It wasn't "waking up," because Ben hadn't been asleep, but there was a sharp shift from whatever Murowa's dust had done to him and the sensation of it wearing off. It was as though he'd had an enormous weight on his chest and hadn't noticed until it was removed and he could breathe again. Like having someone else puppet him around and dictate his actions and only then getting his autonomy back. As if there had been a film over his eyes and everything had suddenly snapped back into focus.
The first thing that Ben noticed was that he was chained. Again. Which wasn't surprising, he had just been hoping that he wouldn't be. He was pretty drained after hallucinating for who-knew how long, but Ben gave a tug at the manacles holding him even though he knew that it would have little to no effect. They held, as expected, and he slumped with a resigned sigh. As uncomfortable as he was to be tied back, being upset had never made anyone release their victims. That sort of defeated the point of kidnapping and restraining them in the first place. At least it was only his wrists, rather than all four limbs and a waist and neck restraint for good measure. Plus, there was no gag. For the time being, Ben considered it an upgrade.
Positive thinking was key, otherwise he was certain that he would be rightly panicking.
He popped his neck and rolled his jaw until it didn't feel so cramped and stiff. His mouth was drier than dirt, but Ben couldn't do much about that. There were no IVs in his arm the second time around, so either Murowa was going to give him water or he was going to die of dehydration. The second one didn't seem very likely, considering how she had reacted to Argyle trying to kill him. So, convinced that he wouldn't be killed at least for the time being, Ben examined his surroundings. He didn't plan on staying and escapes tended to go smoother if he knew what he was dealing with.
His prison wasn't the typical set-up with energy fields or bars. There was a large, glass dome surrounding where Ben was kneeling on a raised metal platform, arms restrained on either side of him. The Omnitrix still had the watch-face exposed, like his manacles from before, but there was a new addition to it. The clamp that Murowa had been adjusting was embedded into the side of the popped-up core, but an enormous machine was descending from the ceiling, where the glass dome appeared to begin. For as complex as it was — about the size of an eighteen wheeler and brimming with circuits and exposed bits of hardware — there was only a few thin wires connecting it to the watch's clamp. Ben had no idea what it was for but he didn't care, either. It would be coming off.
Beyond the dome, Ben was pushed toward the back of an expansive room. It was as tall as any normal airship hangar, but more square instead of rectangular. There were some desks set up haphazardly, like someone had just crammed their office into the middle of the room and left it like that. A lot of the space was empty or used for storage, it looked like. Definitely temporary, but that also meant that there weren't many places for Ben to hide if he wanted to do a sneak attack and he didn't have much that he could use to help himself out. There were vent coverings in the walls, high up near the ceiling, but those weren't going to be helpful. If Ben was going to bother crawling into a vent, he'd use an alien form that could just as easily knock down the wall instead.
He tested the shackles, rotating his wrists, and found that they were tighter than before. There would be no slipping out or dislocating his wrist to squirm free like they did in old crime movies. Ben cleared his throat. Might as well try it, right? "Omnitrix, user access voice recognition mode." He waited for the responding beep that signalled that he was being listened to, but it didn't come. Frowning, Ben repeated himself more firmly. "Omnitrix, user access voice recognition mode."
Still nothing. Was he missing something? It didn't look like anything was encircling his wrist, so the Omnitrix should have been able to hear him. He tried to shake it out of frustration, a habit, but was sharply reminded that he couldn't move his hands. Being tied up was getting old.
"Omnitrix—" Ben tried again, annoyed and impatient and definitely not at all scared. He bit his tongue to stop himself from continuing when the door to the room suddenly slid open.
His gaze immediately snapped up, meeting Murowa's, and Ben tried very, very hard not to react outwardly in the slightest. He succeeded, staring her down with a dead expression until she finally gave up their staring contest and fluttered into the room with an exasperated eye roll. She might have muttered something like an insult or curse, but that wasn't what Ben wanted to hear from her.
It took longer than Ben would have liked to admit to find the words, but eventually, he managed, "What did you do to the Omnitrix? The voice command isn't working."
Their relationship as prisoner and warden was hard to place because Ben had been unable to speak to her. She certainly had talked a lot, though. To herself mostly, but plenty to him, always something cruel or mocking to say. Murowa hadn't changed much. Ben expected her to be angry, either with him for escaping or with everyone because Diavik had been killed. She actually seemed happy as she busied herself at her work desk, annoyance with Ben from a moment ago apparently forgotten as she started making a weird chirring noise. It sounded like locusts chirping. It took Ben a moment to realize that she was humming.
"Of course it's not," Murowa replied. It was surprising that she had bothered to acknowledge him at all. "You've noticed that there's a new device clipped to the Omnitrix, yes? It's different from the one before, which was surface-level and temporary, whereas this one is more embedded and much more permanent." She shot him a pointed grin over her shoulder before turning back to the desk. "While you were being nice and compliant, I took the liberty of getting a closer look, now that I finally had the time to do my own work! I found this beauty fairly easily." She turned around, something small and metallic clutched between her fingers.
Ben was too far to actually see it, but he took a wild guess at what she was taunting him with anyway. "The microphone?" He asked dryly.
The smile that Murowa gave him was positively beaming. Whatever it was that was making her so happy, Ben wanted nothing to do with it. "Exactly! You're now unable to make calls or access voice commands. Even if you could get into contact with any Plumber feeds — which you can't — it would accomplish nothing." She ground her fingers together, little metal flecks and wire scraps settling over the floor beneath her like a fine layer of dust.
Likely, it was intended to be a threat, but Ben wasn't all that affected by it. He was mostly amused by the fact that Murowa had saved that useless microphone piece from the Omnitrix just to crush it in front of Ben. It was such a classic villain move — he might have commended her for it if he wasn't, well, in his current situation.
He didn't have the energy to put up with another post-kidnapping tyrade from someone who wanted to cause him pain. Ben felt like he should have been taunting her right back or putting up a fight, but honestly, he sort of wanted to sleep. His position wouldn't make that very easy, but he could try. It certainly beat listening to Murowa spout off every cliché in the book. As if Ben hadn't heard it all a dozen times.
"Nothing to add?" She arched an eyebrow, amused but unsurprised. The thin-layer of smugness behind that grin made Ben clench his jaw in frustration, though he remained tight-lipped purely from stubbornness after that. After a moment, Murowa tore her gaze away and started through drawers open, shuffling around for something. "Always so overdramatic! And such a handful, too, though well-worth the effort. Hopefully, anyway." She tisked, shaking her head. "I'll have to do something about those wounds you've acquired, though. Can't have you dying on us, hm?"
To that, Ben actually managed to make his mouth work. "I don't know why you're complaining," he said, muttering what should have been a shout. "Aren't you the one that ran me through in the first place? Thought that you would be happy. Turns out that I can sustain damage. What a concept."
She said nothing, but came up a moment later with a jar of what looked to be grape jam. Ben knew that that wasn't what it was, but he didn't know how else to describe it. A salve, maybe? The texture looked too gelatinous for that.
When Murowa drew near, Ben tensed, coiling in preparation to lash out. He was already on his knees, and as soon as she was close enough for it to be effective, he suddenly hoisted himself up as far as his bound hands would allow and side-kicked her. Or, attempted to, anyway. The motion sent a searing pain through his side, aching deep into his torn muscles, and Murowa easily dodged around his attack while Ben was still reeling from what had happened.
Before he knew what was happening, Murowa's fingers were glittering with dust that she flicked into his face, catching him right in the eyes. Ben held his breath, subconsciously fearing the worst. His eyes slammed shut on impulse, but unlike the last time, he didn't see or hear and bizarre hallucinations of his friends leaving him or dying or both. His eyes didn't want to open and his body went lax, falling smoothly back to his knees. Over all, Ben didn't consider it that bad of an effect. It was easier to not care when he wasn't given a choice in the matter.
Exhausted, it took the feeling of his shirt being pushed up for Ben to bother trying to open his eyes again. He didn't get them very far, but it was enough for him to see what Murowa was doing. Her jar filled with that unidentifiable substance was open and there was a thick layer of it coating her fingers. All of the bandages and stitches had been lost between transformations, so there was nothing stopping Murowa from, say, jamming her fingers directly into the wound.
Which she did, digging her small hand in deeply and smearing the salve generously. Her hand came back soaked with blood but it didn't register completely to Ben. There was a disconnect, clearly, or else he was sure that he would be in pain. Murowa scooped out another chunk of her alien medicinal jelly and applied it the same way as the first one, practically massaging Ben's insides. It didn't hurt, but it was a little uncomfortable. Ben twitched and shuddered, wanting her to stop, though didn't have the energy to do much more. He had been tired before her pixie dust trick and heaping on more reasons to be exhausted hadn't helped.
Seeing as how there was nothing that he could do to stop her either way, Ben grimaced and tolerated it. For the moment, Murowa wasn't making anything worse. She practically filled the gaping gash in his side with salve before moving on to its twin, running down the length of Ben's stomach. It made him squirm involuntarily, but she ignored him and kept at it until finally — finally — pronouncing herself done and closing the medicine jar.
The film settled over his thoughts was lifting, and with it, feeling returned to Ben's body. The wounds in his abdomen were throbbing, not surprising considering that Murowa had just jammed her hand into it and filled it with a weird alien cream. He was prepared to handle the discomfort, but what Ben wasn't prepared for was that burning itch to dig deeper inside of him. Suddenly his entire torso felt like an oversensitive mass of nerves, aching and causing Ben to squirm with the need to dislodge whatever was causing him pain.
He twisted and writhed to absolutely no effect, growing more frantic with his movements as the pain grew. His shirt had fallen back into place, so Ben had no way to see what was happening to his wounds, but it felt like someone was shoving a white-hot iron into his side. If he was quiet, he could have sworn that he heard his flesh sizzling. He bit into his lower lip to keep quiet, hitching on a sharp cry. The sort of noises that Ben made were inhuman and humiliating, but while he could choke down the urge to scream, there was no way to force himself to be completely quiet. It was hard to think critically through the fire tearing through him grew to an inferno, crashing and cresting in wave after wave.
There might have been tears, not that Ben remembered or care to. By the time whatever was happening to him finally stopped, his entire body was tingling and he felt rung out and hollow. His head lolled forward, chin bouncing on his chest, and that was when Ben figured out that Murowa had moved away at some point. He didn't care all that much. He was so exhausted that he was genuinely confused as to why he was still awake. Every inch of him still felt twitchy and tender.
To be honest, it was starting to get annoying. Saying that he was "sweat-soaked" or "pale and clammy" was so typical for him by that point, that Ben didn't even bother trying to pretend that he was anything other than drained. He wanted to nap and he wanted to slam Murowa through the wall and into the vacuum of space. Maybe not in that order.
His self-esteem and confidence in himself had been thoroughly destroyed not long after he was first kidnapped, so with all of his impromptu pity parties out of the way, Ben was beginning to feel indignant. All that he had accomplished, all of his hard work, all of his power, and yet nothing had changed since he was ten-years-old and still found himself in Vilgax's grimy clutches for the first time. The frustration building beneath his skin was as unpleasant as that salve had been.
"Well?" Murowa's grating voice broke him from his reverie. He tilted his head just barely enough to see her, tiny pointed shoes hovering in the corner of Ben's vision as Murowa fluttered in front of him. She hadn't left him alone after all. "Do you feel any better? I didn't stick my hand into your stomach for fun."
Ben sighed. He really, truly, honestly did not have the patience for his usual shenanigans with villains. Instead of ignoring her though, he changed some of his frustration with the situation into a glare. "I'd feel a lot better if we traded places," he seethed, straining against the manacles. "Or, hey, you could just let me go. I'm not in a position to be picky, as you can see. I'll end up kicking your ass either way."
She gave him a dry smile. "Charming. But unless you want me touching you more than absolutely strictly necessary, it's in your own interest to cut the shit and answer my question."
Curious, Ben arched an eyebrow. It was weird. Murowa was being so… pleasant. Compared to the last time they were alone together, anyway. She hadn't even called him an "it" or referred to him and the Omnitrix as a singular object yet. Stubbornly, he looked away and muttered, "What does it matter to you one way or the other?"
"After all the trouble I've gone through for you?" Murowa tilted her head at him, lips twitching in an odd mixture of condescending and amused. "I'm already speaking English for your benefit, now that the Omnitrix's translation feature is effectively moot without its speaker. You caused quite a mess by escaping, Ben. Killed someone very near and dear to me. I know you lost your Petrosapiens friends, but you have other friends that are alive, don't you? Shouldn't you want them to stay that way?" When Ben stayed quiet, she fluttered closer. "You can continue trying to distract me if you like, but I grow tired of this exchange. So, I repeat myself: well?"
Okay, sure. That was an awful attempt at changing the topic anyway. Ben rolled his eyes. "How do I feel? I feel fine, so you can take your fake concern or whatever and shove it up your—!" He paused, anger gone as easily as flipping a switch. "Wait. I feel fine?"
That wasn't supposed to be an invitation for Murowa to lift his shirt up, but she did anyway. Ben recoiled automatically, both from her touch and in anticipation of more pain. He felt her gloved, blood-soaked hand prod his side but, to Ben's surprise, that was all that he felt. There was no aching, no stinging, no burning. He let out a shaky breath, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling with the realization that, for the first time in a long while, Ben really did feel fine.
"Then the salve worked. Good. I was worried that it wouldn't have the desired effects on a human. Fascinating," Murowa remarked, sounding giddy. Right. Somehow, Ben had forgotten that she had an interest in dissecting him. Or, more aptly, dissecting everything. At least she was limiting herself to non-invasive experimentation. Mostly, at least.
Seemingly back to ignoring him, Murowa let Ben's shirt fall back into place and fluttered away. He sort of wished that he could see what his abdomen looked like with his stab wounds apparently "fixed," but that wasn't as important to him as being pain-free was. It felt so good to stretch and shift without having to brace himself for a shock of discomfort or having to risk pulling his alien stitches.
After a moment, Ben cleared his throat. Murowa didn't acknowledge him, but he spoke anyway. "So, uh… thanks, I guess. For healing me. That was… yeah. Thank you."
She lowered the blueprints that she was holding to shoot Ben a puzzled, somewhat frustrated look. "Thank me? Why? I didn't do it for you. You've been running around this station with an open wound for almost three days, did you know that? We go so ungodly slow that it's only thanks to our failing cloaking device that we haven't been surrounded by Plumber cruisers yet. And this whole time, you've had little to no sleep, food, or water. I'm amazed that you aren't in agony from shock or blood loss or gotten yourself a staph infection yet. Humans are so fragile, it's a miracle that you're even still alive." Murowa chuckled, eyes gleaming as a smirk drew across her lips. "And I can't have you dying on me. Not after all of the years of effort I've put into finally meeting you."
Ben clenched his jaw in frustration. "I am not fragile," he snapped. "I think I'd take dying over being stuck here, forced to watch you pat yourself on the back and stroke your own ego. Wow, good job, you captured me. As if I haven't been kidnapped a dozen times by guys better than you. And I still took all of them down in the end."
"You don't get it, do you?" Murowa shook her head, angry. "This isn't some hero's challenge or a question of good versus evil! You've lost, Tennyson. This whole thing, it's one big game and nothing more. You want an example?" She dropped what she was holding onto her workbench and fluttered over to Ben, through a slit in the glass dome that he hadn't noticed before. "That clamp that I had on your Omntrix the last time?" A loose gesture at his wrist. "It was designed to harness the powerful self-destruct feature and funnel the omni-energy into a concentrated beam strong enough to destroy worlds. Ask me why I bothered making it. Ask me why I didn't just buy or design a doomsday device."
For a moment, Ben said nothing at all. He was a little bit worried about the look in her eyes. Sure, Murowa never presented herself as very mentally sound, but there was always a certain element of calculated control to her special brand of crazy. In that moment, she looked unhinged. Was that just the effect that Argyle had on her? Ben blinked, shifting in discomfort. "Um..." He licked his lips. "I didn't know that you were trying to blow up a planet, but why—?"
"There is no reason!" Murowa snapped, throwing her hands up in frustration. "That's the big twist! Isn't that wonderful, just absolutely hilarious? The only reason I bothered, the only reason I wasted so much time, the only reason your friends have even a miniscule chance of successfully rescuing you is because Argyle thought that it was more fun this way!"
Thoughts spinning, Ben felt distant. He stared blankly. "Fun…?" He whispered.
Either not noticing his anger or not caring, Murowa nodded savagely. She floated up somewhere above Ben, tinkering with the giant focusing device hooked to the Omnitrix. The only reason that he knew that was because of all the noise she made in the process. "Yes, fun! He thinks this is all a joke, some way to pass the time! I don't! This is my life's work. But unfortunately, I'm a woman of my word! I never should have asked for his help, but what could I do? You weren't being predictable, you weren't staying in place or doing what you were supposed to! The first set-up for you failed, which was the extent of Argyle's charity. I'm lucky that I got your buffoon of a "friend" to turn on you at all, but that Plumber attack on your pathetic base wasn't cheap. That was another favor from Argyle, and the first had been generous enough. He had me turn the Omnitrix into a weapon only because he knew that it would inconvenience me. That's it, Tennyson! That's the only reason I bothered with your first week here at all! Had I gotten to have it my way, we would have done this first thing after I got my hands on you."
As if to emphasize her point, the machine over Ben's left wrist whirred to life, creaking and groaning like it was barely holding itself together. Lights began flashing in all sorts of colors, bright and fast enough that it quickly gave him a migraine. Ben closed his eyes and recoiled on impulse, but there was nowhere to retreat to. Being near it made him hot and uncomfortable, though it thankfully didn't seem to be enough to burn him.
But that wasn't the point. Ben was finally getting answers from Murowa, even if they were for questions that he hadn't asked. He didn't want to let her lapse into silence again. "So why do you bother with him?" He had to raise his voice to be heard over the sound of the machine. "If you hate him that much, why don't you break it off? Do your own thing?"
She startled him by abruptly dropping down into Ben's line of vision. There was a scowl on her face, but it quickly faded, creasing into a pensive frown. "I've thought about it," Murowa sighed. "But I don't hate him. Despite everything, I can't. That's the problem."
That wasn't at all the answer that Ben was expecting. He shook his head slowly. "I'm not following. What are you talking about?" He asked.
It didn't make Murowa smile, but it was a close thing. "You wouldn't understand even if I told you. Not that it would change anything, regardless. Argyle likes to pretend he's complex and interesting, but he's really very easy to read. He's a child with control issues. All he does is mess with people. Not that it's much of a secret, but he'd never kill Patience. He enjoys tormenting her too much." Murowa grimaced. "It's the same for me, I suppose. Only with a different reason behind it."
Whatever that was supposed to mean, Ben didn't get the chance to ask. Murowa suddenly turned in mid-air and left the room. Just like that, without saying another word to Ben. Stunned, all Ben could do was stare after her. He felt as though something significant had been exchanged but… what? All she had done was complain about Argyle for five minutes.
Alone, Ben hung limp in his restraints, waiting. When he didn't hear or see any changes, he tried tugging on his wrist cuffs again. It really was amazing that there wasn't even the slightest twinge of pain in his side. Muscle injuries could take so long to heal, especially without any real medicine for humans around, but Ben was surprised by how good he felt. With the tinges of the salve's effects fading, he even felt more awake. That didn't help him get free, but at least he wasn't exhausted anymore.
Even if he couldn't get free though, Ben was hoping that he could use the rocky relationship between Argyle and Murowa to his advantage. They didn't seem to like each other much — it was obvious within five minutes of seeing them interact — and yet Murowa insisted that that wasn't the case. Ben was starting to puzzle it out. He had a working theory that they used to date, but he had no idea how that would work cross-species or what could have happened to make them act like they hated each other so much. It made even less sense if they were exes. Murowa seemed perfectly capable of handling things on her own, so why did she so willingly hang around someone who had wronged her?
Thinking about it was starting to give Ben a headache. He had a limited understanding of romance himself, mostly due to inexperience, but Argyle and Murowa both had to be centuries old. Clearly, they had taken "dating" to some sort of higher level. On the plus side, there was no real proof that they were exes. Maybe Ben was wrong and it was simpler than that.
He was almost grateful when the door opened again, although it meant that he would be out of the relationship drama in his head and back into the relationship drama in real life. Ben started to say something, but the remark died on his lips once he looked up.
The raised platform that Ben was kneeling on wasn't very tall. If he had to guess, it was about the height of a male Petrosapien — which he knew because Argyle standing in front of him was a convenient point of reference. Ben had no idea what he wanted. Other than to kill him, of course, but it didn't seem like that was what Argyle wanted. Why bother having Murowa drag Ben to another holding chamber and strap his wrist to a strobe light when Argyle could have killed Ben just as easily before that? It seemed convoluted, though he was beginning to doubt that any of these people knew how to do anything straight-forwardly.
Argyle walked forward in silence, his expression contemplative, and stopped near the base of Ben's platform. There were stairs that would lead him up to the top, but he must not have been in the mood for that.
For a long time, they stared at each other, unblinking and unexpressive. Normally, Ben might have humored his little staring contest, but he wasn't in the mood. He shifted as much as he could in his restraints, trying to get comfortable, and rolled his eyes. "Oh, hey. I was wondering where you went off to. You didn't seem like the type to miss an opportunity to brag about someone else's hard work."
"I wouldn't call capturing you "hard work," Tennyson," Argyle dismissed with a scoff. His lips soon turned into a smirk that had distaste curling in Ben's chest. "I'm not here to brag, or even to kill you, as tempting as you make it. Considering what happened earlier, and my knowledge on the subject, I thought I would give you a lesson in Petrosapien healing abilities. I think that it will soon become very relevant information for you to know. And I didn't want to miss out on the chance to put something useful into that empty head of yours."
The sub-par insult went ignored and Ben's breath hitched. He didn't want to be reminded of what happened to Popigai. He had already accepted that he was trapped and the last thing that he needed to do was give them the pleasure of seeing Ben fly into a rage.
"Shut up," he muttered. Though he lowered his head, staring at the floor, Ben knew that he was shaking. "Don't talk about him. You don't have any right to talk about him at all."
Argyle tilted his head to the side, amused, and quirked an eyebrow. "Did you think of him as your friend? Unfortunate. He was my cadet for a while, you know. Always so useless in his physical classes, where it really counts."
Had Ben's hands been freed, he would have tried again at Humungousaur. Even if Murowa stopped him again, it would have been worth it to put Argyle through a wall. "What do you know?" Ben snapped, tugging futilely against the cuffs holding him. "I doubt that you know anyone at all. You don't care enough about others to really "know" anybody else, do you?"
He didn't look up to see if his words had any effect. Not that it mattered. Argyle laughed off his remark and Ben stiffened at the sound of crystalline footsteps climbing to the top of his platform. "You wound me. I've only come to deliver some information. Isn't that a good thing? Knowledge is power — although considering how powerful you are, it really throws that whole remark into question, doesn't it?" He stopped in front of Ben, though seemed content to prattle on as the hero glared daggers at his feet. "You humans and other mammals like you function as a multicellular organism. While you have different cells that make up your skin and liver and bones, they all function together by sending signals. It's how they identify things like invading bacteria or foreign cells." He paused. "Petrosapiens… are not like that."
In a move so quick that Ben nearly missed it, Argyle suddenly knelt down and jammed a shard of something sharper than broken glass into his forearm. Ben gasped in pain, hunching forward, only for Argyle to grab a handful of his hair and force his head back. Blood oozed hotly down his arm and Ben panted for breath, seething at Argyle as though he could set the man on fire with his glare alone.
"Peranite isn't made of cells," Argyle whispered. "Every inch of us is indistinguishable from the rest. It's the only way consciousness can exist in such a cruel, brittle material. And every last bit of us has a singular memory. Why do you think that when pieces of us shatter off, they not only grow back, but grow back as perfect replicas? It's because the body remembers itself. This," he waved the stump of his left arm in Ben's face, "isn't going to heal, not even if I cut off the damaged areas. My body remembers the injury, but not my arm. Losing a few crystals isn't a big deal, but permanent damage? Internal damage? That never goes away. Our bodies remember peranite. They can't remember something that's been erased. You have the benefit of getting to time-out, Tennyson. Every other Petrosapien has to live with these scars forever. Why don't you take a look at that "gift" I stuck you with?"
The only reason Ben did was because it beat having to look Argyle in the eye. He yanked his hair from the man's hold, ignoring the responding pain that made his scalp throb and turned his head to look. Immediately, he wanted to look away. Stubbornly though, Ben held himself still. He would have preferred broken glass. Embedded in his arm, right above the healing marks of where Murowa's IVs had been torn out, there was a gleaming lavender crystal. The exact shade of Popigai's skin.
"That's…" Ben didn't finish. He swallowed thickly and closed his eyes.
"I thought you said that you missed him?" Argyle taunted. He straightened up and pulled away. "I didn't want you getting your hopes up. Your friend is dead. His brain is still splattered all over the floor. Brains, for reference, aren't made of peranite. They don't grow back."
Ben pried his eyes open and shot Argyle a sharp look, pouring as much venom into it as he could. Maybe he was imagining it, but he could have sworn that he saw a flicker of hesitance in those golden eyes. "If my hands weren't tied," he promised, "yours would be to. Did you seriously just come in here to mock me?"
For the first time, Argyle looked unsure. He frowned, looking around as though convinced that someone was watching, then said, "It's complicated. I suppose that a part of me simply wanted to see you like this." He gestured at Ben. "While you're still yourself, at any rate." He sighed, almost wistful. "I've wanted to challenge you for a long time, you know. Almost as long as Murowa's wanted you strapped to a table, I wanted your head on a spike. Or perhaps something less needlessly brutal, but you understand what I mean. A part of it still hasn't sunk in, I think." Argyle raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "I was expecting… more from the man behind the legend. This was almost too easy."
It was as though every word that came out of his mouth was tailor-made to make Ben furious. He usually didn't feel such intense urges toward violence, but Argyle was beginning to make it sound really promising. "Sorry I didn't meet your expectations. Why don't you let me out of these chains and I'll send you through the floor?" Ben challenged. His fingers curled into fists, eager and waiting for his chance to teach Argyle a lesson.
"Tempting." The Petrosapien smirked, turning away. "I'll think about it. But trust me, Tennyson. By the time you're done here, you'll be begging to meet the same end as your friend. And I'll be waiting, ready and willing to let those prayers go unanswered."
Though Ben instinctively rolled his eyes, used to threats like that, he couldn't help the glimmer of unease in his chest. Argyle looked like he meant it. Whatever was about to happen probably had something to do with the large device designed to funnel energy out of the Omnitrix, but Ben couldn't imagine how that was supposed to hurt him. Murowa wanted him alive — she had said as much herself. She wouldn't put Ben in a position where he was likely to die. Would she?
He bit back the urge to demand that Argyle clarify. The typical bad guys never did, anyway — they only grew smugger and continued to vaguely brag about how pathetic Ben was. Besides, he was far more interested in having Argyle as far away from him as possible. He would rather be alone and in pain than continue talking to the man any longer.
The door shut behind Argyle with a slight thud that echoed in the huge, empty room. Without anything to distract him, the throbbing from the wound in his arm was building to unbearable levels. He wanted that shard of peranite out, but shaking his arm only made it worse and Ben didn't have many other options available to him. He tried reaching it with his mouth, but even without the other wrist manacle keeping him from going very far, Ben didn't think that he would have been able to manage.
He kept picturing the look on Popigai's face — the fear and determination, the confidence in the fact that what he was doing was right and was going to succeed. And it had all been crushed underneath the boot of a man who thought it was a game. A part of him wanted to keep insisting that Popigai would just grow his head back, but… as Diamondhead, Ben had known instinctively that his vitals had to be protected. Crystal could reform itself. His insides could not. There was no coming back from that. Popigai had died in front of him and all Ben could think about was how ashamed he was, to have never told the cadet how thankful he was.
He had barely even considered them friends, but Popigai had done so much for Ben when he was at his lowest. He hated to admit it, but a few more hours alone, and he probably would have passed out from blood loss or exhaustion and just laid there until either Argyle or Murowa dragged him off. Which they ended up doing anyway, but the fact was that Popigai had been so willing and insistent on helping. He had wanted Ben to get better, to be the hero that he was always made out to be, and he had died anyway. He had been murdered and all Ben had been able to do was stand there and watch. He didn't understand when he had become so utterly useless.
The door opened again. Ben wasn't exactly "relieved" to see Murowa enter, but she was better than the other option. The idea of a rescue party was tempting, but Ben was getting pretty sick of needing someone else to break his restraints for him. He would be getting out — of that, Ben was certain. It was only a matter of when, and how cool he wanted to make himself look while doing it.
"Found it," Murowa sighed, holding up a device that looked like a potato peeler. Ben had no idea what it was for, but it seemed like it was pretty important if the relief on her face meant anything. She fluttered up to the large complex of machinery and started tinkering. "Well, that was annoying. But we should be all ready to go now, Ben. No need for you to be bored out of your skull any longer." Something clicked into place and the room exploded.
Not literally, though it certainly felt like it. The bits connected to the Omnitrix sparked violently, sending a shock down Ben's arm like he'd just shoved it into ice water. The enormous machine burst into color and light and sound, flashing a seizure-inducing rainbow of colors as it hummed like a rocket engine. Instinctively, Ben tried again to pull his wrist away, but he was held even tighter than before. The noise grew loud enough to make his ears hurt and the lights were burning their way through his tightly-clenched eyelids.
Then there's pain. The pin-and-needles racing up Ben's arm faded and his skin felt like it was on fire. He cried out, clenching his jaw in an attempt to keep quiet as he struggled and twisted to yank free. There was no give, but the worse the pain got, the harder Ben tried to free himself. He might have worried about dislocating his arm had he not been so possessed with everything else.
He heard a whoop of happiness and then Murowa fluttered into view, buzzing like a hummingbird and unable to hold still. "Do you know what this is?" She asked gleefully, shoving a chunk of blue-ish crystal into Ben's face.
He did recognize it, though it took Ben a few tries to trust himself to speak without his voice breaking. "P— Peranite?" He guessed. Where had she gotten it from?
Murowa chuckled, pulling away from him again. Her gaze flickered over to the crystal still embedded in Ben's arm and, with one smooth yank, she tore it out. Had the entire left side of his body not already felt agonized, Ben imagined that it might have hurt. It certainly did bleed a lot, though. Crimson bubbled out of him and dripped down Ben's arm to his wrist, splashing into a small puddle on the ground at his side.
"For now," Murowa agreed, looking pleased. "For now, yes it is. But we'll fix that." She sighed wistfully. "Thank you for this, Ben. Now that we have this method, I can dispose of all the remaining prisoners."
Through the haze of pain, Ben caught onto the word "dispose" and knew immediately what that meant. He lurched forward in his binds, desperate. "No! You can't! Let them all go!"
The look that she gave him was sad and condescending, like she was watching a child. "It's so cute," Murowa muttered, "that you think it matters what you want. I can promise you that you will be much happier once you stop having a personality or a sense of morality. You might as well get used to it." She tossed the chunk of peranite idly from one hand to the other, not looking at Ben. "I'll have to go start processing, but I will stop by to feed you at some point. Assuming that I remember to, anyway. Don't go anywhere, now," she said with a smirk. With one last look at him over her shoulder, Murowa was out the door and gone.
Ben went limp, heart slamming in his chest and breathing hard. Beyond the pain, beyond the acute sense of failure, beyond all of the self-pitying and doubt… there was anger, white-hot and sharp.
They were going to pay. It was only a matter of when.
A/N: If my Petrosapien healing headcanon doesn't make any sense, just hit me up in the comments and I'll explain better. I didn't really see Argyle giving a textbook style lecture, so I'll clear up any confusion myself.
But you guys see how boring it is when the main character is restrained, right? This "captivity" thing doesn't last very long for Ben the second time around, but imagine how dull our last Act would have been if I stopped Rook's leadership arc every other chapter to reiterate over and over again that Ben is in trouble. That would have been a slog.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Devil's Advocate
