Bellwood.
Mr. Smoothies.
A large ensemble is fighting in the area, including the Vreedle
brothers, Rook, the Incursion emperor, Argit, and Ben Tennyson himself.
A bomb flies through the air.
But not just any bomb…
It lands, and everyone around gasps in awe.
With a strobing cherry red light, it blinks and beeps faster and faster.
Ben is the only one who can stop this, and he knows it.
The interdimensional bomb prepares to detonate.
Argit jumps on Ben's back and urges him to use the omnitrix to stop it.
Ben looks seriously at the device and speaks into his watch.
"All right, listen Omnitrix.
I don't want goop. I don't want Stinkfly.
Just give me something I can use to
defuse this thing so we can all get on with our lives."
He smacks the dial on his wrist as a mystical green aura surges through him,
transforming him into ALIEN X.
The bomb, otherwise known as the Annialarg, flies into the air with
electricity shooting out in every direction.
It explodes,
annihilating everything other than Alien X at the terminal velocity of
one billion light years per second.
With the universe gone, Ben begs Serena and Bellicus,
the other two keepers of Alien X, to restore it.
Since all of time and space no longer existed, reversing the Annialarg was impossible.
With an interstellar shock, solar systems galaxy wide begin to reform as
though they'd always been there.
But they were only mirror images of what had existed before.
As the Earth fades into actuality, the omnitrix's timer depletes,
transforming Ben back into human form.
A look of horror flashes before his eyes as he is taken aback by the
gravity of the situation.
In a fearful and hesitant voice,
he exhaled the only word he could think of.
"Woah."
In an incredibly startled fashion, he jumped out of his sleep,
falling off of the bed in the process.
He tried not to think about it,
but the nightmares wouldn't stop.
It had only been a month.
Could he really go on living like this?
It was 3am.
The next morning, he called Gwen.
"We need to talk."
They met later at Gwen Tennyson's dorm in Friedkin University, New York.
She greeted him in the hall.
"Oh my god, is that Ben Tennyson!" a nearby girl exclaimed.
"Do you have anywhere more private than this?" Ben asked.
"Sorry Ben, I don't have anywhere else. Unless…"
"Unless what?"
"Come with me."
She took him to a garage-like building that Kevin had been using
to work on his car.
It looked like an olden castle, like the rest of the school.
The walls were made of gray bricks with the only other exits being modeled after iron dungeon bars. The room had a computer at a desk on one side,
and a refrigerator on the other, with
Kevin's car sitting in the middle.
"So what is it?" Gwen asked.
"I can tell something's wrong with you."
Ben replied hastily "Wrong with me? I'm pretty sure I'm the only thing left
that isn't wrong Gwen."
"What's that supposed to mean?" She looked puzzled.
"I…. look Gwen you know you can trust me right?"
"Of course Ben, we've been through so much."
"So then you have to know that what I'm about to tell you isn't a lie."
"Okayyy?" She said crossing her arms and paying more attention.
"But you have to know that hearing this is
going to change the way you see everything." Ben explained.
"You might not like it, so I'm giving you the choice.
Do you want to hear what I have to say?"
Gwen paused. "Okay. Tell me."
Meanwhile Kevin was walking towards the garage door
from the outside when he heard Ben's voice.
"Tell her what?" Kevin whispered to himself.
"I recreated the universe." Ben finally got the words out.
He tried to tell Rook and the others immediately after it happened,
but no one believed him. And at the time, he thought
that maybe it should stay that way.
But the guilt was killing him.
Gwen replied, "You recreated the universe? I don't understand Ben."
"The universe was destroyed.
I failed.
And I used Alien X to create another universe.
The one you're standing here breathing in the air of right now."
Gwen looked shocked, "That … doesn't make any sense. How did you survive?
How did it even get destroyed in the first place?
You'd better not be joking Ben."
"I swear on Grandpa Max's life, I'm not."
"That still doesn't answer my questions." Gwen reminded him.
"There was a bomb that the Incursions were after." Ben explained in
his usually inquisitive, slightly high voice.
"They said that if it went off it would be catastrophic, but I underestimated it.
I wasn't taking the mission seriously enough, and by the time that I was, it
was too late. I'm pretty sure that the only reason I'm
alive right now is because I turned into Alien X before the blast."
Gwen was staring intently at him.
"Woah." she said as she sat down.
After some silence, she motioned her hands upward and exclaimed,
"This is insane. So the bomb didn't just erase space,
but time as well? Who would even make something like that?
Ugghhh…" she sighed aloud.
Just then the shutter door opened and Kevin was on the other side.
Gwen and Ben both stared at him.
Gwen talked first. "You didn't hear any of that, did you?"
"I really wish I didn't." Kevin groaned half sarcastically.
"Close the door." Ben responded.
He slammed it shut.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" Gwen condescendingly said to him in a loud tone.
Kevin fired back quickly with an argumentative fire in his voice.
"What's the matter with me? Did you not hear him?
Ben's the one who let us die!"
He walked intently towards Ben and pushed him up against the wall.
Kevin looked at him in awe. "I can't believe this.
So what?! We're all just copies? You couldn't save ANY of us!"
"Listen Kevin, I…" Ben said while trying to catch his breath.
"I'm done listening."
Gwen intervened, putting her hand on him.
"Kevin, hear him out."
He turned his head to look at her, and stared a moment.
"Fine." he said while letting go of Ben.
Ben tried to calm Kevin down after that.
"Look, I had no idea it was going to get that bad Kevin I swear."
Kevin responded:
"So let me get this straight, you let them get their hands on an Annialarg, which is level
25 tech, and you didn't even bother to call us for help?" Kevin continued
"I've never seen level 25 tech before, it wasn't even supposed to exist."
Ben replied, "I did everything I could to stop it. Even Alien X wasn't enough."
Kevin doubted him.
"Did you use XLR8? Or clockwork?"
Ben: "Well…"
Kevin said in an agitated tone,
"I knew it.
If you'd have used either of those 2 then you could have stopped
the bomb long before it went off. Why didn't you?"
They looked each other in the eyes for a good five seconds.
Ben couldn't even answer.
He just put his head down in shame.
Gwen looked at him.
"It's not his fault Kevin."
"And how is that?"
"If this bomb is as high tech as you say it is, it couldn't have been destroyed.
Someone would have gotten to it eventually."
Ben spoke up. "Not if I had just used Alien X to get rid of
it in the first place. Kevin's right. I could have stopped it
if I'd only known sooner.
But I couldn't stop it on time.
And I'll have to live with that for the rest of my life.
I don't think there's anything I can say that can make it right.
Just know that no one hates what happened more than I do.
I'm not sure I can ever forgive myself for it either."
The room went quiet.
Gwen hugged him.
She talked while they hugged.
"We know you did everything you could, Ben.
It must have been killing you to be keeping this to yourself."
Kevin sighed.
"How long ago did it happen?"
"A month ago." Ben answered
"And all that time you knew that you'd gotten everyone killed."
He sighed again, more heavily.
"That's rough."
"Tell me about it." Ben responded.
Kevin continued, "Look… I get it. Going through something
like that… I know what it does to you. What matters is what's left.
You can't change the past, but you can try to make things better."
He extended his hand out to Ben.
They shook.
"Does this mean we're cool?" Ben asked straightforwardly.
"We're cool." Kevin said honestly.
"What now?" Ben questioned again.
Gwen responded this time.
"Now we never let anything like that happen ever again.
And maybe try to go on with our lives in the process."
Ben replied. "But things will never be the same."
Gwen answered "No… but you aren't alone in
this any more. We'll always be there for you.
To talk, to fight, anything."
"I guess that's all any of us could ask for." Ben said with a melancholic tone in his voice.
The next day…
Galvan Prime.
"I want you to take back the omnitrix…" Ben said after
explaining the situation to Azmuth.
Azmuth replied agitatedly,
"If what you said is true… I ought to.
You not only let the universe get destroyed, but you played god
by forcibly creating a copy without my knowledge."
"I'm only human Azmuth."
"And that's precisely the reason…
why you need to be the one in control of the Omnitrix."
"What!?" Ben yelled in confusion.
"I gave the Omnitrix to you for a reason, Ben.
Humans are rash, emotional, impulsive,
with an intelligence level hardly above an exhelious."
"And you're telling me this, why?" Ben interrupted.
Azmuth continued, "Exactly my point.
Nonetheless you have shown a considerable level of adaptability.
Survivability. And with your case in particular, morality.
So even though you failed miserably under every conceivable parameter,
you still found a way to ensure that the world went on.
If it weren't for you, there would be no universe left to save."
"But couldn't I have done more?" Ben asked.
"You already have.
Coming here, offering to give back the Omnitrix shows
me that you understand your mistake and are
determined never to let it happen again."
Azmuth turns around and begins
walking away when Ben calls out,
"But don't you care that everyone in the original universe is dead?"
"Who's to say that
it was ever the original universe in the first place?"
Azmuth smirks and walks away.
THE END