#rolaplayart

[rolaplayor101]

Prime 9

A Tennyson is born 12/27

Prime chapter 9 under the cut (long chapter, violence, major omniverse spoilers, it totally didn’t take me 5 years to finish this) thanks to @dragonidpyrus12 for beta-ing!

Ben 10,000 is on the couch, freshly showered and bandaged up, by Rex, specifically, so that he's no longer bloodied. The way he stared at Rex was peculiar, like he was trying to calculate something. When he was done, his expression melted into nostalgia, and it kinda made Ben Prime uncomfortable. 

He was drinking hot chocolate(because neither Rex nor Ben drank coffee), sitting with his legs crossed and one arm over the back of the couch like he owned the place.

Ben, with his arms crossed and his hood down, revealing brown hair growing at the roots, which he was originally planning to dye black again that day, until 10,000 blew his secret, stood in front of his future self. His eyes were green again, having taken the irritating blue contacts out. 16 and Argit were the only ones surprised by the reveal, screaming, “Ben?” and “I knew there was another Ben!” before quickly turning to Rex, who held his hands up in surrender. 

16 was sitting on the armchair adjacent to the couch, pouting, while 05, 12, and Argit stood beside him, ready to listen to whatever 10,000 had to say.

“It’s Eon,” 10,000 sits his mug in his lap. “But I’m sure you already knew that.”

“Is he here?” Rex asks, walking up beside Ben and mirroring his pose. 

10,000 has lines under his eyes as he meets Rex's, his lips set in a tight line. “I thought you would know. You haven't seen him?”

Ben shakes his head. “What does your watch say?”

He looks down at his wrist and taps it a few times, then shakes his head. 

12 stands up abruptly. “Your Omnitrix works?”

“Yeah, yours doesn't?” 10,000 throws his head back in exasperation. “Ok, catch me up. Ben, Prime, Ben Prime, whatever, where's your Omnitrix?”

“I can't believe you didn't tell me you were me,” 16 mumbles under his breath as he sinks further into the armchair. 

Ben pretends he didn't hear him. “In a box in my room. Haven't worn it in weeks. Traded it for Ascalon.”

“The Sword of Ascalon? Why would you do that?”

Ben is opening his mouth to explain when he gets the feeling that it wouldn't matter anyway. He closes his mouth and shakes his head. “Doesn't matter. I'll go get it.”

When he comes back, Omnitrix in hand, he catches 10,000 up on everything that's happened the last few months. During the process, they both tell 12 and 05 all about his history with Eon. 

10,000 has a contemplative look on his face, frowning with a hand under his chin and nodding. “And you haven't seen Eon at all?”

“Only his lackeys,” Rex answers. 

With the watch now attached to his wrist. Ben pokes at it. “What makes you think he's the one doing this and not anyone else? Maltruant, or even Vilgax?” He spares a glance to Rex, who meets his eyes before returning back to 10,000. “We haven't seen any version of Vilgax at all here.”

“That's worrisome, but unlikely. He couldn't have done all this by himself.” Ben 10,000 hunches over his knees. 

“You think he's working with them?” Still tapping.

He sighs. “I don't know what to think. You got any leads on where Eon might be?”

Realization sparks on Rex's face. “There is one place.”

Ben sighs and drops his arm to his side. “My Omnitrix isn't working anymore, either.”

The forest is even more foggy this time around. The sky is darker, and the moss under their feet is so soft they sink in a bit with every step. It starts to sprinkle as they make their way in the direction of the cave. Whatever warmth is in the air seems to be sucked away the closer they get to their destination. 

“Can you remember anything from before you got here?” Ben asks 10,000. 

“Just bits and pieces. I remember it being night, and we were fighting someone.”

“We?” Ben interrupts.

“It was me, and some other people. I can't remember who they were, but I'm assuming it was other Bens.” He looks up at the sky as light specks of water hit his face. “I remembered the bomb as soon as you said it's name. I'm wondering what else I forgot.”

One of the Ben's speaks up, “I still remember what happened before I got here.”

Ben, 10,000, and Rex stop and turn to the four kids walking behind them. Argit, 05, and 16 are staring at 12. “I was in the Rustbucket with Grandpa Max and Gwen, when Kevin came out of nowhere and attacked us. It became really foggy and all of a sudden I was in these woods, staring myself in the face.”

He locks eyes with 05, and then with Argit, who tries to turn in on himself. 

“I'd gone to sleep in the Rustbucket that night after arguing with Gwen about the latest Sumo Slammers game,” 05 explains. “I woke up on the ground. Argit, wasn't the first thing you said to us something about Kevin?”

Argit seems to turn in on himself even more. He doesn't answer. Ben knows that Argit was one of Kevin's friends from the past, and he knows what happened to the both of them in the Null Void. Argit probably didn't want to talk about it, or furthermore, he was probably scared out of his mind to tell Ben, the Coming Storm, that he was working with the “bad guys”(though in his mind, they're the good guys). 12 was probably talking about Kevin's attempt to kill him after the Rooter's testing, in which Kevin got away but Argit got caught. But the catching hasn't happened yet. 

Ben eyes Rex in a change the subject kind of way. Rex nods and turns back around. “Come on, it's this way.”

---

“That's...weird,” Young Rex screws up his face at the sight. Ben 10,000 glares into the entrance of the cave, ignoring the glow's burn. 

Of course, he thinks.

The entrance of the cave has a bright white light streaming out of it, the fog crowding around it as if there were a barrier keeping it from coming forward. Its large mouth is almost perfectly round. Ben got the feeling it was inviting them in. 

His nineteen year old self takes a step closer. “Uh, so I'm guessing it didn't look like that before?”

“More like it had an extreme makeover!” Rex laughs awkwardly. He sounds exactly the same as his older self, Ben notices. And he's wearing pride flags on his pants. Ben stops himself from smiling a second too late.Typical. 

Ben is more confused about this Rex being here than Argit. Argit was near one of the (way) younger Ben's when he was transported here, but if that was all it was, then why wouldn't Gwen, who usually slept below Ben in the Rustbucket, be transported with the other Ben? Unless she wasn't near him when it happened, or he was kidnapped by Eon? Or maybe he lied… There are so many possibilities. 

If the second oldest Ben is 19, and he got transported at the same time as Ben 10,000, then where would Rex come into this? But who's to say he got transported at the same time? Who's to say this Ben is the real Ben Prime?

“Wait, where's 16?” Rex's sudden exclamation draws Ben out of his thoughts. 

They all turn around to face the one, two, three…

Prime inhales sharply as the youngest Ben's and Argit look around themselves, as if 16, Ben thinks that's the pouty one, is hiding behind them. Rex looks at Prime with wide eyes, before getting back to business. 

“Where'd he go?” One of the Ben's ask. 

“We have to find him,” Rex starts backward. 

Ben's eyes are on the cave. 

Prime notices him not moving back towards the treeline like everyone else. “You go on ahead. We'll catch up.”

“Only a Ben can go through anyway.” Rex run-hops hurriedly behind the young Ben's before fully turning around and running to go find 16. Prime follows soon after, giving him one last look. 

Ben 10,000 doesn't wait until they are out of sight to walk into the cave. There’s no barrier like he expected there to be, but the light dims considerably. It’s instead replaced with a yellow light like that of a lamp, but its source is coming from out of nowhere, on account of the fact that there aren’t any fires, nor light bulbs. The ground under him is smooth and not as dusty as he'd thought it’d be. There are no stalactites either, and the cave opens up into a tunnel that seems to go on for miles before ending in a white circle in the distance. 

He begins walking. 

And he walks. And he walks. And he walks. 

But he gets no closer. 

---

Ben is running through the forest, but this time he's not looking for Gwen or Grandpa Max. He draws his lower lip between his teeth as unnecessary tears start to gather in his eyes. He wipes them before they can spill, continuing to run as far as he can from the liars and traitors that he had reluctantly called his friends. 

He just felt sorry for the other Bens his age. They were stuck with them. 

 Of course they were lying to him the whole time. Of course they had no idea what they were doing. Prime was him for Pete’s sake! Ben didn’t even know what he was doing! Where was he going now, when this was the closest he had ever gotten to getting back home?

 But Prime and Rex lied to his face, without remorse, without reason. Why? Just for fun? Just to trick him? Just to see how long they could go for? And now they were up against someone they hadn’t even known until now was involved andthe universe was at stake, probably. 

 Life sucks. 

Ben slows to a stop. He wipes his face one more time despite nothing being there, and sighs. It’s stupid, he knows that, and now he sorta just wants to go back. He hadn’t planned on going too far— just far enough away to think and be alone until he was found again. They always seemed to find him. It’s not like this place was ever big enough to hide from them for long anyway. But looking around, he has no idea where he is. What was it the eleven year old Ben said? Stockholm Syndrome? Maybe this was a sign. 

He keeps walking. 

And he walks. And he walks. And he walks. 

He's confused to find himself on the main road only minutes later. It would have taken him more than a few minutes to make it to the main road from where he was. And not only that, but he was sure the city wasn't even in the direction he had been going. So what was going on?

He took a step out of the field of trees and looked from left to right. Nothing, as always. A cold washes over his shoulders. But even more Nothing than usual. 

It seems...emptier, somehow. Less cars, maybe? The lack of the occasional breeze makes it more quiet than it was before, perhaps? 

No one's lights are on in their townhouses. Not that there were many lights on usually anyway, but today there aren't any at all. It's not drizzling here like it was in the forest. Ben finds the grocery store, but even the zombie man inside is gone. 

“Where is everyone?” He asks aloud. 

Deja vu. 

He's right where he started. 

Huh. 

The wind picks up around him, and Ben's heart thumps sharply in his chest as, for a second, he thinks a villain is somewhere close. He turns around in the direction of the burst of wind and his green eyes widen comically as a large white portal opens wider and wider in the air a few meters before him. The light is so bright it hurts his eyes, and his legs move before his brain can think. 

He hides in the alleyway beside the grocery store and peaks around the corner as something mechanical begins to lower out of the portal, held by cables. It's oval-shaped and golden, surrounded by a white light that slowly turns blue as it hits the ground. Instantly Ben knows what it is. 

People drop out of the portal and land smoothly on the ground. Eon's servants. They wave down the Chronosapien time bomb and help settle it down safely on the road. 

Not good. He looks down at his Omnitrix, then furrows his eyebrows. It's glowing green, just as it has been the entire time he's been here. His and 10,000 are the only ones that work out of all the Ben's, strangely enough. Just as he's about to slam down on the face of the watch, a hand covers his mouth. 

He screams, but it's muffled by the cold palm over his lips, and he's pulled back further into the alleyway, behind a dumpster. The hand moves away, rancid breath hits his face, and he gags. “Agh, dude, what the heck!”

The face before him is a familiar one, but looking at him now, almond-eyed and alert, he almost looks unrecognizable. One of his eyes is in a permanent squint while the other is wide and purple. The times that Ben had seen him, his eyes were so low he could be sleeping with the way they were barely open. 

Standing in front of him was the grocery store clerk. 

The store clerk shushes him and points behind him, past the dumpster and into the alleyway opening. The sound of someone talking echoes in the air and gets closer until Ben sees a hooded figure and a boy in robes pass by, heading towards the circle of light in the sky. They get closer and listen in. 

“See, everything's going to plan! We have the Chrono-whatzit in our grasps, no one is around to stop us, and finally we can get rid of that guy that's been terrorizing you this whole time!”

Ben notices immediately that the voice sounds exactly like Prime. Peaking around the corner, they see someone in all black talking enthusiastically with a boy in long black robes and bouncy dark purple, almost black, hair that curls up at the end in a mullet. They can only see the backs of the two boy's heads as they stop a few steps in front of the bomb. The one in all black, with some green mixed into his jacket, has his hood up so that they can't see his face from where they're standing. 

“Who is that?” Ben faces the store clerk. “Who are you?“

“That,” He points to the boy in the black and green hoodie. “Is Nega Ben. That,” he points to the one beside Nega Ben. “Is Eon.” 

Ben's eyes widen at the name, but the man isn't done. “I,” He points his thumb into his own chest. “am Benzarro. And we need to find the others as soon as possible.”

---

 Argit’s lost. Somehow he’d gotten separated from the very many Coming Storm’s when he’d turned his back, and now he was flinching at every crushed twig. He held his hands tightly to his chest, his tail standing up on edge behind him. His ears twitched at every little sound: too strong a breeze, leaves crushing under the weight of feet, branches shuffling with the wind. 

Seconds pass before he realizes it’s not his feet crushing leaves. He stops, black eyes wide and terrified, head turning side to side, looking for even a hint of someone. There weren’t any animals in these woods, so what was moving?

The Bens must’ve moved far from here already; one had thought he’d seen foot tracks and ran off in one direction, the one that called himself Prime followed him with Rex, and the other Ben that had been left with Argit, with wide blank green eyes, had disappeared behind a tree when Argit looked the other way. 

Maybe it was that one who he was sensing. His footsteps were pretty heavy. 

Argit froze, slowly turning his head to face his right, shrinking into himself but not rolling into a ball as the movement would create enough noise to give him even more away. He’s never been more scared in his life than he is right now, and that’s saying something—

And there’s nothing quite scary about the view before him, at first glance. Just a girl in purple dressings, stalking forward, suddenly appearing from a tree that had mistakenly hidden her. No. It is the look on her face, the darkness in her eyes, that makes Argit empty his bladder. 

---

Ben 10,000 has no idea how much time has passed. He could have run for thirty minutes or for an hour, even while in his XLR8 form. When he turns back into his human form, his hollow steps echo through the tunnel, bouncing back against the stoneslick walls. Despite the unnerving quiet and eerie atmosphere, he feels safe here. The white is getting closer, lighting his path like the stairway to Heaven. His breathing evens out, his shoulders drop as he relaxes. There is a heat warming his face as he gets closer and closer…

And he finds nothing. Nothing is here at all. 

There's a cliff that leads down into a vacant, brightly lit cavern with stalagmites circling the circumference. Again, there’s nothing to light up the room, no sunlight, no torches, nothing— and yet there’s a golden glow about the cave. 

Ben jumps down into the cavern. Walks around, looking for anything that seems out of place, but he doesn’t find anything.

He feels comparatively less safe here, now. It doesn’t make sense. What was the point of coming all this way? What was keeping him from reaching this place for so long if there was nothing to protect? Why let him in in the first place?

And it hits him. But at this point it's too late. 

It didn't need to keep him away anymore, because there was nothing left to protect. Someone set up a barrier that he couldn’t get through until everything was all done— and there was only one magician Rex mentioned they hadn’t caught that could do that. 

---

She notices him, pausing in her tracks for only a second, her purple eyes large and pupils small, before she smiles— young, despite her white hair— and a pink electrified marble appears out of thin air and in her hand. 

---

He wakes up to the sound of his name being called. He’s slow to wake, blinking his blurry eyes open to green and brown, with vanilla in the middle. As his vision clears, he realizes he’s on the ground, looking up at the trees and into the face of the young, pupiled Coming Storm. 

Argit screams, sitting upright and moving back, tears already slipping down his face in fear. How long had he been out? It’s all coming back to him, flashes of a golden-skinned woman and something pink flying towards him. 

“Hey, yo, calm down!” The Coming Storm is urging him, but he kicks at him, covering his face and sobbing. “Agh! Dude! Alright, that’s it!”

Argit peaks through his fingers and tears to see the child before him twist his Omnitrix and raise his hand. His heart beats loud and hard, but nothing comes. The boy stills. 

He sighs and lets his arms drop, pouting with his eyes lidded and his brows furrowed down. “Anndd I forgot it doesn’t work.” He stares at Argit. “You good now?”

He nods apprehensively. 

“Good. Now what attacked you out here?”

He brings his fingers down his face, slow, careful to not make too many moves. He grabs onto his collar, keeping part of his face covered. “Uh…a woman,” he answers quietly. “With….with white hair…”

The Coming Storm’s eyes go wide with surprise. “Charmcaster? She’s here?”

Argit stays quiet, not wanting to make him mad again. 

He stands up, dusting off his hands. “Well that’s no biggie. I’ve handled her plenty of times before,” he says, then scratches his cheek, looking out into the wilderness. “…but, we should probably find the other guys. You know, just in case.”

---

Nega Ben isn’t very fond of the fact that he’d been deemed “Nega Ben”. To himself, he is just “Ben”.  But Eon had collected a lot of them and he needed a way to be specified. Even though, out of all the others, he was the most normal looking. Mad Ben somehow had the most embarrassing look, and he was running up against a zombie and a albino child. Also, what was with the accent? Was he doing that on purpose? 

That being said, he was glad that now he could finally go back to being just Ben when he introduced himself to an amnesiac Eon. He found that albeit how much of a setback this was, Eon losing his memories was pretty sweet. He was the boss Ben now, which meant all Eon’s little D-grade Ben’s were under his control. After the mess that had been the Chronosapien time bomb debacle, he’d figured he’d try his hand at it, this time. He at least partly knew what he was doing, in comparison to Maltruant and Vilgax. 

And this time, he’d get it right. Even if that meant Vilgax had to live. 

He just had to keep ordering Eon to send his peons on little distracting missions and find wherever the heck Charmcaster had went, calm whatever doubts Rex had with his plan, and he’d be golden. 

Rex. Not his Rex, but a Rex nonetheless. They were very similar, in terms of personality and charm. You know, outside of the murder stuff. Ben wondered if it would be cheating if they became a thing, if he and his Rex were even still together. 

Ben and Rex were in very unique and similar situations. Both had been brought by Eon when this whole mess started, both had killed their universes(or in Rex’s case, his boyfriend’s universe’s) Vilgax, and both of their lives were ruined. 

Ben liked this version of Rex. He talked just like his, and he smiled just like him, laughed like him, and best of all, he wasn’t mad at him. And just like all the other Ben’s here, he couldn’t leave this reality to go back to his original one either. Not until he got the time bomb working again. Then, he’d be able to go back in time in his reality and stop himself from making the biggest mistake of his life. 

They were very alike. They both missed their real boyfriends. No matter how much Ben was like Rex’s, and Rex was like Ben’s, they weren’t them. They didn’t have the same memories, or experiences. They didn’t have the same inside jokes. 

But Ben found Rex sweet. He wouldn’t even fight the Ben’s during the fight for the Chronosapien time bomb before it blew up. He didn’t want to punch people who were essentially alternate versions of his boyfriend. “Sans the zombie guy and Albedo, you all kinda look exactly alike,” he said. “And I dunno, man… There's also a kid in there? That kinda makes me uncomfortable?” It annoyed the heck out of Eon when he heard about it, but it was too late to turn back at that point. It was kinda lame, but Ben could respect that. 

And Rex was all over the idea to go back in time. He’d only ever gone forward in it, and that hadn’t even been on purpose! They both could get back the lives they wanted, and all that needed to happen was for them to get the bomb working and, also, find out how it works!

Which they can’t do without Eon. Alas. 

Ben was very surprised to find Eon in the middle of the crumbled and deserted city, dissociating and amnesiatic. And young. He was a year or two older than Ben was now. His face was clear of maturity or facial hair. His skin was smooth, his height short. And his hair had turned purple, somehow. Couldn’t remember a thing. Even his own name. But it was clear that it was Eon. 

Rex took extra pity over him. 

Without Eon’s knowledge on the bomb, they were dead stuck in the middle of nowhere. He’d never explained how it worked, and Ben didn’t want to risk tampering with it once they'd found it and ending up messing up all his plans. So, in an effort to get Eon’s memories back in order, he prodded at him as much as he could without accidentally unleashing the unwanted memories. They still wanted him for the most part ignorant. Well, he did. Rex didn’t care. If Eon remembered everything that happened to him, it would be a huge problem for them.

So Ben lied. Said that the other Bens, and singular Rex, out there were all out to get them. That they put him here, took his memories, and were trying to hurt them. Why did he think all the people in this town cowered at just the sight of them?(Nevermind it being because they were the ones who terrorized them) Ben and Rex were only here to help. Look, he even put up a barrier around this part of the forest so that no one could get in! All they needed was for him to remember how the time bomb worked! Easy, right?

Wrong. Rex could tell him that. But what could they do? At that point, they didn't even have it, yet. 

And then, someone did get in. Multiple times. Over and over. She was hiding from the other Ben and Rex, but she was doing no harm, so Ben paid her no mind and kept Eon ignorant. That is, until she started getting real close (so close Eon could feel her) to their hideout. 

That is, until she found the very thing they were looking for. 

---

Ben is tired of following Ben’s around all the time. He felt like this was becoming a habit that he was really starting to hate. But this time, he actually had good reason to be walking with this weird zombie dude version of him. Two good reasons, actually. Their names were Eon and Nega Ben, and they were the reason all of this happened in the first place. 

“Is it okay for us to just leave them there?” He asks as he moves some foliage out of his path. He was getting real tired of walking through the forest too. He’s about tired of everything at this point. 

Benzarro doesn’t turn around. He has a limp, but it seems like he isn’t bothered by it in the least. The guy knows exactly where he’s going. “There’s nothing we can do right now. You really want to fight those guys right now? By yourself?”

“Uh, what, you can’t help? If you’re a Ben, where’s your Omnitrix?”

Benzarro lifts one arm while using the other to clear a path through the bushes. “Doesn’t work. It’s been off since I regained lucidity.” 

Ben screws up his face at that. Of course. How could he forget? 10,000 and him were the only ones whose Omnitrixs worked. “Ok, so, where have you been until now? Why were you working at a grocery store?”

“When I was transported here, I’d lost all my memories, including my name. Something happened on my way here that changed me. I.. I couldn’t think, or talk. I don’t even look the same as I did before. Before I knew it, I’d found myself taking on a role in this city.”

Ben raises an eyebrow at that. “Working at the cash register at a grocery store?”

“It wasn’t until a few days ago that I got my memories back and went into hiding.”

A few days ago? What happened a few days ago? 

“We’re almost there.” Benzarro says. 

“Almost where? Where are you taking me?”

“I have a hunch.”

---

Charmcaster hates Bens. She hates them so much. There was only one Ben that was sorta kinda cool somewhat and even he got on her nerves a lot. It got to the point with that particular Ben where they just decided to let bygones be bygones and agree to not even say hi if they saw each other on the street. But that little agreement didn’t slide with any of the others, oh no. They just couldn’t get enough of her recently. 

She lets out a grunt as her back hits the hard dirt ground. This was getting ridiculous. She’d just managed to get awayfrom one of the Ben’s, and now this old man was pummeling her to the ground! It would be funny if it weren’t so annoying. 

First off, she doesn’t even know what a Chromosome Cucumber time bomb whatever was. She just agreed to keep Ben’s barrier up so she could get her and Hex out of here. But she didn’t need to tell this guy that. Seriously, how many Ben’s are there? She’d done everything she could to stay out of these guys’s radar. She watched from the sidelines as Eon’s goons and Zombozo(and a childish looking Animo, and a robot guy, and some other guys) got taken out one by one by an obvious Ben with bad makeup and his ‘partner’ Rex. She was even there when a nine years younger Hex was found and imprisoned by Rex while she barely got away in time to not be seen. How this was all possible, she was sure it wasn’t all that complicated to understand. It had to do with Tennyson, so it couldn’t be all that difficult. 

Whenever they started to patrol, Charmcaster made sure to stay out of their way. She brought extra food to Hex, cause, even though she wasn’t very fond of how he was back then, they were still related, and she didn’t hate him. He was a jerk, but he would grow out of it. His reaction to seeing the sorceress she’d become made her heart defrost, just a tiny little bit, so she kept visiting him. She was gonna get him back to his timeline. He worked hard for his future being a professor, so he deserved it, at the very least. It would also be great if she got back to her ordinary life too. Which meant she needed Ben’s plan to either hurry the heck up, or she needed to take matters into her own hands. 

Guess which one she went with?

She hadn’t even seen Old Ben coming at her until she’d been thrown backwards at a speed too fast to stop midway. Her back hit a tree and knocked the breath right out of her. He was skilled. She couldn’t keep up with him. Over the last twenty or something years, Ben had really upped his game. He keeps asking about the bomb—

“The bomb! Where is it?” He’s yelling. 

Like she was gonna tell him. She cast a spell. The ground shook under them as golems rose from the dirt, instantly ready for a brawl. 

Old Ben doesn’t pay them any mind. He’s in Articguana mode. Any golem that comes at him is immediately stilled by a flurry of ice. “The. Bomb. I won’t ask again.”

She smiles. “Great.” Then she opens her mouth and casts a spell. 

She forgot to mention that she’s grown more powerful, too. 

It’s like a bomb goes off. And not the Cumberbatch homosexual bomb or whatever. Vines as varied as the wind burst up from the ground, some as thick as trees, others noodle-thin. It completely wraps the older Ben up in its grasps, or at the very least, shields him from her retreat. At first she runs, panting out the words to one last spell so she can get as far away as possible. The last one took everything out of her, and she’d soon need to find a place to rest for a while to get her strength back. Her back was in torture, and her knees ached. She could hear how quickly the man was fighting his way through her trap. A portal of her creation opens before her, and she quickly throws one last shot of magic at the grown Ben to delay his following before she goes through it and closes it behind her. The last thing she hears from the other side is a loud and disturbed grunt. 

With that, she drops to her knees. 

This must’ve been punishment for scaring that little alien kid so bad earlier that he peed his pants. Just thinking about it made her laugh. Was she really that terrifying?

Whatever. She needs to get up. What’s important right now is grabbing Hex and getting the crap out of here. Charmcaster rises back to her feet, slowly, before the hall before her. If she got out of here fast enough, she could probably completely miss the people coming after her and teleport straight home. But things were never that easy. She stays on guard, but quickly makes her way past the jail cells. She ignores the musings of the other prisoners, heading straight for her uncle. 

There’s never anyone physically there watching over them. The only guards they have are Ben Team #1, who only checks in a few times a day, and Ben Team #2, comprised of Trying-to-be-Evil Ben and Rex, along with Eon and his goons, who didn’t want the prisoners to get in the way of their plans any more than they wanted Ben Team #1 to. Charmcaster was an exception. She was more powerful now than her uncle had ever been, and so she was useful. But she could come see Hex at any time, as long as she was out before patrol started. 

He’s sitting there, meditating, just like he always is when she comes to visit. His legs are crossed and his eyes are closed. His mouth is in a permanent line, prominent thanks to the pale white tattoo all over his face. 

“It’s time for us to get out of here,” She says hurriedly, reaching into her bag and taking out a talisman she’d only finished completing that morning. The bars before her sparked blue the closer she got to them, revealing the electric barrier keeping him, and everyone else, inside their cells. 

Her uncle doesn’t say anything. At least, not using his mouth, and not with his voice. “Whoa! You’re supposed to be Charmcaster? You look so…” Charmcaster almost breaks her neck from the speed with which she looks to where the voice is coming from, “different.”

There’s two forms standing at the entrance where she just was. It’s a kid. And..a Ben? No, they’re both Ben. That’s the kid Ben she’s seen around before; with the huge head and annoying voice. She has no idea who the other Ben is, but he doesn’t look so good. He looks like he could bite the dust at any minute. Or like he already has. His skin is getting greyer by the second and his eye is sinking into his face, all lopsided and in a squint. “This was not what I had in mind—“ He says. Me and you too, buddy, she thought. 

“Oh, ho! I’ve been waiting for this!” The kid Ben says, not waiting for his partner to finish speaking, and raising his hand over his wrist. 

Lord almighty, she was going to have a stroke. 

And her worries only grow when a bright and cheerful voice comes from the man that suddenly appears behind the Bens. He walks in from out of thin air, leisurely, as if he were in a shop casually peeking around at all the items. “That won’t be necessary, no!”

For a second, she wonders if he’s another Ben, but, no, couldn’t be. He gives off a completely different aura. First off, he talks like he’s from a really old tv show. And second off, he scares the life out of the two Ben’s when he walks up to them, smiling at their confused faces as he puts a hand on their shoulders. “I don’t think we’ve formally met, yet.”

She was going to have a stroke. For real this time. 

She really hates Bens. And all his adjacent friends. 

---

Rex can’t find anyone. Not 16, not 05, not Argit. No one. He had no idea how they'd even managed to get split up, but now he was looking for all Bens and a plus one. Prime Ben could handle himself. So could 10,000. But the rest were just children, and all but 16 were completely powerless. 

He calls out their names while riding around the forest on his Sky Slider. He looks everywhere, but there’s no one for miles. Seriously, where’d they all go?

Oh. Wait. There’s one. 

Rex slows to a stop, zeroing in on a mop of brown hair a few yards away. A Ben’s back is turned to him, but it’s definitely one of the kids. He calls out to him, “Hey!”

12 is standing there, creepily silent, when his head jerks to the side and big blank green eyes meet his brown ones. Rex releases his build and drops to the ground, lifting himself up and trudging through the forestry all the way over to him. 

“What happened back there? Where’d you go?” He asks as he reaches him.

“I dunno. You guys just ran off without me!”

Okay… probably true. He puts on a sheepish smile. He keeps forgetting that without their powers, the Ben’s can’t really keep up. Especially when they’re prone to not paying attention. Now he felt bad. 

“Have you seen the others?” He takes a communicator from his pocket and puts it in his ear. 

“I thought they were with you!”

Rex nods and talks to the device. “Ben? You there?”

There’s some static. Then, “Yeah, I’m here.”

“Found one.” He points his thumb at him, as if the boy over the phone could see. “12.”

“Great. That’s news,” his boyfriend says tiredly. 

“I’m guessing no luck on the others?”

“I was always the best at Hide and Seek,” he jokes, a shrug in his voice. 

“I’ll tell you if I find anyone else.”

“Gotcha.”

“Bye.” He hangs up and turns back to 12. Or where 12 used to be. He groans, almost dropping to his knees and raising his arms in agitation. 

He calls for the boy, and walks around in a circle, and after thirty seconds—

“I’m here, I’m here!” 12 appears from behind a tree, messing with his belt as he walks around it. 

Rex screws up his face and puts his hands on his hips. “What were you doing?”

“I had to take a pee.”

“Wha— dude! So gross!” He backs up. 

12 rises to defend himself. “I had to go! We’re in the forest!”

“Right here? Did you have to do it right here?”

“That’s why I went behind the tree, stupid!” He points at his head and then lifts his finger upwards. “Ah-doi!”

“While I was standing right here!” He hadn’t even washed his hands! He couldn’t believe this was the same guy he was dating in the future. He rolls his eyes. “Come on, let’s go. We’ll find you a lake or something.” He starts to walk back in the direction he was going before. 

12 follows. “What for?”

“So you can wash your hands!” He yells back at him, voice drowned out by the foliage. 

They walk quietly for a few minutes. Rex has his goggles lowered over his face, searching left and right for a heat signature in the area. 12 behind him is messing around with his Omnitrix, twisting the face around over and over, as if it could start working at any minute. At some point, he snorts. 

“What?” Rex asks, keeping his body forward and his gaze wildly peering around. 

“Nothing. I was just thinking about why the heck my future self decided to go out with you.”

This makes him pause, but only for a second. “Wow, okay..”

“05 raised some good questions. Like, what’s so special about you, in the first place?” He asks impertinently, his voice a mumble and his eyes glued to his watch. A second later, a branch smacks him in the face and he yelps. “Hey! It wasn't me who said it! It was 05!”

Rex moves some branches out of his way as he stalks forward, turning to his left when he thinks he sees something, then being immediately disappointed that it was just his imagination. “I dunno… maybe because I can build machines out of my body?” He was humoring him, but it wasn't like he'd have a real answer. What did Ben like about him? Like, specifically? Besides his obvious good looks and incredibly funny jokes.

“Like that even means anything.” His voice is nasally as he rubs his nose, eyes watering. “I know at least one other guy that can do something like that.”

“Cooper can’t make machines, he can only control them and put them together.”

“You know Cooper?” He sounds surprised. 

Yes, he knows Cooper. And Helen and Pierce. And Alan. But 12 doesn’t know them yet. He’s still eleven. He wouldn’t meet them until he was 15. 

“You’re more surprised about that than about being bi.” Rex muses, before coming to an abrupt stop. 

Someone’s screaming. 

“That's— I—“

“Shh!” He lifts up a finger, standing completely still. 

12 does. Then he hears it, and turns to his right. It’s coming from far away, but it’s like someone’s being strangled. “It’s coming from this way!”

They both rush towards the sound. The closer they get, the more recognizable the grunts are, and the louder the beeping sound. They’re running at a wall of incredibly thick vines that definitely weren’t there yesterday, Rex notes. The sound is coming from behind the ropey threads. 

Rex quickly builds his arm into a long sword as they stop before it, then slices a large chunk of the lower half of vines out of the way. They hit the forest floor with a loud thunk, and 12 climbs over them with purpose. 

Inside is 10,000, all wrapped up in vines and struggling to get one arm loose. His watch is beeping incessantly and flashing red. Rex and Ben 16 make quick work of releasing him, and the oldest Ben falls to the ground, panting. Deja vu. 

“Who did this?” Rex couldn’t believe 10,000 had been beaten so thoroughly! He flinches, his focus being drawn for a second to a vine next to him that had practically just caressed his cheek. 

10,000 lifts himself up on one knee, tapping his Omnitrix and stopping the beep but not the red dot flashing on it. “Charmcaster.” He breathes. “We need to get out of here.”

Rex needs no more than that. He builds his Sky Slider underneath him, successfully cutting off a vine that had wrapped itself around his ankle, and pulls the kid and middle-aged man onto him, right before zooming right out of there. “Watch out, the kid hasn't washed his hands.”

The kid in question shoots him a dirty look before turning to 10,000. “What’s that on your watch?” 16 worries. 

10,000 pokes at his malfunctioning Omnitrix. “A homing beacon. Charmcaster did something to it.”

---

Benzarro and Ben look at each other, then back to the man holding them by their shoulders. He’s old, but younger than Grampa Max. His hair is slicked back and black, and his skin is as pale as the sky right now. And what’s with the lab coat?

“Ben 10,000 sent for me! Thanks to you, Hope.” He smiles right at the golden-skinned woman. 

She does not seem to like that. Not one bit. 

Ben still has no idea what’s going on. Was he supposed to fight this guy, too?

“Oh, right,” The man let’s them go and takes a pocketwatch out of his coat's chest pocket. “I’m Professor Paradox. You give me that name in the future,” he says quickly, glancing at his watch then smiling out of the side of his eye at Ben and putting it back where it came from. “Or, a version of you, at least.” He walks forward, his arms raised in a look at thismotion. Charmcaster, or Hope? Which is it? Well, she stiffens up and reaches one hand into her purse instinctively. “I’ve been searching for you everywhen!” He says into the air, then nods his head at her. “That won’t be necessary, either.”

She stops, then notices something to her left. She’s looking into Hex’s jail cell. Curious, Ben walks forward into the hall and sees that everyone’s frozen. One guy is in mid yell. Animo, there, is stuck with one fist about to touch the electrifying bar, mouth wide with complaint. 

There's not even a single wind. Time’s really stopped. 

“Who are you? And how do you know my name?” She takes a step back, eyes calculating. 

“I can see the temporal distortion has gotten to you, too.” He says, taking another step toward her, his voice as nonchalant and sure as if he owned the place. 

She glares at him. 

“It took all the dye from your hair. Ah, but your eyes are much more entrancing when they have pupils in them.”

Ben speaks up. “What do you want?”

Professor Paradox turns around to him, a different smile gracing his lips. “To stop your worlds from ending, of course.” He starts to walk back towards them. “Follow me.” He says, like he already knows they’re going to do it. He has complete confidence in himself. He doesn’t even care that he turned his back on Charmcaster. “You too!” He calls back at her, voice plummy and singsong. 

She stares at his back for a few seconds, then something in her seems to break. A defeated look enters her eyes and she slouches, then steps forward, following along. 

Ben and Benzarro once again share eye contact, then also trail behind Paradox’s back. 

He begins explaining, “It’s a good thing you’re so powerful, Hope, or else I never would have found my way into this time anomaly.”

“Ok, first off, thank you for that little compliment, I’m glad my magic prowess is finally getting the attention it deserves,” She puts a sweet little hand over her heart, then frowns and lets the facade drop. “And second off, if you’re as all-knowing as you seem to like to pretend to be, you should know that I don’t like just anybody calling me by my real name. To you, sir, it’s Charmcaster. Got it?”

“Of course.”

“Now what’s this thing about a time anomaly?” Ben asks before they can get sidetracked again, and before he could stop caring. 

“Yes, right, that old chestnut. Well, you see,” Paradox starts, his hands folded behind his back. “This all started when Vilgax tried to destroy every Ben in existence. Using the Chronosapien time bomb, of course. With it, he could destroy every reality where Ben received the Omnitrix. Including yours.” He nods back at Ben, then turns to face the path again. But once they were outside and walking through trees, there was no path. Again, Ben was trusting himself in the hands of adults he had no connection with, and knew for sure at least one was an enemy. And he was following them into the woods!

But at this point, he knew these woods like the back of his hand. If he needed to make a quick escape, he could. His Omnitrix still worked. He could fight. 

Paradox walked with purpose. Every step was confident, and it made Ben less confident that the man was also so well-accustomed to the forest. How could he know where he was going? He wasn’t looking at a GPS or anything. Didn’t he just get here?

It occurs to Ben that the man had probably lied to them. 

Ben was tired of lies. 

“The magnitude of the explosion led to the creation of the reality we’re striding through right now.” Paradox continues, completely ignorant of Ben’s distrusting thoughts. “Quite primitive, isn’t it?” He lightly touches a large leaf to his side, sliding a white gloved finger down to its tip as he passes. “It hasn’t fully formed yet.” He sighs. 

“But I don’t get it,” Benzarro says. “Why would the explosion of the bomb make all this happen? Wasn’t that what it was created for?”

Paradox shakes his head, making a clicking sound with his mouth. “It was the interception of the bomb’s explosion that created this anomaly. You see, this all happened because we tried to fix it!” 

He takes an abrupt left, but the others come to a stop in their confused shock. “What?” They all ask in unison, then look at each other. Charmcaster and Ben’s face screw up at each other, but they all keep their pace with the Professor as he explains more.

“We already stopped the bomb from going off, once. When we went back in time, and Ben used his Omnitrix to turn into a Chronosapien and reverse the explosion so that it never went off.”

Ben was getting annoyed. He assumed he was talking about a different Ben, because he sure as heck didn’t remember turning into whatever alien that was. “If that was the case, then why are we still here?”

“Because, since the bomb was already in its midpoint of going off instead of in its countdown when we went back in time, reversing the explosion only caused the reality to divulge into two different timelines. One being of which the bomb didgo off.” He stops and turns around to face them. His smile was unending, perfectly calm and creepy. “But, because the split was so contrastive of its sister timeline, it caused a strange effect to happen between them. It created something of a,” he pauses, “Schrödinger’s cat sort of reality. One that is ancred between two prime realities, and nearly impossible to get into and out of.”

“And that’s where we are right now,” Charmcaster crosses her arms, looking obviously as annoyed as Ben felt. 

“Exactly!” He says, proudly. 

“And how’d you figure this all out?” Ben crosses his arms, too, just to get the same effect.

“Why, I went back in time to see it all happen as soon as the entryway opened up!” He says, grandiose, and winking at Charmcaster. 

“Wait, so when did you have time to do that? I just fought that other Ben less than five minutes ago!” Charmcaster glares at him, lifting her hands and letting them drop down to her side in emphasis. 

“I have nothing but time, my dear sorceress!” He puts a hand over his chest. “Although, it did take a toll. The time here is quite difficult to navigate. There aren’t very many open entrances to peek through. I was only able to see bits and pieces, unfortunately, but I got the gist.” He turns his back to them and keeps walking. “I could feel my memories being tampered with as soon as I made my way here. It looks like now is the only time I can come in with my memories being intact. Any earlier or any later and I would have been struck by the same anomaly that struck all of you.”

“Wha—, so you’re saying the reason we couldn’t remember anything before getting here is because of this time anomaly thing?” It was finally all coming together. 

“Yes. It’s why you suddenly regain more memories when you come in contact with something, or someone, from outside this reality.” All the other Ben’s, he realizes. “And it’s also the reason Nega Ben is about to make a huge mistake and get us all stuck here forever with no way out.”

“What?” Charmcaster exclaims and comes to a stop. 

They all stop to turn and look at her. Her eyes are filled with rage, in complete contrast to Professor Paradox’s wide smile. 

“Yes! Of course! You should know,” The smile, for the first time, slips off his lips, and he suddenly looks deathly serious. “Charmcaster, why don’t you tell our compatriots what you know of his goings on, and why exactly you were talked into helping him?”

“The only reason I agreed to help him is because he said he’d get me out of here!” She’s practically bursting at the seams. Her hands start to glow and her hair rises, cat-like. 

Charmcaster really hates Ben’s. But she lets herself calm down enough to tell her version of the story. She relaxed her fists, felt her energy calm down, and let out a deep breath. 

It all started when she ran into Hex whilst hiding from Rex’s daily patrol. It was like looking ten years into the past. Partly because, well, she kinda was. This wasn’t the Hex from her timeline, but from nine years in the past. Pre-college professor. He was as bitter and angry as he ever was, but he stood there while Charmcaster explained all she knew. She’d been there for weeks by then. She knew of all the old foes of Ben’s that were appearing out of nowhere every other day, then. She was smart enough to not have been caught even once. That, or they were ignoring her. Either way, she’d been doing fine on her own, but she figured she could give her uncle a chance to live a free life out here. That, and she was bored and tired of being by herself. 

But that didn’t work out. Rex was out fighting Eon’s little minion’s, and she’d been way too close for comfort. Hex got caught, and she’d run out into a part of the forest that was strangely more quiet than the rest of it. After a few days, she found this little cave in the middle of nowhere, and just before she was about to enter it, an awful feeling crawled up her spine. 

She turned to face the danger, and that’s when she met Nega Ben, as Professor Paradox called him. He was all hoodied up and emo-looking, with a horrible makeup job. She felt so bad for his eyeliner she almost asked if he needed help with it. He wasn’t in the mood for jokes, though. And something was scratching at the back of her mind. As seconds passed by, it was only getting itchier and itchier, and soon Nega Ben was noticing it too. 

They both made their way down the cave tunnel, too entranced by the amount of powerful energy bursting from somewhere down inside that they forgot to even be wary of each other, and when they got to a busted wall with a weirdly clean hole in it, they found it. 

“The Chronosapien time bomb,” Ben realizes in real time, eyes wide. 

Charmcaster nods at the ten year old. “Once he realized what it was, he suddenly got really interested in having me join his team. Said that if I could keep the barrier up on his side of the forest, and keep the area around the bomb masked until he could figure out how to work it, he’d get me and Hex out of here. And I believed him, the jerk.” She crosses her arms, blowing some hair out of her eyes. “Of course I was skeptical at first, but the price of getting out of here seemed worth the risk.”

“Then what happened? Why did you leave?”

“Why’d you think? I got tired of waiting. And his plan was mediocre at best.” She rolls her eyes. “All he wants is to see his boyfriend again. It’s so lame. So I started working on a spell, with the help of Hex, that would get us both out of here.”

Paradox looks surprised at that. They all did, really, but his face makes her feel a bit proud of herself. 

Ben moves forward. “You did? Did it work?”

“I haven’t cast it yet. Durr.” She rolls her eyes again. “I’m still here aren’t I? Why do you think I was going to get Hex just now?”

The kid scowls at her. 

She ignores him. “Apparently the barrier was too much for him to hold, but for a sorceress like me, it was nothing. I didn’t even feel the thing going through. He made the barrier around the bomb so only Ben’s could go through. I just needed some of his DNA and ouila! Needless to say, I was ready to backstab him from the start. Anyway, the spell took me three days nonstop to cast, and it took all my energy, which is why I needed to get away from Nega, or whatever his name is now. His barrier came down and he wasn’t happy about it. I don’t get what he’s so prissy about though. The time bomb barrier should still be up. It’s, like, a million times stronger than the other one. He made sure of that himself.” It was aggravating just thinking about it. “The spell out of here is practically impossible for a human to cast, which is why I didn’t wanna do it. I couldn’t eat for three days! You know how much that sucks?”

“Eh,” The zombie-looking Ben shrugs. 

She furrows her brow at him, the side of her lip quirked up uncomfortably. She was not feeling this one. 

“So you can get us out of here?” Ben asks. 

She laughs. “Heck no! I don’t care about you guys! Three days only keeps the portal open for three seconds. Why do you think it’s such a difficult spell to cast for humans? High risk, low reward. If anyone could do it then we’d all be out of here by now!” She crosses her arms again. “No, this one’s for me and Hex.”

Half-dead Ben speaks up before the ten year old can argue. “I’d like to hear more about what Nega Ben is planning on doing with the bomb?”

She looks him up and down. “Aren’t you with him or something? You look… evil.” She purses her lips, looking him up and down a second time for emphasis. 

“Right,” Ben suddenly turns to him. “Why aren’t you on his side?”

“I’m quite curious about that myself, actually.” Professor Paradox looks over at him, as well, a curious purse to his mouth. 

“Well,” he says, lifting a finger to his drooping mouth. “With my newfound freedom and will, packed with the fact that I can now think clearly and have self-awareness for the first time since the zombie apocalypse started in my world, I’ve found…” he pauses, seemingly for effect. “that I don’t want to die. Again. I don’t want to die again.” He smiles crookedly. 

They all stare at him for a long moment. Then Charmcaster says, “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”

He shrugs. 

“And to answer your question: I don’t really remember a lot of it, I stopped listening about halfway through.” She picks at her ear to stop the sudden ringing from the silence from before. She screws up her face. “I don’t pay attention to the things that nerds say.” She checked her pinky then wiped it off on her clothes. “It was a bunch of oh, woe is me, I miss my boyfriend, I’m gonna go back in time and stop it all from happening so he’ll love me again kinda junk. I didn’t care so I zoned out, but that was pretty much it.”

“The time bomb doesn’t go back in time, it destroys time!” The confirmed zombie Ben exclaims, panicking. 

“Ah! And that, my friends, lies the problem!” The Professor, who’s probably not really a professor, points at the sky and the smile returns to his face. “He doesn’t know that! Because his memories have been tampered with, too, by the temporal distortion!”

“But why not use the Chronosapien alien or whatever?” Ben asks him.

“Because he’s stupid.” Charmcaster is surprised to hear those exact words voiced in unison with her own. Although the time lord’s sentence ends with a rather tame “not smart.”

“Which is why we need to stop him before he can figure out how the Chronosapien time bomb works and start the countdown! Time is of the essence!” And with that, Paradox continues leading us through the woods. 

---

Charmcaster being gone really made them have to move forward with their plans. They moved the bomb into the city, and Ben had to use one of his aliens to set up a new barrier that was convoluted enough to keep the other Ben’s and Rex busy. With the force field around the forest gone, the cave was practically useless for a hiding spot. They’d mined it out for no reason. The other Rex had snuck his way in just the other day, despite how far away it was from his usual patrolling grounds. They’d chosen that spot specifically because of how far away it was from all the villains and heroes that could mess with their plans, but it was all worthless now. And he still hadn’t figured out how to work the darn thing. 

He looks over at Eon. The man, now only about two years older than him, was looking over the Chronosapien time bomb with awe. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen it, even after his amnesia, but it was the first time Ben allowed him to touch it so thoroughly, afraid he’d accidentally push something and destroy them all. Or, worse yet, regain his memories behind his back and make plans right before his face without him even realizing. At least this way he could keep an eye on him for any change in demeanor. And anyway, they were running out of time. 

He hadn't wanted to ask Charmcaster for help. No. She’d just managed to find the one thing they were looking for for weeks, right in his own backyard! He’d sensed it, of course. The bomb radiated energy like a rat to a snake. When he found her at the cave entrance, he immediately felt its power. It had activated, somehow. Something had blown through the cave wall and hit it with enough energy to power it up. Only an Omnitrix had that kind of energy, and he’d been using his on the barrier. If the other Ben’s had used their Omnitrix on it, they’d have to have found it themselves and been in close range of it. No way they’d gotten through his barrier. No way. But it could only have been an Omnitrix. That, or a Sword of Ascalon. But who would have that?

Ben suspected Benzarro. He must have used his Omnitrix to get in somehow. Ben could have sworn he wasn’t cognizant. But something had changed. Maybe the same something that made Eon notice someone had come through their first threadbare barrier. Ben had known Charmcaster was walking around out there, but she’d never been a threat to him before. Not until she came so close to their hiding place. She teleported in at the same time as the other Ben and Rex, which means she was practically there since the beginning. How Eon noticed her, he’d never gotten the chance to look into. But it wouldn’t matter after they were done anyway. 

He had Eon’s peons looking all over for Charmcaster. If only they could use their watches. But it wasn’t worth the risk, if they ever became self-aware again. And Ben wasn’t even sure if they still had theirs. They all wore those dumb ninja outfits all the time. Charmcaster made fun of them relentlessly, and she had every right, but he’d be darned if he admitted that to her face. She’d broken their deal, and now he was paying the price with having to fast forward everything. 

Yeah, he lied about his side of the deal, but who cares? What did that have to do with anything? It’s the principle of the thing! He needed her to keep up his barriers, which she could do limitlessly, alright? And he couldn’t. He needed a break. It was tiring! It would take all his energy forever to keep up the barrier around the bomb and around his part of the forest at the same time. And he needed both! She was a useful asset! He hated to ask her, but he couldn’t risk his barrier breaking from just the pure force of being near the bomb. He couldn’t take that chance. She went through the barriers so easily. She was the help he needed. She couldn’t have waited one more extra week? At least give him the chance to betray her first! He hadn't even gotten the chance to do the evil reveal, the whole: “Yeah I'm not letting you take the bomb to get back home, what if I mess up again and need it?”

If only he knew exactly how it worked. He could have used it already! And how much more energy would he need for it? Would he need to risk the Omnitrix? Was it not enough to have it turned on? 

“Why don’t I try?”

That brings Ben right out of his thoughts. He quickly grabs Rex by the wrist before he can step any closer to the bomb. “No. I don’t want to risk it.”

What he’d wanted to say was risk you, but he kept that little bit in his inner thoughts. 

Rex doesn’t seem to get it. “We don’t have any more time left. If we’re gonna do this, we have to do it now, right?”

Ben doesn’t let go, but he can’t look into Rex’s eyes anymore. They’re too familiar. “Just wait a little bit longer. If..” If something happens to you… “If he can’t do it, then we’ll give it a shot. Alright? But he will do it.”

I’d rather sacrifice him than you, he doesn’t say. He has to do this. I can’t lose you again. 

Of course, internally, he knows this isn’t his Rex. Somewhere deep inside, he knows that this Rex doesn’t and can’t like him the same way his did. But they look so alike, act so alike, talk so alike… And although he’d made it abundantly clear that he was only doing this so he could be with his Ben again, as Ben was doing for his Rex, Ben couldn’t help but wonder if he reminded Rex of his Ben, too. Going back in time was for the both of them, he knew that; but still…

Rex searches his eyes for something, squeezing his lips into a line as he does so. When he seems to have found whatever he was looking for, he nods. “Fine. I won’t intervene. Yet.” He takes his arm back out of Ben’s grasp. “But if nothing’s changed in the next hour, then we’re doing it my way. Right?”

Ben begrudgingly agreed. “Right.”

Eon better hurry this up. 

---

The Coming Storm stops abruptly, and Argit’s terrible fear of running into him is the only thing that stops him from doing so. 

“Did you just feel that?”

“Wha…?” He’s afraid to talk still. If he got it wrong, would The Coming Storm hurt him?

“I… I’m,” The boy brings his hands up to his temples, tensing up. Argit moves back. “Those guys in the city…! Did you see them?”

He suddenly turns around, and Argit steps back instinctively, his hands raising to his chest. The Coming Storm glares at him, his mouth forming a line. “Argit! Come on! Did you see the city folk before?”

He’s mad at him. He knew it! Oh, he was in for it now! 

“I don’t know why I never noticed it!” He turns back around, voice amazed and shaking his head. “Those guys over there? They’re from my aunt’s neighborhood!”

Argit has been to the city before. He went just the other day with the one they call Rex, to buy some clothes for them all. It was strange. Rex was so nice, despite being friends with The Coming Storm. But when they got there, the store was empty! Even for the cashier! Rex said not to worry about it, but he seemed quite weirded out by it himself. He said that the cashier never took their money anyway, at least not when he was looking. He wasn’t even sure if the store was actually even open. The doors and lights were on twenty four/seven and the cashier never moved, which was probably why he was so unnerved by the guy not being there. 

The only time Argit had ever seen anyone there was when they were walking out and a old lady was closing the blinds to her window. Nobody seemed to want him there. Except Rex. Rex was nice. 

The Coming Storm continues. “How am I remembering this just now? And where,” he stomps his foot, groans. “is everyone?”

It didn’t seem like they were getting anywhere. They’d been aiming to go back to the house, but the ever green of the forest went on forever. 

He’s messing with his Omnitrix for the third time. “Come on you stupid thing, work! What if my aunt’s back there and in trouble?” 

He screams in irritation, and Argit pulls his collar farther up to hide his face. 

“Hello?” A far away disembodied voice calls out. 

The Coming Storm goes quiet and Argit peeks out into the woods. 

It calls out again: “Ben, is that you?”

It’s Rex. Argit let’s go of his collar and turns around in a circle, searching for the source of the voice. The Coming Storm cups his mouth and replies, “Yeah! I’m right here!”

There’s a weird sound of something flying towards them, and Argit turns right in time to see Rex and two other Coming Storm’s nearing them on a bright blue hoverboard.

---

“So, to recap,” Ben points at himself. “This all happened because an alternate dimension me wanted to blow up every version of himself so he could, I dunno, be the most powerful version of himself, and the explosion and.. not-explosion, collided and caused this dimension to form,” he points both forefingers at the ground, then moves them up and around in a circular motion, “then it brought all of us here and made us lose our memories, and now that evil Ben is being used by another evil Ben so that he can use the chromatic whatsamajiggy, that she,” he points to Charmcaster, who gives him a stank face, “helped hide from us using some super convoluted force field, to go back in time to when his boyfriend didn’t break up with him? And this could have all been resolved if he’d just used a chromo-master-something-or-other alien?”

Paradox lifts a finger to the sky, one arm held behind his back as he walks. “That, or the temporal distortion made him forget he has that particular alien or ability. Or maybe his Negatrix doesn’t have a Chronosapien in it. Although, I doubt it.”

Which means his Omnitrix still works. Crap. Just their luck. “How do we know for sure that his Negatrix or whatever is still active?”

“Oh, it’s still active.” Charmcaster speaks up, scowling down at the muck that her boots just stepped in. “He was using one of his aliens to keep the barrier around his hideout up before I got there. When I got tired of waiting for him to keep up his end of the bargain, I took matters into my own hands. The barrier went down when I was contacting the world of mana, and he never put it back up.”

“That must’ve been when Rex found the bomb!” He realizes. “How’d it even get there?”

Paradox answers, “It was always there, from the very beginning. It was here before anything else. It’s, to put it in Layman’s terms, the center of the universe, as of right now. Everything formed around it in the creation of this reality.”

“Oh great! And it’s in the hands of a Wannabe Bad Guy Ben Tennyson? Just a regular Ben is bad enough!” Charmcaster threw her hands up in the air, exasperated. For the first time, Ben was with her on this. This sucks. 

“You were the one helping him…” Benzarro mentions. 

“Shut up. I didn’t know what it was when I found it.” She purses her lips. “I just knew it was exhorting a whole lot of energy and that if I helped him hide it, he’d get me out of this dump.”

“If he was so close to it, then why didn’t he notice it before then?” Ben asks. 

“Well, he said it was because it wasn’t turned on before, but I think he was just lying because his detection skills are weak,” she says with an unimpressed wave of her hand and the baring of her teeth. “That part of the cave had to be mined out, but there was no way he was that close to it all this time and hadn’t felt it. Said something about it having must've been struck by an enormous amount of energy.” She puts a finger to her cheek. “Now that I think about it, there was a large hole that had been blown into the wall of the cave it was in.”

“An enormous amount of energy, you say?” Paradox is looking right at Ben from the corner of his eye as he guides them forward. He’s got a small, knowing smile on his face that both unnerves and intrigues him. 

He’s trying to tell him something. What was it? Ben looks down at his shoes as he walks. He thinks. An enormous amount of energy… right after Rex was on patrol, fighting Eon’s minions…

It hits him. The day that Hex was caught by Rex, it was the same day they found the other Ben’s, which was the same day Prime used that sword! That overpowered magical sword thing he was using! That deforested a line all the way into the horizon! 

Ben looks up and sees Paradox’s smile widen with recognition. 

“No way! So it was Prime’s fault?” He couldn’t believe it! Their lives were in danger and Prime’s little stunt from before had incidentally worked against them? “How is that even possible?”

Paradox looks up in thought. “Physics…trigonometry… coincidence.. Oh! And Azmuth!”

“What’s an Azmuth?”

He looks back, a strangely nostalgic look on his face. “Oh, you’re so young…”

He isn’t sure how to respond to that, but it makes him a bit irritated. He hates being played off as a dumb kid. “Ok. So if the sword can power it up, can it de-power it?”

“There’s no way to know but to try,” Paradox says, cryptically. 

Ben glares at the back of his head. 

“Why don’t you and your other selves just grab your Omnitrixs and beat him up? How many of you guys even are there?”

“Five. Six, if you count Rex.” Paradox answers matter-of-factly. 

“We can’t. Only mine and 10,000’s work.” Crap, why did he admit that? He should have kept that under wraps, shouldn’t he have? Stupid, stupid! Gwen would chastise him if she were here. He could already imagine her voice, saying, “You have to think more, Ben!”

With that in mind, he looks back up to Professor Paradox’s back. “By the way, how come not every Omnitrix works?”

“I assume because of the anomaly.” He tilts his head up. “It’s just speculation, but the temporal distortion probably caused the Omnitrix's to temporarily timeout while the others are active, as a defense mechanism implemented after what happened the first time so many of them were used all at once. Which would make sense, given that it’s bringing forth all Ben’s and their enemies into this world. It’s learned its lesson, and doesn’t want a repeat disaster. It’s clear that yours, Nega Ben’s, and Ben 10,000’s still work, but if no other one does, then it’s sensible to assume that only three can work at any given time.”

His jaw drops. “That explains why Prime’s stopped working after he took his off. It’s because 10,000 entered into our reality using his while Prime’s was inactive! So it wasn’t a coincidence!”

“It also means that Nega Ben has less standing in his way from starting the bomb.”

“What happens when he restarts the bomb?” Benzarro asks, desperately trying to keep the right side of his face from drooping downwards. He keeps poking at his eye, like it’s about to pop out or something. 

“Reality folds in on itself, trapping all of us inside and creating the rest of its universe to its completion. It won’t destroy any of the other realities, but it will be completely independent of them. Meaning, even though more and more people from Ben’s life will be coming in, we will never be able to go back to our own realities ever again and there will be no way out. Even for me.”

Ben feels his heart begin to race. If that happens, he’ll never see Grandpa Max and Gwen ever again…Or, if they do get here, they'd be stuck here for the rest of their lives, having no one else but each other. They'd have to start their whole lives over, never seeing any of their friends again, if Ben had never met them. And who knows how long it would take for them to be sucked into this world? It could be years, decades.. Ben has already been in this timeline for longer than a summer. 

“Coming into this reality was a gamble, but it’s one I was and am willing to take. I noticed the immediate lack of Bens going around the universe, and in my effort to study the strange happenstance, I discovered that he was not the only one going missing, as of late. Figuring that something would soon come up, I took this time to look back at the moments some Bens had disappeared. The first ones to go were a Ben and a Rex, along with a car they were sitting atop, and a few weeks ago, an eleven-year old Ben and one lonely little Argit, who’d gotten just a little too close to him, went missing.” Ben wonders if the car was the same one he'd woken up inside. And the second pair must have been 12 and the Argit that were staying with them now. It was all coming together now, but he was also starting to get a headache. “When I looked further into it, it became apparent that there was a reality I couldn’t gain entrance to. This one, in fact. Luckily, Charmcaster was here to get in a tussle with the older you, and this allowed me to gain access to this reality through his Omnitrix’s travel function.”

“Yeah, well, you’re welcome,” Charmcaster says sarcastically. She looks extremely peeved off, like she could explode any minute. “But none of that helps us get out of here. And I’m not staying here! So, any more bad news before I grab my uncle and go?”

He goes on like he hadn’t even heard her. “There are other Paradox’s out there, if need be, although I myself have to wonder how much help they'll be without a Tennyson to guide. The two realities anchoring this one, consisting of the reality the Ben you call Prime is originally from and the reality of the Ben with no Omnitrix, will come loose from here, dropping us into a metaphorical sea, to be lost to everyone forever, like the city of Atlantis.”

“Atlantis is real?”

“Yes, but not in the way you know it. But that’s besides the point. What we need to focus on is getting control of the Chronosapien time bomb before the Ben with no watch gets transferred here.”

“I’m gonna regret asking, but what happens when he gets here?”

“If he is brought here, then the hook attaching this reality to his will unlatch, and then there really will be no way to get back to our own realities. Prime Ben’s hook has already detached, on account that he was the first to be transported here. And as previously said, the city will continue to fill up with people coming in, but no one going out. The structure of this timeline will stabilize, and even as the rest of the universe comes into fruition, overpopulation will occur, which we don’twant, so we’ll need to wrap this up quickly.” 

“Quickly? But you heard Charmcaster. It could take days or even weeks for him to figure out how to use the bomb.”

“Oh, no, my dear boy.” His face turns grave. “I’ve peeked ahead already, and we have but mere hours until Eon forms his memories back and figures out how to work the machine.”

Horror starts to settle in. It rushes through Ben’s veins like lava. They really don’t have a lot of time. If he messes this up, he’ll never see his family again. At least, not how he knows them. It’s frightening, it’s dangerous, it’s…thrilling. At the very moment the notion of responsibility turned up, the same amount of excitement began to rival it. He felt, with his entire being, that he could do this. That this was what he was meant to do. 

“How do you know all this?” Charmcaster asks. 

“I’ve been through way worse than this,” Paradox smiles gleefully at her. “These types of things usually end up working out, so don’t worry so much!”

“Usually?” She repeats unbelievingly, her brow rising up on her forehead and her jaw dropping as she places her tongue against the bottom of the inside of her mouth. 

Benzarro is still trying to fix his eye. “So, then, who are all those people in the town? Are they bad guys, too?”

“Ah,” he says appraisingly. “That, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” They echo in tandem. 

“They were also one of the first ones here, but I don’t recognize any of them.” He looks up at the sky. 

“Ok… and what about the barrier around the city? Who caused that?” Ben stumbles on a root of a tree.

“Haven’t you been listening?” Charmcaster points an annoyed face his way. “The reality hasn’t fully formed. There’s nothing else beyond there.”

“Precisely! That, my friends, is what they call the edge of the universe.” Paradox says, casually. “As was previously mentioned, the universe isn’t done creating itself yet. The area of reach around the Chronosapien time bomb can only go for so many miles. With the power it releases from going off, it’ll be able to finish what it started.”

“What, so all the land back there is… an unfinished level?” Ben’s voice was incredulous. “The devs haven’t updated it yet?”

“That sounds about right in your video game terms, yes.”

“Ok, so we beat Nega Ben. How does that get us out of here?” Benzarro asks, sighing and letting his arm drop, finally fed up with his deteriorating condition.

“That, I am still trying to figure out.”

This catches them all off guard “Huh!”

“What, only you are able to come up with plans on the fly?” He ducks under a leafy branch and comes out to a stop in a valley. “We’re here.”

A jolt of disbelief goes through Ben. It’s the cabin. They walked all this way… just to get to the cabin. 

He rubs the sudden exhaustion he feels out of his eyes. “Hey, if you can teleport, why didn’t you just bring us here that way?” Ben questions, feeling insane. 

“We were having a nice conversation, weren’t we?” That smug freaking smile..! “Now, do you know where your Prime Ben keeps his sword?” He takes out his pocket watch, turning around and heading for the front door. There’s something like a clicking sound. “He will be needing it about now.”

He’s barely able to finish his sentence before there’s a raucous sound of wood breaking and something long and silver flying out of the front wall of the house, diving somewhere deep into the woods.

They all stare in shocked silence in the direction the sword went, except for Professor Paradox, who smiles cheerily in its direction. “Or that works, too..”

He disappears into thin air. 

Ben blinks, feeling a light breeze brush his skin for the first time in a while, making him realize that time has started up again. 

Hearing a sharp intake of breath behind him, he turns around to Charmcaster facing their mysterious benefactor. “There’s no need for that.” He says, taking her by the shoulder. “I’ll make sure you and your uncle get exactly where you need to be.” Ben almost laughs. Charmcaster’s discreet attempt at sneaking off was instantly foiled by Paradox’s almost telepathic powers of clairvoyance. All joy leaves him, because now he realizes that getting away from this guy will be harder than he thought. “In the meantime, Ben, and Benzarro, I suppose,” he nods at them. “The phone you left is somewhere in that house, yes? You're gonna get a call in exactly eleven minutes and thirteen seconds. Good luck!”

Before Ben can search his pockets and wonder how the heck the Professor knew that, the old guy and Charmcaster disappear, and he's left with only the howling of the wind and the zombie beside him.

---

The Sword of Ascalon takes mere seconds to land in Ben's grip. His smirk is smug and his eyes are bright with enthusiasm. A rush of ebullience goes through him in waves, making his skin tingle and his hair stand up on the back of his nape. This was what he’s been waiting for. If there was one good thing that came out of not needing to pretend to be someone else anymore, it’s that he could go all out in battle. 

Nega Ben, on the other hand, was not as high spirited. His eyes, the same green as his, were dark with loathing. The miscreant’s face twists into an even deeper scowl, but he doesn’t touch his Omnitrix. 

Ben points at his head. “We’re really twinning now!”

Nega is not amused. Ben watches in minor disappointment as he lifts his black hood over his head. 

“Oh, come on!” He teases. “After all the effort of styling your hair, you don’t wanna show it off?”

Oh, yeah. He is gonna enjoy this. 

“You’re so lame,” Nega speaks up, finally. He tilts his head to the side, as if suddenly bored. “You couldn’t even beat us the first time without your little buddies backing you up. What’s with all the sudden bravado? Just because you have that sword? It’ll take a lot more than that to intimidate me.”

Ben furrows his brows at that, amused but curious. “First time? As far as I see it, we’re still in a stalemate.”

Nega looks at him strangely, and he wonders if maybe he somehow said something off. “Wait a minute… you don’t remember, do you?” Now he seems amused. He throws his head back and laughs. “Now that’s hilarious! You don’t even remember how we got here!”

Ben chews on the inside of his cheeks and tightens his grip on Ascalon. Was this some kind of joke? His eyes wander to the guy behind Nega who’s had his back turned to them throughout the entire confrontation. He kinda looks like another Ben, but his hair is purple and he’s wearing a long dark robe. He’s been tinkering with the Chronosapien time bomb for awhile now, but it doesn’t look like he’s getting anywhere. And on the other side of the bomb, sitting with his legs casually crossed and leaning back on his arms, is an introspective seventeen year old Rex Salazar. Ben is only vaguely interested in him. After everything that’s shown up these last couple of weeks, nothing could surprise him anymore. He could tell it wasn’t his Rex strictly by the fact that he still wore his old jacket, and that he wasn’t sporting a mullet. Their eyes met earlier, but neither said anything to the other. Ben could feel himself being watched, but as long as he didn’t move, Ben had no reason to fight him yet. He could only assume this was Nega’s version of Rex, and if that was the case, he’d need to be careful. 

“Oh? Why don’t you enlighten me?” He asks, wondering where his own Rex is right now. 

“No, I don’t think I will.” He smiles. “It’s funnier that way. And, anyway, don’t you think you should be a bit more worried about your friends out in the woods over there?” He lifted his watch, as if he could tell the time with it, and pursed his bottom lip. “They should have been here about now, don’t you think? I wonder what happened to them…”

Ben frowns. Don’t like the sound of that. “They can handle themselves.”

“Can they? With only two of their watches working?”

Definitely don’t like the sound of that. How could he possibly know that?

Now that he thought about it, it had taken him a heck of a lot more effort to get out of there than usual. Ben takes his phone out of his pocket. “Hey, can you wait just a minute?” He lowers his sword while using one hand to tap on his phone. 

“Seriously?” Nega stares at him deadpan. 

“Just wait a minute.” He taps on Rex’s contact. It doesn’t even get the chance to ring. “Hey, you guys alright?”

Wind is blowing through the speaker. “Yeah,” Rex exclaims. “I’ve got everyone here but 16, and now we’re on our way to the cabin. I got some really interesting information from 05, here.”

“Oh, well I bet my news is bigger than yours,” he jokes. 

“You found Eon?”

“Nope, I’m just stuck with small fry.” He glances at Nega, who looks insulted. Good. “Nega Ben is here with the juice. We’re in town, next to the grocery store.” He meets eyes with him, tapping his foot on the ground while the kid watches him in silence. “Oh, there’s also another you here!”

The Rex that Ben is now going to deem “Nega Rex”, perks up at that. 

The Rex on the phone puts on a feathery voice. “No way! What’s he look like? Does he have any evil tattoos on his face?”

“Evil tattoos?”

“Yeah, like in cartoons! Like that Hex guy!”

“No, no, he’s just you, but, like, two years younger. Hasn’t updated his wardrobe yet.”

“Aww, lame!”

“Yeah.. There's also this other guy? Wait,” Ben pauses. He looks between Nega Ben and the purple-haired guy, then leans his phone away from his ear. “Is that Eon? Hold on,” he’s asking Nega, but then he brings his phone back to his ear and says, “I think that’s Eon! Dude, what happened?” He lets out a jolly laugh. The guy kneeling in front of the bomb turns around at the sound of his name and yep, that’s Ben’s face, right there; ten years younger than usual and strangely unguarded. 

Nega glares at him. 

“What’s going on?” Rex asks on the other side of the line. 

“Eon’s a teen again! Tell 10,000! He’s gotta hear about this,” he’s shaking his head in amusement and disbelief. Wow, he really did forget a lot. “When did that happen?” He lifts his sword at the guy, then lets it drop back down at his side. 

Nega flinches, assumedly at the way he was handling the poor object. So even he knew about the sword Ascalon. Ben had gotten used to lugging it around, so the guy probably hated how casual he was being with the almighty sword. Ben wonders how Nega reacted to the whole Dagon thing, and if he even had to go through it. 

There’s some mumbling on the other side of the line, then Rex speaks up again. “Ok, I know you’re having fun, but you really need to hear this.” Rex says, voice getting urgent. “05 just found out that all the citizens here are apparently people from your aunt’s old neighborhood?”

The smile slips off Ben’s face. 

“And, also, Charmcaster’s here, and she attacked 10,000 and Argit. Did something to his watch. We think she brought someone here, somehow.”

“Charmcaster’s loose?” Oh, that’s not good. That’s not good at all. Wasn’t there enough to worry about?

Nega Rex stands up at the name, and Nega Ben doesn’t look very happy to hear it either. 

“That’s not all. I think there’s something wrong with these woods. I’m pretty sure I passed by this same stump five times by now!” Rex informs. “We’re not getting anywhere!”

Ben drops his act and glares at the two standing before him. “So that’s what he meant by that stuff he said earlier.”

“What?”

“I’m gonna have to call you back.” He hangs up. 

“Oh, so you’re done?” Nega Ben takes a step forward, brows raised and eyes tired. Behind him, Eon stares between them, eyes wide and naive whilst his mouth lies agape. Ben looks from him, to Nega Ben, to Nega Rex, who is stepping in front of his line of view to Eon. “Great, thanks for giving us some more time. It’s really appreciated.”

Nega Rex leans over and says something to Nega Ben that he doesn’t like, according to his expression. His eyes grow even more tired, but whatever he said, Nega motions for him to go on. 

“Hey! No fair! No flirting until we’re done here! Or,” he shrugs, glancing up and then back to them, “until my boyfriend also gets here. Whichever comes first.” Ben raises his sword, but is too late to dodge Nega Rex’s tackle. 

Before he knows it, his body is raised from the ground and getting further and further away from it at an alarming rate. 

He’s so fast! And in his position, there’s nothing he can do to get out of his grip without falling to his death. 

Ben recognizes the sound of Rex building his hands into a machine and the next thing he knows he’s grunting whilst being thrown forward as Nega Rex bursts through a wall. He lands hard on his back and slides on the floor as the sound of debris crashing down from where they made their entrance bounces off his eardrums. 

Ben feels a sharp pain in his shoulder. He struggles to open his eyes as he raises himself up on one arm, then spots the sword of Ascalon a few feet away from his hand, next to a pile of debris. He quickly lunges forward, ignoring the pain, and grabs it in his hand, rolling into a kneeling position. He scowls at the young Rex, who looks at him almost sadly as he approaches. 

“I hate to have to do this.”

“Then don’t.” Ben quickly drags himself off the floor and forward, pushing himself and his sword against Rex’s quickly-built long sword. 

They’re in an office building. Desks lay turned over and the only light is coming from the large hole they made in their entry through the wall. It leaves Nega Rex’s face in a silhouette, but Ben can still see the pain in his eyes. 

The Sword of Ascalon is quickly covering his entire body, from shoes all the way up to his neck. The armor ends before it can get to his helmet, just so Ben has the ability to actually see clearly. His pain quickly dissolves, and they soon begin to fight full force. 

Seconds later, Rex is forced backwards by a tornado-like wind right out of the hole he made himself. Ben runs forward and out of the room, into open air, with the sword in hand, following right after him. Rex lands on top of a much shorter building, and Ben uses the air unleashed from the sword to slow his fall. He lands hard on the roof, feet first, knees unbending due to the suit of armor. 

There’s a Rex shaped indent on the concrete ground, but Rex rises easily, and Ben stares in amazement as his hair turns into a fiery blue(a legitimate blue fire!), and the fight continues with Rex barging forward, hand forming into a three-bladed scythe. 

---

Charmcaster is back before the prison house. A sudden freeing feeling rushes over her, like she has jumped right out of a vat of boiling water without even realizing she was in one.

Paradox still has his hand on her shoulder. “Now that you know what is at stake, there is a task I need you to do, and only you can do it.”

She whips around and out of his hold. “And how do I know you won’t take advantage of me, too?”

“Because I’m not a Ben.” He says, then walks out of sight. 

She turns around, feeling someone behind her. She’s quickly met with the face of Hex and Paradox with his hand around his shoulder. 

The sincerity on his face speaks for itself. “And neither of us wants to be stuck in this timeline forever.”

Her uncle looks around, disoriented, then quickly moves away from the strange man. Charmcaster quickly grabs him and places him by her side, then glares at Paradox. “This better not be another trick.”

“I assure you, the time for tricks is over.” His posh voice says brightly. “Surely you’ve noticed the little maze Nega Ben would have us all wandering in if not for my expertise.”

Charmcaster gasps and stomps her foot. “So that’s what I was feeling this whole time! Of course! He used a drifting nexus spell!”

“If I needed you out of my way, I could have simply lost you during our trip.” He turns his back to her and walks a few feet away. “Though, I have no doubt you would have made your way out of it in no time. I have no grudge against you. But,” he pauses, looks back. “If you’d like to make up for your misgiving of helping the wrong Ben, how about you help all the good Ben’s instead?”

Her brows knit together. 

“Of course, you’re free to cast your spell and leave whenever you want.” He assures, holding his hands behind his back and looking down at the ground. “But, I’m not afraid to say.. that we need you, Charmcaster. And this is something only you can do.”

The sorceress looks between her uncle and the time lord, feeling strange and unsure. Her uncle looks like he wants to ask her what is going on, but she knows she doesn’t have time to explain. There is a pressure in her heart when she looks at Paradox’s broad back. It’s something she hasn’t quite felt in a long time. She wonders if it’s guilt… maybe a little, but not that entirely. It’s…more neutral. Maybe even positive. It’s…responsibility. It’s..

Hope. It’s hope. 

She regards the back of his head, sighs. She’s sure she’s gonna regret this. “…What is it you want me to do?”

He looks at her from the corner of his eye with a slight turn of his head, and he smiles. 

---

Five minutes pass between when Paradox leaves and when Ben gets tired of searching for his phone. It’s hard to believe that he’d gone so long without it, back when he first arrived, but after Rex and Prime found him, Red was able to use his ability to charge Ben’s phone back to 100 every time he drained it while trying to call Gwen. Benzarro moves mad slow, but his eyes move around so fast Ben just knows he’s looking thoroughly. He, on the other hand, hates being given low-level tasks, and he can’t find his phone anywhere. If he had a phone, he’d be able to call it, but Benzarro doesn’t have one and anyone he could ask is somewhere he can’t get to fast enough. The first place he looked was between the couch cushions, then the cabinet in the bathroom, and then the kitchen. Out of desperation, he’s even started trudging through Prime and Rex’s room. They don’t have a lot of stuff. The closet is filled with Rex’s jackets and Prime’s hoodies. The bedside table is filled only with gauze and first aid. He searches under the bed, but, again, nothing there. Somehow, that’s the last straw.

Ok, this is over. Ben twists the face on his Omnitrix and smacks on XLR8. Benzarro could work without him. He was incredibly suspicious, anyway. Ben reassures himself with this, and just as he’s rushing into the forest to look for the others, an immovable force blocks his way. 

Paradox steps right in front of him from seemingly out of nowhere. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

He stares at him, heart pounding in his chest at the fright of being basically jumpscared. “How did you do that?”

“Our friend Nega Ben left us a little gift in the forest. One that disorients and loops unendingly. If you walk willy nilly into it, there’s no guarantee you’ll make it back out.”

He has to be lying. He has to be! But the look he has in his eyes makes Ben hesitate. “I..I need to help my friends..!”

“And you will. But you have to be patient.” He puts a hand on his shoulder. “Your time will come, Ben.” He says, softly. “You need only remember.”

Ben pushes Paradox’s hand off of him, voice almost a mumble, yet desperate, as he turns back into a human. “Remember what?”

Paradox is unbothered by it. In fact, his eyes squint with a sympathetic and all-knowing smile.

A whooshing sound reaches Ben’s ears. Both he and Paradox look up to the top of the treeline. Paradox turns around, smile widening, and Ben watches, blood rushing, heart racing, as a long red stream of light bursts up into the air miles away from where they stand.

---

Rex and 10,000 see it. When his hoverboard stops moving, 12, 05, and Argit turn to see what the eldests are looking at. Just as 12 is reaching up to grab hold of 05 in front of him, Rex smacks his hand down without either of them turning to look away from the spectacle. “Not until you wash your hands.”

---

Ben, also known as Prime, and Nega Rex see it, stopping mid fight to look as the beam of light reaches into the grey sky and completely eviscerates every cloud until all that’s left is a bright and blue, sunny sky.

---

Only a few miles away from them, Eon is watching the red strands with wide, wondrous eyes. His hands on the device before him go still, and so does his entire body and heart. He feels something click and begin to change inside of him. 

---

Charmcaster and Hex take one more short look at it right before they exit through their portal to the mana world. The portal closes only a half-second after.

---

“You see that?” Ben turns to Nega Rex. “What do you think that is?”

He shrugs, eyes glowing white with the power of the Meta-Nanites. He keeps his feet planted square on the pavement, his arm in the form of a neon blue whip and aiming at Ben. “Probably me getting closer to going back home and seeing my Ben again.”

“You know that isn’t true! Rex, you’re smart!” He lowers his sword, incredulous. “You think your Ben would want you to do this? Destroy every other Ben in existence because of him?”

Nega Rex’s eyes fade back into color. “What..?” His voice instantly becomes quiet. His stance falters. “What did you just say?”

“The Chronosapien time bomb? It’s going to blow up every timeline, and everyone else in them, except this one!”

“No… no, that’s not what—“

“That’s what it was made for! What did you think it was..?” At the look on his face, Ben trails off. “…You really don’t have a clue, do you?”

“That can’t be right! Eon said…Ben said..!”

“What? What did they say?” Ben gives him a sympathetic look. “You don’t remember, right?”

Nega Rex’s hair is slowly turning back to normal. 

Ben is getting through to him. He gulps, continues. “No matter what they said to get you to join them, you know they’re bad guys, right? They lie! But you’re not, Rex!” He takes a step closer. 

“Eon, he,” His breathing turns harsh as realization sets in. His eyes are going wide and shiny, and he looks like memories are playing before him as if on a screen. “He brought me and Nega to fight you guys, before.. before the explosion,” He steps backwards, his builds breaking and falling to the pavement under him. He falls to his knees in the middle of the street. “He went to collect other Bens… But he looked different… He looked… off, the second time we saw him. He acted like he didn’t know us. I couldn’t fight you guys, you looked too much like my…”

Like his Ben. Ben nods sympathetically, walking to him and kneeling before him. 

His eyes were glossy, but he wasn’t crying. His eyes were in the midst of going white again. “He was a completely different person when we found him. After you guys fought us the second time, and we lost. We…”

“Second time?” He puts a hand on Rex’s shoulder, and something sparks. He gasps as the sudden rush of memories starts flooding into him. 

Rex keeps going, head low, sifting through his thoughts. “This Eon didn’t know anything. He couldn’t even remember his own name. And he was young. But it was him. And Nega Ben, he.. when we first got here, he said we could program the bomb to go back to when everything went bad for us. That we could take back what we’d done and get our own Ben and Rex back. We didn’t know… somehow we’d forgotten… what it really was.. being here, it, it did something to us!”

He looks back up at Ben, eyes glowing white again, but Ben is having his own epiphanies. He’s right, we did fight them a second time. We reversed the bomb before it could fully go off! And then… then we went home! Everyone went home! He’s putting it all together now! How could he have forgotten? Ben 23, Gwen with her Omnitrix, Ben 10,000… all of them! They all should have gone back home! So what happened?

He remembers now. He’d continued living his life. He fought alongside Rook and the rest of the plumbers. He’d met with Rex again and they started dating at some point during those two years, and then when Rex was fixing his car, he’d been transported here, along with Rex and the car! And with it, all knowledge of how they’d defeated Maltruant and Eon, gone, poof! How could he have forgotten that battle? What was going on here? Where is here?

“Eon, Nega Ben, and me… we were the first ones here. Some bad guys came along too, but we left them to their devices. How did we forget everything that mattered?” Rex is in disbelief, his hands on Ben’s shoulders, looking to him for answers. “So we can’t go back? Ever? So I’ll never get to be with my Ben again?”

Ben focuses back on him, feeling his heart reach out to this poor boy. “Rex, listen to me.”

He’s not crying, but he’s anguished. He’s heartbroken and guilt ridden and grieving. “I was just so tired of him getting hurt. I only wanted to help, I—“

“I know. I know.” He doesn’t. Not really. But he could sympathize. He could understand.

“He’ll never forgive me… he won’t even get the chance..!” His eyes search the ground, wide with disbelief. “The bomb is going to go off and it’ll be all my fault..! I’ll have killed him…so what’s the point?”

“What?” 

Nega Rex’s eyes go back to normal, and this time the whites of his eyes are red. “If we’re all gonna be stuck here, then what have we been doing all this for? In fact, we’ll be lucky if Eon hasn’t already gotten his memories back by now and is betraying us as we speak..! It’s too late…” His eyes widen as he looks down at the ground, then up in the direction of where they left the evil Bens, “Ben’s going to hate me all the way to the grave and I won’t even be able to apologize to him..!”

Ben grabs Nega Rex by his face and makes him look into his eyes. “Stop! Talking like that! We have time! It’s me we’re talking about!”

Rex sniffs. 

Ben gazes determinedly into his onyx brown eyes. “You’ll get your chance to apologize to him, you hear me? No one’s going to die. But we have to get back quickly to make absolutely sure that no one dies. Got it?”

He nods, face red and eyes puffy. 

Ben smiles awkwardly. “Great. Now let’s go.”

---

Rex can’t for the life of him get out of this freaking forest! He’s irritated, and the only one giving him any reprieve is Argit, who’s tightly holding onto his pant leg. The Bens, even 10,000, on the other hand, are talking over themselves giving him directions. 

“Turn right! Right!”

“No, we already went that way! Just keep going straight!”

Rex can’t tell who’s talking. They all sound alike. 

“We’ve already been past that vine section!” Ok, that was 10,000. 

“Ok! Ok! Everyone stop screaming at me, or I will turn this hoverboard right around!”

They all go silent, even 10,000. 

He sighs and taps the communicator in his ear. “Ben! Did you see that? Ok, first off, I love you, are you okay? But also, did you see that!”

“Yes, I saw it. No idea what it was, but I’m guessing it has something to do with our stray sorceress.”

“You think it was Charmcaster?”

“Of course, Charmcaster did it!” Everyone on his Sky Slider but Argit exclaims, as if he were dumb just for asking. 

“Okay!” Rex exclaims back, pouting. Seriously, what did they have to be so grumpy about? He was the one who had to lug them all around. “Do you know where it came from? Can you get to it? Also, what happened with Nega Ben and Eon?”

“And the other you.” 10,000 reminds. 

“And the other me?” Rex asks, dodging a tree that he has counted passing fifteen times now. 

“Working on that now. Nega Rex is on our side now and is going to hold Nega Ben and Eon off while I check it out.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” 

“Nope! Love you, bye!” He hangs up. 

Rex screws up his face. He hates when Ben does that. 

“How are you not embarrassed?” 05 asks. 

There’s a brief silence from Rex ignoring him and the others being too awkward to say anything. 

“Welp!” 10,000 blurts, before hopping off of Rex’s Sky Slider. Rex comes to a stop, looking at him curiously. “Now’s a good time for me to go my own way.”

“Huh?” They all sound. 

“You guys hurry up and get to the fight. I’ll deal with finding 16 and meet you there.”

“I don’t think splitting up is the best idea.” Rex tries. 

“Hey,” he shrugs. “I’m a Ben, you know?” And he turns into Fasttrack and is gone in seconds. 

A few moments pass. Then 05 says, “Welp!” And begins to hop off as well. 

“Nope!” Rex grabs him by the back of his collar and pulls him right back up. “Okay, that’s enough of this.” And he rises into the air, above the treeline and into the brightness of the sun. Here, they can see practically everything. It’s forest for miles, but in one direction there’s buildings, and a little to the left, he can see a bit of space where the cabin should be. Argit holds tighter to his pant leg, his eyes squeezed shut. “Now let’s see what’s going on.”

He moves forward towards the city, but after about thirty seconds, his vision blurs and suddenly the city is gone. He stops. “What the..?”

“It’s over there!” 12 is pointing behind them, and Rex turns to see that it is, in fact, in that direction. 

He glares into the distance. “Oh? So that’s how it’s going to be?”

This was going to be a long day. 

---

As all the memories finish hitting Ben like a bus, he looks up at Paradox with newfound realization. “I was— they were—“

“Yes, yes, you get it now?”

“I do! I really do!” He sounds like a child, but he can’t help it. He’s hopping on the tips of his toes. Energy is running through his veins like a generator! He wants to scream! “I know what to do! I have to tell Prime! I have to…” Then it hits him. “Oh… but..”

Paradox raises a brow.

Ben sighs. “Ben and Rex… I just left them.” His brows lower as he looks up to Paradox and his curious expression, then back at the ground. “They lied to me. They tricked me. And for what? For giggles?”

When Paradox doesn’t say anything, Ben peers at him. 

“… If I can't trust them to be honest about something that simple, then what can I trust them with? Man, were they..” he scoffs, “were they even looking for Gwen and Grampa Max?..I hate being lied to.” 

“Well I don’t know one person who does.” He replies, facing the area where the beam used to be. “But, I find that trying to figure out the reasons Bens do the things they do has become somewhat of a useless endeavor.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not right here!”

He laughs. Like, really laughs. “Surely the hidden identity debacle isn’t what’s really bothering you. Now, be honest.”

Ben doesn’t like how the professor can read him so well. He shuffles his feet, arms tingling. “…It’s just… we were becoming a team, you know? They were looking out for me,” he purses his lips, hesitant to finish his sentence. “Just like Grandpa and Gwen were…”

“Ah, so that’s the issue.” Paradox nods, thoughtfully. “You miss your family, and you saw them in Rex and Prime.”

“We never lie to each other. We promised to stop keeping stuff from one another.”

“But they’re not your Max nor your Gwen—“

“I know that!” He squirms. “You think I don’t know that? But still!” He didn’t know what came after. But still what? He knew he was being uncooperative, but he couldn’t just forget about it. He’s been by their side for just over two months. They treated him like just their own, and then to find out they’d been lying to his face the entire time? About something so important? How could he not be upset? He pulled pranks with Rex, played video games with Prime, ate dinner with them; he even wore their clothes, for Pete’s sake!

“Look, Young Ben. Things are not always as simple or as bad as they may seem. I’d know. I’ve lived to see it many times.” His smile is soft, and although his phrasing was creepy as heck, it does feel like it’s reaching something there. 

Maybe they were hiding it for a reason, but what could it have been, seriously? And why wait so long to admit it? Would they never have said anything if 10,000 hadn’t appeared? 

Would Grandpa Max have ever said anything of the Plumbers if he hadn't asked?

…Crap. So once again, he's just the little kid here. 

He feels a bit better, thinking now that there'd been a reason. Not much, since the reason still sucked, but a bit. 

Then Paradox adds, “Also, in the grand scheme of things, this is a nonissue.”

Ok, that’s something Ben can take to heart. He nods, focusing on their impending doom to keep his determination up, and starts to turn the dial on his Omnitrix.

“I thought I smelled something out of place!” 

Ben glances to the side of Paradox to see 10,000 walking out of the forest towards them, a large grin on his face. His clothes are all torn up with green stains on them, and he’s got scratches on his face. 

“Ben! How nice it is to see you! And right on time!” Paradox turns to him, expression brightening up. 

“I make it my business to always be punctual.” He winks, standing by the professor’s side and putting a hand on his shoulder. His gaze lands on Ben. “Nice to see you’re good, too, 16. You know we’ve been searching all over for you.”

He forgets himself, and quickly returns to his old arrogant persona, “Took you long enough!”

“Sorry! Had to deal with a little problem first..!” He gives a sheepish grin and points his thumb back behind him. “Did you notice the crap they were pulling on us back there? Took me forever to figure it out, but I finally remembered the right spell to dispel it.” He turns to Paradox. “So! What do you need me to do?”

“Well, if you could find Ben’s phone for us..?”

“That’s all?” He twists the face of his Omnitrix and turns into an alien Ben’s never seen before, but he moves so fast that it takes a second for him to realize that 10,000 had even gone anywhere. He returns with a phone in hand. A flash, and he’s back in human form again. “No problem.”

Ben stammers, “Wha— I searched everywhere for that! Where’d you find it?”

“It was...on the ground? Right there?” He points to a section of uncut grass at the edge of the patio by the front door.

“What the heck! How did it get there?!” He was shaking with anger and embarrassment. He’d looked all over for that, and it was literally a yard away from him?!

He leans in and whispers not so discreetly, “Cargo pants with deep pockets and a utility belt, that’s the way to go.” Huh. “Helps if they have hidden pockets” He taps his utility belt to emphasize their pure genius.

As if suddenly remembering, “You guys notice there was a zombie in there?” He purses his lips thoughtfully at the flippant motion of Ben’s hand and the awkward baring of his teeth. “Anything else?” He looks at Paradox. 

Paradox has an expression of amusement but is polite as he pulls something out of his pocket and says, “If it’s not too much trouble, could you make sure this finds its way to the Ben you call Prime? We’d do it, but we have some preparations to get to.”

“All these menial tasks..!” He complains, comedically slouching down but taking whatever it is from the professor's hand. When he’s done being dramatic, he stands up straight, feet pointed in the direction of the jail center. “Oh, any chance you’ve seen Charmcaster?”

“Why, she just went home! You missed her by mere minutes.”

10,000 clicks his teeth. “Just my luck. Thought I might get some payback.”

“Don’t stress yourself over that. She’s already paid her dues. I made sure of that.” Paradox wiggles his fingers. “Now shoo! We have a world to save.” 

Then Ben’s phone rings.

---

The beam was coming from here, but there’s nothing’s to look at. All the inmates are still in their cells—

 Ben sighs as he looks into one empty set of bars. Except Hex… Great. Of course Hope would try to bust out her uncle. 

He walks back outside and into the daylight. It’s just one thing after another. Should he look for them? Does he even have time for that? And where are they now?

“If you’re wondering where Charmcaster is, she’s already gone.” Ben 10,000’s voice remarks, coming from his left. He sees the older man just as he’s walking out of the forest. 

“Gone? Gone how?”

“She went back home. Like we should be doing soon.” He tosses something to him and Ben catches it instinctively. 

It’s a watch, but a regular one— except for the fact that each hand is going crazy like a compass by a magnet. “Thanks, but,” he curls his lip up at the corner. “You see this doesn’t work, right?”

“Yeah, well, Paradox told me to give it to you.”

His eyes almost pop out of their sockets. “Paradox is here?” He exclaims. This shouldn’t be the most surprising thing he’s heard all day, but it is. 

“Yep. And he’s got 16 and Benzarro with him. They’ve got a plan.”

Ben scoffs out of the corner of his mouth as he puts on the watch right above his Omnitrix. “Of course they do. Let me guess, they didn’t tell you?”

He looks up just in time to catch 10,000’s finger guns. 

“Right.” He messes with the Omnitrix, but it doesn’t turn on. “Where’s Rex? And the other guys?”

“As far as I know, still lost in there.” He points his thumb over his shoulder. “But they should be coming out soon.” He stretches his arms out and bends over backwards, grunting as he says, “Speaking of coming out, 05 has a real problem with you two, looks like.”

Ben scoffs again. “He’s a child. He’ll get over it.”

“He’s us. He’ll get over it.” 10,000 corrects, amused, placing his hands on his hips. 

He twists the face of the Omnitrix one more time before letting it drop to his side. “Actually, I’ve been wondering…”

“Hm?”

“While you’re here,” he is really unsure how to word this. “Are you and…Do you have a Rex? And are you two..? Together..?”

10,000 smiles, even more amused. He crosses his buff and hairy arms. “You really wanna know?”

Ben glances up at him and then back to the ground. “…Nevermind. You don’t have to tell me.” He feels like he’s chickening out, which is lame of him, but all of a sudden he’s somehow gotten, not insecure, he'd say, but…a word less weird, and he’s not sure why. It had to be because of what happened with Nega Rex and Nega Ben. Both of them had horrible break ups, which lead them to do all of this. It’s crazy, but, Ben was finding a pattern, and he didn’t like it. Not to mention that Ben 10,000 never spoke about his Rex, despite the fact that Ben always caught a sort of nostalgic look on his face whenever he looked at the two of them.

It was normal to take all these clues to mean that they’d also broken up, right? And Ben 10,000 was directly him from the future. He was the him in his timeline, same as 05 and maybe 12? Still wasn't really sure about that one. But if Ben 10,000 and his Rex weren’t together anymore…

His concerns are assuaged immediately. “Yes, we’re still together.” 10,000’s smile turns into a bit of a grin. “Not in the way you’d typically think it’d mean, but we are.”

“What does that mean?” He gives a curious look, finally meeting his stare. 

“All in good time,” 10,000 pats his shoulder.

He feels his face heat up and his stomach start to sour with irritation. “Can you and Paradox stop being cryptic for once?” He wasn’t in the mood for puzzles right now. He wanted— no, needed to know..!

But Ben 10,000 just laughs. “Listen to me, Ben.”

Ben listens up, mouth forming into a real pout. 

He squeezes his shoulder, sturdy and firm. “In all the timelines I’ve travelled through, in all the realities and worlds,” his eyes bore into his younger selves, “in every one of them— at some point or another— a Ben has his Rex.”

And it shouldn’t make him as happy as it does. It’s so vague, and cryptic, and yet it unlocks something in him that makes him feel so unfathomably happy that he could explode. 

In every universe, he falls for Rex— in some way or another, and vice versa. And although that’s not at all what the older him said, he chose to take it that way. In every reality, in a matter of different ways, they were meant for each other. They were destined to be in one another’s lives— so much so, that a version of them was willing to destroy entire universes to be with them. And this… this was something. He didn’t know what that something was, but it meant something to him. 

Rex meant everything to him. 

He needs to see him. Right now. 

---

“Hello?” 

“Oh, hallelujah, you picked up!” A yell. “¡Qué miedo! Never run off like that again, you hear me? I’m literally gonna have a heart attack! And it’ll be your fault! I know that’s an insane thing to say to a ten year old but I need you to know if I die, I’m haunting you forever— Where are you?” It’s Rex.

“I’m, um, at the house?” He replies noncommiseratingly.

There’s a moment of silence, at least on Rex’s part. The other Ben’s are screaming on the other side of the receiver to be heard, and of course there’s the sound of rushing air. “Tienes que estar bromeando joder..”

“What?”

“Nothing—” There’s the sudden sound of an inhale and movement, like the communicator has been snatched right out of Rex’s ear— and then Ben hears:

”16, please come back! I’m stuck here between a wuss and a homophobe and I’m the only normal person here now that 10k is gone!” Ben guesses that’s 12 talking, and now that he mentions it, it does sound like there’s crying in the background. Distinctly Argit-sounding crying. 

“Hey!” And that’s gotta be 05. There’s more sounds of arguing as Rex seems to be wrestling his earpiece back.

 “Just wa—” Rex’s voice comes back so loud that Ben has to pull his phone back from his ear arms length. “-it there, okay? We were so worried about you! I’m coming to get you! Ah! Argit! Ben, what did you—”

“It wasn’t me!” One of the Ben’s exclaimed.

Ben tries to get a word in before Rex’s attention is completely lost. “Don’t! We’re heading back to town to—”

“We?” And then it’s silent. All noise is cut off abruptly, and after a second, Ben looks at his phone to see that the screen is black. He taps it, but it won’t turn on. A red battery symbol appears and blinks on the screen for several seconds before going black again.

Ben stares at it for a quiet moment..then bursts out laughing. He laughs for a long while, Professor Paradox smiling beside him, and he realizes that this is what was missing from Paradox’s argument: Rex and the other Bens weren’t a family, no. 

No, they were friends. 

———-

Eon remembers everything. 

Rex is running up to the one he previously called Nega Ben. He grabs him by the shoulders, his face red and enlightened. Nega Ben seems concerned about him, asking did you get his sword? and what’s going on with you? as Rex pants and starts talking about memories and doing the wrong thing. 

He remembers falling. He remembers darkness surrounding him, momentarily interrupted by sparks of purple and blue, but he’s falling. For a very long time. Too long. He remembers the pit of his stomach rising and dropping. He remembers crashing into something, someone, and becoming one thing. He remembers remembering memories, and then forgetting them. He remembers overwriting everything he ever was. 

Bad Ben and the Eon they all knew would never again be seen. They were one person now.

Eon watches as Nega Ben gets more and more agitated, but also as his cheeks turn evermore pinker whenever Rex leans in a bit too close. 

When he gets bored of that, he turns back to the Chronosapien time bomb. He stares at it for a while, going over every touch, every sense memory he has of it(For so long he couldn’t feel anything but the wind pushing at his back. The total weightlessness he’d suffered for hours, days, months. The darkness. Looking up at nothing. How could he have even breathed?), and then, with all his memories now intact, and with two young teenagers arguing, quite literally, behind his back, he starts taking it apart.

And Rex spots him, at that moment. And then he attacks.

---

They walk outside of an alleyway. Ben’s not entirely sure how it happens. He blinks and he’s just there. With Professor Paradox holding onto his shoulder, he’s suddenly thrashed into the unabashed sunlight of the mostly vacant city street. 

Nega Ben spots them immediately, and all the complicated emotions clearly on his face wane into a scowl. Behind him, they can see Eon furiously working on the bomb. 

Ben’s first instinct is to run at them, his hand already hovering over his Omnitrix, but Paradox’s hand on his shoulder stops him dead in his tracks. He looks up to the smiling man as he steps forward, confident in his stance. His eyes are pointed past Nega Ben and right on Eon. His voice is cheerful as he says, “Hello, old friend.”

Eon’s hands come to a stop. 

Paradox continues. “Been a long time. Two years, precisely.”

His back stays turned, but they know he’s heard him. Eon’s hands slowly fall to his knee and the ground, and his head tilts down. His voice is quiet, but they can hear him, loud and clear. “…Two years… I was falling for two years, huh..”

Nega Ben looks surprised. His attention quickly focuses on Eon, his body twisting around to look at him. 

Eon’s head raises again. “I recognize that voice… how could I have forgotten?” He sounds just like Nega and Prime, Ben notices. More like Prime, with the distinct deepness and maturity in his voice. When he turns around, his eyes are sad and his mouth is tight. They’re Prime’s eyes. 12’s eyes. They have no pupils and are wide and mismatched blue and green. 

Nega looks between Paradox and Eon. “What.. What's going on here?” He’s obviously not liking what he’s seeing. Ben’s confused as to what’s going on, too. If Paradox has any reaction, he doesn’t show it. He keeps his poker face smiley and welcoming. 

“How did you find me?” Eon doesn’t sound accusatory. He doesn’t sound frightened or anxious. Ben’s kinda very really surprised about how chill this is going. 

“Oh, you know… the old tracking system I’ve become quite fond of. I’m very attuned with all the goings on with Ben’s prone to trouble.” He’s jovial, bouncing on the backs of his soles. 

“I know why you’re here, and you don’t have to worry.” He says, placing one hand atop the machine before him. “This will all be over soon.”

“I sure hope so,” Paradox stands still. “It would be a shame if—“

“Hey, hey, can we,” Nega Ben interrupts him, brows furrowed in utmost confusion as he points his thumb back at Eon. “Can we stop all this nonsense? What the heck are you guys talking about? Are we gonna fight or what, cause I’m tired of all the back and forth that’s been happening all day.”

Ben grins. “I was thinking just the same.” He shrugs Paradox’s hand off and raises his watch up to start sorting through aliens. 

Nega is mumbling to himself now, “I mean seriously! Does anyone here ever stop talking? First Rex and now—“

The name makes Ben falter. Rex was here? Where? He glances around but keeps most of his attention on the alien he’s trying to find. He’s stuck with only a limited amount of them, again, it seems. He needs master control. 

Nega’s going on and on, “..then I had to get rid of him, and now there’s you I have to deal with—“

This makes him pause completely. Get rid of him? He says it aloud, “Get rid of him?” His eyes are drawn to the ground between Nega Ben and Eon. Is that..blood? Is…all of that blood?

It’s a paint splatter looking amount. Thin but spread out and he can’t quite get a good look from this distance away but it still looks significant. 

“Yes, get rid of him! Like I’m gonna get rid of you!” Ben looks up and there’s a flash of light, and with it comes a flash of angry thoughts. Rid of me like he got rid of him? What does that mean? Where is he?

And in Nega’s place is a very creepy bear-type alien. It’s face is that of a skull with large blank, blue eyes and sharp tusks in place of its mouth. 

But Ben can’t focus on how scary he looks— it’s an alien, whatever— instead, he clenches his fist and glares at him. “Where’s Rex?”

“Gone!” His voice is deep and raspy at the same time, an echo of itself. “And he’s not coming back!” The creature sinks into the ground like slime, its body as black as a shadow as it begins to slither quickly forward. 

“Ben, wait!” Paradox is saying, but very suddenly all Ben can see is red—

Gone? Gone like how? Gone like he's dead? He's never coming back cause this doofus killed him? Impossible, Rex can't be beat! Gone? What does he mean by not coming back I just talked to him what happened after the call cut off what does he mean by get rid of him who was the Ben Rex was yelling at what does he mean I didn't even get to tell him I'm

—and all he can hear is his inner consciousness telling him to fight fight fight. 

He’s not even sure what creature he’s turning into when he begins transforming. He just knows his rage is taking over. It’s unending, unrestrained. He feels it grow along with his height, his width. His chest widens and his legs bend and hair sprouts out from everywhere on his body. 

He roars, and rushes at the darkness that forms in front of him. Its large silhouette-like body rises tall above him, but Rath’s not intimidated as he bares his teeth and jumps at it. The darkness encompasses him fully, but he doesn't stop tearing and ripping at it, shredding it to pieces as Nega Ben howls in pain. It quickly kicks him out of itself and into the air. He lands on his feet just as Nega Ben in his bear form reappears, the darkness sinking back into his skin like paint on a canvas. 

“I’ll tell ya something, creep-shadow-bear thing!” Rath points one angry finger at Nega Ben’s alien form. “If you don’t tell me what you did to Rex right now, I’mma hurt you real bad!”

“Oh ho ho, I’m so scared,” his deep raspy voice taunts in response. Ebony tendrils start to morph from The Darkness’s back. As quick as a snake, they lash at Rath. He moves just in time to miss them, but they keep coming at him. He snarls as one gets a lucky slash on his shoulder, leaving the spot red but not bleeding. 

“Alright! That’s it!” Rath yells, then rushes at him again. The tendrils nearly half him, but he makes it to Nega and reaches up, twisting around his neck and landing on his shoulders, slamming the sides of his fist down square on his dome over and over while he flails around. Finally, Nega’s many tendrils grab him from the waist and throw him down hard onto the street. 

The Darkness stomps down on him with his big clawed feet, taking the breath right out of him. “You’re weak. Nothing but a kid trying desperately to be like the adults.” He scoffs. “You’re lame, kid. Just give up!”

Rath struggles underneath his weight, grabbing onto the foot holding him down and trying to move it off him. “Not in this life, you rejected teddy bear!” His rage is only fueled by Nega’s arrogance, and with that anger comes his boost in strength. He’s slow, but he’s lifting Nega’s foot up, to the alien’s surprise, and finally he loses balance and falls over. Rath jumps up and on top of him, once more ripping the fur off Nega’s chest in an uncontrollable fit of rage. 

He’s seeing red. He’s landing punch after hard punch to The Darkness’s face, the loud thudding sound of him hitting his every mark silenced only by the harshness of his breathing. He’s suddenly lifted into the air, a tight grip over his waist, and slammed down onto the pavement next to Nega, then lifted back up and down on his other side. A thrumming pain from his face makes him dizzy. His eyes roll but he can’t see anything but a blur. He’s thrown down again, but somehow he feels like he’s rushing through the air, and suddenly he’s hit smack into the side of a building. Gravity takes over and he slides off the brick wall, landing hard on his back some feet down. His brain works enough to register the portal closing next to The Darkness as he stands up and walks toward him. 

---

Benzarro moves back behind the corner as Nega strolls over to Ben, who, although not looking very good, manages to stand back up. Far behind them, Eon is still working on the bomb, complete uninterested in the going’s on behind him. 

Should he stop him? But what could he do? Even like that, Eon would be a far better fighter than him. Oh, if only his Omnitrix worked!

Something catches his attention out of the side of his eye. A window. Someone closing their blinds. 

His eyes widen, at least, as much as they can, and his chest feels painful. There are still people here. He’d thought they’d all disappeared! They’d just been hiding in their apartments this whole time? 

Keeping a sharp eye out for Nega Ben’s watchful eyes, he backs up further into the alleyway Paradox transported them in, and moves sneakily around the building. He runs on the tips of his toes, trying to be quiet, for a few blocks until he reaches the far building at the end of the street. 

He maneuvers around the farthest building in front of the apartments and peaks over his shoulder down the road to the ongoing fight and Eon, who's completely wrapped up in his mission to destroy their chances of getting out of here. 

If there’s one thing that being a zombie did for Benzarro, it’s enhancing his hearing. Just the tiniest squeak of someone opening a door got his attention. The door to the apartments was only open enough for four of someone’s fingers to stick out and motion for him to come here. He takes one last peak at the battle, then runs over and up the three steps that lead to the red brick complex, and squeezes inside through the door. He’s quickly pulled through, his arm almost coming off, and he can barely get one word in as dozens of cityfolk move a bunch of furniture assumedly back into place over the door, blocking their way out and a non-Ben’s way in. He doesn’t have the heart to tell them that their barricade wouldn’t keep any of Ben’s aliens out like they wanted it to. He doesn’t have the heart to tell them he was a Ben. He’s just janked up enough to not look like a Ben. His eyes were a different color, and lopsided, and bulging out of his sockets. He has a hump in his back reminiscent of a elementary school teacher, and his hair is faded and thinning. He doesn’t look like a normal teenager with his cheeks all sunken in, but a nice, albeit intimidating woman gently takes his hand and guides him farther into the corridor, mumbling “poor child… you’re only a kid..”

He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that those aliens out there were also only kids. 

She takes him into her home and sits him down in an old mahogany, vine-patterned sofa chair. She hastily walks into the open concept kitchen and starts making tea. “We were wondering what happened to you, poor boy..” She goes on as she puts on a kettle and gets out a set of cups. “Thought they’d gotten to ya. You’ve been out there all this time? Poor child..”

He wrings his hands together, pressing his lips into a firm line, feeling the skin on his fingers move too much to be human-like. He doesn’t like tea, but he likes her. This old woman was always very kind to him, he remembers, while he worked at the grocery store. Although she was quick in and out, she was always giving him a worried look. And why wouldn’t she? There was evil about. Nega Ben and Rex were scary. He still wasn’t sure what they’d done or said to them, but the townsfolk stayed inside all that they could. They were lucky there were no children. They were even more lucky that they didn’t remember this wasn’t their real lives. They were like him. They treated him like he was like them. 

A hot steaming cup was pressed into his hand. He hadn’t even realized he’d been thinking for that long. 

The woman sits down in a twin chair before him, crossing her chubby legs and moving her white curly hair out of her face with a shake of her head. 

He knew somehow that this was his aunt. She looks just like her, albeit he hadn’t seen her since he was young and before the Event. This was another universe’s Ben’s aunt, not his. 

“How’d you make it back?” She asks. 

He suddenly remembers her saying that they’d been worried about him, and now he wants to cry. How could that be? Was his heart still beating in his chest? He stays still for a moment, pausing his thoughts. 

…Yes. It’s very, very slow, but he has a beating heart. 

“I’m afraid…” he says, already forgetting her question. “That I’m losing myself. I think I’m…dying.”

He can feel his brain degrading as the seconds pass by. 

The woman sets her cup down in her lap, hands still tightly gripped on it, as her eyes bore into him. “Did they..do something to you? Probe you, or something?”

He can’t even laugh. The side of his mouth spasms. 

She leans forward. 

He hates to worry her. “After all this is over… I’m not gonna be me anymore?” He looks at her, desperately wanting her to understand. Desperately wanting to convey what he wants, needs to say. “If we’re trapped here forever, I’m still going to come apart, but if we leave..” he gulps. It’s slimy and gross. “I’ll just go back to being a brainless monster. I’ll..hurtpeople.”

He hates it he hates it he hates it

They can still hear the sounds of the fight outside. Or, maybe only he can. She doesn’t react to any of the sounds. The bashing, the breaking. The puns. The windows are boarded up, like always, and it occurs to him that this is the first time he’s seen the other side of them. 

He wants to cry. He misses his family so much. He misses being human. He hasn’t seen Grandpa Max or Gwen or his parents since he turned. 

A warm, gentle hand lands on top of his. He meets the woman’s stern eyes. “Young man,” she starts. “Whatever happened to you out there, it can’t hurt you here.” She says it so calmly and assuredly that he almost believes her. He wants to believe her. 

Then there’s a crashing sound coming from outside, and all his hopes are dashed. He puts his head in his hands, incapable of withstanding her graciousness. Her stubby arms encircle him, and it’s the first time in who knows how long that he’s been hugged. “You’re safe here. Everything’s going to be okay.” Her sweet nothings have no effect on him. “We’ll make it out of this.”

He begins to cry.

---

Paradox watches over his shoulder as he walks around the two Ben’s fight and stops at Eon’s kneeled frame. Nega Ben punches Rath into a portal and into a wall, which shakes at the impact. Rath, now used to it, hops down from the indentation he left in the building and growls. “Bad move!” The fight continues. 

Paradox now turns his attention to the heavily breathing and focused young Eon before him. He’s wounded. There’s a red bump on his head that looks scratched raw by what could only be concrete, and his clothes are ragged. But even more than that, there’s something about the attention to detail, the movements of his hands, that seems wrong. Paradox himself has lived many lives, many eons, so to speak, and not once in any of them had he taken the chance to actively study and learn how to work a Chronosapien time bomb. He knew what it did, the danger it caused, how much power it needed to turn on and how to turn it off, but he didn’t know how to assemble it and tweak it. It was just one of the many things he hadn’t got to. Yet, he could tell something was wrong with the way Eon was screwing parts out of it with his small, technical fingers. There were too many parts on the ground. The outer shell and some pieces of metal that outlined the inside. 

“You’ve certainly come back into your own, it seems.” Paradox grasps his hands behind his back. Whether Eon could get the bomb functioning or not, it wouldn’t go off until the Ben with no watch was transported here. There’s no way to tell when that would be. All transportations seem to be random. The future looks normal until it happens, and completely throws the timeline for a loop. Well, not an actual loop; those are completely different things. And Paradox fears that will be soon. The farthest into the future of this timeline he could peak at was just a few minutes from now, and it didn’t look good. Which is why he needs to talk some sense into Eon before things get anymore out of hand. 

“Paradox,” his voice sounds more like Albedo trapped in Ben’s form than it does Ben. It’s sophisticated. Mature. But he still has Ben Tennyson's voice. “I don’t have time for you.” His voice is devoid of any ferocity or mockery. He says it as fact, as just a state of being. No time for Paradox. No time for the time lord. 

Just as he’s about to stop time, just to prove his point, time stops him. He notices how stiff, how wound up the time has become in this instance. It’s too late. He’s lost his ability to control time now, before something bad can happen. They’re already in the last stretch. 

“I’m sure there’s always time for a bit of a chat,” he smiles, despite the young man’s back being turned to him as he peaks around the dangerous object, his hand continuing to twist a knob right in the middle of the many flashing lights around the circuit board. “I presume you know what’s happened to you.”

His hand reaches up instantly to touch his mullet of hair. It’s purple, but he realizes that already. Eon finally turns to him, his mouth parted as if to speak and his eyes filled with mystery. “Two years of searching for evil Ben’s and falling through reality does strange things to you.”

Paradox squints at him. “You don’t have to tell me that.” 

His hands have stopped. He’s watching the battle take place behind Paradox now, but Paradox’s eyes don’t stray. The longer he distracts him, the better. “The darkness… the falling… it was all very blinding. I couldn’t remember anything, couldn’t see anyone. I felt like I wasn’t even alive, at some point.” His dark, thick eyebrows lower down his forehead. 

“That happens.” Paradox didn’t even remember those first years when he’d been trapped in limbo. 140,000 years does that to you. 

“When I came back to my senses, I was here. I couldn’t see. Everything was too bright. I’d no one to talk to, still, but myself, and then my warriors came. And with them, him.” He nods to someone behind Paradox, and finally, he lets himself peak back over his shoulder at the fight. 

Nega Ben Tennyson, in the form of his alien, The Darkness, was holding up considerably against Rath’s unabashed anger. 

“I’d no one else, so I trusted what he’d said. We and Rex were the only ones left in the world that weren’t random foes of theirs. At first. When the other Ben and Rex appeared, he’d made me believe that they were the ones at fault. That they kept me here and took my memories from me. I believed him,” Paradox catches a glimpse at Eon’s glare, before it turns into a sad frown. “But now… I recognize the anger in him. It’s what I used to feel, everyday, for years on end.” He turns his attention back to the bomb. 

“Then why are you helping him?” Paradox steps one foot over so that he’s completely facing Eon. 

His face screws up as he focuses. “I’m not.”

“Then shall I ask what happened to Rex?”

“Nega Rex is fine.” He says as though he’s tired. A sweat falls down his bloody temple, and Paradox realizes his hands are bleeding with the effort of fixing the bomb. A spark shoots out, but Eon keeps going. “I was only humoring Nega Ben. Rex attacked me, not realizing we were on the same side, and in defense I sicked my soldiers on him. He did quite a lot of damage,” Eon nods to the blood stains on the ground. “but they were able to overpower him enough to lead him away into the forest somewhere so that he could no longer interfere, and now they’re keeping him busy while I work.”

Paradox is inclined to distrust him, but Ben’s aren’t very good liars, and Eon looks like he’s telling the truth. There’s something about the way that he’s moving the pieces in his hand…

It hits him like a semitruck. It’s right in front of him, right there, and the only reason Nega Ben hasn’t realized it is because he doesn’t know what to look for. He’s too caught up in his own mind, in his fight, to notice. 

A real smile appears on Paradox’s face. 

---

Fighting a dozen holographic Humongasours at once wasn’t really in Rex’s today plans. Luckily enough, he had the advantage. The dinosaur aliens were too big to fit in between the trees, and so they often trip, fall, or waste time thrusting them out of the way as they fight him. And even without that pulling them down, they were only made out of cheap glasslike material, similar to Gwen’s mana. Yes, Eon’s little men could surround themselves in it indefinitely, but that only worked for as long as they were conscious, and they still were no match for Rex and his fiery blue hair. 

His Mega Nanite enhanced smack hands punched them into oblivion. They may have had brute strength, but they were still mindless puppets. And, Rex wonders while he holds a Humongasour’s fists back from coming down on him, they don’t seem like they’re really fighting at max power. Were they going easy on him? Why? 

He smirks. Or maybe I’m just too powerful for them. 

He overpowers the minion in front of him, pushing him back and wrapping his hands around its thick wrists before swirling around, hitting it against every tree in a wide circle hard enough to tumble them over and break the guy’s glorified alien-shaped barrier, then let’s go so that he hits another henchman behind him. Two for the price of one!

But he doesn’t have time for these guys. He needs to get back to Ben. Tell him that he’s going about this all wrong. He has to convince him somehow. 

A fist hits him so hard he’s sent flying into another tree. He’s wheeling, his right cheek sore from the punch but already healing due to his nanites instant regeneration ability. 

“Oh ho, you are so gonna regret that.” He lands on the ground beneath the tree, kicking up dirt, and pounds his fist into his palm. 

---

“Oh, you are so gonna regret that!” Rath shouts, rising from a pile of debris he’d been hit into by Nega Ben’s powerful fist. 

“So you keep saying,” He retorts, an eye roll in his voice, although his muzzle stays blank. 

They run at each other, arms raised, and their fists meet with a hard crack. Pain flows through Rath’s arm, but he grits his teeth through it and raises his other fist to strike. Nega catches it in his other hand and squeezes it hard enough to break(if he were anyone else). 

They’re in a standstill. The other pushes into it, trying to over power his opponent, but all they can do is sneer and growl at each other. 

“Finally!” A voice that sounds just like Ben’s screams out in relief. 

They both turn to the voice. 

05, with his baggy dirt green pants and yellowish-green eyes runs out of the forest with his arms wide open as if to hug the air. He drops to his knees, leans over the ground with his hands apart as if to do a push-up, and kisses the ground. “Oh, sweet concrete, I’ll never take you for granted again!” 

He looks up, sees Ben and Nega Ben watching him, and looks confused, standing back up. “Ummm, which one is which? Is that you, 10,000?” He motions his hand in their general direction. “What, you can’t even take care of this guy? Whichever one you are?” He murmurs the last part. 

While Nega is distracted, Ben headbutts him, successfully knocking him down and freeing his hands. 

“Ooo,” 05 cringes. “That better be the bad guy.”

“I’m Ben!” Rath holds his arms out, like it’s obvious. “Don’t you know anything about colors? I’m bright and flashy, he’s dark and scary! Get it?”

Rath notices Nega start to get up as 05 says, “That means literally nothing to us.” Then, “Also, which Ben?”

“Sixteen!” He screams, then is tackled to the ground in his moment of weakness. Punches start landing from one cheek to the other, tossing his head this way and that. 

“Fight back!”

“What! Do! You! Think! I’m! Trying! To do!” He yells back, each time getting punched in the face by the alien bear. He grabs his wrist just in time to stop a hit from reaching its mark, and he uses his free hand to return one punch back. 

Nega’s head wretches up to his left, spit flying comically from his mouth. He switches their position, landing on top of him and throwing his own set of punches. He feels like they’ve been going back and forth forever. The guy just wouldn’t go down!  

“What crap! How come you get such a cool alien in your ten? I’m older than you!” 05 crosses his arms, obviously annoyed. 16 can hear him going on through the sound of his blood rushing in his ears and the hard bumping sound of him hitting Nega over and over. “You know how much I had to go through to get here? I’m the one who found out the people that live here are people we know! And that everything here is based on our memories! The least you can give me is the use of the Omnitrix!”

“Wait, go back!” He’d just heard something incredible. So it wasn’t just him who’d gotten some memories back recently? “The people are who now?”

“They’re my aunt’s neighbors or whatever! Now finish that guy off, already!”

They’d have to unpack that later. It isn’t like that really changes anything, anyway. Ben lifts Nega up by the scruff of his fur and punches him so hard that he flies back into the sky and slams into the apartment buildings on the far side of the road. Rath grins as the bear alien slides down from the brick wall and lands face down on the street, bits of brick coming down onto him from where he’d crashed. Payback felt good. 

“Really hope that was the bad guy!” 

Ben and 05 follow the voice to 10,000, who comes from the tree line and is running straight towards them. 

“It was.” They say in complete unison. Ben powers down, turning back into his normal ten year old self. 

He was glad to see 10,000. “Did you find Prime?”

The large man stops in front of them, his eyes quickly searching them for bruises and taking in their surroundings. “Yup. I went on ahead, but he’ll be here any second.” His eyes land on Paradox and Eon, and his expression goes from calm and collected to upset and serious. Ben had completely forgotten about the two in his rage, but right now, it looked like they were just talking. Paradox, to Ben’s disbelief, wasn’t even trying to stop Eon from fixing the bomb. Surely he had some kind of plan?

05 doesn’t seem to notice it. “Did you find Charmcaster?”

10,000's voice is low as he responds. “No, she escaped. And for the better!” He shrugs, his chill and relaxed demeanor returning, a smile appearing on his face. “Less to deal with!”

05 gives him an incredulous look. “You just let her go?”

10,000 holds up his hands in fake surrender. Ben steps in. “She’s gone, dude. As in, not in this dimension anymore.”

“Wait, she got out of here before we did? What the heck!”

10,000 is already walking off. The two young Ben’s look at each other before following him. Before Ben can even ask where he’s going, he stops in front of the entrance to the grocery store, leans forward to look around, then walks to the entrance of the alleyway beside it. “Where’s Benzarro?”

The question sparks up a whole new problem, one that Ben can’t worry about right now. But, it does make him remember something important. 

“Uh, who’s Benzarro?” When the name leaves his mouth, it’s like 05 remembers something. His face screws up and he crosses his arms. “Please tell me its not another Ben..!”

They take in a breath through clenched teeth, looking at him apologetically. 

05 raises his arms and lets them drop by his side dramatically, turning around in disbelief. 

Ben focuses back on 10,000. “Hey, I need you to unlock master control.”

His eyebrows furrow. “Okay…why?”

It’s like the memories are all flooding his brain at once all over again. The thought of it, what he was capable of, it made his hands tingle. He looks down at them, remembering. “I recognize this place. I fought someone here, and met a bunch of other aliens. It’s like what he said.” He looks at 05, who’s looking quite worriedly in the direction they’d just left Nega and Eon in. Ben doesn’t look behind him. He needs to get this out, quickly. He turns back to the older him, practically pleading. “This place is based on not just his, but every Ben’s memories! That’s why the barrier stops where it does. There’s nothing out there!” He doesn’t remember there being anything out there, because it was a red empty space. They were just in a floating city in the sky, last time he was in a version of here. “Those aliens taught me something. And when I met them, one of them gave me a very specific power.” He crooks his finger towards himself. 

Ben 10,000 leans down at ear level so that Ben can put a hand over his mouth and whisper into his ear. 

“Uh, you guys? That guy you beat down is getting up!” 05 is saying, but Ben doesn’t let himself get distracted from his explanation. He’s quick about it. He knows that if he can just get his Omnitrix working right, he can finish this whole thing once and for all. 

It’s only a second later, but he can tell 10,000 is into it by the widening open-mouthed grin on his face and the nod of his head. 

“Guys!” 05 yells again, urgency in his voice. 

10,000 stands up, and starts tapping on his Omnitrix. “Knock yourself out!” And the glow of his watch dissipates as he shuts it off. 

05 looks down at his own Omnitrix, taps on it, and grins ecstatically as it glows up, marking that it’s now fully functional. “YES!” He exclaims, twists its face, then slams down on the upturned wheel. 

The transformation sequence is intense. The skin on 05’s body, for a lack of a better term, pops out, and turns red as it slithers up his arm to his face and to even his eyeballs. His eyes go completely white, then burn with a hot yellow fury, so bright Ben has to look away. His height grows, his clothes disappear, and suddenly he’s standing there, arms wide, screaming, “Heatblast!”

He’s somewhat different from Ben’s version of Heatblast; mostly in that he’s taller, scrawnier, with larger fists. His Omnitrix symbol is also located on his chest instead of his neck. 

He seems like a perfect enemy to the darkness that attacks him. Nega and Heatblast’s fist punch each other, unleashing a wave of darkness and light that dissipates in the air. Nega’s alien launches a stream of darkness at Heatblast, but 05 is quick, and he retaliates with his own stream of fire. The forces of light and dark hit, and the light is getting the upper hand. It can’t even touch him. 

As Ben is watching the fight, 10,000 is working on unlocking master control on Ben’s own Omnitrix. 

A cut off scream rings out, between the balls of fire and night that the two Ben’s are throwing, but neither of them is where it comes from. Ben can see, just in time for the boy to duck underneath a ball of fire, covering his bouncy brown hair in the chaos, 12 running straight towards them from across the street.

“Great! The gang’s all here!” 10,000 grins absentmindedly as 12 comes up, his hands busy and his attention focused on, Ben assumes, figuring out his version of the Omnitrix.

“Where’s the last Ben?” He asks, looking around. 

“Ok, the gang’s not all here.”

Ben uses his free arm to hit him, both getting his attention back on him and exerting his rising anger out on 12. “Forget that! How’d you all get separated from Rex?”

12 rubs his arm, face screwing up. “It was all Argit’s fault! We got split up because of him!”

“It’s ‘cause you kept teasing him!” 05 exclaims behind them, still fighting off Nega, who had him bent over backwards trying to keep his claws from coming down on him. 

12 rolls his blank green eyes. “I was just joking! He’s the one who jumped off all scared and threw off our balance! I wasn’t really gonna do it!”

Ben is afraid to ask what it was, but also intrigued. And then suddenly he was mad, because if they hadn’t been separated, Rex would still be…

And then he wondered where Argit was, and if he was all alone out there somewhere. 

“Oh! No no no nonono!” Ben’s focus moves back to 05, who is suddenly surrounded in a green light and transformed back into human form. “Figures! Just because it works now doesn’t mean it’s not gonna be any less janked up than it was before!”

Nega’s large tentacles are aiming to strike. Before Ben can warn him, 12 notices it too and speaks up. “Quick! I don’t know how you got yours working again, but let me have a chance!”

With the speed of XLR8, despite being a human again, 05 turns his Omnitrix off and 12’s lights on as he taps on it. “Nice! My turn!” And he slams his hand down on it, turning into Wildvine. 

He switches places with 05, launching himself into the field and using his own vines to combat Nega’s tentacles. 

Ben 10,000 is speaking into the Omnitrix, quoting numbers or something like a passcode, and to his surprise, the Omnitrix responds back. After a little back and forth, 10,000 takes his hands off him and backs up, the face of the Omnitrix swirling on his wrist and popping up, lighting up brighter. “It’s done.” 

05, who's now standing in 12’s place, points at the watch. “What just happened?”

Ben tips his chin down at him. “I have a plan. Before I got off the call with you guys earlier, I got a call from someone else. Someone not from any of our dimensions—It’s gonna work, but it’ll take too long to explain.” Well, not too long, but he didn’t feel like going over it a second time. “I need you to trust me. You. Yourself. Us.”

05 waves his hand. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. We’re the same person.” 

Ben grins, raising an mischievous eyebrow and finger gunning him. “You in?”

05 grins back. “Heck yeah, you know it.” He crosses his arms. “If I made it up, then it’s gotta be good..!”

---

Ben 10,000 has to stop himself from laughing at that. Instead, he watches as the youngest him starts turning the dial on his Omnitrix and stops at Echo Echo. 16 glances up at 12, who looks back at them both just in time to see 16 transform. 

“Echo Echo!” 16 exclaims. He looks down at himself, seeming surprised. 

05’s face screws up, unimpressed. 

And then, one Echo Echo turns into three, and then four. Just when the alleyway entrance can’t hold any more, the original Echo Echo looks at the rest of them, says “Boy, do I hope I get some good ones!”, and then hits the symbol on his chest. They all do, and Ben has seen this happen before. He did it when he was quite young. It didn’t work out very well in the end. Having a bunch of him’s with only one personality trait didn’t do him any good, socially, or in a fight. The four quadruplet 16’s in front of him look at each other for only a second before searching through their omnitrix and hitting them once again. Again, making a bunch of copies of himself tended to not work out. But now, looking at all the familiar faces appearing all at once, he thinks, maybe, just maybe, this kid was onto something. 

—-

Exactly eleven minutes and thirteen seconds after Professor Paradox and Charmcaster left, Ben got a phone call. The caller ID was blacked out, like the phone couldn’t handle even the idea of whoever it was calling. 

Ben picked it up hesitantly. “..Hello?”

“Is this Ben?” A familiar, feminine voice asked over the line. 

“Yeah?”

“It’s Garnet. Look, there’s no time to explain— there’s this man who calls himself Professor Paradox here,” Ben looked over at his own Professor Paradox as she said that, and he only smiled back. “And he gave me this phone number saying you’d probably need my help about now?”

Ben was too shocked to speak. He hadn’t been sure he’d ever hear her voice again, much less get to speak to someone outside of this reality through his plain old regular phone. Especially in these unique circumstances. But didn’t Professor Paradox say there were other Paradox’s out there? I guess they didn’t need a Tennyson after all. “I— How— How is this even possible? I thought outside communication was—?”

“Darling, there’s no time. I’m kinda in a bit of a situation myself actually.” There’s the sound of an explosion somewhere behind her. Then another familiar voice—

“Garnet, is that Ben?! Can I speak to him?” K.O.!

“What’s going on over there?” Were they having their own realitybending adventure without me?

“Don’t mind that, Ben. Just tell me: what is it you need to know?”

—

The first one to catch his, 12, and 05’s eyes was the one with flaming bright orange hair. It had been a while since any of them had seen the mean ginger, apparently. On Ben’s part, it was because they were always on different missions. He never called. In their case, they’d been in this world for maybe a month or so, Ben isn’t sure, but either way, they seem both pleasantly surprised to see Gwen 10 standing in front of them. Next up is a version of Ben he instantly recognizes just by the blue color scheme. Ben 23 looks around, confused, then, looking as if he just realized something, turns to look at the one in the middle. Ben doesn’t instantly recognize him. He quickly racks his brain trying to figure it out, when it suddenly hits him. It’s obvious, but too obvious? It looks like 16, no doubt, but his skin is various shades of green and yellow. His hair is still brown, but his eyes are crystal green and reflect weirdly in the light. Beside him, to Ben’s surprise, is a normal looking Ben with a watch not on his wrist like the others but on his chest. 

The Ben without a Omnitrix..! 

Oh, this would be interesting. 

“Gwen? Is that you?” 05 steps forward and puts a hand on her shoulder. 

Her face screws up at the touch as she turns to him. “No, you dweeb, I’m Captain Nemesis!”

Ben 10,000 could never get tired of that sassiness. That’s her, alright. 05 grins wide, amusement all over his face, and he slaps her shoulder lightly. “Dude! Ok, now I know that’s you.” His eyes land on the Omnitrix on her wrist, and his smile wanes a bit. “Or, at least, a very convincing version of you.” He turns to 16, lost in his own world, looking down at himself. “What’s that alien?”

“I dunno,” 16 admits. “I think it’s called a gem?” He twists his body to look at his butt. “It’s an alien from a woman named Garnet’s world. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but it’s supposed to help.”

“You don’t even know how it works?” Ben 23 turns a disbelieving stare his way. “Wait, what am I going on about, I knew that.”

Ben isn’t sure how it all works either, but whatever it is, he needs to hurry it up. 12 wasn’t gonna be able to hold Nega off forever. 

“I just know that we need to merge again. Just, not in the Echo Echo way. I’m just not sure…how to do that.”

“Well you better figure it out quick.” No Omnitrix Ben says, pointing out into the street. “That guy’s getting his butt kicked.”

They all turn to watch 12 in his fight against Nega. He was holding steady, but he was obviously getting tired.

“Ok. Ok.” 16 is mumbling to himself, trying to calm himself down. He raises his forearms up and down as if he’s directing traffic. “I got this. I can do this.”

“Ben!” Gwen exclaims, and her voice is high and alerting. It even makes Ben 10,000 cringe. She stomps up to the Gem alien and slaps her hands on his big puffy cheeks. “Focus! You actually have a pretty decent plan for once! Follow! It!”

Her scarily motivating words make them all stand quietly still. 16’s face is like a pufferfish between her hands, and his lightning green eyes spark like he’s about to cry. But he doesn’t. He’s silent for a long time, just staring into her stern gaze like he was turned to stone by it. 

And then his shoulders relax, and the next thing he does shocks 05 so much that he steps back. 

16 hugs her. 

Gwen’s eyes go wide, her frown going limp as she looks to the side of his face, her arms raised in alarm. She looks at Ben, who smiles, and the teenaged Ben, who shrugs. 

“Thanks, Gwen.” 16 says, low and genuine, and Ben watches, all mushy, as Gwen’s uncomfortable expression melts, and she hugs him back. 

A glow surrounds them, and they all look on in even more shock when only one being stands there. 

Skin a now paler green, a head full of mixed brown and ginger locks face No Omnitrix Ben and Ben 10,000. The person before them is dressed in a mix of blue, green, black and white clothing, bell bottom jeans under a Henley, and a slightly taller stature.

Huh.

“I get it, now!” 16? Gwen? turn to Ben, showing a face with large cheeks, yellow and green eyes, a wide grin, and polka dots in the pattern of freckles layered over their nose. “I know what to do!”

He points at 23. “Your turn, doofus!”

“Ok, that was uncalled for.” 23 looks down at the hand. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Grab my hand!”

He does, and he yelps as he’s pulled forward, right into Gwen 16’s arms. 23’s eyes go big as something seems to be whispered into his ear, and he says, “Oh.” Before suddenly being absorbed, for lack of a better word, into a bright flash of white light. 

The being before them is even taller, and bluer, and reaches a careful hand out to the Ben without a watch. He grins, eyes wide, and grabs onto the hand, immediately also sinking into a new light. 

16 is looking more like Ben now, his hair only with a few streaks of ginger, and his height now at Ben’s level. His skin is a light neon green, his shirt mostly white, blue, and green, and his jeans camo with black, brown, and blue. With his hands on his hips and his chest puffed up, he asks 05, “You ready?”

05 stares up at him, jaw dropped, one brow furrowed down and the other up, like he doesn’t know how to react. Then he shakes his head, eyes wide, and reaches a hand out. “More than I’ll ever be, I guess.” His mouth forms an amazed smile, and 16 grins back as he grabs his hand in a hand shake. 

They fuse, and somehow the kid gets a bit shorter. 

“Ooo!” 16’s attention is grabbed by 12, who is standing over a beat up Nega Ben down the road, now in human form. Nega groans, splayed out on the steps of the apartment building, as 12 starts running over, eyes brimming with excitement. “Me next!” 

This is the quickest fusion of Ben’s out of all of them, with 12 actually jumping into 16, instantly creating a bright light around them. Nega is slow to rising, but the light, even from this far away, is enough to make him lay back down and cover his face. Paradox and Eon, Ben remembers to check up on, pay him no mind. Still, Paradox is doing nothing to stop Eon but standing over him patiently, shaking his head. 

“Hey.” The agglomeration of Ben’s and one Gwen is staring at him, and he realizes that now it's his turn. 

“You know how extremely weird this is, right?”

He gives him a confused look. “I’m going through my memories right now, and I feel like way crazier stuff has happened.”

“No, you’re right. This isn’t the strangest thing to ever happen to me in the past thirty something years.” Ben nods. Still, it was a bit weird, right? “Welp, I know you got this, bud. Let’s go.” He pulls out a fist, confident yet still unsure of what to do. 

“You’ve gotta tell me about all these stories one day.” The kid bumps his fist and holds it there.

“Not a chance, little guy.” Ben was eye level with him. 

“Hey, you can’t call me that anymore!” He’s smirking.

And Ben hears his own laugh resound out as a white light envelops him. 

---

Ben feels a tremble go up his leg as he once again steps from soft dirt to hard concrete. He slows to a stop as on the other side of the road a large alien and Ben 10,000 are caught in a flash of white light, and are replaced with something humanoid, something that strangely looks like him…

Something touches his shoulder and he quickly flings it off, turning around to meet a familiar old smile. He lets out a relieved breath. “You have got to stop doing that!”

Paradox looks nothing but amused. “Welcome back, dear Ben.”

“Paradox,” He faces him fully. “10,000 told me you were here.”

He nods, “You put on the watch, right?” He grabs Ben by the shoulder and stares him in the eye with a seriousness Ben has very rarely witnessed from him. 

“Yes? Yes, I did. You gonna tell me what it does? I doubt it’s meant to act as a real watch.”

Paradox moves back a bit with a smile, “No. but it does help us save time.” He says amusedly, then turns him to face the green but not sickly looking Ben across the way. “That’s Ben. A lot of them. No need to worry, this is all part of the plan, just go with it,” He says boredly behind him, taking his hands off him. 

Ben nods, but when he tries to turn to him to ask more questions, Paradox is already gone. Of course. He places his attention back on the being across from him. He’s huge. At least ten feet tall. His eyes are a sparkling green that even Ben can see from this far away. He’s staring back at him, hair a light brown and bushy all the way to the back of his neck. He looks young in the face, early twenties, maybe? His skin is pale green, with dots almost inscrutable, like freckles, all over his arms and face. The Omnitrix is on his left wrist, and something like an emerald crystal shines on his right. The skin around both is dark, as if he was having an allergic reaction to both. 

Ben, having seen worse, begins walking to him. The other Ben, also watching him, starts to meet him in the middle of the street, his face tightening up, to Ben’s surprise, into embarrassment. As he’s walking, his body glows and shrinks, and just as they reach each other, Ben 16, with all his short and self conscious glory, appears. 

“Looks like you did some growing in the few hours I was gone!” He jokes, looking the young kid over. 

“Heh heh,” 16 lets out a little laugh, obviously feeling awkward. His hands are behind his back as he kicks a rock, gaze on the ground to his side. After a second, he looks up, smiling sheepishly. “Look, I’m sorry for running away earlier. I’m a jerk.”

Ben shakes his head. “No, I’m a jerk for not telling you sooner.” Although, at the time, he had his reasons. “Just make sure you don’t do it again.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Until we all can go home. Then, yeah, I’m getting the heck out of here.”

Ben smiles, glad to see the kid still has some humor left. “Anyway, what is all,” he drags his finger up and down at 16, “this?”

“You’ll find out everything once we, uh,” he stumbles on the wording, screwing up his face and snapping his finger, “Actually, we haven’t come up with a name for it yet, But basically, we’re all gonna become one mind meld, like Echo Echo does. You know? But in reverse.”

Ben whistles. “Okay… well, if your friends jump off a cliff.” He holds out a hand. “So, how do I do this?”

“We gotta have a connection. A sentimental moment, if you will.” 16 raises his hands up in a shrug, clenching his teeth in a I dunno gesture. 

Ben gives him a questionable look, then shrugs, and hugs him. 

16 automatically hugs back, and he says, in a sincere tone, “Thanks. For everything.”

“Anytime, kid. Self care, and all that.” He smiles into 16’s shoulder. 

His arms tighten around him, and a strange feeling starts to overcome him. 

“Don’t mess this up, dweeb.”

“Wha—“ And then they’re one person. 

It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t have any physical sensation. It’s like… it’s like when you crush berries together, and they all mix together, but they’re all still berries? And if you look in the bowl, you can still see some individual berries despite them still counting as being successfully mixed in? It's like jumping into a pool with a bunch of other people still in it, except all the other people are different versions of you and the pool is really jello and now you’re stuck, although it would be really easy to get out of either way, and you don’t really want to get out. It’s talking to a dozen people all at once about different things and one person is talking about rocket science and another physics, and one just wants to show you his finished Lego set. 

And then it's feeling a sense of dread as one thing stands out against the rest. When Ben Prime’s mind had only been focused on something so specific, so completely and utterly, looking for any bit of information he could get, it automatically flowed into his mind from the others, their thoughts his and their memories one. It hits him instantly, and he can feel not only his sorrow, but everyone else’s. They hurt as he hurt. And it's painful. It leaves them stunned. 

The sadness numbs him almost instantly. The amount of different emotions rushing through all of them inevitably maxes each other out, and soon they feel nothing. 

Rex is…dead? The silent question mark doesn't even reach him. All he can do now is focus on what he now knows he’s supposed to do. Both Gwen 10, Ben 23, and the watchless Ben were unaffected by the temporal distortion, and therefore have all their memories of the fight from last time. They all know how they beat them the last time, but that won’t work a second time. And now that he knows how to use his gem powers to fight, he is gonna put an end to this for good. 

Nega Ben is standing again, his eyes dark and filled with anger. His voice is low, growling, laced with venom. “You done?”

Ben doesn’t even need to turn. His arms glow and grow long and large, the watches on their wrist wholly normal and separate from the transformation, but unlike Rex, his limbs are still humanoid despite their pale green color; Nega, on the other hand, turns into Ghost Freak.

The fight starts up once more. 

The thing about Ghost Freak is that he can take over someone’s body by overpowering their mind, so although Ben could only get a hit in ten percent of the time, Nega was at an equal disadvantage. He couldn’t fight against the minds of all of them at once. Every time he tried, he was promptly pushed out, each time getting displaced quicker and quicker until he couldn’t even enter anymore. Ben took pointers from Rex’s smack hands and swiped at him, but that only worked when Nega wasn’t focusing on going intangible. An idea comes from the 16 part of him, and he reaches into his gem and prays that it’ll somehow work. He focuses, and starts to feel something in his hand, he gasps, grabbing tightly onto it, and his gem starts to glow as he pulls a weapon out and onto his wrist. 

He stares at it, and laughs. It’s a bracer. A bracer. Unlike the Omnitrix, it’s rather plain looking. It shines green with a golden tint from the sunlight, reaching from his wrist to his mid forearm, and it’s tight almost like a second skin. If he hadn’t of watched himself pull it out, he wouldn’t have even noticed it was there. He flips his arm over, inspecting it. On the wrist end of the bracer are small openings going all around the edge. Curious, Ben straightens his arm out towards the ground, and gasps as five skinny bolts of green electricity shoot out and attach to the ground. 

He laughs again, this time out of delight. He pulls his arm back, the wire-like strings receding back into his bracer, then throws his arm forward, successfully shooting at and catching Ghost Freak, who hadn’t turned intangible in time to avoid it. 

There’s a certain satisfaction that comes from electrocuting Nega that Ben can’t quite describe, but it feels good. 

It feels really good. 

---

Eon’s heart stutters as the Chronosapien time bomb starts to light up underneath his hands.

Beside him, Professor Paradox takes notice and frowns as if confused, pulling out his pocket watch to look at the set of hands running at an interminable speed. “Looks like we’re on a schedule. The watch will only slow everything down for so long. I suggest we hurry this little shindig up, shall we?” He aims these words at the fusion of Ben’s and a singular Gwen. “Time is ticking!”

Nega Ben, who is currently lying on the ground in human form following his latest shock, only smirks, triumphant despite his impending doom. “You hear that, Bens? You better defeat me for good in the next five minutes or who knows where the bomb will send you?” Eon watches as Nega Ben struggles onto his side, then onto his feet. He shrugs. “Or don’t. It’s not like you’ll get very far, anyway.” He says as he turns his Negatrix and promptly slams down on its head. Or he would have, if another voice hadn’t interrupted him. 

“Ben!” 

Eon’s first thought will always be the Rex he spent these last few months with alongside Nega, but as he backs away from the shining machine of destruction, the flashing of brightness so reminiscent of those two years spent falling, it occurs to him that he's never seen the other Rex here. This Rex is the only one he's known.

Nega Ben, on the other hand, has been watching the other Ben and Rex masterfully since they got here. He'd sent Eon's own goons after them several times over a dozen to keep them away from their hideout, and as such, knew them well enough to know the difference between Rex’s in both looks and personality. 

But they still had the same voice. 

And all this Rex had said was Ben, yet Nega knew without looking which one it was. Which is why he paused right before pressing his alien. 

Rex, Nega Ben’s Rex, ran past Professor Paradox, ran past Eon himself, and completely paid no attention to the giant standing in the middle of the road, just to reach Nega. 

In Eon’s own observation, Rex wasn't as evil as Nega Ben. In fact, Eon would even go so far to say that Nega Ben isn't as evil as he pretends to be. But going back to Rex, he was often the kindest soul in the Evil Ben and Albedo group. He refused to fight the other Ben's when the time came, and while in this timeline, he often kept Eon and the villains company. He made devices from his own builds to give Eon something to do in his spare time, and he was the cook! 

If Nega Ben was the one in charge of food, they'd have had nothing but veggie smoothies and kale chips everyday. The average diet of a troubled teen. In fact, most days, Nega was just a lazy seventeen year old kid. While Rex could often be found lamenting his Ben in a corner somewhere, Nega would be laying back on any surface, looking up at nothing for hours on end with no sign of stopping except to suddenly say, “...okay, time to wreak havoc.” and get up with a “new” plan to have Eon send his ninjas to attack the other Ben and Rex.

The only times Nega Ben wasn't like that was when he was talking to Rex. Classic teenage love antics. 

Eon, and subsequently Bad Ben, did not remember being a teen anymore.

---

Seeing a Rex, even the obviously two years younger and non-dripped out one, calms the fusion down a bit. If there is more than one Rex, then their Rex was probably fine. Or, rather, Prime’s Rex. The Ben with no watch has his own Rex who was completely safe at home. Gwen 10 has no idea who Rex is. 12 and 05 have no idea how they so thoroughly lost him, and while 12 internally decided to place all blame on Argit, 05 was more surprised that 05 had been able to get himself so far so quickly, considering the man has a jetpack. But that, the fusion guessed, is what 05 and 16 had alike. 

Just because they both had beef with Rex didn’t mean they wanted him gone. They’d spent weeks under both his and Prime’s care, and although the living situation wasn’t the best, it sure beat sleeping outside and eating the grilled worms grandpa Max considered food. And, yeah, maybe 05 isn’t being very fair, especially now that he’s mind-melded with all the other Ben’s and can see hints of their memories from within them. Maybe the future is coming, whether he wants it to or not. Maybe he’ll one day be fine with being friends with Kevin again, and with dating outside of his normal pool of people, and with getting along with Gwen.

Ew, the Gwen in his head thought.

 And yeah, maybe 16 should have thought a bit more about why Prime wanted to keep his identity secret.

Maybe he should have just asked, the Gwen in his head thought. 

Definitely should have just asked, the others agreed.

In fact, 12 thought, I’m pretty sure you’re the only person who didn’t know. 

And 16 realized, as he searched his, their? his mind, that it was true. He’d been the only one left out of the loop! 

What the heck! He thought. If he weren’t so emotionally susceptible to all the other people sharing his brain right now, he’d be mad enough to punch something. But unfortunately, Nega Rex was still begging Nega Ben to change his mind, and Nega Ben was looking mighty susceptible himself. (Argit also didn’t know, the thought appeared from somewhere. About Prime. Just saying.) 

It was, to say kindly, embarrassing to look at, even for the older Ben’s in the group. Nega Rex seemed to be gently holding Nega Ben by the cheek, speaking calmly but with a worry and urgency in his eyes that reminded every Ben of every Rex they had ever known. On the outside, Ben was silently blushing, but on the inside there was a variety of reactions ranging from a consistent vomiting noise coming from the kids and a awww from the adults. Nega Ben, on the other hand, for all his own blushing and starry-eyed stare, was talking softly in what Ben could only decipher was protest, because Nega Rex did not seem to be getting anywhere with him.

Stubbornness runs in the Ben’s apparently. (Tennyson’s as a whole, more likely.) When a Ben had a plan, there was no stopping him. Not Vilgax, not Maltruant, and not even a Rex. It’s probably how Eon always got so far. He has that blood in him. And he doesn’t even have a Gwen or a Rex to cool him down or take him in the right direction.

But that begs the question, where is Rex Prime? And Argit, for that matter?

Prime had lost his phone in the fight with Nega Rex, and it’s been way too long since the Ben’s have heard from him. Had he gotten caught up in a fight like 10,000 and Prime had? Ben could tell that Nega Rex looked a little more roughed up than he had when Prime fought him. Even though he could heal his wounds, he couldn't mend his clothes. Had it been him? Maybe another secret villain had appeared? Had one gotten out—

(No, cause I used my Chronosapien and froze them all in time to stop them from making any moves while we finished this. Had you guys been keeping them locked up there by themselves with no one watching them all this time?)

(Errr…)

All the while, Nega Rex and Ben were beginning to argue louder. “Why won’t you listen to me?”

“Why are you listening to him? You’re just gonna take his word for it? He’s lying to you!” Nega Ben responded, throwing his hand in Ben’s direction. 

And this is when Paradox finally speaks up. “I assure you he’s not, Mr. Tennyson. The Chronosapien time bomb is just that, a bomb. It won’t send you back in time. In fact, it’ll send you out of time, as in right here. Forever.”

”He’s right.” Eon stands beside Paradox, one foot turned towards the teens and a bloody hand pointing to the bomb itself. “This machine wasn’t meant for time travel, it’s meant for time annihilation. You don’t remember because being here screws with your mind! This device is meant to erase history from existence, not save your relationship!”

“Well what would you know about saving relationships, old man?” Nega Ben yells back, completely ignoring the implications of what he’d just been told. “If that’s the case, then we can erase what we did to Vilgax from everyone’s mind! Heck, we could even erase Vilgax!”

Hard to argue with that, Ben thought, nodding his head in thought. Didn’t sound too bad. 

“You’re not getting it!” Eon yelled, his voice sounding mighty unBen-like. “That’s not how it works! Not anymore! I’m telling you, you won't be able to see your timeline if this thing goes off!”

Nega Ben looked at Eon like he was crazy. “You’re supposed to be on our side!”

”Yeah? Well, I changed my mind.” He glares back. “I’m done being your lapdog. If I’m gonna make up for getting us all into this mess and get everyone out of here, then yes, I’m gonna destroy this bomb.”

Nega Ben looked at him, and then the shining bomb surrounded by naked parts laying on the ground. “…You piece of—”

Eon turns to Ben, and he has to look up to look him in the face, even from this distance. “But I can't disarm it all the way without powering it off first. I’ve only gained us some time.”

Realization hits Ben. “And that means I have to unfuse and get the Ben without a watch out of here before it stabilizes.”

Nega’s face is red, but this time not with any kind of pleasantry. His plans are turning to naught right in front of his face, and now he has no one. His fists are balled tight, and Gwen remarks how baby-like he’s being. “Oh, you’re not going anywhere!” He growls, going redder at the sight of Ben’s giggling. “If we’re all going to die, I’m not going without a fight!”

“Um, I believe there’s been some kind of confusion.” Paradox steps up. ”The bomb won’t destroy any other Ben’s or their universes when it goes off.”

Nega Rex freezes. “What?” He glances at Ben, then back to the professor. “What did you just say?”

Confusion surfs across Ben’s face, and then sudden realization sets in. “Wait—!”

“The Chronosapien time bomb at this point is only designed to do one thing, and that’s keep all these Ben’s and the people they know here, in this world, forever, with no way out.”

Ben sighs, smacking his forehead, while Nega Rex takes a dangerous step forward, his eyes wide and beginning to glow. “You’re saying that only the people these Ben’s know will be stuck here? So if they’ve met my Ben, he’ll one day end up here?”

Oh, Ben is not liking this one bit. 

Paradox glances at Ben, confused as to what seems to be happening— an alarming thing for Ben to witness. “Well—”

“Eon, you’ve met my Ben, right?”

Eon flinches, not noticing Ben2 baring his teeth and moving a hand under his chin at him. “Uhh…yes..?”

Ben sighs.

Rex’s hair instantly turns into blue flames, as if sparked, and anger roils off of him like a phoenix. “So you were right, Ben..”

At first Ben believes he’s talking to the fusion, but it quickly becomes apparent, as Rex turns his flaming head to look at Nega with his glowing eyes, that he’s not. 

“They did lie.”

Nega Ben’s mouth forms into a malicious smirk, and he takes Meta-nanite Rex’s now outstretched hand. 

“Now wait a moment! Don’t you have friends?” Ben pleaded to the other Rex. “People you’ll miss back in your dimension? Do you truly believe your Ben will forgive you if you trap him here? You wanted to apologize, right?”

The two, hand in hand, turn to face Eon. Nega Rex spoke with his cheek to him. “But he won’t, will he? You don’t know my Ben, I mean, he didn’t even look for me.” He frowns. “I’d rather be stuck here with him forever than go back with nothing to go back to. You said it first, right? We’ll have time. All the time in the world, in fact. I mean, it is you we’re talking about.”

Ben sputtered. “Ok, but your friends!”

“What friends?”

Woof, toxic~! A distinctly 10,000 thought. 

Gwen and 12 had the same thought: There’s probably more than one reason those two broke up.

“Ditto.” Nega Ben agrees, having heard none of their thoughts. He licks his lips. “Let’s just get rid of these guys for good. And by get rid of,” Nega looks at Ben. “I mean kill.”

—-

Paradox finds himself frowning, both from the itchy familiar feeling he’s getting and from the dialogue he’s hearing between the two bad boy teens in front of him. He peeks down at his watch, confirming what he’d already suspected, and looks up at the two with an annoyed glare. “Alright, that’s enough of that.” And he disappears. 

—

Eon’s left defenseless now without Paradox by his side, and now both sets of eyes are on him. He looks at Nega Ben. “And why are you still trying to go through with this? It affects you too! You know he’ll leave you as soon as he gets his Ben back!”

Nega Ben shrugs, “Oh, it’s not about that. It sounds like I’ll get what I want regardless. I just don’t like any of you.”

And this is why past Eon chose him, darn it. He was always this capable of selfishness, and Eon helped him hone it.

For the love of— 

It’s a reflex he doesn’t even need to train, because even before he became one person with Bad Ben, he was never alone in his head. 

Read the rest on Ao3/Quotev

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