Chapter 11
Ben woke to the sound of Charmcaster screaming. It hit a well-honed nerve in him, memories of heroism and danger and people almost hurt, almost killed, but not... because he'd acted fast enough. And so, while normally he woke up as groggy and reluctantly as anyone else, this time, he snapped fully awake in an instant, and was on his feet and trying to assess the situation the instant after that. In a panicky kind of way, but still.
The look on Charmcaster's face was haunting. Horror-stricken, wild, absolutely terrified. The way her head was jerking around it seemed like she wasn't even sure where she was. But then her eyes narrowed and her face iced over, and she seemed to regain her senses. Not less scared, but hiding it, like an animal that didn't want predators to know how weak it was. It was somehow just as bad, in its own way. He'd never seen her look like that before, even in a fight. By then, everyone else was awake, and they were all staring at her. Grampa and Gwendolyn with concern, Kevin and the younger Bens and Gwens with irritation.
"S-sorry," she stammered, trying for dignified and failing by a mile. "I just had a, a bad dream, that's all. A really bad dream," she repeated, as if to reassure herself that that was all that it'd been. "I'm gonna get some air." And with that excuse Charmcaster fled, not quite running but definitely moving faster than a casual walk.
He shared equally bewildered looks with all of his relatives old and new (and Kevin).
"She didn't look so great. Someone should go after her." Grampa, of course, always the fatherly type.
A subdued chorus of groans from everyone else in the Rustbucket responded.
"I guess I'll go," Ben forced himself to say. "I'm the only one still dressed besides Kevin." Everyone else was in pajamas. "And he's not really the comforting type," he added with a smirk.
Kevin muttered something mocking about rescuing chicks from nightmares in a high-pitched voice, but Ben didn't listen, knowing it would only piss him off if he did. He went out after Charmcaster, hoping to find her before she'd wandered too far, and chuckled to himself a little as he heard Gwendolyn berating Kevin before he shut the door.
It wasn't hard to find her. She didn't seem to know where she was going. Stumbling in one direction, then another, looking around in that confused, jerky way she'd done back in the Rustbucket. It made him feel sorry for her. She really was messed up. It had to've been some crazy dream to freak out someone like her. She'd always been poised and condescending when she wasn't playing nice to get something she wanted, even when she'd ended up living with them all. But now she was acting like she wasn't even Charmcaster at all. At least, not the Charmcaster he knew and... hated? No, he didn't really have any strong hostility to her even if she was one of the bad guys. He couldn't say he felt anything for her at all, except maybe a little pity at the moment.
He thought about walking up and putting a hand on her shoulder, but decided that would be bad, with how she was acting. Instead, he stomped a little and deliberately broke a few sticks so she'd hear him coming, and stopped well away from her, but still in comfortable talking distance. She turned to look at him, but didn't say anything. Just looked, suspiciously. Whether she didn't want to talk to him, or just couldn't think of anything to say, he didn't know. He wasn't good at reading girls who were open and honest, let alone devious magic-using crook girls.
"Hi," he tried, uncertainly, as if the word could be used to screw him over somehow.
"Hi," she said back, blankly.
"So... that must've been some dream." He grinned wryly and reached up to smooth down his hair, twisted from partial bedhead.
She looked away. "Yeah." When he started to move closer, she looked back again, gaze sharp as a knife. "Sorry for busting up your sleep schedule, I'll be fine." It wasn't a welcoming tone, but something in Ben's gut told him he should stick around anyway.
"We just wanted to make sure you'd be okay. You gave us all a scare. You know, if you ever need to talk, or anything..."
Charmcaster grimaced, looking away again, eyes peering into the dark. Looking, searching almost. "Yeah, yeah. One big, happy, fucked up family."
"We're not fu- uh, messed up," Ben blurted instantly, the remark putting him on the defensive, but not in an angry way. His cheeks flushed at the barely-averted swear. It was embarrassing to parrot her words like that, and even more so to take it back halfway through. At least Kevin wasn't here, ugh. "We're just nice people who like to help other people."
She snorted, a laugh starting through her throat and then getting strangled before it could fully express itself. "Nice people. Right."
He let her disbelief slide. It was part and parcel of being a bad guy, he figured, to not understand that kind of stuff. "What're you looking for?"
"Enemies," she murmured, eyes still scanning all around, into the distance.
"There's no one here but us."
"As far as you know," she sneered. "The ones you don't see till it's too late are the worst."
When she started to walk again, at a slower pace, feet seemingly placing themselves at random, he closed up enough to walk by her side with her. She was a lot calmer now, but still tense. He could tell by the way she held herself, beneath that jacket she never took off. He couldn't think of anything to say, and she didn't seem too eager to chat, so they just walked in silence for a little while, making a rough perimeter around the camp site. He figured she'd probably be ready for bed again after she tired herself out walking, and he didn't mind tiring himself out with her.
When they started to pass by a puddle of dark water, she stopped, staring into it. The reflection was clear enough to show both of them clearly, despite only having distant twinkling stars for light. Her face staring at itself looked almost sad, another new, unCharmcastery thing.
"Have you ever felt like..." she started, then changed her mind midsentence. "No, forget it. It's stupid." She kicked a rock into the puddle and walked on.
"Felt like what? Hey, don't be afraid to lay down some deep spiritual mojo if that's what's eatin' you. My cousin's not the only one with a brain in her head, ya know, even if she likes to think she is most of the time." His tone was joking, but when she finally responded after another, shorter silence, it was totally seriously.
"What makes us who we are?"
"Huh?" That was even further out into left field than he'd expected. "Why d'you have to ask? You're Charmcaster, and I'm Ben, and that other Ben is also Ben... okay, I guess it's kinda confusing having a couple twins around, but there's still the age difference, so we're easy to tell apart."
Her head was lowered to the ground, not looking at anything in particular, her strides slow enough to be almost nonexistent. "I used to think I knew who I was. What I was. It was... what's the word... implicit. It was implicit, I knew it all automatically without ever having to think about it. But things keep happening... things that make me think that maybe everything I knew is really just a bunch of crap. What makes us who we are? The choices we make, or the things we experience, or is it something else? Are we who we are because we say so and don't bother doubting it? If we start wondering if we're someone else, is that enough to make us lose who we are? You could tell me what I did yesterday, and what I was like as a person, but is that Charmcaster from yesterday the same as the Charmcaster I am right now, or a different one? If they're different, how many times can a person split before there's nothing left to divide by? If they're all the same, yesterday and today and tomorrow, then... then I think..."
"You think?" Ben prompted gently, head whirling with all the philosophical stuff she was loading on him. Well, he'd asked for it. He could tell this was somehow important to her, though. Maybe even a major crossroads in life for her. If he said the right thing, could he get her to stop being a bad guy? Would she still need to go to jail then anyway, for crimes enacted with magic that the legal system denied the existence of, or would there be a loophole to let her have a normal life like everyone else? She felt less like a bad guy and more like a victim now, despite all the bad things she'd done, and he wanted to help her get on the right track. Heck, if Kevin could reform, anyone could.
"I don't know. I don't know anything. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore." She rubbed her face with both hands, and this time Ben did put an arm on her shoulder comfortingly. She didn't seem to mind.
"I'm not a guru or anything. Grampa's probably better at this stuff. But so long as you like who you are right now, does it matter about all the other yous out there, or not out there?" Ben asked her.
"Like?" she asked him, with a twisted, confused tone, as if the concept had never, ever popped into her head before. "It's just... another piece of implicit bullshit, I guess. If I had to say I felt anything about myself right now, I'd say... I'm scared of myself. But that's fine. I'm scared of everyone else too," she hurried on, tone getting hysterical, "so that just makes it consistent!"
He expected her to cry. If she were a different kind girl, she would have. But she was a crook and a liar and a schemer, and maybe she didn't really have a heart of ice and snake venom, but she darn well tried her best to pretend she did. So instead, she just stood there, still and stiff as a tree, until she calmed down. Very awkwardly, unsure if he should really do it or not, he tried to put one arm around her for a halfhearted hug, but she shrugged him off.
"I'm going to bed," she announced abruptly, and started walking to the Rustbucket without even looking back at him. He gave her a polite goodnight, but if she heard, she didn't acknowledge it.
When they both got back and settled into their bunks, he closed his eyes, too jittery to really drop off instantly, but pretending anyway for the sake of politeness. A long time later, hours maybe, he opened his eyes again, and saw Charmcaster had her eyes opened too. She stared at the floor until she saw he was looking at her. Before he could even think of anything to say, she rolled over to face the side of the Rustbucket, her back to him.
--
"Hey, I was thinking about that stuff you said last night..." Ben started the next day, having had time to mull over everything in his head.
"Mm?" Charmcaster looked completely disinterested, but that had to just be an act.
"It reminded me of something I heard in an MTV toon once. It went something like... 'we're only what we remember of ourselves.' So yeah, I know that's a dumb place to get pithy wisdom from, but I think-"
"You should leave the thinking to your cousin," she interrupted dryly. "She's better at it." And with that, Charmcaster walked off, leaving him feeling like a complete dork.
What'd he done wrong? Was it just her time of the month, or what?! That was more or less what he asked Gwendolyn when he went to her for an opinion, although he put it as subtly as he knew how. She still laughed at him.
"This isn't a girl thing, you goof," she told him when she calmed down, her tone almost as lecturing as it had been in the earlier days, back before they'd hit puberty. "It's a bad guy thing. You know how touchy Kevin gets about his image, right? Well, it's the same with Charmcaster. She opened herself up to you last night, probably a lot more than she meant to. So now she's gotta act like you don't exist for a while, till her pride's all patched up. Don't worry about it. And don't push her. Just keep on being you, and if she wants to talk, she'll come to you."
That sounded smart. He nodded agreement. "Yeah, okay, I can see that. You should've seen her last night, though. It was... really weird."
"How weird?" she asked, leaning in. His cousin tried to hide it, but she did have a little bit of a gossipy streak in her, like most girls did.
He coughed and looked away from her, fiddling with his short green jacket absentmindedly. "Remember that time you were trying to teach me how to dance? Equally weird as that."
"Ooohhh. Okay then," she murmured, looking anywhere but at him. That'd been one of those things that hadn't seemed to mean anything at the time, but had been something to try and think less and less about the older they got. There were a lot of little things like that between them. Not exactly bad or even uncomfortable, just... awkweird. "Anyway," she resumed with a business-like tone, "you can't get too close and start playing Ben the super therapist or anything, you know. We don't belong in this time, we can't stay. So it would be bad for her to get dependent on you."
Ben repressed a chuckle at the unlikely thought of Charmcaster being dependent on anyone. "I know. It's just... I want to help her, because I feel like it's what... he'd do."
"Grampa?"
"Yeah. I mean, I know there's a Grampa in this time and all, but he's not our Grampa, and I'm here so I still feel like I have to fill in, I guess."
She eyed him carefully. "Sometimes I wonder how much of what you do is because of him. Because of what happened to him. I'm glad you're trying so hard, Ben, but sometimes I miss that reckless kid you used to be..."
"Oh, come on! Gimme a break, you spent years trying to get me to stop being reckless. And now that I'm more mature and a better hero, you want me to go back to being the way I was? Besides... if I'd been more careful, like you'd always told me to be, maybe I could've-"
"Don't start with that again! Like I said before, if it's your fault, it's my fault too, and since you're not willing to admit it's my fault, then it's no one's fault."
"Nnkay."
"Happy mediums, Ben. You can't be mature all the time, that leads to heart attacks. And you can't be childish all the time either, because that kind of self-centeredness leads to you being Kevin or Charmcaster."
"The first of which you think is hot," he pointed out logically, smirking as her cheeks went pink. "Something wrong with being hot?"
"The second of which is not hot, however, so-"
"Who says she's not hot?"
"AH HAH! I KNEW IT!" she crowed with a grin, green eyes practically blazing in smug satisfaction.
Argh! He'd walked right into that one. He banged his head against the nearest hard object repeatedly.
"So now we both have crushes on hotties, meaning that neither of us can tease the other anymore," she insisted primly.
He glared at her. He didn't have a crush, just because he didn't think Charmcaster was ugly! But that was an argument not worth getting into. "Or we could both make fun of each other equally."
His cousin raised an eyebrow. "Do you really wanna go that road?"
Ben thought about it, and thought about how he was totally no match for Gwendolyn when it came to verbal witticism wars, and swallowed. "Okay. Hottie mockery is officially off limits. I think I'll celebrate by getting a bite to eat, of... whatever Grampa's cooking."
"Something aquatic, I think. I'll be right behind you, just gotta finish my upper respiratory for the day."
When he walked out of the Rustbucket, he almost bumped into Charmcaster, who was really close to the door. "Were you spying on us?!"
"Yeah, because there's nothing more interesting than your personal conversations," she snapped. He winced. Bad assumption on his part, even if it was kinda reasonable. She was a crook, after all! Was she gonna be mad at him, now? "Your grandfather forget the ketchup so I'm getting it for him."
Of course, that didn't mean she hadn't been spying on them while being in the process of mustard-fetching, Ben noted to himself. "Alright, sorry. What's he cooking, anyway?" Grampa had felt like having a grill lunch, and had gone all out on the barbecue fixings, but he'd never asked what the main course was.
"Octopus hotdogs."
Even for someone who was more or less used to Grampa's culinary... eccentricities... it was difficult not to gag just at the thought. "Egh. Is that a real food?"
"Some sort of American-Japanese abomination hybrid, I think. He's serving it with a side of 'American' fried rice... which is rice with, like, ketchup, fried chicken, soy sauce, and eggs."
"How... nice," Ben finally managed, feeling greener by the second. "Tell you what, I'm gonna walk over to the gas station and grab some snacks. You want anything?"
"Please God yes!" she blurted out immediately and desperately. He grinned at her, and after a moment of reluctance she grinned back.
He bought her a couple Shrek twinkies, a large bag of vinegar potato chips, and a Sprite, and after that they were something like friends.
--
Ben knew Charmcaster didn't get a lot of sleep. Everyone knew that she yawned a lot lately and took catnaps during the day, but most of them put it down to laziness and excuses to avoid socializing. But he knew different. Whenever he went up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, whenever he got up early to do some random chore, whenever he just plain couldn't sleep, she was there. Pretending to sleep, but not really sleeping. Because when she was really sleeping, she sprawled out on her back. But when she was faking it, she always kept on one side or the other of her body, and held herself eerily straight, usually facing the wall.
Inevitably, she caught him looking at her again, on another late night when everyone else was dead asleep. And it might've been his hero instincts, sick of not barreling through annoying issues head on... or it might've been some remnant of the reckless kid he used to be... or even, maybe, he just wanted to see her looking happy, for once, in a way that didn't involve innocent people suffering. Whatever the reason, he didn't let her ignore him this time.
"You really need to stop drinking coffee before bed," he joked, loud enough for her to hear, soft enough that it wouldn't wake anyone up.
"So sorry for not sleeping through Kevin's freaking church bell snores," she shot back at matching volume.
"That's okay, I forgive you."
She glared, but the look dissolved into a smirk. "I'm sure I care."
"You wanna go for a walk?" He wasn't sure why he asked, except that it was the thing that had gotten them on chatty terms to start with, so a second one couldn't hurt. He didn't feel like sleeping anyway. He would've asked her to play a game with him if the sound wouldn't wake up the others. A part of him almost wished he could stay in the past forever, so he'd have an excuse to buy a headset for the game console. Amongst other reasons...
She stayed quiet for so long he started to wonder if he'd made her mad, but finally she just got up and padded outside in her bare feet. Naturally she was comfortably clothed otherwise, she never took that flipping jacket off. He was starting to wonder if it was sewed to her skin. Scrambling quietly for clothes in the dark was fun, but he managed to get changed before she'd gone out of sight.
"You're so independent it's sickening," he said as he jogged to catch up with her.
"Is that what I am? I don't really think about it much," she replied without looking. As he got next to her, somehow he was struck by how young she was. Maybe it was just the bare feet, or the expression on her face, but for once she actually felt a few years younger than him, like she presumably was.
"What do you think about, then?" he put out, purely to keep the conversation rolling.
"Killing and hurting people, mostly."
"Hah, come on, even you're not that bad!"
She kicked a stone and watched it roll. "I'm totally that bad. D'you know what I was thinking yesterday? I was thinking, 'I should probably get around to killing those Tennyson dorks. But I don't feel like it right now, I'll do it tomorrow.' That's what I was thinking the day before that, too. And the day before that."
"Well, you didn't because you're a good person, deep down. And I think you know that."
"I'm a bad person. That's who I am. Bad people exist to screw over losers like you. Losers just like you, Ben. You're too nice to live, in any sane world. You tell me I'm not that bad deep down because you're not that bad deep down, and you can't believe anyone else is. But we are. And we're happy with it. And we exist to freaking eat people like you."
He shrugged. "So be happy, and eat me, then."
She turned to him and clacked her teeth, smirking. "Innuendo, Benny? For shame."
The sudden heat in his cheeks made an interesting contrast to the chill swirl of the night air. He wished he had Charmcaster's body-enveloping coat. A sudden crazy thought had him wishing he had her coat with her still in it. Down, boy. You're a hero, not a horndog. That was Kevin's department. Right? Right. "The last time we had a late night walk," he went on, deliberately ignoring the flirting diversion, "you talked about how you weren't sure who you were anymore. And now you're talking about how you're a bad person, that's your identity, and that the world is based on a bad eat good relationship. Like predator and prey. So I think you know you're not that bad. You just can't face up to it, because then you'd have to rethink your whole place in the world, and how the world is s'posed to work."
"Whatever." She turned away from him again, walking faster. She really did look young. And vulnerable.
"Tell me that's not why you're having trouble sleeping every night," he said, matching her step for step. "Tell me that's not why you're so twitchy all the time, like even your reflection in a mirror is gonna pounce and get you."
"So what, are you spying on me now, you creep?" It was almost cheering to hear her upset, snapping. She knew he'd hit close to home and was just babbling whatever came to mind now to get back at him.
"No, but I am trying to look out for you, because I care," he said evenly.
She slide a step in front of him, pivoted neatly, and forced the both of them to a dead stop. "Stop." It was almost like a royal command or something, with the kind of authority she was putting into that one little word.
"No."
She seethed, and grated her teeth in ineffectual rage. "You're an idiot. I should've killed you by now. It messes everything up, hanging around losers like you..."
"So kill me."
"I will!"
"I'm waiting."
"Shut up."
"Still waiting."
Charmcaster slugged him in the face.
"Ow!" He staggered, one hand rubbing his jaw. It'd made him bite his lip, and the coppery taste of blood lingered in his mouth. She hit pretty hard, for someone who used brain over brawn. "Feel better?"
The girl's sigh was so heavy it was the next thing to visible in the air. Her head bowed, almost as if she were ashamed. "No. Hurting people doesn't make me feel good anymore like it used to. Like it's supposed to." A shudder worked its way down her spine and she leaned against a tree as if its low shadowy branches would be a safe refuge. "I don't know what to do anymore. I'm so tired."
"We can go back to sleep, if you want..."
"Not that kind of tired, idiot." Her voice was strained, it almost sounded like she was going to cry, but Ben found that impossible to think about.
"Okay. So forget about all of it, then. Just... rest for a bit. And try to relax."
"Yeah, like I care what you think I should do." The strain was still there, though. She cared. Even if she couldn't admit it straight out. But hanging around Kevin had given him some practice in talking to people who couldn't admit stuff obvious enough for a blind person to see.
"I could hit you in the face too, if it'd help any," he offered flippantly.
She giggled. It was a hesitant, shaky giggle, the kind of giggle that didn't really want to make itself known but just forced its way out anyway. "Pass."
"Okay, just offering." As if magnetically drawn, one of his hands went to her hair, tracing fingertips down. It was one of her most obvious unique traits, and really hard not to pay attention to. Ridiculously, he just wanted to sink both hands in fully and pet her like a cat. An action which would surely warrant mutilation and murder. Heck, he was surprised he was getting away with this much. She wasn't even mad, as far as he could tell, just looking at him weirdly. "So, um... what evil scheme are you gonna throw on me if you're not gonna kill me outright, huh, miss murderess?"
"Heh. What else is left to do... if I'm not gonna kill you..." she said slowly, as if turning the thought over in her head to examine it from all angles.
Tilting her head very neatly, leaning upwards a bit, she kissed him, eyes open and staring into his. Then her body moved in to follow her mouth, meshing against him warmly, and that snapped him out of whatever trance the kiss had put him in. He stumbled back, cheeks burning, stammering and flustered.
"L-look, I'm sorry, but we're from different times, and I'm kind of sorta halfway partially dating this girl back in my own time..." he babbled, frantic, intensely aware of his own dorkiness, and hating every second of it. He was older. He should be in control of the situation. He so wasn't in control of the situation!
To his relief, she wasn't hurt. But the way she rolled her eyes wasn't exactly comforting to his suddenly sensitive male ego. "So what, I'm not asking you to go steady with me or anything pathetic like that."
"But, I, uh..." He was drawing an absolute blank. What was she asking of him, exactly?! He could barely see her eyes, through her hair and the dark. It made him uncomfortable, made him feel like she was some rapacious demonette out to ravish him... wait, that was bad? Of course it was, he had responsibilities and commitments! He was a hero! And, and stuff. Other important stuff, that he couldn't think of right now, with the warmth of her body and lips still burnt into his memory, but he was sure it'd come back any second now.
The female demon concept was only enhanced by her sudden aggressiveness, as she pushed him against the tree, nails digging through his thin shirt into his chest. "You told me to relax. Well, this is me relaxing." She raked her fingernails down and around to his hips. "You're a hero, right?" she murmured, lips so close to his, mockingly close, but not really touching. Her breath was warm. He could see her eyes again, but his brain was too frozen to appreciate the fact. "You're not going to hurt me... and I'm tired of looking for a better future that never comes." Her fingers slid back to the seat of his pants, and squeezed. "So fuck the future. Go back to it whenever you want, I don't care." She cared, her face told him. Her lips lied. "Just kiss me back, Ben. Forget about all that shit that doesn't matter. You told me to relax and enjoy the moment, but you have to do it too, or you're full of it."
"I... I, um... look, Charmcaster..." He had absolutely no idea what to say. To go from being meekly aware that a girl was good-looking, to being practically pounced upon by said girl and molested, was way more of a leap than he'd ever expected to experience save in his wildest fantasies. There was too much to think about, too many things in the way, too many complications. His younger self wouldn't have ever hesitated, but then, his younger self wouldn't have wanted to get kissed and groped in the first place! God forbid he ever had a normal life, love life or any other kind of life.
And just like that, she frosted over, fire to ice in an instant. "Fine."
Dang it.
He knew that whenever a girl said that word in that kind of voice, it meant anything but FINE!
Somehow, seeing her walking off, more worldly yet still somehow easier to wound than him, young and tightly-wrapped in that coat she loved so much, twisted up his insides and did something to him, made something snap, that being kissed and felt up hadn't. He jogged after her.
"Charmcaster, wait, you can't just-"
"I can do whatever I want!"
He grabbed her by her oh-so-precious coat and made her stop. The witch turned around and glared with such fury that he expected to get punched again.
"It's just... there's no place for me here, Charmcaster," he said gently, almost pleadingly, trying to make her understand.
"Fuck you." Her voice was barely more than a whisper, shaking with enough semi-restrained emotion to power an entire soap opera cast. There were tears in her eyes, but they didn't fall. "There's no place for me anywhere."
They looked at each other for a moment, and then, somehow, Ben found himself kissing her and holding her tight.
After a while, she even allowed him to take off her coat.
--
They were happy. Willfully blind, probably, but happy. All of a sudden, Charmcaster seemed to open up and become a normal person, no worse than Kevin in most respects, and maybe even a little better in some ways. She told him, eventually, about how she expected the worst out of everyone else, and exactly all the horrible things she imagined could happen if she let her guard down. He pointed out how those horrible things consistently failed to happen day after day, and her resistance gradually dwindled. She didn't really trust Kevin, or either of the Gwens, or Grampa. But she grew to tolerate them with a kind of affectionate condescension. And Ben 10... both of them... were given a subtle respect. Not that that gave them immunity to her mockery when she felt like mocking, or her insults when she felt like insulting, or any of the rest of it. At heart she was still cynical, sneaky, and venomous. But somehow, all that started to feel like a good thing instead of a bad thing.
The gang stopped being hesitant about doing research to help Charmcaster lift the curse. If she was acting, she had everyone fooled. Including herself. Not that what went on between her and Ben was public of course... they had some discretion! Ben, for his part, didn't want to face the lecture he know he'd get from both Gwens, and Charmcaster just seemed to enjoy decieving people as a hobby. What the rest of 'em didn't know wouldn't hurt 'em. It was kind of exciting, too, to sneak kisses and other minor naughty things in the brief instants when no one was watching. A thrill, like heroing, but in a totally different kind of way. When Charmcaster grinned wickedly at him, now, he could grin back and share in the wickedness and know how good it felt. It was hard when she deliberately dropped double entendres in open conversation, though, and Ben had to practically choke himself to keep from laughing where the others would hear. Apparently, when you went to villain school, you took a course in torturing people who were trying to keep straight faces. Who knew.
It was just a fling. It was irresponsible. But they were both enjoying it, and Charmcaster seemed to be getting some real psychological benefits out of it. Sometimes she would pour her heart out to him in a way that made him wonder if she'd ever really had someone to talk honestly, in her whole life.
Ben started to wonder if he could maybe find an excuse to take her to the future with him. Or to look up her future self and hope the path of evil was not her ultimate destiny after all.
Then, one day, while he was getting up early to fix some pancakes (a preemptive assault intended to deprive Grampa of the chance to cook something revolting), when he was trying to find the spatula, he found a little audio recorder in the utensils drawer instead.
That was weird. Even as a ten year-old, Gwen was usually so neat about putting everything where it belonged. How had it gotten in there, anyway? He went to put it back in its little spot, and became even more confused when he saw an identical audio recorder already there.
Okaaaaaay. Magic double audio recorder. Spooky. Shrugging in his head, he hit the play button to listen to it while he mixed everything together for the pancakes.
"Hi, Ben. This recorder will have made its way to you sooner or later. Hopefully sooner. Please don't listen to this where anyone else can hear, it's for you only."
Ben blinked bemusedly, dumping Bisquick and water into a bowl and somehow managing to get half the Bisquick on his shirt in the process. Weirder and weirder. His cousin... his cousin, not the younger Gwen... had recorded this? But why? And where'd she get the new recorder from? And why did she want him to listen to it alone? Oh well, everyone else was asleep anyway.
"Everything I'm going to tell you from this point on will be difficult to believe. But you HAVE to, Ben. Everything depends on it. You can't trust the me you know, not completely, but you HAVE to trust me, the me you DON'T know."
Oh yeah. That was totally self-explanatory. He repressed the urge to roll his eyes at an audio recorder, and sprinkled a little cinnamon in the mix for the heck of it. Except the top of the little bottle came off, and most of the cinnamon went in. He swore (mildly, by Charmcaster's or Kevin's standards) and dug most of it out and threw it away.
"Charmcaster's been lying to you the whole time. Everything she says is a lie. Hex didn't put a curse on her, she cursed herself to have a good alibi to get close to you. She wants to kill you, Ben, and Grampa and me as well."
"What... the... heck..." Ben murmured, breakfast forgotten. He set the bowl and spatula aside and stared at the audio recorder as it continued to play, as if to force answers from it with a look.
"Any other duplicates dragged in through the temporal instabilities are also targets. None of the people close to you are safe from her. And you especially aren't safe. The Omnitrix makes you a high priority target. Doubtless by the time you get this she'll have done a lot of nice things for you, and helped you out, and said a lot of things that make you think she's really a good person, deep down inside. But she's not. She's an amoral sociopathic killer."
He couldn't believe this. Was this some kind of joke? Gwendolyn didn't have a sense of humor this sick. Kevin, maybe Kevin had done it. Somehow bullied the younger Gwen into using some magic to temporarily age her voice and make a fake tape. That was it. That had to be it. It was all Kevin's fault, somehow!
"You're probably wondering right about now what right I have to say any of this. Charmcaster has a little audio cassette tape in her pouch that she uses as an escape route when things go bad, but just as it takes her out of one situation, it puts her into another one. These repeated escapes make a mess of the whole fabric of time and space, resulting in people being dragged into places and times where they're not supposed to be. That's how you got to where you are right now. If there's only two versions of you in your reality, you're lucky. It can get a lot worse.
I'm not just guessing at her goals. I experienced the results of her work firsthand. I saw the corpses of my grandfather and Kevin. And you, as well, Ben. I saw you bloody and dead. I can't possibly tell you how much that hurt me. I'm only saying all this because you have to believe me, or else you'll have no hope. We all started out just like you. Ignorance is a shield, but not your shield. It's HER shield. Charmcaster is safe so long as her victims underestimate her. If you confront her directly she's powerless, but you have to believe that she needs to be confronted. Please, Ben. Save your family. Save Kevin. Save the fabric of the space and time.
You're a hero, Ben, so I know you like to do things heroically, but it's too late to play things like a comic book story anymore. Things have gone too far. The stuff of timespace itself is tearing apart, and everything is going to hell. One by one, each reality is ruined by Charmcaster's petty murder schemes. You have to put a stop to it. You have to stop her, not just for yourself, but for everyone. I'm begging you, Ben, if you have any humanity in you, you have to do this for me.
You have to kill Charmcaster, before she kills everyone else."