A Certain Powerful Omnitrix 5: Power Shift

Ben 10 vs Meltdowner

It was almost midnight before Touma called Ben. By then, he and Mikoto had gone to almost every single fun area that Academy City had to offer. Ashley was now sleeping as Mikoto held her in a piggy back, clutching onto a teddy bear Ben had won for her in an arcade game.

Ben answered his phone while stiffling a yawn. "Hey Touma........what's up?"

"Hey, sorry it took so long." said Touma's voice in the phone. "I got that place I was telling you about. You could stay there until your dorm is fixed.....or stay there forever if you like, I don't really know what I'd do with it to be honest."

"Nice." said Ben. "Can you give me the address?"

12 minutes later, Ben and Mikoto were walking through a district Ben knew was supposed to be the residential area for teachers and Antiskill officers. What kind of arrangements had Touma made anyways?

Mikoto suddenly stopped in her tracks. Her jaw dropped. "No way.........."

Ben looked too, and his jaw dropped as well. "Did Touma just get us an entire house!?"

A house it was indeed. A full two stories, the whole kazoo. Touma waved at Ben from the front of the home. "Hey, er....yeah. As it turns out, this used to belong to Ms. Komoe years ago. She got me to look after it and then said I could have it and do what I wanted with it. So here you go.."

"It's......whoah....you're gonna give this to us!?"

"Well I never use it." said Touma. "And Index doesn't like it in there for some reason."

"Well I think it's great." Said Mikoto. "It'll be nice to have some more space."

"Yeah..." said Ben thinking. "More space...."

"Are you alright?" Mikoto asked looking at Ben with a concerned expression. "You seem out of it."

"We went to space once......" Said Ben. "I remember you talking about things like you're in space......but.....I don't remember our surroundings......its..."

Suddenly, Ben collapsed, clutching his head as his brain started to swirl painfully.

"Oh no! Not again!!" said Mikoto. "Touma!! Can you please bring Ashley inside?!"

"Oh....uh...sure!"

As Touma took the sleeping Ashley into the house, Mikoto knelt down next to Ben and hugged him close. "Don't force it Ben......it's not there.....try and relax.......relax."

One deadly side-effect of Ben's brand of memory loss, had been what the doctors could only describe as Untied Memory. Since Ben remembered Mikoto, but nothing else, not even the memories associated with Mikoto, his brain would sometimes have a tough time getting a grip of things.

Think of it this way. Imagine your memory of somebody, how you met, and everything related to them. Now, turn all of that except for the person into one big blank. Instead of you remembering your friend shaking hands with somebody and then going on a train, you remember, your friend shaking his hand with blank, riding blank, doing blank, all for the reason of blank, and you two became friends because of blank. One's head would have a hard time tying certain events together because of this. It is like having a fill in the blank test you did not study for that offers some of the answers in a completely random order. Now take that stress and multiply it by a hundred......that's what Ben was facing.

After about 5 minutes, Ben finally felt his head clear and he shook himself a little. "Man....I think they're getting worse."

"Just try not to push yourself too hard." said Mikoto. "The memories aren't locked away like your average Amnesiac, they're completely gone except for a select few. If you try and remember something that's not there, you're going to hurt yourself."