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When Albedo awoke, it was to so much soreness that he wished he hadn’t. Aches wracked him from his annoyingly fur-covered head to his proportionally too-large feet, and it was only hard-won instinct disguising his waking hours from Plumber wardens that kept him from groaning or shifting in discomfort.
A quick mental inventory of his body confirmed the worst: he was still human. But his horrific fate aside, he felt no sharp pains from skeletal fractures or dull, throbbing agonies from ruptured organs. Abrasion and contusions appeared to be the extent of his injuries, so overall he’d gotten off with minimal damage. But how had… yes, the ambush.
A poorly planned affair, he had to admit, at least by his standards. Which was not to say it had been ineffective. A simple theft of Plumber technology had been sufficient to bait Tennyson into investigating the Undertown warehouse Albedo had laid out as a trap, rigging the doors to seal shut and concealing a small army of salvaged and rebuilt Techadon battle robots in the empty crates. And, of course, the stolen tech itself, a Null Void projector Albedo had stripped apart and rebuilt into something altogether more potent, the true trap past the robots that would distract Tennyson while it built up charge.
Albedo truly shouldn’t have bothered to be there himself. Gloating over a holoscreen, perhaps, but his presence in the warehouse itself had been pure self-indulgence, a mixture of spiteful desire to see Tennyson’s end with his own… with his current two eyes, and confidence that he’d be able to slip out in time to escape the blast zone of his dimensional bomb.
He should have had time, if not for a stray energy bolt from one of the robots striking the modified projector. The sudden change in pitch and ominous glow from the machine had been more than enough warning that something was going horribly wrong, but not nearly enough for him to escape. He’d barely reached his concealed escape hatch before a flash of light and then… here he was.
Wherever ‘here’ was. Even Albedo wasn’t sure where the projector would have sent Tennyson had it functioned correctly. He’d only meant for it to send that witless oaf far, far away. And instead he’d been caught up in the blast himself.
The thought was humiliating. Albedo, (second) smartest mind in three, possibly five galaxies, hoist by his own petard like some common crook. It rankled enough that he sat up quickly to escape the prickling anger and shame in his gut and across his disgustingly warm skin.
Taking stock of his situation. Yes, that was preferable to spending one more second laying on the ground examining his body for injury and taking stock of all the ways it was not his own, or dwelling on his feelings and failures.
Albedo opened his eyes expecting the barren nothingness of the Null Void, or some landscape yet more alien. Or perhaps the same warehouse in ruins, the damage to the projector reducing it to nothing but a glorified explosive. Instead he found… blue sky. Green trees. The smell of soil and plant matter in the air and the softness of dirt and fallen leaves beneath him. By all appearances, an ordinary forest.
And a forest on Earth, for that matter. Albedo had grown as familiar with the plant life and weather of this backwards mudball as he was with his own homeworld. Clearly the malfunctioning device had succeeded only in hurling him across the continent rather than through dimensions.
He stuffed down the part of him that rankled at knowing his trap had failed so thoroughly and focused on his good fortune. It would be a simple matter then to return to Bellwood and pick up where he left off. New resources could be gathered, new traps arranged. This was but a momentary setback.
With a groan, Albedo pushed himself to his feet, leaning against a tree to support his aching back and legs as he looked around. He hoped to find a road or building, something to accelerate his return to civilization. Instead he found nothing but trees and undergrowth.
He groaned again, this time in frustration. This was… still a simple matter. Just an irritating one. He’d have to hail some lowlife to give him a ride back to Bellwood, and surely be swindled out of the last of his taydens in the process.
Fortunately his Ultimatrix still had its communication functions intact, even after being gutted of its stabilizer and genetic simulator. He dialed it up, scanning for communication signals using the encryption patterns favored by Earth’s extraterrestrial criminals.
Several seconds ticked by with no response. Irritating, but not abnormal. He was in the middle of nowhere after all.
A minute passed, still with no response. Frustrating, and less easily dismissed. The Ultimatrix had interplanetary communication capabilities, it should have found something by now. He ran a diagnostic in case the blast had damaged it. The results came back seconds later: everything was perfectly functional.
When a second minute passed with nothing, Albedo grumbled in frustration and adjusted the settings, searching for any signals above the technological threshold of ordinary human communications.
Another minute, and still nothing. Albedo swallowed as he felt a growing pit in his abdomen, frustration beginning to give way to dread. Something was very wrong here. Earth had too many aliens for there to be nothing. Even at the height of the Forever Knight purges when extranet signals were shut down to avoid attention, it had never been this silent.
Technically there was still one recourse remaining. Albedo kept a block established on all Plumber signals to prevent them from picking up his Ultimatrix, having exploited Tennyson’s Omnitrix signature enough to be wary of having the same tactics used against him. But if everything else was gone…
Long and short term concerns warred in his mind, before he swallowed his pride and disabled the block. Immediately there was a ping as the Ultimatrix locked onto something.
The tension in his body bled away slightly. Clearly he had just been too hasty in his judgements. Perhaps this was a signal deadzone set up for training purposes, or a high security area under communication blackout. Neither were ideal, but there were something to work with.
He twisted the dial on the Ultimatrix, setting it to lead him to the source. It pinged immediately on the northern side of the face.
Perfect, at least he wouldn’t have to spend too long wandering to triangulate the signal.
Then he looked at the distance readout and his short-lived relief vanished.
Ten meters.
Albedo looked to the north. Nothing. Just trees and shrubs and soil. No sign of anything but forest, and certainly not a Plumber installation.
The thought crossed his mind that, perhaps, the Ultimatrix was wrong, and was discarded as quickly as it was acknowledged. If he couldn’t trust the product of his own intellect… no, it had to be functional. It had to be.
He straightened up, doing his best to approximate the direction of the signal and began walking. Small point of favor to these human legs, they ate up the distance much faster than his natural galvan form would have been able to manage it. What would have been a minutes long hike became a matter of moments as he shoved his way through branches and undergrowth.
The distance readout shrank rapidly from ten meters to five to two. Right up until the moment he pushed through a shrub and his foot found a hidden incline where he’d been expecting flat ground.
Point of disfavor to these human legs: they put his center of gravity so high he had no chance to recover his balance.
He managed to spit a truly profane Galvan insult towards the geological processes that had created the drop off in the moment before too many branches and too much dirt was crashing against his face to vocalize anything as he tumbled down the slope.
Fresh aches and pains made themselves known alongside the existing injuries as Albedo came to a… less painful stop than he was expecting, against something soft. And warm. And groaning
He cracked an eye open to appraise his unwitting cushion, and the first thing that filled his vision was a garish white ‘10’ outlined in green.
This was truly just his luck.
Albedo pushed himself up off the thankfully still unconscious form of Tennyson himself. His first reaction was the one he voiced.
“Of course you’re here too, Tennyson,” he spat, injecting as much venom into the words as he could manage.
Tennyson didn’t so much as stir, continuing to drool into the forest floor. How the human could sleep through having his own body weight, down to the kilogram, dropped onto him was a mystery.
His second reaction was to consider how easy it would be to simply dispose of the human, unconscious and helpless and alone in the forest. Most of his tools and equipment had been left behind in his Undertown hideout, but he had enough odds and ends in his pockets to assemble a simple laser projector in the time it would take the human to rouse himself.
But it was the third that stuck with him. Why hadn’t he been able to pick up any signals other than the Omnitrix? Because by now it was clear that was what the Ultimatrix had been leading him towards.
With some effort, Albedo forced himself to shelve spite and revenge in favor of seeking actual answers. He cancelled the seeking program on the Ultimatrix and grabbed Tennyson’s wrist. At least having the human’s wretched body was useful for bypassing the biometric security.
His hopes lasted just long enough to pull up the comms and find the same absence of any and all signals.
One piece of level 20 technology, he could understand having a glitch after being improperly teleported. Two at the same time, in the same way? Inconceivable.
He dropped Tennyson’s arm without fanfare, an uncomfortable pressure and heat building in his body as his pulse and breathing began to accelerate. Wretched human body, couldn’t it even let him panic in peace?
No more subtlety. He set the Ultimatrix to scan for any and all communication signals, starting at most sophisticated and then working its way down.
The device beeped, showing a ‘20’ on its display and then rapidly counting down in a blur. Each number that flicked past made the pressure build and Albedo found himself pacing beside Tennyson. What if it found nothing? What if there were no signals, no hope of communication, and he was stuck on this miserable rock with only Tennyson for-
The Ultimatrix beeped again, now holding steady on ‘4.’ Albedo stopped his pacing, only very slightly reassured. At least the planet had something more sophisticated than cups on a string for its communication systems, though not by much. A quick ping of the network revealed a primarily satellite-based method of signal broadcast, not unlike the ones Earth’s humans used. Nearly identical, in fact.
So alien broadcasts were completely absent, but the human broadcasts remained. Albedo was reminded, suddenly and not at all pleasantly, of his time working with both Vilgax and several alternate Tennysons. If alternate realities and timelines existed, had the malfunctioning Null Void projector sent them into one? A reality where the Forever Knights had been successful in completely exterminating all alien life on Earth?
That would be… sub-optimal. He refused to let himself use any of the other words that occurred to him at the prospect of being stranded in a reality where those zealots turned an entire planet into a charnel house.
His fingers weren’t as steady as before when he flicked through the settings to isolate the most advanced signals currently active. If this was in fact a reality where the Forever Knights had won, those would be theirs. If not, it would be useful in any case to know exactly who was at the forefront of technology in this world.
And that would be… an orbital platform, according to telemetry data the Ultimatrix piggybacked off the communication signals before burrowing into its systems. Albedo wasn’t much of a programmer, but the Ultimatrix was a supercomputer more advanced than any human device, and without any of its usual functions to dedicate resources to it has processing power to spare.
His crude hack quickly splayed out reports on the platform to him. Too large and too energy inefficient to be a mere communication relay. A space station seemed more likely. And those communications were…
A spare moment was all it took to crack into those, and immediately he was assailed by shouting voices.
“-no sign here. Superman?”
“I can’t see a sixth bomb. He might be bluffing.”
“We can’t risk that, not this close to a faultline. I have Parasite subdued and ready for questioning. Flash?”
“On my way just need to- Whoa! Close one, anyone want to take my dance partner?”
“Roger, I’m-“
“Quiet.” A new voice cut through the din. Lower, gruffer, and not strained in exertion the way the others were. Albedo was almost thankful to whoever they were for bringing order to the mess of voices, if not for the fact that they seemed even more on edge than the people who sounded like they were literally fighting for their lives. “We have a leak.”
Albedo stiffened as the sounds of disbelief and confusion echoed from the Ultimatrix. That couldn’t be right. Surely these primitive humans, because they had to be humans, couldn’t detect the intrusion of a device as sophisticated as the-
“Watchtower reporting data breaches across multiple systems and an ongoing signal from an unknown source.” The voice continued, seemingly determined on proving him wrong. “They might be after our comms, or something more. I’ve disconnected the central data servers just in case, and I’m beginning a backtrace to-“
Albedo slammed the Ultimatrix dial like the device was threatening to bite him, severing the connection. Whoever that was, the individual or the organization, he didn’t want them tracking him down while he was still in such a vulnerable position. And if they could detect his intrusion into their systems, he shuddered to think whether properly tracking him was within their capabilities as well.
The incursion on their systems had yielded little he’d hoped for, but the overheard conversation had given him a few details he may be able to use. He selected an ongoing signal at a significantly lower level of sophistication and patched himself into the human internet. It was no extranet, but it was enough to make a few searches.
‘Watchtower’ got him nothing but sites about buildings. ‘Superman,’ on the other hand, provided a veritable flood of responses to sift through.
Superman stops a bridge collapse. Superman diverts an avalanche. Superman stops an illegal whaling ship. Superman rescue a cat from a tree. Superman saves city hall from a hidden bomb. Superman stops Toy Man, stops Parasite, stops Atomic Skull, stops so many different titles and names that they all start to blend together.
Though not all associated names were foes. Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash- and the last he recalled being spoken over the intercepted communications. Not a code phrase or a random word at all, a code name .
And collectively… the Justice League. Superheroes.
Under different circumstances he might have laughed. The Galactic Enforcers seemed downright modest by comparison, at least they wore uniforms instead of gaudy personalized raiment. But the reality of the situation strangled any mirth out of him as he absorbed the implications.
This was a whole reality brimming with heroes, worse than Tennyson multiplied a dozen-fold. The kind of people that when Tennyson woke, he’d naturally seek out, ally with, and throw Albedo back in a cell to rot.
Albedo resumed his frantic pacing beside Tennyson’s obnoxiously still-sleeping form. He had to get out of here. Out of this reality, off this backwater rock, out of this revolting human form. But most of all out of this forest. He couldn’t be here when Tennyson woke, and through the cold weight in his gut he couldn’t feel the burning hate that had been enough to spur him towards more permanent solutions. If he was here when that happened, it would just make things easier for Tennyson to take him to… to…
Albedo slowed his pace as he mulled over the ending to that thought, then made one more search. ‘Ben 10.’
Absolutely nothing.
There was no Ben 10 in this world. There was no Tennyson in this world. Both he and Albedo were unknown quantities to this Justice League, and that gave him a chance. Tennyson didn’t keep mission files on him, any accusations would be purely his word against Albedo’s.
And surely Tennyson would want to go home as well. As much as Albedo loathed to even acknowledge the thought, Tennyson was a known quantity. Given the choice between struggling through this new reality trying to return home with Tennyson out there as an enemy, versus having Tennyson as an ally… well, he didn’t like the human by any definition of the word, but he could tolerate him for as long as it took to get home if it meant not having his efforts sabotaged like his genetic alteration field.
But if Tennyson disagreed… no, surely he could see reason. The human was dense, not stupid, and if Albedo was willing to put aside his loathing for the sake of getting home, then Tennyson must be able to as well. He must .
But if he couldn’t... Albedo's gaze fell upon the Omnitrix sitting on the human's wrist. If he couldn't, then perhaps some insurance was in order.
When Ben woke up, he felt like he’d been run over by a bus, one that backed up after to finish the job. It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up sore and aching after a fight with a villain or a criminal but that didn’t exactly make it any more comfortable.
He groaned and grabbed his aching head to see if he could squeeze his skull back into a less-painful shape. At least his metallic fingers were… wait a minute.
He checked himself over in surprise. Two arms. Two legs. One tail. Two flexible tendrils extending from the back of his aching head. And… he opened his eyes, then corrected that count as he immediately clamped it shut again to ward off the bright light making his headache worse. One eye.
He was still Feedback.
That was weird. He’d been knocked out more times than he could count, and more times than Gwen would ever let him live down, but he always reverted to human when he did. Probably a good thing in this case though. The last thing he remembered was running for some device a techadon had shot a hole in to try and stop it from overloading.
Second to last thing, really, since the last thing was a boom, which meant staying Feedback had probably helped him absorb enough energy to just get knocked around instead of getting blown to smithereens. But hey, he’d count that as a win! Any explosion you could walk away from was a good explosion in his book.
He tried opening his eye again and the light hurt slightly less this time. “Anyone get the number on that truck?”
Too bad he’d been there alone. He could almost hear Rook’s ‘there was no truck involved, only an explosion’ or Gwen’s ‘Ben, you should really know better than to run towards the ominously glowing devices by now,’ or Kevin’s ‘nah, I was too busy watching you eating dirt.’
Except what he actually heard was, “Witticisms moments after waking? Your mind truly never rests.”
That was enough to knock the fog out of his head, and Ben was up on his feet before he could even fully register the voice. A voice that sounded like his own, but distorted like he was hearing it on a recording and spoken with an accent that wasn’t quite right, or even quite human.
“Albedo,” he growled, aiming both his hands and his plug-tipped tendrils towards the source of the voice.
The impostor was leaning against a pine tree, managing to look even worse than he had before. Same black and red clothing, same albino pale skin and hair with bright red eyes, but now he was covered in dirt like he’d been rolling on the ground with a few fresh bruises starting to show and a leaf stuck in his hair that he clearly hadn’t noticed.
And speaking of leaves and things that hadn’t been noticed…when had they gotten to a forest? They’d been in Undertown, and the tree Albedo was leaning against didn’t feel like home. Earth-home, yeah, but not Bellwood-home.
Movement from Albedo snapped Ben’s attention back to him, but he was just raising his hands. “No need for that. Let’s talk things out for a moment.”
“Yeah, I’m not really in the mood to ‘talk things out’ after you tried to kill me.” Ben growled, not lowering his hands.
Albedo sighed and rolled his eyes, as if Ben was being unreasonable for not wanting to have a conversation after his… fourth attempt to kill him? Fifth? They all kind of blurred together after a while.
“Alright, fine, let’s skip ahead.” Albedo said dryly, before switching to the worst attempt at copying Ben’s voice that he’d ever heard in his life. “‘Hey dude, I’m here to stop you! Hero time! Smoothies!’”
“Wha- I do not sound like that!” Ben objected. “I know you can sound like me better than that, you literally impersonated me, like, three times! Professionally even!”
Albedo ignored him to strike a melodramatic pose against the tree, switching to an exaggeration of his own voice. “‘Oh you have defeated me Tennyson! Curses, I will have my reveeeeeenge!’”
Then he dropped the act and held his hands out to Ben like he was asking to be cuffed. “Now, I believe this is the part where you capture me and then call the Plumbers to take me into custody?”
Ben narrowed his eye at Albedo. This was way too easy for someone who’d been ordering robots to shoot him a few minutes ago. “You’re being weird, man.”
“Because you won’t listen to me otherwise,” Albedo complained. “Call the Plumbers now, if you please?”
Coming closer to Albedo still seemed too much like a trap, so instead Ben spared a hand to tap the Omnitrix dial to activate the comms. “Hey, Rook?”
Instead of the familiar chime and then his partner’s voice, he just got an unfamiliar beep. He frowned and tapped it again, only to get the same response.
“That would be the ‘no signal’ tone,” Albedo helpfully informed him. Ben almost wished he’d just try and attack instead, then he’d have an excuse to zap him.
“And how would you know, smart guy?” he snapped. Yeah, sarcasm, that felt better than trying to ask his doppelgänger a question for real, especially with him being weird like this.
“Because I already tried.” Albedo said, waggling the hand with the Ultimatrix. “Neither of us will be able to reach your partner, or the Plumbers, because they’re all gone.”
It had been a while since Ben had felt real fury, the kind that made his skin prickle and get hot as he imagined stomping someone into the dirt. It was almost a surprise to feel it again after breezing through so many fights on jaded amusement and/or annoyance, even if Feedback made it more of a staticky feeling as sparks crackled from his fingertips. “What did you do to them?”
Albedo’s eyes widened and he held up his hands in a more realistic surrender. “I didn’t do anything to them! Do you remember the time I worked with the alternate versions of you and we went to a different reality?”
The hurried excuse had only slightly dampened Ben’s desire to zap Albedo, but he couldn’t help but crack a grin at that. “I remember you being shorter.”
Albedo’s face twisted in annoyance. “Don’t remind me. It took far too long to revert the alterations to return to your marginally less odious adolescent form.”
“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”
“I have tried it, and I hate it.” Albedo snapped, then took a deep breath. “Regardless. Being in an alternate universe?”
He made a wide gesture towards everything around them.
It took a second for the meaning to sink in, and Ben’s hands sank from their aiming position as he understood. “We’re stranded in another timeline?”
“Timeline, universe, reality, dimension, whatever you like to call it.” Albedo said. “But yes. Wherever we are, we’re far from home. No Plumbers, no famous Ben 10, and as far as I can tell, no Azmuth.”
“That’s… wait, no Ben 10?” Ben perked up, latching onto the closest thing to good news he could get out of the bombshells Albedo was dropping. “So I can go to Mr. Smoothy without getting mobbed for autographs?”
“Will you focus!” Albedo snapped.
“I am focused!” Ben argued back. “Hokestar has that Mr. Smoothy store 23 that hops between dimensions, so we just need to find it when it comes through this dimension and boom! We’re on the fast track home.”
“That… is not entirely an awful idea.” Albedo said, ignoring Ben’s mock bow to acknowledge the praise. “But it still won’t work. Remember, a dimension where you never obtained the Omnitrix was a singularly rare occurrence in the entire omniverse. The reality we find ourselves in now is so far afield, the Omnitrix was never invented and you may never have been born.”
Ben winced and held up his hands in surrender, hunching in on himself slightly. He was used to having his ideas shot down, but by Gwen or Rook, people who at least liked him even if they didn’t like his plans. Getting the same from an enemy was a much sharper blow to his confidence. “Yeesh, alright, ease up a bit. So what, is Gwen the top superhero here? Kevin? …Cooper?”
“No, to all of those. As far as I can tell, there are no commonalities between the important individuals of this world and our own. No superheroes match-”
“So there are superheroes!” Ben grinned, straightening back up and regaining his ‘hero’ posture along with his confidence. “That’s perfect, we can just go to them and-”
“No!”
Ben froze mid-sentence.
So did Albedo, who seemed to have been taken by surprise by his own panicked shout. He cleared his throat and tried to straighten his shirt in an attempt to regain his composure, which fell flat since he was trying to straighten a t-shirt.
“That would be unwise.” Albedo continued, doing his best to act like the shout hadn’t happened. Since Ben still wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, he let it slide too, but paid closer attention than he might have otherwise. “Devising a method to return to our home reality will be incredibly difficult. Considering the level of technology available on this Earth, it would have to be invented from scratch, and as the only person in this reality who’s properly observed ours, I am the one who is best suited to devise our return.”
“Riiiight.” Ben crossed his arms, unconvinced. “Why don’t I just turn into Grey Matter, or Brainstorm, or Frankenstrike, and do it myself? It can’t be that hard if you can do it.”
A distinctly unfriendly smile crossed Albedo’s face. “Be my guest. I’m sure the great Ben Tennyson would love to spend days upon days pouring over meticulous mathematical calculations to invent an entirely new field of technological development from scratch. Just you and a blackboard and tedious equations from the moment you get up to the moment you go to sleep, until you can recite the formulae for dimensional tunneling in your sleep.”
Ben visibly shivered at the thought. Just because he could do it if he had to didn’t mean it sounded like fun, but pride demanded he stick it out. “Well… I mean…”
“A Null Void projector is level 10 technology.” Albedo said, and Ben had no idea how he’d managed to get a job as an actor because he faked innocence worse than Ben did when he was five. “A device to return us home? Level 20 at minimum.”
Pride warred with dread, and pride crumpled like a tin can. “Alright, fine! You win.”
“Good.” Albedo preened. “So you understand that our best chance for us to return home is for me to work on the technology for it, which demands that I not be incarcerated.”
Ben groaned at that. “Why do I get the feeling that you just don’t want me going to the superheroes because you don’t want to end up in jail?”
“Because it’s true.” Albedo said bluntly. “But what I said was also true. I was trying to be polite and appeal to your pathos, but if you need the logos as well, let me make it clear: I am our best hope of returning home. So if you don’t want to spend years figuring it out yourself, you need me.”
Ben stilled as he thought it over. He didn’t like it. He didn’t want it to be true. But as far as he could tell, Albedo was right. He was smarter than Ben, even if Ben would never admit it to avoid bloating his ego even more, and he was the better bet to figuring out a way home.
A more ruthless part of him whispered to ignore Albedo, to find whatever superheroes were around, throw Albedo in jail, and work with them to get home. It wouldn’t be the first time Ben outsourced the big technical problems to someone more qualified. Azmuth, Professor Paradox, even Blukic and Driba. Whoever the local heroes had as their head scientist had to be more trustworthy than the galvan who’d stolen his identity, tried to steal the Omnitrix, and nearly killed him, right?
But that felt uncomfortably like sweeping a problem under a rug. It was his fault Albedo was here in this world at all. Making him a problem for this world’s heroes to handle wouldn’t be fair, it was up to him to get Albedo back where he belonged. And if he could keep Albedo focused on making a dimensional portal instead of whatever supervillain stuff he’d get up to if left on his own or tossed in jail, well that was two birds with one stone.
“Fine. I need you.” Ben admitted, before sticking out his hand. “Truce?”
“Truce.” Albedo agreed, grabbing it and shaking to seal the deal with a triumphant grin. Though for a moment, Ben could have sworn he looked more relieved than smug. “You won’t throw me in jail. I won’t return home on my own and leave you stranded here.”
“...was that something you were planning to do?” Ben asked, twitching his tendrils uncomfortably. “I hadn’t even thought about that until you said that.”
Albedo shrugged. “Well it hardly matters now, I’m not going to do it. As long as-”
“As long as I hold up my end of the deal, yeah yeah. Not my first time getting vaguely threatened by a supervillain.” Ben muttered.
“Well, as long as we have an understanding.”
For a moment Ben was reminded of bickering with Gwen when they were kids. This was going to be a long, difficult partnership. And a long trek back to civilization, wherever that was. Might as well stretch his real legs before switching to Jetray to make the trip faster.
He tapped the Omnitrix face to return to normal, no longer needing Feedback to hold Albedo at tendril-point. The flash of green light and strange full-body shifting sensation were almost second nature now as his body reformed and remade itself… into a hulking, red-skinned giant with four arms.
Ben blinked his four eyes, taking in his body. Four Arms? No, that… he’d meant to turn back to normal. He hit the Omnitrix again, another green flash and shifting, before he settled into a new shape, red skin becoming red carapace as the world was subtly warped by eyes meant to see the world through water.
No, no no no no… He hit it again. Gutrot. Again. Wildvine. Again, again, again, shifting through Clockwork, Diamondhead, Articguana, more and more forms with increasing franticness, until the face turned red and chimed in denial when he tried hitting it again.
He staggered back as Chromastone and slammed into a pine tree, still tapping the Omnitrix as it chimed in protest under his crystalline fingers.
“Tennyson?”
Ben’s gaze snapped up, finally remembering he wasn’t alone. He couldn’t name the emotion on Albedo’s face, but he knew panic had to be plain across his own.
“I… I can’t change back.”