The Omnitrix blazed with emerald light.
Energy erupted from the super-charged device in a singular, catastrophic instant—like the Big Bang compressed into a heartbeat. Ben Parker stood at the epicenter, his body the focal point for universal transformation.
BOOM!!!
The wave of genetic rewrite code exploded outward from him as the singularity, cascading across the entire universe at speeds that made light itself seem frozen. What appeared as shimmering curtains of aurora—beautiful, ethereal ribbons of green and white—was actually a reality-altering tsunami traveling billions of times faster than photons could dream.
Across countless star systems, on planets both inhabited and desolate, every Highbreed in existence was touched by the light.
On the Kree homeworld alone, dozens of undercover Highbreed operatives who had disguised themselves as ordinary citizens suddenly convulsed. Their holographic masks flickered and died. One Highbreed agent, posing as a merchant in the capital's central plaza, felt his chest ignite with burning sensation as branching horns erupted from his skull. He screamed, clutching his head as shoppers scattered in terror.
Another, stationed in a military facility, watched in horror as her pristine white skin rippled and hardened, transforming into craggy obsidian stone. Her disguise shattered like glass, revealing her true form—now forever altered, marked by veins of crystalline purple threading through the black.
The mutations were as diverse as they were irreversible. Some Highbreed developed bioluminescent patterns across their wings. Others found scales replacing smooth skin, or eyes multiplying across their faces, or entirely new limbs sprouting from their torsos.
And on that same Kree world, something even more miraculous occurred.
The DNAliens—those parasitized, mutated husks that had once been ordinary Kree citizens—began to change. The parasitic organisms controlling their bodies withered and died, genetic code unraveling as Ben's rewrite protocol rejected foreign contamination. Across the planet, thousands of blue-skinned Kree collapsed to the ground, gasping and confused, their minds suddenly their own again after months or years of enslavement.
Dr. Curt Connors groaned, his head pounding as consciousness returned in fragments.
He blinked against harsh overhead lighting, vision swimming into focus. Blue faces surrounded him—not Highbreed white, but the distinctive azure complexion of the Kree. They stared down at him with expressions ranging from confusion to anger to overwhelming relief.
Where...?
Memories crashed back. The climate tower. The investigation. The giant white moth-creature with those compound eyes and razor-sharp mandibles. He'd transformed into his Lizard form, scales hardening, claws extending, every enhanced sense screaming danger—
And he'd still lost.
"A complete embarrassment," Connors muttered, rubbing the back of his skull where a massive lump throbbed. Professional humiliation burned hotter than any physical pain. Defeated by an oversized insect while in Lizard form. Wonderful addition to my academic record.
He pushed himself upright, taking in his surroundings properly for the first time. The chamber was vast and metallic, clearly Kree architecture given the angular geometric patterns and blue-tinted alloy. Dozens of former DNAliens milled about, touching their faces and bodies with trembling hands, as if confirming they were truly themselves again.
"Who am I? Where am I?" one Kree woman whispered nearby, her voice cracking with emotion.
Connors' scientific mind catalogued the scene rapidly. Mass restoration event. Simultaneous genetic reconstitution across multiple subjects. Given the scope and my own unconsciousness during the event...
"Ben must have resolved everything," he murmured, then caught sight of movement near the chamber's far wall.
His eyes widened.
A Highbreed stood there—one of them, he was certain, recognizing the distinctive wing structure and proportions. But this particular specimen looked like someone had taken a paintbrush to a canvas of fur. The creature's entire body blazed with vibrant emerald green, so bright it practically glowed against the chamber's dim lighting.
Is that... the one who defeated me?
Several other Highbreed clustered nearby, and Connors realized with a start that every single one bore wildly different colorations. One resembled living amber, golden and translucent. Another had skin like polished amethyst. A third seemed to shift between shades of crimson and orange, as though flames flickered beneath the surface.
"They look like a rave went terribly wrong," Connors said, then paused. "Or perhaps terribly right, depending on perspective."
"I... I'm no longer pure!"
The wail echoed through the chamber, raw and anguished.
For the Highbreed themselves, the transformation was existential agony—not physical, but philosophical. Their entire civilization had been built on genetic supremacy, on the sanctity of their bloodline, on the absolute purity of their white skin and uniform appearance.
And now?
The green-furred Highbreed stared at his reflection in a polished metal wall panel. His compound eyes, now ringed with darker jade, reflected back a stranger. Emerald fur covered every inch of his body, thick and soft where pristine white skin had once stretched taut.
But even as horror and shame threatened to consume him, something else registered.
The pain was gone.
Every breath he'd taken for the last fifty years had felt like inhaling shards of glass. Every movement had sent jolts of agony through deteriorating joints. His vision had been clouded by genetic cataracts, his thoughts sluggish from neurological decay.
Now?
He drew a breath—deep, full, unrestricted. His lungs expanded effortlessly. The constant burning sensation had vanished entirely. He flexed his fingers, feeling strength and precision instead of stiffness and trembling.
The backache that had plagued him since adolescence—gone.
The leg pain that made walking torture—gone.
The colorblindness that had reduced his world to shades of gray—reversed, colors now exploding across his vision with almost overwhelming vibrancy.
Even his intelligence, dulled by genetic deterioration, suddenly sharpened. Thoughts came quick and clear. Memories that had been fog crystallized with perfect clarity.
"By the ancestors," he breathed, voice trembling with wonder. "Is this... is this what it feels like to be healthy?"
Around him, other Highbreed were experiencing identical revelations. The amber-colored female tested her wings, gasping as they spread wide without the usual grinding pain in her shoulder joints. The amethyst male straightened his spine fully for the first time in decades, tears streaming down his face.
"Damn it," the green Highbreed suddenly snarled, rounding on his companions. "Why didn't Sirius XII tell us it would be like this?"
The others blinked at him in confusion.
"He should have said how incredible we'd feel once the genetic breakdown was resolved!" The green one gestured wildly at his own body, his new fur rippling. "If he'd mentioned this earlier, I would have volunteered for contamination immediately! Years of suffering for nothing!"
Silence fell across the group.
Then, slowly, one of the other Highbreed cleared their throat. "To be entirely fair... we never actually asked him what it felt like."
More silence.
"We were rather busy calling him a race traitor and threatening execution," another added quietly.
The green Highbreed's wings drooped. "...Point taken."
"Well," he said finally, squaring his shoulders. "We're not making that mistake twice. Move!"
"Where?"
"To find the Elders!" He shoved past the confused Kree crowd, his enhanced strength sending several former DNAliens stumbling. "Someone needs to explain why we've been suffering our entire lives when the solution was this simple!"
The other Highbreed exchanged glances, then followed.
The Kree, still disoriented from their own restoration, could only watch helplessly as the colorful parade of transformed Highbreed marched toward the central tower.
Inside the conference hall at the tower's apex, chaos of a different sort had erupted.
The Highbreed Elders—the supreme council that had governed their species for generations—stood in various states of shock. Each bore the marks of genetic restoration, their once-uniform white bodies now adorned with patterns and hues that would have been unthinkable mere moments ago.
One Elder's massive moth-like wings now trailed behind him like an elaborate festival costume, each segment a different jewel tone—sapphire bleeding into ruby bleeding into emerald. The effect was undeniably beautiful, like living stained glass.
But beauty wasn't the point.
Purity was the point.
And purity was dead.
They stared at each other in horror, in disbelief, in fury so absolute it transcended words. This was violation on a cosmic scale. This was the destruction of everything they'd stood for, everything they'd believed themselves to be.
Among the newly "cured" Highbreed, one Elder stood as a testament to cosmic irony.
His once-pristine, bone-white skin had curdled into a sickly, jaundiced yellow-brown, mottled with irregular patches of bruised purple. It wasn't just a color change; his flesh seemed to be melting, sagging in heavy, bloated folds that defied the Highbreed's usual statuesque grace. Oozing pustules pockmarked his chest, weeping a thick, amber fluid that matted his ceremonial robes.
Then there was the smell. It was a violent assault on the senses—a sulfurous, bog-like rot that suggested something had died inside his digestive tract and was now fermenting in the heat of his rage.
The Elder knew exactly what had happened. He had spent centuries cataloging "lesser" species to justify their extinction, and now, his own cellular structure was echoing the most reviled file in the archives. A species so biologically offensive they were considered a living violation of aesthetic law.
His entire frame trembled. He raised a hand—now webbed, slimy, and trembling with a bloated weight—and pointed a shaking finger at Ben Parker. Small arcs of static electricity hissed between the pustules on his knuckles, a byproduct of his volatile new metabolism.
"How—" His voice, once a resonant baritone, was now a wet, phlegm-filled croak. "How dare you!"
Ben stood before the assembled Elders, arms crossed, the Cosmic Cube cradled in one hand. Its pale blue light caught the glistening trails of slime on the Elder's face, making the horror look even more luminous. Ben's expression remained carefully neutral, but Sirius XII, standing a pace behind him, caught the microscopic twitch of a smirk.
He's enjoying this, Sirius realized, a cold shiver of dread tracing his spine.
"How dare you do this to the High Order!" the Elder shrieked, a spray of foul-smelling spittle flying from his distorted lips. "The purity of our bloodline... the sanctity of our genetic heritage... tainted! Corrupted by this... this heap of biological refuse!"
As the Elder's rage boiled, his body temperature spiked, intensifying the stench of swamp gas and decay. Even his fellow Elders—the ones who had been "cured" with more aesthetically pleasing species—subtly recoiled, shifting their weight to put distance between themselves and the walking biohazard.
"Hmm." Ben tilted his head, studying the Elder with the clinical detachment of a scientist looking at a Petri dish. "You know, you really did pull the short straw. I recognize that look."
The Elder froze, his breath hitching in a wet rattle.
"That's DNA from Toepick's species," Ben continued conversationally, his voice echoing in the sudden, horrified silence of the chamber. "The Ogre-ians... or was it Gravidiosum? I can never keep the taxonomic designations straight. Regardless—they're lovely people once you get past the appearance. And the smell. And the fact that their faces are a literal psychological war crime to any species with a nervous system."
Ben leaned in just an inch, his eyes cold. "But hey, on the bright side? At least you're not extinct. You're just... hard to look at."
Sirius XII felt his worldview crack further. He deliberately...
"I remember reading," Ben went on, tapping his chin thoughtfully, "that looking directly at an unmasked Toepick for more than thirty seconds can cause permanent sanity loss in species without proper strong mentality. Something about the asymmetry triggering primal fear responses. Fascinating evolutionary adaptation, really."
The Elder's compound eyes bulged. His mouth worked soundlessly.
"Of course," Ben added, "being ugly or smelling bad are just minor cosmetic concerns. I would never judge someone based on superficial physical characteristics."
The pause stretched.
"But you do," Ben finished, his voice dropping several degrees. "Don't you?"
The Elder made a strangled noise.
"Your entire civilization judges based on genetic purity and physical uniformity," Ben continued, his casual tone belying the steel beneath. "So I figured—why not give you a very personal understanding of what it feels like to be deemed 'inferior' based on nothing but appearance?"
Sirius XII couldn't breathe. The sheer calculated cruelty of it—giving this particular Elder, the most xenophobic of them all, the genetic markers of a species he'd specifically classified as disgusting—
He's a monster, Sirius thought. And he saved my entire species.
The realization was dizzying.
"BEN PARKER!" The Elder's voice cracked into a shriek. "You despicable bastard! Your scheme will not succeed! Don't think for one moment that we Highbreed will submit to you!"
His wings flared wide, pustules bursting with the motion and filling the air with even more putrid stench.
"We would rather DIE!" he roared. "Do you hear me? We'd rather die than live as tainted, mongrel mockeries of our former glory! We'd—"
The conference room doors exploded inward.
A wave of brilliantly colored Highbreed burst through, wings spread, compound eyes blazing with very different emotions than their Elder expected.
"Oh, how selfish can you be?!" the green-furred Highbreed shouted, pointing accusingly at the pustule-covered Elder.
The Elder gaped. "What—"
"You don't want to live anymore?!" a ruby-skinned female snarled. "That's your choice! But the rest of us do!"
"Traitor!" someone else bellowed.
What followed was less a reasoned debate and more a spontaneous riot.
The younger Highbreed descended on their Elder like a swarm of very colorful, very angry moths. Fists flew. Wings buffeted. The Elder's protests were drowned out by furious accusations.
"This Elder has betrayed our species!"
"He wants us all to die just to preserve his precious pride!"
"Beat him! Beat the traitor!"
Sirius XII watched in absolute stupefaction as two Highbreed demonstrated what could only be described as a combination attack—one extended vine-like appendages to immobilize the Elder while the other breathed a concentrated jet of flame across his already-pustule-covered back.
The Elder's screams were entirely unsympathetic to his attackers.
"HELP!" He thrashed in the vine restraints, compound eyes wild with panic and genuine fear. "Someone help me! Fellow Elders, I command you to assist!"
The other Elders suddenly found the ceiling extremely interesting.
"Sorry," one murmured, examining his newly-colorful wing patterns with obvious fascination. "Can't hear you over the sound of my genetic stabilization."
"Traitor problems are traitor problems," another added, testing the flexibility of his new crystalline skin plates.
"We want to live too!" a third Elder declared, and several others nodded vigorous agreement.
Ben watched the chaos unfold with barely concealed amusement. Sirius XII, meanwhile, felt his entire understanding of Highbreed society crumbling into dust.
They're... they're all...
"Shameless," he whispered.
As if to punctuate his observation, two of the Elders actually stood up and approached Ben directly, spreading their wings in what could only be described as preening.
"Lord Parker," one began, his voice unctuous with sudden deference. "I must confess—I always found pure white to be rather monotonous, don't you think? This new appearance is so much more... aesthetically dynamic."
"Indeed!" the other agreed enthusiastically, doing a small twirl to show off his iridescent wing patterns. "Am I pretty?"
"Absolutely stunning!" they assured each other.
Then, as one, they crouched down and fixed Ben with expressions of obsequious gratitude.
"Sirius XII," one Elder began, his tone suggesting they were old friends, "as you well know, I have always been a progressive thinker. The old ways, the obsession with uniformity—outdated concepts, clearly. This new diversity of appearance is exactly what our species needed."
"Quite right!" another chimed in. "Ben Parker—no, Great Lord Parker, Master of the Omnitrix, King of Sakaar, Sovereign of—"
"I think he gets the idea," Sirius interrupted weakly.
"You shall forever be honored as the benefactor and savior of the Highbreed!" the Elder concluded with a flourish.
Ben raised an eyebrow, glancing between the groveling Elders and the continuing mob beating in the background.
"What about him?" He gestured casually toward the pustule-covered Elder, who was now curled in a ball while younger Highbreed took turns kicking him. "Seems like he's having a rough time."
The cooperative Elders' expressions hardened instantly.
"That one?" An Elder sniffed disdainfully. "He has seriously betrayed the Atasians and is an evil criminal who attempted to destroy our entire species through his suicidal pride."
"We must strike hard against such treachery!" another declared.
"No mercy for race traitors!" a third added.
Ben had to hand it to them—the speed of their about-face was actually impressive in its shamelessness.
And beneath the absurdity, he understood the deeper truth.
The Highbreed's xenophobia hadn't been rooted in genuine supremacy. It had been a coping mechanism for unbearable suffering. When every single breath caused pain, when your body deteriorated from birth, when you knew your species was dying by inches—ideology became a shield. Pride became armor against the reality of helplessness.
We're superior, they'd told themselves. We're pure. We're better than those mongrel species who mix their genes freely.
Because admitting the truth—that they were dying and had no solution—was unbearable.
But now?
Now they could breathe without pain. Move without agony. Think clearly without the fog of neurological decay. All the suffering that had seemed inescapable, that had defined their entire existence, had vanished in a single moment.
Pride couldn't compete with relief.
"If this is what it means to be a 'lower life form,'" one of the younger Highbreed announced, flexing his newly painless joints with obvious joy, "then we are honored to become lower life forms!"
Agreement rippled through the crowd.
Even the Elders, despite their rapid heel-turn, seemed to mean it. One tested his wings—spreading them fully for the first time in perhaps centuries without the grinding sensation of bone-on-bone. Tears streamed down his face.
"I had forgotten," he whispered, voice thick with emotion. "I had forgotten what it felt like to move without pain."
Sirius XII felt his own eyes burning.
His people had been saved.
Not through glorious conquest or racial superiority, but through the forced compassion of an alien who'd grown tired of their self-destructive pride.
We didn't deserve this, he thought, watching his fellow Highbreed celebrate their contamination with the enthusiasm of the newly converted. But we received it anyway.
Ben Parker caught his eye and offered the slightest shrug, as if to say: Sometimes people need to be saved from themselves.
In the corner, the pustule-covered Elder finally stopped struggling against his attackers, his spirit broken.
The Highbreed species had been reborn.
And not a single one of them, it seemed, actually minded.
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