Looking down at Ben Tennyson’s face—devoid of fear, devoid of hesitation, and wearing a cold, knowing smile—the warlord felt a dark, suffocating premonition settle over his chest.
Something was fundamentally wrong with this picture.
Things unfolded with terrifying precision, exactly as Albedo had calculated.
Ben raised his chin, staring straight into the grotesque, tentacled face of the galactic tyrant.
“Omnitrix: Voice Authority Mode, override switch!”
A sharp electronic chime echoed through the bridge.
The cracked, glowing interface sitting squarely in Vilgax’s golden gauntlet flashed a bright, steady green.
“Voice control system online,” the watch’s automated voice announced smoothly.
Vilgax’s entire frame went rigid.
His massive hand froze mid-air, inches away from Ben’s chest.
“What are you doing?!” he roared, his voice reverberating off the steel bulkheads.
“Omnitrix,” Ben declared, his tone cold, unwavering, and crystal clear.
“Command code: 0-0-0-Destruct-0!
Set countdown to sixty seconds!”
“Self-destruct sequence engaged,” the synthesized voice chimed from the watch dial.
The central symbol shifted from green to a pulsing, violent orange as its internal mechanisms began to spin in erratic, dangerous acceleration patterns.
“Initiating system overload countdown.”
Vilgax’s red eye widened in sheer, unadulterated horror.
The confidence he had carried for decades shattered in a single second.
“You insane, foolish child!
If the core undergoes a full command-level self-destruct, the resulting feedback loop will trigger a localized supernova that tears apart this entire star system!”
Ben didn’t flinch.
He didn’t even step back.
“If I let it pre-charge for a few days, yeah, it would,” he replied smoothly, recalling Albedo’s precise technical breakdown word-for-word.
“Which is why I set it for sixty seconds.”
The watch chimed again, its pitch rising higher and faster: “Self-destruction in forty-five seconds.”
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the command deck.
Vilgax stared down at Ben, his chest heaving with mounting panic; Ben stared straight back up at Vilgax, holding his gaze without a single blink.
For an agonizing, endless stretch of time, both stood as still as statues, locked in a silent contest of wills while the invisible clock ticked down toward total destruction.
“Ten.”
“Nine.”
“Eight.”
“Five.”
“Four.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
“One.”
BOOM!
A blinding, emerald detonation erupted from Vilgax’s outstretched hand.
Because Albedo had instructed Ben to double the standard charge time to sixty seconds, the resulting force carried three times the kinetic violence of a normal overload.
The shockwave slammed through the bridge like a solid wall of iron, shattering every glass display terminal in the room, tearing up deck plating, and shaking the massive warship to its structural skeleton.
Vilgax was caught dead-center in the blast radius.
He was launched backward through the air like a cannonball, crashing violently into the primary flight control console before slumping limply onto the floorboards, unconscious and enveloped in thick black smoke.
The moment the blinding glare faded and the dust began to settle, Ben broke into a sprint through the lingering haze.
There, resting in a small pile of metallic ash, lay the Omnitrix.
Ben dropped to his knees, his fingers trembling slightly as he reached out to scoop up the small device.
But as he turned it over in his hands, his stomach dropped into a cold pit of heartbreak.
The chassis was completely destroyed.
Deep, spiderwebbing fractures split the outer casing, the interface dial was warped into melted plastic, and the central core was pitch-black and dead.
The alien weapon that had defined his life since he was ten years old was now nothing more than a ruined piece of scrap.
Gwen stepped toward him through the settling dust, her heart aching for her cousin.
“Ben…”
Before she could reach his side, Kevin suddenly let out a strangled, breathless gasp.
He dropped hard onto his hands and knees, clutching his skull as a violent surge of raw energy rippled across his body.
Gwen whipped around, rushing to Kevin’s side in instant panic.
“Kevin!
What’s wrong?!”
Ben snapped out of his grief, scrambling over to help.
But as they watched in shock, something miraculous began to happen right before their eyes.
The grotesque, asymmetrical patchwork of granite, steel, and Taydenite crystal encasing Kevin’s body began to recede.
The heavy, mutated materials dissolved into fine grey powder, flaking off his skin and flowing backward into his pores.
Within seconds, the visible agony faded completely from his face.
Kevin opened his eyes, blinking in pure confusion as he looked up at Ben and Gwen, who were both staring down at him with wide, stunned expressions.
Kevin rubbed the back of his neck, sitting up slowly.
“Uh…
why are you two looking at me like I just grew a second head?
Is there something on my face?”
“Kevin…” Gwen gasped, tears of overwhelming relief welling up in her eyes.
“Look at your hands!
Just look at them!”
Kevin held his hands up in front of his face.
The jagged granite plates were gone; the razor-sharp steel fingers were gone.
His hands were smooth, normal, human hands once more.
The command-level self-destruction of the Omnitrix had utterly purged the lingering, mutated energy field from his cellular structure, returning him to normal.
Despite the heavy loss of his watch, Ben let out a genuine, breathless laugh, clapping Kevin hard on the shoulder.
“You’re back, man!
You’re actually back!”
“I don’t believe it…” Kevin whispered, flexing his human fingers in absolute awe.
“I’m normal again.”
“DO NOT CELEBRATE YET, INSECTS!” a terrifying, ragged roar tore through the smoke-filled air.
Albedo, who had been leaning casually against a far bulkhead quietly observing the emotional reunion, raised an eyebrow in genuine surprise.
Rising slowly from the twisted wreckage of the flight terminal was Vilgax.
Impressive, Albedo noted silently to himself.
A sixty-second core overload delivers enough concentrated kinetic energy to level a city block.
His raw physical resilience really is absurd.
The warlord was in horrific condition.
His right arm was a mangled, bloody mess, dripping dark purple fluid onto the metal floor.
His dark armor was shredded into useless ribbons, hanging loosely off his massive frame.
Albedo’s eyes narrowed as he focused squarely on that golden glove.
That gauntlet bypassed Big Chill’s phase-shifting intangibility earlier and projected a high-grade forcefield.
I am definitely taking that off his corpse before we leave this ship.
“Ben Tennyson!” Vilgax screamed, his face contorted in a mask of absolute, unhinged fury.
“You destroyed my life’s ambition!
I will drag you and this entire pathetic rock of a planet into hell with me!”
In a frenzy of pure rage, Vilgax lunged at the master flight control panel, slamming his heavy hand onto the primary override lever.
He jammed the sub-light thrusters to maximum output, locking the warship’s trajectory straight into a nose-dive toward Bellwood.
Then, with a furious, backhand strike of his remaining good arm, he smashed the control console into splinters, completely destroying any possibility of manually steering the ship or aborting the crash course.
“Kill them all!” Vilgax shrieked to his remaining Biooid troops.
Dozens of white Biooid droids surged forward, flooding the bridge to overwhelm Gwen and Kevin.
At the same time, Vilgax drew his heavy broadsword with his left hand and charged directly at Ben, his red eye glowing with murder.
“Ben, look out!” Gwen and Kevin yelled, turning to help.
But they were instantly walled off by a wave of Biooids, trapped forty feet away and unable to break through in time to intercept the warlord’s charge.
Vilgax raised the massive broadsword high above his head, bringing it down in a terrifying executioner’s strike aimed straight at Ben’s skull—
SWOOSH!
A blur of blue, black, and white motion cut through the air faster than human sight could register.
In a fraction of a millisecond, the blue blur snatched Ben by the collar of his jacket, yanking him out of the sword’s path a microsecond before the heavy blade bit deep into the steel deck, sending a shower of sparks flying into the air.
The blue streak dropped Ben safely behind Gwen and Kevin, then accelerated right back into motion.
It swept through the advancing ranks of Biooid droids like a kinetic cyclone, striking twenty droids in under two seconds, caving in their chest plates and leaving them in broken, sparking heaps across the floor.
The blur came to a dead halt directly in front of the group, revealing the sleek, dinosaurian frame of XLR8—complete with piercing red eyes and the Ultimatrix glowing brightly on his chest.
Albedo looked back over his shoulder at Ben, his voice completely dry and flat.
“You officially owe me an extra order of chili fries for that, Tennyson.”
Ben let out a long, breathless sigh of relief, dusting off his shirt.
“Thanks, Albedo!
I’m counting!”
Vilgax, now completely blinded by murderous rage, yanked his broadsword out of the metal deck and let out a guttural roar, turning to charge straight for the four of them once again.
“I WILL TEAR YOU ALL TO PIECES!” Vilgax bellowed, his heavy footsteps shaking the floorboards.
Before he could take three steps, a roaring wall of bright red-and-yellow fire erupted from a side corridor, cutting directly across the bridge deck and creating an impassable barrier between Vilgax and the group.
The sheer thermal intensity forced Vilgax to jump back, shielding his face with his golden gauntlet as the heat scorched his armor.
Everyone froze in place, turning their heads toward the burning corridor.
Step by deliberate step, a tall, burning silhouette walked out from the center of the flames.
Its body was composed of dark red magma rocks, white-hot fire flickered across its shoulders, and its eyes burned with a brilliant yellow light.
Gwen’s breath hitched in her throat.
Kevin’s jaw dropped.
Ben stared at the fiery figure in complete, speechless disbelief.
“No way…” Ben whispered, his voice trembling as he stared at the familiar alien form.
“How is that even possible?!”
Alien Data Files
XLR8
Origin: Taken from the DNA sample of a Kineceleran from the planet Kinet.
Anatomy: A sleek, velociraptor-like bipedal alien featuring black and blue skin, a helmet-like head with a sharp visor, and unique, natural frictionless spheres built into its feet.
The Ultimatrix symbol is located on its chest.
Abilities: Possesses hyper-velocity speed, allowing it to run at supersonic speeds, manipulate friction, run up vertical surfaces, and generate high-speed localized tornadoes through rapid rotation.