Title: Zombie Swarm
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Gwen, Ben, Kevin, Max, Alan, Cooper, Pierce, Helen, Manny
Words: 1,601
Summary: The end is nigh. Now if only they could find Ben & Kevin.
Disclaimer: Ben 10: Alien Force and Alien Swarm © Cartoon Network and created by Man of Action. I'm just stealing the characters temporarily and sticking them in the midst of a zombie uprising.
Warnings: Gwen swears. No, really. And there is also slash. THERE IS SLASH IN THIS CHAPTER. If that doesn't float your boat, you better hop off this ship now.

Zombie Swarm
By Minty Chinchilla
Chapter 8: Dead or Alive

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She could feel its energy pushing at her mental barriers, trying to break her down. Gwen pulled into herself to protect her mind, bringing up her memories of the runes and the spell. Holding her hands in front of her face, Gwen began drawing the runes through the air, a golden light trailing her fingers as the magic built up.

The golden symbols surrounded her for a moment, then swirled around and into her right hand. Gwen's eyes flew open as she slammed her hand into the cube.

Gwen shaped the spell around the cube, fighting with the dark energy that was trying to stop her. She pushed the magic into the cube, but it pushed the spell back out.

"Oh, no you don't!" Gwen brought her left hand to join her right and force the magic into the cube. The gold light vanished. Gwen backed away from the cube, warily watching it for any reaction to her spell.

"Uh… Gwen?" asked Ben as he continued to shoot superheated plasma at a mummy. "Shouldn't something have happened by now?"

"It better work. It's the only thing I got!" Gwen was getting desperate, and the others were still fighting the zombies. The undead were overtaking the heroes. Alan shot fireball after fireball after fireball, but the flaming zombies still tried to attack. Cooper's robot suit stomped around shooting lasers and missiles at the mass of corpses. Sizzling plasma fried one mummy, but the other mummies and zombies filled the space as it fell. Ben's constant shooting of the plasma blaster drained its power source. He ducked a few swipes of a mummy's sword and ran over to Kevin. He pulled a baseball bat out of the pocket dimension generator Kevin had slung over his back. Swinging the bat around to knock off a zombie's head, Ben continued his onslaught of angular momentum upon the undead.

As much damage as the team was doing, the zombies were everywhere. Gwen was about to run into the fray kicking brains out of skulls when the spell finally triggered. The cube shuddered a last glint of purple and the zombies started convulsing. Gwen recalled the spell's destructive purposes and realized that her friends were in danger of being blown to smithereens.

"Everybody, run! It's working, the spell's working, RUN GODDAMNIT!" Gwen's eyes flared pink and she shot streams of mana into the mob, pushing away at the dark energy that still swirled through the air so she could pull out Cooper and Max. Helen grabbed Pierce and zipped out of the mob, her brother in tow, and Manny jumped out after them. Alan was already aloft and flew away as quickly as he possibly could. The spell fully coalesced in the cube and all stood still for a split second.

A bubble of gold and pink magic shot out of the center point of Gwen's spell and expanded rapidly. It destroyed the cube and battered the zombies. The house was stripped of its outer layers, fiery explosions following the magic as it blasted through electrical wires and gas lines. Gwen put up a mana shield to prevent the magic from destroying herself, her friends, and their only means of transportation.

When the shockwave passed, Gwen dropped the shield, thankful the dark energy was nearly gone, merely wisping through the air as it searched for stability. The zombies were in cold, dead, unmoving bits and pieces all over the lawn. The house was nothing but a collapsing and burning framework. Gwen turned to her grandfather and returned his hug.

"You did it, pumpkin." Max smiled down at her and then turned to make sure the rest of the so-called "Max Force" was doing. He counted everyone that was behind Gwen's shield. Then he counted again. "Where are Ben and Kevin?"

Everyone looked around, and Ben and Kevin were nowhere to be seen. Had they not made it to safety before the spell blew everything up? Gwen ran back to where she had last seen them, and begin overturning chunks of rubble and toppled trees with her mana. The others soon followed, and shouts of "Ben!" and "Kevin!" and "Where did you dumbnuts go?" filled the air. There was no sign of either hero, and the minutes ticked by. The sheer radius of the destruction was too great for them to search through in one night.

Gwen scanned the area around what was left of the hole Humongousaur had jumped out of less than an hour before. She found a broken sword that looked like one the mummies were using, and as she bent to pick it up, a chunk of rubble to her right shifted. A little glow of blue light peeked out through a crack under the concrete as it was pushed up from below. Gwen almost wanted to shriek and run away, but she steeled herself for the worst and stretched out a snake of mana to scoot the rubble all the way off of the hole it was covering. After dumping it on the side, Gwen could feel that the blue light was a bubble of blue mana, complete with an Anodyte signature. The blue mana wavered, then blinked out.

"Nnnrrrrgh," an oddly familiar sounding grumble of pain issued from the hole. "What the heck just happened?"

"You just pulled a Gwen with one of them bubble… shield… things." Well, it sounded like Kevin was all right. "I think you were exposed to too much of that zombie energy stuff in the cube. You mutated or something."

"Are you serious? But I don't wanna be an energy being!" Ben was panicky. "I've already got my own set of superpowers and now Gwen'll just lord it over me that she's better at using them—"

"Ben, shut up." Right as Gwen poked her head over the edge of the hole, Kevin shut Ben up. With his mouth.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Gwen couldn't hold her tongue as she watched theirs sloppily fumble around. Ben and Kevin jumped upon hearing her voice. What a way for Gwen to find out they were hiding a relationship from her.

"Um… hi Gwen," Ben squeaked out. As nervous as he was about her killing him in a pink rage, he instinctively tightened his grip on Kevin's collar. Kevin just glared at Gwen, silently daring her to throw a bitch fit.

"For the last hour, we've been searching through debris for you two, and this whole time you've been making out in a hole?!" Saying Gwen was angry would be an understatement.

"Hey! We've only been at it for a few minutes!" Kevin felt the need to defend their position, which apparently involved his hands in the butt pockets of Ben's jeans. "He went all energy being when the whole place blew up!"

"I noticed when I found you guys. You know this means I'm going to have to train you to use mana now, right?" Gwen stared down into the hole at her cousin. He nodded in resignation. "Good. Now how long have you guys been together?"

"What makes you think we're together? This could just have been a spur of the moment… thing." Kevin was still feeling defensive.

"Because if it was 'spur of the moment,' you wouldn't still be hanging on to each other like monkeys." Gwen pointed at their tangled limbs. They took in the situation: Ben's arm wrapped around Kevin's neck, Kevin's hands on Ben's rear end…

"You know, I think she has a point, Kev." Ben conceded Gwen's argument. Kevin grumbled in response and pulled Ben closer.

"So how long?" Gwen stood up from where she was crouched at the end of the hole and put a hand on her hip.

"AyearnextTuesday," mumbled Kevin. Ben's face twitched; he was probably unaware of the "next Tuesday" part until now.

"A year? How'd you keep it a secret for so long? Why would you keep it a secret from me for so long?"

"We didn't want to risk you blowing us up. It was good incentive to keep things quiet," Ben answered. "You're not gonna blow us up, right?"

"I guess not," Gwen rolled her eyes as she spoke. "But I'm going to be keeping a closer eye on you guys. If either of you gets hurt, you'll be answering to me."

At that, Gwen used her mana to hoist the boys out of the hole and dragged them across the wreckage of the house and zombies back to the others. A couple cheers and some man hugs later, Max reminded everyone to check themselves for injuries, since he was going to go back to the Plumber's Hospital to see how the survivors from the mall were doing.

Besides a few broken bones on Pierce and Ben's bruised and nearly dislocated shoulder, it was all good. No bites, no incessant hunger for anything outside of ordinary food, and no dead people other than the zombies. Everyone looked around. There were bits and pieces of dead zombie corpse everywhere. Cooper kicked at a limp hand. It flopped over and landed on Manny's foot. The tetramand jumped and wiggled it off.

"We should do something about all the bodies, shouldn't we?" Helen asked.

"I think the outbreak was significant enough that law enforcement will come in and take care of it," replied Max. "I'm exhausted. You kids should be getting home and resting."

"Right. Yee-yuck! I need a shower." Ben picked at bits of dried zombie guts on his pants.

"I'll help you save water," said Kevin. He chucked his pocket dimension generator into the backseat of his Challenger and drove himself and Ben out through the gate and back to Bellwood.

"How's he gonna help Ben save water?" asked Alan. Gwen covered her eyes with her hands and promised herself she'd give those boys a strict talking-to later. Maybe when she starts training Ben on how to use his new powers. That's going to be fun.

The rest of the Max Force got into Manny's van and the Rustbucket III and followed the Challenger's dust away from the remains of the battlefield.

Fin

Notes:
- Useless ending chapter is useless. And short. Why did it take me so long to put this together? BRB, creating full outline for better story instead of winging it like this one.
- I had this finished before Alien Swarm aired in the United States (Wednesday November 25, 2009), but I forgot to post it. It felt off, but I gave up on trying to fix it. It still works the way it is.
- No, I will not be writing a sequel.
- No, there will be no writing about Anodyte!Ben.
- You can guess how Kevin's going to help Ben save water on your own.
- This whole time, I've been posted a majorly edited version. The original had more obvious Kevin/Ben romance in it. Not too sure if I want to share those edited bits or not.
- You liked this thing? You hated it? Let me know what I'm doing right and wrong so I can get better as a writer.
- And thanks for sticking with me through this. I loved writing it; action makes me happy. 3