First of all, I just want to say thank you to everyone who reviewed and favorited the story. You all are a great help, and chapter 5 is already in the works.
»»—Story Start—««
"So, when do you think Ben's going to catch up?" Gwen questioned through in between heavy breaths as she and her grandfather sprinted through the forest.
Max gave her a smile. "Trust me, Ben isn't the type to miss any type of fight. Especially at the level, this might just be at," he said a started to get out of breath from running.
Gwen gave him a weirded out look before she just kept looking forward as they neared another cleared out area. Once they broke through, they both looked, and Gwen couldn't believe her eyes and Max looked like he had to relive his worst nightmare.
'That drone… that structure… those weapons… Vilgax.'
"Uh… Grandpa?" Gwen started awkwardly.
"Y-Yes, dear?"
"How in the hell are we going to beat this thing?"
That caused Max's eyes to widen before he sweatdropped as realized he forgot his Plumber Gear once more.
'Ah… it must be old age catching up to me.' he mentally chuckled at his embarrassing mishap.
"I, ah… guess we'll have to let Ben handle this one, Honey." Max chuckled uneasily.
Gwen thought looked at and frowned. "You can't make-, ah forget it. I'm done being surprised anymore," she muttered, earning a short laugh from the old man.
However, their attention was brought down to where the robot was causing carnage due to a bright green flash.
\\\\\-/
30 Seconds Before
Ben shared a large smirk as he pressed down on the finger-sized green button, which caused the faceplate of the gauntlet to pop up and the weird insignia dilated into a large diamond. In the center of the green filled out diamond was a black, ghosted out silhouette of the same lizard alien he first turned into.
He reached up and touched the ring that had multiple small green dots on the dial before he rotated it, and it caused the lizard alien to be replaced with another alien. But, that one was humanoid in shape. Deciding to give that one a shot, he forced the dial down with the palm of his hand, creating an immediate large green flash.
Only three seconds later, the bright green flash died down and revealed a tall, black-skinned an alien that bright yellow electrical currents running down his arms.
The alien all stood tall, easily being seven feet tall with pitch black skin. It was muscular, but not overly so and on the back of his head was two long antennae with what a golden colored electrical plug. In the center of its chest was a white and black circular Omnitrix symbol. He had long arms, nearly dropping down to his knees and had five fingers, but for fingers, he had golden plugs. His legs were long but thinly muscular, and his feet took the shape of something that resembled penguin feet. On the center of his head, was a large, perfectly circular green eye. Along his arms and shoulders were weird looking golden bolts that traveled up and down his arms.
"Huh, I wonder what this alien can do?" The transformed Ben sounded out through a large mouth, and his words came out like he ran himself through a massive static bomb. He looked down and clenched his weirdly shaped hands and fingers.
'This is going to take some time getting used to,' he thought before his smirk returned as the robot turned around to meet him.
The robot stilled it's large form as it set his scanners on the transformed Ben before it raised it's arm to him and right under his wrist, a large red energy cannon glowed a right stunning red before it shot out a quick, yet sizable beam of energy at Ben.
Out of reflex, Ben raised his hands and his plugs for fingers caught the blast and surprisingly, he didn't take any damage at all. In fact, the blast of energy started rapidly disappearing into Ben's body.
'I'm absorbing it?!' Ben thought with pleasant surprise before he felt an intoxicating rush of power run through his veins before he instinctively aimed his right hand right at the robot. After that, a beam of golden yellow energy blasted out of his fingers, almost as larger as the robot's own.
Reacting quickly to the oncoming blast of energy, the robot fired off another blast, only twice as strong and large as the previous one he fired off.
Ben's blast was quickly overwhelmed and was forced back right towards Ben, who couldn't raise his hand quick enough and was hit full force from the energy, creating a building-sized explosion.
Luckily, the civilians and everyone else that was getting attacked had already evacuated to a safer point, and no one was hit by the energy blast.
Max and Gwen looked worriedly as the explosion hit, both clearly worried about Ben's safety.
Once the dust cleared, they saw Ben, still, in alien form, he was alive, but bleeding profusely down his left his shoulder and had multiple cuts down his chest, which bled out purple blood.
Ben, on the hand, gritted his teeth before he righted his posture, not even thinking about the pain before he cracked his neck once more. He ran forward, using his enhanced speed, running faster then any human was capable of and leaped to the side, dodging a red energy ball.
He then jumped onto a building before he leaped up, further dodging another attack, which created a smaller sized explosion that destroyed the building. However, before he could land, the robot had managed to launch off a quicker, yet stronger blast that neared an airborne Ben.
Ben grinned toothily before he stuck his hand out absorbed the complete blast before he utilized his antennae and aimed both of them right at robot before he shot out two missiles sized blasts that the robot couldn't counter, and his entire arm was blown clean off.
But, the robot was far from destroyed. It proved that as it aimed its arm at the now landed Ben, and from his shoulder, a large plate of metal shifted upwards and up came strip of metal with a dozen red missiles.
Not even moments later, the missiles all collectively shot forward launched forward weird scrapping sounds.
Since those missiles were made out of any amount of energy or electricity, Ben knew he could absorb those, so he did his best to dodge them all.
But, after successfully dodging the first three, he was hit by the forth and the rest soon after, creating a larger fiery explosion.
"Ben!" Max shouted in alarm.
However, Ben came leaping out of the fire with numerous burn marks on his body. But, something alarmed Max to a large degree. It was the massive, bloodthirsty grin on Ben's mouth as he sailed through the air.
Once Ben neared, the robot reared back his single arm before he punched forward at blurring speeds. Ben shot out his own fist and clashed against the robot's fist, creating a small residual boom that soon created a large draft of wind.
Ben then twisted his body and aimed his opposite hand and shot out another yellow blast of energy. The blast bisected the robot's last remaining arm, causing it to stumble back with sparks shooting from its stump.
He then reached forward and once again, instinctively stretched out his fingers and grabbed the robot's head before he punched it's head with his full strength, causing it to cave in somewhat. Ben landed on its head before leaped off, but once he was air born, he sent an air cracking roundhouse kick, nearly sending Its head straight off its shoulders.
With one more final attack, he heeled back his left, heavily bleeding arm before golden electricity started running up and down his entire arm. He then sent a heavily compressed basketball-sized ball of yellow energy.
The ball had electricity covering it before it collided with the center of the robot's torso and the second it did, it created a massive hole in its chest.
The robot stumbled after the attack, but electricity started running around the hole before it blew up in a large fiery explosion.
Slow, steady beeps were heard as Ben landed a couple hundred feet away and he so happened to land right in a tree line. Seconds later, a bright, blinding flash of red light erupted through the tree line.
Max and Gwen both watched with wide eyes before they shared a look and nodded simultaneously before they made there over to Ben, evading the spreading fires.
\\\\\-/
Ben grimaced as he leaned against a tree. His clothes were tatters, and he was bleeding heavily. The injuries he had at the moment were all he had from his fight against the robot.
'Damn… so, mental note, the injuries I get when I'm in alien form transfer over to my human form afterward,' he thought before used his hand and smeared off a line of blood trailing down his lip.
His battle hungry smirk or grin was totally void, which was now replaced by a frown. His own open eye was filled with sadness. 'I lost myself…
Again.'
Before he could continue his dark thoughts, he heard a couple of twigs snap did nothing. He listened closely as two sets of footsteps came closer.
Once they came closer, Ben was able to his grandfather and cousin.
And once they saw him, they all immediately rushed over to and knelt down to him. "You okay, son?" Max asked seriously.
Ben looked at with his frown still in place before he slowly stood up. "I'm fine. Doing all of that wasn't easy," he told the old man a slight scoff.
"You're upset, aren't you?" Max questioned, something confused Gwen.
Gwendolyn looked a lot better when she realized that Ben's life wasn't in danger but became confused at why Max said that. Ben was just being him, or so she thought.
"What do you think?" Ben scoffed erupted in a fit of coughs, he immediately covered his mouth with his black gloved hand. Once he stopped, he slowly let his hand fall and stared into his hand.
Blood.
Right down the corners of his lip was a few new lines of fresh blood.
"And you already know why," Ben told the old man, acting like nothing happened before grasped his slightly ripped shirt and roughly ripped it off.
That revealed his bare, very muscled torso, which was covered with some scars, blood, and open wounds. But, that also caused his shirt to uncover his muscled arms as well, and Gwen couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Gwendolyn looked at his bare torso and arms, and her cheeks were dusted by a bright shade of pink. 'H-How can he have that much muscle? He looked so skinny with his shirt on… but without it, he looks like someone in their peak performance?' she thought, baffled.
"Ben… there's nothing wrong-,"
"That's what you don't you get!" Ben exclaimed, suddenly yelling, which startled the two. "You don't know how it feels to be on the border of losing yourself and sometimes not having a choice whether or not you want to do something!" He exclaimed once more, sounding a little louder.
Ben reached up and pointed to his head with his index finger. "You don't know how it feels. That's what bothers me! You people try and act like you do, but you don't!" he continued, getting a wince from Max and sympathetic look from Gwen.
"Your right, Ben. I don't know how it feels." Max agreed instantly. "But, that's doesn't mean that there aren't people who want to help you."
Ben clenched his teeth and fists, "That's the point! I don't want people to help me!" he exclaimed, getting a confused look from Max and Gwen. "When I deal with shit myself, at least I can blame myself when something goes wrong. If I blame someone else who just wanted to help, that wouldn't even make sense."
With that, silence filled the forest as Ben winced before nearly collapsed on the ground, but he was able to catch himself at the end before he sat against the tree.
Gwen, upon seeing that, immediately went up to him with a worried expression on her face. "Are you alright, Ben?" she questioned worriedly before she used the remains of his shirt and placed it on his bleeding chest.
Ben looked at her, mentally debating whether or not to tell her to stop before he sighed and let her. "I'm fine," he told her.
She looked at him a frown but, let go none the less. "I'm sorry I cant do more." she apologized sincerely.
He looked at her in confusion. "What are you apologizing for?" he questioned, pretty confused at why she was saying sorry to him.
"It's because I can't do more about your injuries," she said easily as if that answered everything.
Ben looked at her and frowned, "We'll don't, you have nothing to be apologizing for." he told her shortly. But, he continued after about ten or so seconds. "But, thank you for helping me."
The orange haired beauty smiled appreciatively. "It's no problem, I'm just happy to at least something useful," she said, still smiling.
Ben looked into her green eyes with his own singular exposed one, "You've changed a lot, Gwen."
Gwen gave an even larger smile in return, "We'll so did you, alien-boy."
Ben gave a dismissive snort, "Please ease up with the nicknames," he sighed miserably.
The three of them all felt the tense and angered atmosphere leave and was replaced with a weird and tired atmosphere.
Max watched the interaction between the two of them with a smile before he cut in. "I think it's time to leave. Plus, I don't think you want Ben to bleed out here. Do you?"
Gwen looked up and nodded before she looked back down at Ben with a quizzical expression on her face. "Can you walk or stand on your own?" she asked seriously.
He looked at her as if she was an idiot before snorted. "Of course I can," he exclaimed before slowly stood up on, admittedly shaky legs. He stood at full height with a hidden wince on his face before he tried taking a step forward before he stumbled forward. However, before he could fall forward, Gwen caught him and slung his left arm over his shoulder.
Ben looked at her an impassive expression on his face before gave another snort as he looked away. "Not-a-word," he growled out, earning an amused giggle from the girl.
"Sure, alien-boy." she giggled once more as she heard him growl even harder.
\\\\\-/
30 Minutes Later
After making their way out of the forest, they all walked over to where they're campsite was, which took about twenty minutes. They all walked in silence, no one really feeling the need to speak. However, Gwen had a smile on her face as Ben leaned over on her as she supported him as they walked.
Once they got to their campsite, they immediately went into the RV and set Ben down. Max then went inside a secret compartment of the RV and pulled out a white, plastic tube that had some weird writing on it.
Max then walked over to Ben's lying form, which was his bunk, but all the sheets and blankets were replaced by a large, plain white sheet. "Alright, son I'm going to place this cream on your wounds, with this, they'll be mostly healed in a few days," he told the young man, who nodded in acceptance.
"That's fine. Just do it so I can get to bed," he grumbled as Max squeezed out a line of pure white healing cream on his index finger. He then smeared it on Ben's largest cut, which was right across his left shoulder.
"There, that will seal the wound up and simultaneously disinfect it," Max explained easily. He then did the same to all of Ben's notable injuries.
Ben just laid back, not really doing much as he just allowed Max to apply whatever he was applying to his wounds.
"So, what are we going to do now?" It was Gwendolyn who asked that question.
Max briefly looked up from Ben's arm from where he was applying some cream too. "I don't really know," he muttered, but Ben and Gwen both heard him.
Ben sighed as he cracked his sore neck. 'I don't know what's going to happen. Do we end the summer trip now this has happened?'
"I say the only thing we can do, is try to help you understand that device better," Max told Ben, earning a narrowed eyed look.
"You already know that I don't want this thing. So, why are you adamant on me having it?" Ben questioned seriously.
Max sighed at that before he looked Ben straight in his eye. "I'm not so adamant on you having it. I just think since we don't know how to get it off of you we may as well have you know how to use as good as you can... at least for the time being." The former Plumber told Ben.
Gwen nodded at that. "I can agree with that," she agreed.
"Fine. I'll try to learn to about using the watch, but nothing more. You got it?" He asked seriously, earning a satisfied nod from Max and Gwen.
Max then stood up and dropped an empty plastic tube into a trash can before he turned a water faucet on and with that, he began cleaning off his hands. "I say we can start in three days once you've had enough to recuperate fully. After that, we'll travel around Washington D.C and maybe take a fishing trip." Max explained to the two young adults.
Gwen nodded slowly, not so sure about the fishing trip idea, but going around Washington D.C sounded nice, so she couldn't complain.
Ben, on the other hand, nodded in agreement and said nothing as laid his head back on a firm pillow with his good hand resting behind it.
"If that sounds alright then, we'll move back into the city at say… 9 AM," Max informed his passengers.