After their fight with Vilgax and Kevin at Niagara Falls, the Tennysons doubled back to South Dakota and made a quick stop at the Plumber base in Mount Rushmore to gather whatever supplies they could in case something like that happened again. Max did not want to have to deal with another mess like that anytime soon, but after everything they had already been through, it was better to be safe than sorry.
Besides, there was another reason for the stop.
Evan had finally told Max that he and the Another Omnitrix were basically one and the same. Meaning upgrade to his Another Omnitrix also meant upgrade to him.
Since this will ensure his grandson's safety, Max no longer hesitates.
That failed safe is just a failed safe; if he suffers another fatal attack while the failed safe is still in cool-down, then he will die.
If upgrading the Another Omnitrix meant protecting his grandson, then he was going to help however he could.
After giving Evan a few of the Plumber's equipment and useful tools, he transformed into Juryrigg to take those parts and make more upgrades for himself.
[Data Upgrade Quantum Storage Pocket is now available.]
[Data Upgrade Cognitrix AI is now available.]
[Data Upgrade Backup Spark Capacitor is now available.]
[Data Upgrade Battery Display Module is now available.]
[Data Upgrade Thermal Venting Exhaust is now available.]
Besides the battery upgrade, these were the main upgrades that Evan had focused on.
The Quantum Storage Pocket instantly became one of his favorite upgrades. He no longer had to carry all his equipment strapped awkwardly across his body anymore. His Proto-Tool, hoverboard, bombs, spare gadgets, and even his metal rod could now be digitally stored inside the Another Omnitrix itself and summoned whenever needed.
The Cognitrix AI was basically a fully autonomous combat-support intelligence capable of temporarily taking control if Evan was unconscious or unable to move.
The Backup Spark Capacitor gave him one emergency thirty-second transformation even if the main battery was fully drained, while the Battery Display Module finally let him see exactly how much power he had left.
And Thermal Venting Exhaust helped prevent the Another Omnitrix from overheating during rapid transformation switching, which massively reduced battery drain during combat.
Once they had everything they needed, Max decided to stop for the day in the forest near the national monument and set up camp for the night. He started getting the campsite ready while the Gold siblings were busy doing something inside the RV, and for once the Tennyson cousins seemed oddly well-behaved.
Almost suspiciously so.
"I've got the marshmallows," Gwen said cheerfully, holding up a bag of fluffy treats.
"And I've got the graham crackers," Ben added, shaking the box.
"We'll wait here while you get the firewood," Gwen said, sounding way too sweet. "Then we can make s'mores."
Max actually smiled at that. "Now that is nice to see. The two of you finally getting along. I'll be back in a jiffy."
"Sure!" the cousins said in unison, waving him off with matching smiles.
They kept waving long after Max disappeared into the trees.
The second he was out of sight, both smiles dropped instantly.
"This is your fault!"
"Wow," Evan said from where he was sitting on top of the RV with his arms crossed. "Three seconds. That has to be a new record."
Gwen whirled on Ben in outrage. "Grandpa only turns sixty once!"
She shoved Ben aside and started digging through the graham cracker box before flinging out a folded sheet of paper and jabbing it at him.
"I had his party totally wired."
Ben snatched it and scanned the list. "You chose his birthday wish?"
"And how is he supposed to make one without a cake?" Gwen snapped. "The cake you were supposed to get?"
Ben stood up, brushing cracker crumbs off himself. "Uh, excuse me, full-time hero here. When exactly was I supposed to have time to go get some dumb old cake?"
"I'm just as busy with Lucky Girl and I still found time to get everything else," Gwen shot back.
Ben folded his arms. "It's not a big deal."
"For Grandpa it is," Gwen said, and the way she said it made Ben feel just enough guilt to hate it.
He groaned and reached for the Omnitrix. "Fine. I'll just go XLR8, run into town, and be back before you can say-"
He never got to finish.
A strange yellow vortex suddenly opened at the edge of the campsite, warping the air around it like a tear in the world itself.
Ben froze. "Okay... that cannot be good."
Before any of them could react, a woman in a blue hood shot out of the vortex and rushed straight at them. Ben and Gwen split apart at the last second, and the woman flew past them before turning back in the air to face them.
She narrowed her gaze.
Then she lunged straight at Gwen.
A blur cut in front of her.
Fasttrack appeared out of nowhere, driving a kick into the woman's face before smashing a knee into her stomach. He spun once, planted a hand on the ground, and snapped a hard kick into the side of her head.
The woman staggered back, but she recovered fast enough to grab Gwen around the waist and haul her toward the portal.
"Gwen!" Ben and Fasttrack shouted at the same time.
Ben did not think. He just slammed the Omnitrix and hoped for the best.
Green light burst around him.
When the flash faded, XLR8 was standing in his place, and he instantly shot forward with Fasttrack right beside him. The two of them bolted straight through the portal after the kidnapper, and the vortex snapped shut behind them.
The campground fell silent.
A few minutes later, Max returned to the RV with an axe on his shoulder and a pile of firewood under one arm. He looked around the campsite once, then again, and immediately noticed that something was wrong.
Orfevre and Gold Ship were still inside the RV, where he had left them.
Ben, Gwen, and Evan were nowhere to be seen.
He stepped into the RV and looked around. "Orfevre, have you seen your brother and cousins?"
"Gwen got kidnapped, and those two chased them through a wormhole," Gold Ship answered like she was commenting on the weather.
Max stared at her for a moment.
Then he let out a long, exhausted sigh.
"...Why am I not surprised?"
...
When the portal opened again, the masked sorceress and her hostage tumbled out into the lower levels of a massive city that was clearly nowhere near Mount Rushmore.
The woman spun around immediately, expecting the two speedsters to come rushing through the portal right behind her.
Instead, there was nobody there. Her eyes narrowed beneath the hood.
Then suddenly, Fasttrack and XLR8 came at her from the front.
The two had circled around the area at high speed before she could even react. Their fists slammed into her face at the same time, and the sorceress went down hard, crashing face-first into the pavement.
Fasttrack did not waste a second. He grabbed Gwen around the waist and sprinted across the street in a blur before setting her down behind a parked hovercar.
"You okay?" Fasttrack asked quickly.
"Yeah..." Gwen answered, catching her breath before looking around the city. "But I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
That was putting it lightly.
The moment they really looked around, it became obvious this place was far beyond anything they had ever seen before. Hoverboards zipped through the air between glowing skyscrapers. Cars floated above the roads. Giant holographic advertisements drifted overhead while neon lights reflected off chrome buildings.
And then there were the aliens. Dozens of them.
Humans and aliens walked around together like it was the most normal thing in the world, and nobody even blinked at seeing XLR8 and Fasttrack standing in the middle of the street.
Actually... most people seemed happy to see them.
"Hey, Ben! Looking good!" a pretty girl shouted while riding by on a hoverboard.
"Yo, Ben! Keep up the awesome work!" a teenager with rocket boots yelled.
"Check it out! It's Ben 10K!" a human kid shouted excitedly while pointing toward them beside a giggling Pyronite girl.
XLR8 slowly lowered his visor. "Okay... this is officially freaking me out. Where the heck are we, and why does everybody know who I am?"
Gwen was just as confused. Her eyes wandered across the street before stopping on a glowing holographic screen beneath a sign that read CN Chronicle.
"Wait..." she murmured.
She walked toward it and started scrolling through the futuristic news display. Her eyes widened almost instantly.
"Ben! Evan! Look at this!"
Fasttrack and XLR8 rushed over beside her.
Fasttrack leaned closer and read aloud, "'Famous rockstars Ami and Yumi welcome their second daughter into the world.' Aw, good for them."
Gwen smacked his arm. "Not that, genius. The date."
Both speedsters looked again. Then froze.
XLR8's eyes widened. "No way..."
"It has to be real," Gwen said slowly. "According to this... we're twenty years in the future."
XLR8 stared blankly for a second. "I heard time flies, but this is ridiculous."
Fasttrack suddenly looked off into the distance before pointing. "Uh... guys? I think I know where we are."
The others followed his gaze.
Standing in the center of a large plaza was a gigantic stone statue of a man standing heroically with a gauntlet-like device raised on his arm.
The three slowly walked toward it.
"Hero of Heroes: Ben 10,000," XLR8 read aloud. He blinked. "That's... me?"
Then the statue exploded.
"MOVE!"
Fasttrack and XLR8 grabbed Gwen at the exact same moment and blurred away just before the statue collapsed where they had been standing. Stone debris smashed into the street while smoke and dust filled the air.
Gwen groaned while brushing rubble dust off herself. "Can we seriously not go one day without explosions?"
"Hey, Tennyson! Long time no see!"
The trio turned toward the voice.
A large humanoid rhino emerged from the smoke wearing bulky red armor, with a glowing laser cannon mounted where his horn should have been.
XLR8 tilted his head. "Uh... do I know you?"
"Prepare for my revenge!" the rhino-man snarled.
He dropped onto all fours, his horn charging with blue energy before firing multiple laser blasts down the street.
Gwen rolled behind cover while Fasttrack casually sidestepped backward. XLR8 rushed forward instead, weaving around the lasers so quickly they looked frozen in place around him.
"I don't know who you are, buddy," XLR8 said while accelerating straight toward him, "but you're about to learn what happens when you mess with Hero of He-"
Red light flashed. The Omnitrix timed out. XLR8 vanished mid-run and turned back into Ben.
Ben immediately slammed face-first into the rhino-man's armored chest.
The impact hurt absolutely nobody except Ben.
He slid down onto the pavement clutching his face while the rhino-man stared down at him in confusion.
Ben rubbed his forehead painfully. "Okay... maybe we can talk about this?"
"Hey ugly!"
Fasttrack blurred forward before tapping his hand onto the Another Omnitrix.
Golden light exploded outward.
The rhino-man instinctively raised an arm to shield his eyes.
The moment Diamondhead appeared, he drove a sharp crystal elbow directly into the rhino-man's chest. The hit shattered part of the armor, knocked the breath out of him, and launched him backward across the street.
"Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" Diamondhead said while crouching down and picking up one of the broken armor pieces.
The piece quickly disappeared into his Omnitrix storage. The rhino-man slowly climbed back to his feet, glaring at him.
"So... you're the real Ben Tennyson."
Diamondhead, Ben, and Gwen all stared at him.
"...What?" they said together.
The rhino-man snorted angrily and dropped back onto all fours. His laser horn charged again before firing another beam directly at Diamondhead.
Diamondhead crossed his arms in front of himself.
The beam slammed into his crystal body and ricocheted harmlessly away.
Without missing a beat, Diamondhead punched the ground.
Rows of crystal spikes burst upward beneath the rhino-man, smashing into his armor and launching him backward again.
The rhino-man growled and suddenly fired a small capsule from his horn.
The capsule burst open midair into a giant metal net racing toward Diamondhead.
Caught slightly off guard, Diamondhead raised a hand. The crystals embedded in the street suddenly ripped free and floated upward, forming a wall that intercepted the net before it could trap him.
Then he rushed forward.
His crystal fist pulled back and smashed hard into the rhino-man's jaw, the impact echoing through the street loud enough to make nearby civilians scatter.
A blur of black and white suddenly shot forward and slammed into the rhino villain, throwing him hard off the ground before he could even recover. More hits followed immediately after, each one landing with brutal speed and precision, smashing into his armor, cracking his horn, and leaving a trail of dents across his body.
In only a few seconds, the rhino villain was lying flat on his back, his armor caved in, his body covered in damage, and blood leaking from several cuts around his skull.
Then, just as quickly, the attacker pulled back and revealed himself to be XLR8.
The Omnitrix symbol was still there on his chest, but something about him looked different now. His armor was bulkier, harsher, and far more vicious than before, like the form had been pushed way beyond what it was supposed to be.
The kids stared in shock at the sight.
Ben's eyes briefly rolled back into his head before he suddenly slumped backward, falling into Gwen's arms. Gwen gasped and barely managed to hold him up.
"Ben!" she cried, lighting her hands in panic before pressing down on his chest and trying to help him breathe. She leaned in and blew into his mouth once, then again, until Ben finally coughed and sat up with a groan.
"Ben?" Diamondhead asked as he stepped forward, still trying to process everything.
Gwen kept one hand on Ben while looking at him with visible worry. "You had me worried for a second there."
Ben sat up slowly and rubbed the back of his head. "That was an awful sight for me," he muttered. Then his expression twisted into alarm. "Did I just kill someone?"
"You killed that giant tick back at Yellowstone Park," Diamondhead reminded him.
Ben shot back immediately, "That was a giant parasite trying to destroy the Earth! It wasn't a person! I would never kill someone, and neither would you!"
"You don't know that."
Diamondhead and XLR8 both said it at the same time, then stopped and turned toward each other.
XLR8 stared at Diamondhead for a moment, taking in the golden Omnitrix symbol on his chest, before looking back at the remains of the rhino villain. His visor scanned what was left of the body.
"Looks like the work of Animo," XLR8 said coldly. "I knew I should have killed him when I had the chance."
"You know Grandpa is not going to like this, Ben," the sorceress said.
"This is vengeance, and you know it," Ben snapped. "He would have done the same in my position. And how dare you bring our younger selves here!"
"They're needed in this time period, Ben," the sorceress replied firmly. "We are trying to help you. You cannot kill every criminal you come across."
"Criminals are murderous scum who want nothing more than to destroy everything good in the world, and you know it," Ben shot back. "That's what happened to Ever, no? Now send them back, or I'll use the Crystalsapien form to absorb all of your mana!"
Then he turned toward the younger Ben, who was not looking at him with awe like most people would. He was looking at him with fear.
"You're me?" younger Ben said, stunned. "But I would never kill someone like that. And definitely not that brutally."
"When you feel the pain that happens to your family, you'll change your moral code," XLR8 said. His voice was calmer now, but it was also colder. "After all, it was that same moral code. That same weakness. It led to his ultimate sacrifice."
He shifted his gaze toward Diamondhead, and then, without warning, rushed over and hugged him tightly.
"I'm sorry..." he murmured.
Diamondhead said nothing has he had already understood what this future Ben meant. XLR8 pulled away and sped off.
Gwen stared after him, then turned back toward Ben. "Are you sure that is still you in there?"
"Yep," the sorceress answered. "That is definitely him."
At that point, Diamondhead transformed back into human form.
The hooded woman finally lowered her hood and revealed herself, and it was exactly who Gwen had suspected all along: an older version of herself. Her hair had been cut into a choppy pixie style, her face was sharper and more mature, but it was absolutely Gwen.
"Wow. You are me?" Gwen asks.
"Actually," the older Gwen said, "I have been going by Gwendolyn since college."
"College? Ivy League? Do I have a master's?" Gwen asked in rapid-fire excitement.
"Look, I did not bring you here to learn about your future," Gwendolyn said calmly, though her eyes kept flicking toward the younger version of her cousin. "I came back to bring Ben... and him."
"So why kidnap me?" Gwen asked.
"I remembered Ben's listening skills kind of stunk," Gwendolyn said dryly, earning an annoyed look from Ben. "Grabbing you was the only way I knew he would come."
Then her gaze shifted toward Evan, and the sadness in her eyes was immediate. It hit her hard enough that for a second she looked like she was about to cry, but she forced herself to steady her breathing and keep going.
"And you too."
"So time travel is no big deal now?" Gwen asked cautiously.
"Once you achieve the rank of Master Sorcerer of the Legerdomain Temple," Gwendolyn explained, "you get access to all kinds of spells. But messing with time always comes with consequences."
"An alternate timeline," Evan said quietly, finally putting the pieces together.
Gwendolyn nodded. "Yes. By traveling between points in time, you can create an alternate timeline. In special cases, it can even become a time loop."
"Hello!" Ben interrupted, clearly fed up now. "Forget him; this is about me!"
"Actually, he is right," Gwendolyn said seriously.
Ben frowned. "Tell me I did not grow up to start agreeing with Mr. Dweeb all the time?"
"Ben 10,000 needs help... badly," Gwendolyn said.
"I seem pretty tough," Ben said with an uneasy smirk. "What could a cool, cold, dark superhero like me possibly need help with?"
"Ben 10,000 may have mastered the secrets of the Omnitrix," Gwendolyn replied, "but that does not mean he is ready for everything. There is a crisis coming that even he cannot solve alone."
Her gaze shifted toward Evan.
"And his biggest regret still haunts him to this day."
At that moment, Gwendolyn's cat-shaped belt buckle beeped sharply and an electronic voice announced, "Danger alert! Sector 15-D!"
"What's in Sector 15-D?" Gwen asked.
"Fort DNA-X," Gwendolyn replied grimly.
"That name is terrible," Gwen said.
"I know," Gwendolyn admitted. "It is Earth's massive genetic depository. It stores DNA samples from across the galaxy."
"Dr. Animo," Ben said immediately. "That is the crisis, right? That is why I am here. He made that robot-rhino guy, and now he is doing something else. Time to give the doctor a double dose of Ben medicine. Come on, I'll give us a lift."
He slapped the Omnitrix and tried to activate it, but it was still locked in cooldown.
"Aw, man! Why can't this thing power up faster in the future?"
Right as he complained, a familiar honk sounded nearby.
The Rust Bucket rolled up beside them, looking almost exactly the same as it had twenty years ago.
Meanwhile, Evan was already moving. Holding his Proto-Tool, he quickly activated the Omnitrix tracker and locked onto the signal from Ben 10,000's Omnitrix.
He tapped the dial on his Another Omnitrix and transformed into Fasttrack before speeding off in that direction without wasting a second.