Gwen let out a sharp gasp, her eyes widening in sheer horror at the sight of the security guard's transformation.
Gold Ship reacted instantly, ducking behind Orfevre with a yelp and clutching at her sister's back like that alone could shield her from what she was seeing.
Orfevre, on the other hand, could only stare in stunned silence, her expression caught somewhere between disbelief and alarm.
That was when Max stepped in. Without wasting a second, he pressed a circular device against Orfevre's chest. She barely had time to look down before the device snapped open and released a strange, flexible material that spread outward across her body in an instant. It wrapped around her from head to toe, sealing into a yellow-and-black hazmat suit with a fitted protective helmet that covered her completely.
Gold Ship and Gwen both flinched when the same thing happened to them a moment later.
Max fitted himself with one as well, moving with the ease of someone who had done this enough times to make it look simple.
"Level-10 hazmat suits," he explained, his tone stern now. "Don't think your parents would appreciate me bringing you all home mutated."
"Hey," Diamondhead protested from the side, "What about us?"
Max didn't even hesitate.
"Petrosapiens are naturally immune to radiation," he said. "As long as you stay in alien form, you should be fine."
That should have been reassuring.
Unfortunately, the moment Max said that, he noticed Spiderthing trembling. Not violently, not enough to be immediately obvious, but definitely enough for anyone paying attention to notice. The spider alien stiffened slightly, and Max's expression changed at once.
"Evan, back up!" he snapped. "The Radioaraneus Anthropus have some resistance to radiation, not immunity!"
Diamondhead reacted immediately.
Before Spiderthing's condition worsened, Diamondhead lunged over and tackled him away from the exposed Corrodium, sending him rolling toward the side of the room just in time.
But while everyone's attention shifted, the mummy made its move.
One of its bandaged arms shot out like a whip and wrapped around Diamondhead's throat with startling speed. Before he could fully recover, the creature yanked him backward and hurled him into a nearby machine with enough force to rattle the entire structure.
At the same time, the mutated security guard staggered forward on its four pointed limbs, hissing and spitting like some kind of feral predator. Its body had become even more twisted now, its posture uneven and unnatural as it lurched toward the Tennysons with mindless aggression.
"Move!" Max warned.
He shoved everyone aside just as the guard swung one of its bladed arms through the air. The sharp limb slammed into the wall behind them and carved a deep gouge into the concrete, sending chunks of dust and broken debris raining down around the room.
Gwen narrowed her eyes. "I've got this!" She thrust a hand out toward the monster.
"Mulcha Objectia!"
A heartbeat later, her hazmat suit abruptly inflated. It ballooned into a huge, round shape that made Gwen look less like a sorceress and more like some sort of oversized rubber ball. The others stared at her in open-mouthed disbelief as she suddenly bounced upward, ricocheting off the ceiling and then spinning into the walls in a chaotic, helpless orbit.
For a few seconds, she became an airborne hazard of her own.
Unfortunately, while everyone was busy trying not to laugh, the mutated guard lunged in from the side.
Orfevre moved faster than anyone else. She snatched up a long metal pipe lying near one of the machines, coated it with her aura in a flash of golden light, and swung it hard into the side of the creature's head. The impact sent the guard sprawling across the room with a sickening crash.
A moment later, Gwen's spell finally wore off. The inflated suit deflated all at once, and the redhead dropped straight to the ground with a painful-sounding flop.
She lay there face-down for a second before groaning into the floor.
"Okay," Gwen muttered to herself, "mental note: never try to cast a spell from inside a hazmat suit."
The mutated guard spat angrily and forced itself upright again, claws scraping against the floor as it scrambled back onto its pointed limbs.
Orfevre didn't give it time to recover.
She planted the end of her pipe into the ground, used it as a brace, and launched herself forward in a sharp burst of motion. Her feet slammed directly into the creature's head, sending it tumbling backward across the concrete.
Then she landed in front of it, shoulders squared, pipe held ready.
"Go," she said sharply, not even glancing back at the others. "I've got this."
Max's expression tightened with concern, and the others shared the same look. It was one thing to see Orfevre fight; it was another to see her step forward alone against something corrupted by alien radiation.
But they also knew better than to underestimate her.
So they trusted her.
Orfevre charged. The pipe in her hands flashed again and again as she struck the mutated guard with quick, brutal blows, each hit carried by the force of her aura. The creature roared in fury and lashed out with its razor-sharp limbs, trying to claw through the weapon and reach her directly.
Orfevre tightened her grip and blocked the blow, but the force still shoved her back a step.
Her eyes flicked downward.
A cut had opened in half the pipe. Without hesitation, she snapped it cleanly in two. Now she held one shorter piece in each hand. The range was lower, but the speed more than made up for it.
She surged forward again, driving the creature back with a relentless barrage of attacks that left it unable to regain its footing. The mutated guard snapped and swiped and hissed, but every attempt it made to close the distance was shut down by the rapid rhythm of her strikes. Orfevre didn't let up for even a second, forcing it into constant defense.
Even so, the others could tell she wouldn't be able to keep that pace forever.
That was when Gold Ship, who had somehow managed to stay mostly out of trouble for the last few seconds, suddenly spotted one of the nearby machines.
Her eyes lit up. Without warning, she dashed over, rummaged through the equipment with reckless enthusiasm, tearing it apart before finding what she needed, and came back out holding a giant duck tap almost as large as her own head.
"Sis, catch!" she shouted.
Orfevre didn't even turn around.
Instead, she hurled both metal pipe halves directly at the mutated guard, striking it hard enough across the head to force it back just as Gold Ship threw the duck tap toward her. Orfevre caught it cleanly on the move, landing lightly despite the urgency of the fight.
Without wasting a breath, she pulled the tool open, set one end down, and coated it with aura.
Then she charged.
Using the opening she had just created and the incredible speed in her legs, Orfevre rushed around the mutated guard in a tight, circling path. The duck tap whipped through the air as she guided it around the creature's limbs, wrapping, binding, and tightening in quick, practiced motions that left the monster increasingly trapped.
It roared and struggled, but the more it fought, the more tangled it became. The aura-enhanced binding held firm.
Much like Spiderthing's webbing, the duck tap wrapped the mutated guard tight enough to pin its arms and twist its balance off-center, making it harder and harder for the thing to break free.
By the time Orfevre finished, the mutated guard was trapped fast, snarling and thrashing uselessly as it strained against the binding. For the moment, at least, it wasn't going anywhere.
A fiery explosion erupted somewhere deeper inside the factory, sending flames and twisted metal bursting into the air.
Max, Gwen, Gold Ship, and Orfevre instinctively turned toward the blast.
Diamondhead had managed to slip beneath one of the mummy's whipping bandages just before it skewered another industrial machine. Sparks showered the room as the razor-like wrappings punched clean through solid steel.
Twisting his hips, Diamondhead drove a powerful uppercut straight into the mummy's jaw.
The force launched the creature backward through the air.
Without giving it a chance to recover, Diamondhead followed immediately with a spray of silicon shards, the crystalline fragments flashing through the air like a storm of razor-edged glass.
The mummy simply unraveled. Its body split apart into loose wrappings, slipping around the attack like smoke through a crack in a door. The shards tore through empty space and shattered harmlessly against the wall behind it.
Diamondhead clicked his tongue before raising both crystal-covered hands, preparing another attack.
Then a beeping sound caused him to froze in place.
"Uh-oh," he muttered.
A burst of red light consumed him, and in an instant Ben was standing helplessly in his place, staring up at the alien mummy with nothing but a horrified expression and a very bad sense of timing.
"Sometimes, I really hate this watch," Ben groaned.
The mummy surged forward at once.
"AAAAAH!"
Ben threw both arms over his head and stumbled backward in blind panic.
Just before the monster could reach him, Spiderthing swung in from the side and kicked the mummy away from him before landing protectively between it and Ben.
"G-Go..." Spiderthing said, though his voice shook badly under the strain of the radiation. "I'll... hold... it off..."
Ben didn't waste time arguing.
He turned and ran immediately, because there was no point pretending otherwise. Fighting the mummy without an alien form and without a hazmat suit would have been less "heroic last stand" and more "suicidal bad decision".
He immediately sprinted back toward Max and the others.
The mummy hissed angrily.
Taking advantage of Ben's retreat, it lashed out at Spiderthing instead, its bandages lashed outward like striking snakes.
Spiderthing barely managed to dodge the first two before the third wrapped around his leg. Before he could cut himself free, the mummy yanked violently.
Spiderthing was hurled across the room, smashing through another machine before crashing into a pile of twisted steel. He shook himself once, but even as he rose, his movements had begun to waver.
The radiation was getting to him. His breathing had become noticeably heavier. His spider instincts screamed at him to move, to hunt, to climb... It was becoming harder to think.
Spiderthing raised one trembling hand toward his Omnitrix dial and tapped it.
Golden light erupted.
When the glow faded, the figure standing in the ruins of the machine was no longer a spider alien at all.
Rising from the wreckage was an entirely different alien.
A tall, slender humanoid draped beneath a long midnight-blue cloak that concealed almost his entire body.
Messy white hair spilled around a smooth, expressionless white mask that possessed neither nose nor mouth. Two black eyeholes glowed faintly with golden light, while a pair of white horns curved backward from either side of his head.
The Omnitrix was hidden somewhere on his body.
"Deathvoid," he announced.
Without hesitation, Deathvoid launched himself at the mummy once more.
The bandaged creature swung its arms in a wide arc, but Deathvoid ducked under the attack and slid neatly past it, closing the distance in one smooth motion. He drove a kick straight into the mummy's head, sending it stumbling back, then landed lightly on his feet.
The two stared each other down.
Then the mummy opened its chest. Three chunks of Corrodium glowed from within its hollow body, flooding the room with an eerie violet radiance.
The others' hearts skipped for a moment.
"EVER!"
But nothing happened.
Deathvoid merely tilted his head slightly.
While the light stung slightly against his body, it couldn't actually harm him. The Doppelganger was immune to nearly everything so long as it wasn't being exposed to light or the Holy Element, and radiation was not among the things that could meaningfully harm him.
The mummy seemed to realize that almost immediately.
Deathvoid's hands shifted. The fingers stretched and sharpened into long black blades, sleek and curved like the edge that resembled Shellblade's handed blade.
He lunged forward, Deathvoid slashed at the mummy with rapid, controlled strikes, cutting apart layers of wrappings and forcing the creature back step by step. Each blow ripped away more of its body, only for the mummy to twist and reform, its bandages pulling together.
From farther back in the room, Orfevre watched the battle with sharp focus, scanning the area for something useful she could use to support her brother if an opening appeared.
Nearby, Ben, still in the hazmat suit Max had slapped on him, looked down at his Omnitrix.
"C'mon..." He repeatedly slapped the faceplate of his Omnitrix. "C'mon, you stupid thing. Recharge already!"
Ben scowled at the red faceplate as if staring hard enough might somehow shame it into working faster. The watch, of course, offered no help whatsoever.
He knew from experience that the Omnitrix liked to take its time whenever Evan was involved, even when Ben absolutely did not approve of that timing.
The Omnitrix's advanced AI had already reached its own conclusion long ago.
Evan's endless curiosity and thirst for power made him an undeniable threat to the Omnitrix itself. Leading it to prevent him from tampering with it. That's why, when he was Brainstorm and reached out for Ben's Omnitrix, it reacted so violently.
At the same time... The AI had also determined something else. Evan was, without question, the sword most capable of protecting its wielder from danger.
As long as Evan was still fighting... protecting his family and most importantly, protecting Ben.
The Omnitrix saw no reason to force an emergency recharge.
Across the battlefield, the mummy finally succeeded in retreating several steps.
Its severed wrappings slithered back toward its body before reattaching themselves, rapidly repairing the damage Deathvoid had inflicted.
Deathvoid watched silently.
Then he crouched down. One severed strip of the mummy's wrappings still lay at his feet.
His bladed fingers slowly reverted back into ordinary claws.
He picked up the piece of cloth. Then his other hand reached beneath the lower edge of his white mask.
Thin black strands clung to the underside as he pulled the mask upward, revealing that he was faceless under the mask, but he also revealed the golden Omnitrix dial was hidden on the underside of the mask.
Deathvoid pressed the severed bandage against the dial, letting it absorb the item.
[New DNA sample acquired!]
The moment the sample was absorbed, Deathvoid let the mask settle back into place, then he tapped his own masked face.
Golden light exploded outward.
Large blue wings unfolded behind him.
His body had become slender and insect-like, wrapped in a dark blue exoskeleton lined with black markings.
"Big Chill."
Without wasting a second, he inhaled deeply and released a concentrated blast of icy breath directly into the mummy's chest.
The icy gale engulfed the mummy completely. Layer upon layer of supernatural frost accumulated over its body until the creature disappeared beneath an enormous pillar of solid ice. For a few moments, Big Chill remained on guard, golden eyes fixed on the frozen monster, ready for the thing to break free at any second.
But it did not move. After a few long seconds, Big Chill finally relaxed.
"Huh," he murmured, a little surprised at how quickly it had ended. "That was easy."
It really had been a little too easy.
Not because the fight itself had been difficult, but because the situation had made everyone hyperfocused on the wrong thing.
Evan, like future teen Ben, had started to develop the same flaw that came with having too many transformations at his disposal. With so many forms available, it became easy to overlook the one that fit the situation best, even when it was practically standing right in front of him.
That was how it had gone in Alien Force and Ultimate Alien too.
Ben could have toyed with the Forever Knights all day as Lodestar if he wanted to, but instead he would often charge in as Humungousaur, smashing straight into the enemy base like the problem could be solved through sheer force alone. It was not that he was incompetent. It was simply that when someone had too many options, the best one could be the easiest to miss.
Nobody was perfect.
Max stepped forward with a small, relieved smile. "Nice work, Evan."
A little later, the Tennysons had the mummy buried back in the hole where they had first found the Corrodium.
Evan transformed into Burnout, his motorcycle form, and Max rode him to fetch cement powder from town. When they returned, Ben used Upgrade to modify an ice cream mixer into a makeshift cement mixer.
Several thick layers of concrete were poured into the pit, sealing the frozen mummy beneath tons of reinforced stone.
Max dusted off his hands with a satisfied nod.
"Good job, kids." He looked down at the fresh concrete. "By the time the day shift starts, the concrete'll be hard as a rock, and nobody'll ever know there's a mummy-sicle buried under this place."
Ben asked. "What about the farm animals?"
"And the security guard?" Gwen added quietly.
Max's face grew somber.
Max's expression turned solemn. He slowly shook his head. "They were exposed for far too long. The mutations have become permanent. I'm afraid... there's nothing we can do for them anymore."
A heavy silence settled over the group.
Just then, Evan walked back over from where the mutated guard had last been seen. There was no trace of the creature anywhere now.
Max had already explained what needed to be done, so while the others were busy with the mummy, Evan had opened a rift to the Null Void and tossed the mutated guard inside. It had been the only real option left.
It wasn't a cure.
But it would prevent anyone else from being hurt.
The family walked out from the facility together.
"Wonder why an alien mummy wanted those creepy space rocks so badly," Gold Ship wondered aloud.
"I guess we'll never know now," Gwen said quietly.
Max let out a breath and looked back toward the Rust Bucket.
"Well, now that everything's settled, we should head back to the farm. I'm sure Joan's got more chores waiting for us."
Ben and Gwen exchanged a look. Their faces turned pale. Compared to another day of hauling feed, milking cows, and cleaning barns...
The alien mummy suddenly seemed much less frightening.
Both of them threw all shame aside and lunged at Max's legs.
"DON'T MAKE US GO BACK THERE!" they cried in unison. "WE LEARNED OUR LESSON, GRANDPA! WE'LL DO ALL OUR CHORES FROM NOW ON! WE PROMISE!"
Max stared at them, then let out a long, relieved laugh. "Oh, thank goodness."
Max rubbed the back of his neck with an embarrassed smile.
"I'd completely forgotten how much I hated working on Uncle Jedidiah's farm when I was a kid."
He helped the two children back onto their feet before turning toward the RV.
"Now let's get out of here before I end up on manure duty again."
---
AN: Okay, based on your comments, I've decided to turn this into a separate story: a side story. In it, I'll include the events that happen outside the main Ben 10 timeline, so it doesn't feel like you're reading filler.
For example, I'll cover things that occur during the time skip between Classic and Alien Force, since I'm planning to jump straight from the end of Classic to the start of Alien Force.
There will also be more than just the isekai'd event to the Uma Musume world; I'm not sure yet exactly how many more, but that's the general idea. It's a random idea that came to me, and I thought it would be cool.
As for why I thought so:
- In Evan's first world (Original World), he was alone, and his life held no meaning.
- In his second world (Ben 10's World), he had a chaotic but loving family, power that rivaled gods, his life became more meaningful, and he is learning to become a hero. His goal here is to live a meaningful life, something he couldn't obtain in his previous world.
- In this third world (Uma Musume's World), Ever Gold doesn't exist; he is alone in a world that does not need him, so his goal here is to go home, and because of him, that world attracted an extraterrestrial threat.