The Elemental Enerithian (Ben 10)

All That Glitters

Rewritten

The group was at a Mr. Smoothy with Ben sitting on the curb listening to the message Grandpa Max sent and Kevin leaning on his car drinking a smoothie, watching him. Gwen walks over to Kevin with her arms crossed, and Aria walks out of the shop, enjoying another smoothie. "Think we should be worried about him? He's been watching that thing for hours." Kevin asks, slurping some of his smoothie. When he doesn't get an answer, he looks over at Gwen, who still has her arms crossed. "Problem?" He asks. "Why haven't you asked me out?" Gwen suddenly asks, causing Aria to choke on her smoothie and walk away to give them some privacy. "What?!" Kevin asks. "You heard me. We spend all of our time together, and you obviously like me." Gwen replies, walking closer to him, and Kevin scoffs. "You do. I see you mooning at me when you think I'm not looking." Gwen pushes. 

"Mooning?" Kevin asks. "and I like you-- most of the time. So I'm asking you again." Gwen leans closer to him. "See? That's the problem-- you're asking me. a guy does the asking." Kevin tells her. "Yeah? When?" Gwen pushes. "Don't push me." Kevin warns. "Don't push me." Gwen mocks, glaring at him. Aria walks over to her, shaking her head. "Ben." Kevin calls the boy, who doesn't answer, still listening to the message. "You know, my dog used to gnaw at a spot on his butt over and over. The vet made us put a cone around his neck." Kevin shares. Ben stays silent for a while before turning off the holoviewer. "Easy does it. I'm not the one you're mad at." He tells Kevin. "Cut me a break here. You wanna go fight some aliens or something?" Kevin asks.

 "Let me see your Plumber's badge." Ben reaches out for the badge. Kevin takes it out of his pocket and hands it to Ben, who opens up a map. "Each of these blips shows the location of another badge." He says. "Yep." Kevin agrees. "And where there's a Plumber's badge, we'll find a Plumber-- or at least a Plumber's kid." He turns off the badge. "Come on. You're driving." Ben says, walking to the car. "You two coming?" Kevin asks the two females. Gwen was leaning on a light post and Aria was talking to her about some random things trying to get her mind off what happened earlier. Gwen stares at Kevin for a second before pushing off the wall and walking to the car with Aria right behind her.

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Ben sat in the front passenger seat while Aria and Gwen sat in the back and Kevin drove. "Plumber. Plumber, Plumber, Plumber. You ever notice that if you say a word enough times, it loses its meaning?" Gwen asks leaning closer to Kevin. "Like a chance to ask someone out. Every time that chance comes along, it has less and less meaning, until you don't have a chance anymore at all." She explains. "Oh, for crying out loud." Kevin groans. "Are you guys having a fight?" Ben asks. "Gwen's pushing Kevin to ask her out." Aria mumbles, looking down at her hands which were shimmering pink. "Oh my god." She whispers she swipes her hands down, and a shield appears in front of the car, causing Kevin to swerve out of the way to dodge it. "Ari, seriously?" Kevin asks. "Yes!" Aria cheers.

 "What?" Gwen asks. "I can use energy again." The white-haired teen replies. "Right, you never told me what happened back at the cornfield." Gwen remembers. "Oh right. So basically since I'm two races for some reason I can't use just one all the time, if I do it disrupts the balance, and that could cause major risks to me if I keep pushing. Which is why I was unable to use energy for a while after that day." Aria explains. "And if you keep pushing?" Kevin asks. "I might die." Aria states. "Don't you ever do that." Ben tells her. "I won't." She mumbles, leaning on Gwen. "And even still, I might have to use something other than energy so that I don't strain myself again." She adds.

They get to a highway where they're stuck behind multiple cars, so they get out to see what happened. The group sees the overpass starting to collapse and rush over to the railing to see what caused it. There they see a truck tipped onto its side on fire with the driver still inside and unconscious. Kevin runs down onto the road to get the driver and part of the overpass continues collapsing. "Gwen!" Ben shouts to his cousin. The red-haired runs over using stepping stones and makes a ramp so that the car can get down safely, and then she backs away. People leave their cars and attempt to get to safe ground, but the road collapses under them. "Oh, no." Aria gasps, she creates water and lets it stream off the overpass before freezing it, making a slide, which everyone uses to get down, and the people below help them off.