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~Tuesday, November 14: Night~

Ben had never considered himself to be a Peeping Tom or a pervert yet here he was, transformed into Big Chill, invisible and lurking outside Julie's bedroom window. He cared so much about her and he wanted to make sure she was doing okay, even though he was sure she was doing about the same as he was—lousy. Gwen had told him as much, but he had been hoping that Julie had a heart like a boiled stone or something, but she didn't. She deeply cared for Ben and she as doing just as bad as he was.

Julie was lying on her bed, clutching his green jacket to her chest and crying. Ship was sitting beside her on her pillow, but even her pet's comfort didn't seem to be helping. She was sobbing so hard that it looked as if her body was going to break apart. The bruise on her face from where Animo had punched her was still dark and ugly.

Ben's heart broke. "Julie," he whispered.

He knew she couldn't hear him and she just continued crying.

There had to be a better way than this. They were both in so much pain—there just had to be a better way. If not, then he would regret ever even speaking with her because no one would ever be able to replace Julie in his heart and he didn't think there was anyone quite like him on this plain of reality to replace him either.

~Wednesday, November 15: Morning~

For once, straight-A student Julie Yamamoto was playing hooky and skipping school. She just didn't feel like dealing with the problems she knew were going to mount up today. Since Will Harangue's scathing new take on Ben and Gwen's relationship and everyone knowing that Ben and Julie had been dating up until recently, it just wasn't going to be pretty. She figured it would be best to stay home and just wait for this to blow over. Ben, Gwen, Kevin, and Jimmy Jones would surely take care of Harangue and everyone would forget about Julie by the time Harangue had his next broadcast aired.

She rolled over in her bed, pressing her face into her pillow and pulling the covers up over her head.

She wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but if she slept any more, she would never sleep again in her life. That… and she was tired of dreaming of Ben. She didn't want to see his handsome face in her dreams, his soft green eyes, his goofy smile, or even hear his voice. She didn't want to feel his lips against hers, his fingertips on her collarbones, his soft chocolate tresses, or even his silken skin beneath her hands. She just wanted to sleep and forget, but she couldn't sleep any more.

Sighing, Julie swung herself out of bed and paced to the full-length mirror she kept on the back of her closet door.

For a moment, she stared at her body—wondering what a superhero like Ben Ten had ever seen in her anyway. She was thin, but muscled from playing tennis. She had small breasts and narrow hips, long coltish legs and lean long fingers, strong shoulders and arms from her sports, and an average Japanese-American figure with the pale skin, dark hair, and slanted brown eyes of her foreign bloodline and the peaches and cream complexion dusted with faint freckles of an American. She was just an average girl, nothing special.

She sighed heavily and pulled off her pajama top, standing before the mirror in her tank top and shorty shorts. Nothing seemed to change by being scantily clad. She was still Julie, still single, still alone, and still had an ugly bruise on her face.

"Dating a superhero… Lois Lane and Mary Jane Watson make it look so easy. Sure, they occasionally get used as bait for a deadly trap for their dearly beloveds, but then they're rescued, share a sweet and passionate kiss with their heroes, and that's that. They made it look so freaking easy!" Julie snapped at her reflection in the mirror, fingering the fresh bruise that had started all this. She winced—man, did it ever stop hurting? How did Ben manage to make injuries like this look like nothing? She sighed again, biting her lower lip.

Her alien pet, Ship, quietly asked her what was wrong in their personal private language. "Ship ship?"

"The reality is…" she sighed, her brown eyes welling with tears, "It isn't easy at all…"

Again, he inquired what was bothering her. "Ship?"

She sighed heavily to herself, sat down on the bed, and petted the little alien that had interrupted her very first date with Ben. "Wait… maybe I should start from the beginning…"

And so she did.

She told Ship everything that had happened between her and Ben, even the embarrassing things that she was loathe to tell anyone else like their make-out session on his bed. She told her pet about being kidnapped by Animo and how afraid she had been, but how she had never doubted that Ben would somehow save her, even when the jaws of the mutated shark were coming for her. Then, she recounted the hideous break-up, how Ben told her that he was in love with someone else (but she assured Ship that Will Harangue was full of it and there was no way he was in love with his cousin, Gwen). When she finished, she felt a lot better for it.

"Ship?" the alien inquired.

Julie petted him. "Yeah," she murmured. "Thanks, Ship. I feel a lot better now. I think I know what to do."

She told the alien her plan and Ship balked, shrieking at her in his private language.

"Yeah, I know it's stupid, but it's the only way to get Ben to talk to me. And I need to talk to him. I need the closure."

Ship eyed her, not looking convinced.

"How about you turn into a backpack and I bring you with me? Will that make you feel better?"

In answer, he immediately morphed into the most convenient way to be carried and waited patiently on her bed.

"Alright then," Julie said with a small worried smile. She gathered up some clean clothes, ducked into the bathroom to shower, and emerged a while later in a waft of steam. She was as ready as she would ever be, but there was no backing out now. She had to see Ben, but she really didn't want to bring Ship with her. That would be like waving a red flag and admitting that she didn't think Ben would cut it and that was the last thing she wanted. So, alone, Julie left her house in search of Ben.

…

It wasn't as if he was ever hard to find.

All Julie had to do was walk by one of those bizarre stores with their windows full of television sets to get an eyeful of her ex-boyfriend and his team plastered all over the news. It seemed that Ben, Kevin, and Gwen were all at the railway, having another go at the Forever Knights. Those guys just wouldn't call it quits even though they always got their asses handed to them on a silver platter. Jeez, but she supposed that was why they were villains and not heroes or even business men. They weren't smart enough.

Julie started her motorized scooter and headed off, sans Ship.

When she arrived at the railway, the battle was in full force. There were Forever Knights crawling all over, media ringing the outer edge of the battle and shouting a lot, and all the incoming trains were just continuing as if this happened every day, which is kind of did.

Ben was known all over Bellwood as their alien hero so it wasn't much of a shock to see him out fighting now as it had been when there were just seemingly random alien crime-fighters all over the place. It was a wonder no one had just noticed Gwen and Kevin and figured out his secret identity from there. (1)

Julie took off her helmet, put the keys to her Moped in her pocket, pushed her way through the media circus, and began making her way down into the railway and the battle. She wasn't afraid. The Forever Knights had no interest in hurting humans, only going after aliens which was one of the reasons she had left Ship at home.

Suddenly, from behind, someone wearing noisy armor grabbed her.

"Wait!" she started, but a wad of cloth was shoved in her mouth as her wrists were quickly bound behind her back with handcuffs.

"You'll be the perfect bait to make Ben Ten lay off," a man hissed in her ear.

Her eyes narrowed. No one would use her to hurt Ben if she had anything to say about it!

Before she could react, Julie was shoved forward, unable to get her balance, while someone yanked her about from behind. She realized that she had made a big mistake. After Animo had taken her and now she was showing up at Ben's battles, someone must have thought Ben still cared for her. Or maybe they just knew Ben would bend over backwards for any hostage. She tried to shout through the gag, but it was hopeless. She had practically swallowed the thing. Suddenly, Forever Knights or no, she wished she had brought Ship with her.

Something hard and no doubt deadly was pressed into her lower back, urging her forward, but Julie never had been and never would be just an innocent bystander captured in a unfortunate situation. She bided her time a moment, picked her course of action, pretended to stumble, and got her foot into her assailant's crotch in a fantastic mule kick. Armor or not, she had just rearranged this man's privates, putting them somewhere inside his ribcage.

With a howl of pain, the Forever Knight shoved her away before she could kick him again. She caught her foot in the railroad track and fell, caught in the tracks and unable to get to her feet since her arms were tied and unable to cry out for help since she had been gagged. When she finally rolled over onto her back , she saw the oncoming train. Her eyes met those of the conductor and panic passed between them. She suddenly wished she had let the Forever Knight just hold her as a hostage.

Then, at least, she would have lived.

…

Ben and Kevin were up to their eyeballs in Forever Knights. On a pink platform above their heads, Gwen was taking them out one after the other with her mana. It was an easy fight for them, but the Forever Knights were putting up quite a struggle since they had come out in such force to fight Ben Ten and his team. They had some precious cargo coming in on a train, some new technology to help them hunt aliens and maybe be a little more of a threat villain-wise, according to Kevin's source at least, but Kevin's contact was right as often as it was wrong.

Gwen was the first to see Julie arrive.

The second was the train conductor.

One of the Forever Knights must have grabbed Julie as a hostage as soon as she had arrived or maybe they already had her. Either way, something in this hostage situation had gone very wrong because now Julie was in the path of an oncoming train that had no hope of stopping in time before it killed her.

"Ben!" Gwen screamed.

Her cousin met her eyes through the space between them and immediately spotted Julie. For a moment, it looked as if Ben's alien transformation—his favorite, Swampfire—was going to be sick. Then, he sprang into instant action, plowing down Forever Knights left and right in his haste to get to Julie. He managed to grab her from the path of the train only moments before it screamed over the tracks where her body had been and finally stopped its path completely after about half a mile.

"Ben!" Julie gasped as soon as he pulled the rag from her mouth.

"Are you nuts?" he snapped.

"No, I—"

"Gwen! Here!"

Then, Swampfire coldly and abruptly gave Julie a toss into the air and her stomach dropped out for a moment before one of Gwen's platforms came to support her. Ben rushed back to Kevin's side (to be fair, Kevin was centimeters from being overrun by the Forever Knights) and resumed the fight. Even though Julie understood that all she was doing was getting in the way and had almost just lost her life, it still hurt to just be tossed aside like that, literally.

"That idiot," Julie heard Gwen mutter. "Julie, are you okay?"

"Peachy keen," she said softly.

Gwen broke the handcuffs with her powers and turned back to helping her cousin and boyfriend, but now that the train that had been about to kill Julie had slammed to a stop, things were breaking down fast. The Forever Knights were scattering like roaches, unable to even salvage the operation by retrieving their weapons.

"Wait you!" Ben shouted.

He transformed into Big Chill and started to take flight after them. The Omnitrix let him get about ten feet in the air before abruptly powering down and dropping him like a hot rock. Ben hit the ground with a yelp of pain and sent up a cloud of dust. Kevin plucked him to his feet by the back of his shirt and Gwen touched down with Julie just beside them.

"You okay, Jules?" Kevin asked, smiling easily at her.

She nodded, tucking some dark hair behind her ear.

Gwen absently brushed some dust off of Ben's back. That was quite a dump the Omnitrix had given him—ouch.

"Are you okay, Ben?" Julie asked, touching his arm.

He pulled away from her. "Just fine. What are you doing here? Are you insane? You were almost killed!"

Julie wasn't sure what exactly she had expected from Ben after her brush with death, but this certainly hadn't been it. Even if he really did love another, she had still expected him to hug her and at least be glad that she was alright, but he was acting almost more like he would have rather she had been flattened by that oncoming train. Even Kevin had been concerned for her well-being and had cared enough to ask, but not Ben… She took several steps back, stumbling into Kevin's strong chest. Her brown eyes welled with tears.

"Ben!" Gwen said harshly.

Ben met his cousin's unhappy eyes with his own strong frown, turned sharply away from his friends, and had several goes at slapping the powered-down Omnitrix before he finally managed to change into Jetray and was gone.

The media began pouring in.

"Um, guys, I think we'd better make like a banana and split," Kevin said as an attempt at humor. When no one started laughing, he closed his large hands down on Julie's thin shoulders since it looked as if she was going to break apart at any moment. "Gwen, let's go."

She nodded, enclosed the three of them in a bubble of pink mana, and spirited them away from the media.

…

Ben made it home before the Ultimatrix powered itself off again, but only just. It practically dropped him on his face in his lawn. Sometimes, he swore, as he dusted himself off, that Azmuth had installed that timer just to keep him humble or to punish him when he seemed to deserve it. He quickly let himself into the house and checked his mobile phone for messages. Gwen had already called, berating him for how he had acted towards Julie before Kevin had taken the phone and told him to check out the news. That was never good.

Will Harangue had plastered the images of Ben tossing Julie upwards to Gwen and then shouting at her all over the screen.

Groaning, Ben sat down on the couch and put his head between his knees. What a rotten week this was turning out to be. Just last night he had been trying to figure out another way that he could be with Julie but still keep her safe and then she shows up at the battle with the Forever Knights and is nearly killed. Ben had been so stricken by seeing her life in danger because of him once again that he just hadn't been able to think straight. All he wanted was for her to be safe, but even by breaking up with her, he still couldn't protect her.

What was wrong with him? How could he make any of this better? Or was it broken for good?

…

Gwen had Kevin drop her and Julie off at Burger Shack for chili fries and a little girl talk. She knew they were Ben's favorite and seeing them would probably make Julie cry, but she knew Julie liked them too. Along with Sumo Slammers and a lot of the other weird stuff that Ben liked. They were a match made in Heaven. Sure enough, when the order of chili fries was slipped between them, Julie's eyes filled with tears and she pressed her hands to her face.

Gwen passed her a napkin. "Julie, I know you're upset about Ben, but what were you thinking coming to the battle like that?"

She sniffled, but explained her reasoning to Gwen. "I didn't think the Forever Knights were interested in hurting humans so I thought I'd be safe."

Gwen nodded. That made sense in a way, but the Forever Knights were also obsessed with taking down Ben. It could have gone either way so there was no reason to fault Julie. "But why come to the battle?"

"I had hoped that…" Julie shook her head. "I don't know. I thought that maybe since the media was there, Ben would talk to me to keep up his appearances, but I was wrong." She sobbed. "I was so wrong…"

Gwen squeezed the girl's shoulder. "Julie, I'm sorry."

"I love him, Gwen. I really do!" Julie sobbed into the napkin. "I don't know what to do."

"Julie," Gwen whispered, her heart aching for her friend and cousin. God, what could she do? These two were tearing each other apart. She chewed her lip while she thought, excused herself to put in a quick call to Kevin, returned tot the table, and told Julie the truth.

…

Across town, Kevin banged loudly on Ben's front door, but the teenage hero didn't answer. Kevin, never one to be deterred by obstacles as simple as locked doors or alternate dimensions, picked the lock with his morphed finger and let himself in. The house was dark and silent, deserted. The television was turned off, there were no dirty dishes in the sink, and there were no Mr. Smoothy cups or empty chili fry containers lying around. There was no sign of Ben.

"Tennyson?" Kevin called, then quietly, "Ben?"

He went upstairs, searching methodically through the dim rooms and even checking behind the shower curtain in case Ben was hiding out. Finally, he found Ben curled up tightly on his bed in his dark bedroom, wrapped in a snarl of covers. He looked like shit when Kevin turned the light on and illuminated the room. Since Gwen was taking care of Julie, gently and nicely, Kevin figured he was in charge of just shaking or slapping Ben until he came back to his senses.

Either way, he flipped up the mattress and sent Ben spilling across the floor. "Get up, Tennyson!"

Ben didn't even bitch at him. Wow, he must have been really down. Kevin righted the mattress and sat down on it. He grasped Ben's upper arm and dragged him up onto the bed.

"Come on. We need to talk," Kevin said grouchily.

Ben just stared at the floor, his face pale.

"You know you're a jerk, right?"

His head snapped in Kevin's direction. "What?"

Kevin rolled his black eyes. "You're a jerk."

"All I want is so protect Julie!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know that and Gwen knows that but you know what? The girls in our lives don't like to be protected."

"But—"

"And they're capable of doing it themselves. They worry about us and we worry about them. That's the way it works."

Ben sighed. "I know, but I'm afraid I'm going to lose her."

"You did lose her, asshole," Kevin said flatly.

He glared at his so-called friend.

"You lost her. You dumped her. You broke her heart. For all intents and purposes, you lost her."

Ben's green eyes widened. Clearly, he hadn't thought of that.

"So, here's how it's going to work. I'm going to go pick up Gwen and Julie and I'm going to drop Julie off here. You two are going to talk things out. If you can't work it out, I'm going to knock your heads together, okay?" Kevin didn't wait for an answer before getting up and leaving the room.

Ben just sat there, blinking in the literal and metaphorical light.

~End Part IV~

(1) I've always wondered that. Jimmy figured out Ben's identity because he saw the Omnitrix symbol on the aliens and then the watch on Ben's wrist. You'd think everyone would just notice GWEN and KEVIN are constantly around. You know, it's not like they cover their faces or anything. Like, hello, people?

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