"Hey, Kevin, you made it!"
Really? They hadn't seen or spoken each other in months, and that's the way Ben greeted him?
It was like he was arriving at a party, except there were only two of them. And a bunch of slimy alien monster things. There was probably an official name for them somewhere, but it the back of his mind, he just thought of them as "those little blobby things." It wasn't like alien tech—he was an expert on that. He could identify almost anything when he cared to.
He didn't have time to dwell on it for long. Ben's lopsided grin evaporated as he shimmied around the corner, slammed his hand over the Omnitrix, and transformed into Humungousaur. He immediately started picking up the angry alien blobs, punching them into tiny pieces as he tossed them around.
Jumping into the fight, Kevin quickly realized that the squishy little aliens weren't all that dangerous, just annoying. He started to pick them off one by one, beating them down. In most fights, it didn't matter how well he fought, as long as he could reach his goal without much trouble. He frequently found taking out thugs to reach a door, or some variation on that theme.
The call had been unexpected; he was sitting at his desk (the amount of paperwork involved with war was ridiculous, especially since they were mostly children who didn't give a shit about work orders and the state of the inventory, what the hell, Mandy?) finishing up a report, when his phone rang. Kevin was surprised to see that it was Ben, but his friend was strangely cryptic on the phone, giving him a time and place to meet him and asking that he didn't tell anyone where or who he was seeing. The hard part was escaping dinner with Gwen, but he managed, saying that he had some extra work he needed to finish and was just going to eat at his desk. They'd fallen into a pattern over the past several months; it was April, and now they met outside for picnics again. It wouldn't be long until the fusion matter made it too dangerous to hang out outside without a reason, so they were doing it while they still could.
But instead, he found himself staring at Ben Tennyson in a random warehouse in Sector V, where Ben lackadaisically gave his awkward and inappropriate greeting and clapped Kevin on the back.
As harmless (okay, it hurt if they bit you or touched you for too long on your bare skin, but they were made out of fusion matter, after all) as they were, they needed to get rid of all the fusion blobs because they spread like wildfire and were a bitch to destroy when they stuck together. They had to make sure they stayed contained, so they didn't infect other areas.
This was actually kind of fun. Ben kicked a group of blobs towards him, and Kevin used his arm as a bat to smash them into a wall.
"You ever play baseball, Kevin?" Humungousaur's voice boomed, echoing to the corners of the room's tall ceiling.
Kevin laughed. How easily they slipped right back into this pattern, this comradery they'd been forming for the past few years.
"Little League wasn't really my style," he proclaimed, smirking as he split another blob into bits and pieces.
"Well, you're not—" SQUISH. "—half—" SMASH. "—bad," Ben noted, pitching him a bunch of fusion blobs in a rapid-fire rhythm.
"I thought you played soccer?" Kevin asked between grunts, punching them and swatting them into a gooey mess.
"I did. But every kid likes baseball. Swampfire!" Ben yelled as he transformed again.
They were jumping and stomping on them, almost pretending that they were popping bubble wrap. This was way more fun than it should have been.
"I didn't say I didn't like it. I just said I didn't play it. I used to watch it all the time—I'm from New York, remember? Do you have any idea how many Yankees games I snuck into? I used to scalp tickets. For a week or two."
"Why am I not surprised?" Ben sighed, grinning and rolling his eyes as he finished off the last fusion spawn. With a flash of green, he transformed back into his human form.
He was smiling, but Kevin wasn't. "What? Do I have spinach in my teeth?" the Omnitrix-bearer whined, laughing. "Here, let's go for a walk."
They left what was left of the building, shuffling their feet as they walked and talked, winding their way through the back alleyways of the industrial area.
Kevin bit his lip, truly looking at his friend for the first time in a while. "What's up with you, Benji? Everything okay?"
Ben shrugged, feigning confusion. "Yeah, why?"
"You kinda look different."
And he did. While his determined green eyes were as bright as ever, something had changed. Now that he was finally taking a good look at his friend, he was somewhat caught off guard by Ben's subtly gaunt appearance. His cheeks looked hollow, and he was skinnier than Kevin had ever seen him despite his constant physical activity. The skin was pulled tight over Ben's chiseled and sharp cheekbones. If he was being honest, his friend needed a good shave; the light stubble over Ben's well-defined jaw was barely noticeable, but it made Ben look uncharacteristically rugged. He was rather pale, and while he didn't quite look sick, he did look like he'd been through some great ordeal. He laughed, but something seemed off, almost wrong about his laughter. And then it hit him; Ben looked older, and tired.
"Do you ever eat? Ever?" Kevin asked, trying to shake his concern. "You're looking kind of scrawny," he declared, shaking his head.
Ben just continued to walk, still smiling. His handsome grin hadn't changed a bit. "It's okay, Mama Kevin," he said, not even phased. "I eat. Sometimes."
Even though he didn't intend for it, Kevin's tone softened. "What happened to you, Ben? There's something you're not telling me, and I don't like it."
"You always could tell when I was lying, Kevin," Ben responded, sighing and shoving his hands in his pockets. The grin melted right off his face with his forced-cheery disposition. Why was he talking like they hadn't seen each other in years, when they had spoken only weeks ago? Why was he talking like they were adults casually meeting up again, instead of two teenagers who had been fighting side by side for years? "It's just been a hard few months."
"Trust me, I know," Kevin agreed full-heartedly.
Ben tilted his head and looked at Kevin thoughtfully. "Do you?"
Kevin felt his face flush, not quite understanding if Ben was taunting him or just asking a question. There was a time he would have known without much effort in analyzing Ben's words, but now there was too much space between them to be sure. Where was Ben going with this?
"Why wouldn't I? We're all fighting this war in some way or another, Ben. Not just the people like you on the frontlines." His words caught on fire by the next sentence, the anger burning his mouth. "What is it that you want to say to me, Ben?" he asked dryly, his suspicions coming off as accusations. "Why don't you just save us some time and just say it?"
He was pissed off now. What gave Ben the right to ask what he understood in this war? As if they hadn't all seen hardship.
"Fine, then. Why didn't you come back to camp after Buttercup died?" Ben asked quite bluntly and boldly, and while he looked calm, he was obviously irritated.
"What?" Kevin spat, choking on his own words, abruptly stopping and standing in one spot. It came out almost like a squawk, but he didn't have time to be embarrassed.
"You heard me," his friend replied with an icy tint to his voice, not looking him in the eyes as he spoke.
"I just can't believe you're asking me that," Kevin said in awe, starting to walk again, leaving Ben behind.
Ben didn't budge. "Well, aren't you gonna answer? Is it because you're still pissed that you can't fight on the frontlines?" he fired back.
Kevin was absolutely exasperated by this point. He turned around to respond. "No!"
"Really?" Tennyson questioned, raising his eyebrows.
"No, of course not," Kevin countered, disbelieving. "I didn't come back because my friend needed me."
Ben blinked, easing back into his edgy calmness once more. "Explain." His mouth was very small as he listened, his jaw set and tight.
"Ace is my friend. Buttercup was my friend. Ace is having a hell of a time trying to adjust to the fact that his girl's dead and he's a father now. He needed someone there to help him out, and I'm there. You know what?" he snarled, "I don't think I have to explain myself. Not to you, not to anybody! I did what I did because I had to."
Ben shrugged, obviously trying to piss him off. "Who said you had to?"
Kevin's voice bounced off the walls, his loud voice echoing through the alley. "I said I had to. I said I wanted to. I don't do anything unless I want to, Tennyson, and you know it. I'm done with this. We're moving on," he said definitively.
They were silent for a moment as they started to travel again. Kevin waited for Ben to respond, and Ben processed Kevin's words.
Ben finally nodded and smiled after what felt like hours. "I think you're ready," he said, shoving some of his brown hair out of his eyes. It was getting rather shaggy; Kevin made a mental note to tease him about its length later when he wasn't so fired up.
"Ready for what?" Kevin inquired, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.
"To fight. On the frontlines. That dependability, that trust that you're trying to show Ace? That's something you can't teach. Fighting just to fight gets you nowhere. I had to make sure that you didn't want to fight just because you were angry. You need to be able to fight for what you believe in, for the people you care about."
"What?" Kevin gaped, mouth wide open. He wasn't used to other people making decisions for him. He was his own person, and he did what he pleased. But now Ben was saying that he was "ready" because he meant it? Because he could trust him to care?
"Well," Ben laughed, "I didn't exactly expect you to understand. It's a bit beneath your level of comprehension."
"Stop with the Dexter-isms. I'm not dumb, and you know it, so stop treating me like I am. Whatever, I don't care why, but I'm in," Kevin answered, pretending that he didn't care nearly as much as he did.
"Ah. Dexter. I knew you'd bring him up at some point," Ben sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
"Well, yeah. I bet you don't tell him what to do," Kevin huffed bitterly.
His number one enemy was Fuse. Wasn't it? Fuse was the reason this was happening, the reason why everyone's lives had been ripped apart. Fuse was the reason why they all felt so desperate to cling to what they still had, why it was that heartbreaking when they lost. They were dying for this war, and dying because of Fuse.
Yet somewhere, he felt his anger shift to Dexter. Was it unfair to blame someone he never really saw, to hate someone who couldn't fight back because he wasn't aware of the problem? He felt like his priorities were out of order, somehow, but he couldn't justify it in his head.
Ben shrugged, pausing and leaning up against a dirty brick wall. "Uh, no, I don't. But I don't have to. Listen, I have to run an idea by you, and—"
"Don't change the subject, Ben. This talk has been a long time coming, and don't you dare pretend that you don't know or care about it," Kevin retorted through his teeth, narrowing his eyes.
The smile and happiness, seemingly forced as they were to begin with, slipped off of Ben's face in an instant without any warning. "Don't," he hissed, shoving a very surprised Kevin up against the wall by his shirt with more force than Kevin thought he was capable of, at least towards his friend. "Don't you dare try to tell me what I care about, or even question it."
Realizing that he was horrendously overreacting to the situation at hand and the words that had been spoken, Ben let go of Kevin's shirt, the dim moonlight still highlighting the angry lines on Ben's irate face. Kevin was surprised, but realized that looking shocked would be as out of character as Ben's little outburst had been. He just glared back, as Ben turned around and kept walking, looking angrier than Kevin had ever seen him.
After a moment, decided to let it go, jogging up beside Ben. "So," he reminded casually, as if Ben hadn't just slammed him into a brick wall in a very uncharacteristic show of anger, "what's this grand idea you wanted to talk about?"
Ben brightened up instantly, almost like nothing had happened. "Well, I'll tell you, it's been a long time coming. But you have to promise; you can't tell anyone, not yet. And like I said earlier, you can't tell anyone you saw me today, especially Gwen and Julie."
It was at that moment that Kevin realized that there was definitely something wrong with his friend. Maybe he wasn't exactly sick, per se, but there was something definitely messed up in his head.