The demon in me: “Fused”
Jun. 12th, 2010 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameAfter four all-nighters in a row, Ben is exhausted but reluctant to sleep due to nightmares. Still, Kevin and Gwen advise him to go to bed when they drop him off. But while he sleeps, a bolt of lightning strikes a powerline and travels though the wiring of his house, causing the light over his bed to explode before an alien leaps down to attack him. Ben wakes immediately and fights off the alien across the yard and the neighbor’s pool, both of them getting electrocuted by the discharge in the water before the alien loses consciousness. After calling the others (and apparently putting on some pants), Ben stares down the alien in a containment unit in the Los Soledad military base. The alien is Ra’ad, the last of the Andromeda Five, and he blames Ben for the capture of his friends and the deaths of the Plumbers sent to save them. Aggregor has been tracking down the Ultimatrix’s signal and using it to home in on the escapees, and now Ra’ad is the last one left free. The team promises to try to help Ra’ad and after a moment of hesitation, Ben moves to free him. Kevin argues it’s a stupid move since they don’t know they can trust him, but Ben insists that Ra’ad knows how Aggregor works and they don’t have a lot of time before Aggregor finds them. Sure enough, Kevin is proven right when Ra’ad attacks them all, revealing that he’d read their thoughts and come to the conclusion that they would betray him to save themselves. But in the battle, Ra’ad’s electricity connects to the Ultimatrix’s scan like Voldemort’s Avada Kedavra meeting Harry’s Expelliarmus. There’s a small explosion, and when they recover, they discover Ra’ad is missing and Ben can’t access anything on the Ultimatrix. Worse, Aggregor attacks. As Aggregor immediately begins wiping the floor with the others, Ben finally manages to access an alien on the Ultimatrix: an Amperie like Ra’ad, which he quickly dubs “Ampfibian.” Unfortunately, Aggregor is too much for him and figures that one Amperie is as good as the next.
Gwen manages a powerful teleportation spell that gets the three of them out of there and safely at their rebuilt warehouse, but it leaves her with a bad hangover. Worse, Ben can’t transform back and he finds himself speaking strangely, sometimes in someone else’s voice, using the wrong tenses, and generally weirding himself out. While Kevin tries to get the Ultimatrix back online, Ben realizes that Ra’ad is trapped inside and they’re sharing the same mind. Unfortunately, Ra’ad’s sharing skills need work, and he tries to take control to ensure that the Ultimatrix isn’t reactivated so Aggregor can find him. Gwen accesses their mind and realizes the truth, and Ben fights for control of his mind and body against the demon in him trying to seize control of the Ultimatrix. Kevin unveils a new version of the Omnitrix-hacking machine—his plan to get the Ultimatrix to reboot. Dumb as the plan sounds, it’s their only choice; Ben is losing against Ra’ad and risking the possibility of being lost forever. Gwen holds Ra’ad off long enough for Kevin to absorb some rubber and attach jumper cables from the machine to the Ultimatrix. When the smoke clears, Kevin’s carrying Ben under one arm, separated from Ra’ad as the watch reboots. Ra’ad makes a break for it, and no sooner than he leaves does Aggregor arrive. One by one, the team is taken down, with Kevin thrown outside and pinned by a fallen telephone pole, Gwen unconscious, and Ben as Brainstorm being heartlessly tortured. Kevin’s forced to listen to the crackling electricity, helpless to stop it as Ra’ad shows himself. Furious, Kevin calls him out and insists that he’s exactly the same as Kevin used to be: a coward who would abandon the only person who ever tried to help him just to save himself.
When Aggregor’s finished, Brainstorm can’t generate a charge and is too weak to stand. Deciding that if he can’t have Ra’ad, he’ll still settle for Ampfibian, Aggregor uses the energy from his staff to try to force the Ultimatrix to change transformations. Gwen wakes from the sound of Brainstorm’s screams, warning Aggregor that he’s killing Ben. But before Aggregor can do any more damage, Ra’ad attacks him, having accepted that he will never be able to escape and that he can’t let Ben sacrifice himself. Aggregor attacks him, and Ra’ad warns Gwen to get the demorphed and weak Ben out of there, but they don’t even have that much time. The garage explodes, blasting Kevin free and throwing Gwen and Ben across the parking lot in a forcefield. They stand before the burning wreckage of their second warehouse, and Ben feels the guilt of Ra’ad sacrificing himself to save him. But he’s not going to stand for it. Thanks to the Ultimatrix, he’s got the powers of all of the Andromeda Five, and he’s going to use that power to save them.
As the last of the Andromeda Five, Ra’ad learns of his friends’ fates and those of the Plumbers who were supposed to save them. Because of this, he’s even more of a survivalist than the others, determined to stop at nothing to protect his freedom. His biggest obstacle is Ben, who has been unknowingly leading Aggregor to all of them in his attempts to find and rescue them. When he and Ben accidentally cross the streams of energy—electricity and scanning—they wind up fused into one being, and Ra’ad refuses to let Ben have control. We watch them fight as Ra’ad becomes more and more dominant, and though Ben refuses to fall easily, Gwen warns that his spirit is fading fast. If not for revisiting the experiment from “Vengeance of Vilgax,” Ben would have been lost and Ra’ad would have control over the Ultimatrix.
In addition to his powers over electricity, Ra’ad is able to read minds—he can pick up the electrical charges that are thoughts and can interpret them easily. This implies that he is the source behind Ben’s nightmares, as mentioned early in the episode—Ben is frightened by the lightning storm, startled awake by one bolt and still fearful while looking at the storm before racing inside the house. It seems clear that lightning was probably a major element of his dreams, possibly that Ra’ad was psychologically torturing him before readying a physical attack.
Ben’s transformation into his copy of Ra’ad, Ampfibian, is animated more like the classic Ben 10 than the Alien Force silhouette. Given that they’ve been doing the silhouettes in the series up until this point, it’s hard to tell if they’ll switch to the new transformation style or if this was a special thing, given the fused state of Ben and Ra’ad. Ampfibian also still had Ra’ad’s blue eyes, even while Ben was in control (unlike Ghostfreak, who had green eyes for the brief moments when Ben had control before changing back to purple), but this will likely change to reflect the un-fused nature of Ampfibian from here on out.
Something I’ve noticed all series up until now is how the team’s interaction levels with one another have changed. Blame it on the Lost Galaxy reviews, but I see that kind of closeness among them that you didn’t have back in Alien Force. It’s particularly evident when it comes to their relationships with Kevin. We’ve already seen how Ben and Gwen got closer and really became family instead of two kids who could barely stand to be in the same room together; with Kevin, we now see a level of closeness that rivals even Ben and Gwen’s relationship. Between Gwen and Kevin, sure, they may argue a lot, but they’re always there for each other when needed. The moment it looks like one of them might get hurt or if they hear anything resembling a threat toward the other, they will charge in there to protect the person they love. They’re not sweet and cute about their relationship, like Ben and Julie had been in Alien Force, but it is clear that they love each other.
As for Ben and Kevin, their relationship has shifted dramatically. Even in Alien Force, they were never as close or as open about their friendship as they are now. Kevin no longer makes any secret of how he cares about Ben, and he’s become fiercely protective of him—just about as protective as he is of Gwen. And Ben is just as protective, as if Kevin’s part of his family. Two moments I think illustrate it best this episode, both indicating a level of guilt for the past. First, when Kevin proposes they try to hack the Ultimatrix into a reboot, Ben freaks out on him, reminding him of the accident. This time, he shares the blame in the way he refers to it—when “we” hacked the Omnitrix and caused Kevin’s mutation. Ben admitted his role in the accident in “The Final Battle,” and he continued to accept responsibility in “Duped.” Here, it seems like he’s comfortable enough that he can admit they were both to blame—Kevin for coming up with the idea, and Ben for going through with it and ignoring the risks. Of course, the bigger moment of their relationship and the guilt inherent in it comes on Kevin’s side, when he brilliantly calls out Ra’ad for abandoning Ben. His tirade is personal, from a dark place he doesn’t like to remember he has:
”The one guy who tried to help you is dying in there. But that’s okay with you, isn’t it? I don’t need to read minds to know what you think. I used to be just like you. So, go! Run! Steal whatever time it buys you, coward!”
He’s able to admit that what happened six years ago was his fault, not Ben’s. That he was the one who betrayed Ben, not the other way around. And here, when he and Ben have made amends for the betrayals they’ve made, he can’t save Ben. Seeing Ra’ad and knowing what he did churns up all of this anger inside of him from his own memories, and you know that he’s not just yelling at Ra’ad; he’s raging at the eleven-year-old fool he used to be.
It’s formally explained that Osmosians have the power to absorb energy, matter, and the ability of any other alien, which finally explains just why Kevin was able to absorb alien powers by touching Ben’s forms instead of necessarily the Omnitrix. Also, Aggregor refers to Kevin as a “hatchling,” which could indicate they hatch from eggs. In that case, his mom must have been one cranky pregnant lady to lay an egg that size…
This episode was particularly brutal, giving a good feel for how dark Ultimate Alien can and will get. The team is effortlessly beaten around by Aggregor, with no one able to score a significant hit; and Ben is particularly viciously beaten. Between Ra’ad trying to destroy his mind and Aggregor torturing him half to death, he could barely stand by the end. Still, he was determined to stand on his own as he vowed that he would save the Andromeda Five. Like “Andreas’ Fault,” the scene was reminiscent of “Max Out” (in particular, Ben’s vow at the end to finish the mission) and followed a sacrifice that Ben particularly felt. Sacrifice seems to be a fairly big theme this series, and it probably hits harder for Ben and Kevin than for Gwen. Ben swore back in “Inside Man” that he wouldn’t allow any sacrifices on his watch, but in “Andreas’ Fault,” he had no choice but to accept it. And here, he was the one to sacrifice himself initially, fighting so that Ra’ad could escape, even though Ra’ad had tried to kill him and take his body and the Ultimatrix. That would be grounds for anyone to say, “Dude, you can have Ra’ad!” but Ben refused to do that. And that guilt-tripped Ra’ad into sacrificing himself instead, only fighting long enough so that Gwen and Ben could escape. As for Kevin, his father has sacrificed himself to save Max, so that is tied to his entire backstory. And here, you can see on his face that he knows he’s more to blame for Ra’ad’s sacrifice than Ben was. Ben believes that Ra’ad sacrificed himself just to save his life. Kevin knows that Ra’ad likely still would have run if he hadn’t convinced him to go back in there and do the right thing. And like so many other things, it’s something he can’t tell Ben because he knows it’d break him to know the truth.
“Fused” was written by Len Uhley.
Gwen manages a powerful teleportation spell that gets the three of them out of there and safely at their rebuilt warehouse, but it leaves her with a bad hangover. Worse, Ben can’t transform back and he finds himself speaking strangely, sometimes in someone else’s voice, using the wrong tenses, and generally weirding himself out. While Kevin tries to get the Ultimatrix back online, Ben realizes that Ra’ad is trapped inside and they’re sharing the same mind. Unfortunately, Ra’ad’s sharing skills need work, and he tries to take control to ensure that the Ultimatrix isn’t reactivated so Aggregor can find him. Gwen accesses their mind and realizes the truth, and Ben fights for control of his mind and body against the demon in him trying to seize control of the Ultimatrix. Kevin unveils a new version of the Omnitrix-hacking machine—his plan to get the Ultimatrix to reboot. Dumb as the plan sounds, it’s their only choice; Ben is losing against Ra’ad and risking the possibility of being lost forever. Gwen holds Ra’ad off long enough for Kevin to absorb some rubber and attach jumper cables from the machine to the Ultimatrix. When the smoke clears, Kevin’s carrying Ben under one arm, separated from Ra’ad as the watch reboots. Ra’ad makes a break for it, and no sooner than he leaves does Aggregor arrive. One by one, the team is taken down, with Kevin thrown outside and pinned by a fallen telephone pole, Gwen unconscious, and Ben as Brainstorm being heartlessly tortured. Kevin’s forced to listen to the crackling electricity, helpless to stop it as Ra’ad shows himself. Furious, Kevin calls him out and insists that he’s exactly the same as Kevin used to be: a coward who would abandon the only person who ever tried to help him just to save himself.
When Aggregor’s finished, Brainstorm can’t generate a charge and is too weak to stand. Deciding that if he can’t have Ra’ad, he’ll still settle for Ampfibian, Aggregor uses the energy from his staff to try to force the Ultimatrix to change transformations. Gwen wakes from the sound of Brainstorm’s screams, warning Aggregor that he’s killing Ben. But before Aggregor can do any more damage, Ra’ad attacks him, having accepted that he will never be able to escape and that he can’t let Ben sacrifice himself. Aggregor attacks him, and Ra’ad warns Gwen to get the demorphed and weak Ben out of there, but they don’t even have that much time. The garage explodes, blasting Kevin free and throwing Gwen and Ben across the parking lot in a forcefield. They stand before the burning wreckage of their second warehouse, and Ben feels the guilt of Ra’ad sacrificing himself to save him. But he’s not going to stand for it. Thanks to the Ultimatrix, he’s got the powers of all of the Andromeda Five, and he’s going to use that power to save them.
As the last of the Andromeda Five, Ra’ad learns of his friends’ fates and those of the Plumbers who were supposed to save them. Because of this, he’s even more of a survivalist than the others, determined to stop at nothing to protect his freedom. His biggest obstacle is Ben, who has been unknowingly leading Aggregor to all of them in his attempts to find and rescue them. When he and Ben accidentally cross the streams of energy—electricity and scanning—they wind up fused into one being, and Ra’ad refuses to let Ben have control. We watch them fight as Ra’ad becomes more and more dominant, and though Ben refuses to fall easily, Gwen warns that his spirit is fading fast. If not for revisiting the experiment from “Vengeance of Vilgax,” Ben would have been lost and Ra’ad would have control over the Ultimatrix.
In addition to his powers over electricity, Ra’ad is able to read minds—he can pick up the electrical charges that are thoughts and can interpret them easily. This implies that he is the source behind Ben’s nightmares, as mentioned early in the episode—Ben is frightened by the lightning storm, startled awake by one bolt and still fearful while looking at the storm before racing inside the house. It seems clear that lightning was probably a major element of his dreams, possibly that Ra’ad was psychologically torturing him before readying a physical attack.
Ben’s transformation into his copy of Ra’ad, Ampfibian, is animated more like the classic Ben 10 than the Alien Force silhouette. Given that they’ve been doing the silhouettes in the series up until this point, it’s hard to tell if they’ll switch to the new transformation style or if this was a special thing, given the fused state of Ben and Ra’ad. Ampfibian also still had Ra’ad’s blue eyes, even while Ben was in control (unlike Ghostfreak, who had green eyes for the brief moments when Ben had control before changing back to purple), but this will likely change to reflect the un-fused nature of Ampfibian from here on out.
Something I’ve noticed all series up until now is how the team’s interaction levels with one another have changed. Blame it on the Lost Galaxy reviews, but I see that kind of closeness among them that you didn’t have back in Alien Force. It’s particularly evident when it comes to their relationships with Kevin. We’ve already seen how Ben and Gwen got closer and really became family instead of two kids who could barely stand to be in the same room together; with Kevin, we now see a level of closeness that rivals even Ben and Gwen’s relationship. Between Gwen and Kevin, sure, they may argue a lot, but they’re always there for each other when needed. The moment it looks like one of them might get hurt or if they hear anything resembling a threat toward the other, they will charge in there to protect the person they love. They’re not sweet and cute about their relationship, like Ben and Julie had been in Alien Force, but it is clear that they love each other.
As for Ben and Kevin, their relationship has shifted dramatically. Even in Alien Force, they were never as close or as open about their friendship as they are now. Kevin no longer makes any secret of how he cares about Ben, and he’s become fiercely protective of him—just about as protective as he is of Gwen. And Ben is just as protective, as if Kevin’s part of his family. Two moments I think illustrate it best this episode, both indicating a level of guilt for the past. First, when Kevin proposes they try to hack the Ultimatrix into a reboot, Ben freaks out on him, reminding him of the accident. This time, he shares the blame in the way he refers to it—when “we” hacked the Omnitrix and caused Kevin’s mutation. Ben admitted his role in the accident in “The Final Battle,” and he continued to accept responsibility in “Duped.” Here, it seems like he’s comfortable enough that he can admit they were both to blame—Kevin for coming up with the idea, and Ben for going through with it and ignoring the risks. Of course, the bigger moment of their relationship and the guilt inherent in it comes on Kevin’s side, when he brilliantly calls out Ra’ad for abandoning Ben. His tirade is personal, from a dark place he doesn’t like to remember he has:
”The one guy who tried to help you is dying in there. But that’s okay with you, isn’t it? I don’t need to read minds to know what you think. I used to be just like you. So, go! Run! Steal whatever time it buys you, coward!”
He’s able to admit that what happened six years ago was his fault, not Ben’s. That he was the one who betrayed Ben, not the other way around. And here, when he and Ben have made amends for the betrayals they’ve made, he can’t save Ben. Seeing Ra’ad and knowing what he did churns up all of this anger inside of him from his own memories, and you know that he’s not just yelling at Ra’ad; he’s raging at the eleven-year-old fool he used to be.
It’s formally explained that Osmosians have the power to absorb energy, matter, and the ability of any other alien, which finally explains just why Kevin was able to absorb alien powers by touching Ben’s forms instead of necessarily the Omnitrix. Also, Aggregor refers to Kevin as a “hatchling,” which could indicate they hatch from eggs. In that case, his mom must have been one cranky pregnant lady to lay an egg that size…
This episode was particularly brutal, giving a good feel for how dark Ultimate Alien can and will get. The team is effortlessly beaten around by Aggregor, with no one able to score a significant hit; and Ben is particularly viciously beaten. Between Ra’ad trying to destroy his mind and Aggregor torturing him half to death, he could barely stand by the end. Still, he was determined to stand on his own as he vowed that he would save the Andromeda Five. Like “Andreas’ Fault,” the scene was reminiscent of “Max Out” (in particular, Ben’s vow at the end to finish the mission) and followed a sacrifice that Ben particularly felt. Sacrifice seems to be a fairly big theme this series, and it probably hits harder for Ben and Kevin than for Gwen. Ben swore back in “Inside Man” that he wouldn’t allow any sacrifices on his watch, but in “Andreas’ Fault,” he had no choice but to accept it. And here, he was the one to sacrifice himself initially, fighting so that Ra’ad could escape, even though Ra’ad had tried to kill him and take his body and the Ultimatrix. That would be grounds for anyone to say, “Dude, you can have Ra’ad!” but Ben refused to do that. And that guilt-tripped Ra’ad into sacrificing himself instead, only fighting long enough so that Gwen and Ben could escape. As for Kevin, his father has sacrificed himself to save Max, so that is tied to his entire backstory. And here, you can see on his face that he knows he’s more to blame for Ra’ad’s sacrifice than Ben was. Ben believes that Ra’ad sacrificed himself just to save his life. Kevin knows that Ra’ad likely still would have run if he hadn’t convinced him to go back in there and do the right thing. And like so many other things, it’s something he can’t tell Ben because he knows it’d break him to know the truth.
“Fused” was written by Len Uhley.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-12 09:15 pm (UTC)Ben's quip on how things couldn't get any worse aside, the way things really went down in this episode was as you stated, particularly brutal. And it started with the (almost)only hilarious moment in the teaser: "He's been having nightmares." "Gwen!" Apparently offscreen, Ben confided in his cousin about his situation the previous 4 nights and Gwen kept it to herself only until when she felt that Kevin needed to know. Aggregor is definitely an enemy that Ben and co. will need to watch for when he returns and figure out ways to counter his abilities with the staff; unfortunately, Brainstorm might not be a factor in those plans as we've already seen.
I was really impressed by how much Kevin has changed-he was confident that they could reboot the Ultimatrix and not cause another explosion. (Though pressing the blue buttons? Definitely something to joke with him on later.) Not to mention how well he and Ben have really grown since Ben 10. Their friendship, along with Gwen and Kevin's relationship, does rival the relationship Ben and Gwen have to a point; Gwen isn't as blunt with Ben as Kevin was when he told him to get out of his car. Though, for all intents and purposes he did say he had to get Gwen home before her parents
called the National Guardfreaked.My birthdayNext week's episode definitely seems like one that is the flip side of the coin, as based on the preview alone. Plus, with Rath in it you know hilarity is a major factor.(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-12 09:49 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, Greggo definitely seemed to be determined to prove Ben horribly wrong. And yes, like you said, Ben would had to have told Gwen about the nightmares. She's practically his older sister; Ben's kind of the baby of the family they make up. He's a little brother to both of them. But when it comes to family, Gwen's the first one he goes to. Those are more personal matters. Kevin's the one Ben goes to when he doesn't want to worry Gwen--things he thinks might be a little more serious.
Oh yes. Even when I was talking to my brother about it--he's only seen "Andreas' Fault" this series--he even said that Kevin's really maturing this season.
Happy birthday!I actually haven't seen the full preview yet. I only caught a soundless version on Youtube, so I really don't know what's going on. But yeah, Rath = hilarious.