Disclaimer: I do not own Ben 10 or its sequels, spin-off and related characters. All is the property of Man of Action and Cartoon Network. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.
Before the Egg Cracks
Chapter Three: Devlin Drops a Bomb, Gwen Drops a Bomb
Maltruant recovered from the blow that sent him flying, and he aimed a temporal blast at the sorceress. They both saw it at the same time, but Devlin moved faster -with a Kineceleran speed inherited from the Omnitrix, and passed through Kevin. He pushed Gwendolyn out of the way just in time, saving the sorceress from the attack.
"Look out!"
But he was so focused on her, that Devlin failed to save himself. Instead of Gwendolyn getting caught in the blast, the Osmosian was.
Gone in a flash of light and temporal distortion. Not even a speck of dust left where he had stood. Just gone.
Gwendolyn gasped, the sorceress starring at the spot where the boy had been. A deep, guttural, primal roar erupted up from her throat. A gravely violent sound. Not the sort of thing one expected to hear from a human throat. In fact, Ben imagined the snarl as something that was more appropriate coming out of Kevin than his gentle and temperate cousin.
The sorceress rounded on the Chronosapian. No spells. She just lashed out with raw power, encircling Maltruant in tight bonds of mana. She slammed the alien into the floor, snarling. "Bring him back!"
The Chronosapien only groaned at the rough treatment, so the Anodite slammed him down again -harder this time.
"Bring him back!" Tears were stinging her eyes now.
Ben -in human form now- knelt down next to the bound and prone form of Maltruant, his expression almost sympathetic. "You can reverse time -I know." He said. "You can bring Devlin back."
Using her mana, Gwendolyn lifted the Chronosapien back up, bringing him face to face with her so that she could glare directly into his eyes when she growled. "That was my son you just vaporized. My only child. You will undo what you did and bring him back to me, or so help me... There won't be enough left of you to bring back!"
Ben opened his mouth again. Perhaps to tell the sorceress that she should 'tone it back a notch' again. But he quickly thought better of it. He was there all those years ago when Kevin took Devlin away from her. He -better than most- knew exactly what she was capable of. This was Gwendolyn 'toning it back a notch'. Where her child was concerned, she could be just as violently loving and homicidally protective as her estranged husband.
When Maltruant didn't instantly do as she commanded -or even reply at all- she slammed him back down a third time.
The Chronosapien groaned. "I didn't vaporize him."
"What?" The Anodite lifted him back up enough so that his face plate was no longer grinding against the Headquarters floor.
"I didn't vaporize him." Maltruant repeated. "That attack was temporal displacement, not temporal advancement."
He wasn't instantly aged into dust! He was thrown somewhere else in time! Gwendolyn's heart gave a little flutter that felt suspiciously like relief, and her hard glare broke into an expression of hope. "Then you can bring him back."
"I don't know when he went." The Chronosapien had to inform her.
An admission that earned him another mana-slam into the floor. There was a lovely Maltruant shaped dent in the Headquarters panels by this point.
He groaned again. "But I do know that -whenever he went- he'll show up again in this same spot. Plumbers Headquarters. Or whatever was here before it. Or after it, as the case might be."
There was a beat.
Over Maltruant's prone form, Ben caught Gwendolyn's eyes and held up a Null Grenade. She nodded and pulled back her mana enough so that she wouldn't get pulled in with the Chronosapien. Maltruant vanished in a flash of golden light, sucked down and compressed into the Null Grenade. Ready for safe and easy release into the Null Void.
But later.
Crossing the space between them -a space that was mostly taken up by a Chronosapien shaped hole in the floor- Ben offered his cousin a supportive hug. That whole thing with Kevin and Devlin eleven years ago was probably the worst thing to happen to her in her life. But then, a decade later, when she's reunited with her lost child he's instantly taken from her again. Ben could only imagine what she must be feeling right now. If something like this ever happened to Kenny... He didn't know what he would do...
Gwendolyn pushed him away.
"I have to go to my library." She said.
"What? What for?" The Hero of the Universe asked in confusion. After watching her only child whom she'd been trying to find and get back for eleven years get hurled elsewhere in time, one would think she'd want to have a good cry, not go and re-read all seven Harry Potters.
"I have the Archamada there." She informed him tersely, crossing the space back to the hole in the wall. "It has a time travel spell in it. With a little tweaking, I might be able to use my mana to track him and figure out exactly when he went. Then I can bring him back."
"I guess..." Ben frowned. It had been a little over a decade, but something about Devlin being hurled through time didn't really seem to bother him all that much. He paused for a moment to think. Really think. He and his cousin had had so many zany adventures over the years -many of which included time travel shenanigans. But there was one time, a little over a decade ago that seemed relevant. A dark hair boy the resembled Kevin just a little too closely just appeared in the Headquarters one day. "Unless..."
"Unless what?" Gwendolyn demanded. She had no patience at the moment for sanctimonious speeches about patience and thinking before acting. Sanctimonious speeches about patience and thinking before acting were supposed to be her job anyway. She was supposed to be the calm, temperate, and analytical one. But, where her child was concerned, one couldn't always expect a mother to be rational.
Ben had to remind himself that his cousin wasn't going to be her usual cool, calm, and collected self in this matter. He had to be the calm one this time. "Its just... Do you remember eleven years ago-"
"How could I forget!?"
"No. Not that thing elven years ago." Her cousin was quick to clarify. "Before that. I guess, twelve years ago? Eleven years and nine months ago? I don't remember the date exactly, sorry." He realized he was rambling and quickly cleared his throat and got himself back on track. "We were here -at Plumbers HQ- and there was an explosion and some random kid just appeared out of nowhere right in the middle of the bull pin. Well, I might be remembering it wrong, but... I seem to recall he had dark hair in a pony tail, and looked a lot like Kevin."
Ben saw it on her face the moment her memory recalled the incident. Her expression melting from frustration and concern, to skepticism, to realization, and finally relief. She already knew everything would turn out just fine, because it already did turn out just fine. Devlin -or 'the Kid', as they called him at the time- got home to the future just fine. And, now they knew both when he went, and how he got home.
"Spanner brought him back." She said.
"I don't know how to get in touch with him." Ben admitted. "He always seems to just show up."
To spite her -still very worried- mood, an ironic smile cracked across Gwendolyn's lips. "He's closer than you think, Ben." At her cousin's confused expression, the sorceress explained. "I can recognize a person's mana, remember. I know who Spanner is and how to get in touch with him."
"You do? Then why haven't you told me yet?" Demanded the Hero of the Universe. He would very much like to know the real name and identity of the time traveling sentai who always shows up out of nowhere to help him (or just down right save him) on a semi-regular basis.
Gwendolyn just shook her head. "Oh, no. If I can wait eleven years to get my baby back, then you can wait a bit longer before learning who Spanner is. He'll tell you when he's ready."
More importantly, Spanner would tell when the Hero of the Universe was ready. The sorceress already knew that -at this moment- Ben was not ready to know exactly who the time traveling sentai that always shows up out of nowhere to help him (or just down right save him) on a semi-regular basis really was.
"In the mean time, I'm gonna get that time travel spell from the Archamada ready anyway. Just in case."
…
Gwen dragged Kevin back to the Plumbers break room. She fished in the freezer and pulled out an ice pack. This she slapped to the side of the Osmosian's head, right over the spot where the mysterious boy kicked him.
"Ow!"
"Oh, hush. I know you've had worse." She huffed at him, placing both her fists on her hips in annoyance. She really loved him, but sometimes the Osmosian could be so childish and immature. Whiney and indignant. He really was just a big baby some times. Gwen shook her head. But Kevin was the way he was, and she wouldn't want him any other way. "What did you say to that poor boy that made him kick you?"
"I didn't say anything!" Insisted the Osmosian. "I was just trying to get a better look at him and he woke up and kicked me in the face!"
The sorceress pursed her lips. That was a very strong knee-jerk (no pun intended) reaction to just waking up in a place you don't know with people you don't know. Some fear and anxiety is to be expected. But to wake up fighting is something different entirely. Kevin used to do that sometimes. If he was napping and she or Ben woke him unexpectedly, he would jolt awake on the offensive, absorbing whatever was closest to him and getting ready for a fight.
Gwen knew why Kevin did that. When he was only eleven he was sent to a particularly rough and nasty prison in the Null Void -Incarsercon. Kevin was an inmate there for a little over a year. From the ages of eleven to twelve, before he escaped and was found by Servantis and his Rooters. So, Gwen understood why Kevin might react violently to being woken unexpectedly or waking up in a place he doesn't recognize, and because she understood why Kevin did it sometimes, it made her worry about why the mysterious boy might do the same thing.
She bit her thumbnail in concern. "You think Ben and Rook can get anything out of him?"
"Well, from what I've seen of your cousin's people-skills..." The Osmosian trailed off, leaving the statement unfinished -which was his statement in and of itself.
"Do you think you can be civil if we went back and spoke with him?" She asked.
…
"Hey. Hey. Hey..." Ben wrapped his arms around the crying boy, trying to calm him down. Seriously, how do you comfort a crying child? Why did Kai want to have one of these? "Its okay. We're Plumbers. If you tell us who you are or where you came from we can help you get home."
The boy tensed in the Hero's embrace, so Ben let go, not wanting to make the boy uncomfortable.
Rook, always the responsible one that kept heroic -but attention challenge- partner on task, cleared his throat. "Perhaps if you told us what you were doing before you appeared here, we can all figure out what's going on together."
Looking up, the boy fixed the Revonnahgander with a stare that Rook was going to call suspicious. What had happened to this human child -or at the very least, Earthling child- in his life to give him that suspicious stare. Sure, Rook was a stranger to him, and children on this planet were taught to be mindful of strangers, but there was an edge to his glance. Almost like there was an accusation of danger going hand-in-hand with the suspicion. Almost as if the child expected a betrayal. ...And the thing that made it all the more unnerving, was the it reminded the Revonnahgander a lot of Kevin. Particularly Kevin back during that whole Rooters thing.
The boy already carried an uncanny resemblance to the Osmosian in looks, but it appeared that he had a bit of the personality too.
"I was..." He began slowly, his focus shifting from Rook back to Ben. His expression likewise shifted from suspicious to appraising, and he considered his words carefully. "I was hanging out with my friend's Grandpa... and we were attacked."
"Attacked!" Ben echoed. He was imagining the kid already being a deputized Plumber of some variety. He looked so much like Kevin to begin with, and -in Ben's personal experience- 'hanging out with Grandpa' usually involved one alien-monster-robot-mutant battle at some point. That was just the way the Tennyson family rolled. (Probably the Levin family too.) "By who? ...Or what?"
The boy frowned, thinking. "I think... they called him 'Mal-Truant'."
"Maltruant!" Both Ben and Rook exclaimed, recognizing the name. It was not the first time they'd had to fight and/or fix the fallout from a fight with the time-bending rouge Chronosapien.
There was the smallest of nods as the boy confirmed. His eyes flicked down to the Omnitrix on Ben's wrist, then back up to his face. His eyes scrunched up as he studied the Hero's face. An analytical expression Ben had seem many, many times on his cousin's face. It was a little disorienting seeing something of Gwen on a face that was almost entirely Kevin's. "Are you Ben 10,000?"
For some reason, Rook found the idea of someone feeling the need to ask that question very amusing. Especially when Ben never missed an opportunity to lord his Hero status and reputation over others. The Hero of the Universe loved being famous. The fact that someone would feel the need to ask who he was, as if they weren't sure, or didn't even know, was hilarious.
Ben offered the boy a patient smile. "Yeah... I kinda am..."
"Either you are, or you aren't." The boy huffed, sounding almost uncomfortably like Gwen. It was very disorienting. "What's this 'kinda' bullshit?"
"Whoa!" Ben blinked. "Your mother lets you talk like that?"
He was imagining this boy's mother being Gwen -or Gwen's daughter since she was literally just talking about wanting to having kids with Kevin no more than ten minutes ago in the break-room, and this boy looked almost identical to Kevin.
The boy just looked annoyed again. He must have decided that dealing with the Hero of the Universe wasn't getting him very far, because he quickly turned his attention to Rook instead. "What year is it?"
The Revonnahgander raised a brow at the child's seemingly arbitrary question. Well, Ben did say that he had 'time travel residue' on him. He would have to ask what year it was some time. "2018."
Usually when accidental time travelers learned what year they suddenly found themselves in, they would lean back and sigh, or gasp, or let out a breath of surprise, or count how far they were from their own time. But all the mysterious boy did was turn his attention back to Ben and glare reproachfully. "Why are you friends with Kevin Levin? How can you be friends with Kevin Levin!? Are you stupid? Are you slow? Do you not know what he is? What he's capable of!"
That patient expression was back on Ben's face. He put a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder. He was suddenly rethinking his assumption that the boy was from the future. Just because he had time travel residue on him didn't mean he had to be from the future. He could be from the past. The recent past, since he obviously knew Kevin. A relative perhaps. A sibling, or a cousin the Osmosian might have harmed when he was younger and unable to control his powers or himself and attacked friend, foe, and family indiscriminately.
"Look..." He said. "I know Kevin's done some bad things in the past. But he's changed. He's a good guy now. He's on my Team."
The boy shot to his feet. Jumping off the exam table, and glaring up at the Hero of the Universe as if he'd just insulted his ancestors.
"In that past! In the past? In the past!" He shouted -snarled, actually. "This is the past! He hasn't 'done some terrible things'. He is terrible! What's wrong with you? What's wrong with all of you!? Why'd you call him Gwendolyn's husband? Why is Gwendolyn married to him? What's going on here? There is so much wrong with this! There is so much wrong with all of this!"
Wow.
That was a strong reaction.
So, if this was 'the past' to the boy, then he really was from the future.
Jeez-uhz! What was Kevin gonna do this time? Between now and -an assessing glance at the boy- about ten to twelve years from now, what was Kevin gonna do that was so, so, so terrible to make this boy loath him so vehemently? Like, did Kevin kill his puppy in front of him or something?
"Okay..." Ben leaned back on his heels and sucked on his teeth -thinking. He glanced at Rook.
The Revonnahgander only shrugged behind the boy's back. He didn't have as much first hand experience with Kevin's 'villain phases' as Ben did. But even he agreed that was an unusually strong reaction.
"Maybe if you told us a little bit about yourself." He suggested.
Dark eyes looked at him suspicious again, but this time they were more shocked. "Is that safe? Can I tell you stuff? I mean, I'm- If it really is 2018, then I'm from the future. Isn't it bad to know stuff about the future?"
"Not for me." Ben smiled at the boy, thumping his chest proudly. "I've met my future self half a dozen times -and by this point I've met my past self, like, twice now. I've been dealing with time travel shenanigans since I was about your age. What is your age, by the way? You're like, what, ten?"
The boy pouted. He didn't answer. Ten was usually Ben's default number -for obvious reasons.
Gwen and Kevin reentered the room -Kevin with an icepack pressed to the side of his face.
The boy cast a suspicious glance at the Osmosian before turning back to Ben. "Eleven."
Of course he was.
"What's eleven?" Kevin asked.
That was when the mysterious boy really reacted. As if Kevin's voice was some kind of trigger that set him off. He jabbed a finger at the Osmosian. "What is he even doing here!? Why are you all acting like he's your friend? Like he's a good person? Why are you holding his hand!? Don't you know he's dangerous? What's stopping him from killing everyone in this room!?"
There was a beat of silence.
Kevin blinked, then shrugged trying to diffuse the boy's venom with humor. It wasn't the first time someone accused him of being a horrible sociopathic murderer and it wouldn't be the last. It was sad to say, but the Osmosian was kinda getting used to it by now. "Well, these two owe me money and this one sleeps with me, so... There's that."
"Kevin!" Gwen gave him a reprimanding -but very light- slap on the chest.
"What? Are you trying to tell me that we didn't have hot, wet, acrobatic sex in the back of the U-Haul this morning? Because I did it with someone and she sure seemed to moan and squirt a lot like you."
"Kevin!" She snapped again. This time the slap was harder, her face turning a bright, bright, bright shade of red in mortification.
"Ew! Gross!" Ben groaned.
"I agree, that was too much information." Rook admitted. He considered the both of them friends as well as colleagues, but he did not need to know the temperatures, moisture levels, positions, or locations of their mating.
The mysterious boy just stared at them all. Eyes wide with disbelief, mouth hanging open in mortification. Not over what Kevin said, or that he had just humiliated Gwendolyn in front of her peers, but over the fact that nobody seemed to care that he was Kevin Levin at all. "Why are you all laughing and hanging out with him!? He's evil!"
"Okay, okay. Calm down." Ben tried to sooth.
"Yeah, Kid, cool your jets." The Osmosian agreed. "You don't even know me."
"I do know you!" The boy snarled, finally speaking directly to Kevin for the first time since he kicked the Osmosian in the face. "You're my father!"
There was a beat of silence.
I mean, everyone already guessed as much -or if not father, then like grandfather, or something. But growing up on Earth where three generations of Star Wars movies had conditioned them to be shocked by that statement, made them all stand and stare at the mysterious boy.
Kevin was the first one to break the silence.
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are!" The boy snarled back. Snarled, with a vehemence that could only come from deep seeded emotional scars. The kind that don't heal, the kind that just get covered over and hidden by healthier relationships, but always insist on showing up again in nightmares and triggers.
The Osmosian looked the boy up and down. A serious, appraising look. The kind of scrutiny he gave a piece of alien tech before he took it apart. "You're, what? Twelve? I would have had to have you when I was twenty. I was just barely losing my virginity to this one-" he jabbed a thumb sideways at Gwen "-back then, and I've never had sex with anyone else in my life besides her. And I'm pretty sure Gwen would have told me if she's had a kid before she even got her first Masters -if for no other reason than to blame me for delaying her education. I don't have kids. I'm not your father."
"I'm from the future!" The boy spat.
"Oh! I guess Kevin was always out of the room when we established that." Gwen realized. He wasn't there in the bull pin when Ben mentioned 'time travel residue' and if Ben had discussed the boy's apparent time displacement after he woke up, well, Gwen had the Osmosian in the break room administering an ice pack. She crossed the space between her and the boy, and knelt down in front of him. "So, you're my son. Huh."
To everyone's surprise, the boy pulled away from her awkwardly. Almost as if he were afraid to be touched. Almost as if he didn't even know Gwen. As if the sorceress were a stranger to him. He avoided eye-contact when I said, "I-" his voice trembled "I don't know. I have no memory of my mother. I never met her. I don't know you, Gwendolyn. I didn't even know you were married to Kevin until-" a glance at the matching rings on her and the Osmosian's fingers "-until just now."
Rook and Ben shard the seemingly obligatory gasp of disbelief.
But Kevin went pale. Very pale. His hands balled into fists at his sides. His voice was low and sober when he said, "She's dead isn't she."
"What?" Gwen looked back at him in confusion.
"In the future." Kevin shook his head. Now it was his turn to avoid eye-contact with everyone. "This is why I don't want to have kids."
"Kevin!" Gwen shot back to her feet, glaring at her husband. Seriously, you don't say something like that right in front of your child. Not even a time displaced version of your child from the future. Even if it might be true. There are some things you just don't say.
"You're dead, Babe!" He repeated. "If I'm his father, then you have to be his mother because there's no way I'd sleep with anything else, but he doesn't know you. The only way he wouldn't know you, is if you died when he was born. Either he absorbed all your mana from the inside out, or he ripped himself out of your body and tore you to shreds, but one way or another he killed you! Having a child with me killed you! This is why having kids with me would be a very bad idea!"
"Whoa." Ben didn't even think of those as possibilities. When he tried to dissuade Gwen from wanting kids with Kevin, he was imagining the Osmosian forgetting the hypothetical child in department stores, or refusing to change diapers, maybe dealing out unnecessarily harsh punishments. Kevin's mind was clearly still a much darker place than Ben's own.
All eyes in the room turned back to the mysterious future boy. Kevin's son.
He was looking at the ground. His sharp bangs hanging over his face, hiding his eyes. He reached a hand up to wipe his face and sniffed.
"You said I was bad for her." It was halfway between a whisper and a sob.
"Ohmygod, its true!" Kevin dropped his ice pack in horror. "You killed her!"
"Kevin, stop saying that!" Gwen snarled at him. She wrapped her arms around the distraught boy and pulled him into a tight hug. She felt him tense within the embrace, but decided not to analyze it to much at the moment. It was abundantly clear that he did not have a perfect childhood and was burdened with trust issues beyond his years. "Can't you see you're upsetting him? You don't tell a child they killed their parent. What's wrong with you!?"
"Nothing's wrong with me! I'm just being real." The Osmosian insisted. He took a breath and forced himself to calm down. "Anyway... future or not, son or not, the kid's obviously from an alternate timeline. Because now that we know this, we are never ever, ever, ever having children."
She turned her head to glare at him again. A truly venomous glare the Osmosian rarely saw on his wife's face and almost never saw directed at him. She turned back around to give the mysterious future boy a maternal kiss on the forehead before she released him from the hug and stood. Meeting her husbands eyes, she announced -sighed with resignation was more like it- in a voice similar to the one a person might use when they say 'Kevin, stop saying stupid shit'.
"Kevin, I'm pregnant."
…