He coughed out the water as he struggled back to the surface. He then realized that Gwen could not cough, as she had no idea what was going on. Though it caused him to sink slightly beneath the water, he put all his energy into lifting her up as much as he could, holding her from behind, picking her up under her armpits. Soon though, they were both under the water again. It was simply no use.

"Sure, now that the Omnitrix is off…" Ben thought aloud bitterly, realizing that he and his cousin were being pulled further and further away from the dock, regardless of how he strugged to pull them toward it; he also realized that the weather simply refused to let up, indefinitely worsening as the frightening seconds turned to minutes, passing him by.

"Ben?"

Turning Gwen's body about in his arms there in the water, Ben smiled slightly at hearing the sound of his cousin's voice at last, watching her as she slowly opened her eyes. "Ben, what happened?" Maybe now they stood a chance of swimming back to the dock, with her awake.

"You fell into the water after hitting your head," he explained to her quickly, before tightening his hold about her as a wave crashed over them both again.

"Wow, this storm is really crazy, isn't it?" she replied as she spat out water, as soon as they were both above its surface again; glancing away from her cousin, the redhead then noticed an impossibly large wave, certainly too large to be caused in the ocean by any normal phenomenon that she could think of in Bellwood. "Look out!"

The two Tennysons felt the power and the crash of the wave, and then they knew the darkness of being under the water - the coldness - the powerlessness. Opening his eyes under the water - a talent Ben had always seemed to have - the young man quickly found Gwen. His arms outreaching again, he clung onto her, before bringing his face to hers. They needed to breathe, and there was no getting to the surface again any time soon. He simply knew this somehow, deep down in his gut. The water was weighing down on him something fierce, something crazy. They were in trouble, so he had to do something.

Bringing his lips to hers, Ben and Gwen were able to help each other breathe then, deep down so far into the storm-riddled ocean water. Where the waves were taking them, they certainly had no clue or control over - but they had each other. They were breathing anyway - it was the very least they could do at all.