Okay. So I haven't updated in a while and I have now, so read, enjoy and if you enjoy review. Heck, if you don't enjoy review. I'd prefer that to no reviews at all. Sorry about the repetitive deja-vous at the bottom, but it was a necessary recollection point in the plot.

"What?" Ben didn't know how else to reply to such a confession. His blood pressure rose. What was Kevin's ultimate goal? No doubt it was some sort of revenge. But what sort? Maybe the omnitirix's malfunction resulted from something he did. Kevin smiled at him almost chastely. Ben gritted his teeth. And he acted so innocent!

"Why'd you take the money then?" he hissed in attempt to win the word feud. Kevin pulled the bag from his shoulder. He reached inside and pulled out a bunch of notes held together by elastic bands.

He fanned them in front of his nose and Ben caught the crisp scent. "You jealous?" he chuckled and released the bag. Ben watched as the thick bundles of twenty dollar bills tumbled into the mud and dirt. The surreal scene caught him for a moment. He'd never seen so much money before.

The snap of elastic bands distracted him. He watched as Kevin threw the bundle he was holding towards him. "Take it," he insisted. The notes fluttered about them like petals.

Ben stood in silence and watched them fall into puddles. He wanted more than anything to break the silence between them but nothing he thought of would sound right. Kevin was the first to speak.

"Do you believe me now?" he jeered.

"Why?" Ben asked suspiciously, referring to their chance meeting actually being planned.

"Can't you tell? I'm trying to pay you off," the other joked.

After he'd recovered from the constriction in his throat Ben continued, ignoring the other's taunting comment. "Are you going to change me back?"

"I don't know anything about it," he replied. The notes crinkled miserably beneath his feet as he began to circle Ben. It was unnerving being scrutinised so crudely. "If only you were human right now…" he muttered in mystery.

"Then I wouldn't have to keep asking you would I?" Kevin looked him in the eyes with shady intent. Ben refused to let his gaze go. So did Kevin.

"Are your cousin's the same?" he asked after a brief moment, without humour. Ben's eyes narrowed.

"What?"

"Your eye colour." Ben looked sideways to the floor, forgetting his plan on making Kevin the first to break eye contact.

"Mine are darker," he replied simply. The sociable exchange of question and answer made Ben feel suddenly nostalgic and regretful. "Why don't we just forget about this?" He wasn't quite sure what he meant by that, but Kevin obviously wasn't pleased to hear it. "We could just go back to how we were when we first met." He was begging. "Isn't that what you want-"

"You said I wasn't worth it!" In the echoed hush that followed the film played before his eyes. He'd turned his back to avoid the look in his rival's eyes. He'd caused the angry deformation as a result of humiliation and rage that started their whole mess. 'Nobody's innocent. They just haven't had a chance to make fun of me yet!'

Kevin approached him slowly but driven by the passion of rage inside him. "Well if you won't except a freak like me as friend," his eyes glowed with furious revenge, "then maybe you'll accept me as something more…"

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"Do you recognise this place?" Max asked suddenly. They'd been walking along the road in silence for a long time. This was the place were the reports of a 'dangerous mutant' had led them to.

Gwen wondered what Ben was doing right now. Perhaps he was in the middle of the action, chased by the police while trying to do the right thing and catch the villain. Or maybe he'd already caught the villain and was trying to find them right now. Or even he was wondering through alleys, wallowing in self misery. Could he possibly be heading here right now for a reason they were trying to find out?

"He's going to be angry when he can't find us," she muttered more to herself than anyone. Max realised that she was too absorbed in her own thoughts to pay Max's questions much attention.

"It'll be alright. He'll understand." He sounded too sure, Gwen thought. He was distressed by current events so even the smallest disruptions could set him off.

"Do you recognise this place?" he asked again now Gwen seemed more focused.

"Not really." She looked around them and tried to match up the buildings but they triggered nothing in her memory. She looked up at her grandpa. "Why? Do you?"

Max shook his head. "I feel like I've been here before but I can't put a year or season behind it." They approached a large bridge surrounded by dirty roads and buildings. A railway led under it into a dark subway. "I feel it with this bridge. The name, the position. But I can't see why it'd be important to Ben at all."

The bridge stood out against the mass of grey buildings. "It looks like it's had some very recent maintenance," Gwen pointed out. Max nodded.

"And renovations but the bare minimum. It doesn't look like it'll last much longer." Gwen looked at it once more. This place couldn't really have much to do with Ben. Nothing really took place here. Hadn't they just come on a fleeting visit? Just a small stop as they toured around?

"Maybe Ben came here by coincidence," she reasoned. Max shook his head knowingly.

"Somehow I don't think so. He was gone all night. They'd been reports that a creature had been lurking under a bridge not far West from here, no doubt he'd fallen asleep." Max was pointing in the direction of the bridge. Gwen could barely see it peeping through the mass of tall buildings. "And then many sightings have been reported about this area. Some were just chance glimpses and others thought they'd seen him threatening civilians."

Gwen's eyes widened. "But that can't be Ben. Even in the state he is now he'd never do that!" Max nodded to Gwen's relief.

"That's true. It's likely they got the wrong impression but I don't want to take any chances." Max lowered his tone to one of determination and concern.

"Something's going on that he's not telling us, and I'm going to find out what."

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The valuable scraps of paper had begun to soak up the grime off the floor. Ben would have thought it was a shame if he'd had the chance. But he had something else on his mind. The enraged boy in front of him was acting strangely, glaring at him with a twisted grin that spoke more than just anger. His eyes were almost alive with the large supply of spare energy he had no way to vent.

Something more? Ben thought. What did he mean? In what way could he be more than a friend? His naïve thoughts caught in his throat as Kevin reached a position that now felt uncomfortably close. Even his breaths, which were supposed to come naturally, were angry and forced.

"W-what do you mean?" Ben croaked. His throat dry from the anxiety of what was to come. Kevin's lip turned upward rudely.

"What could I mean?" A hand of claws reached forward towards a dark green eye. Claws intent on sinking in and not letting go. Ben flinched away and backed up two steps. When Kevin didn't follow he turned his back on the anger and malice, directed at the world, and ran.

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It all started with the unpleasant screech of ripping metal as Kevin, in his Diamondhead form, crashed across the high runway. Shaking from his stupor he regarded Ben's next words without humour.

"You risk all those innocent lives just to get even with me?" The accusations in his voice were apparent. He thought Kevin was crazy, just like the rest of them. A worthless freak like the rest of them.

He let his malevolence leek through. "Nobodies innocent!" he sneered, his voice vibrating with a hatred that stirred Ben's stomach, "They just haven't had the chance to make fun of me yet!"

A threatening hum in the background failed to distract them from each other as Ben fought with fresh anger and Kevin with relentless. Ben threw punches with all his might in the name of protecting the 'innocent' or even just to satisfy an incessant urge inside him which he couldn't explain. He left Kevin no chance to fight back.

Standing over his old friend, intending on a final blow, Ben was matched as Kevin chose a more suitable form to fight with: heatblast. But Kevin couldn't match Ben's strength for long and the more determined he was to win the more careless he became. It even felt as though he was trying too hard. Too hard to claim a victory. He was knocked into the air and, in a final attempt to win, he soared back as stinkfly before his ferociousness stole away his concentration and he fell back down to earth as a mere boy.

The wind was fresh on his face, burning with shame and anger and dampened by restrained tears. His memories were as clear as day but also, in other ways, shrouded him in a darkness that deepened that of the night. At the time it seemed their words were only child's play, but now he could see Kevin's desperate attempts at grabbing Ben's attention and holding onto it as long as he could. He could feel how forceful his insults were, he could see something far less trivial than he'd first thought etched into every action he'd done… and in every word exchanged. What he couldn't see was the history that drove such sinister behaviour. What was the trigger for all the anger and hatred? Did it originate from his early childhood? His life before he'd know Ben? Or even the fated day they met in the arcade.

This sudden mismatch of power put Ben in an odd position. He was ultimately confused as to why Kevin had changed human, but watching to boy let out a groan of revelation and slowly look up to his rival seemed to dissipate his anger and need to win. But only briefly. It all rushed back in a painful moment and he pulled his fist back before hurling it forward at full force.

But of course he didn't hit the boy. Even as the boy's voice broke in brace for it, the devastating force missed his skull by only inches. And then Ben stood over him, his fists no longer shaking with anger, nor his mind racing with pity. All he looked upon for that moment was a waste of time and space. Kevin looked into his eyes only briefly with more emotion than he'd ever let show. A pitiful excuse for a human being. And then Ben turned away.

"Get back here and fight Tennyson!" he demanded wearily, his voice shaking with effort but not anger anymore. Desperation. "I'm not through with you yet!"

"But I'm through with you," Ben replied. He didn't even bother to turn round to say it. This pitiful boy didn't deserve his time. Didn't deserve his anger or his pity. It would be best to just destroy him right now. Destroy it.

"You're not worth it. You never were."

"You're not worth it. You never were." He flinched at those words now. Why had he said that? Why had he said something so arrogant and malicious so freely? Why had he thought such spiteful words were acceptable to be spoken aloud? Who was he to decide whether someone else was worth something or not? Who was he to humiliate someone so strongly just to take a small victory over them? It was true. Kevin had every right to blame him for everything those words had caused.

Gasps of pain were heard behind him. Pain and crawling flesh. Then as he turned, true blame and a shout of anger. A shout of deep routed, cold, hard, bloody anger.

The mutant stood before him, looking at his hands. Currently too distracted to pay Ben his attention, he tried to turn into his human form, the form he'd taken advantage of for so many years but missed now it was gone. "I can't change back!" He needed someone to blame and he had someone to blame, a true culprit, stood right in front of him. "I'm stuck like this! Look at what you've done!" In a final act of desperation he launched himself at the culprit.

This was child's play no longer.

But it needed to be, to make it all right. But it wasn't all right, Ben knew, but he needed it to be, so he disguised this real anger he saw before him and saw the humour in the situation and spoke it to himself, to assure that this all was all right.

"Oh man! Is there anything I'm not going to get blamed for today?" Without real anger he was outmatched, beaten back by brutal force that landed him hanging from the runway. Now he listened to what Kevin had to say.

"You'll never beat me…" he jeered. An air of false security settled about him. "Because you're one of the good guys and good guys never have to guts to finish guys like me." But good guys always had back up, and the bad guys were always wrong, never right. They fought alone, no one to support them and no one to back them up. Because they're the bad guys and they're always wrong. And if something is wrong it has to be righted. Even if they only want to live the right life for themselves.

The gun hit Kevin with such force that Ben was almost knocked back too. He stumbled backwards only a few steps before falling into the aggressive rapids below.

And that was the end of that…

But it wasn't. Kevin had been alive and festering in his humiliating defeat. A one sided fight he was destined to lose. When Ben thought now he doubted those final words. He always called himself the 'good guy', but a good guy would never speak such hurtful words or turn their back on someone's suffering because it's the easy way out. A good guy would fight for the good of everyone. They weren't selfish. Ben wiped his face with his arm and, even though it had started raining, for some reason he felt a bit better. For now, at least, couldn't he tell himself this all was all right?