Chapter 1
[Maxwell Tennyson]
Looking through the rearview, he considered what to do.
He'd heard rumors about the watch, a powerful alien device called the Omnitrix. However… The last thing he'd expected was to see the piece of technology attached to his grandson. Now Ben was a target and Max knew it. Those robots had come for him and there was no way that whoever was behind them was going to just give up.
Also, the design of those robots itself was… familiar.
And that was very, very concerning.
Max would have to do something. He couldn't just sit on the Rust Bucket and hope for the best. Even if the plan already was to travel through the country and never stop, that wouldn't keep them safe. Believing so would be naive and straight out stupid.
He couldn't call the Plumbers though. Those that were still semi-active wouldn't take well to Ben having the device and considering how stuck the thing was to his grandson's wrist, there was no telling what they would do to get it off. There was no way they'd just give up either. If drastic measures were needed, then they'd do it.
Max couldn't allow that.
The Plumbers weren't the only contacts he'd made through his career, of course. So, with that in mind, Max started considering options. Sadly, there weren't that many. With the Plumbers out, most of his human contacts were out too. Alien contacts were… a last resort, at best. If possible, he wanted to try and avoid involving that part of his life with his grandchildren.
He knew it'd be hard, but he had to try. Not only had he sworn oaths, but he also wanted to try and give Ben and Gwen a chance at being semi-normal children. They never would be completely normal, the watch had made sure of that now, but at least he could try to not make their lives more weird than they were already going to be.
So, with the list of names in his mind growing shorter and shorter, he came to one that might help. It wasn't something he wanted to do, not at all. The last thing he wanted was to call on a favor that he hadn't even wanted to be on his list of "favors owed" but desperate times called for desperate measures. Max would hate it, but he had to make sure his grandchildren were safe and there was nothing he wouldn't do for that.
Checking the rearview once more, he made sure that both Gwen and Ben were asleep before starting a call through the Rust Bucket's systems and turned on the sound dampeners.
"Yeah?" was the response he got, not particularly friendly, guarded.
"Hey, kid," Max greeted, even though the person on the other side was far from being the boy he remembered. "Been a while, hasn't it?"
"... Max?" He could hear it in the man's voice, the incredulity. "Been a while? I thought you'd forgotten about me or that you were still thinking about keeping me away from things. Old man, it's been a decade. Didn't even know if you were still…" There was a pause there that worried Max quite a bit. "You are Max, aren't you?"
"As sure as the fact that I gave you your first book," Max answered, getting a laugh from the other side.
"Nice way to make me sound illiterate for a chunk of my life, old man. God, if it isn't nice to hear from you," he heard from the other side and it pained him. It reminded him of the voice his own sons would use when he came back from long, too long, missions. "How have you been?"
"Well, I retired some time ago, for one," Max answered, humoring the small talk despite the fact that he had important matters to discuss. He didn't want to make it all seem like he needed something from him, even though that was the case. It was just… good to hear from the kid again.
"And you just now call me? What the fuck, old man?" he replied, clearly annoyed.
"I was putting that part of my life behind… I'm sorry," Max apologized, the same way he'd apologize to his family back when he was still working. It meant nothing and it'd help nothing, but he couldn't help but say it anyway. Couldn't help but try, even if it just made things worse.
"Went back to the normal life, huh?" the kid said and he could hear the edge and the hurt there. "Didn't have time for the freaks anymore."
"You know that's not how it is, Arthur-"
"No, it's fine," the man on the other side interrupted. "And I'm sure this isn't a social call, old man. What do you need?"
"What makes you think-?"
"You've been retired for a while and just now called. I also remember you. Even if you stopped working, you'd never stop working, I'm sure," the kid interrupted again and Max had to smile hollowly at that. Even after just one month a decade in the past, Arthur knew him too well. And he was also entirely too perceptive. "So, what's the situation, old man?"
"... My grandson might have gotten himself in trouble," Max said, looking through the rearview once more. "I need help, but I can't call the Plumbers. They dissolved-"
"Yeah, right," Arthur commented with a snort.
"And even if they didn't… I don't know if I can trust them with this. Most everyone else I know is an alien and I'd like to keep my grandchildren away from that, if possible," he explained, feeling tired already, from the situation and from needing to hide and from using people.
God, he'd thought he left that behind.
"So, you need the least freaky of the freaks," Arthur summarized.
"That's not-"
"Where are you, old man? At least tell me you are in the country," the kid said and Max wasn't even surprised by the interruption anymore. He was surprised by what he said however. That had been entirely too easy.
"Just like that?"
"You may majorly suck, old man, but I owe you one," Arthur told him, bitterness and sadness mixing in his voice. "So, I'll do this for you. Or… for the you that gave a scared, lonely kid a hand, at least."
"Arthur-"
"I don't care for your excuses, Maxwell," was the harsh statement that cut him off that time. "I don't think you can dig your way out of this one, not as far as I'm concerned."
"I wanted to keep you out of things," Max said, because the last thing he wanted was for the kid to think he'd just been cut off and left to fend for himself. He didn't want to be another name in the list of adults that had failed Arthur, after all. "The same way that I want to keep my grandchildren out of things."
"... Yeah, well, how's that been working out for you?" Arthur asked and this time, Max didn't have any answer or excuse for that.
Instead, he just deflated where he sat, still driving and falling into silence.
Instead, he just felt every single one of his many years of life twice over.
"So, where are you, old man?"
Max sighed.
[}-o-{]
[Arthur West]
He drove his bike through the road, neutral face masked by the helmet he wore.
He wasn't even trying to keep that expression, however. It wouldn't even have mattered since it was hidden anyway. No, that was just a result of the turmoil of emotions warring inside him. He wanted to be happy, he so wanted to. Instead, he felt mostly just hurt, sad, bitter, angry…
And happy too, he supposed.
Max Tennyson had saved him, after all. He'd given him a helping hand, a shoulder to lean on and even gotten his feet under him. Arthur owed that man his life and more. However, the man had proceeded to thoroughly ruin that perfect image that a young Arthur had built for him in his mind. He'd vanished, disappeared off the face of the Earth to never return for more than a decade until that point.
Now, after so long of having been left alone again, Arthur didn't know how to not feel bad hearing from him again. It was all made worse by the fact that this was only because he was needed. Of course someone came back to his life when he was needed. Why else would anyone?
'Story of my life,' he thought bitterly as he continued driving. He was going too fast, but it wasn't like it mattered. On top of that, he'd have to cover quite a bit of ground to catch up.
Some would laugh at him, laugh at the fact that he'd left everything to go help a man that had abandoned and forgotten him for a decade. However, he owed Max this much. Maybe after he was done repaying his debt, he'd leave the man alone as he himself had left Arthur. Until then though, he'd help, because it was what he had to do. There was no way around it, as far as he was concerned.
Without Max, he'd be a mess. Without Max, he'd have likely ended up like his father or worse, like his mother. Without Max, he'd probably be dead. So, in light of that, Arthur would do what he needed to in order to make things even.
Thank God that he needed to drive a lot to get there. Feeling the wind against his body and the rush of the speed flow through his veins always managed to calm him down. It made him forget his worries, made all problems look small. He needed that at that moment, probably more than ever, he supposed.
Ultimately, his debt to Max might not even matter, really. Because the man wasn't doing this for himself. He was doing that for his grandchildren. Arthur could respect that. That part of the old man was probably why he'd saved him in the first place, all those years ago. That was the old man whose memory he had cherished through his life.
Maybe Max had abandoned Arthur. Maybe he'd even abandon these children too, for as much as they were family. Ultimately, even then, they would be better off getting help. It'd hurt and it'd suck, but they would be better than not having anyone in their corners.
Arthur would know about that.
And maybe, if Max couldn't be there for them after all was said and done, he could be. God knew he'd have liked to have someone-
… Maybe he was getting ahead of himself though.
He needed to stop thinking so hard.
[}-o-{]
[Benjamin Kirby Tennyson]
"Ooooh~"
"You are not even remotely scary, Doofus," Gwen said, looking at his newly dubbed Ghostfreak impassively. "And "Ooooh~"? Really? That's the best you got? Figures."
"You are just jealous again," he said, glaring at her with his one eye. Before he could do much else, he saw the timer start counting, red light flashing over the piece of Watch that he still had even as an alien. He sighed, just like he always did when this happened.
It was such a rush, after all, to be something other than himself. It was such a rush, to be something extraordinary, a hero. He could do so much as one, after all. He could help so many, with the power the aliens gave him. And then there was just regular him…
He almost agreed with Gwen that it was a shame that he had to turn back to being himself. He would have, if it weren't for the fact that… Well, he'd have to agree with Gwen to do that and she was a Dweeb.
"Back to pizza-face, huh?" the girl asked, making him glare at her again, this time with two eyes.
"What about it, Dweeb?" he muttered through his teeth. Just before Gwen could shoot back her own retort, however, Grandpa Max came out of the Rust Bucket with a bowl of… something that didn't even look completely dead, again.
"Hey, kids. Having fun? I'm done preparing lunch," the man announced, making both Gwen and Ben's expressions turn to disgust. "I also bring even better news!"
"And those are?" Gwen asked hesitantly, almost afraid. For once, Ben didn't blame her. If Grandpa thought that… "lunch" was good news, he didn't know if he wanted to know what was "better".
"An old friend of mine is on vacation too and I told him where we were. He'll be dropping by in a bit," Grandpa Max told them, smiling widely. Ben and Gwen shared an unsure look. That almost didn't sound bad, but Grandpa was old. He was the exception for old people, being pretty cool, but other old people? They were boring. "I'm sure you'll have lots of fun with him around."
Grandpa also thought bringing Gwen along would be "fun", so… He didn't know if to believe him.
"I'm sure it'll be, Grandpa," Ben's cousin replied after a moment, like the suck-up she was. As for Ben himself, he refrained from saying anything. He'd reserve judgment on that for later, he supposed.
Couldn't be worse than Gwen and "lunch", right?
He really hoped it wasn't, at least.
[}-o-{]
[Azmuth]
"I am telling you, Azmuth," the annoying Petrosapien continued yapping at him. Constantly distracting him from his work. If it wasn't such an important call, he would have already hung up on him. "I am the most capable person to go look for the Omnitrix, the more time we take to make that decision, the greater the chances that Vilgax-"
"As I keep telling you, Tetrax," Azmuth said as he continued pressing the keys on his command terminal at high speed. "I have already sent someone to scout for the Omnitrix already. There is no reason for you to concern yourself with the task."
"No need to concern myself? Azmuth, we have lost all contact with Xylene, all we got was a distress signal before her ship was wiped off the radars. For all we know she is gone now, and there is nothing stopping Vilgax from claiming the Omnitrix for himself."
Azmuth ignored the chunk of crystals that seemed to make it his mission to talk to him in circles. He knew that he was the smartest being in at least three (arguably five) galaxies and he shouldn't judge cognitive standards based on his own. However, some people out there could be so slow that he was honestly baffled.
Putting the subject out of his mind, he did his best to center his attention on the video recording that played on the main monitor of his terminal. Multiple charts and statistics played along analyzing every single frame displayed in the video. He couldn't let a single thing escape his notice. It wasn't a particularly long one. Most of the unnecessary parts were already taken out, leaving only about twenty minutes of the original forty-eight-hour-long recording.
Most of it documented the voyage of his lost Omnitrix after being sent to Earth thanks to a well-timed escape pod by Xylene. It continued with its subsequent landing and the human – a kid if his information on their race was correct, and it usually was – that found it. A sour expression grew on Azmuth's face as the kid's first instinct was to play with his invention as if it were some kind of toy that he could use for his banal desires.
He refrained himself from judging just yet though. There was too little evidence about the kid to formulate a decision regarding if he was worthy of the Omnitrix or not. Even if the first impression had clearly shown that he was anything but, he could at least wait for more evidence. Any scientist worth their salt knew to not draw conclusions out of one single failed experiment and Azmuth, as one of the greatest there were, logically followed the same mentality.
'Well, it isn't like I will be able to obtain much more data directly given-' just as he thought about it, the last part of the recording played itself, making Azmuth's already scrunched-up face look as if had eaten something foul.
A group of drones – a 32S-F class auxiliary drone for Mechadroids – had attacked the new bearer of the Omnitrix, who had decided to transform into a Vulpimancer to show off to the female human kid. The dumb action had saved his life this time as the naturally superior senses of the quadruped alien race were good enough to detect the drone right before getting shot.
A small altercation followed, ending in the destruction of the drone and the kid transforming back after the Omnitrix ran out of charge. That was when another drone came out of the canopy and aimed its own laser. He had to admit the current holder of the Omnitrix, as unworthy of that title as he was, possessed good reflexes. The human jumped to the side and covered his head with both arms as the drone fired. The laser didn't manage to cut through his arm by mere millimeters and instead slammed right into the Omnitrix itself, which acted as an impromptu shield for the kid to not get dismembered.
Luckily for the human, he was saved by the female kid right afterward, destroying the drone from behind with what appeared to be a primitive digging tool of all things. Unluckily for Azmuth however, the altercation wasn't without consequences. The audio and video recording integrated inside the Omnitrix for him to check on had been thoroughly damaged.
Now, if someone were to tell him that a drilling laser, even a military-grade one, would be able to leave the tiniest scratches on his own creation, he would laugh at said person on their face before kicking them out of his planet for making him waste time. Sadly for him, this particular laser seemed to have gotten the one-in-a-trillion chance to actually reach and damage one of the few cellular-sized weaknesses the Omnitrix possessed. Now, nothing of importance was damaged, of course, all regular functions and even ninety-nine percent of the redundant functions were fully operative, but the camera itself…
He managed to see a few more seconds of very distorted video and audio before the signal went completely off. The sign that read "Inoperational" blared in bold red as he glared at it from the other end of the screen. He had to admit that it was his own fault in this case. Most of the Omnitrix was exclusively made out of nanobots with an exomaterial derived from a Taydanite alloy. The device was almost indestructible by any common means.
The problem was that almost exclusively didn't mean all of it. Taydanite was already incredibly expensive and hard to get. A single gram of it was worth enough to buy yourself a moon on its own and not one lost in the middle of nowhere. Given the sheer cost, he decided to cut some small corners on some of the most redundant functions, not particularly expecting anything to manage to aim their shots so perfectly to land in the very few spaces that weren't covered in the nigh-indestructible alloy.
Alas, here was the perfect example of him being too careless. He had no way to fix the issue from here. And the self-repairment nanobots wouldn't be able to restore the signal. Not in months at least given that most of the software and encryption would also need to be written again.
Being unable to observe and decide for himself if this "Ben Tennyson" was good enough for his creation, a more hands-on approach was needed. Which was the reason to send someone to Earth and inform him about the kid. And worse came to worst, if the human proved to corrupt himself with the power the Omnitrix gave… They'd be in the perfect position to eliminate him.
"I don't want you to go retrieve the Omnitrix, Tetrax," he said for the uptenth time. "However, there is something else I want you to do." Tetrax cut himself from his never-ending rant and directed his attention back to Azmuth. His expression grew focused and serious through the monitor.
"You still have your mercenary contacts, correct?" he asked without preambles. The Petrosapien flinched slightly at the reminder of his less than upstanding years. However, he nodded nonetheless.
"Yes, I am still in contact with some of the circles. And I am owed a favor or two around. Why?"
"I want you to go and infiltrate among Vilgax's numbers. Xylene's last shot must have done a number on him, so he would be dependent on outside help to get what he wants. That is where you come in, get me as much information as possible," he ordered as he opened another file with information of an old Plumber, "Maxwell Tennyson".
It wasn't hard for him to figure out why Xylene had changed her course from the vault planet Altarax to Earth when she found herself raided by Vilgax's forces. While not en route, the Sun system was close by and certainly closer than Altarax. She must have weighed the scales and realized that she wouldn't be able to make it, so she changed course and sent the device to the person she could trust the most.
Old photos of Maxwell and Xylene fighting and smiling together filled his screen for a moment before he closed them all down and continued with his work. Azmuth could respect her choice, but that didn't mean he would trust it. Because there might be legends of Maxwell Tennyson, but those legends were old, at least by human standards. Azmuth wasn't about to trust the Omnitrix to someone like that, even if it did work as a reassurance of sorts.
The crystal gears in Tetrax's head seemed to move for once as the man started thinking and humming to himself.
"It can certainly be done. Knowledge about my association with you is almost non-existent and I doubt Vilgax would do such a deep profile screening to findthose pieces, given how desperate he will be." The petrosapien crossed his arms and made him lose time as he stated the obvious.
'Like babies, Azmuth. Remember to treat them like babies,' Azmuth reminded himself.
"May I know what type of information you want me to get?" Tetrax asked, frowning. "Xylene's whereabouts are obvious, but I doubt that Vilgax is putting all that much effort into looking for her now that she is all but out of the way."
"Indeed, while Xylene's location is of interest, I predict that she had probably made her escape and is already working on recovering," Azmuth agreed with a nod. "No. What I want from you is to find the how."
"The how?" Tetrax tilted his head.
'Like babies, Azmuth,' he repeated in his mind, doing his best to remain calm.
"Yes, how. Tell me, Tetrax, do you think that I left the Omnitrix's particular energies without any sort of camouflage when I entrusted Xylene with it? Or do you think that the woman's decades of experience failed her enough to leave an easy trail for a brute like Vilgax to follow?" Azmuth asked, raising an eyebrow and lamenting the loss of time as he continued to spell out things for the petrosapien.
Tetrax blinked in comprehension as the implications finally dawned on him.
"You think someone sold us out."
Azmuth nodded his head. The list of people who knew about the Omnitrix's legend was not short, but the number of them who could actually pinpoint its location was incredibly small. A small pang of sadness grew on Azmuth's chest as he flipped through the pictures of the possible suspects.
"Well, Tetrax Shard. That is your mission, and if there is nothing else to discuss about, I would like to go back to my research," he said with a flip of his hand. Impatient to try a new code to see if he could get the camera working again.
"If I may ask," Tetrax interrupted him again, making him sigh. "Who did you send to look for the Omnitrix?" the petrosapien asked with a curious tilt of his crystal head.
Azmuth took a moment to send a small file to Tetrax's device, who promptly opened it and groaned as he read the name of the person in question. It brought a smile to Azmuth's face. That would teach him to not bother him while he is working.
The scientist spared one look at the same file. A lone-eyed alien photograph stared at him with a cheeky grin and a twin guns gesture with his hands. For the hundredth time this evening, even he himself wondered if he made the right decision. However, needs must and if the situation came to worst, he was the most capable option to end anyone who dared to use the Omnitrix for evil.
He wouldn't allow another one of his creations to become a weapon of destruction. Never again.
'I am counting on you. Don't fail me, Ohm.'
[} Chapter End {]
Arc: Here we are back again with yet another plot bunny. This one comes straight from our childhood!
Adrian: Gotta say, this is a lil' bit out of the norm for us, I guess. Ben 10's certainly a jump from our usual stuff.
Arc: Indeed, it is not exactly the most used fandom out there. But those who watched the series might know that it is a super interesting world to write a fic about. So many possibilities.
Adrian: Which brings us to this, our latest mad invention, as it were. Hope you guys enjoyed it and please leave a review if you did. Those are what keep us going.
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