Ben Ten: Surge of Extinction
The world had ended.
No—worse. The universe had.
Feet struck the broken pavement, each step sparking with static vibrance. A boy, lean and restless, streaked through the carcass of a city. His boots crackled blue with electric charge, each landing more desperate than the last. The ruined skyline loomed overhead—once Earth’s proud towers, now bound together by grotesque webs of alien flesh, meat-vines strung between skeletons of glass and steel.
Behind him, the husks came.
Once, they were people. Humans. Tetramands. Vulpimancers. Even tiny Galvans. Now they moved in jerks and spasms, their skin stretched tight and glistening, their eyes hollow and vacant, their limbs lashed together by the virus’ lattice. A moaning chorus of what was left of life.
The boy’s name pulsed across the back of his jacket in glowing white letters—KV. On his shoulder, etched into a chest plate tinted yellow, the unmistakable crest of the Omnitrix burned like a warning.
Kid Volt.
With a hiss, he spun his rod—a collapsible spear of Plumber alloy—sending arcs of electricity through the husks closing in. The weapon cracked skulls, split open meat-webs, and left glowing scorch marks in his wake. Still they came, swarming like water through a broken dam.
He vaulted onto a rusted car husk, spun, and struck down with a crack of thunder that lit the street like a strobe. For a moment, the army of the fallen staggered. And in that breath, KV ran.
A metallic hatch—half-buried, rusted, its seal scorched—yawned before him. A Plumber tube.
With one last charge, he dove inside. The hatch slammed down as husks clawed against it, their nails screeching on metal. KV slid down the spiraling shaft, sparks trailing his descent, before slamming into a maintenance tunnel. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t.
The device clutched to his chest pulsed softly—a compact sphere of Galvan design, alive with green veins of circuitry. He held it tighter as he sprinted, ducking under collapsed beams, smashing through stray husks that had clawed their way inside.
He reached the bottom of the Plumbers’ headquarters. Or what was left of it.
The great hub that had once stood as Earth’s shield was nothing more than bones. Walls blackened. Consoles shattered. The air stank of burnt circuits and rotting flesh.
KV staggered into a final chamber, its door still sealed. His rod clanged against the entry panel. The door screeched open—revealing a cramped bunker lit by the soft glow of fading Galvan tech.
And there they were. The last of them.
Blukic and Driba.
The two Galvans looked older than he’d ever seen, their tiny forms hunched over failing machines. Their wide eyes softened when they saw him.
“You made it,” Blukic said, voice cracking.
KV stumbled inside, collapsing to his knees. He shoved the device toward them, hands trembling. “Ken… the others… they didn’t…” His voice broke. “…they didn’t make it.”
Silence.
Driba’s hands hovered, unsure. Then, gently, he took the device. “We feared as much.” His small voice carried a weight no Galvan should ever have to bear.
Blukic placed a hand on KV’s arm. “Your fight… your losses… will not be for nothing. But there is no time to mourn. You must rise.”
The chamber shook. Dust rained from the ceiling. Outside, the husks had found them. The moans rose like a storm tide.
The Galvans scrambled, loading the device into a strange platform pulsing with blue light. A time machine cobbled from the wreckage of their species’ genius, powered by desperation alone.
KV’s breath quickened as the doors groaned under the husks’ assault. Shadows slipped through cracks in the wall, clutching, clawing.
Blukic shouted over the din. “Into the chamber—now!”
“I’m not ready—!” KV tried to protest, his body shaking with fatigue and rage.
“You were never meant to be ready,” Driba said. His tiny hands shoved against KV’s chest, guiding him toward the platform. “But you are all we have left.”
