Chapter 10. I have nothing to say about this, really. Just keep on reading!

"Is this really that urgent, Tennyson?" grumbled Kevin irritably, his hands releasing Gwen's hair. He had been so close to the make-out session he'd been anticipating.

"Hope's gone."

"So?" This time it was Gwen. She was rarely this annoyed.

"She took the Omnitrix with her."

"Again," complained Kevin, his hands fiddling with the steering wheel, "total waste of time."

Ben ignored him. "Anything?" he asked Gwen worriedly.

"I'm getting her vibe. It's not very strong, but I can still feel it."

"You said that five minutes ago."

"You asked that five minutes ago."

Discouraged, he sank wearily back into his seat in the back.

What a rotten way to spend Christmas, he thought sadly, as images of the times they'd shared together flew through his unsettled mind. Running around town, searching frantically for the girl he'd just begun to fall hard for, who had turned out to be a traitor.

"A traitor," he muttered to himself hatefully. "She's a stupid, rotten, no-good traitor." He repeated the words to himself, and the more he did, the more he could feel his former hate resurface. "I want to find her - and I'm going to give her a piece of my mind!"

"I may not have your creepy psychic powers, Gwen," Kevin said, pulling to an abrupt stop, "but I'm pretty sure this is probably a place that girl would hang out."

Ben and Gwen looked where he was pointing and nodded in consent.

There was a large black castle looming in front of them, a sense of doom hovering about its shattered windows, peeling gray paint, and stray bats flying out the attic.

The three of them shivered; they each had half a mind to leave, if they hadn't each felt such a strong bond to her.

"No spiders, no spiders, no spiders," Gwen whimpered anxiously, reluctantly getting out of the car.

They proceeded up the dark path to the front of the house.

"WHO?" a voice growled. "Who dares venture into the headquarters of my mistress and master?"

The trio jumped back fearfully as a giant saber-tooth tiger with enormous fangs leapt out of nowhere in front of them, its reddish-brown eyes glaring intimidatingly at them.

"Oh, it's you three," it said scornfully, its fighting pose relaxing slightly. "I have orders not to hurt you," it reported, turning its back on them. "Consider yourselves lucky."

The creature's voice and eyes looked quite familiar.

"Scorch?" Ben said incredulously. Had Hope transformed him into this - this creature or something?

"What?" he said crossly. "I can change between human and prehistoric forms. Kinda like you and your worthless Omnitrix."

"Where's Hope? What's she doing?" asked Ben worriedly.

"Relax, your girlfriend's fine." He started to slink away. "Follow me if you want to see her."

Without thinking too carefully, the three followed obediently after him, up and down stairs and around corners, through several rooms and on different paths. Finally, they reached the royal room of the castle -

- where they were slammed into respective boards and chained into place!

"What's going on?" Ben shouted, straining to free himself.

"Ha ha ha ha," chuckled a deep voice, clapping sarcastically. "Well-done, Scorch, very well-done! Excellent work, Burne. You just might usurp my position one day."

"Thank you, Master," an overwhelmingly familiar voice replied conceitedly. "I hold that compliment of very high value."

"What did you say it was called again?" her master inquired, its voice cutting into Ben's ears.

"This is the consequence of this so-called - love," she replied scornfully. "Mortals will travel to the tips of the clouds, to the depths of the oceans, just for this love. They are so unreasonably easy to manipulate, like picking the wings off a butterfly."

To their utmost horror, Hope Burne emerged from the darkness in her usual outfit, a derisive grin on her slightly scarred face.

"My plan succeeded," she said, stepping closer to Ben, "better than I had anticipated, I admit. I managed to place myself right in your inner circle, Benjamin Tennyson, and let you put all your trust in me. Quite a mistake now, don't you realize?" She stroked his cheek playfully. Ben wanted to slap it away, if not for the bonds cutting into his wrists and ankles.

"Tell me," she breathed, "do you still love me? Even now?"

He ground his teeth. "YOU TRAITOR!" he shouted furiously, his voice resounding off the walls of the near-empty room. "YOU LYING, THIEVING, NO-GOOD B-"

"Oh dear, it seems we have trouble controlling your mouth," she said mockingly. A swish of her hand created gags made of magical fire that sealed itself across her victims' mouths. "Yes," she said quietly, watching the apparent pain on their faces, "it burns, doesn't it? It burns like hell. Fire burns strongly with the hate I have toward you goody-two-shoes idiots."

"Cart them into the dungeon," said her master lazily in a bored voice. "I have no need for them."

"As you wish, Master." She bowed deeply. "Let's go, Scorch."

"This sucks," Gwen mumbled, picking at the bars of her cage.

"No shit," Kevin replied contemptuously, tossing a stray pebble out of the bars of his.

The three of them were in a large room that was barely lighter than totally pitch-black. Their cages were in three different corners, and there was barely room to stretch; they could only sit, hugging their knees, or stand. The fourth cage had an ominous human skeleton - evidently, it had starved to death, but there had been no attempt to remove it.

"I can't believe I let her control me like that," Ben said, utterly depressed. "I should've known better!"

"Didn't we all, Ben?" Gwen said miserably. She felt like crying. What had once been euphoria at finding a new friend was now confusion, befuddlement, distress.

They'd been here for over an hour. Hope had placed a call to their families, ensuring that their kids were safe and there was no need for policemen to come snooping around for them.

Just then, the dungeon door opened, and an unexpected visitor was thrown brutally in the fourth cell.

"Treachery will not be forgiven, Hope Burne," said the master from before, "even among our kind! You will pay your debt by serving your time as well."

"See ya 'round, Hope," Scorch the saber-tooth tiger said scathingly, following his master out and using his tail to close the door behind them.

There was an awkward silence between them for a few minutes. Finally -

"Fancy seeing you here," Ben said coldly, trying to disguise the pain and longing he felt for her. "Bet you wanna go over the good side now, huh?"

Silence.

"I can't believe you could lie to us like that, you greedy, selfish, stuck-up bitch," he continued, trying to make his words pierce her as hurtfully as hers had so often cut into him.

More silence.

"YO, HOPE BURNE!" Kevin shouted, sending a shower of rocks her way. They clinked off the bars harmlessly.

"Shut up, you bastard, you're ruining my concentration!" It was the same ordering tone she had used so often before.

"Concentration for what?" said Gwen hopelessly. "We're stuck in different jail cells, with no food or water, all our powers were taken away, and you're worried about concentrating?"

"Go to hell!" said Ben as hurtfully as he could.

"SHUT - THE FUCK - UP!" she said, more loudly this time. "I planned this, okay?"

"Right, and where's that going to get us?"

"I'm trying to remember where the trigger spot in the cell is."

"The what?"

"How can you be so sure it's going to work, whatever your plan is?" Gwen said unhappily. She had been fed a large dose of the Hopeless Hellth Potion; the result was that her negative moods were greatly exaggerated.

Hope ceased her scraping and turned to face Gwen in the cell opposite her. "Do you know why my mom named me Hope?"

Gwen shook her head, which could barely be seen in the dim light.

"It's because I was born during a time of a Giant Depression," Hope explained, an edge to her voice. "I was the one who was sure to carry the powers through the family, bringing hope to everyone merely by telling them everything would be all right; I was a symbol of hope. That's why."

"Yeah, and I'm named after Benjamin Franklin," Ben said in a mocking voice. What a load of bull shit, how was being hopeful going to help them get out of this situation now? "Why can't you use your powers and bust yourself out of here?"

"If I still had them, do you think I'd still be here having this nice chat, Tennyson?" she answered scornfully, resuming her ear-splitting scraping. "He stole my powers too. They're all rather nice additions to the Omnitrix."

"I'll never forgive you for this," Kevin said menacingly, putting his hands on the jail bars and straining to absorb something, anything. "You realize that?"

"Gee, I wonder what else is new," she shot back, running her fingernails across the bars.

"Do you think this is funny?" said Ben angrily. "Our friendship, our partnership, our depending on each other, everything we did together - and you're willing to just throw it all away?" He punched the wall as hard as he could, but it stayed untainted, blank as his mind.

Hope didn't answer.

"Hope," Gwen said gloomily, "whatever I did to offend you or make me so much... I'm really sorry. I wish it had never happened. All I wanted was a best friend to talk with and confide in." A tear slid down her cheek, and she buried her face in her arms. "I trusted you so much, Hope, I confided all my secrets in you, I - but you're just going to leave me behind? I feel like - I feel like I want to die."

There was silence.

"What about me?" Ben interjected, his voice losing some of its edge as well. He clung onto the bars and tried to remember what her face looked like. "What about my feelings for you? Doesn't that count as something too? Are you just going to leave me behind, just like everyone else, to live without you... Do you know how hard it is to leave someone you love, Hope? Am I nothing - nothing - to you?"

Silence, except for ragged breathing.

"Gwen." Hope's voice nearly cracked. "I'm - I'm s-I'm sorry, too." She sniffed. She rubbed a hand over her heart in vain to try to ease the irrevocable pain that had come to her when she said those simple words. "I didn't know I would feel this bad when -"

"You, you, you, it's always about you!" Ben shouted at her. "Have you ever thought about what I felt? Or what other people feel?"

"Ben." The tears were flowing faster now, and Hope was afraid she would suddenly melt. "I - I l-I love you too."

Nothing else could have comforted Ben more than those four words right at that moment.

All was forgiven.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, streams dripping down her face. "Is there anything I can do to help fix the pain?"

"Well, you could help us get out of this joint," Kevin said casually, his head nodding.

An unexpected smile formed on her ragged face, even through the waterworks.

"Done."

Barely three pages in Microsoft Word! Oh well, I hope you're not too disappointed?

The next chapter comes up soon! Very soon!