Ben 10 and all associated characters are owned by Man of Action and Cartoon Network.

The following story depicts incest between first cousins, any who would be triggered by such content are advised to stop reading immediately.

It was midnight in a forgotten corner of the former United States. The two sat in a large room of an abandoned factory, iron pillars adorning the halls and glass of shattered windows lining the floor. This was as far away as they could get from prying eyes without adding extra work to an already arduous endeavor. Neither of them enjoyed being there, but it was necessary for the task ahead.

"How certain are you this spell is gonna work?" the girl said. She was about twelve, with brown shaggy hair and pale skin. Her outfit was plain, tomboyish even, a green and white t-shirt, khakis, and a green hoodie.

"Eh… I mean… I don't want to start rambling off numbers," the boy said. He was about ten, dressed more ornately, a purple sports coat over a red t-shirt, complimenting his ginger hair. He was occupied in drawing a chalk triangle on the floor, just large enough for him to sit in. He'd spent so much time working on the calculations that there was simply no way it could go wrong. Well, actually that was bullshit. There was always a chance anything and everything could go catastrophically wrong. Sometimes all the training in the world can't save you from when fate throws a curveball.

"Len, don't start." The girl shot him a grim look.

"Eighty-five percent. Sis, you know time travel isn't an exact science."

"Len, you're practicing magic. It's not a science at all," the girl said as she rolled her eyes.

"Okay, fair. But the spell was designed for one individual use at a time, not for a pair of siblings," he interjected. "The Archamada is a difficult enough spellbook to crack as is, even master warlocks struggle to comprehend the contents." He looked again at the book within the triangle, an already hefty tome further weighed down with hundreds of sticky notes, some of them his, and some from previous owners.

"It's a good thing you're so bloody smart then."

"You do know Mom would kill us if she found out what we were doing," Len said, finishing the triangle. He moved to start lighting the candles at the three points of the ritual zone.

"We beat her to the punch then, huh?" Len's sister remarked. "Hey, will Mom be able to follow us? I mean, if you can open a portal, why can't she?"

"Funny gimmick of time travel. The moment we arrive the changes to the timeline will already be in effect. Mom won't be able to intervene, because the second we're gone, there was never anything for her to intervene in. Of course, we're still going to have to do the work, but… it'll sort itself out. Time has a way of healing old wounds, even its own."

Len moved to ignite one of the candles, but paused for a moment, letting the match burn away in his hand. "Jenny, do you have any regrets about what we're going to do?"

Jen scratched the back of her head, trying not to look Len in the eyes. "No," she said. "I love Mom more than anything, and she deserves a second chance. What everyone did to her was— It was sickening. They went out of their way to ruin her life because she made two dumb mistakes. Or, I guess it was one dumb mistake she made twice. I know she was going to do great things, and be a great hero. She made… ridiculous sacrifices for us. She's just grown too sentimental to realize it. And look at how people have treated us!" Jen said, almost shouting. "We've been called freaks and bastards our entire lives. Nobody's ever going to take us seriously with this whole hero shtick, even if I've got this thing strapped to my arm!" She held up her left arm, revealing the glowing green watch she'd once worn so proudly.

"An Omnitrix alone does not a hero make," Len said, finally lighting the last of the candles.

"You're starting to sound like Dad," Jen quipped.

Len turned to his sister. "That's half the problem, isn't it?" he said. "We tried to follow in their footsteps. Fat load of good that did anyone."

"I know, and I know what you're going to say, 'sins of the father' and all that crap. Well in this case, Len, we did inherit their sins. Sins that are branded on our DNA."

"Easy for you to say. You can override your DNA whenever the hell you want. That Omnitrix of yours is a better parlor trick than anything Mom ever taught me."

"I thought you said you never even wanted an Omnitrix? You said the whole deal of metamorphoses creeped you out."

"It does, but that doesn't mean I'll stop bitching about it," Len said with a light chuckle.

"Brat," Jen said laughing. "How much longer till the spell will be up and running?"

"Shouldn't be long now. Most of the work was trying to decode the damn cipher. Also, why do mages never just leave simple instructions? It would save all of us a whole lotta time."

"I don't know, maybe it's a cliché?" Jen said, shrugging.

Len shrugged in response, and moved to the center of the triangle, sitting cross-legged and flipping through the spellbook, trying to find the right page.

"Lotta spells in here I wanted to try one day. Yah know, Mom kept this spellbook dangling in front of me like a carrot. She knew a chance to even peek at this thing was enough to keep me studying."

Jen thought solemnly for a moment, musing on the memories she was soon going to give up, trying not to have second thoughts, but still succumbing to the temptation of nostalgia. "She knows us well. Always had the sense of what we were up to, even when she was off in a separate dimension. Wonder how she pulled that off."

"I've heard it comes from being a mom," Len said. "Motherhood is a type of sorcery that I will simply never comprehend."

"And what about the sorcery sitting right in front of you?" Jen said, the impatience growing in her voice. Len had been haphazardly flicking through the pages, squinting as he tried to read the faded print.

"I'm working on it! And just so you know, even getting my hands on this spellbook was no easy task! Some appreciation would be welcome," he said, his eye twitching. The pages were so old and degraded that even making out the text was a challenge, combine that with the aforementioned propensity for mages to encode, scramble, or otherwise obscure the instructions made reading spellbooks, at the bare minimum, a time-consuming project.

"Mom kept this thing on the high-shelf?" Jen said as she stared down and the odd-looking tome.

"Try locked in a pocket dimension she used as her personal study. Just walking in that room gave me serious vertigo. I've no idea how she can keep herself locked in there for days on end."

"You're certain she has no idea you took it?"

"I want to say there's no magic in existence that could spot my illusion, but like I said, motherhood is a unique brand of the arcane."

"I don't even question how things work in this family. Didn't Mom tell us something about mana and those Anodite precursors? Or am I just half-remembering? Those lectures of hers had a tendency to put me to sleep."

"I recall. You didn't even fall asleep that fast when she sang us lullabies. As for the whole Anodite thing, it doesn't do much for me. Has a habit of manifesting in the female line, leaving only the bare scraps of genetic potential for the males. It's why she wanted to teach you magic so quickly after you were born."

"Well, that backfired," Jen said as she examined her Omnitrix. "If that's the case, why'd it come to you so naturally? Shouldn't it have been next to impossible for you to learn?"

"Technically, any sapient being can learn magic. The Anodite blood gives a head start, sure, but none of it means anything if you don't put the work in."

"Ah, yah see, that's where Mom went wrong. Me and work, not on the same page," Jen said, grinning.

"I know, you only seem to do work when it actually involves a spotlight," Len muttered. "But there was never a spotlight ready for either of us. We'll always be seen as freaks, no matter how many people we save."

Jen took a moment to think before responding. "Len, do you still remember those lullabies?"

"How could I not? She sang them to us until I was, what, seven? I think she was trying to pretend we were a normal family. Tried to raise us like we were every other kid. But we just aren't, and we could never be normal kids." Even after all these years, Len could still remember vividly his mother singing to him in his cradle. And he was ignorant enough to think that his mother knew all the secrets of the universe, and so long as he was by her everything would be okay. He'd learned otherwise since then.

"I don't even want to think too much about the implications we bring just by existing, Len. Just tell me when you have it figured out. I don't wanna spend any more time here than we ha—" Jen stopped, immediately turning around.

"Jen? Jenny? What's wrong? What're yo—"

"Shhh!"

"What the hell are you do—"

"Shut up! Someone's here!" Jen hissed.

"Are you off your rocker or something? I know you're prone to paranoia, but you gotta lighten up sometimes. I can assure you, nobody's here, I would've sensed them."

Jen shot her brother a sharp grimace. "Can't some mages obscure themselves from extra-sensory perceptions?"

Len thought to himself for a moment. "Well, yeah, some, but that's incredibly advanced training. You'd have to be a master mage to even… Jesus Christ," Len said as he turned to his sister, a look of horror forming on his face. "Mom."

Jen looked around nervously, dialing through her Omnitrix, trying to find something that could possibly help.

"What're you gonna do, fight our Mom? Unless you've got an apology card in that alien lineup of yours, I'd say we're both pretty much fucked."

"You worry about the spell, I'll worry about Mom!"

"You make it sound like I can't worry about both," Len said, his voice shaking.

"Less jabbering, more magic! We're on a deadline now!"

"Oh fuck me. Well, I was hoping we'd have more time to prepare the incantation, but looks like we're all in!" Len said as he closed his eyes. The feeling of mana entering his body began to slowly overtake him, causing a shiver to crawl up his spine as his nervous system began to be overwhelmed. He'd never done a spell this complex before, not even close. And further tampering with it was not a good idea, but it seemed good ideas weren't in fashion anymore. Any other time, he'd have been proud, and this would have been his greatest achievement if he pulled it off, but times for congratulations were long since gone. His concentration began to solidify, only to be shattered by the sound of a familiar voice.

"Leonard! Jenny! It's Mom! Please, whatever it is you're doing, you have to stop!"

"Len, ignore her! Don't pay any attention! Just stay focused on the spell!" his sister yelled. "Mom, please, just stay out of this! We know what we're doing. This is for all of us, we're trying to fix this!"

Len tried to ignore everything being said around him, not willing to open his eyes. He couldn't bear to look at his mother.

"I don't— don't know what you think you're trying to fix, but you don't understand. You're my children! I don't— What you think I believe, but it's wrong! I love you two more than anything! Please, just listen to me! You were the greatest things that ever hap— happened to me! I wouldn't change anything about what happened. Please, for the love of God, stop— stop that spell and just talk to me!"

"Mom, you don't get it! We're trying to help you! We're going to fix everything!"

Len struggled to keep his train of thought. He could hear spells and plasma being fired off around him, but unwilling to open his eyes and witness the conflict playing out before him. He strained himself as he began uttering the incantation, "Quis quandum era maflictus…"

"Leonard, STOP! For God Almighty, don't! I know what that spell does!" Gwendolyn screamed. "Lenny, please listen to me!"

He could hear Jen fiddling with her Omnitrix, desperately trying to find the right alien, but he knew that was pointless. She was trying to pull a miracle out of a faux technological miracle. He remembered the time she'd first gotten it. How she was so happy, and how she said she was going to be the greatest superhero ever. She was never so thrilled in all her life, and the potential for that happiness to grow shone so brightly that birthday. Now it had vanished, and the same device she'd once thought a miracle was now her mark of Cain.

"IIem feachus mas redentegero…"

"I don't need anything fixed! I'm happy with the way things are! Please, I can't— I can't lose my babies! Please, stop!" Gwendolyn yelled to her children.

Len felt his skin crawl as the spell began to manifest, levitating him a few inches off the ground, but he could not speak the final words until his sister was with him. They were a team, they were going to sort this out together. He tried his best to concentrate, not break the spell, or have the spell break him instead. He shuddered as his skull seemed to throb from the worst headache he'd ever had. But he couldn't give up until—

"Len, I'm here! Finish it!"

"Quis venit pro mas mesquam essei!"

"NO!"

There was a flash of light as the room went silent.