Chapter Text
Ben-
After tracing over the Sumo Slammers fanart he drew on the R.V. window with his breath for the fourth time, Ben threw himself against his seat and tossed his arms out to the side in a manner reminiscent of a toddler.
Rolling his head back, he let out a long and dramatic, “Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
Ben was reeeaaally boooooorrrreeeeeddd. He was a ten-year-old, after all. Gwen flicked her eyes away from her spell book to glare at him for all of five seconds before returning her focus right back to the same pages she had already studied a thousand times.
Ignoring her, he looked around desperately for something to pass the time. Yep. Just like two minutes ago when he did that very same thing: absolutely nothing. He couldn’t even play video games anymore after he’d broken both his controllers trying to 1v1 himself as Four Arms to incredibly predictable results. His only consolation was that, unlike the last instance in which the Tennysons had found themselves in the middle of a never-ending desert, the air conditioning was working perfectly.
He had already used up the Omnitrix for the time being, as well. Pestering your Grandpa until he finally gives you permission to let off some energy as XLR8, it turns out, is not a permanent solution when the device that lets you turn into an alien has a timer. Even then, he just kinda ran in circles around the R.V., which did very little to appease the never-ending monotony.
There was nothing to do in this stupid desert! Everything was just dirt, cactus, more dirt, rocks, dead bush, oh hey look it’s more dirt, and one lonely road stretching on forever and ever.
“Why’re we even driving into the middle of Arizona anyways…” Ben muttered to himself spitefully.
“Because, Grandpa’s old friend called him and asked us to come check out the weird stuff people have been seeing in his town," rolling her eyes, Gwen followed it up with, “Are you trying to be annoying? Or are you just so dumb that you forgot something you heard ten minutes ago?”
Ben pretended to himself that it was the first option.
Sensing that Gwen had cornered him with that accusation, Ben elected to take the mature route and blow raspberries at her.
“Ugh,” she vocalized, “you are so immature! This could be an amazing chance to experience a pre-colonial era culture that dates back to nearly the beginning of human history.”
“Sounds like a total snooze fest…” Ben intoned, resting his chin on his palm to stare angrily out the window.
After what felt like yeeeaarss, Grandpa Max finally broke the silence.
“Oh look, kids! That’s the first sign of civilization we’ve seen in two hours!” he chuckled, gesturing out the front windshield at a small town, glinting in the distant sunlight.
“Score!” Ben shouted, pumping his fist in the air.
Despite being comparatively rural, the town bustled with life as they pulled the R.V. into a nearby gas station.
Rolling out of his seat and onto the floor with a thump, Ben heard and felt the telltale signal of his watch timing back in. The boy laid on the floor for a few moments while Grandpa Max pumped gas. In the distance though, he thought he could hear... sirens?
Concentrating on the noise, he realized that they were getting steadily louder, and thus closer. Ben rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up to his feet. His cousin seemed to hear the noise too, growing louder by the second, and beat him to the back window.
Just as she pushed the curtains to the side, dozens of cop cars sped past.
“Woah,” she breathed, turning to where he was standing beside her.
“Woohoo! Finally, some action!” Ben shouted.
The Rust Bucket’s door creaked as Grandpa Max stepped inside. He flashed them a small smile and sped off in pursuit of the police cars without saying a word.
They were experienced at this by now. Summer vacation was two-thirds of the way complete, and the three of them had been following trouble and being heroes everywhere they went since the summer had barely begun.
Ben was also experienced enough to realize that going XLR8 just to get there faster, despite being tempting, was not always the most intelligent course of action.
For all he knew, the scene they were headed to could be at the bottom of a lake or something, and what good would super speed do him then?
They turned a corner only to see what looked like every police officer in the state. They had formed a barricade outside of some sort of sciencey, one-story office building. Distressingly, EMT’s and other medical personnel could be spotted among the cops.
Parking far enough away so as to not draw suspicion to themselves, but still close enough to hear if the situation changed for the worse, the Tennysons prepared to sneak into the fray. Before they could begin to plan, however, a singular voice drew their attention back to the scene.
“What’s the situation, boys?” a police officer asked loudly.
“Captain, the perps and our guys are still in there! But- but this place’s security is top notch, and they must’ve hacked it and put the whole building into lockdown. Nobody can get in,” a young cop relayed frantically. He looked like he was on the verge of tears.
“They already got one of us,” the young man swallowed harshly before continuing, “They said they don’t think she’s gonna make it… We really, really need help.”
The weight of the officer’s words took a few seconds to sink in. This fight was a serious one, then. No goofing around.
He’d done it before with Kevin and Vilgax, and he’d do it again with whoever, or whatever, was in that building. Ben couldn’t afford to be trying out one-liners when there were lives on the line.
“Okay,” he said, steadying himself, “How do we get me in there?”
“Woah, wait,” Gwen ordered, stepping in between him and the building, “We can’t be hasty with this one, Ben. This seems super serious."
“Yeah. I know,” he stepped past her pointedly, “which is why I’ve gotta get in there and help the people that’re still trapped.”
Now, it was Grandpa Max's turn to move in front of him. Ben frowned, feeling patronized. Crouching slightly, the old man placed a gentle hand on Ben’s shoulder, “Ben, I believe in you with all my heart, but you don’t gotta go in there if you don’t want to.”
Ben took a step backward, a bit stung by his words, “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if people got hurt because I was too scared to fight."
"With great power comes great responsibility, remember?” he quipped with a cheeky wink, unable to help himself from adding levity to the grim situation despite his previous internal declaration.
“Plus,” Ben continued, activating the Omnitrix and turning the dial, “Four Arms could smash through those security doors in ten seconds flat.”
He raised his right arm above his head and slammed it down onto the Omnitrix’s faceplate.
Okay, fine. He knew he could probably just press it lightly and it’d transform him all the same, but what kind of superhero didn’t add a little flair into their super-heroics?
The device immediately made it clear that flair and super-heroics meant absolutely nothing to it.
“Awww man…” Grey Matter all but whined.
“So, you still gonna smash the doors in, tough guy?” Gwen asked, staring down at him with her hands on her hips and a smirk on her face.
“Yeah, right. I could try,” he answered sarcastically before feeling the part of Grey Matter that wasn’t entirely himself supply him with an alternative idea.
“Or… Grey Matter can reroute the building’s power away from the security doors so the police officers can get inside! Now, the only thing left to figure out is how to get me in there…”
Gwen bent down and allowed him to hop onto her outstretched hand. She then deposited him on her shoulder.
Ben wondered, not for the first time before a fight, what he was about to get himself into. Memories of being slammed into the side of Mount Rushmore by Vilgax’ fists, electrocuted in a dingy alleyway by Kevin, and nearly being eaten alive by over a dozen different aliens flashed through his mind in sharp detail thanks to Grey Matter’s impeccable ability to recall even the things Ben wished he could forget.
“Hey, what if you somehow got into that vent right there? You’d probably be able to access the whole building from inside it without anybody seeing you, right?” Gwen asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.
“Huh?” he intoned dumbly, squinting his frog-like eyes in an attempt to get a better look at the direction she was pointing in.
On the roof of the single story building stood a grate that was probably connected to the ventilation system. Grey Matter had crawled through vents before, so this should be a piece of cake.
“I like it, but do you have any plans for getting me from your shoulder to a roof?” he asked, a bit of sarcasm in his tone.
“Just one…” she replied ominously, shifting him to be in one hand and then positioning her body as if she was about to try and throw him the entire distance. Panic seized Grey Matter's chest, but he had no time to vocalize his apprehension before Gwen was moving.
“Declam Baccura!” Gwen commanded, throwing Ben into the air.
Grey Matter screeched as he was carried over the heads of all the police officers by whatever spell Gwen had cast to empower her throw, his arms pinwheeling wildly.
He landed hard on the roof of the facility, bouncing for a few moments on its gravelly surface before finally skidding to a stop with his limbs in a tangled mess. Grey Matter stood up clumsily, the effects of what would have been a nasty fall nothing but a slight ache in his limbs. He was tougher than his outward appearance would give him credit for.
Ben jogged over to the raised edge of the facility’s roof, standing up on his toes to peak over it. He scanned the crowd for Gwen and his grandfather with the intention of getting their attention and signaling that he’d made it to his intended destination. His eyes found them after a second, they were standing in the same place after all, but their attention appeared to be completely focused on something happening directly below him, at the entrance to the facility.
The sound of glass smashing loudly below made him flinch harshly, a byproduct of his more jumpy nature whenever he used this transformation, which just so happened to be the perfect size to get stepped on.
He could hardly see from the position he was in, so he decided to hoist himself completely onto the raised section of the roof. Leaning a bit precariously over the edge, he could clearly see two police officers dragging the bloody, unconscious body of a third officer back to safety out of a small, now smashed, window.
He shuffled numbly backward until he was standing on the roof again, blinking the afterimage out of his mind. People were already hurt. Actually hurt.
He’d fought much bigger threats before- world ending threats, universe ending threats- but something about this felt so much more real. The entire universe was a lot more of an abstract concept than a normal person doing their normal job bleeding to death right in front of him.
“God damnit!” he heard someone shout angrily, “We still can’t get these guys out cus’ these doors won’t open! We could try to single-file our way inside through this window here, but we’d risk becoming sitting ducks! We’re stuck in a waiting game we can’t win.”
Hearing this, Ben steadied himself with renewed determination. He was good at turning fear into a purpose. He'd had a lot of practice with that.
Whipping around pointedly, he ran to the vent. After a few experimental tugs to see if he could just wrench the thing off outright, he carefully unscrewed the outer grate with his small fingers and slipped inside.
Crawling through the vents with practiced efficiency, Ben quickly came upon a T shaped split in his path.
Ever the problem solver, Grey Matter pulled a memory from the very depths of Ben’s mind. In this memory, he was only three years old and sitting on his father’s lap playing with some sort of superhero action figure. On the T.V., one that young Ben clearly wasn’t paying attention to at the time, was a detailed map of the ventilation system of a bank. The host, who was narrating something about a grand heist, made an offhand comment about some ventilation systems being standardized in order to cut costs. The bank robbers had memorized that standardized layout before their robbery, which is why their getaway was so clean that they had escaped without ever being caught.
“Good thing I memorized it too,” Grey Matter voiced aloud triumphantly.
“Man, that is creepy,” he added after thinking about it for a moment.
Following the map in his mind’s eye, Ben quickly realized that this system of vents followed the standardized model perfectly.
“Which means… aha!”
He crawled toward the shafts of light illuminating the inside of the vent. When he got close enough, he squinted through and was granted a perfect view of the main lobby of the research center, and a perfect view of the three criminals below. As well as their seven hostages.
His heart, or whatever the Galvan equivalent of a heart was, clenched in his chest at the sight of the people sitting huddled in the center of the room. The situation just got a lot more volatile. All of them looked like workers at the facility, as they were all wearing matching "business casual" style uniforms. Some of them even wore pristine white lab coats. All of them had their arms zip-tied behind their backs and their legs zip-tied together at the ankles.
Once again turning his fear into determination, Ben shifted his attention to the criminals. Collectively, they appeared frazzled. A wide assortment of weaponry and the accompanying ammunition was strewn about every surface, and multiple computer monitors appeared to have been smashed in.
One man in particular was pacing back and forth menacingly, a handgun firmly in his grip. His eyes were bloodshot and his dark stubble was beginning to creep off of his face and down onto his neck.
A shorter man with thin chestnut hair just barely reaching past his shoulders stood hunched over a computer, tapping his foot nervously as he watched a progress bar get closer and closer to finishing.
The final man stood eerily still, though his back was to the vent's opening, hiding his face from Ben's view. His menacing form would have dwarfed Ben even if he wasn’t Grey Matter.
Speaking of Grey Matter, he had a job to do. Continuing his path for a few more feet, Ben came to a vent that opened into the same main area of the facility but was far enough away from the three men to not risk them hearing it. Then he went to work.
After unscrewing the grate, tilting it carefully so he’d be able to pull it up and inside the air ducts, and hopping carefully from the ceiling onto a nearby desk, Grey Matter ran to the first computer he could reach. If they were connected to the router of the building, he should be able to find a way through to disable whatever connection was keeping the doors locked.
“Boy, would upgrade have been useful right now,” Grey Matter whispered to himself.
After some desperate clicking and typing, he found a control panel directly responsible for remotely controlling the doors, most likely for when large shipments of materials were brought into the facility and no one felt like getting up to unlock them for the delivery men every time they needed to get in.
Well, that was easier than he thought it would be.
The harsh beeping of the Omnitrix made him freeze in his tracks. Picking up his pace, Grey Matter clicked on the control panel, only to be met with a large text box with the words “password required” hovering over it.
“Do you guys hear that noise,” one of the men asked, coming closer as he did so.
“No, no, no, no, no…” Grey Matter muttered, looking in every direction in a panic.
Across the room, on a sticky note slapped haphazardly on the side of a computer screen, was a string of about 16 random numbers and letters scrawled in a messy pen. Below it, a different sticky note stated in giant, underlined letters, "DON'T FORGET.”
Grey Matter turned back to the computer already having memorized the code and typed it in, nearly praying that the password on the note didn't go to some other login.
No sooner did his small finger press the enter key than his transformation timed out, unleashing a bright flash of red light and replacing the tiny alien with a very human, and very vulnerable, ten-year-old boy.
“What the shit?! The doors just unlocked!” exclaimed what Ben could only presume was the shorter man.
“You…” a terrifying voice sounded from directly behind him.
With a horrified gasp, Ben whipped around only to be violently grabbed by his right arm before he could even react.
He was wrenched upward so hard it felt as though his arm was going to be pulled out of its socket, his feet skimming along the ground desperately.
“What did you do?!”
“I-I just-” Ben sputtered uselessly, the Omnitrix in his peripheral vision that horrible shade of red.
With a growl, the man dragged him into the center of the room, tossing him onto the floor next to the other hostages. With his arm now free, Ben could see the pink silhouettes of the man’s fingers pressed into his skin.
His attention was ripped away from assessing his injury by the realization that a gun was being waved around expressively a mere foot away from his head.
The man who had previously grabbed him flailed his arms in every direction silently for a few moments before screaming at the top of his lungs, the sound full of deranged fury. When he finished his temper tantrum, he looked back at Ben with barely contained murderous intent.
“Oh, so you wanna be 'Mr. Hero' and unlock the doors, huh? Where were you,” he shouted, accusatorially shoving a finger into Ben’s chest, “when we gave the police half the hostages back?! We were supposed to get a reduced sentence for that!”
“That was before you shot a cop and kidnapped an eight-year-old,” an electronically deepened voice said smoothly from the direction of the entrance.
It was the man from before, the one who had been silent the entire time. He was wearing a mask over his face, with his long, dark hair framing it and making the simple smiley-face look almost like an animalistic predator in some way Ben couldn’t place. Perhaps it was because the guy looked to be about six-foot-one-billion-inches of pure muscle.
Ben needed to make a plan, he needed to do something. He couldn’t risk blindly running away, not only for fear of his own safety but also because of the fact that the criminals would probably retaliate by attacking the other hostages if he stepped out of line. And, horribly, the watch was still timed out.
“I believe it’s time that I take my leave,” the masked man continued suddenly.
In one smooth motion, he crossed the room, removed the hard drive from the computer just as the material finished downloading, and disappeared further into the building. The entire room sat in stunned silence for a few seconds.
“Oh my god… oh my god he left us,” the shorter man breathed.
It was then that the full police force rushed into the building, their heavy footfalls echoing off of all corners of the office.
Ben once again felt himself yanked off the ground.
“Get off me!” he yelled instinctively, wriggling in the guy’s grasp.
“Shut up!”
And the guy punched him. In the face. Ben was too stunned to even remember that it hurt to get punched directly in the jaw, so he just gaped silently at his assailant for a few seconds too long.
He had never been punched in his human form before.
In the time it took for him to realize what was happening, he’d been snatched up and put into a choke-hold. Crying out in alarm and desperation, Ben scratched at the arm restraining him with his fingernails and kicked his feet in every direction.
“Put the kid down, now!” A police officer screamed, with echoes of the same command rippling through the now large crowd of uniformed and armored men.
Even the office workers started frantically speaking up, begging for the crazed man not to take his life. Ben couldn’t hear them over the blood rushing in his ears.
One thing he did hear, however, was the glorious sound of his watch switching back to green. Clumsily, he managed to press the buttons only due to so many weeks and months of muscle memory. The faceplate extended outward.
“Nobody FUCKING move or I’ll blow this kid’s brains out, I swear to God!” the deranged man screamed.
The man turned, Ben's body twisting in a way that made it increasingly difficult to reach the Omnitrix while also not being hanged by the robber's unwavering arm around his throat. Tears began to flow out of Ben's eyes, despite how hard he had been trying to stay strong and not cry.
Heroes never cried. He was supposed to be a hero. But at that moment, struggling to breath, completely powerless, and possibly moments away from his life being snuffed out forever, Ben certainly didn't feel like one.
He just needed to reach that watch.