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To The 10th Power
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To The 10th Power
Chapter: Kevin
Note: Still rated T. Cannot stress that enough for #3 in this one.
1
Begins night
Kevin’s powers had always been tough for his family to deal with, but the first time he’d ever gotten in trouble because of them was when he was about three, and he still remembers it to this day. His dad had been called away to deal with some kind of emergency, and somehow or another, his mom ended up taking care of a baby that night. Everything else about that night fades into the back of Kevin’s memory, but he remembers the lightning storm and the kid crying. His mom wasn’t in the room—maybe getting ready to feed them? He doesn’t remember.
Kevin had known right away that the baby was scared of the lightning and thunder, so he tried to do exactly what his dad had done to show him there was nothing to be scared of. He went straight to the electrical socket and absorbed some of the energy there, holding it out for the kid to see and touch, to let him know that it was okay. Of course, he’d been too young to realize that not everyone was like him, and where Osmosians could handle electricity at least somewhat safely, it would definitely have caused harm to a human. His mother had burst in at that point and screamed at him, giving him a sharp whack on the bottom for putting the kid in danger. When his father finally came home, he had to give Kevin an explanation that they had powers nobody else had, and they had to be careful with them. It was a lesson he’d never really taken to heart.
Kevin doesn’t know about Ben’s dreams; otherwise, he’d put two and two together. But he does see the way Ben sometimes flinches around high voltage electricity, and he can’t help but think back to that night—the real first time they’d met.
2
The world of “If”
One of Kevin’s biggest regrets is that he didn’t accept Ben’s second chance the first time it was offered. If he had, he thinks he knows how things would have happened.
Max would have been stunned to realize that his late partner’s son was on the streets of New York, his mental stability out of whack from absorbing energy. With Ben willing to give Kevin a second chance and Kevin willing to take it, there would be no need for the Old Yeller mindset. A bit of dealing with the Hacketts, and Max would have ended up taking Kevin along on the roadtrip as the energy slowly made its way out of his system and he learned to control himself. Ben would immediately have a partner-in-crime against Gwen, but that would quickly turn against him when it turned out that Kevin didn’t mind siding with Gwen to pick on Ben every so often. Prank wars among the three would reach epic levels.
Kevin would be warned off using his powers, but he rarely listened and did whatever he could to back up the Tennysons in battle, though Max watched him like a hawk in case he lost his mind again. In a life-or-death battle against Vilgax, Kevin would absorb the power of the Omnitrix, and the mutation would still happen. But some clever thinking by Ben and Gwen would figure out his skewed logic, and they’d manage to get him to control his reactions with a tit-for-tat system that repaid every wrongdoing with a slap upside the head. It also applied to their transgressions, especially Ben’s. It worked to satisfy his more violent urges and let the cousins satisfy their urge to hit each other. He’d betray his friends just once—when Animo lured him with a promise to restore his human form. It would be a lie, and nobody would blame him for it, but he’d regret it his whole life.
When Ben managed to set off the Omnitrix’s self-destruct and had to go into space with Tetrax, Kevin and Gwen would give each other a flat look and quickly stow away. Thanks to Gwen’s brains, they’d manage to avoid being caught until they were too far to turn back, and Tetrax would grudgingly admit that Kevin’s form would make it easier to get through Incarceron when they rescued Myaxx. Kevin would be able to rescue Gwen when they got to Xenon, but Gwen’s attempted sacrifice would still shake Ben up, and he’d realize right there how important it was to have his family around to back him up. And when Azmuth tried to chew out Ben for misusing the Omnitrix, he’d take one look at Kevin and start shouting at Ben even worse, only to be out-screamed by three very loud, stubborn-as-all-hell children defending one another. Azmuth would never be more impressed, though the way they still yelled at him and had to be told by Max to thank him when he built a device to drain off the excess energy from Kevin would be a close second.
And when the summer was over and Kevin had to head home to a newly rebuilt house and a better understanding of his mother and stepfather, it would be with the promise that if he ever needed to, he could crash at Ben’s house. When the Highbreed attacked, Ben would immediately hit the speed dial and get him out to Bellwood.
The one thing that keeps Kevin from being bogged down by regret is the fact that he knows he’s mostly got all that now. He’s got that friendship with Ben, and his relationship with Gwen is something he wouldn’t trade even for a second chance. And it might have taken two full-blown monster mutations, but he’s beginning to work on things with his family.
And maybe, he realizes, it’s better late than never.
3
I can explain
Devlin Levin was still born in a timeline where Kevin was good. It involved a deep cover assignment to Saturn that Kevin had to go on alone for three years, a pressing need for information from a drug cartel’s inner circle, and a hooker who happened to serve the guy’s right-hand-man every other Tuesday.
When Kevin came home from his mission with a toddler in tow—a blue-eyed two-year-old who looked amazingly like him—the first words out of his mouth were “I can explain.”
4
Insight
Being a ticking psychological time bomb has given Kevin some perspective on his friends’ psyches, and it makes him wonder maybe if he’s the sane one on the team. Take Gwen, for example. She’s got this whole need to define herself by how she can help others. She gets obsessed about it, and it makes her miss some really important things, like the fact that the guy she wants to help is a walking nuclear reactor!
Ben gets obsessed with helping people too, mostly because he’s even more trusting than Gwen. Like not even having to hear the whole “I was insane” thing from Kevin to forgive him for what happened six years ago. Yeah, he was desperate for help, but he’s idealistic and optimistic to a fault. He won’t kill, he’ll forgive anyone, and he’s going to get himself killed sooner or later for all that. And that ADHD doesn’t help him any.
Kevin only forgets that Ben’s sometimes a pain in the ass when he just shifts gears and goes straight into “hero mode,” focusing single-mindedly on the mission and sometimes losing his temper so fiercely that they’ve all got to wonder if Ben’s going to break his own rules sooner or later. It’s as scary as when Gwen gets protective and will stop at nothing to take care of a threat or get revenge on someone who tried to hurt someone she cares about. Yeah, Kevin’s got his own limits and he’s got no problem with revenge, but he doesn’t completely snap like they do.
So for all he’ll complain about how stupid Ben’s being or how Gwen needs to lighten up when she thinks either one of them is being stupid, he’s got to admit he’s grateful for those moments. Because sometimes, he’s not quite sure where they’d be without him.
5
Behind blue eyes
The weirdest thing happened to Kevin when he left the Forge of Creation, and the strangest part of it is that he doesn’t know whether it really happened or not.
He was making his way back to his universe when he crossed another. Almost as if he’d hit another one of those chronal barriers, the next thing he knew, there was another version of him standing ahead—smaller, younger, and in his original mutant form. Enraged, Kevin told him to move, but the other didn’t. He just stood there, like he was disappointed or something.
Not exactly in his right mind at the time, Kevin attacked. Never mind the fact that he was trying to kill himself—he was sick of the past, sick of being a freak, and sick of every reminder that nobody loved him and nobody wanted him. The funny thing was, the other freak didn’t fight back. He dodged what he could, tried to block blows, but whenever Kevin hit him, he took it. And that only pissed him off more. He’d survived all this time and all the crap the universe had thrown at him; why was his younger self just taking it? And why did his past pity him like this? That was the absolute last person he wanted feeling sorry for him.
But when the kid went down, going face-down like he was drowning, he shifted back into human form. And he wasn’t Kevin. Whoever he was, he had long hair pulled back in a ponytail—looking this shy of a mullet, to be honest. Somehow or another, the kid raised his head and looked up at Kevin with unfamiliar blue eyes, giving him that same look of…disappointment? pity? before vanishing in a flash of light. And Kevin found himself back in his own universe, right in orbit around Earth.
Was it real? Was it a dream? One thing’s certain; crazy or not, Kevin wasn’t going to forget those eyes and the look on that kid’s face. It would haunt him for the rest of his life.
And one day, when this whole thing is just a nightmare deep in the past, he’ll give his son a startled look when he sees those eyes again.
6
Lock and key
It wasn’t exactly planned for Kevin and Gwen to wind up with the two keys for Alien X, but it’s just the way it turned out. And oddly enough, none of them questioned it.
When Ben asked Kevin to build a lockout system for the Omnitrix after Albedo’s first attack, Kevin hit on the idea of a key to ensure that nobody would be able to hack through it. Low-tech, but it worked. After all, they were the only species stupid enough to come up with answers that completely confounded the smart ones. And because Ben had a habit of doing stupid stuff that typically resulted in important things breaking, Kevin made sure to make a second key and give it to Gwen for safekeeping. As for the first key, he kinda…forgot to give it to Ben. And in any case, Ben never asked for it, so it was okay.
And then the Omnitrix was destroyed, and the Ultimatrix was the new thing to worry about. Ben had only the barest idea of how the new watch worked and since none of them trusted Albedo to build something properly anyway, they knew they had to be absolutely sure that the new locking system would work the way it was supposed to. So Kevin measured out the lock on one side of the dial and got it to match up to his key—and by extension, the key Gwen had—and then he decided to adjust the shape of his key and make a second lock on the other side. It was just safer this way, and it meant that if they got kidnapped by Vilgax or somebody again where they’d have to worry about someone trying to get Alien X, then all one of them would have to do was throw out the key. And as far as they were concerned, making it harder for Ben to turn into the completely useless statue of an alien was a good thing.
They’d tested the system before, though without Ben actually going through with the transformation, but the first time they ever had to explain it was to Azmuth when they needed to find the Forge of Creation. And for the first time, Kevin saw that they were always on the same page about it. Though he wouldn’t admit it, he knew it just showed how close they were that they didn’t even need to explain their thought processes to each other anymore; they all simply knew.
Kevin still had the key on him when he lost control and turned into a monster again. And although he knew even in that state that he’d never be able to get Ben and Gwen to unlock Alien X, he still kept it. Even now, he can’t explain why.
7
Contains language
Kevin can barely remember his father, but he does remember the things he taught him. First, that he was special and that he had powers that had to be used with care. Second, never to use his powers to absorb energy. And third, that he loved him with all of his heart.
The first two Kevin didn’t pay much attention to as a kid. The third had burned itself deeply into him, where even the madness couldn’t take it away.
The fourth lesson was speaking Osmosian. Kevin’s father never used a translator on Earth; he’d taught himself English when he was assigned to the planet, adopting as much of the planet’s culture as he possibly could. It didn’t mean that he wanted his son to grow up without knowing about his Osmosian heritage, however. Kevin grew up knowing a handful of words in Osmosian (aitona—father, amotto—mother, aitorde—stepfather. There’s also the word kor—to take or steal, leading to the pun aitkorde—one who usurps the father), including quite a few swear words that his father mistakenly said around him. Not all of these translate well into English, so every so often when he’s working on his car and having trouble, Ben and Gwen hear him muttering something that their translators don’t pick up.
He’s picked up more since then. His accent is horrible, so he’s never going to pass as a native speaker without using a translator, but he does have a few words he can apply to things. He knows what it’s like to be sakhotz (without a soul—their term for the insanity of absorbing energy) and he has to live with that regret (kurhotz—shadow on the soul) all of his life. He knows what it’s like to have love (omaipe) and to have somebody to love (omaike). And his enemy (tumitsai—literally, war-enemy) is now his brother (anayup, or tuminayup—brother in arms). And he can name them, for both his human and Osmosian sides. He’ll probably never be fluent, but learning everything isn’t the point. But he’s part of two worlds, and he needs the words to come together so maybe he can bridge the gap within himself.
8
Loaded words
Words have also hurt him. Two, in particular.
The first was “freak,” a word Kevin used to describe himself a lot as a kid. He first heard it from Harvey during an argument. He knows now that his stepfather didn’t mean it, and when he thinks back on the argument, he remembers a sudden look of regret on Harvey’s face the moment after he said it. It was an accident in the heat of the moment, and given that he’d blown up the house, Kevin realizes that he probably would have said the same thing. But it had burned deeper than anything else. When his mother tried to reason with him, he assumed that meant she’d sided with the enemy, and so he left, taking it as a dismissal, that nobody wanted him around.
The second actually never came up in reference to him; he adopted it himself. It was back when Ben was first working up the nerve to ask Julie out—or maybe he had already; Kevin hadn’t been paying much attention back then. Ben admitted that he was afraid of what she would think if she ever found out about the Omnitrix:
“I don’t want her to think I’m some kind of…”
Ben had cut off at that point, and even though Kevin didn’t have that great a relationship with him yet, he couldn’t bring himself to fill it in with that word, “freak.” But Ben had his own idea and used the word “monster,” and somewhere in drowning out Gwen trying to reassure her cousin, Kevin felt that word settle in with a cold sense of dread. He realized that it matched perfectly with his idea of what a “freak” was, thanks to one little slip from his stepfather five years before.
Gwen and Ben never use the word “freak” around him, or try never to at any rate, and the only time either of them has ever called him a “monster” is when they’re blaming themselves for his mutations. And then, it’s usually Ben, who knows just how loaded that word is. Instead, they’ve given him new words to focus on: friend, boyfriend, brother. He’s got Max praising him as a gifted crime scene investigator and Plumber. He’s got his mother telling him things that she should have long ago—or at least things he should have realized long ago. And he’s got his stepdad bluntly telling him exactly what happened that day they blew up at each other; and oddly enough, despite the fact that Kevin was ready to kill Harvey right there, he thinks their relationship has never been better.
He doesn’t think of himself as a freak anymore, and he hasn’t for a long time. He’s beginning to feel better about the monster part. Instead, he thinks he knows who he is now, and it’s everything that the others have given him.
9
Definitions
Insanity runs in his adopted family too.
Or at least it did until Kevin tackled it to the ground.
“Ow!” Ben complained.
“Wuss,” Kevin said with a smirk.
“You didn’t have to tackle me that hard!” Ben argued.
“You’re the one who wouldn’t knock it off with the end zone dance,” Kevin pointed out.
Though she was reading and steadfastly trying to ignore them, Gwen said, “If you guys hurt each other, I’m not getting in the middle of this.”
“He started it!” Ben insisted, but Kevin bounced the football off his head. “Hey!”
“Come back and play when you can stop acting like a two-year-old,” he said.
“You’re both acting like two-year-olds,” Gwen interrupted with a glare.
Kevin ignored her and smirked at a sulking Ben. Sure, he was never going to admit that maybe Ben had a point that they were like brothers, but he was grateful that he’d redefined “crazy” for him.
Not that he’s going to say as such.
10
That guy
There was this guy once.
He wasn’t on Earth, and Kevin didn’t know who he was and honestly didn’t care. All he knew was that the guy was abusing his friends. Belittling them and going below the belt, hitting them to hurt them instead of to tease them, leaving his girl crying and his buddy bleeding.
Kevin didn’t even realize that the others were ready to act. Not until after he’d grabbed the guy and thrown him several feet. When the guy got up to fight back, Kevin noticed that Gwen and Ben were standing guard over the other two.
The guy grabbed a piece of piping and came at Kevin, swinging. Kevin caught the pipe, absorbed the metal, then bent the pipe into a pretzel around the guy’s hand. He shouted and swung at him again, but Kevin got him with an uppercut, landing him on the floor, completely out of it.
While he was out, Ben and Gwen called the local authorities and medics to care of everything else. Once they were there and had gotten statements, Ben and Gwen came over to him. Gently, Gwen took his hand into hers, and Ben just grinned. Kevin relaxed, and soon they were off.
It was good not to be that guy.
Some of these pieces are connected to pieces in others’ chapters. In this one, #1 and #3 are directly related to Ben’s. The identity of Devlin’s mother in #3 is a personal theory on just who would have gotten with Kevin in the “Ken 10” universe when he’s known to be evil and completely guano loco. #7 is inspired by Merlin Missy’s “Contains Language,” about Shayera Hol of Justice League Unlimited and the way she has to define her relationships on Earth by her native Thanagarian words. The Osmosian words are blends of words meaning pretty much the translations I gave, in Ainu and Basque—chosen specifically because they are isolate languages with no “families” of languages that are similar enough to them for them to have come from a common ancestor language (such as the similarities among French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, all descended from Latin, which is theorized descended from the same proto-Indo-European language as Sanskrit). The title “Begins night” comes from the first Kamen Rider W movie, where “The world of ‘If’” comes from a sidestory for Kamen Rider Ryuki. “Behind blue eyes” obviously enough is from the song by The Who.
To The 10th Power
Chapter: Kevin
Note: Still rated T. Cannot stress that enough for #3 in this one.
Begins night
Kevin’s powers had always been tough for his family to deal with, but the first time he’d ever gotten in trouble because of them was when he was about three, and he still remembers it to this day. His dad had been called away to deal with some kind of emergency, and somehow or another, his mom ended up taking care of a baby that night. Everything else about that night fades into the back of Kevin’s memory, but he remembers the lightning storm and the kid crying. His mom wasn’t in the room—maybe getting ready to feed them? He doesn’t remember.
Kevin had known right away that the baby was scared of the lightning and thunder, so he tried to do exactly what his dad had done to show him there was nothing to be scared of. He went straight to the electrical socket and absorbed some of the energy there, holding it out for the kid to see and touch, to let him know that it was okay. Of course, he’d been too young to realize that not everyone was like him, and where Osmosians could handle electricity at least somewhat safely, it would definitely have caused harm to a human. His mother had burst in at that point and screamed at him, giving him a sharp whack on the bottom for putting the kid in danger. When his father finally came home, he had to give Kevin an explanation that they had powers nobody else had, and they had to be careful with them. It was a lesson he’d never really taken to heart.
Kevin doesn’t know about Ben’s dreams; otherwise, he’d put two and two together. But he does see the way Ben sometimes flinches around high voltage electricity, and he can’t help but think back to that night—the real first time they’d met.
The world of “If”
One of Kevin’s biggest regrets is that he didn’t accept Ben’s second chance the first time it was offered. If he had, he thinks he knows how things would have happened.
Max would have been stunned to realize that his late partner’s son was on the streets of New York, his mental stability out of whack from absorbing energy. With Ben willing to give Kevin a second chance and Kevin willing to take it, there would be no need for the Old Yeller mindset. A bit of dealing with the Hacketts, and Max would have ended up taking Kevin along on the roadtrip as the energy slowly made its way out of his system and he learned to control himself. Ben would immediately have a partner-in-crime against Gwen, but that would quickly turn against him when it turned out that Kevin didn’t mind siding with Gwen to pick on Ben every so often. Prank wars among the three would reach epic levels.
Kevin would be warned off using his powers, but he rarely listened and did whatever he could to back up the Tennysons in battle, though Max watched him like a hawk in case he lost his mind again. In a life-or-death battle against Vilgax, Kevin would absorb the power of the Omnitrix, and the mutation would still happen. But some clever thinking by Ben and Gwen would figure out his skewed logic, and they’d manage to get him to control his reactions with a tit-for-tat system that repaid every wrongdoing with a slap upside the head. It also applied to their transgressions, especially Ben’s. It worked to satisfy his more violent urges and let the cousins satisfy their urge to hit each other. He’d betray his friends just once—when Animo lured him with a promise to restore his human form. It would be a lie, and nobody would blame him for it, but he’d regret it his whole life.
When Ben managed to set off the Omnitrix’s self-destruct and had to go into space with Tetrax, Kevin and Gwen would give each other a flat look and quickly stow away. Thanks to Gwen’s brains, they’d manage to avoid being caught until they were too far to turn back, and Tetrax would grudgingly admit that Kevin’s form would make it easier to get through Incarceron when they rescued Myaxx. Kevin would be able to rescue Gwen when they got to Xenon, but Gwen’s attempted sacrifice would still shake Ben up, and he’d realize right there how important it was to have his family around to back him up. And when Azmuth tried to chew out Ben for misusing the Omnitrix, he’d take one look at Kevin and start shouting at Ben even worse, only to be out-screamed by three very loud, stubborn-as-all-hell children defending one another. Azmuth would never be more impressed, though the way they still yelled at him and had to be told by Max to thank him when he built a device to drain off the excess energy from Kevin would be a close second.
And when the summer was over and Kevin had to head home to a newly rebuilt house and a better understanding of his mother and stepfather, it would be with the promise that if he ever needed to, he could crash at Ben’s house. When the Highbreed attacked, Ben would immediately hit the speed dial and get him out to Bellwood.
The one thing that keeps Kevin from being bogged down by regret is the fact that he knows he’s mostly got all that now. He’s got that friendship with Ben, and his relationship with Gwen is something he wouldn’t trade even for a second chance. And it might have taken two full-blown monster mutations, but he’s beginning to work on things with his family.
And maybe, he realizes, it’s better late than never.
I can explain
Devlin Levin was still born in a timeline where Kevin was good. It involved a deep cover assignment to Saturn that Kevin had to go on alone for three years, a pressing need for information from a drug cartel’s inner circle, and a hooker who happened to serve the guy’s right-hand-man every other Tuesday.
When Kevin came home from his mission with a toddler in tow—a blue-eyed two-year-old who looked amazingly like him—the first words out of his mouth were “I can explain.”
Insight
Being a ticking psychological time bomb has given Kevin some perspective on his friends’ psyches, and it makes him wonder maybe if he’s the sane one on the team. Take Gwen, for example. She’s got this whole need to define herself by how she can help others. She gets obsessed about it, and it makes her miss some really important things, like the fact that the guy she wants to help is a walking nuclear reactor!
Ben gets obsessed with helping people too, mostly because he’s even more trusting than Gwen. Like not even having to hear the whole “I was insane” thing from Kevin to forgive him for what happened six years ago. Yeah, he was desperate for help, but he’s idealistic and optimistic to a fault. He won’t kill, he’ll forgive anyone, and he’s going to get himself killed sooner or later for all that. And that ADHD doesn’t help him any.
Kevin only forgets that Ben’s sometimes a pain in the ass when he just shifts gears and goes straight into “hero mode,” focusing single-mindedly on the mission and sometimes losing his temper so fiercely that they’ve all got to wonder if Ben’s going to break his own rules sooner or later. It’s as scary as when Gwen gets protective and will stop at nothing to take care of a threat or get revenge on someone who tried to hurt someone she cares about. Yeah, Kevin’s got his own limits and he’s got no problem with revenge, but he doesn’t completely snap like they do.
So for all he’ll complain about how stupid Ben’s being or how Gwen needs to lighten up when she thinks either one of them is being stupid, he’s got to admit he’s grateful for those moments. Because sometimes, he’s not quite sure where they’d be without him.
Behind blue eyes
The weirdest thing happened to Kevin when he left the Forge of Creation, and the strangest part of it is that he doesn’t know whether it really happened or not.
He was making his way back to his universe when he crossed another. Almost as if he’d hit another one of those chronal barriers, the next thing he knew, there was another version of him standing ahead—smaller, younger, and in his original mutant form. Enraged, Kevin told him to move, but the other didn’t. He just stood there, like he was disappointed or something.
Not exactly in his right mind at the time, Kevin attacked. Never mind the fact that he was trying to kill himself—he was sick of the past, sick of being a freak, and sick of every reminder that nobody loved him and nobody wanted him. The funny thing was, the other freak didn’t fight back. He dodged what he could, tried to block blows, but whenever Kevin hit him, he took it. And that only pissed him off more. He’d survived all this time and all the crap the universe had thrown at him; why was his younger self just taking it? And why did his past pity him like this? That was the absolute last person he wanted feeling sorry for him.
But when the kid went down, going face-down like he was drowning, he shifted back into human form. And he wasn’t Kevin. Whoever he was, he had long hair pulled back in a ponytail—looking this shy of a mullet, to be honest. Somehow or another, the kid raised his head and looked up at Kevin with unfamiliar blue eyes, giving him that same look of…disappointment? pity? before vanishing in a flash of light. And Kevin found himself back in his own universe, right in orbit around Earth.
Was it real? Was it a dream? One thing’s certain; crazy or not, Kevin wasn’t going to forget those eyes and the look on that kid’s face. It would haunt him for the rest of his life.
And one day, when this whole thing is just a nightmare deep in the past, he’ll give his son a startled look when he sees those eyes again.
Lock and key
It wasn’t exactly planned for Kevin and Gwen to wind up with the two keys for Alien X, but it’s just the way it turned out. And oddly enough, none of them questioned it.
When Ben asked Kevin to build a lockout system for the Omnitrix after Albedo’s first attack, Kevin hit on the idea of a key to ensure that nobody would be able to hack through it. Low-tech, but it worked. After all, they were the only species stupid enough to come up with answers that completely confounded the smart ones. And because Ben had a habit of doing stupid stuff that typically resulted in important things breaking, Kevin made sure to make a second key and give it to Gwen for safekeeping. As for the first key, he kinda…forgot to give it to Ben. And in any case, Ben never asked for it, so it was okay.
And then the Omnitrix was destroyed, and the Ultimatrix was the new thing to worry about. Ben had only the barest idea of how the new watch worked and since none of them trusted Albedo to build something properly anyway, they knew they had to be absolutely sure that the new locking system would work the way it was supposed to. So Kevin measured out the lock on one side of the dial and got it to match up to his key—and by extension, the key Gwen had—and then he decided to adjust the shape of his key and make a second lock on the other side. It was just safer this way, and it meant that if they got kidnapped by Vilgax or somebody again where they’d have to worry about someone trying to get Alien X, then all one of them would have to do was throw out the key. And as far as they were concerned, making it harder for Ben to turn into the completely useless statue of an alien was a good thing.
They’d tested the system before, though without Ben actually going through with the transformation, but the first time they ever had to explain it was to Azmuth when they needed to find the Forge of Creation. And for the first time, Kevin saw that they were always on the same page about it. Though he wouldn’t admit it, he knew it just showed how close they were that they didn’t even need to explain their thought processes to each other anymore; they all simply knew.
Kevin still had the key on him when he lost control and turned into a monster again. And although he knew even in that state that he’d never be able to get Ben and Gwen to unlock Alien X, he still kept it. Even now, he can’t explain why.
Contains language
Kevin can barely remember his father, but he does remember the things he taught him. First, that he was special and that he had powers that had to be used with care. Second, never to use his powers to absorb energy. And third, that he loved him with all of his heart.
The first two Kevin didn’t pay much attention to as a kid. The third had burned itself deeply into him, where even the madness couldn’t take it away.
The fourth lesson was speaking Osmosian. Kevin’s father never used a translator on Earth; he’d taught himself English when he was assigned to the planet, adopting as much of the planet’s culture as he possibly could. It didn’t mean that he wanted his son to grow up without knowing about his Osmosian heritage, however. Kevin grew up knowing a handful of words in Osmosian (aitona—father, amotto—mother, aitorde—stepfather. There’s also the word kor—to take or steal, leading to the pun aitkorde—one who usurps the father), including quite a few swear words that his father mistakenly said around him. Not all of these translate well into English, so every so often when he’s working on his car and having trouble, Ben and Gwen hear him muttering something that their translators don’t pick up.
He’s picked up more since then. His accent is horrible, so he’s never going to pass as a native speaker without using a translator, but he does have a few words he can apply to things. He knows what it’s like to be sakhotz (without a soul—their term for the insanity of absorbing energy) and he has to live with that regret (kurhotz—shadow on the soul) all of his life. He knows what it’s like to have love (omaipe) and to have somebody to love (omaike). And his enemy (tumitsai—literally, war-enemy) is now his brother (anayup, or tuminayup—brother in arms). And he can name them, for both his human and Osmosian sides. He’ll probably never be fluent, but learning everything isn’t the point. But he’s part of two worlds, and he needs the words to come together so maybe he can bridge the gap within himself.
Loaded words
Words have also hurt him. Two, in particular.
The first was “freak,” a word Kevin used to describe himself a lot as a kid. He first heard it from Harvey during an argument. He knows now that his stepfather didn’t mean it, and when he thinks back on the argument, he remembers a sudden look of regret on Harvey’s face the moment after he said it. It was an accident in the heat of the moment, and given that he’d blown up the house, Kevin realizes that he probably would have said the same thing. But it had burned deeper than anything else. When his mother tried to reason with him, he assumed that meant she’d sided with the enemy, and so he left, taking it as a dismissal, that nobody wanted him around.
The second actually never came up in reference to him; he adopted it himself. It was back when Ben was first working up the nerve to ask Julie out—or maybe he had already; Kevin hadn’t been paying much attention back then. Ben admitted that he was afraid of what she would think if she ever found out about the Omnitrix:
“I don’t want her to think I’m some kind of…”
Ben had cut off at that point, and even though Kevin didn’t have that great a relationship with him yet, he couldn’t bring himself to fill it in with that word, “freak.” But Ben had his own idea and used the word “monster,” and somewhere in drowning out Gwen trying to reassure her cousin, Kevin felt that word settle in with a cold sense of dread. He realized that it matched perfectly with his idea of what a “freak” was, thanks to one little slip from his stepfather five years before.
Gwen and Ben never use the word “freak” around him, or try never to at any rate, and the only time either of them has ever called him a “monster” is when they’re blaming themselves for his mutations. And then, it’s usually Ben, who knows just how loaded that word is. Instead, they’ve given him new words to focus on: friend, boyfriend, brother. He’s got Max praising him as a gifted crime scene investigator and Plumber. He’s got his mother telling him things that she should have long ago—or at least things he should have realized long ago. And he’s got his stepdad bluntly telling him exactly what happened that day they blew up at each other; and oddly enough, despite the fact that Kevin was ready to kill Harvey right there, he thinks their relationship has never been better.
He doesn’t think of himself as a freak anymore, and he hasn’t for a long time. He’s beginning to feel better about the monster part. Instead, he thinks he knows who he is now, and it’s everything that the others have given him.
Definitions
Insanity runs in his adopted family too.
Or at least it did until Kevin tackled it to the ground.
“Ow!” Ben complained.
“Wuss,” Kevin said with a smirk.
“You didn’t have to tackle me that hard!” Ben argued.
“You’re the one who wouldn’t knock it off with the end zone dance,” Kevin pointed out.
Though she was reading and steadfastly trying to ignore them, Gwen said, “If you guys hurt each other, I’m not getting in the middle of this.”
“He started it!” Ben insisted, but Kevin bounced the football off his head. “Hey!”
“Come back and play when you can stop acting like a two-year-old,” he said.
“You’re both acting like two-year-olds,” Gwen interrupted with a glare.
Kevin ignored her and smirked at a sulking Ben. Sure, he was never going to admit that maybe Ben had a point that they were like brothers, but he was grateful that he’d redefined “crazy” for him.
Not that he’s going to say as such.
That guy
There was this guy once.
He wasn’t on Earth, and Kevin didn’t know who he was and honestly didn’t care. All he knew was that the guy was abusing his friends. Belittling them and going below the belt, hitting them to hurt them instead of to tease them, leaving his girl crying and his buddy bleeding.
Kevin didn’t even realize that the others were ready to act. Not until after he’d grabbed the guy and thrown him several feet. When the guy got up to fight back, Kevin noticed that Gwen and Ben were standing guard over the other two.
The guy grabbed a piece of piping and came at Kevin, swinging. Kevin caught the pipe, absorbed the metal, then bent the pipe into a pretzel around the guy’s hand. He shouted and swung at him again, but Kevin got him with an uppercut, landing him on the floor, completely out of it.
While he was out, Ben and Gwen called the local authorities and medics to care of everything else. Once they were there and had gotten statements, Ben and Gwen came over to him. Gently, Gwen took his hand into hers, and Ben just grinned. Kevin relaxed, and soon they were off.
It was good not to be that guy.
Some of these pieces are connected to pieces in others’ chapters. In this one, #1 and #3 are directly related to Ben’s. The identity of Devlin’s mother in #3 is a personal theory on just who would have gotten with Kevin in the “Ken 10” universe when he’s known to be evil and completely guano loco. #7 is inspired by Merlin Missy’s “Contains Language,” about Shayera Hol of Justice League Unlimited and the way she has to define her relationships on Earth by her native Thanagarian words. The Osmosian words are blends of words meaning pretty much the translations I gave, in Ainu and Basque—chosen specifically because they are isolate languages with no “families” of languages that are similar enough to them for them to have come from a common ancestor language (such as the similarities among French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, all descended from Latin, which is theorized descended from the same proto-Indo-European language as Sanskrit). The title “Begins night” comes from the first Kamen Rider W movie, where “The world of ‘If’” comes from a sidestory for Kamen Rider Ryuki. “Behind blue eyes” obviously enough is from the song by The Who.