# Ben 10: Ultimate Alien – Void Predator
Episode 10: Null Void Incarceration
The transition was instantaneous.
One heartbeat, Ben, Gwen, and Kevin stood beneath the collapsing museum as Aeternus smiled through the storm.
The next, darkness swallowed them.
Not ordinary darkness. This was a pressure without a shape, a void so complete it seemed to strip the universe from their bodies one layer at a time. Ben tried to shout Gwen's name. The sound broke apart before it left him. Kevin's hand vanished from his reach. Gwen's mana flashed once—small, violet, desperate—and then even that disappeared.
Consciousness shattered.
A spark remained.
Ben woke with a gasp.
Pain arrived before sight. His skull throbbed. His ribs burned. Dust grated between his teeth, mixed with the copper taste of blood. Something cold pressed against his cheek, and when he tried to move, an invisible weight drove him back down.
He forced his eyes open.
Stone. Damp stone. A narrow chamber surrounded by rough blocks darkened with age. No windows. No lamps. Only a heavy iron door reinforced with bands of black metal.
"Gwen?"
His voice came out as a rasp.
A groan answered him.
Gwen lay a few feet away, one hand pressed to her temple. Kevin was facedown beside the wall, his jacket torn and singed.
Relief hit Ben so hard it almost became another wave of pain.
They were alive.
For now.
Gwen pushed herself upright. "Ben… what happened?"
"I don't know." He tried to sit and nearly blacked out. "But I'm guessing this isn't Bellwood."
Kevin rolled onto his back. "Great. Another interdimensional vacation." He stared at the door. "Where's the part where we get a refund?"
Ben looked down at his wrist.
His stomach dropped.
The Ultimatrix was gone.
The place where it should have been felt cold and naked. He flexed his hand, expecting the familiar green glow, the reassuring weight of a device that had saved them more times than he could count.
Nothing answered.
Gwen noticed. "Ben…"
"I know."
The silence after that was worse than the pain.
A scraping sound moved through the corridor outside.
Metal dragged over stone.
Then a beam of white light cut beneath the door.
Kevin got to his feet first. His movements were stiff, but his arms began hardening into gray metal. Gwen raised one hand, pale mana gathering between her fingers.
The door opened.
A tall figure entered, wrapped in a dark hooded robe. Its skin was pale and stretched over angular bones. Two red eyes glowed beneath the hood. In one hand it carried a staff alive with black electrical arcs.
It looked at Ben as if inspecting an object recently delivered.
"Well," it said. Its voice was metallic and emotionless. "The famous Ben Tennyson. I expected more resistance."
"Give me five minutes," Kevin said. "I'm injured."
The alien ignored him.
"My designation is Executor Krall. I am the warden of this facility."
Gwen's eyes narrowed. "Facility?"
"Your prison."
Krall's gaze settled on Ben's bare wrist.
"You possess something my master requires."
Ben stepped in front of Gwen. "You mean the Ultimatrix? Good luck finding it."
A thin smile exposed needle-like teeth.
"The device is not the thing we want." Krall lifted his staff. "It merely taught your body how to hold the power."
A pulse traveled through the weapon. Ben felt it reach toward him, probing the empty space around his wrist.
"Who is your master?" Gwen demanded.
"A being who will correct the universe."
"That is the kind of answer people give right before they try to destroy it," Ben said.
Krall aimed the staff at his head.
"This weapon will extract your memories, your transformations, and the structure beneath them. You will survive the procedure. Your identity may not."
Kevin moved.
His shoulder struck Krall like a battering ram. The warden crashed into the wall, and the staff skidded across the floor.
"Run!" Kevin shouted.
Ben and Gwen lunged through the open doorway.
Behind them, Krall rose with impossible speed. A blast of red-black energy struck Kevin in the chest. His metal armor glowed orange, but he stayed standing.
"Go!" he roared. "I can hold one creepy skeleton!"
"You owe me one!" Ben yelled.
"I owe you three!"
Ben and Gwen sprinted down the corridor.
Cells lined both walls. Behind the bars waited things that should never have shared the same universe: a creature made of glass and teeth, a mass of liquid shadow, a four-armed alien with a collar of burning symbols. Some hurled themselves against the bars. Others watched in silence, their faces empty from years of captivity.
The alarms began.
Red light strobed across the hallway.
At the far end stood a sealed blast door covered in pulsing energy glyphs.
Gwen pressed both hands against it. Violet mana spread across the surface, searching for a weakness.
The glyphs brightened.
Then rejected her.
"It's shielded," she said. "Not just against magic. It's designed to adapt to whoever touches it."
"Then it hasn't met me."
Ben tore open the control panel beside the door. Wires sparked in a nest of alien circuitry. He grabbed two cables and forced them together.
The shock raced up his arms.
The door shuddered.
"Again!" Gwen shouted.
Ben crossed the wires a second time. His fingers went numb. Behind them, metal screamed as Krall slammed Kevin into the corridor wall.
"Ben!"
A third attempt.
The seals flickered.
Kevin hit the ground.
Ben twisted the cables together and pulled.
The blast door unlocked with a thunderous clang.
They dove through.
The chamber beyond was enormous. Machinery climbed into the darkness, connected by glowing conduits that pulsed like veins. Ozone filled the air. At the center, a portal churned inside a circular frame.
It looked like an exit.
Gwen stopped.
"No."
Ben turned. "No?"
"That portal is wrong." Her face had gone pale. "It carries the same energy as the Null Void."
Kevin staggered through the doorway and leaned against the wall. "So we escaped the prison and found a worse prison?"
The portal rippled.
Something moved inside it.
Ben stepped between it and Gwen.
A figure emerged from the dark.
It was tall and muscular, with mottled green skin, glowing yellow eyes, and claws long enough to open a person from throat to stomach. Its mouth widened into a predatory grin.
"This is not the Null Void," it growled.
The creature inhaled.
Ben felt the air leave his lungs as if the thing were already tasting him.
"This is my hunting ground."
Its eyes fixed on Ben's empty wrist.
"And you are the first prey to arrive without a weapon."
The creature lunged.
Ben shoved Gwen aside. Claws tore through the space where his chest had been, striking sparks from the floor. Kevin charged from the side, but the hunter twisted, caught him by the arm, and hurled him across the chamber.
Gwen fired a mana bolt.
The creature swallowed the blast.
Its yellow eyes turned violet.
It fired the same attack back.
Ben threw himself in front of Gwen.
The returning blast struck his bare wrist.
For one impossible second, nothing happened.
Then the mark appeared.
A four-part symbol burned beneath his skin, black at the edges and green at its core.
The energy split around him.
Ben stared at the light crawling over his hand.
"I thought the Ultimatrix was gone," Gwen whispered.
"It is," Ben said.
The hunter smiled.
"Not the power."
It attacked again.
Ben ducked beneath its claws and drove his fist into its ribs. The impact should have broken his hand. Instead, the symbol flared, and something inside the creature tore loose.
The hunter screamed.
Black light poured through Ben's arm.
He saw a red desert. A dead Earth. A silver-eyed Gwen standing beside a ruined Rust Bucket. Kevin kneeling in the ashes of a city.
Then the vision vanished.
The hunter collapsed into dust.
Ben staggered backward, breathing hard.
"What did you do?" Kevin asked.
Ben looked at his hand.
"I don't know."
The mark pulsed.
A voice whispered inside his skull.
Not Gwen.
Not Kevin.
Something that sounded like Ben, only older.
"You judged it."
The portal exploded.
Creatures poured from the rupture—fire-covered, crystalline, liquid, winged, armored. Each carried the same four-part symbol. Each locked onto Ben.
Behind them, Krall entered the chamber, dragging his damaged staff.
He did not look angry anymore.
He looked afraid.
"You were not supposed to awaken here," he said.
Ben raised his fists. "I'm having a pretty bad day."
The creatures attacked.
Gwen and Kevin moved with him. Gwen carved circles of mana through the air. Kevin became a wall of metal, taking impacts that would have killed an ordinary person. Ben fought without the Ultimatrix, using instinct, anger, and the strange power burning under his skin.
But every creature knew what he intended before he moved.
A fire-copy turned before Ben struck.
A shadow-copy dodged attacks he had not thrown.
"They're reading your thoughts!" Gwen shouted.
"Then I'll think of something stupid."
Kevin slammed both fists into the floor. The chamber buckled. Three creatures lost their balance.
Ben grinned despite himself.
"Good plan."
The army closed around them.
The mark on Ben's wrist divided into four jagged lines.
Four paths.
Four choices.
The creatures pressed against his mind. Their memories became weapons: every future in which he failed, every version of himself that became cruel, weak, or alone.
A thousand voices filled his skull.
You failed.
You abandoned them.
You were never a hero.
Ben dropped to one knee.
Gwen seized his shoulder.
"Ben. Look at me."
He forced his eyes open.
"You don't have to become every version of yourself," she said. "You only have to choose who you are now."
Kevin raised both metal arms as the creatures surrounded them.
"And choose quickly!"
Ben looked at Gwen.
At Kevin.
At the symbols.
The Ultimatrix had selected forms for him. The Forge had tried to turn possibility into obedience.
But this power was not a form.
It was choice.
Ben opened his hand.
"Choose."
The mark detonated.
Every creature froze. Their bodies fractured into streams of light, each revealing a different shape before being pulled toward Ben's wrist.
Fire.
Crystal.
Strength.
Speed.
Gravity.
Void.
The power struck him like a collapsing star.
Ben screamed.
The floor broke apart beneath his feet. Gwen caught his arm. Kevin caught Gwen. For one impossible moment, all three hung above an endless darkness while the chamber tore itself open around them.
Krall stared at Ben's burning eyes.
"You cannot contain the Forge."
Ben looked up.
"Good thing I'm not trying to contain it."
His eyes opened fully. Every color of the stolen powers rotated inside them like stars trapped in a storm.
"I'm going to break it."
He thrust his hand forward.
The facility split apart.
Doors burst open across the prison. Trapped aliens vanished into portals. Machines ruptured. The void beyond the chamber filled with thousands of fleeing lights.
Krall screamed as the floor beneath him dissolved.
But before the warden disappeared, his expression changed.
He smiled.
"You still opened the door."
The darkness folded inward.
Ben, Gwen, and Kevin were thrown through a tunnel of fractured light. Images of unknown worlds flashed around them—dead cities, burning moons, oceans suspended upside down.
Then they crashed onto solid ground.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Kevin groaned. "I hate portals."
Gwen pushed herself upright. "Where are we?"
Ben sat up.
They were in a vast chamber of white metal. Rows of machines stretched beyond sight. Every surface carried the four-part symbol.
At the center stood a circular platform.
On it rested the Ultimatrix.
Ben froze.
The device was no longer attached to his wrist. Its faceplate hung open. Beneath the green core, a small black sphere pulsed like a second heart.
The sphere cracked.
A tiny voice emerged from inside the machine.
"Ben Tennyson has been located."
Gwen raised her hands.
"Who are you?"
"The Forge has begun final production."
The chamber doors opened.
Beyond them stood an army of armored aliens wearing the Plumber symbol upside down.
At their front was Albedo.
He wore a silver battle suit and held a device assembled from pieces of the Ultimatrix.
His eyes locked onto Ben.
"Excellent," Albedo said. "The original survived."
He lifted the device.
"Now we can extract the power."
Kevin stepped forward. "Ben, please tell me you have a plan."
Ben looked at the army.
Then Gwen.
Then the Ultimatrix.
The power inside him stirred.
This time, it did not feel like a weapon.
It felt like a decision waiting to be made.
Ben smiled.
"Yeah."
The chamber lights went out.
"I'm going to give Albedo exactly what he wants."
A green-and-black storm erupted across the room.
When the lights returned, Ben was gone.
Only the four-part symbol remained, burning on the floor.
Albedo stared at it.
Then something behind him whispered in Ben's voice.
"Your turn."
To be continued.