22: Chapter 22: Earth
What had once been a sprawling, prosperous metropolis was now an unrecognizable, blackened scar on the surface of the planet.
Skyscrapers lay shattered into mountainous piles of twisted steel, cracked rebar, and pulverized concrete.
The streets were split open, revealing burning gas lines spewing towering plumes of orange flame into the choked sky.
Every piece of infrastructure, every home, every park had been systematically reduced to a desolate, ash-covered wasteland.
Traces of human civilization had been erased, leaving behind an oppressive, suffocating silence broken only by the crackle of distant fires.
The city’s inhabitants had suffered a nightmare beyond description.
Countless bodies littered the scorched ruins—their faces frozen in twisted masks of pure, unadulterated terror.
Some had been torn to pieces by unimaginable physical violence; others were reduced to charred, unrecognizable husks by high-intensity plasma fire.
Dried, dark-crimson blood coated the concrete in thick, ugly stains, filling the hot, stagnant air with the sickening, metallic stench of decay and slaughter.
The entire city was a mass grave.
Yet, buried deep within a shadowy alleyway beneath a collapsed overpass, a single living teenager sat huddled on his knees in the dirt.
He was physically unharmed, but his eyes were completely dead—devoid of light, devoid of hope, hollowed out by absolute, crushing despair.
This was Error Ben.
He stared blankly at the human purgatory around him, his body trembling uncontrollably.
The unbearable smell of copper and rot filled his nose, and the phantom echoes of thousands of people screaming, begging, and crying for mercy rang incessantly in his ears.
He felt as though his soul had been dragged into the deepest pit of hell and left to burn.
This was not the first city.
Was it the fifth?
The tenth?
He had lost count days ago.
Every settlement he encountered was transformed into a slaughterhouse, every life extinguished by his hands.
Ever since the day that grotesque, biological nightmare known as the Carnitrix had latched onto his wrist like a parasitic leech, his life had ended.
The moment the device sensed a living organism within its detection radius, it overrode his nervous system, forcing a violent, agonizing transformation that hijacked his mind and body to execute systematic genocide.
He had tried to fight it.
He had screamed until his vocal cords tore, he had pulled at his own flesh until he bled, he had tried to smash the watch against jagged boulders.
It was useless.
The Carnitrix was absolute, controlling his motor functions while forcing him to watch every second of the slaughter from inside his own mind.
He had watched, trapped inside his own skull as a helpless spectator, as his mutated body tore apart his cousin Gwen.
He had felt the bones break beneath his hands as he slaughtered his grandfather Max. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
He had watched tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children bleed out beneath his monstrous claws.
The overwhelming guilt had burned through his soul, eroding his grief into a cold, numb, catatonic despair.
Please…
the boy wept silently in his mind, staring at his trembling, ash-covered hands.
Someone…
anyone…
please just kill me.
End it.
I don’t want to hurt anyone else.
He knew that death was his only release—the only true justice for the oceans of blood on his hands.
But he couldn’t even end his own life.
The Carnitrix refused to allow its host to die, forcefully intercepting any attempt at self-harm by forcibly mutating him to survive.
Just as Error Ben sank deeper into his quiet, agonizing prayer, the air in the ruined alleyway suddenly hummed with immense, concentrated temporal energy.
FLASH!
FLASH!
FLASH!
Dozens of brilliant blue spatial tears tore open in a wide arc around the alleyway, shattering the silence.
Out stepped an armada of heroes, led by Fusion Ben, Ben 10,000, and Ultimate Ben, flanked by hundreds of variants—including the mainline Ben and Albedo.
The moment they stepped out, the horrific stench of death, copper, and the sight of the blood-stained ruins hit the assembly like a physical strike.
Several of the younger Bens gasped, recoiling in disgust, while the Albedos narrowed their eyes in quiet horror at the scale of destruction.
Fusion Ben’s expression hardened, his eyes filling with profound sorrow and dark anger.
He couldn’t begin to fathom the sheer, crushing psychological horror this timeline’s version of Ben had endured.
“Child…” Fusion Ben spoke, his voice deep, gentle, and solemn as he took a slow step toward the shivering boy.
“Do not be afraid.
We are here to help you.
We are going to remove that vile weapon from your arm.”
Error Ben slowly lifted his head, his tear-streaked face caked in dirt and ash.
But looking at the massive army of heroes standing before him, his dead eyes didn’t fill with hope.
They filled with absolute, pure, blinding panic.
NO!” Error Ben shrieked, his voice raw and broken.
“Run!
Get away from me!
You can’t stop it!
You’re all going to die!”
As the boy’s panic spiked and his heart rate surged, the biological horror on his wrist reacted to the presence of living targets.
The Carnitrix flared with a violent, sickly yellowish-green light.
The bio-organic core rose sharply from the wristband, its flesh-like mechanisms twisting, expanding, and groaning like tearing muscle as the selection icon shifted erratically before locking onto a humanoid silhouette.
CRACK!
SNAP!
A sickening shower of yellowish-green light burst from Error Ben’s body.
Horrific, wet sounds of snapping bone, tearing muscle, and agonizing screams echoed through the ruins as the watch forcefully mutated his physiology.
His skin turned pitch-black, absorbing the light around it, studded with glowing, distant star-like specks like a void in space.
His limbs snapped and twisted into unnatural, broken angles, expanding in length.
Three jagged, bone-like horns erupted violently from his skull, tearing through his flesh, and his jaw split open to reveal rows of razor-sharp, needle-like teeth dripping with acidic saliva.
The whites of his eyes turned pitch-black, leaving two tiny, pinpoint white pupils burning with absolute, indiscriminate murder.
Error X had arrived.
The sheer, staggering pressure radiating off the corrupted Celestialsapien flattened the surrounding dust, cracking the concrete floorboards for miles around them and tearing small rifts in the air itself.
Fusion Ben raised his arm, his voice booming over the sound of snapping spatial reality:
“Everyone, transform!
Target the device, not the host!
Save the boy!”
In a single, synchronized wave, hundreds of wristwatches flared—green, red, gold, and pink light illuminating the ruined city as the multiversal army engaged.
Alien Data Files
Error X (Carnitrix Celestialsapien)
Origin: A severely corrupted, bio-engineered DNA sample of a Celestialsapien housed within the Carnitrix of Quadrant 54.
Anatomy: Unlike a standard Celestialsapien, its form is jagged and monstrous.
It features a pitch-black, star-studded void body with twisted, broken limbs, three jagged horns, a jaw lined with needle-like teeth, and pitch-black eyes with tiny, glowing white pupils brimming with unhinged killing intent.
Abilities: Possesses the raw, reality-warping omnipotence of a Celestialsapien, but lacks internal psychological checks or debate mechanisms.
Controlled entirely by the Carnitrix’s violent slaughter protocols, it unleashes instantaneous, localized reality collapse, spatial tearing, and indiscriminate physical destruction without hesitation.