BEN 10: ULTIMATE ALIEN
"Sunk Cost"
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A Fan-Made Episode Script — Written in the style of Dwayne McDuffie
COLD OPEN
EXT. BELLWOOD — CENTENNIAL PARK — 9:40 AM
Clear morning. Joggers on the path. A groundskeeper drags a hose across the lawn toward the sprinkler heads, frowning at a brown patch that shouldn't be brown in a park this well-watered.
He crouches. Presses a hand to the grass.
It's warm. Warmer than morning grass should be.
Twenty feet away, a sprinkler head SHUDDERS — not turning on, just shaking, like something underneath it is bumping against the pipe.
GROUNDSKEEPER
(standing, backing up)
...Okay.
The ground beneath the sprinkler CAVES — a clean, circular sinkhole, maybe eight feet across, opening with a sound like a held breath finally let out. The sprinkler pipe snaps and hangs loose over the edge.
Dust settles.
Down in the hole, a tunnel. Fresh-cut, walls scored with parallel drill marks, wide enough to drive a car through.
Something moves at the bottom of it. Then another something.
PICKAXE ALIENS — squat, armored, single-purpose mining drones with rotary blades where hands should be — climb up out of the tunnel and start efficiently, methodically, cutting the sinkhole wider.
The groundskeeper runs.
INT. BEN'S CAR — MOVING — MOMENTS LATER
BEN TENNYSON, driving toward the park after Max's alert, listens to the wrist comm.
MAX (V.O.)
(filtered, brisk)
Sinkhole in Centennial Park. Mining drones. Tunnel network reads deep — deeper than anything local. Whoever's digging isn't doing it casually.
BEN
(parking, getting out)
"Whoever" have a name?
MAX (V.O.)
Working on it.
Ben crosses the park at a jog. The sinkhole's widened considerably in the last two minutes — a dozen Pickaxe Aliens now working the edges with brutal efficiency, and a second, larger shape climbing up out of the tunnel behind them, servos whining under real weight.
VULKANUS.
Not the version Ben remembers. Bigger. New armor — heavier, more angular, plated in dark alloy with reinforced joints and a drill-tipped gauntlet on each forearm that wasn't there before. His voice, when it comes, is amplified through the suit, booming across the park.
VULKANUS
(climbing fully out, surveying the park like a man checking a receipt)
Tennyson.
BEN
(stopping at a safe distance, taking in the new armor)
You got an upgrade.
VULKANUS
(flatly proud)
I got smart. Last time we did this, you cost me a Techadon factory. Do you know what a Techadon factory costs?
BEN
(dry)
I remember you yelling about it. Something about a solar system.
VULKANUS
(pointing a drill-gauntlet at him)
I do not forget an expense, Tennyson.
He gestures at the tunnel behind him.
VULKANUS (CONT'D)
My scanners picked up a crystalline signature under this park an hour ago. Density readings I have not seen since — well. Since the last time I lost a fortune trying to get my hands on real Taydenite.
BEN
(glancing at the tunnel, then back at him)
And you think this is it.
VULKANUS
(almost giddy, in a terrifying way)
I think this time, it might actually be worth something.
Ben looks at the sinkhole. At the Pickaxe Aliens. At a park full of joggers who have no idea any of this is happening yet.
BEN
(slapping the Ultimatrix)
Yeah. Let's find out.
ACT ONE
[TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE]
Green flash — DIAMONDHEAD lands on the lawn, pale green crystal against morning grass.
BEN (AS DIAMONDHEAD)
(rolling his shoulders)
Diamondhead. Funny thing about crystal signatures, Vulkanus — you're standing on top of one right now.
VULKANUS
(studying him through the suit's visor, almost fond)
I know. I've had four years to study you, Tennyson. Every fight. Every sample my drones ever scraped off a battlefield.
(beat)
You're not the mystery you used to be.
Diamondhead fires first — a fast, precise shard volley aimed at the suit's shoulder joint.
The shards hit — and shatter. Not deflect. Not absorb. Shatter, the suit's plating unaffected, a fine dust of Diamondhead's own crystal drifting to the grass.
DIAMONDHEAD
(staring)
...Okay. That's new.
VULKANUS
(almost gently)
Hardened resonance plating. Tuned to shatter crystalline structures at the harmonic frequency of a Petrosapien lattice.
(beat)
You didn't think I built a mining operation without learning how to break the one substance I hunt for a living?
He advances — and Diamondhead, recalculating fast, switches from shards to a direct strike, crystal fist against armored plating.
The suit doesn't budge. But Diamondhead's fist does — a hairline crack spreading across two knuckles on contact, the resonance plating doing to his hand exactly what it did to the shards.
DIAMONDHEAD
(pulling back, shaking out the hand)
Every hit costs me more than it costs you.
VULKANUS
(a drill-gauntlet spinning up with a whine)
That is, historically, how I prefer my fights.
He swings. Diamondhead barely gets a crystal wall up in time — and the drill bites into it, not smashing through, boring through, clean and methodical, the wall failing not from force but from the same mining precision that's been carving tunnels under Bellwood for who knows how long.
Diamondhead dives clear as the wall collapses into gravel.
DIAMONDHEAD
(backing across the lawn)
You built a suit that's really, really good at doing the one thing my whole body is made of.
VULKANUS
(following, unhurried)
I built a suit that's really, really good at mining crystal, Tennyson. You just happen to be crystal-shaped.
ACT TWO
Diamondhead circles, putting distance between himself and the drills, trying to find an angle that doesn't involve his own crystal structure meeting Vulkanus's mining tech head-on.
He tries speed instead of force — a fast strike at the suit's leg joint, hoping for a gap in the plating.
Vulkanus doesn't even fully turn. A secondary drill deploys from the suit's forearm almost lazily, catching the strike, grinding it down to gravel before it connects.
DIAMONDHEAD
(pulling back, breathing hard for an alien that technically doesn't need to)
You've got a counter for everything I do because everything I do is exactly what you built this thing to counter.
VULKANUS
(patient, almost bored)
Four years, Tennyson. I don't lose money on the same mistake twice. I lose it on new mistakes. That's called progress.
He advances again. Diamondhead throws everything remaining in the standard playbook — shard volleys, a crystal blade formed along his forearm, a wide sweeping construct meant to entrap rather than strike.
Every single one shatters, grinds down, or gets bored straight through.
Diamondhead ends up backed against the edge of the sinkhole, cracked knuckles, a spiderweb fracture running up one forearm, breathing hard.
VULKANUS
(closing in, drill-gauntlets spinning up together)
This is the part where you usually have a clever idea.
DIAMONDHEAD
(looking at his own cracked hand)
Yeah. Working on it.
He looks at the Ultimatrix — flickering, urgent.
DIAMONDHEAD (CONT'D)
(quiet, fast)
He studied me. Every fight, every sample. He's got four years of data on exactly this crystal, at exactly this density, doing exactly these tricks.
*He looks at Vulkanus's suit — purpose-built, precise, comprehensive.
DIAMONDHEAD (CONT'D)
His whole advantage is knowing exactly what I am.
He slaps the dial.
DIAMONDHEAD (CONT'D)
So let's stop being that.
[ULTIMATE TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE]
The Ultimatrix symbol SNAPS open.
Diamondhead's pale green crystal lattice darkens — not gradually, but completely, a wave of deep crimson red flooding outward from the Ultimatrix and resetting his entire structure at once. Dark navy plating fills in between the crystal sections, dense and matte where the crystal is faceted and bright. Massive spiked formations erupt from both shoulders, each one a different jagged length, catching the morning sun in sharp red-orange refractions. His hands reshape into broad, multi-fingered claws, every joint newly faceted. The Omnitrix symbol resettles green at his chest — the one piece of him that hasn't changed color, small and precise against all that red.
The cracked knuckles are gone. The spiderweb fracture is gone. It isn't healing.
It's a different structure entirely.
BEN (AS ULTIMATE DIAMONDHEAD)
(voice deeper, denser, landing with real weight)
Ultimate Diamondhead.
Vulkanus's suit visor flickers — actively rescanning.
VULKANUS
(genuinely thrown, for the first time in this fight)
That's not in my data.
ULTIMATE DIAMONDHEAD
(steady)
No. It's not.
Vulkanus swings a drill-gauntlet on reflex, the same strike that ground three separate crystal constructs to gravel in the last ninety seconds.
It hits Ultimate Diamondhead's forearm.
And doesn't grind through.
The drill SCREECHES against the denser lattice, sparks flying, the resonance plating's harmonic tuning simply wrong for this structure — calibrated for a frequency this crystal doesn't produce.
VULKANUS
(recoiling, staring at his own gauntlet)
That should have—
ULTIMATE DIAMONDHEAD
(flat)
Should have. Yeah. That's the problem with four years of data.
(beat)
It's four years old.
He drives a clawed fist forward — full contact, no crack, no shatter, the suit's resonance plating unable to find purchase on a lattice it was never tuned to break.
Vulkanus staggers backward, actual distance this time, servos whining in protest.
ACT THREE
Vulkanus recovers fast, both drill-gauntlets spinning up to full power, clearly deciding to compensate for the tuning mismatch with raw mechanical force instead.
VULKANUS
(grim, committed)
Fine. New data later. Right now I just need it to be rock.
He charges — full suit weight behind both drills, aimed at Ultimate Diamondhead's chest.
Ultimate Diamondhead doesn't dodge.
He catches both drill-gauntlets, one in each clawed hand, the shoulder spikes bracing his stance as the suit's full mining power grinds uselessly against a grip that isn't shattering, isn't cracking, isn't giving at all.
ULTIMATE DIAMONDHEAD
(holding, steady)
You built a suit to break down valuable ore.
He squeezes.
The drill housings, not the drills themselves — the housings, the plating around the mechanism — begin to crack under the pressure, an irony neither of them misses.
ULTIMATE DIAMONDHEAD (CONT'D)
Turns out that cuts both ways.
One housing gives entirely, the drill mechanism grinding to a halt, sparking and dead. Vulkanus, off-balance, gets shoved backward hard enough to skid across the lawn on his back.
He doesn't get up right away.
A crack has opened along his own chestplate — not from the fall, from the earlier grip — and through it, for just a second, something small and pale and distinctly unarmored is visible before the suit's emergency plating slides back into place.
VULKANUS
(from the ground, voice suddenly a register higher, suit audio glitching)
That is not — that's cosmetic damage, that means nothing —
ULTIMATE DIAMONDHEAD
(standing over him, not unkind)
Sure.
He crouches, one claw resting lightly against the cracked chestplate — not threatening, just present.
ULTIMATE DIAMONDHEAD (CONT'D)
You want a scan?
He doesn't wait for an answer. A small shard forms and detaches from his own forearm, offered flat on his palm — a sample, freely given, deep crimson, catching the light.
VULKANUS
(staring at it, something almost desperate in his voice)
...Run it.
A beat. The suit's internal scanner whirs.
Reads.
Vulkanus's shoulders drop — the whole suit seeming to deflate slightly around him.
VULKANUS (CONT'D)
(quiet, flat)
Denser. Not Taydenite. Just... more of what you already were.
ULTIMATE DIAMONDHEAD
(standing)
Yeah.
VULKANUS
(from the ground, genuinely tired)
Do you have any idea what this suit cost me?
ULTIMATE DIAMONDHEAD
(looking at the cracked, sparking gauntlets)
Honestly? Probably a solar system's worth.
Vulkanus doesn't answer.
Which, at this point, is basically a yes.
Plumber vehicles arrive at the park's edge, having tracked the tunnel network's seismic footprint the moment the sinkhole opened. The Pickaxe Aliens, leaderless and confused, are rounded up without much resistance.
Ultimate Diamondhead reverts — green flash — and Ben stands on the churned-up lawn, small and ordinary, looking down at Vulkanus, still on his back, still processing the loss.
BEN
(offering a hand, mostly out of habit)
Need a hand up?
VULKANUS
(swatting it away, sitting up on his own)
I need a refund.
Ben looks around the park — sinkhole, torn-up grass, a groundskeeper watching from a safe distance with his hose still in hand, sprinkler still hissing uselessly into the hole.
BEN
(to the groundskeeper, apologetic)
Sorry about your lawn.
TAG SCENE
EXT. BELLWOOD — CENTENNIAL PARK — LATER
Cleanup crews fill the sinkhole. Vulkanus, suit powered down and heavily restrained, is loaded into a containment transport, muttering the entire way about receipts and warranties that definitely don't cover "getting beaten by an upgrade nobody told him about."
Ben leans against a park bench, Max's voice on comm.
MAX (V.O.)
(dry)
Vulkanus. Again.
BEN
Again.
MAX (V.O.)
He say what he was after this time?
BEN
(watching the transport pull away)
Thought he'd finally found real Taydenite. Spent — by his own estimate — "a small planet's worth" on a suit built specifically to break down my crystal structure.
MAX (V.O.)
And?
BEN
(quiet, almost sympathetic)
And it turns out I'm still just me. Denser model, same basic disappointment.
A pause on the comm — something that might be Max trying not to laugh.
MAX (V.O.)
That's going to sting more than the suit did.
BEN
(looking at the torn-up lawn, the groundskeeper already surveying the damage with a clipboard)
Yeah.
He watches the transport disappear around the park's edge.
BEN (CONT'D)
(to himself)
Guy's gonna keep doing this until it actually pays off, isn't he.
No one answers that. It isn't really a question.
He pushes off the bench. Looks at the Ultimatrix — calm, green, ordinary.
BEN (CONT'D)
(quiet)
Denser model. Same basic disappointment.
He almost smiles at that.
Walks home.
FADE TO BLACK.
END OF EPISODE