Peer Pressure, part II
Ben
"My name is Albedo. You have something that belongs to me, human," The Galvan said, pronouncing the word 'human' with a tone of contempt and arrogance, "I want my Omnitrix back."
The Omnitrix timed-out, and Upgrade turned back into Ben - 'Watch Boy' - again. "Crap."
"Weird, the watch didn't have your name written on it when I found it. What makes you think the Omnitrix is yours?" Ben asked.
"23976120, restrain him," Albedo said.
Ship - to whom Albedo referred as 23976120 - grabbed a chain and tied up Ben's feet and arms. Julie was still inside the armor, and from the transparent material in the front of the helmet, Ben could see her sobbing. "Don't worry, everything is going to be all right." Ben tried to calm her down, even though he was not sure of anything at all.
"To answer your question, human," Albedo said, "I created the Omnitrix. It's my right to use it. "
Ben was lying down, completely immobilized. Albedo approached his wrist and began to tinker with the Omnitrix. Ben knew that if it were to be removed by force, it could break. Albedo was probably trying to remove the watch from Ben the right way.
A few minutes passed and Albedo was still unable to take the Omnitrix off Ben. The red-eyed Galvan looked utterly frustrated.
Ben raised doubts about Albedo's earlier statement. If he had really created the Omnitrix, he probably would know how to remove it.
"Damn you, Azmuth!" Albedo cursed with anger.
"I'll take a wild guess... Azmuth is the guy who actually created the Omnitrix," Ben said.
"Shut up!" Albedo shouted. "I WAS THERE ALL THE TIME! I WAS HIS ASSISTANT! HE WOULD NOT HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT ME! And yet ..." He lowered his voice, "He hid information from me. He didn't tell me how to unlock the To'kustar form... He didn't tell me how to take off the watch... He didn't want me to wear it... "
"So you stole Azmuth's watch ..." Ben whispered.
"I got what was rightfully mine!" Albedo snapped again.
"And the Vilgaxians stole the watch from you ..." Ben said, remembering that Tomyx had brought the Omnitrix to Earth when he defected from Vilgax's army. And he was being pursued by several Vilgaxian soldiers.
"Those stupid squids... They took the Omnitrix from me using brute force, and they almost broke it completely," Albedo said, closing his eyes. It had probably been very painful to have the Omnitrix removed by force. Ben would have sympathized with him, if he was not such an evil s.o.b.
"23976120, let's go before the human authorities arrive here. Take the wielder of the Omnitrix to the ship, but first... kill the female human. We don't need her anymore," Albedo said.
"NO!" Ben shouted "Let her go!"
"Ship... ship, ship ..." Ship said in a tone that sounded very sad.
"I gave you an order, you idiot! Do not question your master!" Albedo yelled at Ship.
Ship opened up his armor, releasing Julie. Then he grabbed her by the neck and lifted her with one hand. The other hand was aiming toward Julie's face, ready to trigger a burst of energy that would certainly be fatal.
"DON'T DO IT!" Ben shouted.
"No," Julie sobbed, "please, don't."
. . .
Then Ship put Julie back inside the armor and aimed his arm toward Albedo. "Ship, ship, ship, SHIP!"
"You're worthless Galvanic Mecamorph!" Albedo protested, angry at Ship's betrayal.
"I think ... I think he'll hear me now," Julie said, surprised. "Ship, please release my friend." Ship then fired a few bursts at the chains, and released Ben.
"Now we're talking!" Ben cheered, "The game is over, Albedo. You're going to jail. "
"I wanted to put an extra feature in the Omnitrix, an evolutionary function," Albedo said, with a dark grin on his face. "Something to evolve and optimize the aliens' DNA for a war situation. Azmuth didn't accept it. He said that what I proposed was unstable, dangerous, and that the Omnitrix was created to make the different species communicate with each other, not to wage war. So I stopped the development of this new feature. But after Azmuth and I had our little falling out, I resumed my work on the Evolutionary Device, and it's finished now."
"I love my aliens just the way they are. If you think you're going to bargain your freedom in exchange for that evolutionary thing you created, you're very wrong," Ben said.
The red-eyed Galvan laughed creepily. "No. I'm going to integrate the Evolutionary Device with the Omnitrix after I take it from you. But for now, I still have one alien that I can evolve ... myself."
Albedo pressed a button on the belt of his robe, and he immediately began to mutate. Albedo grew from four inches to almost 16 inches, most of it just head. He had a huge head - with his brain pushing its way out - contrasting with small arms and legs. He also had a third red eye in the middle of his head, in the center above the two normal eyes. Albedo floated in the air with a small hovercraft, which somehow appeared after the mutation.
"YES! I feel the power flowing through my veins!" Albedo shouted. "And I'll make you suffer!"
"Going hero!" Ben shouted, activating the Omnitrix. Ben turned into a fiery alien whose body consisted of a bright magma interior covered by dark red rocks, "HEATBLAST will fry your evolved brain!"
Heatblast threw several fireballs at the Galvan, but Albedo protected himself with a telekinetic shield in a big display of his new mind powers.
"Now it's my turn!" Several immensely powerful bursts of energy from Albedo's third eye hit Heatblast, Julie and Ship. Fortunately, Julie was protected inside Ship's armor. From the pain that Heatblast felt, he knew that those blasts would, in a best case scenario, put any normal human in the hospital for a very long time.
Heatblast was crawling on the floor, trying to get closer to Albedo.
"Don't worry, it'll all be over soon," Albedo said, smirking. He was charging another burst of energy in his third eye.
Heatblast knew he couldn't let Albedo win. He focused as much as he could, and in one last desperate effort, he fired huge fireballs around him at random - just taking care not to hit Julie and Ship - which set fire to much of the floor of the building.
"Your aim is terrible." The Evolved Galvan laughed. But his laughter ended as he began to cough.
"I just think a big head like yours needs a lot of oxygen ... And I may not be the smartest guy here, but I know fire consumes a lot of oxygen." Heatblast smiled.
Albedo, coughing even more, fled through a window.
"He's escaping," Julie said, crawling across the floor. Fortunately, she was protected from the fire inside Ship's armor.
"We're too weak to keep fighting," Heatblast said, "We'll catch him another day. Let's get out of here."
At S.E.C.T.'s base, Ship unmerged with the battle suit, which was collected by S.E.C.T. In his normal form, the Galvanic Mechamorph looked like a small black seal with green stripes. He hurried up and down the armory room of S.E.C.T. excited, "Ship, ship, ship, ship!"
"Someone catch him soon, before he merges with any of our weapons here and causes trouble," Max said, worried.
Julie picked up Ship and put him on her lap. "I don't think he cares about weapons. Albedo wanted him to be a weapon, but ... I think he is just an innocent baby."
"A baby. That's it." Ben wondered why the Omnitrix translated several languages - terrestrial and alien - but he still couldn't understand Ship.
"Makes sense ..." Ben said. "What he says, 'ship', 'ship', must be like some sort of baby gibberish? Like, 'goo goo gaa gaa'."
"Ben, do you think Albedo might come after you and the Omnitrix again?" Max asked.
"I think he's going to try, yes. But I got the impression that he used Ship to detect the Omnitrix. Without Ship, I think it will be much harder for him to find me," Ben replied.
"So we have to hide this mechamorph well, in a place where Albedo will not think about looking for him," Max said.
"I ... I want to keep him," Julie said. "He saved my life."
"Ship, ship, ship," The Mechamorph said, still on Julie's lap, happily wagging his tail.
"I think I can arrange this," Max said. "And nobody would ever think that S.E.C.T. would leave a Galvanic Mechamorph in the hands of a civilian girl, it should work."
"Civilian?" Ben asked. "Let her keep that battle suit too, Grandpa. Then Ship merges with the armor, with Julie inside to tell him what to do. I'm sure she's going to kick butt as an agent!" He said excited.
"Ben!" Julie arched an eyebrow. "We have to talk."
"Err ... I'll leave you two alone," Max said, "I'll be outside the armory."
An awkward silence hovered in the room. Ben was totally embarrassed. He had not stopped to think that while he loved the thrill of a fight, for Julie it had probably been a very traumatic experience. Julie was completely different from him.
"Sorry ... This was probably the worst date of your life," Ben scratched his head.
"It was not your fault, Ben," Julie said. "But that's definitely not the kind of thing I want to do on a regular basis. I mean, if you really need me or Ship, you can count on us, but ... I think you and your cousin have everything under control most of the time. "
"Of course, I understand," Ben said. And then he finally realized what Julie had said. "Hey, 'me and my cousin have everything under control'? Are you talking about Gwen? What does she have to do with this?" It was obvious that Julie had already realized that Watch Boy was just a fake identity for Ben, but that did not mean she needed to know that Gwen was Lucky Girl.
"Once I found out that you are Watch Boy, your partner's identity was easy to guess. Gwen loves shirts with cat drawings and Lucky Girl wears a cat mask, and-"
"Come on," Ben interrupted her, "It can't be that obvious. She kept me in the dark about it for weeks."
Julie laughed.
After a few seconds of silence, Julie proceeded, "I remember before when you - 'Watch Boy' - jumped in front of me to save me from that Squid-Monster. You are a hero..."
"Thanks," Ben said. "But ... there's always a 'but' after a line like this..."
Julie bit her lip. "You're a hero, Ben, and it seems like you love being a hero. I'm a normal girl, and I love being a normal girl. I don't know if we're compatible. Your job will always have to come first, I get that. And, I'm sorry for being selfish, but I'm looking for a boyfriend who can put me first. I don't know if things would work out between us."
"Well, I just got rejected... again." Ben thought, sighing.
"I'm sorry, Ben." Julie gave him a kiss on the cheek, "You're amazing. I hope you find someone."
A few minutes later, Ben's parents arrived. Max had called them and told a small part of the story - that the restaurant where Ben was had been attacked by an alien, and that Ben was taken to the S.E.C.T. base to give a report of the situation, since he was a trainee there.
His mother Sandra covered his cheeks with kisses, and his father Carl hugged him so tight that his lungs were almost out of breath.
"Mom, Dad, stop it," Ben said, a little embarrassed. "I'm fine."
At least he had avoided being grounded for a long time. He could not imagine what excuse he would give or what his parents would think if he had gotten home after 1 a.m.
The following day, Gwen went to visit Ben while his parents were at work. Both sat on his bed, and he told her everything that actually happened.
"So ... you and Julie ... are no longer together," Gwen said, and Ben could swear she sounded a little happy about it.
"We didn't even get together in the first place, to tell you the truth," Ben replied. "I was going to say that I really tried, like I promised you, and I was sad that Julie didn't want anything to do with me, but... you seem to be pleased with that."
The redhead was taken aback with Ben's statement. Then she took a deep breath. "When it was over eleven p.m. and you had not gotten home yet, your parents called me. They wanted to see if I could reach you or Julie. At first, I thought the same thing they were thinking ... That you two were... you know... "
"Fighting an evil alien?" Ben asked, arching his eyebrow and smirking.
"Of course not. Everyone thought you and Julie were playing doctor," Gwen said, folding her arms. And then she closed her eyes and sighed. "I cried, Ben... I know we can't be together, we're cousins, and I thought I was prepared to let you go... But I'm not."
Ben took her hand in his, "You don't have to let me go."
Ben crashed his lips on hers. Gwen tried to resist the kiss at first, but soon she was kissing Ben back with just as much passion and urgency as he was kissing her. Their tongues began to wage war within their mouths.
Ben put his hands on her hips and pushed her so she would be laying on the bed. He laid on top of her without breaking the kiss. He felt like there were fireworks lighting up inside of him, and he had never felt that good before in his entire life.
Suddenly, the Omnitrix beeped in a single shriek and the two teenagers interrupted the kiss because of the sudden noise.
"What happened to the watch?" Gwen asked.
"Who cares? Let's go back to what we were doing," Ben tried to take Gwen's shirt off, but she grabbed his hand, stopping him.
"We're not going to be playing doctor, Ben. And we've gone too far with that kiss already, we shouldn't have done it," she said with a serious face. "Besides, if there's anything wrong with the watch, we need to find out now."
Ben sighed in frustration. He got up from the bed and began dialing the Omnitrix, cycling through his aliens, just to make sure that nothing had happened. "See, everything is normal and ..."
. . .
Eleven.
Ben noticed that there were eleven aliens instead of ten now.
"A new alien," Ben said, surprised. He immediately slammed the watch to check out the new alien form.
"You're wearing your normal clothes, Doofus, they will be torn apart. You had to-" Gwen started to say but was interrupted by a bright green light.
Now in his new alien form, the first thing Ben did was take a look at his body and... He was exactly the same. His normal clothes were also there, they didn't get the slightest bit of damage. He walked to the front of the mirror and checked. Nothing was different.
"I think this transformation failed," Ben said.
"It didn't fail, Ben." Gwen was grinning from ear to ear. "Look at your left wrist."
The Omnitrix was not there.
Ben immediately took off his shirt and looked in front of the mirror again. The Omnitrix symbol was on his chest now. He really had turned into an alien.
"Can't you feel anything different in me, Doofus?" Gwen asked, very excited.
"Hey, shouldn't I be asking you that, Dweeb? I'm the one who turned into an unknown alien," Ben said.
"Not unknown. I know what alien you've turned into." Gwen giggled. "That's why I'm asking you this. Can't you feel anything different in me?"
Then he realized there really was something different about Gwen. Her looks hadn't changed, but at the same time Ben felt that his cousin was more colorful ... more alive… more bright... even more beautiful than before, if that was possible.
"You're right... You changed," Ben said, confused.
"I didn't change ... I was always like this, but you couldn't feel it before. You changed." Gwen said, with a smile. "You can feel my magical aura now. You've turned into a Sorcerer, Ben."
Author's Notes
* Surprise! A new chapter yesterday, and a new chapter today! Hope you all liked it - I deserve a few reviews over that, huh? XD
* Did you like Ultimate Albedo? And Ben's all-new alien?
* Thanks again to all reviewers, favorites, and follows, and to Aurora Nightstar for beta-reading this chapter.
