Content warning in this one for Star Wars-esque dismemberment. No blood or anything, just canon-typical violence and a fresh candidate for a prosthetic fitting.
Abigail looks out the viewport on the bridge of Hala's flagship, the Azure Lance. The sun's light glints off the curvature of Earth, flaring against the planet's atmosphere. It's a beautiful sight, and one that she can't imagine she'll ever get tired of.
"More hunters approach." -Hala notes, manipulating some incomprehensible holographic display beside her. "A pair, this time."
Abigail purses her lips. "Jesus. Three of them? How high is the bounty on the Omnitrix, Hala?"
"High enough to warrant risking a Hunt on a developing planet in the middle of a Kree exclusion zone, clearly." -Hala retorted. "Suffice it to say, should these bounty hunters succeed, they would not lack for comforts well into their twilight years."
"Yikes." -she says. "And the Kree? How are they fine with these...visitors?"
"The Empire rarely meddles in the affairs of the Hunter's Guild. And, while C-53 may normally be a forbidden destination, the hunters have invoked their Right To Hunt. So long as they do not harm any other sentient life forms, or otherwise disrupt the normal course of human civilization, they are free to pursue their target."
Abigail bites the inside of her cheek. She'd had an inkling from Max's stories that this would be the case. Even told Ben to never stay alone, no matter what. But the hunters currently approaching the blockade are crafty - some of the best in the galaxy, if the Accuser is to be believed. Abigail knows they'll be looking for every possible loophole they can use to get the fucking watch, the human attached to it be damned.
A small vessel carefully glides by the fleet; it's a bronze and maroon hunter-killer, too large to be considered a starfighter, and too small to qualify as a corvette. It's kinda ugly - an oblong, bulbous thing covered in mismatched, grafted-on weapon systems, sensor arrays, and other such upgrades that betray its lethality. Just behind its engine wash, a tiny shape follows. Abigail gasps; it's the second hunter. The cocky bastard doesn't even have a ship. It's just them, decked in an armored exosuit, flying through space like cosmic radiation and hyper-accelerated microparticles aren't much of a concern. They're bursting with zeta radiation, too, which means they went through a warp gate, unaided. She can't even fathom how much it would cost to integrate a warp drive into a vaguely human-sized armor system.
These guys must be good.
And they're headed straight for Cali.
"Are you absolutely sure there's nothing we can do to intervene?" -she asks, anxiously rubbing her thumb against the pommel of her cane.
Hala sighs. "Unless you'd rather court the actual wrath of the Kree Empire, yes." -she says. "I am aware my...proposal to Tennyson was ill advised, but you can't deny it would have been a kinder fate. The Guild has only ever failed to deliver on a bounty a handful of times in its many thousands of years in operation."
She rolls her eyes. "We can discuss your dumbass plan later." -she says. "Right now, we have to figure out a way to help Ben survive the Hunt."
"There is nothing to be done, Abigail." -she says, then gazes out to the planet she's come to love as her own. "Nothing but trust that the child can wield the Omnitrix well enough to survive."
"He's really not a child, Hala." -she chides.
The Kree huffs. "Well then, dear Abigail...this is his chance to prove me wrong."
Ben, Kevin, and Gwen haven't had a sleepover since he was eleven years-old.
He's never been quite sure why; at some point, aunt Natalie and uncle Frank decided to dissuade Gwen from ever inviting them again. Ben's long since gotten over it, and the trio's friendship's only gotten stronger in the years that followed in spite of it, but between this, and the borderline toxic relationship between Gwen and her parents, Ben has never been able to really forgive them.
Unfortunately for all parties involved, Ben is being literally hunted by alien mercenaries, and can't be alone for longer than a few minutes, or the bounty hunters will, apparently, be free to attack. Since his dad flew to D.C. for one of his mom's fundraisers - without telling Ben, as per usual - Julie's house is on lockdown - having managed to convince her parents that someone tried to break in, to explain the damage caused by his and Hala's little brawl - and Kevin left town to retrieve some of Max's belongings from a storage facility in San Francisco, Ben has to emergency-crash at Gwen's house.
He literally crashes at her house.
He's power-walking towards her home when the first bounty hunter jumps him - a nine-foot-tall robotic creature that can only be described as a centaur-like being, with four crab-like metal legs and a humanoid torso. Ben manages to duck out of the way, narrowly avoiding the deadly swipe of his massive left claw, and pops up the Omnitrix, slamming it down on Heatblast's position. Since that first awkward transformation, Ben's learned to internalize and redirect most of the Pyronite's thermal emissions, so they don't passively melt and burn everything around them. Instead, they channel the excess energy into a powerful plasma beam that forces the robo-crabman back, and out of melee range.
Following Abigail's advice, Ben blasts off, a reverse meteorite propelled by the same overwhelming heat, this time directed downwards, generating thrust like only a jet engine - or Iron Man's repulsors, perhaps - could. They don't get far before getting shot in the back with a freakin' missile, which knocks them out of the air, maybe half a block away from Gwen's home. He's incredibly lucky to find his fall turned to a controlled slide on a glowing tobogan, which has him landing softly in Gwen's backyard, her solid magenta eyes fading to normal green irises, shining with worry.
Ben detransforms as soon as the hunter's glowing yellow eyes fade into the treeline, temporarily defeated.
"Quick, get inside." -she says, scanning the horizon. "I'm gonna make sure they're gone."
Ben nods. He's not fond of the idea of her fighting his battles, but the hunters can't touch her, not unless they want an angry fleet's worth of Kree on their heads. He brushes himself off and heads for the back door, which opens before he can reach it.
"What the heck's going on back...Ben?" -Uncle Frank asks, bewildered, flashlight in hand.
Ben glances back - Gwen's already jumped the fence, thankfully - and grins, awkwardly. "Heeey, uncle Frank." -he meekly greets.
He frowns. "I'm guessing you're the one causing all this racket?"
"Yeah, sorry." -he says. How the man could confuse a small missile explosion with Ben presumably jumping the fence is beyond him.
"You know, we do have a front door." -he says, crossing his arms. "There's no need to sneak around like this."
Ben winces. "No, I know. I was just...practicing my...parkour."
Frank narrows his eyes, looking his admittedly scrawny form over. The physical activity of the aliens he becomes sadly doesn't seem to translate to a buffer body. "Uh-huh. Just come inside already, Ben. Gwen let us know you'd be coming over." -he says, then narrows his eyes. "It is just you, right?"
Just me and a few alien selves, he thinks. "Yup."
Frank grunts and nods at him to get moving. The teen complies without a word, awkwardly passing by Frank. He's greeted by an explosion of academia, just as he remembers; every available surface, from the kitchen countertops to the sofas in the living room just beyond, are covered in books, papers, and other such materials he's honestly not smart enough to even read, let alone understand. Gwen's parents are both scientists - uncle Frank works at the prestigious San Francisco Institute of Technology, a lead researcher and developer in the machine learning and artificial intelligence fields, while aunt Natalie is a top biochemistry researcher for the West Coast branch of OsCorp, currently in the process of being absorbed by the LIFE Foundation, thanks to the Avengers' recent - and highly controversial - takedown of Norman Osborn's company. Ben can't understand how this utter chaos makes any sense to them, but they have a system, and it clearly works, judging by the many awards and diplomas lining the walls.
"Oh, hello Ben." -Aunt Natalie says, not even bothering to look up from the papers she's reading through, sat at what might've been the bar once.
"Hi, aunt Nat." -he says, hands in his pockets.
An awkward pause follows, which Natalie eventually breaks. "Gwen is upstairs." -she remarks, sounding bewildered about his continued presence in the living room.
As if on cue, Gwen calls out. "Ben! Get over here!" -she shouts.
Natalie sighs. "No yelling in my house, sweetie!" -she yells, then sighs. "I swear, sixteen years old and I still have to tell her these things." -she says to nobody in particular.
Ben turns around, doing his best not to make the sound of his gritting teeth too audible. Gwen is seventeen, not that she'd care.
He makes his way to Gwen's room, which unlocks for him. Magically, since she's on the other side of the room, closing the window she's likely just climbed through.
Gwen's room is the polar opposite of the rest of the house, order-wise. She's still got an entire wall of books, but the contrast is pretty stark. Many of the tomes in her shelves are novels, not academic texts. Her room is spotless, except for the vanity in the corner, which is covered in photographs. There's road trips with Grandpa, shots of him and Julie being stupidly cute, selfies with her school friends, and of course, one or two pictures of Kevin, alone.
Ben kinda wishes the mutual pining would stop, but he's pretty sure he'd be in the same spot as those two, if Julie weren't such a go-getter.
"I'm guessing you spoke with my parents." -she says, sitting on the bed.
"How can you tell?" -he asks, taking off his green and black light jacket.
She snorts. "Your emotions are all over the place. What'd they say this time?"
Ben sighs. "On top of her chiding you for your volume like you're a toddler? Your mother apparently can't remember your age."
There's a second of hurt on Gwen's face, but it vanishes all too quickly into a carefully cultivated neutral expression. "That does sound like my mother."
"They haven't gotten any better, huh?"
She snorts. "With college just around the corner? Of course not. I might as well be a robot programmed to bring diplomas with the Tennyson name home, to them."
Gwen takes off her sweater, revealing a bandaged shoulder. A faint magenta glow seeps through the wrappings, which she frowns at. "Still not gone?" -Ben asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Getting there." -she says, removing the bandage. Her wound is oddly mesmerizing to look at; it's like a second, glowing skin, a square-inch patch of flesh with a texture Ben has a hard time describing. It's as if she was made of flexible, backlit amethyst, if that makes any sense.
The wound is definitely much smaller than it was after she received it, so Ben opts not to worry too much about it. The skin around it has healed nicely, too, and likely won't scar, thanks to Gwen's magic.
"Have you figured out why…?"
"I think so." -she says, poking the little patch. It doesn't seem to hurt at all. "I think this is my 'second skin', so to speak. The body of an Anodite."
Ben crosses his arms. "The thing you're supposed to become after you die?"
"Well, we've established I'm a special case." -she shrugs. "It's the strangest thing; the skin that's healing around it still stings a little, but I can't feel a thing on the pink part. I've tried pinching it, flicking it, hitting it...even grabbed a kitchen knife and tried to cut at it, but it didn't even budge, let alone hurt."
"Maybe you're bulletproof, like Supergirl." -he suggests. "Not that we should, uh, try to prove that one."
She chuckles. "Yeah, maybe not."
Ben grabs the chair from her vanity and sits. "So, bounty hunters."
"From space, yeah." -she says, still a little baffled at the turn their lives have taken.
"What the hell am I gonna do, Gwen?" -he shakes his head.
She purses her lips. "Honestly? This one seems pretty straightforward to me. We need to take them down, Ben."
Ben frowns. "What, just like that? Like these guys didn't scare an alien warrior princess into trying to kidnap me?"
"I'm not saying it'll be easy." -she says. "But I think it's possible."
He stares at the Omnitrix, which just so happens to turn green again at that moment. "What are you suggesting?"
"These guys have some pretty harsh restrictions, right?" -she asks, rhetorically. "They can only actively hunt you while you're alone, and they can't damage or disrupt anything or anyone in town."
"Right. We already knew all this, but thanks for repeating the rules of the actual horror movie scenario I'm living through."
She rolls her eyes. "Anyway. Step one: the buddy system."
"Kinda obvious."
"It's really not." -she says. "Not the way we're doing it."
She stands up, and her eyes come aglow. Her hands gesture in patterns he can't quite comprehend, and a moment later, a nebulous shape surges out of her chest, and solidifies into another Gwen. The new Gwen is solid, but not quite there - something he can really only notice because the original is beside her - as if someone's turned down her opacity by 1%. She doesn't seem to have a mind of her own, simply staring blankly at the window behind real Gwen.
"Did you just magically clone yourself?" -Ben asks in disbelief.
She gleefully nods. "It's a pretty freakin' difficult spell, but these 'shadow clones' are virtually indistinguishable from the real deal to others. She should be able to fool whatever sensors your hunters use into thinking you're never alone. I've also modified the spell so I can 'program' her to act like I would, and I can take remote control of her body, keep up a conversation, all that jazz."
"Wow. That's super useful. Why haven't I ever seen you use this one before?"
She purses her lips. "You have. Sometimes I don't leave the house, but I still leave the house, if you know what I mean."
"Jesus. Really, Gwen? It's that bad?"
She shakes her head. "Not really. I just don't wanna deal with asking my parents for permission to go out, sometimes. If I didn't do this, you guys would see me, like, half as often as you do."
Ben crosses his arms. "Well, it definitely sounds that bad. Gwen, this isn't healthy."
Gwen sighs. "Believe me, I know. I'm lucky, having these powers. Their B.S. doesn't affect me as much when I can just...magically get away from it all." -she says, then offers a smile. "It's fine, Ben. I've made it this far. One more year and I'm out of here."
"It's not fine. But...I guess you've got it handled." -he says, dubiously.
She smirks. "Go on, get ready for bed. I'll share the details of phase two with you tomorrow morning."
Pseudo-Gwen is...eerie. Ben tries not to act too freaked out, but, while the shadow clone is convincing enough that people don't tend to look at her twice - and if they do, it's more than likely because Gwen is an attractive redhead in a city with a smaller population than the average battleship crew - to someone who's known Gwen since she was a toddler, her double is extremely disturbing when left to her own devices.
Still, Ben is pretty thankful. Whenever Julie isn't around, Pseudo-Gwen is always close-by, holding a conversation with him, or just loitering around, pretending to drink a smoothie, or pretending to enjoy a walk in the park near Town Hall, where Mr. Stuart's rad burrito truck can usually be found.
The trick works flawlessly for the better part of a week. Ben's pretty sure he spots glowing yellow eyes at night, tracking him every now and then, but the alien doesn't jump him anymore, and if there are any other bounty hunters out there, they don't make themselves known. It's a heck of a relief.
So much so, that he almost forgets how dangerous phase two really is.
Facing Hala was a hard lesson in not being too cautious when experimenting with the Watch. Goop is a really cool alien, and he's only figured out cooler things to do with their...unique abilities and physiology, but it quickly became clear that focusing on training with only two aliens was a mistake. So, while he hasn't gone too crazy, transforming at every available opportunity into another one of his remaining seven unknown aliens, he has discovered two more of those transformations, and figured what they do.
Phase two depends entirely on Upgrade.
Upgrade is an interesting alien, in that it's not actually an alien in the conventional sense. It's a living supercomputer, a blob-like, metallic, semi-solid humanoid entity with no personality traits, thoughts, or desires other than Ben's. The other aliens he's become all have some kind of driving force or, heck, a 'soul' to them - something Ben thinks might be linked to the occasional flashes and memories he'll experience during transformation - but Upgrade is, by all accounts, a blank slate.
It's also incredibly adept at merging with and improving technology. When he first became Upgrade, he was immediately drawn to his smartphone, instantly turning it into a communication device capable of receiving and sending signals from all over the galaxy. It's an incredible phenomenon, but the thing that most interests Ben is the ability to control that tech at his leisure.
Knowing that the hunters can't attack in a heavily populated area, Ben is forced to find a secluded spot. There's many little wooded areas like the one he's chosen in Arcadia, the types of places that one can only find in a small town that's still a few decades away from actual urbanization. More importantly, it's strategically placed: halfway between Gwen and Julie's homes, a relatively short run away from reinforcements - or rather, deterrents for the hunters.
Ben is thus walking around the woods at night with Pseudo-Gwen when he gives Gwen the signal, and the clone vanishes. For a few moments, nothing happens. Then, the woods come ablaze.
It's only because he knows it's coming that Ben is able to dodge the searing beam.
"Have to hand it to you, Terran." -the hunter says, stepping out of the treeline. "Projecting that image of your mate for 'company' did stump me for a cycle or two."
Ben can't help the horrified expression. "My what? Gwen is my cousin, you weirdo."
"Is she? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. You primate types and your libidos...I'll never understand why the superweapon on your wrist chose one of your kind" -he says, disgusted. "It doesn't matter. Hand the Omnitrix over, Terran."
"I'm going to pretend you didn't suggest what you just suggested." -Ben says, desperately wishing for some mental bleach. "And what do you mean, 'a cycle or two'? It's been almost a week!"
The hunter approaches slowly. "For most of which I've seen through your ruse." -he says, bored, though his body suggests tension and anticipation. "But, I was curious about your strategy, since you so obviously knew I'd be hunting you. So, here I am. How, pray tell, will you strike the mighty Krabb down?"
Ben snorts. "That's your name?" -he asks, popping up the Omnitrix's faceplate. "I think you're in dire need of an Upgrade!"
There's a flash of green light, and he's suddenly underwater. Ben doesn't understand - especially when he looks at his hands and finds dull, green-gray scales, webbed fingers, and deadly claws where he should be seeing black, white, and green semi-solid metal. He looks around, and finds himself in the middle of a battle between two very distinct species: a race of centaur like humanoid crustaceans, and the people he fights beside: angler fish-reptilian-mermaid things.
It's a slaughter, most of which he thankfully misses as the battle fast forwards. The crustaceans do not fare well, even though they fight like rabid wolves with their backs against the metaphorical wall. Whatever alien he's become, his species is faster, more aggressive. Better tactics and weaponry, too. He's almost thankful when the flashback ends, but then he finds himself in a dark, blurry world, narrowly dodging a swipe from Krabb's massive claw cannon on instinct and reflexes alone.
"You dare face me as one of the Volann!?" -he shouts, utterly enraged. This alien's vision is terrible, as he can barely make out the bronze-colored cyborg crab, but something tells him Ripjaws - the alien he's mistakenly become - can see just fine...underwater.
Brilliant. Is the Omnitrix actively trying to get him killed?
Ripjaw snarls back, with an aggression Ben would expect of Kevin, not himself. "What about it, crab cake?"
Krabb lunges at him, legs first. Ripjaws lunges forward, under the cyborg, and manages to turn in time to rake his terrifying claws at one of the four limbs. The bronze-colored metal tears and breaks, but the damage is all superficial. Krabb quickly stabilizes, turns his torso around, and backhands him with the humanoid hand, sending him soaring until he hits a tree, which creaks and splinters from the impact, but thankfully doesn't break. The blow hurts, but Ripjaws is definitely made of tough stuff.
"You Terrans really are ignorant. You've taken on the image of the bloodthirsty bastards that nearly eliminated my entire species!"
Yikes. The bounty hunter charges a shot, and blasts him with the beam emitter between his pincers. Ripjaws barely sidesteps, allowing the blast to finish off the damaged tree.
"This isn't the form I chose." -Ben tries to defend. "I was only planning to defend myself by disabling your tech. The Omnitrix picked this guy for me."
Krabb scoffs. "Excuses, excuses. Intentional or not, this isn't an offense I can ignore, kid." -he says, pulling an axe from his back. "Even if it was, this just goes to show you shouldn't have worn the Omnitrix in the first place. You clearly know nothing about galactic culture."
He stalks sideways, and Ben follows suit, keeping the distance between them intact. "The Omnitrix picked me, Krabb. I may have decided to bear the responsibility, but the Watch obviously has a mind of its own. If it didn't want me wearing it, it would've rejected my claim."
"Even if I took you at your word, the Omnitrix's logic must be horribly flawed. Turning you into this alien has only guaranteed your...separation, by my hand."
Krabb charges, axe held high above his head. Ripjaws instinctively lowers his head, and the angler fish-like little bulb on his forehead lights up, emitting a small bolt of electricity that hits the mercenary's arm. The limb instantly goes slack, sparking, and the axe falls to the forest floor. Krabb stops in his tracks.
"Bioelectricity." -Krabb notes, annoyed. "Meant to paralyze victims prior to...consumption. I didn't expect you to know how to use it."
Ripjaws smirks, as much as the ridiculously toothy mouth he has allows. "Oh, I didn't. But now that I do…"
He tries to blast Krabb again, but nothing happens. The bounty hunter cackles. "You've got to be kidding me. What, did you think your lure was a gun? It's on a hard timer, kid."
His useless arm ceases sparking, and slowly starts moving again, no doubt rebooted. The limb is clearly still affected, stiff and slow in its motion, but the fact that he can move it at all is not good for Ben's chances. To make matters worse, he got incredibly lucky with that shot. This alien's terrible eyesight practically guarantees he'll miss the next one.
Krabb picks up the axe again, and resumes his charge. Ben is forced to dodge another axe swipe, but that places him in the path of the claw, which decks him into the ground. Dazed, he manages to roll out of the way in time to avoid being executed, and tries to kick the axe out of Krabb's hand, but the bounty hunter grabs his foot and tosses him clean through another tree.
"Give it up, Terran." -Krabb warns, brandishing his axe. "Shed that blasted form and hand over the Omnitrix. I promise to make the amputation clean."
"Gee, what a deal." -Ben says, groaning as he rises. There's splinters painfully stuck between his scales, and he's pretty sure his dorsal fin is unusable now, but he's not giving up. He feels the tension of his lure having recharged, and has an idea.
A dumb, horribly dangerous idea, but one that could potentially finish this fight.
"You said this species nearly killed your entire race?" -Ben asks, inching forward.
"Slaughtered us, nearly to the last." -Krabb growls. "Very few intelligent species ever evolve alongside another in a single world. Fewer still manage to coexist or even survive without eliminating the competition."
Ben nods, grim. "How did you survive?"
"By being stubborn enough that I managed to outlast the Volann's advance." -he says. "Not unscathed, as you can plainly see. Just a brain driving a robot, by now."
The massive pincer snaps, menacing. "Why become a bounty hunter, though?"
He scoffs. "Why do you think, kid? With my skills, it was either this, or pick up a Nova badge and pretend at keeping the peace, like the rest of the useless Corps."
"I thought the Nova Corps were the good guys." -Ben says, almost in range of a pincer swipe.
He shakes his head. "Like I said; it's a charade, Terran. The Nova preach peace and stand idle while genocide happens. They did nothing for us, they did nothing for the Skrulls...and they'll do nothing for you, when the Chitauri and their masters come and finish what they started here."
Ben winces. "But then it's up to us, isn't it? It's up to humanity to stand up for, and defend ourselves."
Krabb actually chuckles at this. "You really have no idea, do you?" -he asks, the question rhetorical. He towers over Ben by now, a full two feet taller than the Piscciss Volann he accidentally became. "When the Black Order and their bloodthirsty, techno-organic mutts set their sights on a planet, there's no defense in the galaxy that can stop them. Your champions bought Terra some time, I'll allow you, but your civilization will end sooner, rather than later."
Fast as lightning, Krabb grabs him with his pincer, the pressure he exerts strong enough to break through the tough, scaled skin on his arms and draw dark green blood. Ben grunts in pain, but he's right where he wanted to be. Completely immobile, two feet from his target.
"If anything, this is doing you a favor, kid." -he says, winding back his right arm for a deadly axe swipe.
"Keep your favor, jackass." -he growls out, and blasts Krabb in the face with a bioelectric bolt.
Just as he'd hoped for, it really doesn't matter that Ripjaws is incredibly myopic when the target is this close.
Krabb's entire body goes absolutely haywire. His head spins around like a top, and his limbs twitch like it's dissection day in science class. Hidden weapon systems flash in and out of their compartments, and his legs struggle to maintain equilibrium.
Ripjaws knows this might not last long, so he gets to work. He sinks his claws into Krabb's humanoid arm, ripping it off, and chomps on the shoulder joint for the pincer arm, shearing through armor and inner workings like it's no tougher than a saltine cracker. A part of him - a tiny, but worryingly vocal part - thinks about biting off the cyborg's head, but he quickly dismisses the grievous notion. Like he said, all Ben wants is to disable him.
Ripjaws jumps off as the bioelectricity's effects start to wear off. He stands ready, but Krabb just slumps down, apparently unconscious. Ben can't imagine spinning around like that can be good for a brain in a jar - no matter how high tech the jar may be.
Ben breathes a sigh of relief. He's bruised, bleeding, and he's pretty sure his ribs very nearly broke when that pincer grabbed him, but he's standing, and victorious. Score one for the know-nothing Terran kid. Well, three, really. He destroyed the giant drone, he sorta beat Hala, and now Krabb is down for the count.
Not too shabby, right? When can he expect a call from Captain America?
Ben shakes his head out of the adrenaline - or whatever alien substance passes for adrenaline - induced stupor.
"Oh my god, is that you, Ben?" -he hears a comforting voice behind him.
He turns, and sees Julie, who seems shocked at the scene before her.
"Hi." -Ben manages.
She takes in his appearance. "What the hell happened to the Upgrade plan?"
He grunts, and taps the Omnitrix's symbol, which hangs above his left pectoral muscle. "Same thing that happened to the 'Diamondhead drives the angry Kree lady away' plan. The Watch picked for me, again."
Julie walks up to him, skipping over a fallen tree on the way. She hesitantly touches the bleeding cuts on his arms. "Fuck. You're...you're actually hurt."
"It was bound to happen eventually, right?" -he says, then points behind him. "Besides, you should see…"
"Please don't finish that quote." -she pleads, pale and starting to breathe a little too hard. "I love you and I love pop culture references, but I'm kind of freaking out here, Ben."
Ben gingerly grabs her hand, so as to not scratch her. "Hey. I lived, Julie. I'll heal, just like you." -he says, gentle. "Honestly, I'm not sure this'll even carry over to my own body. I'll be just…"
*bip*
"...fine." -Ben says, his grip going slack. Julie is momentarily confused, but she understands as Ben falls at her feet, a small, burning hole in the middle of his chest.
Someone just shot the guy she loves, and they're hovering right behind her.
"Goola, Da Uba Stuka Je Keepuna." -the alien says, landing just a few feet away. They're tall, armored in black and deep purple, and pointing a space gun at her. She has no idea what the bastard just said, but she's not about to shuffle off this mortal coil without a curse and some fisticuffs.
Julie couldn't ever tell anyone what she chose as her final words. Something along the lines of 'fuck you!', 'you killed him!', and 'fuck you!'. She decides to charge them, ready to punch that expressionless mask off their face, but they simply sidestep out of the way of her blow.
Well, they sidestep, do an incredibly quick flourish with some glowing thing protruding from their wrist, and suddenly, Julie is horizontal, her shoulder burns like she just scraped it against gravel, and she can...see...her arm.
Her right arm is away from her body.
Julie is vaguely aware that she's entering shock, but she still reaches for her disembodied limb with her left hand, not sure if she wants to reclaim it, or beat the bounty hunter to death with it. It's a surreal experience, especially since, yeah, her wound hurts, but it's not even that bad. There's not even any blood, the cut cauterized instantaneously. If she's inclined to scream, it's really because she just lost a fucking arm, holy fuck, not because of the pain.
She touches her arm, and it's just...too much. She passes out. The last thing she remembers is the red flash of Ben's detransformation, and a violet glow before the darkness overtakes her.
I rewatched the first appearances of both Krabb and Sixsix to write this chapter! They're pretty flat characters, a pretty common trend in the OS. Krabb is arrogant but has the skill to back himself up, and I wanted to expand upon that. Sixsix actually speaks Huttese - he says, in pretty broken English because I used a fairly janky online translator "A pity you had to see me shoot him." I couldn't find a source for the language he actually speaks, and I figured huttese is a nice choice for a bounty hunter.
There's a third bounty hunter on the planet…and it's not Tetrax. I think I mentioned this before, but Diamondhead is the last of his species, and the reason for the Petrosapiens' extinction has to do with the creation of the Omnitrix itself. Any guesses on who our third mystery bounty hunter might be? I'll tell you this: the hunter is female.
Zeta radiation comes from DC Comics zeta tubes. There's no actual zeta tubes in this 'verse, but I wanted to use the term, as it relates to warping spacetime to travel instantaneously.
Also, the reason Gwen's parents stopped allowing Gwen to have Kevin and Ben is pretty obvious: they noticed Kevin is into Gwen.
Until next time! Oh, and of course, enjoy the entries for the two aliens mentioned in this chapter:
Ripjaws:
The Omnitrix's sample of a Piscciss Volann, from the planet Piscciss. Ripjaws is the king of the seas, able to swim at breakneck speeds and use his claws and powerful bites to tear apart even the strongest of alloys. He can use the lure on his head to emit short-ranged bioelectric bolts that can paralyze his foes. Ripjaws retains his strength on land, but he dehydrates quickly, and moves much more slowly and clumsily. His eyesight outside of water is also terrible.
Upgrade:
The Omnitrix's sample of a Galvanic Mechamorph, from the lost planet Galvan Prime. Upgrade is an artificial being, a robotic life form composed of an alien metal that behaves like a non-Newtonian fluid. It is a living supercomputer designed to optimize and improve any sample of technology it touches - or practically possesses - to its ultimate expression. It is slow and weak in its base form, but practically indestructible, and able to project a particle beam from its "eye" for defense in a pinch. Magnets will not stick to it, but magnetic fields do give it a facsimile of a headache.