Chapter 17: The Last Laugh: Part 2

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 17!

* So, it has been three and a half months since the last post, which probably isn't nearly as bad as the first hiatus from earlier this year. If anyone wants to know, I started working more hours at work (which was not my choice, it just kinda happened), I had some mental health issues and most recently, I got sick with Pneumonia in my right lung. I'm a little better now and am trying to write consistently now again. As I've said many times by this point, I apologize for leaving you guys hanging, I can only hope to do better in the future.

* This chapter will have a couple differences from the original episode. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter. Without further ado, let's get into it!

Ben

Friday, April 13th, 2018

Zombozo's Travelling Carnival and Circus

I was flabbergasted. The carnival and circus that we had just left had vanished without a trace. I looked far ahead of me to the lot outside the former carnival and circus that had been reserved for parking. All of the cars that had been here when we pulled in were still here, so that meant the attraction must have really been here. As I looked into the parking area, I noticed two people who seemed to be tampering with one of the cars.

Uh-oh, I thought. Someone trying to steal from the cars while the customers are distracted?

I got down low to the ground and began sneaking my way closer to the parking area. As I got closer to the two people, I realized two things. One, they were breaking into the cars, one at a time. And two, these were some of the weirdest people that I had ever seen. One of them was female who appeared to have five reddish colored tentacles attached to her head, all of which seemed to end with an eight ball like structure on the ends.

She also had pale skin and was wearing a jet black jumpsuit that had four orange stripes on each sleeve, also leaving her shoulders exposed. The other person also had pale skin, wore a similarly styled jumpsuit, but also had an extremely unhygienic appearance with only two clumps of greasy, decaying black hair sprouting from above the forehead. There also appeared to be some kind of contraption strapped to his face.

Huh, I wonder why those jumpsuits look so familiar?

Now that I was closer, I could begin to hear what the two of them were saying. Well, more accurately, what one of them was saying.

"Check it out!" the female said. "This car had a wallet full of debit and credit cards, as well as over a hundred in cash!"

All I heard from the male was a grunting sound and they continued ransacking the car. I had to put a stop to this thievery before it got out of hand. So, I dialed up the alien watch and got ready to transform. Usually my go to alien form would be Diamondhead, but I thought about mixing up this time. So, I decided to pick Fourarms instead. I pressed down on the top cylinder and transformed, causing the two criminals to turn around.

"Am I interrupting something?" I asked in a booming tone.

"Who the hell are you?" the woman asked.

"I'm more interested in the fact that you're robbing the carnival and circus's customers."

She sneered at me.

"Trust me, they won't need any of their belongings where they're going."

Where they're going? What is that supposed to mean?

Before I could answer, the lady reached over to her cohort and pulled off the object from his face, which I now realized was a muzzle.

"Acid Breath, let's take care of this would be hero so we can get back to profiting."

The man called "Acid Breath" nodded.

"Mmm." He spoke in a long and drawn out hoarse voice. "Profiting."

"What kind of name is 'Acid Breath'? Who are you people?!"

"Wouldn't you like to know!"

The man then stretched his mouth open wider than I knew possible and out came some foul smelling fumes. He tried to get closer to catch me in a cloud of the stuff, but one whiff was all I needed to know to get away. I backed up as I put one of my hands over my nose.

"P.U! Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?!"

Acid Breath gave me a sinister grin.

"Who do you think taught me in the first place?"

As he was busy taunting me, the lady's tentacles that were attached to her head began spinning around her, as if they had a mind of their own.

How are they doing that? Is she controlling them with her mind?

I'm guessing that she was controlling them because one of them tried to hit me, but I was able to get out of the way before it touched me. I was also busy thinking about how I was going to contain these two. I was pretty sure that if I stuffed something into Acid Breath's mouth to keep him from using his ability then I'd be able to incapacitate the woman and use her tentacles to tie them to each other. The only issue was being able to get close enough to Acid Breath to cut off his breath and assuming that the woman didn't try to hit me again. Which she was already spinning up her tentacles again for another go. I jumped back out of the way again.

She's not letting me get close to her, I thought. I have to rush in when I see an opening and—

As I was in thought, I was suddenly struck in the back of the head with a heavy object.

"Ugh!" I let out a grunt of pain as I fell over forwards.

"Well, well, well." A familiar masculine voice said in a deep tone from behind me. "If it isn't Bellwood's resident Alien Guy!"

No, that voice…

I rolled myself over and peered up at the person standing over me, my vision still blurry from being hit in the back of the head so hard. Even with Fourarms' four eyes, my vision was blurred and the sight in front of me was not clear. But it didn't take long to clear up and when it did, even though the voice had already given him away, my sight confirmed it. I was staring up at Thumbskull.

"Thumbskull?" I grunted in confusion. "But I sent you back to jail right before Christmas!"

He just grinned down at me.

"I broke out. And I finally shacked up with a couple like-minded individuals like I said I would."

"Oh, yeah? A guy with bad breath issues called Acid Breath and Bad Hair Day? What a pick, pal!"

"That's Frightwig to you!" the lady exclaimed.

"Frightwig? Really? That's not much better, you know!"

She let out a growl of fury as the tentacles on her head began spinning around her.

"I'm gonna squash you for that!"

"I'd love to see you try!"

I leaped into the air and flipped over Frightwig, landing right behind her. Acid Breath was waiting for me with an opening but I was ready for him. He opened his mouth to spray his bad breath right as I was picking up a large stone from the ground.

"Here, hold this!" I exclaimed as I shoved it into his mouth.

I then kicked him backwards causing him to fall over onto the ground. I turned around to see that Frightwig was still spinning up her tentacles. I grabbed one of them from the air before she could hit me and I tossed her toward Thumbskull, whom she hit and sent both of them tumbling to the ground.

"Hey, watch it, you big lug!"

"You watch it, you wench!"

As the two insulted each other, that's when I got the idea. If I could get the two of them to collide with each other, they might get angry with each other again and they may fight each other for me. I waited for my moment. Eventually the two freaks began to circle me, with Thumbskull in front of me and the woman called Frightwig behind me. I had a hunch I knew what they would try to do. Frightwig was going to use her tentacles to subdue me and that would prompt Thumbskull to start beating on me.

Except, I wasn't going to give them that opportunity. Right when I heard Frightwig's tentacles begin to move again, I leapt into the air and not a moment too soon, as they reached right for where I had just been standing. And just as I predicted, Thumbskull charged right in Frightwig's direction as her tentacles moved. By this time, it was too late for Frightwig to move just as it was for Thumbskull to change directions. He slammed right into her, sending both of them to the ground.

"God damn it, you bitch! What did I tell you?!"

"Don't call me a 'bitch'! You're the one who didn't stop charging when he moved!"

Thumbskull pushed himself up as he got angrier.

"You keep barking orders and calling us names like you run things, but we all know that I'm the one thing keeping this group together!"

Frightwig laughed as he said that.

"You really think that you're the leader here? If being intelligent was an Olympic sport, you wouldn't even qualify for a bronze medal!"

"I know that I don't like being insulted by the likes of you!"

He then without warning threw a punch, knocking her to the ground as she wasn't ready and all.

"O—ho—ho! You did not just do that!"

"I did! And I'm tired of taking orders from you! It's high time that a real man takes the reigns!"

"Boy, you've earned yourself a killing and I'm going to enjoy it now! Prepare yourself, it'll be the last thing you ever do!"

My plan had worked, I had goaded them into fighting each other. Thumbskull was a brute who's only plan ever was to just hit someone until they came down, but that didn't work all that well when his opponent was someone fast like Frightwig. He threw a few punches sure, but now that she was alert, she dodged all of them. It only took a few hits to the face from her tentacles to send Thumbskull to the ground, where he didn't move anymore after the fact. Frightwig probably would have followed through and done him in here and now, but I wasn't going to allow that. As she readied her tentacles to strangle him, I rushed in and grabbed her with two of my hands.

"What the-?! What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

"Well, my thinking is that now you've taken care of him, I can properly detain you and make sure you lot all get apprehended."

She struggled against me as I used my other two hands to grab the tentacles that protruded from the top of her head.

"Wait, did you plan for this to happen?!"

"Well, no, not initially. But you two were so hostile to each other that how could I not? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that two of your enemies who are already in disagreement will take care of each other if goaded into fighting."

"You spineless bastard. You call yourself a hero, but you're nothing but a coward!"

I snorted.

"I'm no coward. I'm just smarter than the three of you. Smart enough to see an opportunity to end a fight quickly, anyway."

She continued screaming at me, but I just tuned her out. I wrapped her up in one of her tentacles and left her writhing on the ground. I walked over to where I had left Acid Breath on the ground and grabbed him by the back of his suit. I dragged him over to Frightwig and used another one of her tentacles to wrap him up as well. By this point he had spit out the stone I had shoved into his mouth and was now looking at Frightwig's tentacles with a tempted look on his face. Before he could even open his mouth to use his breath to get free, she cut him off.

"Don't you even think about it, breath boy!" she exclaimed in an angry voice.

Acid Breath rolled his eyes but kept his mouth shut. I then walked over to Thumbskull and dragged him over to the other two and repeated the process of wrapping him up in Frightwig's tentacles, this time multiple of them due to how much bigger than them he was.

"You bastard." He muttered in a weak voice.

I bent down to look at him on his level.

"Don't feel bad, Thumbskull. It's not your fault."

"It's not?"

I chuckled as I stood back up.

"Of course not. Next time you want to join a team, make sure that all the members can actually work well with one another."

"Ugh, just wait until I get my hands on you. I swear I'll—"

"But you won't. I'll make sure that all of you get apprehended. You're going right back to jail. Now, if you'll excuse me."

I walked away from them and when I turned back around, I was shocked with what I saw. The Big Top tent, which I had left no less than ten minutes or so ago, was gone. I could see something in the distance where the tent had once stood, but it was completely gone. I just blinked with bewilderment.

I was just there! How could the Big Top just be gone?!

The hourglass symbol began to flash red and I made sure to get out of sight so that anyone around wouldn't see me. This was the exact reason that I needed a costume. Once I reverted back to my human form, I approached the area where the Big Top had once stood. I now realized the objects I saw were the bleachers that the audience had been sitting. But almost the entire audience was gone. There were a few stragglers here and there, but almost everyone had just vanished. And what really worried me was that Gwen was one of them.

Where had everyone gone? Where had SHE gone?

The show had long since ended. Empty candy bags and popcorn buckets littered the ground. A couple of circus flyers rolled across the ground like tumbleweeds in an old west ghost town. A few of the remaining people slowly milled about the area as if they were in a daze, but most of them remained sat on the bleachers. Almost all of them were laughing a little but the laughter was off. It sounded dry, void of any tangible emotion. I walked up to one of the people still sitting in the bleachers.

"Hey." I greeted them.

They didn't even acknowledge me, they just kept laughing as if I wasn't standing in front of them.

"Hey!" I spoke a little louder.

He finally looked at me, but he also seemed to be staring past me, as if he wasn't grasping the reality of the situation.

"Oh, hey. What's up?" he spoke in a monotone voice.

"What happened here? Where'd the circus go?"

"Um, I'm really not sure. I don't really—"

He looked around the area as if it were just now clicking with him.

"I just remember laughing. It was soooo funny. Did you miss it?"

What is he talking about? Isn't he a little bit concerned?

"Um, are you okay?"

"Yeah. I just feel a little down, I guess."

"And yet, you're smiling?"

He didn't say anything else after that. So, I turned away and looked around the area once more.

Why are there so many people missing? Did Zombozo the Clown have something to do with their disappearance? It doesn't really make sense, but I got nothing else. Maybe if I go back to where Zombozo's private tent was at, I may find a hint? I highly doubt I'll find anything significant, but I have to start somewhere.

I left the area of the former Big Top and retracted my steps to where I remembered Zombozo's private tent to be at. Of course it wasn't there anymore once I got there, but I did actually find something. There were more scattered circus flyers, an empty box with a mailing address on it and a sheet of paper that looked important. The mailing address had been covered by black ink, but the label had a few words scribbled onto it, which said: "Parts for Psyclown".

What on earth is a Psyclown? I guess if I find Zombozo I'll find out.

I now looked at the piece of paper. It was a lease for a property that had been rented somewhat recently. It was an address of five digits on a street that was here, in Bellwood. It seemed pretty obvious that Zombozo would be there. And if he was there, the rest of the people that were here had to be there, too. And even if they weren't, I'd just force Zombozo to tell me what he had done with them.

Author's Note:

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

* I wanted to try something a little different with this chapter. Obviously, you'll never find a mailing address or a lease in The Last Laugh episode of the original series. As I said before, I wanted to differentiate my version of The Last Laugh from the canon version. It may be a really basic change, but it's what I came up with. Hope you liked it.

* That's going to do it for me. Thanks for reading, have a fantastic day and bye.

Next Chapter: Ben tracks down Zombozo and his hostages to a big warehouse in Bellwood. After the confrontation cools down, he's forced to tell Gwen the truth about his clown phobia.