The Red King's cruel smile widened as he gestured toward the massive holographic display that had materialized above the arena. The screen showed Ben and Caiera locked in their deadly dance, but where Caiera moved like a living storm wreathed in crackling energy, Ben appeared desperately outmatched.
"Then you can watch him die at Caiera's hands!" the Red King declared, his patience with Looma finally exhausted.
He'd given this arrogant woman countless opportunities to see reason, but now he was done with diplomacy. Once Caiera finished executing the pretender, he would order her to help him break Looma's spirit completely.
"You use such dishonorable methods and then broadcast them for the entire world to see?" Looma asked, her voice filled with genuine revulsion. "Aren't you concerned about your reputation? What about dignity and honor?"
The Red King's behavior was utterly incomprehensible to her warrior mentality. Among the Sakaarians, such cowardly tactics would be carved into stone monuments as examples of eternal shame, remembered and despised for generations.
But not only was he unashamed of his methods—he displayed them as proudly as military victories.
"Dishonorable?" The Red King shook his head as if he'd heard the funniest joke in years. "This is reality, Looma. I don't need anyone's respect—I only require their fear."
He raised his hand toward the sky, fingers slowly curling inward as if grasping for the very concept of absolute power.
"Strength is the only truth that matters," he continued, gesturing toward the arena around them. "Countless fighters have bled and died in this place. Do you know which ones died quickest, and which ones survived the longest?"
His voice dropped to a mocking whisper. "It wasn't the ones who believed in fairness and justice."
"You're absolutely disgusting," Looma said flatly, her interest in conversation completely evaporating.
An uncomfortable silence settled over the arena. Despite having the royal guard surrounding him, the Red King lacked the confidence to capture Looma through direct confrontation—he was waiting for Caiera's return. Meanwhile, Looma was content to keep him occupied, creating the diversion that Bill and the other gladiators needed.
With their respective ulterior motives creating a temporary stalemate, both parties turned their attention to Ben's desperate battle.
On the screen, Caiera appeared to be completely dominating the fight. Her superior experience and mastery of the Old Power should have ended the confrontation within minutes.
But something strange was happening.
Despite Caiera's overwhelming advantage, Ben somehow managed to dodge her attacks by the narrowest possible margins. More importantly, her movements were becoming increasingly predictable to his senses.
Every strike, every lightning-wreathed gesture, the rhythm of her breathing, the way cosmic energy flowed through her body—it was all beginning to make sense. The universe itself seemed to be revealing its secrets to him, showing him the underlying patterns that governed the Old Power.
Caiera remained unaware of this development, but her failure to quickly eliminate Ben was becoming increasingly obvious to distant observers.
In the arena, Looma watched with growing suspicion and irritation.
"What is Caiera doing?" she muttered, her four eyes narrowing dangerously. "Is she... is she developing feelings for Ben?"
The possibility hit her like a physical blow, and suddenly Looma felt a surge of possessive anger that had nothing to do with military strategy.
"This won't do at all!"
She clenched her fists and stamped her foot with enough force to shake the entire arena structure. The gesture might have been adorable on an ordinary person, but coming from Looma it registered like a localized earthquake.
"Angmo-Asan!" she roared, spinning to face the Red King. "Control your subordinate! She doesn't understand proper protocol at all!"
"I am Ben's fiancée!"
The declaration rang through the arena with absolute conviction. In Looma's mind, Caiera's apparent hesitation was a breach of battlefield etiquette—if she wanted to compete for Ben's attention, she should defeat her in honorable combat first.
But her words had a very different effect on the Red King.
What is this supposed to be? he thought with mounting rage. I've worshipped this woman like a goddess for months, and she's never even looked at me directly. But some random fighter shows up for one week and suddenly he's her fiancé?
If that wasn't bad enough, now even Caiera—who had served as his loyal lieutenant—seemed to be wavering in her dedication. It was intolerable.
He immediately activated Caiera's communication link and snarled into the device: "Caiera, what are you doing out there?"
"Kill him immediately, or you know the consequences!"
Receiving the Red King's direct order, Caiera felt the familiar weight of the control disc's compulsion settling over her mind. She looked at Ben with something that might have been regret in her pale eyes.
"I cannot disobey the Red King's commands," she said quietly. "If you truly are the Son of Sakaar, perhaps fate will allow you to survive this."
Then she abandoned all restraint.
Caiera moved like a bolt of living lightning, covering dozens of meters in an instant to appear directly in front of Ben. Her arm, wreathed in crackling energy, transformed into a spear of pure electrical force aimed directly at his heart.
BOOM!!
The impact shook the ground and sent a pillar of smoke and debris hundreds of feet into the air. For a moment, the image seemed frozen in time.
When the dust began to settle, the Red King's expression shifted from anticipation to shock and rage.
On the screen, Caiera's energy spear was indeed pointed at Ben's heart—but her fingertips had stopped just short of piercing his skin. Ben's hand was wrapped around her wrist, holding her attack in place through sheer force of will.
"This... this is impossible," Caiera whispered, her entire body trembling with the effort of her restrained strike.
"Why isn't it possible?" Ben asked with a confident smile.
Blue-white lightning now blazed from his eyes just as it did from Caiera's, and arcs of energy danced between his fingers like tamed serpents.
"Is this the Old Power?" he mused, feeling cosmic energy flowing through his transformed body like liquid starlight. "The power of the universe itself... it really is incredible."
The Old Power enhanced every aspect of his physical capabilities—strength, endurance, reflexes, even his ability to perceive and manipulate the fundamental forces of reality. An ordinary Shadow People warrior had been transformed into something approaching a demigod.
Ben slowly pried Caiera's fingers open, though he made no move to counterattack. On one level, the Old Power flowing through him was still weaker than hers—decades of training couldn't be replicated instantly. But more importantly, the Omnitrix wasn't simply a weapon.
It was meant to be a bridge between different forms of life.
"I don't know the legend of the Son of Sakaar," Ben said, raising his voice so the hovering camera drones could capture every word. "But if you believe I might be him, then perhaps others across this planet feel the same way."
He looked directly into the nearest camera, speaking to the entire population of Sakaar.
"It doesn't matter whether I'm actually your prophesied savior. What matters is whether you—the people enslaved by Angmo-Asan—have the courage to sacrifice everything for dignity and freedom."
His voice carried across every broadcast screen on the planet.
"You fear his control implant. You fear his military might. You fear his seemingly invincible armies. So you break your own spines, wag your tails like beaten dogs, and even turn your weapons against other victims of his oppression."
The words cut through years of accumulated despair and resignation.
"You sit back hoping someone else will save you, waiting for others to fight your battles. Is this what it means to be Sakaarian?"
"If the people of Sakaar are truly this cowardly, then even if the legendary Son of Sakaar stood before you right now, would you have the courage to follow him?"
Across the planet, people who had been hiding in underground shelters and abandoned buildings slowly raised their heads. On their screens, a silver-skinned Shadow People warrior stood defiant against impossible odds.
He was the Son of Sakaar.
"TAKE UP ARMS, PEOPLE OF SAKAAR!" Ben's voice thundered across the world.
"Whether it's a farming tool, or the very chains that bind you! Even if you have nothing but your bare hands, fight for your destiny!"
The response was immediate and overwhelming.
Across the planet, countless Sakaarians emerged from hiding. Young and old, gray-skinned Shadow People and red-skinned natives, even off-world refugees who had made Sakaar their home—all of them took up whatever weapons they could find and began marching toward their oppressors.
Near the battlefield, a Shadow People child no taller than Caiera's knee burst from an underground shelter. She wielded a farming sickle nearly as large as her entire body and charged directly at the towering warrior.
The improvised weapon couldn't even scratch Caiera's skin, but its symbolic impact was tremendous. In the child's determined eyes, Caiera saw an echo of her own younger self—the frightened survivor who had been taken from her destroyed village and molded into the Red King's perfect weapon.
"Do you still wish to serve the Red King?" Ben asked quietly.
Before Caiera could respond, a massive shadow fell across the battlefield, blotting out the sun itself.
Both fighters looked up simultaneously, and Caiera's expression transformed into one of pure horror.
"What is that thing? Some kind of orbital weapons platform?" Ben asked, his voice grim with understanding.
Suspended above them like a technological sword of Damocles was an irregular black cylinder at least a hundred meters wide and several times that in length.
"That's... that's a Death-Fire cannon!" Caiera's voice shook with a mixture of terror and rage. "A single blast from that weapon can reduce everything within kilometers to ash!"
She activated her communication link with desperate urgency. "Your Majesty, you'll destroy everything here! There's a Shadow People village underground—dozens of innocent lives!"
The Red King's response was cold and merciless:
"You're just my slave. If you die, you die. But you, Caiera—you're nothing but Shadow People trash, and you dare to betray me?"
"Die with that traitor!"
From his position in the imperial capital, still facing Looma across the arena, the Red King issued his final command:
"Fire the cannon!"
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