He forgets sometimes that the Plumbers, despite acting as the occasional canon fodder for the enemy to charge through before he and Rook can get there, are actually trained for stuff like this. One of them is even spraying Vilware with a garden hose, a look of grim determination on his face and Ben feels like he's gotta at least give the guy props for that.

He grins and launches himself from a billboard splayed over with Billy Billion's face, his tail slyly slicing through the obnoxious slant of the grin as his foot leaves the glass – and, oops, such a pity, looks like Billy's gonna have to fork out to re-paper over the obvious new grey gap in his teeth.

'Mummy, look! It's Ben Ten!'

Ben has to fight down the small smile he can feel twitching at his mouth; it feels private, the emotion behind it too important for him to want the inevitably waiting cameras to catch. Instead he forces it into a grin, turning to wave with his organic hand because he doesn't want to freak the kid out with a broken robot arm but the motion jerks off suddenly, turning into a panicked swipe through the air, mostly for balance as he trips onto the oncoming road. He stumbles for a moment, the leaden weight of the metal attached to him still feeling jarring and cumbersome, especially when he has to whirl to avoid an incoming tentacle.

'Yes, sweetheart, I can see that,' he hears 'Mummy' say. 'You don't see landings like that in the movies.'

'Whatever lady,' he grunts, jumping back and then ramming a punch onto the headlight-infused tentacle currently reaching for his chest. 'You know what those actors have that I don't? Stunt doubles.'

And maybe if I had one of those, he continues snidely within his own head, I wouldn't have lost my arm. He allows himself a quick chuckle at the thought that he actually feels strong enough to joke about it now, before he rams his head into the splattering dark of Vilware's own, wincing as he feels more than hears a metallic crunch grinding beneath the mesh of bone inside. He then whirls away, tail tugging out of a nearby fuse box as two black-and-red veined hands extend towards him, van tires rolling out from their knuckles like the sudden spurs of ninja knives.

A few orange blasts from Rook's Proto-tool quickly dampens this danger somewhat, raining down from Ben's left and biting into the exposed grooves, managing to take off a few chunks of the oozing rubber as they do so; at this, the metal rims let out an irate clank and twist away from the orange energy, re-forming into sharper, thinner knives, much more in line with the whole ninja-effect. Ben grimaces and punches them before they can fully harden, watching grimly as their fluidity causes them to break apart like melting ice, spraying out into a splatter of angry marks onto the pavement. And then he frowns as these comma-shaped splashes catch the corner of his eye with wiggling movements, as though in imitation of caterpillars. Barely pausing to breathe, his fingers immediately shoot out a crackling surge in response, rendering the upturned curves of their movements into charred drops.

Then he promptly summersaults over Vilware's head, raining down a last blast of white energy right into the guy's vacant eyeballs. He winces at the gurgling scream he hears – he doesn't like being ruthless, but he's working with far less manoeuvrability than before and if this transformation is any indication, only one arm from now on is gonna be able to deal out decent alien powers. Which throws out a whole host of concerns, like if he's gonna be able to make a metal arm intangible when he's Big Chill or Ghostfreak-

'Ben!'

Right, right, focusing. He has to be smarter than that. He can do this, right? Be the hero again?

Vilware gurgles, drooling lumps splurging out his back to reform themselves into a familiar and rather wonky-looking cannon. A bright orange light flickers inside and Ben races forward, leaping round to try and face its blast before Vilware can erupt into another burst of dizzying speed. He's caught in mid-leap when he realises he's not going to be fast enough to make it.

And then, unbidden, his face breaks out into a grin. Because to 'be the hero?' Against this lump? Of course he can!

His hand sweeps down, arm forcing itself into a rigid diagonal angle towards the pavement. And then he lets the light race down, lets it all explode out into a push that jerks him up to one side. But this time, he's ready for it, knows how to use it and it shoves him with a force that gets his feet to slam down onto the side of the cannon, and then out his antenna roll, to suck down all that wonderful energy that's about to stream forth. And stream forth it does, before his uncoiled antenna feeds it back through as though they're both part of a closed circuit, the re-routed energy outlining the sodden tangle of his enemy's limbs in a halo of orange and yellow crackles.

Guess, I won't have to 'go home' this time, Ben thinks grimly, all as he sends Vilware into a screaming mess of spasms.

'Well done,' Rook tells him afterwards.

And Ben, now human, passes a critical eye over his...boyfriend's armour. It's not cracked and there are no missing panels, so it looks like it's business as usual.

'What are we gonna do with Mr Zombie over there?' he asks, jerking his head towards the groaning lump of Vilware that is now being cushioned somewhat by a crackling blue force field currently being set up by a nearby science team. Driba and Blukic, he notices, are booking distinctly nervous, hands hovering over a small remote that looks suspiciously like a re-modelled playstation controller.

'Perhaps...we can help Vilgax, or what is left of him,' Rook offers uneasily. Then he winces as a particularly mournful bellow rumbles out of Vilware's mouth, the distortion of red and black veined mucus making it echo like the low groan of a whale. '...Assuming he is still alive underneath all that...'

Ben shrugs. 'Couldn't have happened to a nicer person,' he says coldly. If it had been any other villain, someone who wasn't Vilgax or Malware, then he might have felt some residual sympathy. And it's not as though he doesn't feel some degree of horror, looking at what his oldest enemy has become. But...well. He's only human.

Rook looks at him. 'True, Vilgax was not a nice person,' he says quietly. 'But you are.'

And you should show it, seems to be the unspoken sentiment.

But all Ben says, rather breezily, is, 'yeah, well the guy's been trying to cut off my arm since I was ten. Oh, and just outright kill me. So I've kinda had it up to here with feeling sorry for him.'

Rook doesn't wince at this, but his eyes do glance down along the ruined line of Ben's left arm, the one Vilgax had never managed to actually take.

'Heh, yeah, just another failure he can add to his long list. Looks pretty busted, though.'

A large spark runs through its frame, causing it shiver and clank.

'Whoa...'

'Whoa, indeed,' says Rook, his hand already closing on Ben's unaffected shoulder. Ben kinda gets the feeling that the guy wants to take both his shoulders under his grip and steer him away straight into a hospital, but the way he's eyeing Ben's ruined arm speaks volumes on how bad an idea it might be to try and touch it. 'We should get you to a hospital.'

Blukic and Driba take a moment to glance over, offended looks on their faces.

'...And then we will come straight over to Blukic and Driba and see what they have to say about your health,' finishes Rook smoothly.

They don't exactly look mollified by this, but it's enough to make them grunt and turn their attention back to the force field at any rate.

'Hang on,' Ben says, shrugging out of Rook's grip. 'There's something I want to try first, before the doctors make everything shiny and new.'

Rook stares at him blankly. But when he speaks, his voice is anything but. 'Oh no, what?'

Ben frowns. For someone who prides himself on being so polite, Rook sure has no problem being rude sometimes. 'Just...shut up and watch, okay?'

He takes a breath and then speaks clearly and concisely. 'Give me Ghostfreak.'

There's a burst of light and his fingers lengthen, curved into claws, as the rest of him grows taller and he stares down as the light fades, wings curling over his body in a nice shade of blue and black. 'Well,' he says wryly in the husky tones of Big Chill. 'Could have been worse.'

Looks like even without a control dial to help it function, the Omnitrix is still going to act out the role of a sulky parent that has already determined the fact that it always, always knows best. At least his little experiment can still work with what it's given him. So he concentrates and lets the colours bleed out from his skin, the contours of the pavement showing through the now invisible lines of his flesh. And immediately, his prosthetic arm falls down with a heavy thump.

'Drat,' says Ben, 'That's effectively halved Big Chill's usefulness. And made Ghostfreak pretty much useless. Oh well. Big Chill's still pretty cool. At least he can still fly and shoot ice out and stuff.'

Rook meanwhile, is staring at him, eyes as wide as saucers.

'Oh, don't give me that look,' Ben says grumpily. 'I had to find out sooner or later. And it might as well be sooner, with my arm all messed up and stuff.'

'No, no,' Rook reassures him, his eyes now back to his normal size though he still looks decidedly queasy. 'I understand your reasoning. In fact I cannot believe I did not even think to consider the possibility that going intangible would result in such a problem for you. But that is besides the point. It is just...as soon as you become tangible again, your nerves will react as though they have been severed. It might be a shock to your system.'

Oh. Oh.

'Oh,' says Ben. Now he feels rather queasy.

'Yes,' says Rook, 'oh. Step into my truck, please. I will attempt to get you to the hospital before you time out.' And then with one smooth movement, he ducks down and sweeps Ben's broken limb off the ground, attentively checking it over for jumping darts of electricity.

Ben glides past him even when he could, you know, just glide through him, but whatever, that's just creepy, and he's already coiled himself up in the space above his usual seat by the time Rook looks up. He feels kinda stupid, all of him looming in the air that would usually hold his weight, the stark lines of the seat showing through his midriff and without so much as a shadow to fall across them, but half a second later, Rook opens the door to join him and makes him feel a lot less awkward, before the guy promptly rolls Ben's lost limb into the seat Ben's hovering through, thus making it awkward again.

'At least I do not have to worry about you fiddling with any of the controls directly in front of you,' he notes with a detached sense of amusement.

'Hey!' Ben protests. 'I haven't done that for ages!'

'Only because we have not been on missions together for a while. And when we were, you ended up breaking the radio.'

'I was trying to access the fire extinguisher foamy stuff!

'Foamy stuff?'

'Yes! That pink bubbly stuff, crushes oxygen, puts out fires?'

Ben has time to feel offended at the way Rook's face drops open in surprise, his mouth a quiet dark hole at the fact that yes, Ben does in fact know that the quickest way to put out a fire is to rob it off its oxygen.

'Let's just go,' he grumbles.

Rook nods and starts the engine. Thankfully, they're only a minute or so away from the hospital when the ominous time-out beeping from the Omnitrix makes itself known and Ben flashes back into his usual self before promptly curling over into a scream.

Ben tries to block out the memory of Rook scooping him up into his arms and dragging him through the doors as if he were some frail civilian, Ben's broken arm shoved unceremoniously over his shoulder like a very stiff towel. He tries even harder to forget the dark lines around Rook's eyes collapsing, cutting that amber slant in half as Rook tried to juggle Ben through the various corridors and doorways that loomed in front of his face, popping up like an unlocked dungeon boss as Ben's flailing leg managed to catch a senior doctor in the gut.

'Sorry,' Ben breathes out now, when there is nothing but white sheets and green curtains hanging from a rail to keep them from each other. Rook's fingers reach up to the drapes in question, shoving them even further away from the bed before they settle and Ben can feel the tight knot being made between them, echoed in the pressure of fingers over his own, digging into all the gaps he opens up as he spreads out his hand. His body feels loose, pliant, a soupy mix of dullness and apathy in contrast to his feelings, tricked into compliancy by the morphine flooding his system.

'This is an occupational hazard with you,' Rook says quietly. 'I feel as though I am sometimes waiting for the ticking of a bomb to go off when I am with you.'

Ben tries to pull his hand away, even if he can read the futility of the gesture by the way his pulse jerks in his wrist, his muscles making his hand flop listlessly under Rook's hold.

'You don't have to stay,' he mutters. 'You could go be with someone who wouldn't get themselves 'blown up.''

Rayona's name is on the tip of his tongue, but he can't bring himself to press it out into the air.

'Ah,' tuts Rook. 'I said 'sometimes', not 'always.' Besides a 'bomb' went off in my heart long ago. And I am still dealing with the fallout, even now.'

He grins, looking extremely pleased with himself at what he presumably feels to be a pun. Only to look a little put out when Ben starts to laugh rather helplessly, the jitters running all the way down to the hand he has enclosed within his own.

Notes: Guys, I don't actually know if a suddenly severed prosthetic limb would have the same painful effect in real life, but then again, none of them have probably been separated from the people they are attached to by having the body suddenly become intangible - that's gotta mess up the machinery like whoa.

Though honestly, I'm starting to re-think the title of this fic. It should be named something like 'How many times can the author send Ben back to the hospital AGAIN.'