Chapter Text
There weren’t words that really could put how he felt right now, not tired, not angry, not anxious. Every emotion mixed together in a blender to the point where one could not tell what exactly was going on. Like when he was a child and mixed every paint hoping to get the most beautiful color possible but came back with a tasteless grey.
Done. Yeah, done was very fitting.
Done for today, no more thinking, no more arguing, no more running, no more nothing.
He was done for now.
He got up, the sound of the dirt and pebbles shifting beneath his feet felt grounding, made him stay on the now, forget the past and ignore the future, even if for just a few seconds. Step after step, he focused on the sound, on the immediate progress.
He kept walking, the red sun was in the horizon, close to the edge of the world but not enough that he had to worry too much about reaching shelter in time, just perfect. He took note on the feeling if the sand shifting beneath his shoes, on the air ruffling his hair a bit, on the sun warming his skin again after all this time in the darkness.
and he kept on walking, leisurely, focusing on breathing, on the beauty around him.
“h-hey wait…”
He did, didn’t look back, but he did wait. The pause was just long enough for the steps come closer until he started to walk again. He didn’t acknowledge her, didn’t turn back or even spared a glance, instead he just kept on walking.
“where are we going?” she asked, voice wrong, small, soft, barely recognisable as the proud princess.
“back to the shelter.” Ben’s voice had been described many times as “energetic” “enthusiastic” even as “childish” sometimes. But right now, the best description would be “direct”, there was no joke, no teasing, just information.
“okay.”
The walk went on silent, or as silent as possible when you have a foul mouthed princess following you, some painful hisses that he assumed were because of her wounded arms, some curses because of the missteps in the uneven ground, and some more directed to the unrelenting sun.
“you make no sense, you know?” that made him stop in his tracks and turn. Out of all the things that she could have said that was the most infuriating one he was sure of it.
“I make no sense?” he asked with an unimpressed look on his face, she seemed surprised that he had finally said something but didn’t back down, instead she looked more annoyed than anything.
“see? This is what I’m talking about.” She said with a huff and tried to keep going but he blocked her path with his body. Her arms had stopped bleeding a while ago, now the cuts were little more than scabs, while that did surprise him it wasn’t the strangest thing he had ever seen.
What really put him off was how she was hugging herself, tightly so, holding her own forearms trying to keep them as hidden from the outside world as if she was freezing.
“no, I don’t, explain.”
“what?”
“explain, you don’t get to tell me that I make no sense, not after all that back there.”
She looked at him, then back at her arms, as if weighting her options before letting out a huff and going under the shadow of one of the weird blue bush things.
“especially because of back there you make no sense. You are most likely than not one of, if not THE single most powerful person in this universe. You have access to The Omnitrix, and the Omnitrix has access to every single species known, you could literally just snap your fingers and boom, everyone would be on their knees to you and yet you are this boy scout that can’t even do what needs to be done when it matters.” She ranted on, getting more and more lost on her speech than on his growing scowl.
“then you randomly switch back and forth from this bumbling idiot playboy to a warrior that is able to challenge the biggest empires in the galaxy, you have literally no consistence, you have no discernible goal, you show no desire, you are a Tetramand warhead that instead of doing what you should be doing you choose to play make believe as some fantasy hero.” At this point she was raving her hands around as if it would help anything she had said make sense.
“I have seen your files, BOTH of them, from the incursean database to the plumbers’s, and you keep this-this lack of pattern all the time! you beat Looma but didn’t take the throne to one of the most prestigious clans in 4 sectors, you beat Vilgax and didn’t take claim over his planet, you can RIGHT NOW turn into a Celestial Sapien, just teleport back to your shitty little mudball of a planet leaving me here to die and NO ONE would be able to stop you”
“So, Benjamin Tennison, tell me, What. The. Fuck. is your deal?” she asked one breath away from his face, confusion and annoyance clear as day on the usual scowl’s place.
“so, you are mad that I’m not like you?”
“NO! I’M MAD THAT YOU ARE NOT LIKE ANYONE!” she said throwing her hand to the air. “everyone, and I mean EVERYONE I have ever met would have done it in the blink of an eye, taken every opportunity, used everything you have at your hand for themselves, everyone would have created their own empire, but not you? No, no one is this much of a goodie, goodie two shoes, not even you.”
Ben stood there, frozen.
Guess “a broken clock is right at least twice a day” is true.
He took a very deep breath, running his fingers across his hair. The universe really liked to put him in a tough spot huh? It was ratter comical in a sense, this entire thing would most likely fit one of the sumo slammers comic books and yet here he was.
“alright… first of all.” He said with one finger held up “the fact that apparently everyone you know would act like a scumbag is just sad, even if it doesn’t surprise me.” He said.
It really is incredible just how fucked up the entire incursean society runs, to the point its almost unbelievable, truly. During the many boring study sections he had to take, the incursean empire was always one of the more overlooked subjects, at least until they started to be a thorn on his side.
He took upon himself to try to understand just what was wrong with them, the High Breed had this sense of superiority because they are one of the oldest space faring civilisations ever, not unlike an old person waving their walking cane around annoyed at younger generations times one hundred.
The Tetramands are the way they are, because in their home planet it was either hitting things first and asking later, or be eaten by some monstrosity that they call fauna. Even the Sotorogians had similar explanations, not excuses, explanations for why they are like that.
But the incurseans are just blank. Blank except for the constant reports of emperors and empresses taking over the throne by some kind of assassination, coup, political manoeuvre, or all tree combined followed by rampant tyranny before being overthrown themselves.
So, when Attea told him that everyone she knows would abuse the power of the Omnitrix he did believe her.
“and second… you are right.” He said as a matter of fact.
“what?” at his admission she seemed to get tense, her eyes watching him with a wary look.
“you are right, I’m not a goodie goodie two shoes. You think I don’t want to pummel Vilgax into a pulp every time I see him? Think I didn’t want to let you finish him of that one time? That some days I want nothing but to get rid of people like him for good?” he asked taking a step closer, his face was neutral, but his heart drummed in his chest with years of frustration.
“of people like you?” she grabbed her gun instinctively, assuming a fighting position, waiting for… something, anything. Ben could see the thoughts rush across her mind but he wouldn’t give her any satisfaction of proving her right.
He was not like her.
Not like them.
“then why don’t you? Right now, right here, why aren’t you trying to kill me? Why did you let him live? Why do you pretend to be a hero?” she hissed still waiting, muscles coiled up like a spring ready for a fight to break out at any moment.
But none did.
“because I want to be better than people like you.”
“oh, so that’s it? you want to have the moral high ground? to feel like you are a good person? Oh, how noble of you, it makes me sick. Grow up Tennyson, that’s not how the universe works. There are only two kinds of people, the ones with power and those who serve them, I learned that early on and I have yet to be proven wrong.”
“you being here with me already proves you are wrong.” He said, a spec of disgust at such life philosophy tainting his voice “who is the one supposedly more powerful here? You, you are an empress, I, on the other hand, don’t even have the highest clearance level at HQ, and yet who do you think would actually be missed if we died right now? who do you think people are truly worried about if they live or die? Who do you think actually has people searching for them”
The question hung in the air like miasma, making Attea flinch, even if barely so.
“I said it once and I will say it again, you, Attea, are just another villain, just another faceless bully, even inside your own empire, your own empire that is also just another faceless bully in the crowd.” He said, one finger pointing to her in accusation “I can be selfish, I want people to remember me for what I did, for the person I am, I like that people see me as a hero and I like helping people, so one thousand years into the future, maybe, just maybe people will still remember me and still like me”
“I don’t need to be liked by no one, I’m not that childish” she said with distaste, but there was something else in her voice, a hesitation almost imperceptible, though Ben cared very little for that, he should have known she was a lost cause.
“well, you must thank the stars for that every single day because No. One. Does. And when you get overthrown like every single emperor before you no one will miss you, just like no one missed them.” He said with a huff of finality.
Then, simple as that, he turned and kept on walking, if she thinks like that, that’s her problem not his, he isn’t going to waste any more air on her.
“what are you doing?!” he heard her shrill indignation echoing around him, her sharp voice cutting through the stillness of the air like butter.
“going back to shelter.” There was no use in trying to negotiate with her, no use in trying to make her see just how fucked up her own life is. Not everyone is like Kevin, not everyone deserves that empathy.
“you can’t just walk away when I’m talking!” she said following him, her until now soft footfall tuned into an angry stomping in the sand, disturbing the quiet of the wilderness.
“I just did.” He declared without stopping. That was the last thing he said until they reached back shelter, Attea’s complains following him through the desert as background noise, drowning out any semblance of serenity that could be found before their little argument.
Though, strangely enough, Ben noticed her complains die down rather quickly. eerily so the peace was back, but not as before, he felt glad sure, the quiet was a relief compared to the death marathon followed by random fistfight, but now it just felt empty.
In the end, he hadn’t found water, the fruit he had gattered had to be left behind because it was slowing him down, and the little he had been able to shove into his pockets now were most likely than not crushed beyond recognition.
The same feeling of before was resurfacing again, that impotence, that fragility. Few were the times Ben had ever felt like this, after all, Attea’s words were true in a sense, he did have the most powerful object in the universe. But even still he couldn’t help it but feel the dread pooling deep in his chest.
Idly, he had begun to tinker with his watch, the SOS was still active and the signal strong, the lack of mountains safe from the one he resided in and the lack of dense vegetation seemed to be helping him at least.
But still, he didn’t know in what state the plumber’s fleet was after the supposed element X duct tape nuke and, He wasn’t the most well informed, he knew that something like that most likely than not could scramble wavelengths or leave residual radiation or a million other things that could make it so he stuck here longer than he wanted to.
If only life was so simple like Attea thought it was…
Turn into alien X and boom, back home with a Mr. smoothie in hand just in time for dinner. But if convincing Bellicus and Serena that remaking not letting the universe be destroyed was in fact important was hard enough he didn’t want to imagine just how hard would it be to convince them to teleport back to earth.
Frustrated Ben kicked a rock in his way, the small thing rolling somewhere along the bushes.
This silence was worse than her screaming.
Why was is silent? Is she even following him still?
Giving a quick glance back he was met with the top of her head, the aviator goggles shining in the sun like beacons. What was she looking at? was there something stuck on his shoe? Why was she looking the ground?
Was she sulking?
…
Let her.
No matter, he already got bigger problems to deal with anyway.