BEN 10: ULTIMATE ALIEN
"Still Water"
A Fan-Made Episode Script — Written in the style of Dwayne McDuffie
COLD OPEN
INT. BELLWOOD GENERAL HOSPITAL — CORRIDOR — DAY
Fluorescent light. Squeaky floors. The particular silence of a building full of people being very quiet.
BEN TENNYSON sits in a plastic chair outside a closed room, elbows on knees, staring at the floor. He's been here a while — there's a half-eaten vending machine sandwich on the chair beside him he forgot about.
He's not in hero mode.
He's just a sixteen-year-old kid in a hospital hallway.
MAX TENNYSON's voice comes from behind the closed door — filtered, weak, the version of his voice that doesn't give orders.
Ben doesn't go in.
He just sits.
His wrist comm buzzes.
PLUMBER DISPATCH (V.O.)
(automated, clipped)
Alert. Seismic anomaly. Downtown Bellwood, Meridian Street. Civilian reports of ground displacement and—
Ben reaches over.
Turns it off.
Sits back.
Stares at the floor again.
Ten seconds.
He picks up the comm.
Turns it back on.
BEN
(quiet, to himself)
Yeah. I know.
He stands.
Looks at the closed door.
Looks at the sandwich.
Leaves the sandwich.
Walks.
EXT. BELLWOOD — MERIDIAN STREET — DAY
Downtown. Lunch crowd. All of it currently doing what lunch crowds do when the ground starts moving — running in several directions at once.
The source is visible from a block away: a figure in the center of the intersection, seated cross-legged on asphalt that isn't cracking so much as flowing — rippling outward from his position in slow, ground-level waves, like the street itself is breathing.
MORVANE.
Roughly human in shape but made entirely of compressed sedimentary layers — you can see the strata in him, the geological history of something that took millions of years to become what it is. Old. Genuinely, cosmically old. His eyes are closed. His hands rest on his knees.
He's meditating.
The city is falling apart around him because he's meditating.
BEN
(arriving, looking at the rippling ground)
Hey.
Morvane opens one eye.
MORVANE
(voice like deep earth settling)
Tennyson.
BEN
You're liquefying the street.
MORVANE
(closing the eye again)
I'm aware.
BEN
You need to stop.
MORVANE
(simply)
I cannot.
A ripple rolls outward, buckling a section of sidewalk.
BEN
(watching it)
Can't, or won't?
MORVANE
(both eyes open now, something old and tired in them)
When my kind meditates, we ground ourselves. Literally. We connect to the earth beneath us and we become still.
(pause)
I have not been still in eleven years. Not since my planet—
He stops.
The ripple that rolls out from that pause is larger than the others.
MORVANE
(quieter)
I cannot stop because I do not know how to be still anymore. And the longer I try, the worse the tremors become.
Ben looks at him.
At the rippling ground.
At the closed-off intersection.
Then at the Ultimatrix.
BEN
(quiet)
Okay.
ACT ONE
He slaps the dial.
[TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE]
Green flash — white-out — and TERRASPIN lands in a low, wide stance. Turtle-like shell, flipper-arms, the compact, grounded geometry of something built to deal with wind and pressure and force.
BEN (AS TERRASPIN)
(looking at his own flipper-arms)
Terraspin. Okay. Aeromancer. Wind, vacuum generation, flight.*
(looking at Morvane)
Not exactly the obvious choice here.
MORVANE
(watching him)
No.
TERRASPIN
(crouching near the rippling ground)
But wind needs something to push against. And what's the opposite of movement?
He doesn't answer his own question.
He sits.
Cross-legged.
On the rippling ground.
Directly across from Morvane.
MORVANE
(uncertain)
What are you doing.
TERRASPIN
(settling)
Sitting down. You got a problem with that?
Terraspin tucks his flipper-arms in.
Closes his eyes.
And instead of generating wind outward — instead of the usual spin, the vacuum, the force — he generates the opposite. A contained, inward pressure. A stillness field. Not a power. An absence of one.
The ground around him, within a three-foot radius, stops rippling.
Morvane stares at that three feet of still ground.
MORVANE
(barely a whisper)
How.
TERRASPIN
(eyes still closed)
Wind is just moving air. If I move air inward instead of outward, I create a low-pressure anchor. A still point.
(beat)
It's like the eye of a storm. Everything moving around it. Nothing moving inside.
The still circle holds.
Three feet.
The rest of the intersection continues to ripple.
TERRASPIN (CONT'D)
(quiet)
The problem is three feet isn't enough.
ACT TWO
Terraspin pushes.
Trying to expand the stillness field outward, to widen the eye of the storm, to give Morvane enough still ground that he can actually anchor himself to it.
The field trembles.
Pushes back.
Morvane's eleven years of accumulated stillness-debt pushing against a containment field that wasn't built for geological force.
TERRASPIN
(straining, eyes still closed)
You said eleven years.
MORVANE
(watching the field tremble)
Yes.
TERRASPIN
(through the effort)
What happened eleven years ago.
A beat.
The ground ripple intensifies.
MORVANE
(flat)
My planet was destroyed. Seventy billion people. In approximately four minutes.
The field buckles.
Terraspin plants harder.
TERRASPIN
(quiet, not letting the effort into his voice)
I'm sorry.
MORVANE
(old grief, not fresh — the kind that's been carried so long it's part of the weight)
I survived because I was not there. I have been moving ever since. Planet to planet. Never still. Because every time I try to be still, I feel the ground of a world that no longer exists.
The ripples hit Terraspin's field hard.
He slides back a foot.
Two.
TERRASPIN
(losing ground)
And your stillness makes the earth move.
MORVANE
(watching him slide)
My stillness was always connected to my world. Without it — there is nothing to connect to. Nothing to ground through. The energy has nowhere to go except outward.
Terraspin loses another foot.
The three-foot still circle is down to one.
TERRASPIN
(honest, from the ground)
I can't hold this. Not like this.
He opens his eyes.
Looks at the Ultimatrix symbol on his chest.
TERRASPIN (CONT'D)
(quietly, to himself)
Three feet isn't enough.*
(beat)
I need to be the ground itself.
[ULTIMATE TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE]
The Ultimatrix symbol SNAPS open.
Terraspin's compact, shell-based frame expands — not upward, downward. His shell thickens and widens, flattening and broadening like a foundation being laid, his body distributing weight outward rather than upward. Additional shell plating extends from his base in overlapping layers, each one locking into the next, creating a physical surface area that covers the ground beneath him like a lid being placed over something volatile.
His flipper-arms press flat to the ground on either side.
His eyes, when they open, are the same color as deep earth.
BEN (AS ULTIMATE TERRASPIN)
(voice lower, resonant, coming from the ground as much as from him)
Ultimate Terraspin.
The stillness field doesn't push outward.
It grows downward.
Into the earth itself.
Rooting.
ACT THREE
Morvane feels it before he sees it — a stillness coming up through the ground from below, the way warmth comes up from stone in the afternoon sun.
He looks at Ultimate Terraspin.
*At the way his expanded shell has become, functionally, a piece of the street — not sitting on the earth, part of it.
MORVANE
(quiet, stunned)
You connected to the ground.
ULTIMATE TERRASPIN
(from the earth, steady)
Yeah. And through the ground — I connected to you.
The stillness travels through the geological layer between them — not a force, not an attack, just a signal. A reference point. This is what still feels like. From below. From the earth itself.
Morvane closes his eyes.
His hands settle back onto his knees.
The ripples slow.
Not stop — slow. One by one, the waves coming less frequently, less forcefully, as Morvane finds the signal Ultimate Terraspin is broadcasting through the ground and follows it back toward center.
MORVANE
(eyes closed, voice far away)
There is no ground beneath my world. Not anymore.
ULTIMATE TERRASPIN
(steady)
There's ground beneath this one.
(beat)
Use it.
A long moment.
The ripples slow.
Slow.
The last one rolls out, gentle, barely a tremor.
Stops.
The intersection is still.
Genuinely still.
Morvane opens his eyes.
He looks at his own hands.
At the ground beneath him.
At Ultimate Terraspin, whose shell is still pressed flat to the earth, still rooted, still broadcasting.
MORVANE
(barely audible)
...Still.
ULTIMATE TERRASPIN
(quietly)
Yeah.
Long silence.
The city around them — stopped, cleared, emptied — holds its breath.
Then a pigeon lands on a mailbox at the intersection's edge.
Looks around.
Decides everything is fine.
Starts walking on the mailbox.
Ben reverts — green flash — and sits cross-legged on the now-still asphalt, small and ordinary, the Ultimatrix dim and quiet on his wrist.
He and Morvane sit across from each other in the empty intersection.
Neither of them says anything for a moment.
MORVANE
(finally)
You were sitting outside a hospital room. When the call came.
Ben looks at him.
MORVANE (CONT'D)
I saw you arrive. Your face.
Ben doesn't answer immediately.
BEN
(quiet)
My grandfather. He's — he's okay. He's going to be okay. It's just—
He stops.
BEN (CONT'D)
(small)
It's one of those days where you sit in a plastic chair and you don't know what else to do.
Morvane looks at him.
At a sixteen-year-old kid sitting on broken asphalt in an empty intersection.
MORVANE
(gently)
And yet you came.
BEN
(looking at the ground)
Yeah.
A beat.
MORVANE
(quiet)
Six billion people on my world. I was the only geomancer. I could have stilled any tremor. Held any fault. If I had been there—
BEN
(quietly, cutting it off)
You weren't. That's not the same as failing.
A very long beat.
Morvane looks at the ground beneath him.
Still.
MORVANE
(barely)
I know.
(beat)
I am still working on believing it.
TAG SCENE
INT. BELLWOOD GENERAL HOSPITAL — CORRIDOR — LATER
Ben is back in the plastic chair.
Same hallway. Same fluorescent light.
The vending machine sandwich is gone — he finally ate it, probably.
Max's door opens.
MAX TENNYSON leans against the doorframe, color better than it was, the version of his face that gives orders starting to come back.
MAX
(looking at Ben)
You left.
BEN
(standing)
There was a thing.
MAX
(dry)
There's always a thing.
BEN
(small smile)
Yeah.
Max looks at him.
At the Ultimatrix.
At the chair Ben's been sitting in.
MAX
(quietly)
You could have sent it to dispatch. Let someone else handle it.
BEN
(looking at the closed door)
...Nah.
Max nods.
Slowly.
Steps back into his room.
MAX
(from inside)
Get some sleep, Ben.
Ben looks at the empty hallway.
At the plastic chair.
At the Ultimatrix — calm, green, ordinary.
BEN
(to himself, quietly)
Yeah.
He sits back down.
Leans back.
Closes his eyes.
The hospital is quiet.
FADE TO BLACK.
END OF EPISODE