Chapter 12: Origins - Part 12
In the night-blue sky of Metropolis, illuminated by fires below and choked with smoke that swallowed stars, a streak of burning light carved a path through the darkness.
The pod.
It moved with purpose—not the random trajectory of space debris, but the focused intent of something searching. Sensors embedded in its heat-resistant shell swept the ground below, scanning frequencies invisible to human perception, hunting for a specific signature written into its programming at the molecular level.
DNA.
When Azmuth had put the finishing touches on the containment pod—working with hands that trembled from exhaustion and grief—he'd programmed it to seek out Max Tennyson on Earth. A safety measure. A failsafe. The pod would track Max's unique genetic markers and deliver the Omnitrix directly into his hands, ensuring it reached someone trustworthy, someone worthy.
But Azmuth hadn't counted on Max coming to Galvan Prime.
Hadn't anticipated the chaos of Vilgax's invasion disrupting his carefully laid plans.
And in the frantic rush to finish the device before the Archives fell, in the desperate scramble to save what could be saved, Azmuth had forgotten to remove the DNA lock tracker.
The pod still sought Max Tennyson's genetic signature.
And now—descending through Earth's atmosphere, sensors active, searching—it had found something.
Not Max himself.
But someone who shared his DNA.
Close enough.
The pod's trajectory shifted, thrusters firing in micro-bursts, curving from its original ballistic path toward something below—a single, specific point in the burning city.
Target acquired.
---
Ben Tennyson stumbled through the industrial zone's outskirts, legs burning, lungs raw from smoke inhalation, clothes soaked with sweat and covered in ash that turned his white T-shirt gray.
Almost there. Almost home.
The industrial district of Metropolis was a maze of warehouses and freight yards, chain-link fences and loading docks, all of it currently deserted—everyone either fled or hiding or worse. Ben's sneakers crunched on broken glass and scattered debris, and the air smelled of oil and char and something chemical that made his eyes water.
But through the haze, he could see the familiar shapes of Bellwood's residential blocks rising in the distance. Maybe ten minutes away. Maybe less if he ran.
Mom. Dad. Please be okay. Please—
A sudden brightness cut through his peripheral vision, sharp and startling against the smoke-dulled sky.
Ben stopped, breath catching, and looked up.
A light. Small at first, but growing—a point of brilliance streaking across the clouds, trailing fire like a comet.
A shooting star?
For one absurd, irrational moment, Ben's exhausted brain latched onto childhood memories: Make a wish. Close your eyes and make a wish and it'll come true.
He almost laughed. Almost.
What would he even wish for? Please let today be a nightmare I can wake up from?
But then—
The star curved*.
Ben's heart stuttered.
Shooting stars didn't curve. They fell in straight lines, obeying gravity and physics and all the rules that made the universe predictable and safe.
This wasn't a shooting star.
This was something else.
And it was getting bigger.
Oh no.
Realization crashed over Ben like ice water: the light wasn't moving across the sky parallel to the ground. It was moving toward him, trajectory shifting, angling down, accelerating—
It's heading right for me.
"Oh no. Oh no no no—"
Ben dove sideways, instinct overriding thought, throwing himself behind a rusted dumpster just as the fiery object slammed into the pavement twenty feet away.
BOOM.
The impact was apocalyptic.
The ground shook, vibrations rippling through Ben's bones, and a shockwave rolled outward—hot air and pulverized concrete and the screech of tortured asphalt. Chunks of pavement exploded upward like shrapnel, spinning through the air, clattering against metal and glass in a percussion symphony of destruction.
Ben curled into a ball, arms over his head, face pressed against the ground, and prayed.
Debris rained down—pebbles, chunks of asphalt, something larger that hit the dumpster with a clang that made Ben's ears ring. Heat washed over him, baking the air, and for a terrifying moment he thought whatever had crashed was going to explode, was going to vaporize him where he lay.
Then—
Silence.
Not total. The city still burned in the distance, alarms still wailed, but the immediate chaos of the impact faded, leaving only the soft patter of settling dust and the faint hiss of superheated metal cooling.
Ben waited, counting heartbeats, until he was reasonably sure nothing else was going to fall on him.
Then he pushed himself up.
His clothes were covered in dust—white-gray powder coating his shirt, his pants, dusting his hair like premature aging. He looked like a ghost, pale and grimy, but he didn't care.
"What... what was that?"
His voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper, swallowed by the empty street.
Slowly, cautiously, Ben approached the crater.
It was maybe fifteen feet across, edges jagged where pavement had buckled and cracked, steam rising from the center in lazy coils that smelled of scorched metal and something else—something faintly chemical, almost sweet.
And in the middle, half-buried in pulverized asphalt, was a black object.
Sleek. Angular. Roughly cylindrical, maybe two feet long, with surfaces that gleamed dully despite the coating of ash. It looked manufactured—too precise to be natural, edges too clean, panels too deliberate.
The pod.
Ben stared down at it from the crater's edge, heart still hammering, and for a moment his exhausted, terror-soaked brain offered helpful suggestions:
Bomb. It's a bomb. Run.
Alien tech. Don't touch it. Definitely don't touch it.
What if it's radioactive? What if it's leaking something? What if—
But then—
He looked past the crater.
Looked at the path that stretched beyond it, the route to Bellwood, to home, to his parents who might be hurt or scared or—
Ben swallowed hard.
I have to cross it.
There was no going around. The crater blocked the entire street, bordered on both sides by chain-link fences topped with razor wire. He could backtrack, find another route, waste precious minutes—
Or he could just... walk through.
Ben slid down the crater's edge, loose gravel skittering beneath his sneakers, and hit the bottom with a jarring impact that sent pain shooting up his shins.
The heat was intense here—residual warmth from the pod radiating like an opened oven, making sweat bead on his forehead instantly. The air shimmered, distorting his vision, and each breath felt like inhaling hot sand.
Don't think about it. Just move.
Ben edged sideways, giving the pod as wide a berth as the crater allowed, moving with the exaggerated caution of someone tiptoeing past a sleeping monster.
'Please don't explode. Please don't open. Please don't—'
He was halfway around when—
HISSSSSS.
Ben froze.
Every muscle in his body locked up, breath catching in his throat, cold terror flooding his veins despite the oppressive heat.
What was that?
He turned—slowly, agonizingly slowly—and watched as the pod's surface shifted.
Panels slid apart with mechanical precision, revealing glowing green circuitry beneath, and steam vented from hidden ports with that same soft hiss that had stopped his heart.
And then something launched from the pod.
Fast. Too fast to dodge.
A dark shape—sleek, disk-like, trailing a faint green glow—shot toward Ben like a guided missile.
Ben's hands came up instinctively, protecting his face, and the object slammed into his right wrist with force that knocked him clean off his feet.
He hit the ground hard, back slamming into scorched pavement, air driven from his lungs in a single agonized wheeze.
For a moment, Ben just lay there, stars exploding behind his eyes, ribs screaming, trying desperately to remember how to breathe.
Then—
A weight. On his wrist.
Unfamiliar. Foreign.
Ben pushed himself upright, cradling his right arm, and looked down.
A watch.
Or something like a watch—sleek, modern, impossibly advanced. The band was green and smooth, some kind of flexible material that fit his wrist perfectly, almost organically. The main body was black, compact and ergonomic, far thinner than any watch he'd ever seen but somehow feeling substantial, like it weighed more than its size suggested.
The faceplate was black and green, dominated by a design Ben vaguely recognized—an hourglass symbol, stylized and geometric, etched into the surface.
( A.n - Incase you haven't figured it out, it's the alien force Omnitrix design)
But it was dull. Lifeless. Like a TV screen that had been turned off, reflecting only his own pale, terrified face.
"What—what the—GET IT OFF!"
Panic surged through Ben, hot and irrational, and his left hand grabbed the rim of the faceplate—smooth glass-like material—and pulled with every ounce of strength his ten-year-old body could muster.
The device didn't budge.
Ben pulled harder, teeth gritting, muscles straining, fingers slipping on the smooth surface—
His grip slipped.
Momentum carried his hand backward and Ben punched himself in the face, knocking his head back, and he collapsed onto the ground again with a groan that was half pain, half humiliation.
'Great. Just great. Attacked by jewelry.'
And then—
CHIME.
A sound. Soft. Mechanical. Almost... musical?
It came from the device, accompanied by a sudden, sharp sting beneath the band—like a dozen needles piercing his skin simultaneously, sinking deep, touching bone.
Ben screamed.
It wasn't pain, exactly—not the throbbing ache of a bruise or the sharp lance of a cut. This was invasive, fundamental, like something burrowing into him at a cellular level, rewriting parts of him he didn't even know existed.
Bio-receptors engaged, microscopic filaments extending from the device into Ben's flesh, mapping his DNA, analyzing genetic markers, bonding with neural pathways in a process that took exactly 3.7 seconds and felt like an eternity.
The pain peaked—white-hot and all-consuming—
—and then stopped.
Ben lay gasping, chest heaving, tears streaking clean lines through the ash on his face.
And then a voice spoke.
Feminine. Calm. Utterly emotionless. Synthesized but somehow elegant, each syllable precisely articulated.
"OMNITRIX ACTIVATED."
Ben's head snapped toward his wrist, eyes wide.
The hourglass symbol was glowing—brilliant green, pulsing faintly, alive.
"USER IDENTIFIED. BEN TENNYSON. GENETIC MATCH: NINETY-SEVEN PERCENT COMPATIBLE. AUTHORIZATION: ACCEPTED."
"What—what are you—I didn't—"
"BONDING PROCESS COMPLETE. SCANNING FOR EXISTING PLAYLIST..."
A pause. Then:
"NO PLAYLIST DETECTED. GENERATING DEFAULT CONFIGURATION. PLAYLIST ONE: ASSEMBLING OPTIMAL SAMPLE SET FROM AVAILABLE GENETIC DATABASE."
Green light pulsed faster, brighter.
"PLAYLIST ONE: COMPILATION COMPLETE. TOTAL SELECTIONS: TEN."
Another pause.
"COMMENCING SYSTEM DIAGNOSTIC AND USER INTERFACE INITIALIZATION. PLEASE STAND BY."
Ben stared, mouth open, brain struggling to process what he was hearing, to make sense of words that sounded important but meant absolutely nothing to him.
'Playlist? Genetic database? What is this thing?'
"DIAGNOSTIC COMPLETE. ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL. INITIATING TEST PROTOCOL."
The faceplate popped up—rising smoothly on hidden mechanisms, revealing the hourglass symbol in three-dimensional relief—and a holographic projection erupted from the device.
Green light coalesced into a figure hovering above Ben's wrist: a ghostly, ethereal being with moth-like wings and a body that seemed to phase in and out of solidity, as if it existed partially in another dimension.
Ben's breath caught.
What... what IS that?
"PLEASE ROTATE THE INTERFACE RIM TO BROWSE AVAILABLE TRANSFORMATIONS."
The voice was patient. Instructional. Like a GPS giving directions.
"SELECT YOUR DESIRED FORM AND ACTIVATE BY PRESSING THE FACEPLATE."
Ben just stared, paralyzed by confusion and awe and lingering terror.
The voice repeated, slightly louder:
"PLEASE ROTATE THE INTERFACE RIM TO BROWSE AVAILABLE TRANSFORMATIONS."
Ben's hand moved—almost unconsciously, driven by curiosity that overrode fear—and his fingers found the rim, the smooth edge of the faceplate.
He turned it.
Click.
The hologram changed.
The ghostly moth-thing vanished, replaced by something else—a massive, hulking creature that looked like a dog crossed with a nightmare: all muscle and claws, eyeless, with gills flaring along its neck and quills running down its spine.
Ben's eyes widened. "What the—"
He turned the rim again.
Click.
Another transformation. This one looked almost dinosaur-like—bipedal, raptor-sleek, with a helmet-like head and what appeared to be wheels on it feet.
Click.
A being made of living crystal, faceted and gleaming.
Click.
Something insectoid, all chitin and compound eyes.
Click. Click. Click.
Each turn revealed something new, something impossible, something that shouldn't exist but was rendered in perfect holographic detail above his wrist.
Ben was so absorbed—so utterly transfixed by the parade of alien forms cycling past—that he failed to notice the shadow descending from above.
Failed to hear the leathery beat of wings.
Failed to see the parademon diving toward him, claws extended, eyes glowing toxic green, until it was too late.
The creature's talons closed around Ben's shoulders—sharp, biting through his shirt, puncturing skin—and with a single powerful downstroke, it lifted him off the ground.
Ben screamed.
"NO! LET GO! LET GO OF ME!"
He thrashed wildly, kicking at empty air, hands clawing at the parademon's wrists, but the grip was iron—unyielding, crushing, dragging him upward toward the sky where a Boom Tube pulsed with sickly yellow light.
Terror flooded Ben's system, raw and primal.
He knew—knew—that whatever waited on the other side of that portal was worse than anything he'd faced tonight. Worse than fire. Worse than monsters.
'I'm going to die. I'm going to die and no one will ever know what happened to me.'
"LET ME GO!" Ben's fist slammed into the parademon's wrist—weak, ineffectual, but desperate. "LET ME—"
In the chaos—in the flailing and screaming and the parademon's vice-grip pulling him higher—Ben's hand struck the Omnitrix.
His fingers caught the rim.
Turned it.
Click.
The hologram changed again, but Ben didn't see what it became.
His other fist came around in a wild backhand, trying to strike the creature holding him, and instead—
—slammed the faceplate down.
WHOOM.
GREEN ENERGY exploded from the device.
Not light. Not heat.
Transformation.
It washed over Ben like a wave, rewriting him at the molecular level, flesh and bone and DNA unraveling and changing, reforming into something else.
The parademon shrieked—confusion and alarm—as the weight in its claws suddenly multiplied.
What had been a terrified ten-year-old boy became something massive.
Heavy.
Powerful.
Dense.
The parademon's wings beat frantically, trying to compensate, but physics was unforgiving.
They fell.
Together—parademon and the thing Ben had become—plummeting from the sky, momentum carrying them toward the skyscraper below.
They hit the rooftop with the force of a meteor strike.
CRASH.
The roof buckled, reinforced concrete cracking like eggshell, and they punched through, tumbling into the building's top floor in an explosion of debris and dust and the screech of tearing metal.
Ben—or what Ben had become—slammed into the floor below, cratering it, and the parademon landed beside him, wings crumpled, dazed.
Silence.
Dust settled.
And in the dim emergency lighting of the damaged office space, something moved.
Something that was no longer human.
Something that glowed faintly green in the darkness.
And deep within that transformed body, Ben Tennyson's consciousness flickered, confused and terrified and alive.
What... what happened to me?
The Omnitrix pulsed on his wrist—wherever his wrist now was—and the feminine voice spoke one final time:
"TRANSFORMATION COMPLETE. DURATION: TEN MINUTES...."
A pause.
".... RECOMMENDATION: SURVIVE."
And then, silence.
( Please leave a review, it helps me to pump out more chapter)