Nexus HWR 3.2 Hope:
"This is bad, real bad, so bad," Ben Tennyson paced back and forth on the deck of the Thousand Sunny, mumbling to himself and checking his left wrist every few seconds. "It's still there," he mumbled loudly, as if he had just tricked himself into imagining it wouldn't be.
Nami and Timmy sat on the swing-set a little away from where Ben was pacing. The two of them turned their heads left as he walked left across the grass, then right and watched him walk that way. At one point he stopped, lifted up his left hand, and yelled, "A-HAA!" It sounded like he had discovered something amazing, but then his face dropped back to what it looked like before and he continued pacing.
"Hey Nami," Timmy whispered to the woman on the swing next to him. "I think Ben's losing it," he whispered.
The navigator looked at the nervous wreck stumbling around on the deck and she nodded her head. She made a low humming noise and stared at the watch on his hand where the single orange bar from the day before had gotten twice as thick. It was extending towards the middle of the watch where if it made it all the way, taking over all of the green color, Ben said he would 'explode or something.' She watched him stop and he dropped down to the floor and sat criss cross style on the grass.
Ben lifted up his hands and made little circles with his thumbs and index fingers while holding up his other three fingers. He sat in a meditation state and his mind slowed down from the high paced thinking he was doing. Okay. O-kay. O...kayyy... Too slow! Alright I need to think, just stay calm and think of a solution. He gulped and hummed, "Ohmmmmm. Ohhmmmm." The two watching him sweatdropped at his strange mediation style, but it was helping Ben think... or at least he thought it was. Okay. Last time, I didn't know what was so bad about this until Tetrax told me with one day left. And, I still haven't told the others. Shut up! Come up with plans, NOW! Ah ha ah hah... STOP PANTING THIS IS YOUR MIND!
Just looking at Ben sitting there, struggling to keep a straight face as he meditated was too hard for Timmy and Nami. Sweat was pouring down both sides of their friend's face and his arms lowered back to his sides as he started shaking. There's no way I can get this off. I've tried hundreds of times on my own, but every time I mess with it I normally only screw things up more! Using the Keyblade only sped up the process, and the creator Azmuth might not even be on this world, not that I'd be able to find him if he was. He took a few deep breaths and continued thinking, Maybe if I used Brainstorm I would be able to come up with a way to get out of this... but if I can't, I'll just be speeding up the countdown! "Ahhhhhh!" he grabbed both sides of his head and yelled in frustration.
"Hey Ben," Nami began, making the boy open up his eyes and see that she was standing in front of him, with Timmy Turner floating next to her.
The younger boy's amazing powers did little to make him look less than just a concerned child at the moment. Timmy's face was full of worry and he looked down at the floor as Ben looked up at them. "I'm sorry Ben. If I still had Wanda, she could have taken the watch off-"
"It's not your fault Timmy," Ben stated, shaking his head. "It's those damn Forever Knights! And if I was to blame anyone, it would be myself."
"Ben it isn't-" Nami began.
"They trapped me before," Ben grumbled angrily at her. "They put me in a dream world and I had no idea what was happening until Gwen and my Grandpa showed up and told me. I thought, if it ever happened again, I would notice."
"But you did notice!" Timmy exclaimed.
"Not soon enough," he said softly, shaking his head in disappointment. "I spent too much time enjoying the perfect day that they were able to accidentally set off the Self Destruct Mode. Now, I might not even have three days." His own eyes looked down now, And it isn't just me...
"Well," Nami started, bending down and grabbing Ben by the shoulders, surprising the boy. "You still have to eat for those three days, so come and have lunch with everyone. We're all worried about you."
"I told you," he muttered, "I'm not hungry."
"Ben," Timmy scolded, as Nami was just trying to be nice.
"Just go away," Ben growled at them. He turned around on his butt and closed his eyes again, lifting his hands back up in a meditation pose. He hummed loudly a few times before opening one eye and looking out the corner of it. The two who were watching him had walked over to the cabin and gone inside where Ben could hear laughing coming from his friends at the lunch table. "Ahggg!" he fell backwards and slammed a hand to his forehead angrily. What am I going to do?!
The Next Day
"Hey look! An island!" Natsu yelled, pointing off the bow of the ship towards shore. He looked at the lion figurehead and made to climb up it, but Luffy jumped down and landed on it first.
"My seat," he snapped back at Natsu who was midway over the railing. Luffy spun back with his legs over the sides of the Thousand Sunny's figurehead. He pointed towards shore and yelled, "Full speed ahead!"
Robin walked up to the bow where everyone was gathering and she stated calmly, "Perhaps here there will be a way to get Ben-san's watch off."
The others all looked at her, then looked back towards the cabin where Ben didn't leave this morning. Sanji frowned, thinking about the breakfast and lunch he had to bring to the boy who had not left the cabin once today. Then, he thought back to dinner the night before where they had finally calmed Ben down a little since leaving the Forever Knights' facility. Ben was actually laughing, when the watch on his hand started to glow bright orange and a sphere of light surrounded it. He backed up away from the table and everyone panicked as the small orange sphere surrounding his wrist exploded in a dome of translucent light that sent all the food on the table flying and half of them falling out of their seats. They had asked him what happened, but he only freaked out seeing another orange bar blinking on his watch and moving closer to the center.
"Yeah, let's find a way quick," Natsu muttered, staring at the approaching island with a much more serious look as he was thinking the same thing Sanji was.
"I'll go get him," Dash said, turning around. "He probably knows best how to turn it off so we'll need him to help us look." He sprinted away, rushed into the cabin, and down to the boys' room in the next couple of seconds.
Dash threw open the door and saw Ben carefully tinkering with the watch. Opening the door distracted Ben and he panicked, snapping his head up angrily. "Hey! Don't spook me like that! What if I had made it worse-"
"We're at an island," Dash told his older friend who looked way too panicky. "Hey Ben," he began, while the older boy got up to his feet with an anxious look on his face. Ben turned to Dash and the smaller blond boy smiled at him, "You know we won't let you explode, right? Stop panicking so much, you aren't going to die."
Ben gulped, then nodded at his friend and tried smiling. "You're right. Let's go." Azmuth isn't on this ship, so there's no point in being here. Then again, chances he's on this next island are pretty slim too. No! I got to stay positive. He and Dash walked up the stairs and Ben smiled genuinely, I am definitely going to get the watch off on this island.
Later that Day.
"I can't believe there wasn't a single person on that island," Ben muttered as he climbed back aboard the Thousand Sunny, one of the last of the crew. As soon as he was up, he started pacing back and forth again on the grass deck. "How much time do I have left? A day? Two? This is hopeless. I have no clue how to turn this off and only the smartest person in my universe could do it. Why wouldn't I ask Azmuth how to turn it off myself last time!? Ahh! I thought he had deactivated it for good. Damn it!"
The ship started sailing back away from the empty island that they only managed to get some meat and fruit from, no information on taking off an alien watch. They were sailing for maybe an hour before the suns started to go down, and the crew went inside to eat dinner. All of them except for Ben who stayed outside to continue pacing on the deck.
As dinner was finishing up, the crewmates were nodding at each other, though a bunch of them were sweating or scratching the backs of their necks nervously. "This is ridiculous," Timmy muttered as they all started walking back out of the cabin.
Ben looked up and saw everyone getting out of the dining room. He was a little surprised because after dinner most of the time, some people would go off to take showers or go to their rooms or something, but everyone was coming out on the deck right now. Still, his surprise did not really last as he continued to pace, getting his mind back on his Omnitrix and the SDM.
"Ben," Natsu began as the boy paced in front of where their entire group stopped. "Ben!" he shouted.
The boy who kept pacing stopped and turned in to see all of them gathered right next to him. He looked around at them all, at their nervous, sheepish expressions, and he snapped, "What is it? Why are you all looking at me like that?"
"Well," Usopp began, scratching the back of his black curly hair and looking away.
"We've come up with a way to save you," Riku stated. The silver haired teen stared into his younger friend's eyes and saw a skeptical look in them.
Ben looked around at them all for a few seconds, and then asked, "Okay? What is it?"
Cyborg Franky took a step forward and lifted up a hand he had behind his back. Ben's eyes widened and his jaw dropped at the sight of the buzz-saw in his hand. He pressed a button on it and it started spinning so fast Ben could not follow the blade.
He took a step back. "What are you-"
"We're going to cut off your left wrist," Riku stated, keeping his voice calm despite the crazy thing he just said. Ben's face took on complete surprise and shock, and also some fear as he saw that when he stepped back, three others stepped forward.
"We realize you may be scared," Killua began calmly.
"But this is for your own good," Natsu added, taking another step forward himself.
"So to save your life," Luffy said, keeping a frown on his face as he didn't like the idea Killua suggested, but liked it better than watching Ben die. His eyes darkened and he glared ahead at Ben, "We need to cut off your watch."
"And we all know how connected it is to you," Riku started again. "So the only way to get it off forcefully is to cut off your arm beneath it too."
"You guys are crazy!" Ben yelled at them all. He snapped his head around at them all but they all looked serious. "Come on! Not one of you thinks this idea is stupid?!"
"It is stupid!" Nami yelled back at him. "But it's the only idea we've come up with that saves your life!" The bottoms of her eyes had water in them as she didn't want to watch Ben get his hand cut off as much as any of them.
"I could knock you out-" Timmy began.
"NO!" Ben yelled at Timmy. The younger kid took a step back at that yell. "This is my wrist! And it's my watch too!" He grabbed his wrist with the watch on it and pulled it closer to his chest, then his eyes widened as Luffy, Natsu, and Killua all took another step towards him. "Stop it!" he yelled at them.
Goku watched nervously from the back of his comrades. The Saiyan looked down at the teenager in front of him, "Do we really need to do this?" he asked Sora who turned back to face him.
"I don't like it either Goku," Sora said, "but it's the only chance Ben has."
"You're wrong!" Ben yelled at them all, backing up again as they circled him. His back pressed up against a wooden wall and Natsu and Luffy blocked off the stairs on either side, while Killua continued walking straight towards him.
"If we knock you out, it could be painless," Killua stated, not batting an eye as he did. "Or else it will hurt, a lot."
"I SAID, STOP ITTTTT!" Ben roared at the top of his lungs. Out from his body shot an almost invisible wave of energy that crashed into Killua and made the kid feel light-headed. He dropped down to a knee while Nami and Usopp collapsed behind him. Robin and Franky each went wide-eyed before dropping to their knees and almost failing to keep their eyes open. A few seconds later, both of them managed to get back up to their feet, but they continued staring at Ben in shock.
"Whoa, Kairi," Sora put his arms behind Kairi and caught her as she stumbled back.
"Sorry," she whispered, feeling dizzy for a second but okay now. "I'm fine," she told Sora, regaining her footing and looking him in the eyes to show she meant it. He nodded, then turned back to Ben with an amazed look.
"What was that?!" Natsu shouted, staring at Ben in confusion.
Ben did not even seem to care that he just knocked out Nami and Usopp. He just glared into Killua's eyes as the older boy stayed on one knee in front of him, looking back cautiously.
Luffy stared at Ben in surprise, Conqueror's Haki?!
Ben just snarled at Killua, then snapped his head to Natsu and then Luffy on his other side. "It won't work!" he yelled at them. "Stop trying to cut off my wrist, because the idea won't work anyway!"
"What do you mean it won't work?" Killua asked, trying to keep control despite not knowing what just slammed directly into him that made him feel so weak in the knees.
"I mean it won't work!" Ben yelled at the kid, glaring him straight in the eyes. "The Omnitrix isn't just connected to my wrist or it wouldn't be able to transform my whole body into an alien weapon. It's connected to my brain too or something, it distributes DNA through my whole body! I don't know how it works, but how would cutting it off work?! Why would all the bad guys who captured me over the years not just do that if it was so easy?!"
The crew looked around at each other, then back towards Ben. "That makes sense, but..." Sora began.
"But this is the best option we have," Riku continued for his friend. He stepped forward closer to Ben himself, leaving a nervous-looking Dash behind him. "None of us want to see you dead, and you said it yourself, you don't have much time."
"Even if it did work!" Ben yelled. "Even if you did manage to get it off me without killing me! It wouldn't matter anyway!" he roared.
This time, the entire crew became silent. Even Killua, who was thinking about charging him and slicing off his wrist when he wasn't paying attention, now froze and looked up at Ben's nervous expression.
Ben stepped backwards, realizing what he just said but then bumping back into the wooden wall behind him. "Why won't it matter?" he snapped his head to the right and saw Luffy staring at him. "Why wouldn't it matter if we saved you? Because you wouldn't have your watch?"
"That's not it," Ben muttered, closing his eyes and shaking his head. Crap. I said too much.
"Ben, what are you talking about?" Riku yelled at him, making Ben turn back to his older friend. "What is going on with you?"
"It doesn't matter," Ben said, shaking his head more. "We need to find another way!"
"Why can't we just cut your arm off?!" Killua yelled at the thirteen year old who was making him nervous now.
"What do you mean it wouldn't matter-" Natsu began, but then Ben yelled out in fury and everyone became quiet again.
"RAAAA!" Ben snapped, looking around at them all and panting over and over. "It doesn't matter if you get the Omnitrix off me! We need someone to deactivate it before it explodes!"
"Why?" Nami asked him, looking over at the boy. "I know you're attached to the watch, but-"
"It has nothing to do with me!" Ben yelled at her. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "The creator, Azmuth, he was paranoid. He was so paranoid someone would get his creation, would use it for evil. He was crazy!" Ben shook his head, then snapped his eyes open and looked ahead straight into Riku's eyes. "It doesn't matter if you get the Omnitrix off, because if it self-destructs, the entire universe will be destroyed."
The group of people in front of Ben gasped. They looked horrified and he looked down to his right a little in shame.
"Why didn't you tell us this?!" Killua shouted, getting back up on both feet and marching towards Ben. He grabbed the boy by his shirt and lifted him up against the wooden wall. "Why didn't you tell us we were all going to die?!"
"I didn't think it mattered!" Ben yelled at the kid with white spiky hair who was holding him up.
"Didn't matter?!" Killua roared at him.
"Ben, why wouldn't you tell us." Riku began in disappointment. "Didn't you trust us?"
The younger kid waited a few seconds, then lifted his head up and looked over Killua's head and back to Riku. "Yes," Ben admitted, sounding sad as he said it. He looked around at the angry, disappointed looks of his friends and continued sadly. "I did trust you. I trusted everyone here. I didn't think it mattered," he whispered, then continued with water on the bottoms of his eyes, "I didn't think it mattered, because I didn't think anyone would try any harder to find the creator if you knew. I thought, telling you would have just made you all afraid. I thought everyone would try as hard as they could, even if, even if it was just me who was going to die."
Killua glared angrily up into Ben's eyes for a few more seconds, then lowered the boy down to the ground and turned away angrily. Other than him though, most of the crew were smiling at Ben now, losing their disappointed looks.
"Of course we were trying as hard as we could," Riku stated, stepping forward over to his younger friend. He knelt down in front of him since he was pretty tall and even down on one knee he was still about eye-level with Ben. "And I promise, we're going to find a way to get that watch off of you."
"Or at least turn off the SDM," Sora added from the main group.
"Juvia was mad Ben did not tell us about the universe being in peril," Juvia started, but then softened up with a smile on her face, "but Juvia is glad Ben trusts us so much that you did not think it mattered."
"I know this is sweet and all," Killua began, getting angry at all the people around him who were turning into saps. "But do I need to remind you that the clock is ticking and Ben is a literal universal time-bomb?"
"You don't need to remind us," Rin muttered at the younger boy next to him. He looked over at Ben nervously, then down at his watch which made his eyes double in size. "Uhh, Ben," he mumbled, making everyone there look at him, then followed his gaze over to the watch on Ben's wrist that had another bar of orange blinking even closer to the middle of the watch than before, making orange cover more than half of it and green have a very small amount of space.
"Uh oh," Ben muttered, then turned towards Natsu and ran at his friend. The pink haired Dragon Slayer moved out of the way as Ben ran straight towards the side of the ship and jumped right off. He started falling towards the water, but then used his flying ability to keep himself up and shot twenty, thirty feet away from the ship. He only made it around thirty five feet before the orange glow surrounded his watch in a small glowing sphere.
Some of Ben's friends were about to chase after him as it looked like he was running away, but now they understood why it was he was leaving. The orange glow that surrounded his watch turned into an orange sphere of translucent light that covered his entire body, then stretched further to cover a fifty foot diameter sphere of energy that finally pulsed out in an explosion that rocked the Thousand Sunny. The entire crew were thrown to the port side of the ship as Ben exploded on the starboard, and as they stood back up they watched a smoking Ben fall out of the sky with his eyes closed.
"Ben!" Natsu and Luffy yelled simultaneously. Both of them were about to go try to get him, but a flash flew by them quicker and suddenly Son Goku was hovering in the air with Ben in his arms.
The Saiyan warrior floated back over to the ship with a motionless Ben in his arms, only a small bit of green left on the center of his watch. Goku lowered Ben down to the middle of the deck and the rest of the crew ran over as the boy was collapsed in the middle of them.
Usopp and Nami were getting back up on their feet after having collapsed from Ben's earlier burst of energy, but as they got up they both panicked at the sight of a motionless Ben in the middle of the deck. Nami pushed people out of the way to get closer and she held up a hand to her mouth as she stared at Ben's body, with cuts on his arms, legs, and face, and blood coming out quickly. "Is he," she whispered.
"He's fine," Goku stated, a smile on the Saiyan's face. A few seconds after he said it, Ben's eyes fluttered open and he pushed an arm down on the ground below him, pushing himself back up to his butt and then getting up on his feet. He shook out his arms and legs and wiped his face of some blood.
Ben looked around at the scared people all around him, and he muttered in a low voice, "I don't know what we can do. My only hope is that Azmuth knows his watch is about to explode, and that he is not so cynical on this world that he thinks it's better off exploding."
"And what are the chances of that?" Robin asked the young boy standing in the middle of them.
"Well..." Ben began, then looked down at the floor. "Not good. I'd say less than fifty percent chance. He would have had to been teleported to Nexus, survived this long, created technology to tell if his Omnitrix was acting funky, and the most unbelievable of them all, still believe this world has a fighting chance."
"So what can we do?" Killua asked, looking back with a dejected expression on his face.
"We do all we can," someone spoke in a positive voice and they all looked over to see Sora putting his hands behind his head. "We hope."
"Hope?" Killua deadpanned, looking at Sora to see if he was being serious.
"Yep," Sora replied. "Hope."
Miles away from Ben and his friends, two women with long silver hair were walking down the hallway of a castle towards the throne room. A man walked ten feet behind them without saying a word to the two of them. Both women were wearing long cloaks, though Dreamcaster's cloak was more purple than her cousin Charmaster's pink one. The witches walked down the hall and turned left into the throne room when they reached it. Sitting on his chair in a full suit of armor with a helmet that had a glowing red line on the center of it like a visor was the Forever King.
"My liege," Charmcaster greeted as soon as she walked into the room and bowed to the man. Dreamcaster was much less formal and strolled straight into the room all the way up to the most powerful man on the island. Charmcaster glared ahead at her sister, but Dreamcaster walked straight to the Forever King and only stopped when she was standing on the right side of his throne so she was right next to him.
Charmcaster growled at her sister, then jumped in surprise as the envoy walking behind her suddenly appeared on her right side. She stood up fully and stepped away from the man in an all brown cloak. Dreamcaster stopped whispering to the Forever King and he turned his gaze down to the floor and the man there, "I hear the Emperor has sent you personally to our island for, a checkup?" The Forever King sounded accusatory, but the figure in front of him did not flinch.
The man dropped the brown hood over his head and he turned out to have a green skull underneath with spikes sticking out all over it. "The Emperor expects results from his Lords." The Sith Lord rose up his right hand and pointed it towards the Forever King, "Do not forget who you work-"
The Forever King suddenly shot off his throne. He was in the middle of the room in a second with his right armored fist wrapped around the Sith's neck. The Sith barely saw him approach he moved so fast and the alien was choking and reaching for his throat in pain. "You can give this message to the Emperor," the Forever King began, and Charmcaster gasped while Dreamcaster just grinned. The younger of the two sisters was worried that they were going to anger the Emperor, but their Lord no longer seemed worried about that. The Forever King clenched harder with his hand and the Sith tried using the Force against him, but he was not moved an inch. "I no longer take orders," the Forever King growled.
He threw the Sith down at the ground and the man bounced out of the throne room and into the wall out in the hallway. He held up his right arm and flexed, and the armor over his bicep cracked and shattered so his huge muscles could show through. "Look at this. One dose of synthetic Saiyan blood in my system has already made me more powerful than you can imagine," he bragged as the Sith got up to his feet and stared inside the throne room in rage. "Now begone," the King demanded. "The Forever Knights no longer take orders from your Emperor."
Savage Opress, the Sith in the door, rose his arm again, but even a full blast of his Force did not move the Forever King an inch. He snarled and spat towards the Forever King, then spun and marched the other way out the door and down the hall. In a deep voice he grumbled under his breath, "The insolence of this man- this fool! I will have his castle crushed into dust!" He turned the corner and came to a complete stop. Standing there in front of him in the next hallway was another cloaked figure, only this figure's cloak was black and the hood was down to reveal his light-skinned face and his long black dreadlocks. "The Forever King has stopped taking orders," the Sith began.
"Has he now?" the dark man spoke, and his voice gave even the alien Sith Lord shivers. The man turned around and said, "It will be the fool's own fault when he reaches his demise soon." The dark figure kept walking and the air around him started to darken, "Return to the Emperor," the man with long black hair styled in dreadlocks commanded. "Report what you have learned. I will do the same with my own Lord." As he finished saying it, a dark portal rose out of the ground in front of Opress. The green-skinned alien behind him marched forward with a furious expression on his face, and he stepped into the other emissary's portal who closed it behind him.
Back in the throne room, Charmcaster nervously looked to the leader of their organization. She opened her mouth, but shut it fast as her sister darted a glare her way. Dreamcaster smirked at her sister's silence, then turned to the Forever King herself. "My liege," she began, keeping her tone respectful but also on a somewhat even tone as she walked towards him. "Are you sure that was the best move? Considering we cannot mass-produce the Saiyan blood-"
The Forever King swung an arm out and smacked Dreamcaster across the face. Charmcaster's eyes widened as her sister spun around and hit the floor with blood dripping down her lips, and the older sister on the floor stared at the ground with wide eyes as she was not expecting that smack in the slightest. She lifted her gaze and looked a lot more afraid as she stared at their Lord now. The Forever King just walked forward without mentioning what just happened and spoke calmly, "Even with the doses we have already administered, we have become like Gods."
He walked towards a huge window in his room that opened up onto a balcony. The witch sisters behind him glanced at each other and then started following the King out onto the balcony. "Saiyans are one of the strongest races on this world," the Forever King began as he got on the balcony and stepped to the railing at the edge. "Soon, our scientists will complete work on the synthetic blood, and my entire army will be more powerful than you can imagine. The Emperor will try to stop us, but he will fail. I will become the High Lord of this region! Then…" He chuckled to himself and clenched the balcony's railing. "Well, I will see when the time comes what is next."
The Forever King grinned inside his black helmet and behind the red visor his dark eyes narrowed down at the huge open area in the plaza in front of his castle. Most of the time that area would be cleared out, but in that very moment there were hundreds of people down there. They stood in lines of ten going back eight rows deep, wearing suits of armor and holding spears with glowing edges and holes at the ends of them. In front of each block of eighty soldiers was a single commander, ten of them in total, each with their own army, each given a dose of the Saiyan blood they weaponized. At the front of all of those commanders, stood one figure in red armor with a jetpack on his back and katana hilts sticking over each shoulder. The Forever King lifted up his right hand, and the figure in red armor got down on a knee, the commanders followed suit, and close to a thousand people knelt down before him.
Charmcaster gulped from behind their leader on his left side. She glanced at her sister and saw Dreamcaster glaring daggers into their Lord's back. Her own eyes opened wide at that crazed look on Dreamcaster's face that she had not seen in a long time. Despite that look though, Charmcaster looked back forward and thought, Not this time sister. Hold back your rage. This is not a man you can beat, even with your magic. Not anymore.
Beep beep beep beep, beep-beep beep-beep beep-beep…
A tall woman with green skin and tentacles on the bottom of her face instead of a chin groaned in her chair. She leaned back and turned her head to the right to look across the room at a different chair where another alien, much smaller than herself, was working. "The beeping's getting closer together," she called over.
"I can hear that Myaxx," the tiny gray creature snapped over at the woman with green skin who was wearing red armor over her torso, shoulders, forearms, and upper legs. He lowered the wrench he was using and kept staring with the bulging green eyes sticking out of his head at the contraption in front of him. "Now, pass me the electron divider. I have almost finished…"
"What's the point?" the muscular woman muttered. She leaned back on her chair and put her hands behind her head. The smaller creature only a few inches tall glared back at her but Myaxx just stared up at the ceiling annoyedly. "If you're just going to let the universe blow up, why should we even bother finishing the particle dismantler?" She leaned back up in her seat and turned fully around to the tiny creature with a wrinkled face and long gray whiskers hanging off of it. "How much time is even left?"
"It doesn't matter," the tiny alien muttered. He turned his back to her and looked back down at his newest invention.
"Azmuth," Myaxx snapped. He did not respond and she groaned. "Alright, I'll hand you the electron divider if you tell me," She bargained.
The small intelligent creature hummed and then lifted his head up to stare at the ceiling of their dimly lit workshop. "The rate of the beeping tells me there are now only twenty-four hours until the Omnitrix's imminent destruction."
"'Imminent,' yeah right," Myaxx scoffed. The smaller creature spun and opened his mouth, but stumbled back as the electron divider came flying his way. It hit the desk behind him and knocked into the particle dismantler. As he yelled at his assistant and ran over to the tools, Myaxx stood up behind him. "You're really fine with letting things end like this? You're dooming us all!"
"I'm saving us all," Azmuth snapped, throwing down his inventions and glaring at the woman behind him. "Whoever got their hands on the Omnitrix is using it the same way everyone on this god-forsaken world use their powers. They're all the same."
"You don't know that," Myaxx muttered his way. The smaller creature narrowed its eyes at her but she continued anyway, "He could still have it you know?"
"The chances that that boy survived on this world this long are minuscule. He likely died within days of arriving," Azmuth stated. "And even if it is somehow in his possession," the gray creature continued, waving a hand as if the possibility were at least partly viable. "He does not have the power to make the change this world desperately needs. It would be better for the watch to go off and just reset everything."
"Ben would beg to differ," Myaxx said.
"If he was still alive that is," Azmuth corrected. He looked back at his inventions, Who has had control over my greatest invention all this time? Someone like Vilgax? Even worse? The tiny alien sighed and rubbed his forehead. His assistant was quiet again, but the incessant beeping coming from a machine across the room from him filled his mind. He turned his head a little and looked back over at the red light blinking over and over and over again accompanied by that high-pitched sound.
Azmuth picked up his electron divider and got to work installing it into his new invention, but as he worked his mind was elsewhere. Who cares if this place gets blown up? It's not like we're even in the same universe anymore anyway! Wonder if the explosion will be able to break that barrier… The Galvan slowed down working and he wound up staring at his own hands. "At first, all I cared about was that I wouldn't be able to go hero anymore. That I'd be stuck with just being me. Sometimes you have to see the good in people, and not just be a selfish jerk!" Azmuth closed his eyes and sighed, Is this world really worth saving?
A/N Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed! This will be the last update for a little while as I have yet to finish Chapter 20/ HWR Chapter 3. Only one of the other parts in this chapter are finished yet, and it is not the next part, so it's going to take a bit of time. I am going to spend a lot of time today working on the chapter, but I have some work due Friday and if I don't get one in by then, then hopefully this weekend. Anyway, Ben's watch countdown is in its final twenty four hours, Azmuth can't decide whether the world should be saved, and the Forever King amasses his forces with newfound strength! Leave a review telling me what you thought, questions for the upcoming chapter, predictions or comments! 'Till next time!