In a certain alternate timeline, a teenage girl wearing a dark green jacket and a black pleated skirt sat by the riverbank, lost in thought.
“Celestialsapiens…” she murmured to herself.
“If your race truly exists…”
As her voice trailed off, Bad Ben pulled a weathered photograph from her pocket, staring at it blankly.
Suddenly, the voice of a middle-aged man echoed from right behind her.
“I might be able to help you with that.”
“Who’s there?!” She whipped her head around.
Standing behind her was a man clad in intricate purple armor, extending his hands toward her in a seemingly welcoming gesture.
But Bad Ben was far too cynical to be easily fooled.
She slammed her hand down on the dial, transforming into Four Arms.
Pointing a massive, muscular finger at the mysterious interloper, she snarled, “Why the hell should I trust you?
Just because you have a silver tongue?”
Seeing her hostility, Eon simply smirked.
Before she could strike, he materialized behind her, grabbed her arm, and initiated a chronal rift, teleporting them both instantly into a completely different town.
“Where the hell did you just bring me?
You better start talking if you want to keep your teeth.”
Bad Ben cracked her knuckles, her muscles tensing as if she were about to unleash a devastating punch.
However, the man didn’t flinch.
He calmly raised a finger, pointing toward a familiar vehicle parked a short distance away, the Rust Bucket.
“I believe it would be best if you look over there and see for yourself.”
Following the mysterious man’s gaze, Bad Ben looked toward the doors of the RV.
“That’s…
that’s…”
Her breath caught in her throat.
Standing right by the door was the exact person she had spent years desperately yearning for, her heart aching to see him again.
On pure instinct, she took a frantic step forward, desperate to sprint into his arms.
But before she could move, another figure materialized to block her path.
It was Professor Paradox, accompanied by a mature, elegant woman.
“You cannot make contact with him yet,” Paradox stated firmly.
Seeing Paradox intervene, Eon didn’t dare risk a prolonged confrontation.
He quickly grabbed Bad Ben and teleported them both straight back to their original universe.
“If you agree to make a deal with me…”
Before Eon could finish his sentence, Bad Ben lunged forward and clamped a hand tightly around his throat, choking off his words as she threatened him.
“Take me back right now!
I demand to see him!
If you don’t, I will make your life a living hell!”
Fortunately, Eon possessed time-manipulation capabilities that allowed him to phase out of her grip, or Bad Ben might have actually choked the life out of him right then and there.
“You can’t kill me,” Eon gasped, smoothing his armor.
“If you cooperate and do exactly what I ask of you, I promise I will bring you back to see him.”
Bad Ben wasn’t about to play by his rules.
She violently spun her dial and transformed into Way Big, bringing a colossal cosmic boot down to crush the mysterious man into a pancake.
But her massive attack passed right through his shifting temporal form, yielding absolutely no result.
Realizing she couldn’t brute-force a solution, Bad Ben slammed her chest plate to cancel the transformation.
She glared at him, her voice dripping with venom.
“Fine.
What exactly do you want me to do?”
Seeing her finally submit, a dark, triumphant smirk spread across Eon’s face as he began outlining his grand design.
A short while later, after detailing his instructions, Eon turned to leave.
But Bad Ben suddenly cut him off.
“Wait!”
“Can you…
can you just let me see him one more time?
Just a single glimpse…
that’s all I ask,” she pleaded, her voice cracking with a vulnerability she hadn’t shown in years.
“I really…
I miss him so much.”
A single, silent tear slipped from the corner of her eye, splashing into the dirt.
It was the first time she had wept since she had conquered her universe.
But Eon remained entirely unmoved.
Granting her request held absolutely zero benefits for his timeline, only risks.
“No,” he replied coldly.
“That old man Paradox is definitely guarding that specific timeline somewhere in the shadows.
We can’t risk tipping him off.”
With that final rejection, Eon vanished through a temporal rift, heading into another corner of the multiverse.
The moment he was gone, the fragile vulnerability on Bad Ben’s face shattered, replaced instantly by her signature, sub-zero chill.
She glared down at the Omnitrix on her wrist, her teeth grinding together so fiercely they audibly clicked.
“Why…” she hissed, her voice shaking with an unstable fury.
“Why does *she* get to have him?!
It’s not fair!
It’s completely unfair!”
With a savage roar, she swung her fist, smashing a nearby oak tree into splinters.
But as the adrenaline cleared, a new, terrifyingly perfect plan began to take shape in her fractured mind.
“I’ll just have to kill you all…” she whispered, a dark, maniacal chuckle bubbling up from her chest.
“I’ll take him back…
along with everything else that was always meant to be mine!”
“Haha…
Hahaha!”
Losing her grip on reality entirely, she dissolved into a fit of psychotic, echoing laughter, her eyes bloodshot and wide with a terrifying fixation.
“Just wait for me…
very soon, you’ll finally be mine!”
“No one will ever separate us again!
Not even another version of me!”
*(Bad Ben Arc: