Using his flesh-and-blood fingers, Ben shoveled a strange mush with the consistency of oatmeal into his mouth. It tasted like nothing and soothed the painful clenching of hunger pains in his gut so, as far as Ben was concerned, he was going to choke down as much as he could handle. He was lucky that Patience had stumbled upon any food at all in the bunker-like room she had elected to use as her base of operations.

"I've been exploring this place since our attack," Patience said as she paced in front of Ben. She kept sticking her hand out, as though expecting there to be a hologram for her to flick in order to illustrate her point. As a result of the constant swiping at nothing, each step seemed to make her angrier. Ben made the wise decision and stayed quiet, eating ravenously as his head turned to follow her from one end of the room to the other. "It's huge. Absolutely enormous. The design changes dramatically a few miles in any direction, which leads me to believe that the original station was much smaller. But, then, what could they need to fit? It can't be all of the kidnapped Petrosapiens. They would fit in a space much smaller than this, so why the need to expand at all, much less—?"

"Uh, Patience?" Ben cleared his throat pointedly. "I thought that the plan was to destroy the engine, not worry about getting these guys a good interior decorator."

She shot him a scowl, before seemingly catching herself and going still. Patience thought for a moment, then sighed, deflating begrudgingly. "Fine," she said. "It isn't that easy, though. The engine room… I've been there. It's not exactly…" She searched for the right words, taking a deep breath as she turned to face Ben fully. "Right. Do you know what a fusion drive for a ship is?"

Ben blinked dumbly. He made a twirling gesture in the air with his good hand. "Yeah, vaguely. It's really powerful and dangerous, and… it's powered by fusion, which is what happens in star cores." Memories of tenth-grade science class told Ben that hydrogen and helium were supposed to be involved somewhere in there, but he couldn't be bothered to remember the details.

His answer must have been close enough regardless because Patience nodded, looking relieved. "Right. This engine is clearly a sort of fusion engine, but it's far bigger than anything I've ever seen. That's probably why, when Tetrax and his team knocked out the generator, it had such an extreme impact on the rest of the ship. It probably wasn't even a real generator, it was… only a converter, to act as a transfer between the raw power source and the rest of the ship so that the technology isn't immediately fried and overwhelmed." She set her head in her hands, shaking it slowly. "Essentially, if we don't want to blow this entire station to the next galaxy over, we'll have to find a safe way to cut the power. So much raw energy can be very finicky. That's why the manufacturers don't include a simple "off" button."

The alien food that he had been eating was finished. Ben tossed the container away and stood up, wiping his good hand on his pants. What he wouldn't give for his warm bed and familiar clothes. "Okay. Sounds simple enough," Ben reassured her, lying through his teeth. "So if it's a fusion generator then it's gotta have a main source of energy somewhere on this base, right? We can just follow the wires from the engine room to there and then figure out how to get rid of it once we know what it actually is."

He made a move to walk off, only for Patience to set a hand on his shoulder and stop him in his tracks. "Aside from how stupidly simplistic that plan is," she snorted, "I want to know what you plan to do about your arm. Can you even transform when it's like that?" She gestured at the mass of peranite clinging to what was left of Ben's forearm.

Somehow, he managed not to wince. There was no point in looking weak in front of someone like Patience.

Still, Ben couldn't help but wish that she hadn't asked. He had been trying so hard not to think about it and still found himself attempting to grab things with his crystallized hands or reaching to fiddle with his hair and realizing that he couldn't flex his fingers. It kept getting worse. He really, desperately wished that he could go five minutes without reminding himself of the glaringly obvious problem with his wrist.

And what if Patience was right? What if Ben was no longer able to transform at all? He glared at the Omnitrix as if the steady red glow that signaled low power might provide him with some sort of answer. It didn't, of course. Instead, it felt as though it was mocking him.

He was so sick of relying on the Omnitrix. Of needing other people to get him out of situations because being human wasn't good enough. Was it Ben's fault? Was he only weak because he was allowing himself to be? Was it his dependence on the Omnitrix? Or was it just his inability to use it?

Ben wasn't sure. And, as desperate as he was to have somewhere to pin the blame, that was the scariest part.

He shrugged her hand off, turning half-way to give her a glare out of the corner of his eye. "I'll manage," Ben said stiffly. "It doesn't matter right now. We have to figure out how to shut down their engine before Murowa and Argyle find us. All we're doing is wasting time."

Without waiting for a reply, Ben hurried on ahead of her. Patience was right behind, quickly passing him, not that it mattered. Ben didn't try to stop her. She was the one who knew the way to the engine room, after all. Hopefully, it would be a quick, simple task. Honestly, Ben wasn't certain how much more he could take. He was so furious and exhausted, all the time, for no real reason.

He had faced impossible challenges in the past. What was so different this time around?

As they left the room, both of them silent, Ben noticed all the metal shards and wiring lining the floors. He spotted a lens lying among the trail of shards and assumed, correctly, that they were the remnants of cameras. There were holes dotting the walls, sometimes speckled with peranite shards, where the cameras had been torn out. The sheer amount of them made Ben's mind spin. They were of every size, some holes bigger than his head and some so small that Ben only noticed them because he was looking for them.

It made sense how Murowa and Argyle had managed to get the drop on them in their own trap. By the looks of things, there wasn't an inch of the station that Argyle didn't have under surveillance. Ben had been underestimating his paranoia.

The silence grew thick and unbearable so, hesitant, Ben cleared his throat in an attempt to dispel it. Patience didn't look at him but he knew by the tilt of her head that she was listening. "You seem to know Argyle really well. You found all of these cameras? I had no idea that he was such a control freak." Ben chuckled nervously.

For a moment, it didn't seem like he was going to get a response. But maybe Patience was tired of the silence too because she sighed and decided to indulge him. "Yes, I know him," she admitted begrudgingly. "It's not much of a secret anymore. Your partner—" She caught herself, not smug or regretful but simply acknowledging. "Your ex-partner knows, so I'm sure that you'll know eventually. Argyle was my brother."

Whatever Ben was about to say fell flat. He closed his mouth again, frowning as his brow furrowed. "I… Huh." He looked at the ground thoughtfully.

Patience faltered, almost pausing her gait, but caught herself. She shot Ben a scowl. "What? Something to add, Tennyson?"

He shook his head quickly. "No! No, it's not that. I just…" Ben shrugged. "I don't know. I guess that I was expecting more of a stunning revelation. I'm not all that surprised. It explains a lot, actually," he admitted.

That actually did make Patience stop. She turned on Ben, livid. "Explains what, exactly?"

Any edge of intimidation was lost on Ben. He had just spent what felt like an eternity locked up by a crazy alien woman who wanted to use the Omnitrix to mutate him and then dissect the human-hybrid remains. It was hard to be cowed by an angry rock.

Still, he held his hands up placatingly and made a "calm down" gesture. "Relax. It's not like it's stunning news that you're not a perfect person. I just mean that things like how you both have control issues and bad tempers and a fragile ego… It all really lines up when I put it into perspective like that."

It seemed like she wanted to be mad at him. Patience curled her fingers into fists and uncurled them, again and again, before giving up and slumping her shoulders. She turned away from Ben, continuing their walk to the engine room as though nothing had happened. "Yeah," she grunted. "We're pretty similar. That's how I know him so well. Even when he was living with me when he didn't have much money… He was always so possessed by the idea of knowing everything that the people around him were doing. He took locks off doors, even at other people's homes, he would nitpick for flaws or "suspicions" and use those as an excuse to follow people around, and he'd spend all of his Credit on the latest microphone or camera security system." She snorted. "One time, he was interested in a girl and didn't leave her alone for weeks. Followed her from work to home, wherever she went with friends…" The way that Patience described it was almost fond.

Ben arched a brow. "Uh, that doesn't really… sound all that mentally stable or harmless to me." Or romantic. He couldn't remember the last time he had ever met a girl who was into obsessive stalkers.

There was a dismissive wave of the hand from Patience. She had a hard look on her face, a distant expression that Ben couldn't fully describe. "It wasn't supposed to be. She hated it. They had such intense fights…" Her voice trailed off, then she remembered herself and continued. "I'm not explaining Petrosapien romances to you. But personally, I say it's better to have a control freak who doesn't understand personal boundaries than a powerful freak who wants to blow up planets."

At the mention of the old plan with him, Ben crinkled up his nose in distaste. "Ugh, yeah. That. I still don't understand why he wanted to do that in the first place."

With an uncommentable hum, Patience shrugged. Even though her gaze was staring ahead of her she didn't seem to be looking at anything. "Why does a child do anything? Because he wants to," she replied vaguely. Her head angled more toward him, losing sight of the path ahead and, carefully, she asked, "Does that hurt? Your arm, I mean."

The change of topic caught him off guard but Ben soon nodded, shifting his arm uncomfortably with the reminder. "No, um… not really. It's kind of tingly, actually." He sighed. "To be honest, I'm sort of used to it. It's not the worst thing I've ever dealt with. I wish that the arm was actually functional, instead of just hanging on as dead weight, but it just feels like being in the middle of a transformation. Except, well, constantly."

She didn't reply immediately. Ben thought that she was going to stop the conversation there, but then Patience placed a hand on his shoulder. Even though she didn't stop walking, it caught him off guard and nearly caused him to trip. "For the record, I am sorry that this happened and you were dragged into it. It was supposed to be a Petrosapien matter. A family matter, ideally, but…" She shook her head. "He's my responsibility. I should be the one to bear the brunt of his crimes."

That got her another odd look from Ben. He looked away just as quickly, focusing on what was in front of them. "That's a really shitty reason to take this whole thing on yourself. "Family" isn't a good excuse for tolerating…" He gestured around him. "...for tolerating any of this. Especially since it sounds like Argyle was doing this sort of stuff from a young age. I don't get why you're so insistent on doing this alone. I've always been offering my help."

Patience sneered, unimpressed. "Yes, and I've always been declining it," she shot back.

Innocently, but passionately, curious, Ben continued to push. "But why?"

For some reason, she didn't answer. Ben couldn't pretend to understand what was going through Patience's head, but he assumed that he had upset her. But how? It would all be so much easier if she would explain things to him but she seemed determined not to.

They walked in silence for a few more minutes, but the second time around, Ben wasn't all that eager to break it. In the end, Patience was the one to stick a hand out, stopping him, and point to a door just up ahead. There were so many camera scraps on the ground around it that it was impossible to approach the door without stepping on them.

"This is our stop," she muttered, waving Ben forward. "The engine room. Let's just hope that the main power source isn't far. Whatever it is must be massive and I'm not eager to waste any more time. It will probably take a while to dismantle."

Ben nodded absently, not really listening. "Hey, how come Argyle hasn't noticed you taking out all of these cameras? I thought he would be furious."

That made Patience laugh, even though Ben hadn't been saying it to be funny. "Oh, he is furious," she assured him, "but he's also very busy. By the time he noticed a flaw in his endless security system, I had already destroyed so much that he couldn't accurately pin me down. Sure, he could stay and watch the cameras for whatever ones go offline next, but then he would really be leaving me to my work. After that assault on the satellite, most of the lackeys working for them left. As unreliable as any other thugs. So instead of leaving no one to deal with me, he's attempting to hunt me down. There have been some close calls but nothing I couldn't avoid. He's probably still trying to find my trail." Her expression turned severe, pace quickening. "We should hurry."

As tempting as it was to reply sarcastically, Ben settled for an eye roll. He had to jog to keep up with her, which jostled his crystallized arm. And that was… yeah. Certainly something that he was trying hard not to think about. Luckily, Ben had a lot of practice with avoidings thoughts of things that he disliked.

He crossed his arm over his chest almost self-consciously, tucking his wrist between his good arm and his abdomen. A quick glance showed that the Omnitrix was still off, which was really starting to worry him. It shouldn't take so long to recharge, and yet he was still waiting.

In front of the door to the engine room, Ben paused, running his working fingers over the metal keypad. "So, do you know the password or—?"

He was cut off, receiving an abrupt answer in the form of Patience shoving her fist through the door. She split the reinforced steel like it was paper, curling her arm before yanking back and taking over half the door with her. Carelessly, she tore it off with her other hand and crumpled it up into a lopsided ball before tossing it over her shoulder and down the already-torn-apart hallway behind her. It clattered obscenely loudly against the scraps coating the floor, causing Ben to wince.

Seeing the glare that he shot her, Patience scoffed and shouldered the gap in the door open wider before stepping inside. "It's not like he doesn't know we're here."

As much as he wanted to, Ben couldn't argue that, so he didn't try. He simply shrugged it off and followed her in, ducking to avoid the sharp edges of what little door remained attached to the threshold.

The engine room, as it turned out, was exactly as unremarkable and bland as Ben had expected from an engine room. It was lit by dim, red emergency lights and smelled stale, like smoke had been accumulating for weeks. Pipes creaked and hissed and machines groaned and whirred all around him, like a symphony of ear-grating noise. He wasn't familiar at all with what a fusion drive looked like, but he understood what Patience meant about needing to be careful when he saw the engine itself.

It was enormous, easily five times his height. The metal that made it was dull and rusted, but the heat and noise coming off of it left no doubt in Ben's mind that it was functioning. He could see pipes and wires coming off of it, running off to power the station, but he couldn't tell which one was fueling it.

After a moment of study, Patience started walking around its width, squeezing around machinery to try and get a look at the back of it. Ben followed her, moving more slowly and awkwardly, but he was determined to not be left out of whatever decision she made.

On the backside of the generator, where the heat was bad enough to stick Ben's hair to his forehead with sweat in only a minute, it was connected to the thickest pipe he had seen yet. It was wider than Patience was.

"That's probably our best bet at finding the source of that thing," Ben remarked. Or, at least, that was what he was hoping. They were overdue for a miracle.

Thankfully, Patience seemed to agree. She nodded, holding up her arm and shifting it into a pickaxe. "In that case, all we have to do is see where it leads. It should be simple enough. Just don't wander off." Approaching where the biggest pipe met the wall, crammed uncomfortably close to the rattling generator, Patience jammed her pickaxe into the wall next to it and started tunneling.

A part of Ben wanted to protest. He was pretty sure that what she was doing was dangerous, but he didn't know enough about engineering to stop her. They were avoiding hitting the big pipe, which was probably good, but she wasn't exactly going out of her way to avoid anything else.

"Exactly," being used in place of the far more accurate words, "at all."

Patience drove her makeshift tool home, cracking pipes that sputtered out water and some that released gas and some that seemed to let out nothing but hissing sounds, which Ben hoped wasn't anything toxic. They loosely followed the path of the main pipe, but for the most part, she seemed content to hack her way forward. A trail of shattered metal was left behind them like breadcrumbs.

They walked for what felt like a long time. Ben had discovered that, apparently, the crystallized part of his arm was heavier than the rest. What a surprise. It tugged unnaturally at his skin when he walked, the artificial gravity pulling down on it. More than that, the crystal was an added weight on every part of him. Down to the recesses of his bone, Ben felt the increased pressure, the way his human body shifted against it as though the only thing keeping his arm and the Omnitrix from falling off entirely was a thin layer of glue.

The thought unnerved him more than he would like to admit. He settled for crossing his good arm over his chest and setting his left one over top of it, keeping it supported against his chest. Ben tried and failed to not think about it.

To distract himself, he figured that conversation was good enough even though Patience hadn't been stellar company thus far. But his legs were cramped from the exercise after being in one position so long, he was sweating like a pig in the humid bowels of the satellite, and there was a potent sort of hazy misery that was making it hard to breathe. Talking to Patience couldn't make him feel any worse than he already did.

"Why do we need to find a power source for a generator?" He asked irritably. He was forced to duck his head to avoid taking a blast of what he hoped was steam to the face as he trudged along behind Patience. "I thought that the point of a generator was to, y'know, generate energy. Isn't this counter-productive?"

Despite her annoyed grunt, Patience nonetheless took it upon herself to answer him. "Ordinarily, yes. But, again, this is a fusion drive. The generator's main purpose is to power the station's thrusters. That takes the most energy for any ship, and especially one this big. That's why Rook's team could safely destroy the power sources without killing us all. They derive their energy from the generator, but function only to feed power into the wired electronics. If the generator fed directly into those, it would be at risk of overloading them with energy. It's possible to limit the energy output, but then you have to monitor both that and the input very closely, which can affect your thrusters, which isn't efficient if you need to move your ship quickly. It's overall smarter and easier to have the generator feed off into a seperate storage device, for lack of a better term, that can power everything else."

Ben nodded absently, as though he was listening or even cared at all. "Okay. Cool. So, about the fusion drive?" He prompted her to get back on topic.

"I'm getting there," Patience assured him with a scowl. Then, relaxing, she continued, "Generator isn't really the right term. It's more like a fusion simulator, and this pipe that we're following feeds a steady stream of pure hydrogen into it. A smaller one offsets the resulting helium so that there's no build-up and the result is an incredibly efficient, but dangerous, infinite power source."

That made more sense to Ben. He had never taken an engineering class, but he had paid attention during science class in his sophomore year. At least, to the parts about space, anyway. The technical babble behind it all was much more interesting once you had actually been to space.

"Alright, got it. And I'm guessing that these "generators" are pretty finicky, otherwise, we wouldn't be bothering going this far out of the way to kill the engines, right?" Ben guessed.

He remembered fighting on Vilgax's sinking warship — the one powered with a fusion drive — and how it had gone up into a brilliant explosion even after it had sunk a good mile underwater. With how massive the generator on the satellite was, Ben was pretty sure that it would put all of Earth's weapons to shame. And considering what he remembered of the Cold War and nuclear testing from history class, he had no problem picturing the entire satellite being torn in two and the explosion being visible for over a thousand miles if a generator that massive went off.

Patience hummed in agreement. "Yes, exactly. We could destroy it easily, but I wouldn't recommend doing so if you wanted anyone on this station to survive. The fusion drives work in a loop, stabilizing themselves and their energy output by constantly needing more hydrogen. The only way to shut it off safely is by gradually lessening the hydrogen supply over the course of several weeks." Her expression turned grim. "We will do it over the course of a few hours."

"Oh." Ben didn't falter or even blink. He looked at the ground ahead of him and frowned contemplatively. "And are we going to survive?"

She shrugged with a nonchalance that didn't match the tension in her clenched jaw. "I don't know, Maybe. That doesn't strike me as being nearly as important as stopping this freak show. We have to gradually cease the energy supply and hold Murowa and Argyle off until it finishes. Then we can destroy the hydrogen supply without killing everyone and get out of here. My suit is air-tight and has a helmet, so you can transform into something and we can just get out of here."

There were so many things wrong with that plan, so many holes, so many things that could go wrong. What if their rush to speed things along caused the generator to detonate anyway? What if Ben couldn't transform at all anymore? What about all of the other people probably still onboard the satellite?

Ben took a deep breath. "Okay," he managed. "You call the shots. I'm— I'm with you."

At least for the moment.

On the plus side, Ben had finally managed to say the right thing. Patience nodded and relaxed, pushing on ahead more quickly and leaving Ben to pick his way a few feet behind her more carefully. Since they were apparently going to be attempting a suicide mission together, Patience had warmed up to him. It didn't make her any more eager to talk, but that was probably a good thing. The larger distance between them made talking awkward and Ben wasn't up for it.

It was only after the heat of the broken pipes became unbearable and Ben was convinced that the satellite couldn't possibly be any bigger and long after his legs had grown tired and sore and weak, that they finally reached their destination. There were no dramatics. Patience swung her pickaxe hand forward, but instead of tearing through more steal and wires, there was a sharp clanging sound and she stopped. The suddenness of it nearly caused Ben to stumble into her.

"Huh. That's weird." Patience shifted, cutting into the pipes and supports around her to clear her line of sight. It was nearly completely dark in the pit of the ship. The Plumber suit that Patience wore let out soft amounts of light, which was what Ben had mindlessly focused on following. He hadn't realized how dark it really was. "I should have been able to cut through that. Unless it was…"

"Peranite?" Ben guessed. He glanced at the Omnitrix, but it was still in the red. Something was clearly wrong with it. "I guess this means that we found what we were looking for. Argyle must've fortified it himself."

There was a nod, the silhouette of Patience's head bobbing briefly in front of him. "That's what I'm afraid of. It wouldn't need to be fortified unless it was either very dangerous or very expensive. Or both." She let out a sigh, setting her hand on the solid peranite wall blocking their way. "I suppose there's only one way to be certain."

A gap in the wall was opened, just big enough for both of them to step through. The other side wasn't as impressive as Ben was hoping for it to be. It was just as dark and cluttered with engineering bits. He idled next to Patience, letting her decide which way they went. She could feel the peranite around them, now that she knew it was there to look for, so she could sense which way the exit was.

After a moment of deliberation, she started toward the left with Ben hot on her heels. "This is just where they keep the wiring, locked out of the way so that no one accidentally interferes with it," she explained to Ben. "This should be the fastest way out. And once we can see what's going on, we can worry about finding the control panel and finishing what these freaks started."

He didn't reply, mostly because it seemed unnecessary. It took longer to get there than it probably should have, but to be fair, they were no longer tearing things apart to move more quickly. So close to the station's power source, they couldn't afford it.

At the other end of the maintenance room, they finally came across the end of the wall. Again, Patience dropped the barrier for them, but that was where the similarities ended.

Light flooded in, near-blinding in its intensity. Ben waited for his eyes to adjust but, after keeping his head down for several minutes, he realized that he was wishing for the impossible. He side-stepped Patience, who was muttering and cursing about Petrosapien light sensitivity, and fully entered the room that housed the satellite's power source. "Room" was doing it a bit of a disservice, though. Ben almost wanted to call it an auditorium, but he didn't think that that was accurate, either. Was there a term for an enclosed area that seemed to go on for miles?

Directly in front of him was a window. Sort of. It was clearly looking in on something, more like a viewing port, but Ben had no idea what it was. He couldn't look directly at it without causing his eyes to water. When he closed them, something circular and pulsing was engraved into the backs of his eyelids for an uncomfortably long amount of time.

In either direction, the room curved away from him, going on for what had to be miles. If he could see it from above, Ben imagined that the set-up would look like a donut, with the power source in the middle. And himself, too small to be even a speck if they were doing it to scale.

"I don't think that hydrogen is supposed to glow like that," he said to Patience. At least he finally knew why the satellite was so much bigger than the original blueprints had portrayed. Murowa had to have done dozens of different reconstruction and repair projects to carve out space for something so massive.

"No shit," Patience hissed as she stumbled over to stand next to Ben. She had a hand next to her eyes, blocking the worst of the glare, having given up on getting more than a glance at their target. In the light, her peranite skin reflected like a disco ball and was equally as distracting. "I have no idea what they're doing here. This isn't… This should just be a storage area for hydrogen! I don't know what that thing is or what it's doing here!"

Ben tilted his head at her in confusion. "Well, it's supposed to power this place, right?" He inclined his head toward it pointedly. "What if it's just a star?"

The noise that Patience made was somewhere between mocking and hysterical. She looked about on the verge of a mental breakdown — which made two of them. "Don't be ridiculous!" She snapped. "It's impossible to get a star into a confined space like this. It would collapse into a black hole! Not to mention, do you have any idea how ridiculous it sounds? Who's going to waste their time and resources putting a star in their station when we've developed countless, far easier methods?"

There was a frown on Ben's face as he moved forward, shielding his eyes from the light with his crystal arm, and set his good hand on the viewing glass that separated them from it. Remarkably, it was cool beneath his skin, shimmering as gently as freshly fallen snow. It lacked the burning glare that Patience's body reflected, but it looked exactly like peranite. In fact, the entire room seemed to be made of it, the windows and walls glimmering different shades of green, blue, and purple. The light from the other side of the window was so bright that the colors were barely noticeable.

"Murowa said that they use the heat and pressure of a star core to make peranite mold the way that they want it to…" Ben muttered, mostly to himself. He didn't want to explain the gruesome details to Patience. He didn't even want to think about it, let alone go out of his way to describe it all.

It still made him sick. All of those people, millions and millions of them, torn from their homes, permanently crippled, and probably still alive when Murowa crushed and melted them down into little casting molds. It made his stomach roll, what little food he had been given earlier threatening to come back up. Ben swallowed the urge and composed himself before turning back to Patience.

He faced where he assumed that she was, anyway. It was a lot easier to just keep his eye closed instead of having to squint at everything. "Okay. I think that it's a star and I think that this is the center of their operations. We still need to destroy this. Any ideas on how?"

Patience scoffed. "I'm not going to waste my valuable time discussing hypotheticals. It wouldn't kill you to be serious for a minute or two, Ben."

It took a conscious effort to keep from snapping, but he knew that yelling would only make her yell back and a shouting match wouldn't be productive. They were trying to save lives and stop criminals. Ben had handled difficult teammates before.

He took a deep breath to calm himself and sighed, thinking hard before replying. "Look. I don't know anything about the science behind what's going on here, I just know what Murowa told me. It's not like we have a working plan anymore anyway, so could you please humor me for a few minutes and play along?"

There was a pause where Ben didn't breathe, certain that she was going to refuse, then Patience groaned. He could picture her throwing her hands up in frustration. "Fine! Whatever. Let me think. It's been over a century since I took an engineering course."

Despite himself, Ben smiled. That explained why Rook was always complaining about how dated her technology was…

But Ben shook that thought away. It wasn't the time to be thinking about Rook or Gwen or Kevin or Tetrax or Conway, or… or Popigai. He had something far more important to be worrying about than how much he missed his friends. He couldn't fail the entire galaxy just because the Omnitrix was acting up and he felt lonely. They were so close. All he had to do was push through, just a little bit more… If it came down to it, Ben could always punch whatever stabilizing device was keeping the star nice and contained. It would kill him and everyone on the satellite in the process but…

Well, he was a hero for a reason. And heroes had to know when to make sacrifices.

It had been long enough that Ben was growing restless. He huffed and crossed his arms over his chest, hoping that Patience still had her eyes open so that she could see the silhouette of him pouting. "Well? Is there going to be an off switch somewhere in here or not?"

Her heavy, clanking footsteps sounded, moving away from him and staring along the path that would lead in a circle around the energy core. Ben followed, keeping his right hand on the window to guide himself blind. With any luck, they would stumble upon a control panel or something sooner rather than later. It turned out that walking grew pretty tiring when you were running on no sleep and very little food or water.

"Maybe," Patience said after a moment, hesitant. "I've never looked into something this advanced, personally, but in theory… For the record, it is just a theory, because to collapse a star to the size of a few miles would make it collapse into a black hole, but if we're entertaining ridiculous ideas, then I'll pretend that the laws of physics don't apply. Fine." She sighed, steps slowing as she talked. "Theoretically, you could force a star into a more confined space. It would involve manipulating the physics behind wormholes, which we can already do. You've seen it yourself, with FTL drives. The problem is that it becomes more unstable the more massive an object you try to apply it too, but if we could work around that then, yes, I suppose that a star could fit into a space station this big.

"Aside from that, if you want to talk about destroying it without killing everybody within five-hundred thousand kilometers of here, you couldn't. It would be, as you said, like "flipping an off switch." In an instant or two, the star would swell back to its proper size, immediately destroying this satellite and everyone even remotely near it. It's impossible for us to shut this off this safely. I imagine that, if this were really a star, then the generator we found in the engine room isn't a generator at all. It functions as another stand-in, to keep the energy surges regulated. With something as unpredictable as a star, it would be suicidal to plug that much power directly into the station's mainframe. It would fry all of the wiring instantly."

Her footsteps stopped right ahead of him. Ben cracked one eye open, tilting his head to avoid the worst of the glare, and stared ahead at her back. Slowly, she turned to face him, an unfamiliar look on her face. Like disbelief, almost, but far calmer.

"That really is a star, isn't it?" She murmured, turning to look out the window. It had to be hard to look directly at it but Ben couldn't tell if the grimace on her face was from the light or the sinking realization about the hopelessness of their situation.

Ben shrugged helplessly. Somehow, he managed to crack a smile. "Hey, it's not the worst way to go. Once, an enemy of my cousin's sucked out my soul as a sacrifice to an ancient, all-powerful being from a higher dimension in part of an exchange to bring her dead dad back to life. That wasn't a whole lot of fun. It was really… cold."

He earned himself an odd look from Patience, only for her to suddenly snort with laughter and shake her head. "That's so fucked up, Tennyson. I don't know about you, but I'm not eager to throw my life away. Not that I'm being given much of a choice right now."

Comforting wasn't his strong suit, so Ben didn't try. He walked past her, continuing the way that they had been heading. "Like I said, it's not the worst. At least you'll be helping people and stopping these guys from doing anything else. That's more than most people can say about their entire lives." The view hadn't changed much from before he had closed his eyes, except that the hole they had made in the access panel was out of sight and far behind them. It didn't matter. Ben had his gaze firmly focused on what lied ahead of them.

He waited for Patience to say something more, but she didn't. Maybe she was lost in thought — ironic because, for the first time in a long time, Ben's head felt clear. He had been okay with dying for a long time, at least if it was in service to the greater good. He didn't think of himself as suicidal, but if there was no other way, other people's lives matter more than his own. It was almost a fact, practically a universal constant.

Thoughtfully, he ran his fingers over the Omnitrix. Still red, unsurprisingly. Was it broken? Had whatever Murowa done to it caused it to malfunction? Would it lock his wrist into being made out of crystal for the rest of his life? The worry gnawed at the back of Ben's mind but, somehow, the idea that he was going to be dying in a few minutes or so made it all seem so irrelevant. He did feel a little bad about the Omnitrix being destroyed, though. As advanced as it was, he didn't think that it would be able to react fast enough to save him in a millisecond. It sucked that Azmuth's pride and joy would be incinerated. Ben would never even know what was going wrong with the Omnitrix.

They continued onward in silence, which was probably for the best. If Patience was the type to want comfort, which she wasn't, then she definitely wouldn't want any words of advice from Ben. He didn't want to say that a suicide mission felt like a relief because it wasn't. Beneath the surface level of calm was the regret and anger of knowing that he wouldn't get to see any of his friends ever again. And Tetrax and Conway were still onboard the satellite, hopefully alive. Ben was about to make the decision for them to sacrifice their lives.

But what other options did he have? Ben wasn't naïve enough to think that Argyle and Murowa would stop committing such atrocities just because they had him and the Omnitrix to virtually print money for them. They would get bored of that — or at least, Argyle would. They would move onto something else, someone else, and then the cycle would repeat. People like that would never stop hurting others. And Ben couldn't get them arrested, not with all of the odds so stacked against them, so he was going to have to take whatever option he had at his disposal to end it while he still could.

He wished that he could apologize, though. There were so many things that Ben wanted to say, but maybe that was for the best. If he had to look at Rook or Gwen or Kevin, he probably wouldn't be able to go through with it. It was hard enough the first time, forcing himself to turn away from Gwen to sacrifice his own life for the ultimate aliens trapped in the Ultimatrix. But this was for more than six people — it was for the entire galaxy.

Ahead of them, the walls curved away and a control center came into sight. Ben hesitated, glancing at Patience, but continued walking toward it. There were computer monitors flashing with numbers and lights, giving readings in a language that Ben couldn't even begin to decipher. There was console after console, work desks with spilled cups staining the papers, flashing lights and big red buttons and cranking dials.

Ben surveyed it blankly and turned to Patience, meeting her eyes and giving a shrug before turning to the window. There was a hatch in the wall where the seemingly endless window finally seemed to take a break, some sort of device built off of it that reached toward the star in the center far beyond what Ben was capable of seeing without burning his retinas out. He let Patience move over to the work station before reaching out to open it.

The hatch hissed quietly with the releasing air pressure as he pried it open, a sweltering wave of heat hitting Ben strongly enough that he gasped and stepped back. Inside of it was row after row of perfectly shaped, glimmering pieces of peranite. They were a blur of colors, blending together in elegant streaks of purple and blue and green. Ben swallowed thickly. He didn't know if these pieces were made from the Omnitrix or the kidnapped Petrosapiens, but he had finally found his limit — he was going to be sick.

"Did you find anything?" Patience asked from behind him.

Torn from his thoughts, Ben choked down bile and slammed the hatch shut, whirling around to face her. "No, um, it's nothing! Nothing at all. Just, uh…" He cleared his throat. "Did you find the off switch?"

"Good luck with that," a different voice interjected, sending chills through Ben's body.

He stiffened, throwing himself to the side just in time for golden dust to rain down over where he had been standing. A peranite shard cut through the air, missing Murowa by an inch, and bounced harmlessly off of the protective glass.

"Murowa," he snarled, reaching for the Omnitrix out of habit. He was sharply reminded of the low battery reading when its only response was to whine gently and flash red. Almost like it was apologizing. Ben cursed loudly.

"So you've found out our dirty little secret." Murowa pretended to pout, then flashed Ben a grin. "Do you know how much trouble it is to do this with a star out in the void of space? The energy flares, the constant thrust adjustments to stay in a clean orbit, dodging the space debris, not to mention the paperwork! This way is so much more streamlined." The smile slipped from her face, twisting into a sneer. "You're making this very difficult, Ben. You shouldn't be in here."

"Huh. And to think that I had been about to leave," he retorted. Jumping up from his crouch, Ben risked a glance over at Patience. Why wasn't she doing anything? She was just standing there, looking everywhere except at Murowa. "Patience! Hey, a little help here? We have to get rid of her!" He shouted, gesturing toward Murowa even as she again tried to douse him in glittering dust.

Before he could get a response, the floor shook and crumbled beneath Ben's feet. He let out a shout of alarm, flailing for a way to catch himself, only for Patience's hand to snap out seemingly from nowhere and grab him tightly by the wrist. Ben winced, the sharp points of her hand drawing thin lines of blood, and grunted in pain as he was tossed safely to the side and out of the way.

Out of the hole, Argyle launched himself out, immediately trying to slam his fist through Patience's head. She caught him by the arm, fingers lengthening to points that she attempted to jam into the sensitive crook of his elbow. Argyle twisted away at the last minute, gaze darting to Ben for a moment.

Ben could see the deliberation in Argyle's eyes. He so badly wanted to end both of them, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to. Furious, he tore his attention away from Ben in time for Patience to tackle him and send them both slamming through the far wall.

"Patience!" Ben scrambled to his feet, letting out a hiss of pain. Something in the way he had landed made his back ache fiercely, spine twisting in discomfort every time he moved. He moved toward her anyway, intent to help even without the Omnitrix, but was stopped when Murowa fluttered into his line of sight.

"Ah, you shouldn't interrupt sibling spats," she chastised him, a dark look in her eyes despite the smile on her lips. Her fingers were dripping so much dust that it almost looked liquid, running like molten lava. "Besides, we have our hands full here."

Despite himself, Ben glanced in the direction that Patience had disappeared. He could still hear her and Argyle grunting as they threw punches. Swallowing, he turned back to Murowa, self-consciously setting a hand over the Omnitrix to hide the red dial. "How did you find us? Patience disabled all of those cameras."

Murowa snorted. "Yes, in one area of the satellite. You think that someone as paranoid as Argyle wouldn't have motion detectors and back-up alarms for his back-up alarms in a room as critical as this?" She gestured around them before refocusing on the moment. Her expression turned severe. "You don't want to fight me, Ben. If you thought that the hallucinations were bad, just wait until you see what I can do with my claws in that palpable brain of yours." She bared her teeth, razor-sharp and full of intent. "You're going to beg me to finish you."

Somehow, Ben found the will to chuckle. "You bad guys always say that. Why don't you shut up and prove it?"

She launched herself at him, claws catching on the back of Ben's shirt as he tumbled inelegantly out of the way. In his head, she might be able to control the pace of things, but as long as Ben didn't let himself fall asleep, he would be able to manage.

Eyes going to the work desks, Ben avoided another attack by sprinting over to them. He scrambled for something — anything — that he could use as a weapon. Behind him, wings fluttered, and Ben grabbed a mug that used to hold some sort of yellow drink. He turned around and swung as hard as he could. There was a dull thud as the bottom of the mug connected solidly with Murowa's head. It cracked in Ben's hands, shattering easily when he let it go in his surprise and it clattered to the peranite floor.

The force of his blow sent Murowa flying, hitting one of the machines and causing it to spark and whine. She crumbled to the ground, a thin line of purple, gold-flecked blood oozing languidly down her temple. Her eyes were tightly shut and she didn't stir.

"Oh, God…" Ben rushed over to her, falling to his knees at her side and awkwardly propping his hand up underneath her head. "Hey! Murowa, dammit! Wake up!" He shook her for good measure. There was something cold and heavy in his gut. Had he actually done it? Had Ben just killed someone with his own hands?

Her eyes snapped open and Ben had barely a second to register that grin before Murowa punctured his arm with her nails. Blood splattered out, then blurred, melting back into Ben's skin as his eyelids grew heavy. The world became fuzzy. Murowa's body sank into the background, taking all of her features with it except the wild look in her eyes.

"So predictable," she hissed right next to his ear, though Ben wasn't sure when she had moved. "See you in your dreams, hero. If you can even stand to call yourself that when I'm through with you."

There should have been panic or worry or concern, but Ben felt eerily calm as he tipped forward. Small hands pressed against his chest, sinking in, drawing blood and filling the empty spaces in his veins with gushing gold. Murowa propped him up, almost gently, and Ben went limp. He muttered something that should have been a threat, but then his body lurched away from his mind and he was gone.


A/N: Ben versus Murowa! Fuck yes. It's been a long time coming and it's so overdue. Stay hyped for that next week!

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Walls Have Ears