A/N: When I said last chapter to "comment codenames," that was a joke. Sorry if I didn't make it clear enough, but I finished this chapter a month ago. Reader input wasn't exactly my focus at the time, but you guys didn't comment some really good ones. I'm partial to "Bishop" for Rook (that's a really good one, seriously, very nice) and "MY CAR!" (best said in Kevin's voice) for Ben, because it made me giggle uncontrollably for about a minute straight.

This chapter and the next one in Rook's P.O.V. are mainly to do some character building and take a bit of a break from the plot before it gets heavy. I figured that if I'm going to have OCs, I might as well take the time to get them semi-developed so you guys aren't just watching bland pieces of cardboard jump start some plot.

Plus, after chapters averaging seven thousand words, I feel like we could all use something shorter.


"Many of my people distrust you, Ben Tennyson. They question my decision to accept your help." Patience, despite her namesake, looked less than tolerant as she watched Ben from the other side of the table. "But you know this already."

The hero nodded, unphased. "Yeah. I'm sort of used to people not liking me. It's more common than you might think."

"They blame you for the state of our world," she informed him. "It's easier to blame an outside source than accept that some things are out of a single person's control. The Guardian of Petropia may have brought our planet back, but you brought us back, Ben 10, and I don't think that you have ever been properly thanked for that."

Ben blinked. "Thanked?" His frown deepened. "The Guardian… You mean Sugilite?"

"The very one." Patience nodded. "So much is not known about the back-up crystal that you used to restore us. We call it Pantheon. She has been a treasured artifact for as far back as our history can recount. Her energy is what allowed our species to settle above ground and quickly make the jump to interstellar travel. Very few knew her true purpose, of recording the planet and our DNA along with our memories."

There was a pause. "That's… great," Ben said carefully, "but what does that have to do with me bringing the planet back? I knew most of that already."

Patience shook her head. "Pantheon is a mystery to all of us, Ben. It was lost after you recreated the planet, collapsing to dust not long after you left. I suspect that her power was completely drained. Sugalite followed, his eternal task finally complete. This is why the people of Petropia blame you for the loss of our buildings and industry and artifacts. We can no longer search Pantheon for the answer of what happened a year ago. But, there is more.

"It is possible that Pantheon never held the record for these things at all. Even the eldest of us, Petrosapiens who have lived for centuries, can only remember the legend stating that she recorded "the planet and her people." There was never a description of our possessions."

Something sparked in Ben's chest. He straightened in his seat. "Are you saying that—?"

"It might not have been your fault, Ben," Patience said gently. "It's always possible that you've been being blamed this entire time for something that you had no control over."

Relief swept over him. The questions, the guilt, the doubt, the endless repetition of "What if I had tried harder?" — it all caught in his throat. It made it hard to breathe. Ben swallowed hard, not trusting himself to speak. For once, something that wasn't his responsibility, wasn't his problem, wasn't his fault… Could it even be the truth?

"Well?" Tetrax asked. There was a contemplative frown on his face. "I know I haven't been the most trustworthy person, Ben, but I'm hoping that this all has proven to you that I really did mean the best."

"That was never the part that I doubted, Tetrax." The hero looked away, his expression pensive. "I get why you had to lie. I'm not mad about it, I'm just— ugh, I'm so bad at talking about this sort of thing." He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut in frustration. "Can we just forget that it ever happened? If I can forgive you for trying to kidnap me when I was ten and turning me into Diamondhead just to shatter me the last time we met, I can forgive this. I'm all about second chances."

Tetrax smirked. The tension hanging over their rendezvous dissolved. "In that case…"

"I was not acting," Rook stated matter-of-factly,

And Ben, basking in the glory of having captured Khyber and narrowly avoided having his arm cut off, took a second to catch on. "Wait. So you actually meant all of that stuff you said about always having to save my butt?"

He could remember all of it clearly. "I have already saved you countless times, and I have only known you a few weeks" Rook had snapped, and even in the moment, Ben had been taken about by how good he was at "faking" such a resentful glare. "I am surprised you made it this far."

Ben swallowed his indignation — had to remind himself that they were acting, that their fight was only a stunt. "You want to start something?" He'd shouted back, hand going to his Omnitrix. "Is that what this is about?"

"No," Rook had replied, and the fight left him as his stance relaxed as if Ben wasn't even worth the energy to be angry with. "I am going to end something."

But it wasn't just their partnership, as the world fell away and slipped through his fingers and it felt like the entire universe ended with that punctuation. And it did, as Ben's eyes snapped open and the world he'd been dreaming retreated back to his subconscious.

Weird not-quite-nightmares were fairly normal for Ben, as far as dreaming was concerned. He thought nothing of it. He sat up in bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and, by then, he could only faintly recall what he had dreamed at all. All of his nights had passed like that since arriving on Petropia. They weren't nightmares, but they always left Ben feeling lethargic and on edge in the morning. Still, it was nothing that he couldn't deal with.

A quick glance at the bed across the room showed that Rook had already gotten up. Not that it was surprising — Ben found himself having trouble adjusting to the time difference on Petropia, but Rook had carried on as if nothing had changed. At least it meant that he got the room to himself whenever he woke.

The diamond-hard beds weren't all that comfortable, though. Some blankets had been given, but while they kept off the chill, they provided little to no padding. Ben popped his neck painfully, twisting his back until the knot in his spine cracked as if something had broken. It felt sore but much less stiff. Satisfied, Ben got out of bed, looking down at himself with a faint grimace. He was really going to have to find some replacement clothes. Wearing the same thing day in and day out was going to get old pretty quickly.

The main priority, though, was food. He made his way to the kitchen, which was mercifully empty. The minerals intended for the soldiers were shoved out of the way and Ben grabbed for the human food tucked into the back. As Patience promised, it wasn't exactly great, but Ben shrugged and figured that he could do a lot worse than a breakfast of stale bread and chocolate-covered crickets. He had eaten weirder.

After that, he knew that Patience wanted to talk to his infiltration group. He couldn't remember the names of the other two that he was supposed to work with, but he wasn't looking forward to working with Conway. Then again, if he could turn Kevin into his friend, this shouldn't be that much harder. Hopefully.

But, more importantly, he was looking forward to sparring more with Tetrax. Their practices from the previous day had left him sore, though thankfully, his ankle felt better. Ben didn't think that he would be needing more ice. He left the kitchen and, on a whim, set off with the training room as his destination.

The set-up sort of reminded him of when he had been ten and Tetrax had shown up to stop the Omnitrix from self-destructing. He looked back on his first time entering Tetrax's ship with fondness. He had only gotten a brief look at the area where his friend trained, but the impression that it left on his child-mind was something akin to a medieval torture chamber. The training room that Patience had set up had the same feel. Even Ben had to admit that it was weird to be getting nostalgic over something like that.

There were plenty of Petrosapiens using the devices. Ben didn't see Rook anywhere, but he picked Tetrax out easily enough. Years around aliens had helped him grow skilled at picking out even the most minute differences between individuals. Tetrax had a very distinct shade and, oddly enough, the length of the prongs sticking out of his back was a dead give-away — the other males had noticeably longer ones and females lacked them entirely.

"Hey, Tetrax," Ben greeted as he approached his friend.

He was doing something similar to boxing, but where the goal seemed to be to hit the ball hanging from the hook with peranite projectiles very precisely, at just the right angle and with the perfect amount of force to send it knocking into the holographic targets that appeared around the set-up.

Tetrax grunted in acknowledgment. "Ben, glad to see you're up. I thought that you were going to sleep until lunch at this rate."

Instead of pointing out that time meant literally nothing to his internal clock when he was underground on an alien planet, Ben shrugged and tapped his watch. "Sorry. It's on Earth time and I haven't figured out if it's got an alarm feature yet. Unless it's set to notify Azmuth whenever I do something stupid, which wouldn't surprise me."

That made Tetrax laugh. He scored another perfect hit before reaching over, pressing the button on the machine's interface to turn it off. He turned to face Ben properly. "Did you want to work on more of those lessons?" When Ben nodded, he added, "Your ankle is better, isn't it? I would hate for you to have a debilitating injury on the mission and I don't need to give your partner any more of a reason to dislike me than he already does."

Ben hardly considered a sprained ankle to be a "debilitating injury" and was about to tell Tetrax as much when his statement caught in his throat. "My partner…? What? Rook doesn't dislike you. He's too polite," Ben insisted.

"Yes, I've noticed that," Tetrax agreed with a nod. "But he's a very… "rule-abiding" Plumber, Ben. Can you really think of no reason he might have to not dislike me?"

Sparing a quick glance around, Ben made sure that no one was close enough to hear before dropping his voice and leaning in. Much quieter than before, he said, "I haven't told him about any of that. I never told anyone that stuff about your past, Tetrax. The only way that Rook would know is if he read some sort of file on it when you got put on trial for all of it, and I doubt it'd be the kind of thing that Petropia waves around for anyone to get a look at."

For a second, Tetrax looked surprised and the faintest bit fond. He quickly wiped that look away. "You have a point. The files detailing my "legal past," so to speak, are filled with highly sensitive information. I doubt that your partner could have gotten his hands on it, assuming that he even knew where to look." He relaxed a little bit. "Maybe I was overthinking it."

"See, dude? Rook likes pretty much everybody until they start breaking laws in front of him. And even then, I mean, I can't tell you how many lawsuits have been filed against me for property damage and things like that, but Rook still likes me." Ben grinned. "So can we switch to the more interesting stuff and get to the part where we're trying to punch each other?"

Tetrax smirked. "I thought that you would never ask."

In the last year, Ben had sparred with Rook a few times. The biggest difference between him and Tetrax was that, well, one of them was impervious to most physical attacks and it wasn't Rook. Fighting a Petrosapien as a human was, the way that Tetrax explained it, more about prolonging his survival than trying actively to win.

The biggest advantage was to use his environment, but since most everything around them was made out of peranite, that point was null and void. Instead, Tetrax focused more on teaching Ben the few weak points on a Petrosapien and how to use their weight against them. It reminded Ben of the few karate lessons he'd sat through with Gwen. It had been boring when she taught it, but Tetrax skipped the spiritual mumbo jumbo and got right to the good parts.

"Feel here?" Tetrax held out his arm towards Ben about twenty minutes into their lesson, gesturing for him to feel the inside crook of his elbow.

It was an odd request, but once Ben did as told, he was surprised by the different feeling of the skin. There was an almost rubbery quality and it was more taunt. He applied pressure, immediately lifting his hand back when Tetrax winced. "Sorry! My bad."

"It's fine. Just a little discomfort." He shrugged it off and retracted his arm. "Remember that spot, Ben. It's the same on the other arm and behind the knees and it applies to all Petrosapiens. If you can twist or put pressure on the area, it could get you out of a tight hold or send even the toughest men to the ground. It's a very sensitive nerve cluster. We have to have a lot of them to feel effectively through peranite skin and most of the nerve endings for the limb will run through this area. Our eyes are also very soft and easy weak points if you're in a bind."

"Wow," Ben said with big eyes. "Are you going to let me try that out on you?"

"Not a chance." Despite his words, Tetrax smiled. "I think that, for the mission, your best bet will be to go unnoticed. With perimeter guards, your group shouldn't have to fight anybody. And if they do, it will likely be short considering that we should have the advantage of numbers. If there is a fight, you shouldn't get involved. Like Patience said, the most important thing is to disable whatever is being used to poison the water. Your goal should be, first and foremost, to get to that room. Right?"

Ben nodded. "Right," he agreed, though they were both perfectly aware of Ben's insistent need to save everyone. He didn't think for a second that Tetrax actually believed Ben to be capable of turning his back on a fight.

"Good. Are you ready to continue, then? The most important element to stealth is timing. You can be pretty impulsive, Ben. I want to make sure that you understand—" His explanation was cut off when the human held up a hand.

"Hold that thought." Ben frowned as he pointed at something over Tetrax's shoulder. "Could you, um, tell me what that's all about?"

To be honest, Sybil had been watching them for a while, but Ben had assumed that she was just watching Tetrax the way that she frequently did. She would end up talking to the Petrosapien once Ben inevitably got tired first and chose to sit out, but usually, her staring wasn't so noticeable. The look on her face was far away, but even without pupils, Ben could practically feel her gaze drilling into him. It wasn't malicious, only contemplative, but it was incredibly creepy all the same.

Tetrax must have felt the same because he looked uncomfortable when he turned back to Ben. "Yes, well… How did I put this?" He was quiet for a moment. Ben waited as patiently as he could (which wasn't all that patiently). "Ben, dating on Petropia is a fairly… streamlined affair," he said uneasily. "If you know anything about Tetramand courting practices, it might help you to think about it. They're similar."

"I know about them. A little," Ben answered as evenly as he could. Wasn't that the understatement of the year? He almost grimaced at the memory. He knew more about Tetramand dating than he ever wanted to.

"Yes, well, that helps. See, Petrosapiens are mostly a combat-oriented species. We aren't the conquerors and warmongers that the Tetramand are, but as you've probably managed to discern yourself by now, combat skills are very important to our culture. Sybil is…" Tetrax hesitated. "...nice. But she's also the sister of one of my closest friends and someone that I practically grew up with."

A little confused, Ben nodded. He figured that Tetrax and Conway were old friends based on the way they greeted each other, but he hadn't known that their history went as far back as childhood. That was interesting to know. On the other hand, Tetrax's love life (or lack thereof) wasn't something that Ben ever wanted to hear about again. "Alright. Cool." There was a beat of silence. "...but what does that have to do with her staring?"

Swallowing a groan, Tetrax visibly struggled with his admittance. "We don't have a true equivalent for marriage as humans understand it. But, our courting begins and ends in battle. It doesn't have to be serious, though you'd be surprised how many myths and legends on our planet have centered around two people finding love on the battlefield. In our modern days, we substitute this for sparring together. It's a surprisingly reliable metric of compatibility. If a couple can fight well together, their time together will likely be long and prosperous. Do you understand that, Ben?"

The Hero of the Universe made a face. "Yeah, I do. Not that I'm all that excited about it."

"My point is," sighed Tetrax, placing his hands on Ben's shoulders. "Sybil wants to spar together. And, as much as I care for her, I very much do not want to."

"Oh." Ben blinked. "Oh. So you mean this whole time she's been...? Dude, don't you think that maybe you should just tell her to stop or something so that you don't have to keep— Wait." He took in Tetrax's withdrawn posture with wide eyes. "Oh my God. You've been trying to buy yourself time with these sparring lessons, haven't you?" Horror dawned as Ben paled, his voice rising in pitch. "Did you trick me into flirting with you?"

"No! No, Ben, that's just—!" His face contorted like he was in actual pain, darkening in color the way that it did when Petrosapiens blushed. "Friends are perfectly capable of sparring together. That's not what this is about. I wanted to help you, of course. I felt that you would need it and it…" He hesitated. "And it did have the added benefit of avoiding her, but that was never my intention!"

"Yeah, that's great, but the thing is," Ben hissed, leaning in to be heard over his lowered volume, "I don't think that she sees it that way."

Their argument probably could have continued in hisses and whispers for another good half-hour, but Tetrax didn't get to reply. As he opened his mouth, Conway clapped a hand down on his shoulder, surprising them both. Somehow, Ben hadn't seen him approach.

"Sorry to interrupt your spat," he said dryly, "but since I'm on the same infiltration team as Tennyson, I'm going to need to borrow him from you, buddy. Patience wants to see our group now that she's done talking to the others." His disliking towards Ben hadn't eased at all. If anything, Conway was more insistent about it than ever, sending Ben a glare before turning a smile to Tetrax. "How about after we have a good brawl? You know, for old time's sake."

Even without pupils or very clear facial muscles, it was obvious when Tetrax's gaze snapped over to Sybil. Ben couldn't help but scowl. "Of course," he answered almost automatically. "It's the least that you can do to make up for cheating the last time we spared."

Conway scoffed. "Oh, please. Get over yourself, Tetrax. I've explained it to you a thousand times — how could I have planned for that vespertilio to attack us? And even if it hadn't interfered, I still would have won."

Fighting not to grin now, Tetrax let out an unimpressed huff. "Spoken like a sore loser."

Ben's patience was officially at an end. He shoved his hand in Conway's face before he could retort, doing his best to look intimidating to someone that was over two heads taller than him. Thankfully, he'd gotten pretty good at looking serious since being partnered with Rook. It was sometimes necessary to put in that extra effort, considering how tall his partner was.

"Not another word about it until after the meeting," he said in a clipped voice. Conway was annoyed, but thankfully, said nothing. "For the record," Ben addressed to Tetrax, "we're not sparing again until you talk to her. And after I get Rook to lend me his texts on this planet's culture." He swallowed an indigent shout, throwing his hands up in frustration as he turned and started away, holding back curses.

If Ben had a nickel for every time he'd unknowingly fallen face-first into an alien courting tradition, he'd have two nickels. Which still wasn't a lot, but how stupid did he have to be to let that happen twice?

The worst part was that he couldn't even be mad about it. As rude as it was, Ben had had his fair share of unwanted attention from girls. He'd never gone that far to keep one of them away but, then again, he had never been put into a position where that would have been an option. Ben wanted to think himself better than that, but logically, Tetrax had a point. Their sparring solved two problems at once and narrowly avoided hurting Sybil's feelings. More than that, though, Ben didn't want to keep doing the apologetic back and forth with Tetrax. He already knew that his friend hadn't meant to offend and that was enough.

Just as quickly as it had come, Ben's anger faded. He slowed his furious steps, meandering in the empty hall, and then stopped completely. He deflated. It wasn't worth being upset about, so why was he?

"Hey! Tennyson!" Conway's irate voice interrupted his musings.

Annoyed but resigned, Ben turned to face him with an unimpressed look and folded his arms over his chest. "What is it, Conway? Don't you have better things to be doing?" He asked, bored. The only warning that he got was the Petrosapien taking one step too close, then there was a hand knocked in the front of his shirt and hefting him off the ground.

"I'm only going to say this once, Ben 10." His free hand curled into a fist that grew into a sharpened point, molding the end of Conway's limb into a large spike. He held it to the human's throat. If he cared at all that Ben's expression hadn't changed in the slightest from the dispassionate look he'd had back when his feet were on the floor, then he didn't comment on it. "You don't like me and I really don't like you. But for the time being, we're forced to tolerate each other's company. So I'll get you to that target room alive and I'll keep my mouth shut while you make friends, but get in my way or hurt my sister, and I promise that you won't live long enough to regret it. Do we understand each other?"

After years of having his life threatened both verbally and physically, Ben couldn't have been more disinterested if he tried. He was about to snarkily request to be put back on the ground when something that Conway said stopped him. "Wait." He frowned. "Your sister? What makes you think that I have anything to do with Sybil? We barely know each other." And, frankly, she creeped him out. Not that Ben was about to say that while the guy had a diamond-hard edge digging into his neck.

"How stupid do you think I am?" Conway narrowed his eyes but, to Ben's relief, retracted his arm back into a normal hand and let go of the grip he had on the hero's shirt. Ben stumbled when he hit the ground, jarring his ankle, but only clenched his jaw for a moment as he straightened himself back up. "You think I haven't seen her making googly eyes while you and Tetrax spar? Keep your distance, Tennyson."

Ben went red in mortification. Somehow, the situation kept getting worse. "That's not—!" He started to protest, but Conway cut him off with a shake of the head.

"I don't want to hear it. Just know that I'm watching you. Closely. So, start walking we have a meeting that we're supposed to be attending, remember?" He put his hand on Ben's forehead, shoving the human pointedly out of his way as he stalked off.

That time, the wall caught him. Ben scowled at Conway's retreating back. How could Tetrax be friends with a guy like that? There was a small part of Ben that was reminded sharply of Kevin, but he squashed that down. That was different.

He waited for Conway to round the corner before heading after him. Despite the interruption, it didn't seem like Ben was late. As he entered the same conference room from the day before, a Petrosapien rushed in after him, looking embarrassed.

Patience already had the hologram visual on, waiting with an unimpressed look as Ben and the other straggler took their seats. All four of them sat on roughly the same side of the circular table, but none were close enough to touch. Before, Ben had felt bad about not remembering their names, but the hostility coming off of the two strangers erased that guilt.

"Thank you for making time out of your busy schedules to be here," Patience said with a thin-lipped smile. "As I'm sure you all remember from yesterday, you are the second infiltration group. Analyzing the factory's blueprints, I've drawn together a simple plan to get Ben as close as he needs to be to disable the generator for the Red Sleep. Of course, getting information about it that you can should be the first priority. There should be computers nearby with details on production. First, Haslach, I want you to disable the security cameras." She brought up a diagram of their room again and the four hallways encircling it, highlighting a total of seven cameras. "I don't care how you do it — block their transmission or patch in a different feed, I don't care. Just take care not to destroy them. It will automatically set off the alarms. While she's doing that, Aurum, I want you to knock out this guard." Patience made a few swipes and a map of patrol routes in that area was displayed, each guard shown in a different color to produce a crisscrossing, tangled rainbow. She tapped on a light blue one. "At the time that we set this mission underway, he will be the only guard in these halls. It will only be that way for a minute until his patrol intersects, so quickly, your job will be to knock him out, hide him, and strip him off his armor and authorization, should he have any. Learn his patrol and commit it to memory, because you're to keep it up for ten minutes, at which point, all of our agents should have either left the property or be on the way out. Here's a copy of this specific patrol route." She tossed Aurum a small flash-drive, waiting for the man to salute her before continuing.

"When you're both done, maintain your positions. Conway and Ben, I'm partnering you two together. The door should need a key card, so once Haslach finishes with that, have her let you in. Once in, I want this job done as fast as possible. I can't tell you what you might see, assuming that this is the right room. If it isn't, leave as quickly and as silently as you can. If it is, Conway, your job is first to gather as much information as you can, then cover Ben while he sabotages the setup, if you have the time for it. If you hack into the computers there, I can't be certain whether or not guards will converge on your location. Conway, if they do, you're tasked with getting Ben out unharmed. Unless it's a matter of life or death, do not," she directed solely to Ben, "use the Omnitrix. We don't need the Plumbers tracking our locations. Remember, all of you, it should be as though we were never there. Anything else to add?" Her eyes narrowed, as though she could sense Ben's and Conway's displeasure. But, after a tense moment, neither said anything and she nodded. "Meeting adjourned, then. You all have your assignments, so you're free to leave."

All four of them got to their feet, giving Patience the crossed-arms salute (admittedly, Ben's might have been lackluster), which she returned. The human started to leave, only for Patience to add, "Ben, could you stay for a moment?"

It wasn't as though he had been overly eager to follow his team members out. Ben watched after them for a moment, a frown on his face that only deepened when he saw Aurum look back at him and, very pointedly, stick his nose up and huffily leave the room. He swallowed a sigh. A part of Ben had hoped that the unjustified disliking of him would fade once he joined up, but no such luck. "What is it?" He asked, turning to Patience lazily.

"After I finished talking with the first group, Rook stayed behind to give his suggestions for nicknames for you both," she said. Immediately, Ben's interest was piqued. "He thought of "Stone-Cutter" for himself and "Kirby" for you. I was checking to be sure that you're alright with using that."

Ben couldn't think of anything to say for a second. He had been embarrassed too much that day already to have much of an outward reaction, but inwardly, he was thinking some very loud and very rude words in Rook's general direction. And he made a mental note to have a talk with Gwen about telling people his middle name once he was back on Earth and had his phone again.

"I was hoping for something cooler," he complained. "Something like "Papa Smurf," or "57 Pixels," or "Mr. Commando," you know?"

Patience frowned. "No. I can't say that I do."

"Okay, okay, gimme a sec." Ben rolled his best ideas around in his head, cupping his chin thoughtfully. "Alright, what about… Dr. ET? Huh? Is it great or what?" He grinned proudly.

"As long as you like it," Patience answered finally. She turned back to the projected hologram, looking over her notes with a thoughtful frown on her face. It was a clear indicator that the conversation was over, and yet…

"Uh, hey, I was wondering…?" started Ben, squashing his nervousness forcefully. "So, um, why partner me with Conway, exactly? I thought that Rook would have made a better choice since we're already partners and work well together and all of that."

Without turning to face him, Patience shrugged. "And what would you learn by working with someone that you already trust? Besides which, I need you both in the separate rooms, just in case. The partnering isn't about what you want, Ben 10, it's about what's the most beneficial for the mission. You and Conway have complementary skill-sets. That's all that you need to understand about my decision. So, if that is all, I trust that you can find the door from here," she said shortly.

Silently, albeit unsurely, Ben inched his way backward out of the room. He shut the door with a soft click behind him. Once he was alone, he scowled. What happened to the smiles and kind words that she had when meeting him and Rook only a few days before?

Maybe Patience was the kind of person who acted this way under stress, but she had been a Magister before, so surely she was used to having a lot of pressure on her shoulders. Besides, something about that theory didn't align with what Ben had just experienced. The tone of her voice, the way she held herself above him, refused to even glance in acknowledgment… It felt purposeful to Ben. Her patronization had been calculated.

More so, it had been personal.


A/N: "Vespertilio," as used by Conway in his conversation with Tetrax, is an enormous, crystalline bat that only comes out at night, and it mainly eats small animals (but also Petrosapiens because you gotta get that protein). How those two got into a situation where one was attacking them is a story for another day.

Also, because I won't be elaborating on it and it was only touched upon in Ben's memories, I feel I should make it clear that Sugalite and the crystal that brought Petropia back are both gone. They completed their created purpose and dissolved to ash. Sorry for anyone who wanted to see Sugalite, but I figured that Petropia's back-up was a one-time-use. How overpowered would it be if they could keep coming back as many times as they wanted? Besides, my finale won't work if they're still around. You'll see what I mean eventually.

Chapter Eleven: No Love Lost