The summer sun beat down upon the cracked asphalt of the Bellwood Elementary School parking lot with the merciless intensity of a thousand blazing infernos, casting shimmering waves of heat that rose from the ground like the desperate prayers of students who had suffered through an entire year of mathematics, science, social studies, and the peculiar tyranny of cafeteria mystery meat that may or may not have been sentient at some point in its questionable existence. The cicadas screamed their eternal summer chorus from the withered branches of oak trees that lined the street, their droning symphony mixing with the excited chatter of children who burst forth from the school's double doors like water from a broken dam, flooding outward in a chaotic wave of backpacks, sneakers, and dreams of lazy days spent doing absolutely nothing productive whatsoever.
Benjamin Kirby Tennyson—ten years old, brown-haired, green-eyed, and possessing the kind of cocky swagger that only a kid who genuinely believed he was destined for greatness could maintain—pushed through the crowd with the determination of a salmon swimming upstream, if that salmon wore cargo pants and had an ego roughly the size of Jupiter. His white shirt with its distinctive black stripe clung to his skinny frame, slightly damp with the perspiration that came from existing in what felt like the surface of Mercury during its closest approach to the sun. His sneakers, once pristine white, now bore the battle scars of an entire school year—grass stains from soccer games, mud splatters from puddle-jumping expeditions, and one mysterious purple stain that Ben preferred not to think about because it involved a science experiment, a hamster named Mr. Whiskers, and a series of events that had resulted in a three-day suspension and a very uncomfortable parent-teacher conference.
"Finally!" Ben shouted to absolutely no one in particular, throwing his arms wide as if embracing the entire concept of freedom itself. "No more teachers! No more books! No more—"
"Benjamin!"
The voice that cut through his declaration of independence belonged to a woman who had mastered the art of making a single word contain approximately seventeen different emotions, ranging from exasperation to reluctant affection, with a healthy dose of "I cannot believe I have to spend the entire summer with this child" mixed in for good measure. Sandra Tennyson stood beside the family sedan, her arms crossed, her expression the perfect blend of maternal love and the thousand-yard stare of a parent who had signed permission slips for this summer's camping trip with her father-in-law without fully reading the fine print.
"Coming, Mom!" Ben hollered back, his voice cracking slightly in that awkward pre-adolescent way that he absolutely refused to acknowledge was happening with increasing frequency.
He bounded across the parking lot with the boundless energy of youth, his backpack bouncing against his spine with each enthusiastic stride, completely oblivious to the cosmic forces that were, at that very moment, setting into motion a chain of events that would fundamentally alter the trajectory of his existence, the fate of the universe, and the sanity of every villain who would ever have the profound misfortune of crossing his path.
Little did Benjamin Kirby Tennyson know that somewhere in the vast, incomprehensible expanse of space—past the swirling nebulae that painted the cosmos in colors that human eyes had never evolved to perceive, beyond the dying stars that gasped their final nuclear breaths into the void, through asteroid fields that had been ancient when Earth's first single-celled organisms were still figuring out the whole "being alive" thing—a small, metallic pod was hurtling toward the planet that Ben called home. And within that pod, nestled in a bed of alien technology so advanced that Earth's greatest scientists would have wept tears of inadequate comprehension at the mere sight of it, rested a device that would soon become permanently, irrevocably, and some might say hilariously attached to Ben's wrist.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's return to the parking lot, where destiny was still taking a coffee break.
The Rust Bucket—a name that Max Tennyson had bestowed upon his beloved recreational vehicle with the kind of affectionate irony that only a man who had seen the far reaches of the galaxy could truly appreciate—sat in the Tennyson driveway like a monument to the aesthetic sensibilities of the 1970s. Its exterior, painted in a shade of brown that had once been described by a passing child as "the color of sadness mixed with old gravy," gleamed dully in the afternoon sun. The vehicle was massive, imposing, and possessed the kind of fuel efficiency that made environmental activists weep into their reusable shopping bags.
Max Tennyson himself stood beside this vehicular testament to an era when gas prices were measured in cents rather than the tears of the working class, his Hawaiian shirt a riot of colors that seemed to be actively fighting each other for dominance. The shirt—orange, purple, green, and what might have been either yellow or a really committed mustard stain—depicted palm trees, flamingos, and what appeared to be either abstract art or a visual representation of a migraine. Max's white hair caught the sunlight, his weathered face crinkled into a smile that spoke of adventures past, secrets kept, and a summer full of activities that his grandchildren would probably complain about but secretly enjoy.
"Grandpa!" Ben's voice preceded his arrival by approximately three seconds, giving Max just enough time to brace himself for impact as his grandson launched himself at him with the force and accuracy of a heat-seeking missile made of pure enthusiasm.
"Easy there, sport!" Max laughed, catching Ben in a bear hug that lifted the boy's feet clean off the ground. His arms, still surprisingly strong for a man of his age—and even more surprisingly strong when one considered the actual reason for that strength, a reason that involved intergalactic peacekeeping organizations and experiences that would have driven lesser men to madness—wrapped around his grandson with genuine affection.
Behind them, a second vehicle pulled into the driveway, and Ben's momentary joy curdled like milk left in the sun as he watched his cousin Gwen Tennyson emerge from the passenger seat. Gwendolyn Tennyson—ten years old, red-haired, sharp-eyed, and possessed of an intellect that made her simultaneously the perfect student and the most irritating person Ben had ever had the misfortune of sharing DNA with—stepped onto the driveway with the measured grace of someone who had been practicing their "better than you" walk since age six.
Her orange hair was pulled back in a practical ponytail, her blue eyes already scanning her surroundings with the analytical precision of a computer processing data. She wore a blue shirt and white capri pants, an outfit that somehow managed to look both casual and judgmental at the same time. In her hands, she clutched a laptop bag that Ben knew contained not one but three different electronic devices, all of which Gwen could operate with the proficiency of someone who had never wasted a single braincell on the pure joy of video games.
"Ben," she said, her voice carrying approximately the same warmth as a refrigerator set to "arctic."
"Gwen," Ben replied, infusing the single syllable with enough disdain to power a small vehicle.
"Children," Max interjected, his voice carrying the weary patience of a man who had spent decades mediating conflicts across the galaxy and somehow found family disputes more exhausting, "we're going to have a wonderful summer together. Let's try to start it off on the right foot, shall we?"
"I don't see why I have to share a room with him," Gwen complained, jerking her thumb toward Ben as if he were a particularly unpleasant piece of furniture that someone had inexplicably decided to include on this trip.
"You're not sharing a room with me!" Ben protested, his voice achieving the kind of pitch that only truly outraged pre-adolescents could manage. "You're sharing MY side of the RV! There's a difference!"
"There's no 'your side,' doofus. It's Grandpa's RV."
"Don't call me doofus, dweeb!"
"I'll call you whatever accurately describes your intellectual capacity!"
"That doesn't even make sense!"
"The fact that you think that proves my point!"
Max Tennyson closed his eyes, took a deep breath that his old Plumber training had taught him would center his chi and prevent him from doing anything he'd regret—like turning the RV around and driving back home—and began the process of loading luggage into the Rust Bucket's storage compartments. It was going to be a long summer.
Three hours later, the Rust Bucket was rumbling down a highway that cut through the California wilderness like a surgical incision, leaving civilization behind as it climbed into the mountains. The sun had begun its descent toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink that would have inspired poets and artists throughout the ages, but which Ben and Gwen were too busy ignoring in favor of their ongoing cold war.
Ben had claimed the fold-out couch that served as one of the RV's sleeping areas, sprawling across it with his portable video game device held close to his face, his thumbs working the buttons with the frantic energy of someone deeply invested in the digital defeat of pixelated enemies. The game—Sumo Slammers: Tournament of Doom—played its tinny soundtrack through the device's small speakers, a repetitive melody that had been designed by someone who either hated children or had simply never met one.
Gwen sat at the small dining table that doubled as her workspace, her laptop open before her, its screen displaying what appeared to be a complicated mathematics problem that she was solving recreationally because apparently, that was something people did for fun in whatever parallel dimension Gwen's brain operated in. Her fingers flew across the keyboard with the precision of a concert pianist, occasionally pausing to push her hair out of her face with an irritated gesture that somehow managed to convey her general dissatisfaction with everything around her.
"Could you turn that down?" she asked, not looking up from her screen. "Some of us are trying to engage in productive mental exercise."
"Could you be less boring?" Ben shot back, not looking up from his game. "Some of us are trying to have fun."
"Fun doesn't have to be mindless."
"Your face is mindless."
"That literally doesn't make grammatical sense."
"Your grammar is mindless!"
"That's even worse!"
"KIDS!" Max's voice boomed from the driver's seat with the authority of a man who had once commanded strike teams across multiple star systems. "I swear on every galaxy I've ever—" he caught himself, coughing slightly, "—seen pictures of, if you two don't find a way to get along, I will turn this RV around!"
Silence descended upon the Rust Bucket like a heavy blanket, broken only by the rumble of the engine and the distant sounds of Ben's video game, which he had reluctantly lowered to a barely-audible whisper.
Max nodded to himself, satisfied, and returned his attention to the winding road ahead. The campground was only another hour away, and he had plans for this evening—a campfire, some stargazing, maybe a little fishing in the morning. Simple grandfather-grandchildren bonding activities. Nothing cosmic, nothing dangerous, nothing that would require him to dust off skills he hadn't used since his retirement.
In the vast, cold expanse of space, the pod carrying the Omnitrix had just entered Earth's solar system, passing Mars with the casual indifference of a UPS delivery driver who had seen too many planetary bodies to be impressed by another one. Its internal systems, designed by Azmuth himself—the greatest mind the universe had ever produced and also, coincidentally, the grumpiest—hummed with quiet efficiency, maintaining the precious cargo in perfect stasis.
The Omnitrix rested within its containment field, its sleek green and black form pulsing with a soft light that represented the combined DNA of over one million sentient species from across the cosmos. It was, without exaggeration, the most powerful and sophisticated device in multiple galaxies—a tool capable of transforming its wearer into any of those million-plus species, granting them the abilities, strengths, and physical forms of beings that defied human comprehension.
Among those million-plus species was the DNA sample of an Appoplexian—a being from the planet Appoplexia, a world where the dominant form of communication was shouting, the primary method of problem-solving was punching, and the concept of "indoor voice" had never evolved because everything was solved through sheer, unbridled aggression. The Appoplexian DNA within the Omnitrix belonged to a particularly fine specimen of the species: massive, orange-furred, possessing a single claw on each hand capable of slicing through virtually any material, and blessed with the kind of temperament that made angry bulls look like meditation instructors.
This DNA sample had no idea that it was about to become very, very important.
Neither did Ben, who had just lost his seventh consecutive game of Sumo Slammers and was contemplating whether throwing his game device at Gwen's head would be worth the resulting punishment.
Neither did Gwen, who had just completed her recreational math problems and was moving on to recreational physics problems because apparently, she was actually an alien sent to make Ben feel inadequate.
Neither did Max, who was busy remembering a time when the most complicated thing in his life had been choosing between plasma rifles and laser cannons for a routine peacekeeping mission.
The universe, as it so often does, was about to get very interesting.
The campground nestled in a valley between two forested mountains like a secret whispered between giants, its clearings dotted with picnic tables, fire pits, and the occasional raccoon that had learned that humans were basically walking vending machines that could be intimidated into dropping food. The trees—ancient pines and oaks that had been standing since before America was a country, before Columbus made his historically problematic voyage, before the Roman Empire rose and fell—stretched toward the darkening sky like natural cathedrals, their branches creating a canopy that filtered the dying sunlight into golden coins that danced across the forest floor.
Max guided the Rust Bucket into a campsite that he had reserved months in advance, a perfect spot that offered both privacy and a clear view of the night sky. He had chosen this location specifically because it was far from light pollution, ideal for stargazing—and if he happened to be keeping an eye out for any unusual celestial activity, well, old habits died hard.
"Alright, troops!" Max announced with the enthusiasm of someone who refused to acknowledge that his audience was comprised of two sullen children who would have rather been anywhere else. "Let's set up camp! Ben, you're on firewood duty. Gwen, you can help me with the cooking equipment."
Ben groaned—a sound that came from somewhere deep in his soul, the primal cry of a child who had been asked to do something that qualified as manual labor. "Why do I have to get firewood? That's outside. There's... nature out there."
"That's generally where one finds firewood, yes," Gwen said, her voice dripping with the kind of condescension that should have been illegal for a ten-year-old to possess.
"I wasn't asking you!"
"And yet, the answer remains the same."
"Your face remains the same!"
"That's not an insult, Ben. That's just... stating a fact about how faces work."
"FIREWOOD!" Max's voice cut through their bickering like a hot knife through butter, or perhaps more accurately, like a frustrated grandfather through patience. "NOW!"
Ben scrambled out of the Rust Bucket with the speed of someone fleeing both parental authority and the inexplicable horror of his cousin's existence, his sneakers hitting the packed dirt of the campsite with a satisfying crunch. The evening air was cooler here in the mountains, carrying the scent of pine needles, distant water, and the indefinable freshness of wilderness unspoiled by strip malls and fast food restaurants.
"Stupid firewood," Ben muttered as he trudged toward the treeline, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his lower lip extended in a pout that he would have denied with his dying breath. "Stupid camping. Stupid summer. Stupid Gwen with her stupid brain and her stupid... stupid... stupidness."
Eloquence had never been Ben's strong suit.
The forest swallowed him as he moved beyond the clearing, the trees closing in around him like the walls of a living maze. Shadows lengthened and multiplied as the sun continued its descent, transforming the woodland into a place of mystery and hidden depths. Ben kicked at fallen branches as he walked, occasionally stooping to grab one that looked dry enough to burn without producing the kind of smoke that would attract every mosquito in a three-county radius.
"One stupid stick," he counted, adding it to the growing bundle under his arm. "Two stupid sticks. Three stupid sticks. Four—"
He paused, his head snapping up as a sound cut through the evening quiet. It was high-pitched, rising in intensity, like a whistle that had decided to become a scream. Ben's eyes scanned the canopy above, searching for the source, and what he saw made his arms go slack, spilling his carefully collected firewood across the forest floor.
A star was falling.
No—not a star. Even at ten years old, with his knowledge of astronomy limited to what he'd seen in movies and video games, Ben knew that stars didn't actually fall. This was something else—something that blazed across the sky with a tail of fire that painted the darkening heavens in streaks of orange and gold. It was moving fast, impossibly fast, and it was getting closer.
"WHOA!" Ben stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet as the object—a meteor? A satellite? An alien spacecraft full of evil space monsters come to devour humanity's brains?—screamed overhead, close enough that he could feel the heat of its passage, close enough that the sound of its descent rattled his teeth and vibrated in his chest like a second heartbeat.
And then it crashed.
The impact shook the ground beneath Ben's feet, sending him tumbling onto his backside as a shockwave of displaced air and pulverized earth rippled outward from a point somewhere deeper in the forest. Trees groaned and swayed, birds exploded from their roosts in a panicked cacophony of beating wings and distressed calls, and a column of smoke began to rise from the impact site like a smoke signal from the universe itself.
Ben's heart hammered against his ribs. His palms were sweaty. His brain was screaming at him to run back to the campsite, to find Grandpa Max, to hide under his sleeping bag and pretend that whatever had just happened was someone else's problem.
But another part of his brain—the part that played video games about heroes, the part that read comic books about super-powered beings, the part that had always suspected that he was destined for something more than homework and chores—that part was saying something very different.
That part was saying: "Go look at it, dummy."
Ben listened to that part.
He pushed himself to his feet, brushed the dirt and pine needles from his pants with hands that trembled only slightly, and began to move toward the smoke. His steps were cautious at first, then gradually faster as curiosity overwhelmed fear, until he was running through the forest with the reckless abandon of youth, leaping over fallen logs and ducking under branches, following the trail of destruction that the object had carved through the woodland.
The crater was larger than he had expected—a bowl of scorched earth maybe thirty feet in diameter, the soil around its edges still smoking and glowing faintly with residual heat. Trees at the rim had been snapped like toothpicks, their broken forms leaning away from the impact point as if trying to escape. The air smelled of burning and ozone and something else, something alien that Ben couldn't identify but that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention.
And in the center of the crater, half-buried in the blackened earth, was a pod.
Ben's eyes went wide.
The pod was metallic, its surface covered in designs and patterns that were clearly not of human origin. It was roughly spherical, about the size of a beach ball, and despite having just survived a descent through Earth's atmosphere and a violent impact with the planet's surface, it appeared completely undamaged. Lights pulsed along its surface—green lights that seemed to respond to Ben's presence, intensifying as he crept closer to the crater's edge.
"No way," Ben breathed, his voice barely a whisper. "No freaking way. This is... this is like..."
His mind raced through every movie, every TV show, every comic book he had ever consumed. Alien invasions. First contact. Space exploration. Hidden messages from advanced civilizations. Dangerous artifacts of incredible power. This was the kind of thing that happened to heroes, to chosen ones, to people who mattered.
This was the kind of thing that was apparently happening to Ben Tennyson.
He scrambled down the side of the crater, half-sliding, half-falling, until he stood before the pod. The heat radiating from the surrounding earth was intense, and he could feel sweat beginning to bead on his forehead, but he didn't care. His attention was completely, utterly, obsessively focused on the object before him.
"Okay," he said to himself, reaching out with a shaking hand. "Okay, okay, okay. This is either going to be the coolest thing that's ever happened to me, or I'm about to die. Either way, totally worth it."
His fingers touched the pod's surface.
And the pod opened.
The motion was smooth, silent, and utterly alien—panels that Ben hadn't even recognized as separate parts sliding away from each other with the precision of a mechanism that had been designed by minds far beyond human comprehension. Green light spilled out from within, painting Ben's features in emerald hues, and there, resting on a small pedestal that rose from the pod's interior like an offering to the universe, was a watch.
At least, it looked kind of like a watch.
It was black, with green accents, and it had a face that displayed not numbers but a strange symbol—an hourglass shape, dark and mysterious. It was definitely wearable. It was definitely technological. And it was definitely calling to Ben on some level that he couldn't explain but couldn't deny.
"Cool," Ben whispered reverently.
He reached for it.
What Ben didn't know—couldn't possibly have known, because he was a ten-year-old human child with no knowledge of Galvan technology, Primus, or the cosmic implications of intergalactic DNA repositories—was that the impact had done something to the Omnitrix. Something significant. Something that would have made Azmuth, had he been there to witness it, tear out the few remaining hairs on his tiny grey head and scream into the void about the unfairness of a universe that would allow his greatest creation to be damaged by something as mundane as a crash landing.
The recalibration was instantaneous and catastrophic. Deep within the Omnitrix's impossibly complex quantum matrix, failsafes triggered failsafes that triggered more failsafes, each one attempting to contain a cascading series of errors that had originated from a single cracked crystal in the pod's navigation system. The DNA database—containing the genetic information of 1,000,903 sentient species, carefully catalogued and indexed by Azmuth over the course of centuries—began to seal itself away behind walls of protective code.
One by one, species were locked out. Pyronites, capable of generating and manipulating fire hot enough to melt steel. Petrosapiens, beings of living crystal stronger than diamond. Kinecelerans, the fastest creatures in seven galaxies. Vulpimancers, Tetramands, Galvans, Piscciss Volanns—all of them, every single one of the million-plus species that the Omnitrix had been designed to offer its wearer, disappeared behind digital barriers that Ben would never be able to breach.
All except one.
For reasons that would never be fully explained—perhaps a quirk of the damage, perhaps cosmic fate, perhaps the universe having what could only be described as a very strange sense of humor—a single DNA sample remained accessible when the recalibration completed. One species. One form. One angry, orange-furred, magnificently aggressive option out of more than a million.
The Appoplexian.
Specifically, the template designated: RATH.
The Omnitrix latched onto Ben's wrist with a sound that was somewhere between a mechanical click and a hungry animal's bite, and Ben's scream echoed through the forest with enough volume to send a family of deer approximately three miles away into a full-blown panic attack.
"GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF!"
He shook his arm frantically, the watch-like device now firmly attached to his left wrist as if it had always been there, as if it had been waiting his entire life for this moment. Ben pulled at it, twisted it, bit it in a moment of pure desperation—nothing worked. The Omnitrix was now, for better or worse, a part of him.
"This is bad," Ben panted, staring at the device with wide eyes. "This is very, very bad. I'm going to have an alien watch stuck to me forever. I'm going to have to explain this to Mom. I'm going to have to explain this to Grandpa. I'm going to have to explain this to Gwen and she's never going to let me live it down—"
His panicked rambling was interrupted by a sound from the Omnitrix. A small beep, gentle and somehow inviting, like a puppy that had just discovered its vocal cords. The hourglass symbol on the watch's face began to glow, pulsing with soft green light, and something rose from the surface—a dial, previously flat against the device, now protruding slightly as if waiting to be manipulated.
Ben stared at it.
"Well," he said slowly, his panic beginning to give way to something else. Something that felt a lot like excitement. "I guess... I should see what it does?"
Later—much later, when he was older and had the benefit of hindsight and the wisdom that came from years of alien transformations—Ben would look back on this moment and recognize it as the exact instant when his life had changed forever. He would remember standing in that crater, the smell of burning earth around him, the weight of an alien device on his wrist, and the single thought that had prompted him to push down on that dial.
That thought was: "This is so cool."
Ben pressed the dial.
The world exploded into green light.
Pain—not exactly pain, but something close to it, a sensation of being pulled apart at the molecular level and reassembled into something completely different—flooded through every nerve ending in Ben's body. He felt himself growing, his bones stretching, his muscles expanding at a rate that should have been biologically impossible. Fur—orange, coarse, magnificent fur—sprouted across his skin like grass in fast-forward. His fingers condensed, forming massive hands that ended in claws of pure, gleaming black. His face pushed forward, his skull reshaping itself into something decidedly more feline, complete with a mouth full of teeth that would have made a great white shark file for early retirement.
And then there was his brain.
Ben's thoughts, usually scattered and easily distracted, suddenly felt... focused. Intensely focused. Focused on things like fighting. And yelling. And expressing his opinions about EVERYTHING and EVERYONE through the medium of LOUDLY DECLARING HIS INTENTIONS.
Where Ben Tennyson had stood, a new creature now dominated the crater.
He was massive—nine feet of rippling muscle covered in orange fur with white accents on his chest and face. His green eyes blazed with an intensity that suggested either profound wisdom or an imminent violent outburst (spoiler: it was definitely the second one). A single enormous claw extended from each fist, black as night and sharper than any blade human hands had ever forged. He wore what appeared to be a black wrestling singlet, the Omnitrix symbol emblazoned on his chest like a badge of honor.
He was magnificent.
He was terrifying.
He was VERY, VERY ANGRY for reasons he couldn't quite identify but felt VERY STRONGLY about nonetheless.
He was RATH.
And he had a LOT to say about this situation.
"LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, CRATER THAT RATH IS STANDING IN!" Rath bellowed at the top of his lungs, his voice shaking the trees at the rim of the impact site with sheer volume. "RATH DOES NOT APPRECIATE BEING TURNED INTO... INTO WHATEVER RATH IS! RATH WAS A PERFECTLY GOOD HUMAN BOY WHO JUST WANTED TO COLLECT FIREWOOD AND NOT GET YELLED AT BY HIS GRANDFATHER, BUT NOOOO! SOME SPACE WATCH HAD TO COME DOWN FROM THE SKY AND TURN RATH INTO THIS... THIS... ACTUALLY, THIS IS PRETTY AWESOME, BUT RATH IS STILL UPSET ON PRINCIPLE!"
He flexed his arms, watching with a mixture of horror and intense satisfaction as muscles the size of cantaloupes rippled beneath his fur. His claws extended and retracted, extended and retracted, making a sound like switchblades being deployed in perfect synchronization.
"OKAY, THIS IS DEFINITELY AWESOME!" Rath amended his earlier statement, looking down at himself with something approaching glee. "RATH HAS CLAWS! RATH HAS MUSCLES! RATH HAS... RATH HAS SOME KIND OF WRESTLING OUTFIT, WHICH RATH DOES NOT REMEMBER PUTTING ON BUT RATH IS CHOOSING NOT TO QUESTION BECAUSE IT LOOKS RADICAL!"
A rustling sound from the edge of the crater drew Rath's attention. His head snapped toward the noise with the speed and precision of a predator, his green eyes narrowing dangerously. A squirrel—small, gray, completely oblivious to the cosmic significance of the moment it had chosen to interrupt—had emerged from behind a fallen tree, its tiny nose twitching as it surveyed the strange situation before it.
Rath pointed at the squirrel with one massive, clawed finger.
"LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, SQUIRREL WHO THINKS IT CAN JUST WALK INTO RATH'S CRATER LIKE IT OWNS THE PLACE!" Rath roared, his voice causing the small creature to freeze in abject terror. "RATH SEES YOU! RATH KNOWS YOU'RE PROBABLY UP TO SOMETHING! SQUIRRELS ARE ALWAYS UP TO SOMETHING WITH THEIR NUTS AND THEIR CLIMBING AND THEIR SUSPICIOUS TWITCHING! BUT IF YOU THINK YOU CAN INTIMIDATE RATH WITH YOUR BEADY LITTLE EYES AND YOUR FLUFFY TAIL, YOU'VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING, BUDDY!"
The squirrel, operating on the ancient survival instincts of its species, fled. It fled with a speed and desperation that would have earned it a gold medal in the Woodland Creature Olympics, its tiny legs becoming a blur as it vanished into the underbrush.
"THAT'S RIGHT!" Rath shouted after it, pumping his fist in triumph. "RUN! RUN BACK TO YOUR SQUIRREL FRIENDS AND TELL THEM WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY MESS WITH RATH! TELL THEM RATH IS HERE NOW! TELL THEM THE FOREST HAS A NEW APEX PREDATOR AND HIS NAME IS—"
Rath paused, a flicker of confusion crossing his feline features.
"ACTUALLY, RATH ISN'T SURE WHY RATH KEEPS CALLING HIMSELF RATH! RATH'S NAME IS BEN! BEN TENNYSON! EXCEPT RIGHT NOW RATH FEELS VERY STRONGLY THAT RATH'S NAME IS RATH, SO MAYBE RATH IS BOTH? RATH-BEN? BEN-RATH? ACTUALLY, NO, RATH PREFERS JUST RATH! RATH IS A GOOD NAME! RATH IS A STRONG NAME! RATH IS THE KIND OF NAME THAT STRIKES FEAR INTO THE HEARTS OF SQUIRRELS EVERYWHERE!"
Gwen had heard the crash.
How could she not? It had rattled the windows of the Rust Bucket, sent ripples through her glass of water, and caused Grandpa Max to knock over an entire pot of the mysterious stew he'd been preparing—a dish that Gwen was secretly grateful to see spilled because she was about sixty percent certain it contained ingredients that had once had faces.
"Stay here," Max had ordered, his voice suddenly carrying a steel that Gwen had never heard before. His eyes—usually warm and grandfatherly—had gone hard, focused, the eyes of a man who had seen things and was fully prepared to see more of them. "I'm going to check it out."
"Grandpa, what was—"
"Stay. Here." And then he was gone, moving toward the forest with a speed that seemed improbable for a man his age, leaving Gwen alone in the RV with a laptop full of physics problems that suddenly seemed very unimportant.
She lasted exactly forty-seven seconds before curiosity overwhelmed obedience.
Gwen was ten years old, but she was not stupid. She knew something was wrong—knew it in the way adults always knew when they were lying, knew it in the way Grandpa Max had looked at the sky right before the crash, knew it in the way her instincts were screaming that the world had just gotten a lot more interesting. She grabbed a flashlight from the supply cabinet, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the night.
The forest had changed.
Where before it had seemed peaceful, if somewhat intimidating, it now felt alive with possibility. The trees cast long shadows that seemed to move when Gwen wasn't looking directly at them. The sounds of the night—owl calls, insect symphonies, the distant rustling of small creatures—had taken on an expectant quality, as if nature itself was holding its breath.
And somewhere in the distance, something was yelling.
Gwen couldn't make out the words, but the voice was... massive. Deep and resonant, with a kind of passionate intensity that reminded her of wrestling announcers or really committed street preachers. It rose and fell in what might have been sentences, punctuated by occasional pauses that suggested either breathing or dramatic effect.
"Ben," she murmured, her heart suddenly clenching with an emotion she refused to identify as concern for her annoying cousin. "What have you gotten yourself into?"
She followed the sound, her flashlight beam cutting through the darkness like a tiny sword of illumination, her sneakers crunching on fallen pine needles with each careful step. The yelling grew louder as she approached, resolving itself into actual words that made Gwen seriously question whether she had somehow developed a fever that was causing auditory hallucinations.
"—AND FURTHERMORE, LET RATH TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF GRAVITY, WHICH RATH HAS JUST REALIZED IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT SPACE WATCH FALLING OUT OF THE SKY AND LANDING IN THIS FOREST IN THE FIRST PLACE! RATH IS NOT HAPPY WITH YOU, GRAVITY! RATH THINKS YOU NEED TO BE MORE CAREFUL ABOUT WHAT YOU PULL DOWN FROM SPACE, BECAUSE SOME OF THOSE THINGS TURN PEOPLE INTO GIANT TIGER-LOOKING GUYS WITH ANGER ISSUES!"
Gwen emerged at the edge of the crater and her flashlight clattered to the ground, forgotten.
Standing in the middle of a bowl of scorched earth was a monster. A monster that was roughly nine feet tall. A monster covered in orange fur. A monster with claws and muscles and a mouth full of teeth that were currently moving very rapidly as it delivered what appeared to be a passionate monologue about... physics?
"WHAT?!" Gwen's voice came out as a squeak, entirely undignified and very un-Gwen-like.
The monster's head snapped toward her. Its green eyes—weirdly familiar green eyes—locked onto her position at the crater's rim with the intensity of a laser targeting system.
"LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, GWEN TENNYSON!" the monster bellowed, pointing at her with one massive clawed finger. "RATH KNOWS IT'S YOU! RATH RECOGNIZES YOUR ANNOYING VOICE AND YOUR JUDGY EXPRESSION AND YOUR GENERAL AURA OF THINKING YOU'RE BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE! AND RATH HAS SOME THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THE WAY YOU'VE BEEN TREATING RATH'S HUMAN FORM TODAY!"
Gwen's brain, operating at a processing speed that would have impressed her computer science teachers, rapidly assembled several pieces of information: the monster knew her name, the monster was referring to a "human form," the monster's green eyes were the exact same shade as her cousin's, and the monster was complaining about being treated poorly, which was literally all Ben ever did.
"Ben?" she gasped.
"RATH!" the monster corrected immediately, its voice echoing off the surrounding trees. "RATH'S NAME IS RATH NOW! RATH IS PRETTY SURE RATH USED TO BE BEN, BUT RATH FEELS VERY STRONGLY THAT RATH IS THE NAME RATH SHOULD BE USING IN THIS FORM! IT'S VERY CONFUSING BUT ALSO VERY CLEAR, WHICH IS SOMEHOW POSSIBLE!"
"Ben—Rath—whatever!" Gwen scrambled down the side of the crater, her earlier fear transforming into something closer to exasperated curiosity. "What happened to you?! You're a... you're a..."
"RATH IS AN APPOPLEXIAN!" Rath supplied helpfully, though the volume was still set at "maximum." "RATH KNOWS THIS SOMEHOW! RATH'S BRAIN IS FULL OF INFORMATION ABOUT RATH'S SPECIES THAT RATH DOESN'T REMEMBER LEARNING! RATH COMES FROM A PLANET CALLED APPOPLEXIA WHERE EVERYONE COMMUNICATES BY YELLING AND THE PRIMARY FORM OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION IS PUNCHING! IT SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT PLACE! RATH WOULD LIKE TO VISIT SOMETIME!"
"You're an alien," Gwen said flatly. "You've turned into an alien."
"RATH HAS TURNED INTO THE BEST ALIEN!" Rath countered, flexing his arms again because it felt really good and he wanted Gwen to see how impressive his muscles were. "LOOK AT THESE GUNS! RATH BET YOU CAN'T DO PHYSICS PROBLEMS WITH GUNS LIKE THESE! WAIT, ACTUALLY, THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE, BUT RATH'S POINT STANDS!"
"How? Why? What is happening?!"
Rath pointed to the Omnitrix symbol on his chest, which pulsed with soft green light in response to the attention. "THIS WATCH THING FELL FROM THE SKY! RATH—BEN—WHOEVER RATH WAS BEFORE—TOUCHED IT AND IT ATTACHED TO RATH'S WRIST! AND THEN RATH PUSHED THE BUTTON BECAUSE BUTTONS ARE FOR PUSHING AND NOW RATH IS THIS! RATH HAS VERY MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT THE WHOLE SITUATION BUT MOSTLY RATH IS FEELING PRETTY GOOD BECAUSE RATH HAS NEVER BEEN THIS STRONG AND RATH HAS ALWAYS WANTED TO BE THIS STRONG!"
Gwen's scientific mind was racing, trying to categorize what she was seeing, trying to fit it into the framework of reality that she had spent ten years constructing. Alien technology. Physical transformation. Her doofus cousin turned into a nine-foot-tall cat-person with anger management issues. It was too much. It was impossible. It was completely, utterly, fantastically insane.
"We need to find Grandpa," she said, her voice steadier than she felt. "He'll know what to do."
"LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, GWEN TENNYSON!" Rath agreed enthusiastically. "RATH THINKS THAT'S A GOOD IDEA! GRANDPA MAX ALWAYS KNOWS WHAT TO DO! EXCEPT FOR WHEN HE MAKES THAT WEIRD FOOD THAT TASTES LIKE SADNESS AND CONFUSION, BUT OTHER THAN THAT, GRANDPA MAX IS VERY RELIABLE!"
Rath began climbing out of the crater, his massive clawed hands finding easy purchase on the scorched earth, his powerful legs propelling him upward with minimal effort. Gwen watched, simultaneously horrified and fascinated, as her cousin—transformed into something that should not exist—moved with a grace and power that seemed almost natural, as if his body had been designed for exactly this kind of terrain.
"Can you change back?" she asked as they began making their way through the forest toward the campsite.
"RATH DOESN'T KNOW!" Rath admitted, his voice causing a family of owls to evacuate their tree in terror. "RATH HASN'T TRIED! RATH WAS TOO BUSY YELLING AT THINGS AND ADMIRING RATH'S MUSCLES AND HAVING WHAT RATH ASSUMES IS AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS ABOUT IDENTITY AND THE NATURE OF TRANSFORMATION! IT'S BEEN A VERY BUSY FEW MINUTES!"
"Well, try!"
Rath paused, looking down at the Omnitrix symbol on his chest. The dial that had risen from the watch face when he was still Ben was nowhere to be seen, but there was another feature he hadn't noticed before—a smaller button, recessed into the side of the symbol. Acting on instinct, he pressed it.
Nothing happened.
"LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, OMNITRIX THAT IS CURRENTLY IGNORING RATH'S COMMANDS!" Rath shouted at his own chest, which was a sentence that had probably never been uttered in the history of the universe until this exact moment. "RATH WANTS TO BE BEN AGAIN! NOT BECAUSE RATH DOESN'T LOVE BEING RATH—RATH DEFINITELY LOVES BEING RATH—BUT BECAUSE GRANDPA MAX MIGHT HAVE TROUBLE RECOGNIZING RATH AND RATH DOESN'T WANT TO GET SHOT WITH WHATEVER WEIRD GRANDPA WEAPONS GRANDPA MAX PROBABLY HAS HIDDEN IN THE RUST BUCKET!"
"What weird grandpa weapons?" Gwen asked, but before Rath could answer, a new sound filled the night air—the sound of something large moving through the forest with obvious malicious intent.
Trees crashed somewhere to their left. The ground trembled with heavy footsteps. And a voice—mechanical, cold, distinctly not human—cut through the darkness:
"OMNITRIX LOCATED. INITIATING RETRIEVAL PROTOCOL."
Rath and Gwen spun toward the sound, and what emerged from the tree line made Gwen's earlier fear look like mild concern by comparison.
The robot was massive—twelve feet of gleaming metal and glowing red eyes, its body a nightmarish fusion of insectoid design and military hardware. Six legs, each ending in a point sharp enough to impale a car, carried it forward with mechanical precision. Its head—if the sensor-studded dome at its front could be called a head—swiveled toward them with a whir of servos and actuators. Mounted on its back was what appeared to be some kind of cannon, already beginning to charge with ominous red energy.
"TARGET ACQUIRED," the robot announced, its voice devoid of emotion. "ORGANIC LIFE FORMS DETECTED. THREAT ASSESSMENT: MINIMAL. OMNITRIX BEARER DETECTED. THREAT ASSESSMENT: VARIABLE. PROCEEDING WITH EXTRACTION."
"WHAT?!" Gwen stumbled backward, her scientific mind temporarily abandoning her as primal fear took the wheel.
But Rath—Rath did not stumble backward. Rath did not feel fear, because Appoplexians had evolved beyond such limiting emotions somewhere around their equivalent of the Stone Age, replacing it with a much more useful emotional state: RAGE.
Rath stepped forward.
"LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, GIANT ROBOT THAT LOOKS LIKE A BUG AND A TANK HAD A REALLY UGLY BABY!" Rath's voice rose to a volume that made his earlier shouting seem like whispers. His claws extended to their full, gleaming length. His muscles tensed, preparing for violence. His eyes blazed with a light that was part Omnitrix energy and part pure, undiluted Appoplexian fury. "YOU WANT THE OMNITRIX? YOU WANT TO EXTRACT IT? WELL, RATH HAS NEWS FOR YOU, BUCKET OF BOLTS! THE OMNITRIX IS ATTACHED TO RATH'S WRIST, AND RATH'S WRIST IS ATTACHED TO RATH, AND RATH IS ATTACHED TO THE CONCEPT OF NOT LETTING SOME OVERGROWN ROOMBA TAKE HIS STUFF!"
The robot paused, its sensors processing Rath's words. "THREAT ASSESSMENT: UPGRADING. SUBJECT DISPLAYS ELEVATED AGGRESSION. RECOMMENDED RESPONSE: INCAPACITATION."
The cannon on its back finished charging. Red energy crackled along its barrel.
"BRING IT ON, VACUUM CLEANER!" Rath roared.
The robot fired.
The blast that erupted from the robot's cannon was a concentrated beam of pure destruction—enough energy to vaporize stone, melt steel, reduce organic matter to its component atoms. It crossed the distance between the robot and its targets in a fraction of a second, a red streak of death that illuminated the forest in hellish light.
Rath moved faster.
With reflexes that came from millions of years of Appoplexian evolution—millions of years of fighting, of hunting, of being the apex predators on a world where everything was dangerous and the only way to survive was to be more dangerous—Rath launched himself to the side. His massive body twisted in midair, his claws digging into the trunk of a nearby tree for leverage as the energy beam screamed past him, close enough that he could feel its heat against his fur.
The beam struck a boulder behind where Rath had been standing. The boulder ceased to exist in any meaningful sense, transformed into a cloud of superheated gas and molten fragments that scattered across the forest floor.
"GWEN, RUN!" Rath bellowed, already pushing off from the tree and launching himself toward the robot with the force of a furry orange missile. "RATH WILL HANDLE THE MURDER BOT!"
Gwen didn't need to be told twice. She was already moving, her legs carrying her through the underbrush with the speed of pure survival instinct, her mind racing to process what she was seeing even as her body focused entirely on the task of not dying.
Rath hit the robot like a meteor of muscle and righteous fury, his claws leading the charge. The sound of metal meeting Appoplexian claw was like a thunderclap—sharp, violent, intensely satisfying. Sparks flew as Rath's natural weapons raked across the robot's chassis, leaving gouges in the metal that exposed circuitry and wiring beneath.
"LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, VILGAX'S DRONE!" Rath shouted, using a name he didn't consciously remember knowing but which felt right in his mouth—another gift from the Omnitrix's information download. "YOU PICKED THE WRONG OMNITRIX BEARER TO MESS WITH! YOU PICKED THE WRONG FOREST TO CRASH INTO! AND YOU DEFINITELY PICKED THE WRONG NIGHT TO TRY YOUR EXTRACTION PROTOCOL NONSENSE, BECAUSE RATH IS HERE AND RATH IS VERY, VERY UPSET ABOUT BEING TURNED INTO A TIGER-MAN AND RATH NEEDS SOMETHING TO PUNCH!"
The robot's legs stabbed at Rath, trying to impale him, but Rath was already moving—twisting, dodging, his body operating on instincts that had never been trained but felt as natural as breathing. He caught one of the legs in his massive hand, gripping the metal with strength that would have crushed steel, and PULLED.
The leg came free with a shower of sparks and a screech of tearing metal. Rath held it aloft like a trophy, then immediately began using it as a weapon, swinging the severed limb at the robot's sensor dome with the enthusiasm of a little leaguer who had just discovered that baseball bats were fun.
"HOW DO YOU LIKE GETTING HIT WITH YOUR OWN LEG?!" Rath demanded, each word punctuated by another devastating blow. "DOES IT FEEL GOOD? RATH BETS IT DOESN'T FEEL GOOD! RATH BETS IT FEELS BAD! RATH BETS YOU'RE REGRETTING ALL OF YOUR LIFE CHOICES RIGHT NOW, ASSUMING ROBOTS HAVE LIFE CHOICES, WHICH RATH ISN'T SURE ABOUT BUT RATH DOESN'T CARE BECAUSE RATH IS TOO BUSY WINNING THIS FIGHT!"
The robot's cannon rotated, trying to bring its devastating weapon to bear on Rath, but the Appoplexian was too close, too fast, too relentlessly aggressive. Rath's claw came down on the cannon's barrel with the force of a hydraulic press, shearing through the metal and severing the weapon from its mount. The severed cannon fell to the ground, its charge dissipating harmlessly in a sputter of dying energy.
"DISARMED!" Rath announced triumphantly. "LITERALLY! RATH MADE A PUN! RATH IS GOOD AT PUNS NOW! THIS ALIEN FORM COMES WITH MANY UNEXPECTED BENEFITS!"
The robot, reduced to five legs and no ranged weapons, attempted to retreat. Its remaining limbs churned against the forest floor, trying to carry it away from the orange-furred nightmare that had just dismantled its combat capabilities in less than a minute.
"WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?!" Rath demanded, pursuing with the easy lope of a predator who knows its prey cannot escape. "RATH WASN'T FINISHED TALKING TO YOU! RATH HAS SO MANY MORE THINGS TO SAY! RATH HAS OPINIONS ABOUT YOUR DESIGN CHOICES—WHO MAKES A ROBOT WITH SIX LEGS? THAT'S AN EVEN NUMBER! ODD NUMBERS ARE COOLER! RATH HAS OPINIONS ABOUT YOUR VOICE—IT'S VERY MONOTONE! VERY BORING! YOU SHOULD WORK ON INFLECTION! RATH HAS OPINIONS ABOUT—"
Rath leaped, covering the distance between himself and the fleeing robot in a single bound. He landed on its back, his claws digging into the metal for purchase, and began tearing into it with the enthusiasm of a child unwrapping presents on Christmas morning, if those presents were made of metal and contained the processing cores of an alien killbot.
"—YOUR OVERALL LIFE PHILOSOPHY!" Rath continued, pulling out handfuls of wiring and circuitry. "YOU CAN'T JUST COME TO SOMEONE'S PLANET AND TRY TO EXTRACT THEIR MAGICAL SPACE WATCH! THAT'S RUDE! THAT'S INVASIVE! THAT'S THE KIND OF BEHAVIOR THAT MAKES SPECIES NOT WANT TO JOIN GALACTIC SOCIETY, AND RATH DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT GALACTIC SOCIETY IS BUT RATH KNOWS IT'S IMPORTANT!"
The robot's movements became jerky, uncoordinated, as Rath's rampage severed critical systems. Sparks erupted from multiple points on its chassis. Its red eyes flickered, dimmed, flickered again.
"MISSION... FAILURE..." the robot's voice slurred, its synthetic words becoming corrupted as processing power failed. "TRANSMITTING... FINAL... REPORT... TO... VILGAX..."
"VILGAX CAN GET IN LINE!" Rath roared, bringing both fists down on the robot's central processor with enough force to crater the metal beneath them. "RATH DOESN'T KNOW WHO VILGAX IS, BUT RATH ALREADY DOESN'T LIKE HIM! ANYONE WHO SENDS MURDER BOTS TO NICE CAMPING FORESTS IS AUTOMATICALLY ON RATH'S BAD LIST! AND LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, VILGAX WHEREVER YOU ARE—RATH'S BAD LIST IS NOT A GOOD LIST TO BE ON!"
The robot died with a final sputter of failing electronics, its legs collapsing beneath it as power ceased to flow through its systems. Rath stood atop its metal corpse, breathing heavily—not from exertion, because Appoplexians had stamina that would have made marathon runners weep, but from the sheer emotional release of combat.
"YEAH!" Rath bellowed into the night, throwing his arms wide. "THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS! THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MESS WITH RATH! YOU GET MESSED UP! YOU GET YOUR LEGS TORN OFF! YOU GET YOUR OPINION-WORTHY DESIGN CHOICES CRITICIZED! AND THEN YOU GET DESTROYED BECAUSE RATH DOESN'T DO THINGS HALFWAY!"
The Omnitrix symbol on Rath's chest began to flash red, accompanied by a warning beep that cut through his triumphant mood like a bucket of cold water.
"WHAT?" Rath looked down at his chest. "WHAT'S HAPPENING? WHY IS RATH BEEPING? RATH DOESN'T LIKE BEEPING! BEEPING IS THE SOUND OF PROBLEMS!"
A flash of red light enveloped him, and suddenly Ben Tennyson stood where Rath had been—ten years old, skinny, human, and very confused. The Omnitrix was back on his wrist, its face dark except for a small red indicator light that pulsed slowly.
"Whoa," Ben breathed, looking down at his hands—his normal, human, clawless hands. "That was..."
He couldn't find the words. What had just happened? He had been himself, and then he had been something else—something bigger, stronger, louder, more confident than he had ever been in his entire life. He had fought a giant robot. He had won. He had done things that should have been impossible.
"BEN!"
Max Tennyson burst through the treeline, and for one frozen moment, Ben saw his grandfather in a way he never had before. Max was moving like a soldier, his body low and efficient, a weapon in his hands that definitely wasn't a regular camping tool—something sleek and metallic that hummed with power Ben didn't understand. His eyes were sharp, scanning the area with professional precision, taking in the destroyed robot, the torn-up forest, his grandson standing atop a pile of alien wreckage.
"Grandpa?" Ben's voice came out small, confused. "What... what is that thing? Where did you get that?"
Max lowered the weapon, his expression cycling through several emotions—relief, concern, calculation, and something else that Ben couldn't identify. "Ben, are you okay? What happened here?"
"I... I found this thing." Ben held up his wrist, showing the Omnitrix. "It fell from the sky. It attached to me. And then I turned into this big orange guy with claws and I beat up that robot." He paused, the reality of what he was saying hitting him. "Grandpa, I turned into an alien. A big, yelling, aggressive alien. That actually happened."
Gwen emerged from behind a tree where she had been hiding, her face pale but her eyes bright with the excitement of someone who had just witnessed something incredible. "I saw the whole thing. Well, most of it. I was running for most of it, but I looked back a few times. He turned into this giant cat-person thing and just... destroyed that robot. With his bare hands. While yelling about opinions."
Max looked between his grandchildren, then down at the destroyed robot, then at the Omnitrix on Ben's wrist. His mind was racing, connecting dots, forming conclusions that he had hoped he would never have to form again.
"That's an Omnitrix," he said quietly. "And that—" he gestured at the robot's remains "—is one of Vilgax's drones. Which means..." He trailed off, his jaw tightening.
"You know what this is?" Ben asked, incredulous. "You know what I've turned into? Grandpa, how do you know any of this?"
Max was quiet for a long moment, his eyes distant, lost in memories that his grandchildren couldn't see. Then he sighed—a heavy sound, full of the weight of secrets kept too long.
"There's a lot I haven't told you kids," he said. "About me. About your grandmother. About the universe and its... wider context. I was hoping I could keep you out of it—keep you safe, keep you normal." He looked at the Omnitrix, glowing softly in the darkness. "But it seems like the universe had other plans."
"Grandpa," Gwen said slowly, "what are you talking about?"
Max looked at his grandchildren—two ten-year-olds who had just been thrust into a world of alien technology, intergalactic conflict, and the very real possibility of violence and danger. They deserved the truth. They needed the truth. And maybe, just maybe, the truth would help them survive what was coming.
"Let's get back to the Rust Bucket," he said. "We have a lot to talk about. And Ben—" he reached out, putting a hand on his grandson's shoulder "—that thing on your wrist? It's one of the most powerful devices in the universe. And apparently, you're the one who's going to have to learn how to use it."
Ben looked down at the Omnitrix, then up at his grandfather, then over at the destroyed robot that he had dismantled with alien strength and alien rage. His life had just changed forever—he could feel it, the same way you could feel the approach of a thunderstorm in the electricity of the air.
"Cool," he said, because what else could he say?
But somewhere deep in his mind, a small part of him was already preparing for the next time he'd push that dial. The next time he'd feel himself transform. The next time he'd become Rath.
And let him tell you something—that part of him couldn't wait.
Two hours later, Ben, Gwen, and Max sat around the fold-out table in the Rust Bucket, the remains of a hastily-prepared meal pushed aside as Max finished explaining the truth about his past. The Plumbers. The aliens. The wars fought across galaxies while Earth slumbered in blissful ignorance. The reason why he knew what an Omnitrix was and who Vilgax was and why that knowledge was terrifying.
"So you're telling me," Gwen said, her voice steady despite the fact that her entire worldview had just been dismantled and rebuilt from scratch, "that aliens are real, you used to be an intergalactic police officer, and now Ben has a watch that lets him turn into different alien species?"
"That about covers it," Max confirmed.
"And this Vilgax person—"
"Warlord. Conquerer. One of the most dangerous beings in the known universe."
"—Vilgax warlord wants the Omnitrix because it would let him build an army of unstoppable soldiers by copying the DNA of a million different species?"
"Yes."
"And he's going to keep sending drones and assassins and who knows what else until he gets it?"
"Almost certainly."
Gwen processed this, then turned to look at Ben, who had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the explanation. "And the doofus is our first line of defense?"
"Hey!" Ben protested, his normal personality reasserting itself. "I beat that robot! I was awesome!"
"You were screaming about opinions while ripping its legs off."
"THAT'S CALLED PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE, GWEN! I WAS BREAKING ITS SPIRIT WHILE BREAKING ITS BODY!"
"Robots don't have spirits, Ben."
"YOU DON'T KNOW THAT! MAYBE ROBOT SPIRITS ARE A THING! MAYBE I SENT THAT ROBOT'S GHOST TO ROBOT HEAVEN AND NOW IT'S TELLING ALL THE OTHER ROBOT GHOSTS ABOUT HOW RATH DESTROYED IT!"
"You're calling yourself Rath now?"
"WHEN I'M THE TIGER GUY, I'M RATH! WHEN I'M ME, I'M BEN! IT'S A WHOLE THING!"
Max watched this exchange with an expression that mixed concern with something that might have been pride. His grandson had the Omnitrix. His grandson had already demonstrated an ability to use it in combat. His grandson was apparently transforming into a Rath—an Appoplexian, one of the most aggressive species in the galaxy—and was somehow channeling that aggression into effective violence against enemies rather than just random destruction.
It wasn't ideal. But then again, the universe rarely offered ideal.
"Ben," Max said, cutting through the cousins' bickering, "have you tried using the Omnitrix again since you changed back?"
Ben looked down at the device on his wrist. The red light had faded some time ago, replaced by the original green glow that pulsed softly in the dim light of the RV. He hadn't thought to try—hadn't thought about much at all except trying to process everything his grandfather had told him.
"No," he admitted. "Should I?"
"Let's see what it can do," Max suggested. "But carefully. Try just bringing up the selection interface—don't transform yet."
Ben nodded, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration as he pressed the dial on the Omnitrix. It rose from the face of the device, just as it had before, and the hourglass symbol was replaced by... something strange.
A single icon. A silhouette that looked unmistakably like the form Ben had taken earlier—massive, muscular, distinctly feline.
"Where are all the other aliens?" Ben asked, rotating the dial. Nothing happened. No matter which way he turned it, the same icon remained. "Grandpa, you said there were like a million species in this thing. Where are they?"
Max's brow furrowed. He leaned in close, examining the display with the expert eye of someone who had seen Plumber technology before. His expression grew increasingly troubled as he studied the interface.
"That's... not right," he muttered. "The Omnitrix should have multiple transformation options available. Basic interface should allow selection from at least ten forms at any given time, with others accessible through—" He cut himself off, shaking his head. "Something's wrong. The crash must have damaged it somehow."
"Can you fix it?" Gwen asked.
"I'm not even close to qualified to repair something like this. Azmuth is the only one who could—but he's..." Max trailed off, his expression darkening. "Let's just say he's not easy to reach."
"So I'm stuck with one alien?" Ben asked. He wasn't sure how to feel about that. On one hand, having one alien was better than having zero aliens. On the other hand, if there were supposed to be a million options...
"For now, at least," Max confirmed. "But Ben—that one alien is a Rath. An Appoplexian. They're one of the most physically powerful species in the galaxy. In terms of raw strength and combat ability, you could have done a lot worse."
"Yeah, but can it do anything besides punch stuff and yell?" Gwen asked skeptically.
"LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, GWEN TENNYSON!" Ben shouted reflexively, then caught himself. "Wait. I'm not Rath right now. Why did I do that?"
Max and Gwen exchanged a look.
"We're going to have to figure this out as we go," Max said finally. "The Omnitrix, Vilgax, the whole situation—we're in uncharted territory. But we'll face it together. As a family."
Ben looked at his grandfather, then at his cousin, then down at the Omnitrix—the device that had attached itself to him, that had transformed him into something powerful and loud and angry, that had apparently made him the target of an alien warlord.
"Together," he agreed. And then, because he couldn't help himself: "But mostly me. Because I'm the one with the alien watch."
Gwen rolled her eyes. Max sighed. And somewhere in the vast reaches of space, Vilgax received the transmission from his destroyed drone and began planning his next move.
The summer had just begun.
And it was going to be LOUD.
END OF CHAPTER ONE
NEXT TIME: Ben discovers the joys and challenges of having only Rath as a transformation option when the Kraken attacks a summer cruise ship. Features: extensive property damage, creative use of crustacean-based insults, and a very confused sea monster who really didn't expect its day to include being suplexed by an orange tiger-man.