11. Adrenaline (Fantasy versus Reality Remix)
It had started with Ben wishing loudly for a ninja form on the Omnitrix. And why not? He had a mummy, a werewolf, a Frankstein's monster, a midget genius, a guy made out of crystal, a guy made out of fire... a ninja wouldn't have particularly stuck out in the lineup. That was where it had started, and from there it'd somehow progressed into a cinematic faux duel where Ben and his cousin were forced to rely upon every hazy memory of half-watched Japanese cartoons and black and white samurai flicks.
Ben was better at it than Gwen, which aggravated her to no end. Stupid dramatic poses, and speeches, and little spinny flip kick things. It would've been nice to've been Lucky Girl again for the event, but Ben wasn't going hero, so it was technically fair footing. Not her fault she hadn't spent most of her life watching tv.
Something stabbed into her foot as she ran around the back of the van to try and get to the higher ground, and she yelped. It was a crushed soda can, with the tab carefully turned straight up.
"Hahahah! You fell for my caltrop trap, you little fool, just as I knew you would!" Ben's voice wafted from behind some tree or building nearby, full of villainy gloating. He even managed to sound like a bad dubbing job, and if Gwen's foot hadn't hurt so much, she would've found it hilarious.
"It only hurts because you stole my shoes, you jerk!"
"You should guard your possessions more carefully... for that is not all that I have taken from you, my child..."
"Yeah, I know. You took my sanity about a year ago," she grumbled, refusing to be further baited, though she wondered what else he could have grabbed as stakes. "If you damage my computer, Grampa will kill you, and then I'll kill you, you know that, right?" she called out warningly, eyes scanning around for an annoying boy playing evil ninja who refused to materialize.
There was a significant pause. When Ben spoke next, she was able to pinpoint the rough direction of his voice, behind a certain set of trees. "Uh... of course I know that, I wouldn't do anything to your computer. Uh. Puny... gaijin..."
"Bennnnnn," she said with slow anger, grabbing a heavy-looking stick and hefting it menacingly.
But Ben had regained his bluster. "What would a mystical master of Mandarin mincing do with a worthless technological device? The power of technology is insignificant next to the might of my inner chi!"
Wait. She was going about this the wrong way. The thing to do was to keep in character and appeal to his very real ego. Raise the stakes and he wouldn't be able to resist. He never could.
"I think you're bluffing, Mandarin mincer," she practically purred, her voice carefully calculated to mock and enrage. "I think you did steal my computer. For the same reason you've been throwing cardboard throwing stars at me... and setting up soda can caltrops... and dropping water balloons." She didn't know if he could see her or not, but just in case, she wagged her finger in the air tauntingly. "Because you're afraid to face me in open combat!"
"Foul and dishonorable lies! Stealth and trickery is the ninja way!" Ben thundered, and she knew exactly where he was now. Playtime and real emotions were merging to her benefit. A straightforward dramatic conflict would come next, and he'd be mad. He'd be even madder after she finished kicking his butt for touching her computer.
She faced towards him, a smirk on her lips. Back straight as a rod, expression ever so slightly challenging. "Oh, but it's true, isn't it? I'm twice the man you are, and you know it." And things were blurring a bit for her, too... she couldn't help but envy him the Omnitrix, which he used so often to pull annoying physical pranks that couldn't be countered by direct force. No, she'd had to survive on her wits. But the Omnitrix was out of bounds now, totally incorrect for the genre. She was gonna whup him good, and then maybe he'd be a little more respectful!
He emerged from his hiding place with a surprisingly cheery smirk on his face. Amongst the other things he'd scavenged, he'd gotten a blanket and wrapped it around himself. It would've looked almost snazzy if it hadn't been dragging twigs and dead leaves along with it with every step he took.
"Hm, now that I think about it, yeah, maybe you are twice the man I am," he replied unexpectedly. The smirk turned into a wicked grin. "'Cause you've got hair on your upper lip. And your tits are like, concave."
It actually took her a second to get over her surprise at him knowing a word like 'concave' and process the sentence, resulting in the appropriate amount of rage. It didn't help that she hadn't really developed in the chest area yet, so his comment held a grain of truth to it.
"Benjamin Tennyson, I am going to kill you for that," she growled, stalking towards him with the stick held high.
"Hahahah! If you strike me down, I shall become greater than you can ever imagine!" He whipped out a floppier branch he'd been hiding behind his back. The doofus had just stripped a live branch off some unfortunate tree, instead of getting a nice, hard dead one like hers. She was gonna beat him like a rug, and grinned in anticipation of a proper glorious victory.
Branches crossed, swished, and clacked amid, in her mind, dramatic storms of crashing blue lightning and falling cherry blossoms. And to her absolute delight, she was whipping his butt! Little boy wasn't so tough without his alien bodies. He was a little stronger than her, but his stupidity weapon choice negated that advantage of his nicely. And she was a lot faster and better-coordinated. His energetic but clumsy efforts were almost laughable, and for every negligible lash that landed on some part of her, she poked and smacked and wacked him ten times.
They crossed branches again and deliberately let it linger, pushing weapon against weapon and glaring at each other, sweaty faces aglow with cruel delight (on her part) and frustration (on his. "Come on, mister ninja, is that all you got?"
"Ah, she may have all the passion of fire her hair's colored as, but courage and looks alone are not enough to withstand the master of the seventh hidden double-foot technique!"
Gwen gave him a weird look. "Okay, if that was supposed to make up for the chest comment or something, not a chance. I'm still beating you down for that."
"Naw, I just wanted to give you a fair chance to run away before I did this!" And then he jumped on both her feet with his, stomping hard. Considering she was in socks and he still had sneakers on, it freaking hurt.
"Ow! You little jerk, I'm gonna-" she started, then cut herself off with a panicked squeak as he tried it again. She managed to dodge that time, and started hitting him with her branch even harder than before in revenge.
It'd still been fairly playful, up until then, but once significant physical pain got involved, things got... uncivilized. It just got angrier and angrier, and eventually things devolved into them basically bashing each other mindlessly, with assorted kicks, hair-pullings, headbutts, and wrestling holds tossed in at random whenever survival seemed to dictate such. The accumulating collections of bruises and minor bloodloss were ignored in the heat of the moment.
Then a particularly nasty thwock on the back of her head left her ears ringing and her eyes watering. She yelled in pain, but it was so close to the angry warcries they'd been tossing back and forth already that Ben didn't seem to notice. After all her mockery, now that he'd finally got the upper hand, he wasn't showing any mercy, and she got to learn that while a flexible green branch may not make a good club, it works rather well as a whiplash. The little knobs and smaller branches on it only increased the stinging sensation. Unable to think clearly, Gwen pushed blindly, then stumbled a few steps before setting into a run for the safety of the van.
Ben's hooting jeering followed. "Givin' up so soon?! What happened to all that more of a man than me stuff, huh?! By the way, I painted your computer pink!" When she darted inside and slammed the door shut, retreating to her bunk, he seemed to get that the game was over, and hadn't ended well, even if he had won. "Gwen?! Gwen! Come on, don't be a sore loser! I didn't hit you any harder than you were hitting me!"
And that part was true, and Gwen hated it that she hadn't been made of tougher stuff, but she ached and stung all over, and she couldn't stop crying into her pillow. Very quiet tears that she tried to stop from leaking out every few seconds, but they wouldn't stop, and it was totally humiliating. For the first time since she'd known Ben, she felt like her gender actually made some kind of a difference in how they interacted with each other. And not a good one. An incredibly insane part of her mind wished, for just that one moment only, that she'd been born a boy.
That was when Grampa came back from shopping, arms full of exotic and disgusting culinary goods. She got to hear Ben being interrogated with increasing firmness before Grampa came in and talked to her, just a little more gently. He patted her back, smeared some oily medical junk on her reddened skin, and told her with utmost seriousness that if she and her cousin ever did anything like that again, he would turn them over on his knee and spank them both until they couldn't sit down for a week, no matter how old they happened to be. She believed him.
