The Encounter
The Omnitrix flared green on Ben’s wrist, alien glyphs spinning in circles. He didn’t waste time with low-level picks. The flash swallowed him, and when it cleared, he stood as Atomix—a walking furnace of nuclear strength.
Scipio shifted his grip on the Chaos Iklwa, left hand steady, feet bare in the dirt. Gaia hummed through his bones, rooting him deeper than the ground itself.
Atomix hit first—straight punch, enough force to level a city block. Scipio bled momentum from the blow with vector domination, twisting the impact sideways until it cracked the earth instead of his chest. He blinked forward, tachyon-fast, and drove the Iklwa into Atomix’s armor. The blade cut clean, spilling white-hot plasma like blood.
Ben roared, the Omnitrix flashing again. Atomix melted into XLR8, speed incarnate. He blurred around Scipio, a cyclone of claws and strikes. But speed alone wasn’t enough—Scipio’s nervous system burned on myelin overdrive, his perception dragging every microsecond into focus. Each attack froze mid-flight, every slash a clear line. He reversed one, vectors snapping, and sent XLR8 tumbling into the dust.
The flash came again. Feedback. Ben absorbed ambient energy, blasting Scipio with enough current to light a continent. The CRAS-9 drank it, nullifying the surge, Aset’s strand whispering quiet defiance. Scipio stepped through the lightning, unburned, and slashed. The Iklwa tore through the black-and-green carapace, sparks bleeding like blood.
Ben was breathing hard, but he wasn’t beaten. His hand slammed down one last time. The light changed, slower, heavier, scarlet in its burn. When it cleared, Alien X hung in the air.
Scarlet eyes, a body that wasn’t flesh but night given shape. His voice echoed like verdicts: “You cannot win. You cannot even exist.”
Reality shifted. Gravity inverted. Probability chains shattered. The air itself stuttered.
Scipio felt it—his body erased in half a dozen timelines, possibilities collapsing like rotten wood. But Gaia hummed still, a low song through his bare feet. He clung to it, pulled vectors tight, and blinked across probabilities until he stood in the one where Alien X’s erasure hadn’t yet reached.
The Iklwa lifted. It hummed with the In Between. It was the blade that separated Now from Never.
Alien X raised his hand, and reality began to fold.
Scipio tightened his stance. One-on-one. Fair fight. His blade cut forward, aiming not at flesh but at the connection between Ben and the Omnitrix itself.
Alien X’s hand was raised. Reality bent like it was tired of being real. Streetlights in a city a thousand miles away flickered and went dark, as if his gesture decided their time was up.
Scipio didn’t flinch.
He blinked forward, tachyon-fast, barefoot still pressed into Gaia’s pulse even across broken space. The Chaos Iklwa cut a line not through flesh, but through connection.
The blade screamed as it parted the tether between Ben and the Omnitrix. For the first time since Alien X existed, there was silence in his form. No hum, no cosmic debate — just a body without the anchor of its infinite engine.
Ben gasped, eyes wide, and Alien X flickered, dissolving around him. The night-body peeled away, leaving just a teenager, chest heaving, Omnitrix sparking dead on his wrist.
Scipio stood over him, Iklwa red and quiet. One move would end it.
Ben lifted his chin, defiant even with his power gone. “Do it.”
Scipio didn’t. He pulled the blade back, blood and light dripping from the edge. “One on one, I fight fair. You’re down. That’s enough.”
The Omnitrix sizzled, trying to reset. Ben stared at it, then at Scipio. His jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue.
Scipio turned away, bare feet pressing into broken earth. Gaia’s hum carried him out of the silence Alien X left behind.
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