Growing Pains • Ben 10 [On Hold]

Chapter 4: Ben + Responsibility = Problems

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One of the first things Lenny registered was discomfort. Discomfort so great in its scale, it muscled its way past the initial pain of falling a great distance and landing on her tailbone.

It demanded her full and undivided acknowledgement. Like the thin pads of an insect crawling over her skin, disturbing the hairs and alerting the brain to its presence. Like someone took the entirety of her digestive tract, threw all and sundry into a blender and left it to run overnight.

Her stomach turned. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, dry as a strip of sandpaper. And her butt hurt. It really, really, really hurt.

Another thing Lenny noticed was that she laid on her chest, on the cool surface of an unknown vessel. She stretched a hand over and behind to try and alleviate a bit of her pain, to try and massage what portion of her lower back she could reach while on the floor, and she realized her fingers were no longer covered in scales. That they weren’t elongated with the addition of one too many joints. That they weren’t a deep shade of red and tipped with claws sharp as a blade.

And that when her shoulders bent, they bent as they would when she was in her normal form. Her human form. Without the obstruction of leathery wings reminiscent of a bat’s. Lennox’s eyes surveyed her surroundings, her vision dim and hazy, and she found she no longer possessed an enhanced ability to see in the dark.

She could see, but barely. Using her sense of touch as her sight was currently out for the count, Lennox patted the wrist of her left arm with quick, hurried motions. The sound of skin slapping skin changed when her palm connected with something raised, inorganic. Her lungs flattened with the release of a glorious sigh. It was still there, her watch.

Lenny brought its screen close enough to her eyes that the tip of her nose grazed it, and though the image was black around the edges and filtered through a blurry film, the piercing red glare of the watch’s emblem read well. From her scratchy, dry throat, a groan burst.

In the duration of maybe a few minutes, Lennox had managed to task her watch to the point of it having to time out, to recharge. And until it was done teaching her a lesson, she wouldn’t be able to perform any more transformations, and the wretched red would continue to hold her hostage. Coupled with her visibility compromised and her legs now tubes of paste, she was as vulnerable as she’d ever been.

How icy.

The need to wretch and heave until the end of time passing, Lennox braced her hands beneath her body and pulled herself up to her knees. Dizzy, she lost her balance once, and her forehead dinged onto a panel plated with metal. Blinking, she rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket while her other hand felt up the wall to which she was pressed.

Yep, that’s metal. The walls of her dad’s toolshed were concrete.

Her ears popped and through a dull ringing, a world of noise invaded her senses. Scuffles of shoes, the palming of a forehead. Unintelligible moans slowly morphing into comprehensible speech. Voices.