Chapter Ten
Was it Perseus? I believe so. He owned a sword that could cut through anything, and an indestructible shield. I had always wondered what would have happened if he decided to see which one was stronger. He never did, though. I suppose Perseus was a smarter man than I. I suppose he knew what would have happened. But I didn't. I struck my unstoppable sword unto my unbreakable shield.
The entire ship rocked. The son of god's artificial gravity cut out for a split second, allowing Ben 10 to escape the grasp of a large machine-like alien with pincers for hands. His Echo-Echo form wasn't meant for close quarters combat. He ran away from the pincer machine and screamed a sonic scream. The machine vibrated and its head began to smoke; Ben had disabled what counted as its brain.
But even though that was likely the twentieth monster he had beaten, he seemed to be fighting the mythical beast that gained two more heads when one was severed, but Ben dared not to remember what that beasts name was, as he feared the mere thought might summon it.
Ben was tackled by a zombie looking humanoid with knives for fingers. It stabbed into Echo-Echo's soft skin and began to claw at his head. Ben tried to scream, but the tackle knocked the wind out of him. He tried to wiggle out of the zombies hold, like he had seen wrestlers do at his school, but nothing, not even a swift kick to the groin, seemed to stop him.
"Ben!" a voice yelled. A red flash of light momentarily blinded Ben. When his vision came back after a few blinks of his eyes, he saw a hole in the zombie's abdomen. Then, two large metal hands grabbed the Zombie by the shoulders and threw him across the room.
Dr. Animo helped Ben to his feet. They stood back to back. Ben finally got some air in his alien lungs and screamed, disabling a four armed man with swords in each hand that charged the two. Dr. Animo fired the lasers from his palms and knocked over two gun toting criminals that screamed for blood.
"Seems I was overzealous…" Dr. Animo started. A previously invisible ghost like alien tried to stab Animo with his claws, but Dr. Animo, in his battle hardened senses, sensed the danger just before the claws pierced his old skin. He grabbed the hand and ripped it off, then put his palm into the face of the ghost and fired his laser. "When I considered this to be the easy job."
"No kidding." Ben said, his voicing sounding as if though he was in an echo chamber made of metal. Suddenly, Ben heard a loud alarm. At first, his mind merely classified it as the alarms on the Son of God, but he quickly remembered that the power had been shut down fifteen minutes before. He looked down to see the ultimatrix icon blinking red.
"That isn't what I think it is, is it?" Animo asked.
"Cover your ears." Ben responded. "I'm going out with a bang. A loud one."
Instantly, Echo Echo split himself into two. And those two duplicated themselves. The process continued until there were as many Bens as there was criminals, and they, in unison, screamed.
The scream shook everything to its core. Dr. Animo instantly vomited, but kept his metal gauntlets over his ears, as to keep from going deaf. Metal vibrated and melted, wood and glass shattered into a million pieces, and Ben silently prayed that no one was killed by the time the scream was through.
A green flash of light assimilated Ben back into one form, his human form. He fell to his knees and threw up the Arogun Jelly that Kevin Omega had prepared for him. Ben was shocked to learn it had the same texture coming up as it did going down.
"That about did it." Dr. Animo muttered as he fell backward and landed on the ghost he had dispatched before. Despite its skin being made of something akin to rough leather, it seemed to the doctor that it was the most amazing pillow and mattress ever, and his body wanted nothing more than to rest.
But he couldn't sleep. His mind was filled with horror as he pressed the communications link in his ear, and frantically he checked on the well-being of his last friend and ally.
"Vilgax? Are you okay?" he asked.
"Fine." He responded. Dr. Animo looked around for the only standing monster, and saw Vilgax walking slowly towards them. His sword was out, and coated with blood from scores of different races. "Tell me child. If you could do that from the beginning, why didn't you?"
Ben only stared back at Vilgax. The energy of the Ultimatrix was the only thing that allowed such a powerful attack. Ben could feel that it had no energy left. It would take a while to recharge. And while it did, Ben was exposed and weak. Vilgax took his silence to mean all of this, and he sat next to Dr. Animo, his amphibian bones moaning as he lowered himself on the ground.
"What next?" Vilgax asked. Dr. Animo pressed the button in his ear.
"Omega, Lucky girl. What's your status?"
"We're coming." Lucky Girl responded. There was a large shake in the Son of God, as if though it had hit a planet sized asteroid. "I think Ben's met his counterpart."
"Indeed." Vilgax said into his communication link. "Meet us in the commons, and we shall aid your cousin in battle."
"Sounds like a plan. ETA, twenty minutes. Lucky girl out." The com link went silent. Ben managed to find the strength to look at his Ultimatrix to see that it was still red. Twenty minutes? Plus another ten or so to get to the other Bens. Would half an hour be enough time for it to recharge? What if wasn't?
As if though the Devil heard his fears, a sound came from adjacent to the three. There, in a dark hallway, was a red dot, the ember of a cigarette. Two hands could only be seen when they came near the ember. The cigarette holder was clapping.
"Twenty minutes, huh?" it said. It had a masculine voice. A familiar voice. Ben found the strength to stand only when Dr. Animo helped him up. "Guess I'll have to work quickly."
The man flicked the cigarette into the light, and his boots quickly followed. There, standing only fifteen feet away from the tired trio, was Kevin Levin.
Ben V was, for one of the first times in years, scared. He raised himself out of the debris and tried to stand tall, but Ben X smashed him down once again. This time V managed to just barely avoid the strike, but the displacement of air alone shot him down the hallway. He managed to stay on his feet.
"This isn't fair!" Ben V screamed. "You and I! We're supposed to be equal! This is supposed to be a fair fight! How are you stronger than me? How?"
Ben X ignored his pleas of understanding and walked calmly toward him, set on V's destruction. Ben V let loose an array of ice, but Ben X flicked his wrist and summoned hell fire to melt them and revert the temperature back to normal before it ever became an issue. Ben V backed up.
"Wait! Please! I just want to talk!" Ben V pleaded. Ben X struck him in the stomach. He grabbed him by the belt and threw him through another wall, what must have been the twentieth he had broken.
"Just want to talk?" Ben X asked as he grabbed his counterpart by the hair. He rammed his face into the metal, over and over again, until there was nothing left of the metal. He threw him to the ground like a ragdoll. Ben V got up and flew to the opposite side of the hallway, and turned to face him. "What is it with you people? Dictators, criminals, evil demons. When you're winning, you seem intent on destruction and death. You don't care about anyone in your way. You get what you want. But when you're losing? It was just a joke. It isn't your fault. Or you throw out some excuse, or some argument of morality. That's why you people always loose. You're afraid too. You're afraid to lose because you know you've done wrong and you're afraid of the repercussions."
"I'm not afraid of anything!" Ben V screamed. "Especially not some bullshit hero with a cause to kill for! You think you're any different than me? Ha! The only difference between us is the color of our omnitrix!" Ben V, in his anger, flew at the speed of light at Ben X. His mass became infinite, and his strike could destroy planets. But when he hit Ben X, he merely waved off the assault and grabbed his counterpart by the neck.
He threw V to the ground and got on top of him. He got him into a headlock and pulled, stretching his spine, as to keep V from doing anything Ben X didn't allow.
"See? There you go. Some throw away excuse. I really thought you were like me. I thought you were a soldier. A man. But you? Your nothing." He pulled on his spine and broke Ben V's trachea. It re-healed and broke a dozen times in a second, and despite the fact Ben V didn't need air, he tried his best to breath. "Hear me!" Ben X screamed. Ben V's entire molecular structure vibrated and he felt as if thought he was going to melt. "You're nothing! You're fucking nothing! You're not some god! Not some interstellar conqueror! Not even a super villain! You know what you are? You're just some punk with a gun!"
Ben V could feel the minor flexing Ben X's arm. He was about to snap his neck. Ben V released a blast of telekinesis, strong enough to shatter everything within thirty feet into dozens of pieces. Ben X was launched like a rocket into the now shattered hull behind him. He leveled himself with his own telekinetic powers.
Ben V rubbed his aching neck. His trachea re-healed, and he spoke, now calm.
"Yeah? Well you're just using your telekinesis to enhance your strength. And now I am too." He informed. Ben X's eyes arched. "So come on, Mr. High and Mighty. Let's see how you fight someone who's every bit as powerful as you."
Ben X smiled and laughed. Ben V cocked an eyebrow.
"That's funny. You think you're even half as powerful as I am."
Ben 10 was thrown across the room. He landed on his back and rolled across the concrete floor. He quickly rose to his feet. His body was telling him, begging him, to quit. He could feel at least a dozen broken bones, and every so often he coughed up blood. But there was no letting up. No catching his breath. Not after Kevin Levin changed into his monster form.
It was ugly to be sure. The beasts of legend would take one look at Levin and spit in disgust. Those same beasts would be ripped apart only seconds later. The form was large, just as tall as Vilgax. It had four arms, each one with sharp claws or talons. On its back, it had two insect wings that could keep him hovering for as long as he needed. Jutting from his back was two, slimy, green tentacles that he wrapped around his waist like a demonic belt, and Ben could tell from the air popping and sparking around them that they were electrically charged.
But the worst had to be Kevin's face. It had three eyes. two on the right, one stacked above the other. They were beady, blood red, with no iris'. The other eye was large, larger than the other two. It was green, with a black, rectangular iris that looked blankly at everything and nothing at the same time. His mouth was filled with sharp fangs and serrated teeth that could cut threw and chew steel as if though it was grass.
Ben took only a second to admire his ugliness. Dr. Animo charged Kevin, tried to punch the ugly off his face, but he too was thrown back with one arm, as if though Dr. Animo weighed but a few pounds. Dr. Animo slid back towards Ben. Ben helped the old man, who's bones must've cried more than his, back to his adamant feet.
"How do we stop him?" Ben asked.
"Every being with invulnerability I've ever fought as one weakness." Dr. Animo said. He sprinted towards the monster as it grabbed with fiery hands at Vilgax's face. "Aim for the eyes!"
Ben retrieved the rifle he had strapped onto his back. He put Kevin's eyes just above the square barrel of the gun and fired.
A red beam ejected from the gun. Ben was shocked to find that the gun actually kicked forward instead of backward, and suddenly his reflex to pull up before he pulled the trigger was gone. He saw that his aim was just a bit off, and he adjusted accordingly.
"Vilgax! Keep him still!" Ben screamed. Vilgax shoved his sword into Kevin's hooved foot. Kevin screamed and knocked Vilgax away, shifting his weight just enough that the hell beam just missed him. Kevin raised his hands and created an intense wave of heat that shot out at Ben. Ben had only enough time to close his eyes.
But when he opened them, he saw something beautiful. The fire swirled around him, but was unable to touch him. Ben looked down at his chest to see the device blinking, indicating a force field had been projected.
Instantly, however, Ben's amazement turned to horror as he quickly remembered that it could keep out the fire, but not the heat it produced. The force field had turned the sphere around Ben into an oven, and his skin burned. His jacket suddenly caught ablaze and he dropped the blaster to rip off the burning cloth, only to find, to his infinite horror, that all of his jacket and jeans were on fire.
The fire outside the sphere let up. Ben caught a glimpse of Vilgax holding onto Kevin' arm as he fell to the ground, screaming.
Dr. Animo ran up to Ben and began to tear off the personal force field generator. Once it was off, he tore off Ben's jacket and began to pat down the fire.
Dr. Animo saw as a shadow engulfed the two. He turned to see Kevin, with Vilgax's sword, standing above them. Dr. Animo grabbed Ben's flaming body and rolled out of the way just as the blade came down.
"Vilgax!" Dr. Animo screamed. "Catch!" he grabbed Ben by the neck and belt and chucked him into the air, just above Kevin's head. The wind knocked away what little flame was left on Ben's body, and Vilgax caught the boy.
"I've got you, child." Vilgax assured. He laid Ben down on the ground, but took no time to attend to his wounds. He instead pulled the blaster from his holster and ran into the fray.
Ben X fell to his knees. He inhaled, although his body no longer needed the air. He looked up to see his counterpart, leaning on a wall that could give at any moment. Ben X willed his body to move, to take advantage of his enemies weakness. Unfortunately, every super dense bone in Ben X's body was broken. Every organ busted. His spine was misaligned, and he was bleeding profusely from a dozen gashes. Luckily, his counterpart was no better off. They sat there, heaving for air they didn't need, waiting for their bodies to heal. They had nothing to do but look at each other.
"Your body." Ben X said. "It has laser vision, right?"
"Yeah." Ben V replied. Ben X chuckled. "What?" Ben V asked.
"Nothing. It's just that…I haven't used mine…not in this form, anyway. People think that laser vision is like a limb. You have to move it, you have to try to use it. But that's not true. Not for me, anyway. You don't so much push it out as you let it go. Because it's always there. Burning behind your retina. Begging to be let loose." Ben V stared at him and shook his head.
"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"
"Yeah." Ben X locked eyes with his counterpart. "I'm letting it loose."
A dark green beam shot out at Ben V. Ben V cursed under his breath, and let loose an identical beam of dark blue energy from his eyes. They met in the middle and created an explosion that absorbed everything around it.
The alarms sounded. It took a while for the alarm to come in English, but when it did, Gwen and Kevin were horrified to hear that the hull was breached. Without power, the external force fields that kept the ship pressurized weren't there, and an entire sector of the son of god was going to be ejected from the main ship.
The two stopped, checking to see if they were in that sector, but they were not. Kevin found a map in the hands of an engineer that they knocked out and began to look at it.
"That's what I thought." Kevin muttered. "That sector houses Evil Ben's personal quarters." Kevin turned to Gwen. Even through the mask, she looked worried. "Don't worry. Ben can survive in space just fine."
"I know." Gwen replied. "I was just thinking…remember when you and I joked around when we were kids. We joked around and talked about who could beat Ben? We said Superman, Thor, Captain America, none of them could beat him."
"Babe-" Kevin started, knowing where this was going. But she kept going.
"We said the only person that could beat Ben was Ben."
"But that's assuming that Ben's alone." Kevin said. "That evil Ben? He doesn't have us. Our Ben does. So let's go link up with Animo's team so we can take this son of a bitch down." Gwen looked at him and nodded her head. she smiled through the mask.
"You know they have the same mom?" she asked jokingly as she began to run down the hallway. Kevin shrugged.
"Yeah. Guess I'll need to come up with a new insult."
"You stupid, slimy, piece of shit." Kevin Levin muttered to Vilgax. Vilgax reached for the pistol, still in his hand. But his hand was a few feet from his arm, and his hand still clutched the blaster. Kevin stomped on his uninjured arm, and his amphibian bones shattered. Vilgax moaned, but he wouldn't scream. "Tennyson let you escape. He thought you were the only person. The only person in the whole universe that could even come close to fighting him on an equal level. And what do you do? What do you do when you have a second chance? You come back here with old man Animo and some punk kid with a knock off Omnitrix. It's like you want to die!" Vilgax activated his laser vision, hitting Kevin in the chest. But it did nothing, save anger Kevin even more. Kevin raised Vilgax's sword high above his head and slashed.
Vilgax's warrior pride gave way to his pain, and he bellowed a curse in his native tongue. The sword had come down, just above both of Vilgax's eyes, and slashed them both. Vilgax kicked his legs and did everything he could to get the monster off of him, but Kevin didn't budge.
"This sword…" Kevin said. "This is some family heirloom, isn't it?" Vilgax didn't answer. Kevin laughed and stabbed the sword clean through Vilgax's chest. "Guess that makes this ironic." Kevin grabbed hold of the hilt of the sword with both hands and bent the blade.
Kevin, laughing, walked away from Vilgax's dying body and walked over to Ben. Ben looked over at Vilgax, who moved only enough to indicate he was still in pain. Behind him lay Dr. Animo, who was unconscious, laying on a table that was broken when Kevin decided he's metal exo-suit would make an excellent bat.
Kevin grabbed Ben's burnt body by the neck and raised him off the ground. Ben looked down and believed that he wouldn't survive the fall if Kevin dropped him. He looked back into the three eyes of the monster named Kevin Levin.
"Alright, pipsqueak." He bellowed. "Who are you?"
Ben looked into the eyes of death itself. He saw his parents, chastising him for lying to him about being a superhero. He saw Gwen and Kevin, both versions of them, getting married, and he was Kevin's best man. He saw his girlfriend, Julie. He saw her lips as the two inched in for a kiss...
And he wasn't about to let some mutant freak take all that away from him. He found new strength in his burnt body and smiled.
"My names Ben." Ben muttered. He slowly unclipped the holster attached to his leg. "Ben…Tennyson."
Kevin smiled and laughed, a laugh so loud that it shook Ben to his very core. He could feel his claws getting tighter around his neck, and Ben grabbed the handle of his plasma pistol. It took all the strength in the world to lift it, maneuver his arm around Kevin's, and push the barrel of the pistol into one of Kevin's three eyes, and finally, to pull the trigger.
Ben's weak body was thrown from the explosion. The air around him became superheated and exploded, and Ben found himself thanking his burnt skin for not relaying the sensation of being thrown across the room and feeling drops of plasma drip onto his chest.
His body hit the ground. Ben rolled with the impact until he hit the body of a particularly large alien. He laid there; still, his body wishing to stay numb, as if he acknowledged that he had a body, he would be engulfed in massive pain.
Two metal footsteps came closer and closer to Ben. He turned his eyes ever so slightly to see Dr. Animo.
"you got 'em, kid." He admired. He reached down to help Ben up, and Ben, against his better judgment, moved his arm and grasped his hands. The numbness was replaced with pain. Burning, intense, pain. But Ben felt fine. He was alive. And that's all that mattered.
Two familiar voices came from behind them. They turned to see Kevin Omega and Lucky Girl running to them. Dr. Animo and Ben almost screamed in anger. Neither had the strength. Only Animo muttered.
"You're late to the party." The two heard this and saw the massive chaos. They immediately saw Vilgax, a sword in his chest. They ran over to him. Gwen knelt down and Kevin examined the sword. Ben leaned on Dr. Animo, and the two hobbled over to him.
Vilgax was coughing up what little blood was left in his body. Kevin Omega looked at the bent sword and looked at Gwen. He shook his head. This was the end of the Chimera Sui Generis. Dr. Animo saw this and knelt down next to his friend.
"You're going to be okay, Vilgax." He lied. Vilgax laughed.
"I don't think so, James." He muttered. "I…I can see my people."
"Damnit, you two ton squid." Dr. Animo muttered. "Don't say stuff like that. You're going to make me cry."
"This is what I want, old friend." Vilgax looked at him. He closed his eyes and smiled. "I wonder…if all the races go to the same heaven?"
And then he was dead. He held out long enough to say his form of goodbye, and let go. Dr. Animo could sense his passing. He clenched his fist, and with newfound strength, he smashed his metal fist into the ground. But he had shed enough tears for a dozen lifetimes. Vilgax, the once infamous pirate and dictator, would get only a dent in the ground for his mourning.
"Come on." Dr. Animo muttered. "Let's go help Ben. Finish this."
The four got up and walked towards a corridor, leading towards the battle between gods. In their way was the corpse of a monster. Kevin looked down at the monster as he stepped over it.
"Who's this guy?" he asked. Ben stopped, and, with a sarcastic chuckle,
"you." Kevin looked down at his counterpart and sighed. He kicked its rough monster skin, but it didn't move. It couldn't. It only had half a head.
"He's dead." Kevin informed them of the obvious. Ben turned his back on it.
"Fuck 'em." He muttered as he walked down the corridor.
I laughed so hard when I heard that. I laughed at Ben 10's supposed idealism. It just goes to show you. It's easy to forget what a sin is on the battlefield.