Omnitranyl (Ben 10 Alien Force)

Before you think I've forgotten about Benjamin Kirby Tennyson, I assure you that I haven't. I know, he hasn't been here for a long time and you have every reason in the world to want to know what happened to him, but I repeat, I haven't forgotten. 

The last time we saw him, he had just left his house, which had been damaged by the first explosion. He was in possession of his hoverboard and floating towards the enormous smoke on the horizon in search of Gwen and Kevin. 

If you're already in this chapter, it means you already know what happened to them. Gwen and Kevin have had a rough time, but they're fine as far as possible. However, Ben doesn't know that. If you've ever been through the experience of not hearing from a loved one after a possible tragedy, you know very well how he's feeling at the moment. 

If you don't, I wouldn't recommend you try it, because our mind's ability to create catastrophic scenarios, surrounded by suffering and the possibility of loss, is incredible. The anguish is overwhelming and makes your intestines churn frantically. The feeling in your chest is that an elephant has sat on you and it's not even bothering to look for somewhere else to sit. All this while your mind creates the worst imaginable scenario beginning with the letter "A", taking care to make you think of a terrible situation for each letter of the alphabet.

At this moment Ben Tennyson was floating towards his goal with his thoughts elaborating a scenario with the letter "D". The residential neighborhood around him showed varying degrees of disrepair. Very few windows remained intact, several roofs were uncovered and walls that had already been compromised by termites were unable to withstand the shockwave of the first explosion. Several cars in the street had their alarms blaring, joining the sound of people coming out of their homes shouting their families' names.

Ben, however, was trying to stay focused on the road. He dodged obstacles and requests of "has anyone seen so-and-so?". One worry at a time. His mind was finishing the letter "E" scenario and preparing to start the letter "F", when dark smoke appeared to the right of his field of vision. He turned around.

A small six-storey residential building was on fire. The third and fourth floors were already engulfed in flames. People poured out of the building like ants and gathered at a safe distance from the scene. A muscular man with short hair directed the people, saying:

"Come on guys, hurry up, go this way! Get away from the building as quickly as possible!"

Running in the opposite direction to the crowd, a red-haired guy looked at the faces of each of the children he passed. As he searched, he shouted:

"Rachel! Rachel! Where are you? Rachel? No, it's not her. Rachel!"

The boy kept going, bumping into people, until he reached the muscular man and said:

"My daughter, Rachel, have you seen her?"

"Sir, listen to me, you need to get away from here! I'm a fireman and this place isn't safe-"

"You don't understand, I need to find my daughter!"

"Which floor do you live on?"

"Sixth floor, apartment 604. Have you seen her? She's a redhead and-"

A sharp cry for help from the sixth floor balcony attracted the attention of the men and, of course, Ben Tennyson, who until that moment hadn't known why he was standing in mid-air.

"Rachel!" shouted the red-haired boy.

"What the hell?" said the fireman. "I thought I'd got everyone out. Sir?" the man ran to hold the red-haired man back "Stop, this is crazy, you can't go in there!"

"Let me go!" the man struggled in the fireman's firm embrace "Rachel!"

Ben tilted the board forward, propelling himself towards the burning building. He leaned part of his body weight backwards, tilting the tip of the hoverboard upwards, and advanced towards the sixth floor. The flames and smoke seemed to want to grab him in mid-air. On the ground, he could hear the father's screams as he was forced away from the building's entrance.

The young man reached the sixth floor and saw a red-haired girl of about eleven clinging to the balcony ledge, her face streaked with tears. She only stopped crying when Ben suddenly approached on his hoverboard.

"Hi! Rachel, am I right?" asked Ben, with a smile on his face. 

The girl nodded.

"Great! Rachel, I know you're a brave girl..."

The girl nodded in the negative.

"Oh, aren't you?" he offered a smile again "Then I'll need you to be. I need you to get on that magic board of mine so I can get you out of here."

"I-I won't be able to..." said Rachel.

"Yes, you can" Ben looked past the girl and saw the smoke and flames beginning to reach the corridor leading to apartment 604 "Come on, I'll help you!"

Rachel was shaking. Ben lifted the girl over the balcony ledge and carefully let her place one foot at a time on the hoverboard. Once on the board, the girl hugged Ben as tightly as the muscular fireman holding her father.

"There, there..." said Ben, resting one hand on her back and the other on the back of her neck.

Careful not to move the board from its horizontal position, Ben began to move away from the building. Little by little, he reduced his height, observing the approaching ground and the distant top of the building. The wind was hot and the air heavy, even though he was far from the flames. The crowd below him began to open up a circular space to welcome them onto the street full of parked cars. 

They were approaching the height of the second floor when a bang at the top of the building made Rachel startle, unbalancing herself on the plank below them. Ben grabbed her tightly and, aware that he wouldn't be able to regain his balance, leaned back and pulled her close to him. They fell over the roof of a gray sedan and lay there in the crumpled bodywork. The crowd rushed towards them. Rachel's father was the first to arrive. Ben stroked the girl's head and asked:

"Are you hurt?"

Rachel slowly moved away from Ben and nodded in the negative.

"That's good!" he smiled.

"Rachel!" the red-haired guy held out his arms to receive the girl from the top of the car. "Oh my God, my daughter!" Now with the girl in hand, the father wrapped his daughter's head in kisses. 

While the crowd focused on the father-daughter moment, Ben calmly climbed down the other side of the car, trying to ignore the pain in his back, and calmly walked over to his hoverboard lying on top of two garbage bags. He picked up the board, climbed on and floated away.

The problem with having a persistent thought in your head is that if you give it any space, no matter how small, it makes a point of coming back and occupying it. And then, like flipping a switch, the mind returns to its work of what letter was I in again? Oh yeah, F. What starts with F that could kill someone? What a fool I am, fire, of course!

Ben was now crossing the shopping district. Perhaps because it was closer to the center, the ambulance and police services were very present there. Of course, there weren't enough of them, because even in the best-case scenario, there was no way to help an entire city at the same time.

As he drove along an avenue famous for its Asian culture, Ben narrowly missed a half-destroyed banner inviting people to the neighborhood's eighth festival, and this near miss meant that he had to swerve at the last second, ducking his head and crouching down on his hoverboard to get under the banner. With the movement, the hoverboard lost height and the young man saw to his left a scrawny policeman and a paramedic trying to lift the fittings from a sign that had fallen on an elderly man.

Ben continued his descent until he landed on the ground. He leaned the hoverboard against a nearby wall and said to the policeman and paramedic:

"I'm going to help you!" and grabbed one end of the hardware. 

"Thanks, kid!" said the policeman.

However, even with a lot of effort, the irons hardly moved. Positioned over the old man's chest, it was clear that all that weight was making it difficult for him to breathe.

Ben didn't give up, he changed position by getting under the iron, leaning it on his right shoulder and trying a lever movement. The iron lifted a few centimeters, but soon returned to its original position.

"Damn!" said Ben. For a few seconds, he looked at the people running down the street, desperate with their own problems. He decided to ignore them. "On three we'll try to get up at once, okay?" he said to the policeman, who agreed.

He started counting.

"One... Two..." he filled his lungs with air and said "Three!"

Again, the ironwork lifted a few centimeters, not enough to remove the old man. Ben, who was staring at the ground as he pushed, saw shadows approaching them. Three more people, two men and a woman, grabbed other parts of the wreckage and finally the tangle of iron began to lift. 

The paramedic put her hands under the victim's armpits and with speed and care, pulled him out of the ironwork. Once free, Ben and the people dropped the metal debris to the ground, making a loud clanging sound.

The paramedic began to perform first aid on the elderly man. The policeman thanked the people for their help and quickly turned his attention to his walkie-talkie to request an ambulance to the scene.

One of the men helping with the rescue patted Ben on the back and said:

"Well done, kid!" and ran off down the street.

Ben gave a slight smile that lasted no more than two seconds. He waved his hand in thanks and picked up his board from the wall. 

Then the second explosion was heard.

The ground shook like a lake hit by a stone. A powerful wind rushed through the maze of buildings and into the street, tearing away what was left of the banners, decorations and wiring that hadn't been ripped out in the first explosion. The people there were trying to protect themselves as best they could. Ben crouched down on the sidewalk, holding his board against his chest, trying not to be swept away by the gale.

Gradually, the wind and the shaking subsided, but the general fear grew more and more. The first explosion had been traumatic enough, now the occurrence of the second could only mean one thing: there was nothing to stop a third.

As soon as he could, Ben got up from the sidewalk and started running against the wind. He turned right onto an avenue, trying to dodge the people who were fleeing, and he could see a column of light rising into the sky between the buildings, blowing away the clouds on the horizon.

Even though another strong gale would come at him and knock him down, Ben didn't hesitate to get on his hoverboard and fly towards Bellwood Forest. The scenarios of doom in his mind began to overlap one another. The letters K, L and M combined in a combo of agony and despair. Tears began to flow from the corner of his eyes, but Ben convinced himself that it was the wind in his face.

He walked down a long stretch of road, getting closer and closer to the beam of light that was beginning to thin. He tilted his board to the right and entered a forest of tall, thin trunks. The squalid leaves and branches that reached his head and arms were like needles. He dodged a wide trunk but missed the long diagonal branch that connected one tree to another. He slammed his abdomen into the obstacle, bending his body and letting the hoverboard slip out from under his feet. The board moved forward and shattered as it hit another tree ahead.

A little bewildered by the impact, Ben couldn't hold onto the branch any longer and fell backwards onto the soft soil and leaves. He put his hands on his stomach and contorted his face into an expression of pain. With difficulty, he got up, leaning on a tree. He tried to fill his lungs with air, but stopped suddenly at the end of his inhalation: he had broken a rib. 

Limping, he continued into the forest, watching his breathing and trying to ignore the pain. He raised his head and looked through the treetops for the column of light to guide him. If there's one place Gwen and Kevin could be, it's over there.

"I'm coming, guys..." said Ben as he imagined a catastrophic scenario beginning with the letter T.

He walked for about fifteen minutes and noticed that the trees were starting to lean. Some of them were already exposing their roots. Suddenly, he heard a roar of engines accompanied by a light wind blowing through the trees. Ben hastened his pace. Slowly, he saw his grandfather's spaceship landing in a small glade of fallen trees. 

"Grandpa..."

He ignored the pain once and for all. He began to run. The spaceship's entrance ramp was down and the access doors were open. As soon as he entered the ship, he began to call out:

"Grandpa! Gwen!" he followed a corridor towards the command bridge "Kevin!? Grandpa, where are you?"

Ben reached the bridge and saw the pilot's chair empty. In the front window of the spaceship, he saw the forest he came from with small floating screens projected onto the glass. 

"Young Tennyson..."

The alien's aged voice sent a chill down Ben's spine. A new thought filled his mind, pushing out every previously imagined worst-case scenario. Not a thought, a memory, rather. The conversation he'd had with Albedo to be precise...

Ben turned towards the voice. On a dark side of the command bridge, the silhouette of a Galvanian, famous for the destructive potential of his creations, walked out of the shadows into the light. 

"I know it's not like me, but I'm pleased to say that I'm delighted to see you here..." said the alien.

"Azmuth..."