Hidden inheritance

Chapter 15: Wedding Alien Crashers

Max sighed as he struggled to put the bow tie on Ben's neck.

They were invited to Joel's wedding, and Ben had to be the ring bearer while Gwen was the flower girl. Except, while Gwen was excited to be part of the wedding, getting Ben to agree promised to be... difficult.

Gwen thought Ben was stretching it and being a baby about his argument with Xylene (and not just because of an incident where Ben turned into a baby along with his aliens a few days ago, during which Sixsix and Kraab made sure to get Ben's best profile when taking pictures without him noticing).

In Ben's part, he wasn't having much fun. Why did they have to go to a stupid wedding filled with other Plumber relatives that also didn't know who he was and would probably put him in a cage if they did? And what did Max even think before getting them to come?

If Ben hadn't found the Omnitrix and didn't learn about Max's past, they would never have come to this wedding, this was really taking advantage of him and Gwen. Besides, he had to learn how to dance, and if he was to dance, he needed to stand hearing Gwen being all schmaltzy about how glad she was to be a flower girl, learn not to step on her feet and seeing everyone just have the fun of their lives being hypocrites while meeting people they never heard of before.

If he was having a wedding, he'd get Vilgax to help, he knew how to smell out hypocrites and people who pretended they were glad to be here just to make themselves look good. Max was a good example.

Or maybe not. Vilgax also was a big showoff with the Chimerian Hammer and his way of boasting during battle, though Ben did admire him a bit for that. Let's hope he just didn't crash the wedding and revealed Ben's secret for a reason or another. Though beside the last part, he'd be glad if his father ruined the whole thing, at least he didn't have to be there if it was the case.

"This tuxedo was a family heirloom. It was mine when I was a kid, then... your dad wore it, and now you." said Max, adjusting Ben's tie.

Ben almost shot him with a death glare, but he knew better than call him out now. He might as well wait until his "dad" and "mom" were present if he wanted Max to get what he had coming. He couldn't believe he was going there wearing this ugly suit, red wasn't really his color. Vilgax's was, and Max's too, he preferred wearing green if anything.

"Smile and say Mega-Dweeb!" said Gwen, bringing her camera out.

In a second, as a reflex, Ben suddenly grabbed her arm and yanked the camera away.

"Ouch! Ben!"

"Sorry! Overreacted." apologized Ben.

"Are you sure you didn't take judo classes too? You almost broke my wrist!" she said, handling her arm.

"Sorry, that won't happen again."

"If that's how you react to a photo, let's hope you don't go Four Arms on everyone, mister ring bearer."

'Or Rath.' "I know I'd better not use the watch this time, this is a human wedding, not an alien one. They'd freak out if they had an alien with them and-"

"-and put you/me in a cage with bear food!"

Sometimes they wondered if they didn't have some sort of mental link to come up with similar ideas. Gwen guessed it was because she was related to a doofus that she could predict how he thought, Ben thought otherwise. He wasn't even sure he could call her his cousin at the moment.

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"This is where you live?" asked Alan, looking at the dump.