Ben awoke and noticed two things.
Firstly, he wasn't Crashhopper anymore. And secondluy, he was trapped inside a large cage that was stacked around other cages with an assortment of strange creatures he had never seen before. In the cage next to him lay an unconscious Mikoto, while he could see Touma unconscious in the the next cage over. This could only mean one thing:
Either they had decided to space travel super cheap style or those Spheroid pirates had captured them. Ben decided on the Spheroid pirate theory. Ben activated the Omnitrix looking for the alien form he desired. He pressed down the face plate and in a green light became the the goeey green alien known as Goop. Goop let his antigravity disk fly through the bars of his cage, pulling his gelatinous body along with it. Goop went through the bars and into Mikoto's cage.
Goop nudged Mikoto. "Mikoto......Mikoto!!"
Mikoto got up and rubbed her head. "Ugh.....he used gas......that dirty stinking vomit shooter used gas."
Mikoto looked around. "Where are we?"
"Looks like we're in the place those Spheroids keep all their prisoners." said Goop. "Touma's in the cage over there."
Goop reverted to his humanoid form and touched his hands to the bars of the cage, melting it with highly corrosive acid. Goop then stretched his hands over to Touma's cage and melted the bars on it. Mikoto moved in to Touma's cage and attempted to wake him.
"Touma!......Touma!!" Mikoto nudged Touma but he remained out cold.
"zzzzzzzzzzzz......."
"I don't believe it." said Mikoto increduosly. "He's fast asleep!!"
"No time to worry about that." said Goop as he turned back into Ben. "We have to get out of here."
Ben and Mikoto both took Touma by the arm and together Mikoto used her electromagnetsim to levitate slow their descent to the ground.
"As far as I can tell, we're in some kind of ship." Said Ben looking around the metal cage filled interior of the room. "And if the lack of rumbling in this hull is evidence enough....we're still on planet."
"HEY!! Two Spheroids with photon guns suddenly appeared. "Those Spits have essscaped to Spitss uss!!"
Mikoto shot a lightning bolt at the nearest Spheroid while the second one dropped his gun and ran off yelling. Ben used the Omnitrix to change into XLR8 and sped over to the remaining Spheroid and knocked it out in 0.2 seconds flat.
"We should probably hide them before sombody discovers we've escaped." said XLR8.
"Got it." said Mikoto. But I am not lugging Touma the entire way.
Mikoto pointed a finger at Touma's side and let out a spark which caused Touma to jump back to life. "Wha!? Who!!??"
Touma looked around. "Don't tell me we were captured."
"Afraid so." said XLR8. "Come on, let's get out of here."
XLR8 sped around the entire room for around 3 seconds before coming back to Mikoto and Touma. "I found a door not far from here, come on."
XLR8 picked Mikoto and Touma up and ran off to the nearby door and ran out into what looked like a long metal hallway. Mikoto got down dizzilly.
"Seriously Ben, warn us before you do that. Normal humans don't usually go up to 400 miles per hour in 1 second flat."
"Sorry." said XLR8 who immediately changed back into Ben. "Huh? That's strange.."
"What?"
"I didn't tell the Omnitrix to change me back. Oh man, don't tell it's broken.....that hasn't happened since I was 12..."
Ben began tapping the Omnitrix's face plate which began to glow purple. "Okay......that's never happened before."
"Ummm....Ben?" said Mikoto worriedly. "Are you going to be alright?"
"Huh? Sure! It's no big-" Before Ben could finish his sentence he suddenly turned into the large orange no eyed beast-like alien Wildmutt.
"-graarrgghssnarrll" Wildmutt finished.
"Ben! What's going on!?" Mikoto said frantically.
"Rraaggh roarrrrgghh rowwllrrrgggh" Wildmutt growled. (Wildmutt's species is not capable of normal human speech).
"Does anyone speak Mutt?" asked Touma. "Because I have absolutely no idea what he just said."
Mikoto could feel her insides going cold. The Omnitrix had glowed that same purplish light when Ben had gone GhostFreak. Could GhostFreak be messing with the Omnitrix?
"Well Wildmutt's got pretty good senses." Said Mikoto trying to focus on the current issue. "Maybe he can sniff a way out of here."
Wildmutt growled in agreement. Wildmutt began snuffling around the metal floor of the ship. Wildmutt then gave out a large growl and ran down the hallway with Mikoto and Touma running close behind. Wildmutt kept on running around the maze of metal hallways till he came to a huge electronic metal door. Wildmutt began snarling and scratching his front paws agains the metal door, but it was shut tight.
"Hold on." said Mikoto. "I've got this."
Mikoto put her hand up against the door and used electromagnetism to wrench the door open. Wildmutt and the others walked through and found themselves in what appeared to be an extremely large control room. There were computer terminals everywhere and unfortunately they were all occupied by Spheroids.
"SPITSS" Flutos was sitting in a captain's chair in the middle of the room. "Those Spittss are loose from our prison of the high securityssss spitsss!!!!"
"Aw man!!" said Touma. "Now what!?"
"We fight." said Mikoto with her bangs sparking.
The Omnitrix badge on Wildmutt's arm suddenly turned purple and Wildmutt turned into a giant armored dinosaur man.
"Humungousaur?" said Humungousaur looking at himself. "Eh, good enough for me."
Humungousaur ran into the crowd of spheroids and began smacking them around with his massive fists all the while smashing terminals to pieces with his massive tail.
"Has the Omnitrix ever malfunctioned like that before?" asked Touma worriedly.
"No...." said Mikoto. "Never, it only used to malfunction when it was in prototype form. That was how the Omnitrix was when Ben was 10. It kept on changing him into the wrong thing, and occasionally he would get stuck in a certain alien form but.......ever since Azmuth upgraded it when he was 14 it never did anything like this, at least that's what Ben said."
"Uh oh." said Touma pointing at some pirates that were coming close. "Company."
Mikoto knocked out a Spheroid with a electric blast and took his plasma gun. Mikoto tossed the gun to Touma.
"Start shooting, or we stop surviving." said Mikoto.
Meanwhile, Humungousaur had managed to beat his way over to Flutos who had almost lost his hat in the chaos.
"End of the line Bluto." said Humungousaur.
"The namessss is FLUTOSSS!!!"
"Whatever."
Humungousaur brought his fist down at Flutos. But Flutos jumped out of the way as Humungousaur smashed the captain's chair.
"Ha!! Yousss Spitsss thinksss youss havess won!! But yousss spittsss are still wrongss!!" Flutos activated a device on his belt and a metal suit engulfed him growing until Flutos was controlling a powerful 20 ft tall Techadon mech suit.
Humungousaur got ready to punch the mech suit, but the moment his fist connected, Humungousaur suddenly turned larger and his skin turned dark green while armored plating and spikes grew onto his back and torso along with a spiked mace on his tail. Ultimate Humungousaur's punch sent the mech suit flying into the wall of the room where the mech suit fell to pieces.
"Ben!!" said Mikoto. "Overkill!!"
"Don't tell me that!" Ultimate Humungousaur exclaimed. "Tell the stupid malfunctioning Omnitrix."
Flutos climbed out of his wrecked mech suit and fell to his knees. "Youssss thinksss youss have won? Well........I.............spitss." Flutos fell to the floor unconscious.
Ultimate Humungousaur turned to look at the remaining pirates and roared. Without their leader, the pirates were complete cowards. So naturally they ran out of the control room like crying children.
"Well that's awesome." said Touma. "But can you change back now? Cause to be honest, your Ultimate forms kind of scare me."
Ultimate Humungousaur pressed his Omnitrix badge, but nothing happened. He pressed it again, but Ben was still Ultimate Humungousaur.
"After working for so long this thing decides to break on me now?" Ultimate Humungousaur said in fustration. "I don't even know how I'm going to fit back in Tetrax's ship."
"Don't worry Ben, we'll figure something out." said Mikoto who went on to think in her head, I hope.
"Ben? is that you!?" Tetrax had entered the room, apparently he had beat through over a dozen pirates to get there.
"Tetrax!" said Ultimate Humungousaur. "Old problems, apparently Azmuth didn't fix this thing completely when he upgraded it."
Tetrax looked at Mikoto who seemed to confirm somthing with a look.
"Alright Ben. As long as you're the evolved Vaxisaurian......."
The Omnitrix badge flashed purple again and Ultimate Humungousaur turned into the large robot-like Atomix.
"Okay.......as long as you're......I don't even know Atomix's species..........well as long as you're that, you might as well go search out the rest of the ship with Touma. "
Atomix complied and levitated off with Touma following close behind."
Tetrax turned to look at Mikoto. "We have a big problem."
"Ben might go WayBig while we're back on the Resolute?" said Mikoto hoping that was the biggest problem and not what she suspected.
"Well there is that yes, But the fact that the Omnitrix is malfunctioning like this is one of the first symptoms of GhostFreak going wild in the Omnitrix. He's slowly taking over Ben's body.........from the Omnitrix outwards......The sooner we get to Anur Phaetos, the better....."
Tetrax suddenly noticed a small tear traveling Mikoto's cheek. "I'm sorry Mikoto.......perhaps it's better I change the subject............"
Mikoto gave Tetrax an unnaturally cheerful smile. "It's okay, so did you get any information out of your contact?"
"............Loads."
"Well then what are we waiting for? Those Ancient Ones aren't going to find themselves!" Mikoto ran out to follow Atomix and Touma.
Tetrax stared into the distance for a while. "Humans........always terrible at hiding grief."