Sometime later, night had fallen, and the fire was long extinguished. The family trio sat around a fresh campfire while trying to piece together their bizarre day.
Ben, still in his fire creature form, caught a marshmallow Gwen tossed at him.
Max looked unimpressed. "And you say that this watch just 'jumped up and clamped onto your wrist'?"
"Hey, this time it wasn't my fault," he mumbled through a sticky mouthful. "I swear. It was, like—snap! Just locked on."
"Think he's gonna stay a monster forever?" Gwen asked, smirking.
Max corrected her gently. "He's not a monster. He's an alien. I mean... look at him. What else could he be?"
Ben groaned. "Yeah, I don't wanna be 'fire guy' forever. How am I supposed to play Little League this fall if I charcoal the ball every time I catch a pop fly?"
"Don't worry, Ben. We'll figure this thing out."
Just then, the Omnitrix symbol on Ben's chest beeped. In seconds, it let out a blinding pulse of red light. When it faded, Ben stood there, human again.
"Hah! I'm me again!" he laughed, checking his hands.
"Aw, too bad," Gwen teased. "I liked you better when you were a briquette."
Ben ignored her, tugging at the watch face. "Still can't get this thing off."
"Better not fool with it anymore until we know what we're dealing with," Max warned. "I'll go check out that crash site. I need you two to stay here in case our guest wakes up."
He turned and disappeared into the dark, flashlight sweeping ahead.
~ ~ ~
Inside the RV, moments after Max left, Penelope stirred. Her head throbbed dully, like it had been stuffed with cotton and then dropped from a cliff. The ceiling above her was unfamiliar. The air smelled like campfire smoke and old vinyl.
She sat up slowly.
Then the memories came crashing in like a tidal wave.
The fire.
The man who saved her.
The walking inferno.
Ben.
Gwen.
Max.
Her brain pieced the puzzle together and dumped the answer squarely in her lap.
She was in the Ben 10 omniverse.
Her body went rigid. Her eyes widened. Her mouth dropped open but no words came out. Her chest tightened, and the edges of her vision blurred.
This wasn't a dream.
This was real.
They were real.
The cartoon she'd grown up watching? The late-night binges?
All of it. Real.
And she was in it.
Penelope launched off the couch, pacing like a trapped animal. "Okay okay okay okay... Breathe. Breathe, Penelope."
She grabbed the sides of her head, pulling at her hair. "No. Nope. This isn't happening. This can't be happening!"
She squeezed her eyes shut. "Wake up. Wake. Up."
Nothing happened.
She opened her eyes. Still the Rustbucket.
Still in—wait.
While she was pacing earlier she hadn't noticed but now that she was standing still she saw that she was in front of the open bathroom door. What the bathroom looked like didn't matter; it was the mirror in the bathroom that held her attention. After all the reflection that was looking back at her wasn't herself… couldn't be herself. Almost 2 feet shorter, hair reaching her lower back instead of the shoulder length it was before, and the lack of glasses was startling.
In a daze she walked closer to the mirror, her eyes taking in every detail, as she leaned hard on the sink rim, her fingers gripping it tightly.
After a few more minutes of silence she laughed.
A short, near hysterical, breathless sound.
Her laughter gave way to silence.
"I got pulled into a cartoon. Into a world where kids turn into aliens and fight interdimensional warlords for fun. I look like I'm ten years old again, but with a completely new style," she trails off softly at the end as she twirls a bit of her now long hair, taking in the "new" dyed amber colored streaks. Letting out a sigh she summed up her certain major predicament, "I don't even remember how this all happened."
And then, finally, an unnaturally numbing calm.
Not because she understood.
But because she had no choice but to keep calm, if only for her own survival. So standing up she walked over and opened the door of the RV, and stepped out.