Chapter 15: Fearful Developments

I Don't Own Ben 10 or Any of the Respective Characters, The Rights Belong to Man of Action Studios and Cartoon Network

Author's Note:

* Hello and welcome to Chapter Fifteen of the reboot!

* So, this chapter has a decent chunk of differences when compared to the original version.

* I don't really have anything else to say in regards to this chapter, so let's get right into it!

Earth Prime

Friday, June 1st, 2018

The Tennyson House

Ben

I didn't end up sleeping very well the previous night. I ended up getting up the following morning at around seven o'clock, while Gwen remained asleep. Surprisingly, she slept through the night like a baby. She was the more traumatized one out of the two of us, so it surprises me that she didn't have trouble sleeping, but I did.

Anyway, I got out of bed and left Gwen by herself in my room. I went down the basement, planning to play some video games to take the events of yesterday off of my mind, but instead, I just ended up sitting there, thinking to myself. I couldn't stop thinking about yesterday with Kevin and my friends.

He tried to hurt my friends and family, all because I refused to share my powers with him, I thought as I sat there on the couch. You think that you know a person, until... Maybe I didn't know Kevin as well as I thought I did.

I was eventually brought back to my senses by the morning sunlight coming in through the blinds on the basement window. I checked the alien watch on my wrist to see that I had been sitting there thinking for the better part of thirty minutes. I decided that I should do something with my time before I ended wasting more than thirty minutes of my day.

It's been a while since I cleaned the lab, so I'll do that.

Once I got materials to dust the room with, I proceeded with getting to work in the lab. Ten minutes passed of me dusting, as well as continuing to be invaded by thoughts of yesterday's events. After sometime of this, I heard footsteps and then silence. I stopped what I was doing and looked at the open door, to see Gwen standing there.

"Good morning." I greeted. "How'd you sleep?"

She nodded.

"Fine, I slept just fine. What are you doing?"

I spoke as I moved to the next folding table.

"Just cleaning up a little. It had been a while, so I decided to clean up a little in here."

"Do you want some help?"

I shook my head as I moved to clear the next table so I could dust it.

"That's alright. I got it covered."

Apparently she didn't take that as an answer.

"I can't help a little?"

I let out a sigh as I put down the feather duster on the table in front of me. I turned to look at her as I spoke.

"Alright. Go upstairs and get the broom from the living room closet. If you want to help, then you can sweep the floor while I continue to dust in here."

"Okay."

She left the room and while she was gone, I got back to dusting. Once she came back, I was putting the stuff back on the table that I had just finished dusting. She started sweeping the floor as I asked to her to and eventually she broke the silence.

"Hey, what are these?"

I turned to look at her and saw that she was holding some of my lab papers in her hand. It then dawned on me that I never put away those papers from last week. I just put them on the table that Gwen was now standing next to.

"Those are my lab papers. Ever since Alien Guy started appearing, I've been taking notes on him and his alien forms. They fascinate me."

"Well, that makes two of us, I guess."

After that, she continued standing there, just looking over the papers. She did eventually speak after a few seconds.

"Diamondhead. A being made of some sort of fast growing, possibly organic material, as he's capable of growing large amounts of said crystal in a short amount of time."

She looked to another paper and spoke again, reading my words out loud.

"With Heatblast, his body is comprised of some sort of carbon material similar to that of coal or perhaps a volcanic rock like basalt, with what is most likely molten lava or an equivalent material underneath holding the body together."

She moved on to one last paper after that.

"The next alien form is Fourarms. His appearance is that of a large bipedal humanoid with four arms, four eyes, and is completely red in coloration. Across his body are multiple spines of varying lengths, though I'm unsure as to what purpose they serve. He has enhanced strength, likely caused by dense muscle mass beneath the skin, and in combination with his four arms, he's capable of lifting several thousand pounds of weight, and can easily bring a speeding truck to a dead stop."

After Gwen had finished reading from Fourarms' file, she looked up at me.

"Ben, what does all this mean?" she asked.

"Gwen, like I just told you. I like keeping tabs on all of these aliens. I jot down notes about anything interesting of note regarding any of them. I think they're neat."

I walked up to her and took the papers from her. I walked back over to the filing cabinet, put the papers back into their respective folders and put them back into the cabinet. I looked around the room, now being finished with my dusting and pretty soon, Gwen would finish with sweeping the floor.

"You finish up here, I'm going to go put my dusting stuff away and use the bathroom."

"Okay."

I left the room to lightly jog up the stairs and into the basement hallway. I walked into the kitchen and opened the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink to put the dusting materials back. I walked to the bathroom and once I had finished up, I walked to the sink and turned on the water until it was warm. I ran my hands underneath the water with soap, rinsed and then turned it off again. That's when I noticed that it had gotten a bit colder in the room and for some reason, the mirror had fogged up.

What the hell? I didn't shower this morning and Gwen didn't either, so why is the mirror fogged up?

I let out a sigh of frustration as I went to wipe the fog from the glass. Then, I was treated to a truly horrifying sight. As soon as I wiped the fog away, I once again saw Ghostfreak's reflection looking back at me. But unlike the time I had seen him in the bathroom at my clubhouse, this Ghostfreak was different. His skin, if you could call it that, had rotted away, to reveal a jet black texture beneath. He also had some kind of white fluid, maybe ectoplasm, oozing from his body.

I backed away in fear once I realized it was actually there. Maybe I was hallucinating the next part, but I could have sworn I saw the reflection actually come through the mirror! It reached through the mirror for me. I tried to dodge his reach, but he got me and I realized that he had talons instead of fingers. He grabbed me by my shoulder and started to pull me towards the mirror.

As he pulled me closer to the mirror, I continued to struggle against his grip. Eventually, it lost its grip, but grabbed my shoulder again. Then, it brought me forward, causing my head to collide with the mirror. After recovering, I noticed that the room had returned back to its normal temperature. When I looked back into the mirror, that twisted reflection was gone. I also noticed that my forehead wasn't bleeding. There was, however, a red knot in the process of growing on my forehead. I let out a sigh, as I held my head in pain.

"What the fuck was that?" I muttered to myself.

Obviously I didn't get an answer, so I walked out of the bathroom and back downstairs to the lab, where Gwen was waiting.

"I'm done." Gwen said as I walked back in.

"Good." I replied. "Then you can take the broom and dust pan back upstairs. We'll have breakfast now that we're done."

"Okay—Hey, what happened to your forehead?"

For some reason, I touched the knot on my forehead, resulting in me hissing with pain.

"I—uh—tripped and fell against the mirror while I was in the bathroom."

She smirked at me in response.

"Aww, poor baby. Are you going to live?"

I frowned.

"Ha, ha, ha. Very funny, Dweeb. Let's go upstairs."

I turned and walked out of the room with her behind me. Now that she had been inside the room and knew what I used it for, I didn't see the point in keeping the door shut and locked anymore. At least not until my parents got back.

Sometime Later

While we were sitting at breakfast, Gwen spoke up, breaking the silence between us.

"Can we—uh—talk for a minute?"

"Sure. What do you want to talk about?"

"What was that thing from yesterday? The thing that abducted Ken and I? You said that you heard about it, so would you have a better idea that I? About what it could be, that is?"

I shook my head.

"I think it's best that you just let it go."

She gave me a strange look, mixed with dissatisfaction.

"Why?"

"Because it's in the past. Remembering it isn't going to do you any good. Dwelling on it won't help you get past it. Just accept that it happened and move on."

Besides, that's what I have to do, I thought. I can't remember what Kevin was like before. I never knew Kevin. Just be done with it and move on.

Gwen still looked dissatisfied, but she didn't pressure me any further after that.

"Okay. If you say so."

We continued on with our breakfast after that, without another word to each other.

Later That Night

I was sitting down in the lab past eleven that night. I had looked over my lab papers again to see if there was anything I could add, but there was nothing. I even considered typing up some papers on the villains that I had come to face over my first few months with the alien watch, but quickly decided against it. The point of the lab papers was to keep track of the attributes of my alien forms, along with any weaknesses that they may have.

And making up papers about the villains would be escaping the point of all this. Anyway, after I realized that there was nothing that could be added to the papers, I moved on to inspecting the alien watch, on the account that I thought one of my forms was missing yesterday. And my suspicions turned out to be correct. One of my alien forms was missing. And as my luck would have it, Ghostfreak was the form that was missing.

It fucking figures that Ghostfreak would be the missing form! He must have somehow escaped recently! But how could he possibly do that?

I stopped thinking about how he could have escaped and began focusing on the implications of him being free to do whatever he pleased. I had always assumed that Ghostfreak was somewhat sentient within the watch's DNA catalogue, database, or whatever it used to store all the forms, so if he could get out, he'd probably be dangerous. I should have been happy that he was gone, but I wasn't. I was deeply concerned, unnerved even. This was an alien form that I used to have nightmares about. That's when my thoughts turned to the two apparitions I had seen recently.

Wait! Those two apparitions, instead of just me just thinking I saw something, was that really Ghostfreak, trying to mess with me? If so, what did he want from me?

Just then, as with earlier that morning in the bathroom, I suddenly felt a chill in the air. I began to rapidly look around the room, now feeling as though I wasn't safe down here by myself. Just then, even though the chair I was in sat flat on the ground, I was knocked out of it and the chair itself then fell over. I hissed in pain as I hit the cold, carpeted floor.

Wait, cold, carpeted floor? The carpet in here shouldn't be cold!

After I recovered, I looked around the room as my blood ran cold at the prospect of the situation at hand. I got back up and that's when I heard it. The sound of cold, cackling laughter and there was no one in the room but me. I fell right back on my ass, cursing in pain as I did. And that's when the lights went out as well. I sprang up from my position on the floor and found my way to the door, but when I tried the door knob, it wouldn't open! Eventually the lights came back on. I stood with my back against the door, scanning the room. There was nothing. But that's when I saw writing on my whiteboard. After willing up the courage to do so, I walked over to it and read what it said:

Are we having fun yet?

"Oh, fuck this!" I exclaimed as I ran from the room, flipping the light off on my way out.

Epilogue

Unknown Location

Mr. Enoch

I sat at the desk in my office, looking at the computer monitor in front of me. I heard a knock at the door and spoke up in response.

"Come in."

The door opened and another one of my scientists entered. I looked up at him as he approached my desk.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Tell me."

"Yes, sir. The subject you call 'Albedo' has been released into the outside world."

"And?"

"If the conditioning that we did on him worked, then he will believe that he's the real Ben Tennyson. And once morning comes, he will likely seek Tennyson out and attempt to retake what he believes to be his."

I nodded. After a few moments of silence between the two of us.

"Sir, may I ask a question?"

I leaned back in my chair.

"I suppose. What do you want to know?"

"This Tennyson kid hasn't really done anything to you. He just kind of happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, why?"

I sighed.

"You really don't know anything, do you?"

He didn't say anything in response. He just stood there, looking at me.

"I won't go into just how wrong your statement was, but I'll humor you and answer your question, anyway. I'm messing with Tennyson's life, because I think it's fun. I will eventually get the Omnitrix, I will eventually take it from him. So, might as well have some fun before that time comes."

He continued standing there in silence.

"Does that answer your question?"

He eventually nodded.

"Good. Now, get out."

He did as I said and left the room in a bit of a rush. Once he was gone, I leaned further back into my chair and put up my feet on the desk as I thought about how disappointed I was that I wouldn't be able to physically see Tennyson's life begin to unravel.

* And that's it for this chapter, I hope you all enjoyed!

* What did you guys think of this one when compared to the original version of Chapter Fifteen? Did anything stand out to anyone? Give me any comments or questions that you may have in either a review or a private message, please. I am very curious on what you all thought of this version of Chapter Fifteen.

* Anyway, that's going to do it for me. I'm going to go now, so have a great day and bye.

Director's Commentary

* Okay, so this is my first installment of Director's Commentary in a while, so please go easy on me if I'm not as in depth as I usually am with these. So, to start off, I changed up the beginning of this chapter, because I really do think that after the day he had regarding Kevin and all of that, Ben wouldn't have slept very well. In the original chapter, you just open with him and Gwen down in his lab the following day, but I thought a change was in order. That's kind the point of this reboot, I guess. I want to mostly preserve the overall story, while changing some stuff just enough for you guys to get the sense that things are just a bit different than you remember.

* Next, most of the dialogue between Ben and Gwen had to be cut and reworked, due to the fact that they aren't in this weird phase like they were at this time in the original story.

* And lastly, I want to talk about the end of the chapter for a second. Well, I want to talk about two things regarding the end of the chapter, actually. First off, I want to say that I made Ben fully aware that Ghostfreak is the one who is messing with him this time around. I feel like it would be obvious that it was Ghostfreak, but in the original, he didn't become aware of this until much later.

* And lastly, I put in a scene that teases Albedo's appearance in the next chapter. I mean, we all know he's coming, so I didn't see why I shouldn't put in a scene like that. With that said, it's time to wrap this up. Thanks for reading.

Next Chapter: Albedo is released and Ben's life quickly becomes hell.