Author's Notes: Mostly exposition this chapter, but the action starts picking up next chapter so just be a little patient. Hopefully some of the stuff here explains some of the unexplained stuff they inconsistently used in the show.
Chapter Seven!
Clay Attack - Part 2!
It was a few hours after Max left for the nearest town to get the parts for the Rust Bucket and Harry was some distance from the Motel about to play with his watch when Gwen appeared with her bag. When she saw what Harry was about to do, she immediately jumped on the issue, "Harry, I thought Grandpa Max told you not to play around with that thing until he gets back."
"I know," Harry said, "but I'm bored, so I thought I could give a name to each of the aliens I've got on this watch."
"A name, what do you mean?" Gwen asked suddenly interested in what Harry was doing.
"Well, I just feel that we should give a name to each of them, so when I transform you have something to call me by in that form." Harry explained. "Using my name would probably be bad, especially if some government agent person hears and comes looking for me to find out how I can become an alien and see how I work - and that's not counting the ones who are looking for the watch or want to use it for their own gain."
Gwen could see the logic in that. It wouldn't work forever if the aliens had a way to track the watch, or if Harry grew famous enough and the watch timed out where everyone could see, but it should hold them long enough for her cousin to learn enough. With a sigh she accepted his point and asked, "Have you came up with any names for them?"
"Well I have for the first four that I changed into at least." Harry answered with a proud smile, "The fire guy I was thinking about Heatblast, since he can fire blasts of... well heat." He explained lamely. "Diamondhead, for the crystal alien I was using against that tripod. Can't take credit for that one though, Grandpa called me that back at the Camp Site. The dog is definitely Wildmutt. Lastly the speedy lizard alien I was thinking about XLR8, like accelerate, since he's fast, and has that really cool visor that gives me all kinds of tetchy readings."
"Not bad." Gwen admitted, "Have you decided on the names for the others yet?"
"Not yet, no." said Harry, "I was about to transform into them to see what they're like before I decided on what to call them. Though there's one on here that has two sets of arms, so I was thinking of just calling him Four Arms. There's an alien that looks a bit like a fish on here, from what I can tell from the silhouette at least, so I think I'll wait until we're near water just in case I can't breathe in the above water."
Gwen nodded, impressed he'd thought this through so much. The names were slightly childish, but just hearing them told someone what the alien did or something about them, so they worked just fine. It was kind of cute in seeing him thinking so hard about it, it didn't help that he had a good body too. 'Woah there girl, that's your cousin you're thinking about like that.' Gwen thought with a full stop, mentally cursing hormones as she shook her head.
"Alright there Gwen?" Harry asked in concern.
"I'm fine, just not feeling too well at the moment." She lied, "Nothing to concern yourself with."
"Okay, but take it easy. If you feel any worse you should head back to the Motel. No need to give Grandpa the opportunity to break out his home brewed cures..." They both shuddered at the stuff their grandfather called medicine.
"Thanks for the warning Dweeb, but I'm fine." She joked "Anyway, would you mind too much if I took a few photos of you as you transform?"
"What this, the great upholder of the rules want me use the watch when she just told me that Grandpa said not to just to take some photos of me?"
"Oh shut it Doofus." Gwen snapped with a fake sneer as she pulled a camera from her bag along with a stopwatch, a pen and some paper, "I thought that if you were going to do this either way. It would be a good idea to record this and get what you can and can't do on paper. Who knows, it could be useful to know down the line some time and find weaknesses so we can deal with them before they appear."
"Not a bad idea Gwen, you're useful after all. Learning I have a weakness right in the middle of a fight doesn't sound good."
"Not really." She agreed, "So what alien are you going to try first?"
"I think I'll try the flying alien." Harry said, and then admitted sheepishly, "I always wondered what it would be able to fly like a bird and this is my chance." And so, he slapped down the raised dial on the watch.
However things didn't go as planned, instead of becoming the alien he wanted he transform into, he got the muscular alien he'd decided to call Four Arms. Once he transformed, Gwen started her stopwatch and looked at the alien she saw. From what Gwen could tell he was approximately twelve feet tall covered in well developed muscles, possessed two pairs of four-fingered arms, four yellow eyes and red skin. He also had a black stripes goes from the bridge of his nose to his neck. And a second black stripe leading from his chin to his lower lip. He was wearing dark green white t-shirt with a black line going down it, black pants and fingerless gloves. His feet were human in design but his toes, the two he had on each foot, were more like talons, the tips shining in the light, covered in some kind of hard material. The watch symbol was located on his upper left shoulder.
"This isn't the form I wanted..." Four Arms moaned, his voice far deeper than Harry's. He blinked as he moved, momentarily disoriented by the two new sets of eyes, but getting over it quickly as it didn't actually prove to be too different.
"Hmm..." Gwen hummed as she thought about it as she took a few photos of Four Arms.
"Do you have an idea Gwen?" Harry prompted.
"I could be wrong, but I think this happened because you slammed down on the watch too hard." Gwen lectured, her pen scribbling lines. "It's like when you hit your CD player, or bounce it too hard. If it gets jostled too much the song can sometimes skip forward or backward. It could be the same for the watch, hit it too hard and it'll jump to another alien that you don't want."
"So doing something like that during a fight could be dangerous, especially if I accidentally get that fish alien somewhere far away from water." Harry said thoughtfully. "That does make sense, I'll have to keep that in mind in the future. Now let's see what I'm able to do in this form." He finished excitedly.
Harry discovered that Four Arms possessed immense strength, far beyond what a being of his size would suggest, an amount that was already very high. After discovering this he immediately tried out his Kata, but was met with difficulty as his fighting style was obvious meant for two arms. Worst case scenario, he would just need to fight with two arms behind his back. Harry snickered as he made plans to use that as a taunt/bluff in the future.
He'd also left Gwen sputtering when he'd slammed all four arms on the ground and made shockwave of energy that split a tree in half. "Physics do not work like that!" She'd screeched, but dutifully took several pictures. She made a mental note to bring her video camera next time she did this to capture Harry in action.
"Alien." Harry reminded her with a smug look, as if the answer solved everything.
He went to clap his hands of dust, only to make a shockwave when he slapped them together too hard. He'd stumbled back, more in surprised than anything, and wound up tripping over a log.
He groaned as he heard Gwen's fancy camera clicking away as she rapidly snapped three pictures of him. Thankfully this embarrassment ended when the symbol on his shoulder flashed red and beeped.
Ten seconds later a human Harry was lying on his back, knees no longer bent over the log as he was much shorter than Four Arms. And the exact moment that Harry became a human again Gwen stopped, reset, and restarted the stopwatch, writing down the time the watch had briefly displayed.
As Harry got up and brushed himself off. "So what's with the stopwatch?" He asked.
"It's to time how long you can stay as an alien," Gwen explained, "and you were Four Arms for eleven minutes, by the way. Now I'm timing to see how long you'll have to wait until you can use the watch again."
"Ah, that would be useful to know..." He admitted. "So what weakness can you see about using Four Arms? Only ones I can think of are being in tight spaces, because it's really hard to move with any kind of grace in that form, and that I felt invincible, or just fearless I guess."
"Those sound like the only ones that seem apparent." She paused, "Wait, your mentality changes with the aliens?" She asked, having never heard him say anything about it.
Harry nodded, "Yeah. Four Arms is fearless, like I said before. Wildmutt is almost feral, takes a lot of work just to get past all the instincts the body comes with, as well as the scents and not being overpowered by them."
Gwen smirked, "That would explain why you always find the nearest food source and gorge yourself."
Her smirk faded as Harry winced, "Yeah, it's not very fun being Wildmutt when I smell something enticing like food. Instincts take over and I just get... swept away in it, I guess. Anyway, XLR8 is just fast. I think faster, react faster, and it tends to make it hard to make long term plans, because I'm more impatient and impulsive when I'm him. Diamondhead is... level headed? Can't really describe it, but it's like the opposite of Wildmutt, the form itself can't seem to feel emotions very strong, so things are kinda muted when it comes to emotional reactions. It works well when I need to stop and think up a plan, but I doubt I'll ever be flying off the handle with rage, grief, or happiness as Diamondhead."
Gwen, meanwhile, was furiously writing all this down. It was fascinating to hear. She hadn't even considered her cousin would be affected like this. It sounded like he doing more than just transforming, but actually morphing into a very real version of those aliens, just without any memories or pre-existing desires beyond what they instinctively needed, rather than just physically changing himself.
She was about to ask more, but the watch beeped and glowed. Gwen stopped her stopwatch, finding it was just shy of eighteen minutes, "Not too bad, but let's see if the time is always the same or it varies between aliens. Try that flying alien of yours."
"Yeah!" Harry exclaimed excitedly. Adjusting the dial to the right silhouette he brought his hand up to slam it down, only to freeze and instead slowly depress the dial with two fingers. In a flash of green light the alien he'd actually been going for stood.
He had bug-shaped body and four sharp lance tipped legs with two arms, whose hands were surprisingly human shaped with a black coloration, similar to fingerless gloves, and 3 clawed fingers. He lacked any kind of face, instead his head had four independently movable stalks with yellow eyes on the end sprouting from the side of it, and where his nose would be was instead the watch symbol, just above his mouth. He had four green wings on his back, deceptively fragile looking, very much like a dragon fly's.
"You smelled bad before, but now you smell even more awful." Gwen teased as she pressed the stopwatch, one hand holding her nose.
"Very funny Gwen." Harry replied, his voice strangely nasally for an alien that possessed no nose. Unlike Four Arms the two new eyes were actually disorienting because he could move all of them, looking in four different directions. It was a lot to take in, but he was adapting oddly quickly. 'Must be a feature of the watch,' he decided.
He quickly discovered that he was an exceptional flyer. He was as agile as a fly in mid-air, able to change directions at top speed, going from his fastest to a full stop on demand. He couldn't fight in the traditional human sense in this form, but he did learn accidentally when he sneezed that he could excrete high pressured streams of liquid from the pollen ducts located inside of his eye stalks and mouth. After some practice these liquids had a vast range of forms, from a flammable toxin to an immobilizing jelly.
He was actually pretty strong, despite what his insect body would suggest, which he demonstrated for Gwen first hand as he picked her squealing form up and flew her around for a while. He also found out that his tail was extremely sharp when it brushed a branch and took it clean off. A few minutes of getting the hang of it and it became apparent the spade tipped tail could slice cleanly through entire trees with little effort. Gwen theorized his tail might even be able to cut through steel too.
Once he timed out at fifteen minutes, Harry decided to call this form Stinkfly, for obvious reasons. As the watch recharged Gwen and Harry discussed the weaknesses of the form. Gwen pointed out the easiest one was the smell, it would make hiding from people much harder than his other forms, though she admitted the smell was so powerful it would be hard to track his exact location, rather than just narrowing it down to a general area. Another weakness she could think of was his wings, as they looked very fragile and that could be a problem if Harry wasn't careful. Other than that, they couldn't see a problem, but like Four Arms there could be more that they didn't know about.
Harry revealed that while he was Stinkfly he seemed fairly detached from things, more prone to random acts of mischief, as long as it amused him. He guessed it would be hard to focus on the task at hand if he ever needed to use Stinkfly in a situation where he wasn't in battle.
It was about an hour before Harry tried another alien, this one he called Grey Matter; though the watch recharged in approximately fourteen minutes. He was a grey-skinned, frog-like, bipedal alien, only four inches tall with large yellow-green eyes, the pupils of which were shaped like horizontal bars. He wore a dark green jumpsuit with a black stripe going down it. The watch symbol was on his back, like some kind of round backpack.
In this form they knew that his size was his main weakness, and likely wouldn't be handy in a direct fight. Although he was weak in battle in this form, his greatest became apparent as Harry's problem solving and analytical skills went through the roof, as well as his overall intelligence. His attention span seemed to be even shorter though, and as much as he tried to focus, his mind kept drifting to possible inventions he could make out of spare parts he'd seen recently. The little alien also seemed to possess gills, so they could safely bet he could breathe underwater if need be.
Harry lasted a solid twenty minutes in this form before he became human. Gwen filled this time taking pictures and then scribbling down the ideas Harry was spouting rapidly and randomly once she had documented his form.
The watch recharged in twelve and a half minutes this time. Once he could transform again, he became the new alien that Gwen named Ghostfreak. An apt name, considering it did look like a ghost, and possessed similar abilities. Ghostfreak looked like a wraith right out of a horror book, possessing clawed hands and grey skin. Black lines ran along his skin, and one really disturbing discovering later revealed that his single eye could move along the lines. The watch symbol was also peaking out of the cracks in the skin, right where his heart would be.
In this form Harry could hover, phase through the trees and become invisible. He also had a weak form of Telekinesis.
He felt like his current form was wrong though, like it was a cover for his true appearance. Gwen was interested, despite herself, and expressed interesting in seeing what he looked like for real. Harry, through some foreign instinct, knew his true appearance would drive her insane with fear just by looking at it, so Gwen hurriedly changed the subject.
They moved onto possession next, which, as Gwen was the only one around, she volunteered for. They were met with partial success. One of Harry's claws sank into her chest, causing her to shudder at the icy cold feeling, but he was rejected. He had the impression he could do it, but he just wasn't powerful enough.
This form only lasted ten minutes, a record low, and Harry noted that the form took a lot out of him, like something was fighting him, making every second a subtle struggle.
They moved onto discussing weaknesses, but they couldn't think of any. Harry made a wild guess that sunlight may not agree with him, as Gwen's camera flash had stung - though it was very bright and would have stung his eyes in human form anyway, so it wasn't a sure thing. She was forced to admit it seemed like logical weakness, going off what they knew.
An entire forty minutes later the watch finally recharged. "There's one more to go and we can call it a night. Looks like I can hold the alien forms for anywhere from ten to twenty minutes."
"Sounds about right, but we need to do some more testing to see if it is the same set of times for the aliens or a different set of time each time you become one." Gwen pointed out.
"Right. That would really suck though, especially if I timed out in a fight. Ghostfreak seemed to take the most out of both me and the watch, but if that was just random chance and it takes that long to recharge to only hold the form for that long for other aliens sometimes, I'll need to really hurry in my fights." Harry aired his thoughts out.
She nodded, "On the bright side the watch recharges on the same time-scale, ten to forty minutes. We'll need to do more tests to make sure."
"Okay here goes the last one." Harry announced. Once again he adjusted the dial to the right silhouette and brought his index and middle fingers down to push the raised dial down. The alien he became stood at about eight feet tall, and his front, apart for his head, was white, while the rest of him had a black exterior with glowing green stripes that resemble circuitry. His head had a green circle, which Gwen thought was an eye, and nothing else.
"Hmm, I wonder what this alien does?" Harry said as the green circle on his head flashing as he spoke.
Before Harry and Gwen could think about it, they heard from behind them, "Finally, I've found you, and for your information you're a Galvanic Mechamorph, a technological humanoid alien species that was accidentally created by the Galvans. They can merge with any technology, making them more powerful. They can't merge with organic creatures though, unless they're part mechanical."
Shocked to hear this, Harry and Gwen turned around to only to find a hulking humanoid mass of living clay wearing a collar, his left arm shaped to look like a medieval mace, which was raised threateningly.
TO BE CONTINUED!
Author's Notes: Here ends the next chapter of Harry Tennyson, this one isn't canon so I hope you like the first new work for this story. Now that you spent the time to read this story, could you spend a few minutes to review and let me know what you think of the story? Like it or not, I would like to hear what you think and what you would like to happen next. And if you can come up with a better title for this chapter, please let me know…
I would like to ask what episodes you would like to see and not see within this story, and ideas for new aliens, what they look like, powers, where they come and things like that to make it easier to write them in. So you know, I'm planning to use a few aliens from Star Wars.
So you know, I won't be following the same episode timeline as the show, they'll be all over the place to fit into this story, so if you think of an episode that could be shown soon that it did in Ben 10 let me know and I'll add it if I is it fits with my story.
Omake's are also welcome, or even just suggestions for scenes you'd like written out if they're funny but you don't feel confident you can write them out yourself.
I meaning to let you reader know, but I've got a Yahoo Group up for mine and your stories to be posted on. I would prefer that it was Harry Potter stories to be posted there, but as long as the stories are will written I'll allow any stories to be posted on the site. You can find the site here: uk . groups . yahoo group/Dark_Harry_Stories/