Chapter Three: "Persona"

"We're here."

Ben looked around as Kevin turned off the car and got out. Slowly and cautiously, he did the same.

Instead of taking him straight home, Kevin had driven him to the beach. Everything was silent except for the sound of waves lapping up on the shore. Except for Kevin's stiff attitude and Ben's confusion, the quiet would almost be relaxing.

Deciding it was better to break the silence, Ben asked, "Why are we here?"

Kevin thumbed in the direction of the water. "You took a few hits in the fight. You should wash up before your folks see you."

That was something Ben hadn't considered. His grandfather knew what was going on, but his parents…

"Do they know?" he asked.

"Yeah," Kevin answered. "But you try not to worry them anyway." When Ben only gave him a blank stare, he sighed, "Look, you only told me this a little while ago, all right? You come down here to wash up after some fights. I figured you'd probably want to get cleaned up before facing all those questions."

This did make sense, and Ben nodded. "Right."

He walked toward the shoreline and took off his clothes, setting them aside to keep dry. The water was cold and the salt stung his cuts, but he held back a shiver and waded in until the water was up to his chest. Soon enough, the pain faded, and his muscles began to relax. The scratches on his back from the Null Guardian, the light burn from Animo's blaster, and all the other bruises and scrapes he'd collected over time stopped aching the longer he stood in the water. It was too cold to float, but he could at least enjoy the feeling of the waves gently pushing against him. When he'd finally had enough, he dunked his head in the water before making his way back to dry land.

Kevin had built a campfire while Ben was in the water, and the moment he got his clothes back on, a shivering Ben gratefully migrated toward the heat.

"I've got to say," he admitted, "I think that's one old habit I wouldn't mind getting used to."

Kevin snorted. "Just don't die of hypothermia before you can."

Ben sat close to the fire and rubbed his arms to try and warm up. Glancing over at Kevin, he could see him fiddling with some kind of mask. Without having to remember it, Ben realized that the mask was what Kevin had been using to maintain a human appearance.

Something went off in his mind like a flashbulb: a sense of fear, Kevin trying to help him free his arm from something, an explosion throwing them back, and debris falling on top of him. All of it was painted with a green flash of light. Ben brought his hands to his head in pain as he tried to make sense of the image and will more of it to come back.

"You okay?" Kevin asked.

"Yeah," Ben answered, raising his head. It hurt to focus on the memory too much—particularly following the information overload he'd just suffered earlier—but he tried to analyze what he saw while he studied Kevin carefully. Kevin wore a mask now to hide his true form. He'd been wearing it around Ben until the fight—just another thing the others were careful about so Ben didn't end up having to remember too much information all at once. But in that flash of memory, Kevin had looked human. There was no reason he would have to wear the mask around Ben when he still knew everything.

"…Kevin," Ben called out hesitantly. "Do you mind if I ask you something?"

"You want to know why I look like this." Kevin's tone was matter-of-fact, like he'd been waiting for Ben to ask this. Cautiously, Ben nodded. In the same tone again, he answered, "An accident."

The memory of the explosion came to the front of Ben's mind again, along with the green flash he was coming to associate with the watch. Quietly, he asked, "It was my fault, wasn't it?" When Kevin didn't answer, he added, "There was a green light. That had to have been the—the Omnitrix? You were trying to get my arm free when there was an explosion."

Kevin still didn't answer, and Ben lowered his gaze out of guilt. His few memories didn't leave him with any specific feelings of guilt—maybe there was something, but it wasn't what he was feeling now that he didn't know what exactly had happened. But he did know one thing: if the Omnitrix was involved, then so was he.

"I'm sorry," he confessed.

"Don't worry about it," Kevin insisted.

Ben looked up in surprise. Kevin didn't sound all that reassuring, but he didn't sound mad either. And looking at him, Ben was having a hard time reading him.

"But I…" Ben protested. "I caused that explosion. I must have."

"I said drop it," Kevin warned, his voice getting colder. "You don't remember what happened, so there's no point beating yourself up about it. When you do remember, go ahead and wallow in guilt if that's what you want. But if you don't know, don't try and take the blame."

Ben was stunned. For a moment, all he could do was stare at Kevin, speechless, until the implications finally sank in. Whatever happened, they didn't talk about it. It wasn't a subject either of them ever wanted to bring up, no matter who was to blame.

"Okay," he agreed finally. "But I've got to ask…"

"What?" Now, Kevin was distinctly annoyed.

"Just…what exactly are we to each other?" Ben asked. "Half the time, we're driving each other nuts." Here, Kevin smirked, suppressing a laugh. "And the other half of the time, it's stuff like this. I mean, I see why nobody gets our friendship, but right now, I don't think I get it either."

There was a ghost of a smile on Kevin's face as he said, "We've got a long, weird history, Tennyson, and sometimes I don't think we're supposed to be pals. But you'll hear all about it later. You ready to go?"

Ben stood up, pulling his jacket around himself a little tighter now that he was away from the heat. "Yeah. And thanks."

Kevin didn't say anything as they got in the car, but there were some things that didn't need to be said.

Kevin only stuck around long enough to watch a half-asleep Ben immediately be mobbed by his worried parents and ushered inside. It was uncomfortable watching those family moments when his own family wasn't exactly ideal, so he made his escape as quickly and painlessly as possible.

The lights were off when he made it home. He'd long ago come to terms with the fact that he'd never have the kind of welcome home his friends had. Even so, he wasn't all that eager to go inside, and it was somewhat of a relief when Gwen called his cell phone.

"I just heard Ben got home," she said. "Is everything okay?"

"He'll survive," Kevin insisted. "Just let him sleep it off."

Gwen wasn't entirely convinced. After a brief silence, she said, "You don't sound so sure. What happened?"

"Nothing," he answered, but after a moment, he admitted, "Just gotta admit that I'm starting to miss the pain in the—"

"Kevin!" Gwen shouted.

"I'm serious," Kevin replied. "He's not Ben anymore. He doesn't act like normal. He doesn't joke around or goof off like he usually does—he's serious all the time. He spends too much time thinking and not enough time doing. Even when your gramps was gone, he wasn't like this."

Gwen was quiet for a moment, and then she softly admitted, "You have a point. He starts to react the same, like he did when you were teasing him, but he's not there yet. He doesn't remember enough."

"You know, he actually apologized to me about the accident," he said. "When he's normal, I can't get him to even admit it was his stupid idea to keep going with it."

There was a long pause on the other end. Finally, Gwen asked, "Did it help?"

Kevin sighed. No, it hadn't. That was the worst part. The one time he could actually get Ben to admit it was his fault, he couldn't feel any vindication from it because Ben couldn't remember anything specific about it. It was like dealing with two different people.

"It wasn't that Ben who did it," he explained. "It was our idiot with the hero complex and the big head, not the one with the scrambled brains."

He could hear a trace of a smile in Gwen's voice as she said, "Did you just call him 'our' idiot?"

Kevin shrugged, trying to act casual. "What? I'm not allowed to miss my regular punching bag? It's no fun when he doesn't fight back."

"Right," Gwen answered, not sounding convinced at all.

Kevin was about to make a sarcastic remark when a light suddenly turned on in the living room, and he could see a shadow watching him from out the window. The shadow didn't make a move for the door, but it still waited and watched all the same.

"Kevin?" Gwen asked.

"I'll call you tomorrow," he said. "Got something I need to take care of right now."

"Okay," she answered skeptically. "Bye."

Kevin hung up and walked into the house. His mother looked at him with concern, but she didn't say anything, and neither did he.

Maybe it wasn't a warm, Tennyson family moment. But for the Levins, it was a start.

Ben's sleep was far from restful. All night, he tossed and turned, plagued by uneasy dreams. By the time he woke up in the late morning, he felt like he needed to sleep off his sleep.

But today was the day. Maybe it was weird giving this otherwise ordinary day so much weight, but it was important for Ben. For two days, he'd gone without knowing probably the most important memories he'd had. Even with the overload he'd gotten from the battle with Animo, he was still anxious to know everything as soon as possible. It was more than just wanting it; he needed it, and he was desperate to remember.

"Right now, I don't even know who I am," he admitted painfully, as he looked at the Omnitrix. Everything he was was tied up into that watch, and he knew the only way he'd begin to remember who he was was for him to learn about the thing.

Glancing up from the watch, he looked around at everything in his bedroom. It was beginning to look familiar, if only because he'd spent most of the past two days in there. There were books and various possessions on his shelves, organized in a way that he figured only he could understand. As he got out of bed, he picked up something from the closest shelf—an MVP medal Gwen had told him he'd won at the end of the last soccer season. He smiled as he looked at it. He couldn't remember winning it, but he did recall a rush of pride and accomplishment.

"That's right," he realized. "I was going to tell Grandpa Max first thing. But…" He frowned. The memory ended there, like the emotion connected to it had ended. He couldn't follow his own train of thought from the time.

Groaning in frustration, he set the medal down. He was getting tired of this. It seemed like even the flood of memory fragments the battle had brought on wasn't enough.

"Are you all right, Ben?"

The voice was so sudden that Ben jumped and went for the Omnitrix, only to relax when he saw Max walking through the door.

"I'm sorry I startled you," Max said, slowly approaching him. "When I heard your voice, I figured you were awake. I didn't mean to sneak up on you."

"It's okay," Ben insisted, sitting down on the bed. Giving a slight scowl to the Omnitrix, he added, "At least now I know why I keep doing this."

Without a jacket, the bruises on his arms were plainly visible as dark blotches and rings on his skin. Disturbed, Max gingerly placed a hand on one of the bruises and asked, "Where did all these bruises come from?"

This was definitely the final nail in the coffin for Ben's abuse fear. Grandpa Max was just as horrified as Julie had been. Pointing out the ones on his forearms, Ben explained, "These are just from fighting Kevin last night. He thought I was out of control again, and I was too scared to fight back." Then, rubbing a tender ring just next to the Omnitrix, he added, "I think the rest are from whatever Animo did to me."

Max was clearly struggling to control his anger. When he'd finally managed it, he said, "I'm sorry, Ben. I wish I could tell you that was a one-time thing, but the life you've been living for the past few years has been a dangerous one. Still, what he did to you was unforgivable."

Ben managed a slight smile. "Yeah. I figured I didn't usually come home with amnesia." Max smiled, glad to hear that Ben still had his sense of humor. "But I really do need to know everything that's happened to me."

Max sat down next to him, setting a box to the side. "That's why I'm here. I promised I'd tell you everything. Where do you want me to start?"

"I guess at the beginning," Ben answered. "Like how I got the Omnitrix, and about Gwen and Kevin?"

"Well, that's not exactly the beginning," Max admitted, rummaging through the box. "But I'll do the best I can." He pulled out a photograph and handed it to Ben. Max was a lot younger in the photo and dressed in a white spacesuit of some kind. "Years ago, I was an officer in a galactic police agency known as the Plumbers."

"Kevin said you were a plumber," Ben replied, looking at the photo carefully. No specific memories were coming to mind, but given that the picture had probably been taken before he was born, he wasn't surprised. "I didn't think he meant something like this."

Max laughed. "It's a common mistake. In any case, I retired when you and Gwen were younger. I wanted to spend more time with my family, and I didn't want the dangers I'd faced to follow me home."

"But they did," Ben realized, looking up at him. Max nodded grimly. "What happened?"

Max handed him another photo—this one of Ben and Gwen as children. "When you were ten years old, I took you and Gwen on a road trip across the country for summer vacation. The very first night, you came across what you thought was a meteor near our campsite. But it was actually a containment pod holding the Omnitrix—a powerful piece of technology developed by an alien named Azmuth. It allows you to transform into any alien in its database. But you later learned the database was a safeguard in case any alien species in the galaxy died out. The DNA samples would allow for the species to be restored."

"Wow," Ben confessed, looking at the Omnitrix with something between amazement and heaviness. He'd lived it, and he couldn't believe that kind of weight had been on his shoulders—or rather, his wrist—all this time. Trying to get himself back on track, he asked, "So what about Gwen and Kevin?"

"Well, that's where things get a little difficult," Max explained. "What you have to understand is that the Plumbers can be assigned to any planet in the galaxy, regardless of their own home planet. Sometimes, you get attached to the people you're protecting."

Ben stared at him in shock. Part of him felt like he should have been disgusted or at the very least a little freaked out, but latent memories kept his emotions steady and calm. "So, you're saying…"

Sparing him the embarrassment, Max answered, "That's exactly what I'm saying. Kevin's father was a Plumber assigned to Earth—an alien called an Osmosian, who are already physically similar to humans—and Kevin inherited his powers from him. As for Gwen…" He reached into the box again for another picture—this time of himself as a young man, with a pretty brunette woman with blue eyes. "That's your grandmother, Verdona. She's from a race of energy beings called Anodytes, all of whom can create a physical body compatible with any other race."

"And Gwen inherited her energy powers," Ben realized. A memory started to push its way through in his mind, and he added, "But it was some kind of fluke or something, since none of the rest of us had powers."

"That's right," Max confirmed. "Verdona left before you kids were born, and though she returned long enough to see each of you, she left again when she didn't detect that spark of power. Gwen didn't develop it until that summer, when she learned she had an aptitude for magic."

Ben sighed. "I'd say that was impossible, but I'm already a kid who can turn into a bunch of alien superheroes."

Max smiled. "You learn quickly that there's no such thing as impossible."

"Starting to realize that," Ben replied. "So Animo was one of my enemies, right?"

Something hardened in Max's gaze as he explained, "Yes. Dr. Animo—who now calls himself D'void—mostly did experiments with animal genetics before he learned how to telepathically control animals."

"Including that…'Null Guardian'?" Ben asked.

Max nodded. "He wound up in the Null Void—a pocket dimension that the Plumbers have been using as a prison for ages. There are also innocent people living there, and Animo began using them as slave labor when he learned how to draw power from the mineral coremite. He was trying to tear a hole between the dimensions so he could send lead an army of Null Guardians to conquer the Earth, and for months, I led a team of Plumbers' kids to try and stop him. Then you showed up and managed to figure out the source of his power. You single-handedly destroyed his drill and saved the planet, and not for the first time."

Embarrassed, Ben rubbed at the back of his neck. He was a little overwhelmed by the praise, especially considering he'd had no idea who he was for two days now. It was strange enough learning that he could transform into an alien and regularly fought off other, evil aliens. But learning that he'd done enough that he was considered a hero—that feeling was indescribable.

"Guess I've been a handful since I got this thing," he said. "You just wanted to have a normal life, and I attract trouble like a magnet."

"Not at all," Max insisted, looking at him seriously. "All of this is normal for me now, and it's normal for you too. I had some amazing adventures as an active Plumber, but you've brought me along on an even greater one. You're constantly challenging the way I look at things, and by teaching you, I've learned more than I could have ever dreamed. It's an opportunity I never would have had otherwise."

There was a tight feeling in Ben's chest, and he realized just how much weight he'd always put on Max's opinion. Hearing this meant everything in the world to him, even if he didn't remember exactly why.

"Thanks, Grandpa," he said softly, barely able to speak above a whisper.

Smiling, Max pulled him into a hug, which Ben gratefully returned. After a moment, Max let go and said, "You should probably wash up and get changed. Gwen gets out of school in a few hours, and I know she'll want to check up on you."

"Right," Ben agreed, handing back the photos. "Thanks."

Max took the photos and placed them on top of his box. "I'm always here to help."

Giving Ben his privacy to change, Max left and closed the door behind him. But as he made his way out to the living room, he saw Carl walking toward Ben's room. For a moment, father and son stared at each other in uncomfortable silence, broken only when Ben walked by.

Looking at the standoff in confusion, he asked, "Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing," Carl insisted. "I just came home to check on you, and I didn't expect to see Grandpa Max here."

"Okay," Ben answered skeptically.

Max offered him a false, reassuring smile. "Just go on and wash up. Your dad and I should probably talk."

Ben watched them cautiously before heading to the bathroom. Once he heard the door close, Max said, "We should probably take this somewhere he can't hear."

Reluctantly, Carl led Max to the kitchen. For a minute or two, they stalled, observing the usual niceties: some coffee, a turned-down offer of lunch, and a long, awkward silence as they sat and ignored the elephants in the room. Finally, Carl glanced at the box of photos Max had set on the table and sighed.

"You shouldn't have brought those," he said. "Ben needs to remember things on his own."

"He's starting to already," Max answered. "He just doesn't know the context."

"The aliens," Carl realized.

"He didn't tell you?" Max asked.

Carl couldn't help but snort. "No. He's just like you—he doesn't talk about the things he's facing and just pretends everything's normal. He understates things and acts like it's no big deal that he runs out every night to fight threats he has no business getting in the middle of."

Max wasn't surprised by his son's bitterness, but he insisted, "He only does that so he doesn't worry you."

"It makes me worry a lot more," Carl argued, practically holding his coffee mug in a death grip. "Sandra and I have only the slightest idea of what he's facing, and when he comes home exhausted and beaten up, we're left filling in the gaps for him."

"He's got a good heart," Max reminded him.

"I know that!" Carl snapped. "I'm just afraid that one of these days, it's going to get him killed."

There was another lapse into silence. Neither spoke for awhile until Max asked, "How much of this is Ben and how much is me?" Carl sighed. "I'm serious. You've been angry at me for years, and frankly, I deserve it. There's a lot I should have told you and Frank, and even your mother left because of it. But Ben's not me. You can't expect him to repeat all of my mistakes."

Carl closed his eyes for a moment. "You really made a mess of things, Dad."

"I know I did," Max admitted. "But I thought it was for the best. As long as none of you knew what I was dealing with on a day-to-day basis, I thought I could protect you."

"You have no idea how bad it was," Carl challenged. "For years, we pretended we had no idea what you were doing. We all acted like everything was fine, but inside, we were falling apart. Mom left, and Frank and I grew apart. And even though we all knew what was going on, we just kept lying to each other and ourselves, making everything worse. This is why I hate it when Ben lies—it only hurts everyone in the long run."

"He's a lot better than I ever was," Max affirmed. "He's not going to make that mistake, and you've done a good job instilling in him the morals that will keep him from doing that. But he's going to try and protect you, just like he does everyone. It's his nature."

"It's not his job to protect us," Carl insisted. "It's our job to protect him. But when he's fighting off all of these creatures and disappearing into space, how are we supposed to do that? We're completely powerless."

He sighed and hung his head in his hands for a moment before looking up at his father again. "You know, I was starting to hope he'd never remember any of this alien business. I'd always hoped he'd be normal. You have no idea how terrified I was when Mom showed up after he was born, checking him for the spark. I've never been so relieved as I was when she said he didn't have it. I really thought she was going to take him away, and I had no idea how I was going to fight her to keep him here."

They were quiet again for a good while. It was probably impossible to completely resolve the years' worth of resentments and mistakes, but they both knew that they had to at least deal with it. For Ben's sake, if nothing else.

"No matter what happens in his life, Ben's a good kid," Max said. "You raised him that way, and when he is comfortable telling you all the details of what he's done, I know he'll make you proud."

"We already are proud of him," Carl replied. "It's trying not to worry ourselves to death that's the problem."

The silence returned, but without the anger and bitterness of decades. Somewhat reconciled, Max and Carl sat in the quiet as the elephants in the room made their way out.

But neither they nor the elephants noticed Ben listening outside, hating himself more with each word that still hung in the air.

Ben sat at the edge of his closet, looking through the pile of medals and awards he'd once shoved in there. In his hand was his MVP medal from soccer, which he gripped like a lifeline. There were more awards than he possibly could have imagined, from all kinds of planets all over the galaxy: for valor and for honor. The sentiment, no matter what words were used, was same for each: thank you. And every single one was shoved in the bottom of his closet, into obscurity.

"Hey, Ben," Gwen called as she walked into the room. She halted upon seeing her cousin sitting on the floor in front of his closet and asked, "Is there a reason you're looking at your mess of a closet?"

Ben sighed and shrugged. "Not really, I guess."

Before he could stand up, Gwen sat down next to him, smiling ironically at the avalanche of medallions. "Your medals. You said once that you needed to find a case for all of them."

"Why didn't I?" he asked.

Blinking at the note of despair in his voice, Gwen answered, "Well, we were always busy. You kept getting all of these awards for a few weeks straight, and the next thing we knew, we were fighting Vilgax all the time."

"And Kevin's 'accident' happened," he added.

She was quiet for a moment before asking, "How much of it do you remember?"

Ben closed his eyes. He'd been focusing on the memory for most of the day, willing it to become clearer. The best he'd gotten was a rough sense of the timeframe. "My arm was stuck and Kevin came over to try and get me free. There was a green flash from the Omnitrix and then the explosion. That's it." He opened his eyes to glare at the watch. "Kevin told me not to worry about it if I can't remember everything. But I'm not stupid; I know enough to put it together."

"Ben," Gwen reasoned, "what you did…it was stupid; I'm not going to lie. But you were never trying to hurt Kevin, and he knows it. You told us to get out just before the explosion happened, and Kevin made the choice to try and save you. Since then, we've both been trying to find a way to help him—I look for a cure and you try and keep him sane. You know the best thing you can offer is your friendship, and Kevin can accept that."

Ben stopped glaring at the Omnitrix, but his gaze was still toward the floor as he said, "Kevin told me he wasn't sure we were even supposed to be friends. He said there was a history between us."

Gwen gave him a look that was way too close to pity for Ben's comfort. "Grandpa didn't tell you about you and Kevin?"

Ben shook his head. "It didn't come up. All he mentioned about him was that his dad was an alien and one of the Plumbers."

Gwen sighed, and Ben knew he wasn't going to like what he was about to hear. He waited a moment before asking, "What happened with me and Kevin?"

Hesitantly, she explained, "We met him in New York during the summer road trip—did Grandpa tell you about that?" Slowly, Ben nodded, and she continued, "Kevin was being picked on by some of the local kids—gang members or something—and you got him out of it. You two really hit it off, but Kevin…" She sighed. "Kevin was a bad kid back then. He thought that you two should team up to commit crimes, and when you wouldn't go along with it, he got mad. He absorbed power from the Omnitrix, and it turned him into a monster." Ben sighed in frustration, lowering his head. "He blamed you for that, and you spent part of the summer fighting him."

"So it's not the first time this has happened," Ben answered.

"Ben, don't blame yourself," Gwen argued. "Kevin's changed since then, and you've changed. It's the whole reason you can work together now, and it's why Kevin doesn't hold the accident against you."

But Ben wasn't convinced. More frustrated with himself than ever before, he held up the Omnitrix and demanded, "Why does anyone let me keep this thing? It sounds like all I'm doing is making trouble for people! I mutate my friends, lie to my parents, and make everyone I care about suffer. Why don't I just give this thing back and let someone who's a lot better at it save the world? Seems like it'd solve a lot of everyone's problems."

"You can't give up the Omnitrix. You wouldn't know what you'd do without it," Gwen insisted. "And you can't let yourself sit by and let someone else save the world. It's who you are."

"I don't know who I am!" Ben shouted, making Gwen jump. Realizing he was only making it harder, he sighed and confessed, "I don't know. I don't remember enough of anything to get a real feel for who I was before all this. And listening to everybody, it all contradicts. I'm a hero and an idiot. I save the whole universe and hurt my friends and family. I'm a completely different person from who I was three days ago, and I'm not sure I like him all that much."

"Ben, you are a hero," she argued. "You've proven it over and over."

"If you're talking about the medals, look where I keep them," he said, pointing at the mess falling out of his closet. He then opened his palm to show her the medal from soccer. "This is the only medal I've got in any kind of place of honor, and you can't say it's because I'm trying to keep a secret because everyone knows. I save the galaxy, and I shrug it off. I stop a ball from going into a net, and that's a huge accomplishment." He closed his eyes and slumped forward. "You say the Omnitrix is important to me and I wouldn't know what to do if I was suddenly normal. Right now, I don't know what I'd even do with it."

Gwen watched him for a moment, unsure what to say. Finally, she said, "Turn around. I want to try something."

"What?" Ben asked, his voice low and tired.

Still, he turned toward her, and she put her hands against his temples. A soft glow of pink light filled his vision as he felt something reaching into his mind. For a moment, he resisted in panic, but then realizing that Gwen wasn't going to try to hurt him, he relaxed. In the pink haze, he thought he remembered something, and he reached toward it. But a sudden bubble of fear burst within him, exploding into terror. He pulled away from Gwen as his vision cleared and his heart raced.

"What was that?" he asked, trying to catch his breath.

"I'm sorry!" Gwen cried. "I don't know what happened!" After taking a moment to calm down, she explained, "I was trying to see if I could draw up any of your memories from your subconscious, but something got in the way—this huge tangle of emotions." Watching Ben try to recover from his fright, she said, "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he insisted. Finally back in control of himself, he admitted, "It's like my memories have been more emotions than images, anyway. I feel something, and then I remember it."

"You'll remember it all sooner or later," she assured him. When he shrugged, she answered, "I'm serious! We know Animo did this to you, so we're just going to have to figure out what he did and undo it."

"And if you can't?" Ben pressed, his eyes closed.

"Don't say that," Gwen insisted. "One thing you're going to have to learn about yourself is that you don't think anything is hopeless. You never give up."

He kept his eyes closed, even as she drew him into a hug. There was too much going on—too much he didn't know and too much he'd just learned. She might have believed in him, but he wasn't ready to believe in himself just yet.

"I'll give you some time," she promised as she got up.

Ben listened to the door close, leaving him all alone with a series of fragmented memories and a mountain of forgotten medals. It was all supposed to tell him who he was, but with contradicting stories and multiple alien identities, he wasn't sure he could figure out who was who.

In Carl Jung's theory of psychology, the persona is the "mask" a person wears when dealing with the outside world. This mask can be different depending on the circumstances—a persona for behaving in front of your boss and a persona for behaving as a boss, for example. When your persona does not fit with your ego—your sense of self—and becomes artificial, you can develop a false self that hides the real self.

Portions of this chapter were inspired by the Power Rangers in Space episode "Always a Chance," in which Black Ranger Carlos doubts his abilities after injuring Pink Ranger Cassie in battle, and former Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Black Ranger Adam coaches him to try and build his confidence up, to no avail. Other portions were unintentionally inspired by my Digimon fic "Yang-Yin."

As for details in this chapter, I mentioned Verdona having brown hair in human form simply for the sake of genetics: Ben gets his brown hair from his father, who would had to have had a brown-haired mother, as his father had red hair (red hair is a recessive trait). I also tried not to place this fic anywhere specific in the timeline other than "Between 'In Charm's Way' and 'The Final Battle,'" so I was careful about writing the scene with Kevin and his mother. Also, I promise (but cannot prove) that I wrote the bit about Ben trying to apologize for the accident before "The Final Battle" aired, but after it aired, I took inspiration and ran with it. And it's also very hard writing Kevin discussing his friendship with Ben when he's determined to deny that such a close friendship actually exists.