Ben moaned and slammed his hands against the side of his head, pulling his hair.

"This wrathful torture! Can it be reversed?

I swoon to think of how I shall converse!"

"Calm down, Hamlet," Gwen said. "You need to take a few breaths and relax. We'll find this crazy guy and make him fix it."

"And if that hollow heart doth hide the cure,

His tragic poet's death is premature!"

"What you said," Gwen muttered, trying not to giggle.

"Then let's not stand around, my merry gents!

We must embark to render recompense!"

Ben leapt up and charged towards the Rust Bucket. Gwen chuckled and walked out after him, and Max followed with a strange little grin on his face.

The Rust Bucket rattled forward, as Gwen typed avidly on her laptop, Max looked around for disturbances in the town, and Ben paced the floor.

"Sit down before we hit a bump and you go flying," Gwen suggested.

"I'm set to strike ad hoc upon our foes.

That preternatural apparatus goes."

"This may be the first time you've ever used words that I don't know," Gwen said, impressed. She turned the laptop around to face him. "Here—I searched for information on Dr. Lancer and I came up with some interesting things."

Ben scanned the screen, trying not to say anything for fear of talking in prose. He scrolled through a few articles that Gwen brought up, but one got his attention. He scanned it for a while.

"It seems the place I tried to pass us by

May be where Lancer and his Shake Spear lie!"

Gwen craned her head around the screen and nodded when she saw. It was a newspaper article on how a man named Dr. Lancer had done three days of prison time. He had apparently freaked out when he was not invited to a ceremony at the Library of Congress.

"Grandfather, we would seem to have a lead.

These records from the law enforcement read

that Dr. Lancer is chagrined about

a ceremony which has left him out—"

Gwen cut him off by hitting him in the chin. "Um, maybe I should explain it… takes less time."

Ben nodded with an annoyed look, and Gwen turned to Max.

"Apparently, Dr. Lancer was miffed about this ceremony that he wasn't invited to," Gwen said. "A handful of esteemed authors are going to be at the Library of Congress tonight. We're only a few hours away from there anyway. This article, and the stunt he pulled today, make me think that he's probably preparing for a big entry when he crashes the party there tomorrow."

"Good job, Gwen," Max said. "It's our best lead right now."

The Rust Bucket zoomed off towards their destination.

"When will this tattered transport even start?

I'd travel faster in a horse-drawn cart!"

"Stop complaining, Ben, I'm going as fast as I dare to go," Max said. "It's not like I'm going to risk getting stopped by the police when we're two minutes away and we have ten minutes to get there."

"Your caution and concern may cut the costs,

but only if his trail is never lost!"

"I enjoy hearing Ben talk," Gwen says. "It's like he's trying as hard as he can to avoid the rhythm and rhyme, but he just can't avoid it."

"If you keep bringing up this vile affair,

you'd best enjoy your head while it's still there!"

"Don't threaten your cousin, Ben," Max said. "Look; we're almost there."

"Let's go," Gwen said, and unbuckled her seatbelt.

"It's time to set things right, so grab hold, all;

we'll blow right by the guards and through the wall!"

Ben slammed a hand down on the watch; a surge of power swept through him from the wrist, turning his skin black and stretching him into a shadow-like shape. This was currently one of his most useful forms—a true, freaky ghost, who could phase through walls and fly and turn invisible. It was black and formless, so he called it Shadow.

He placed a hand on Gwen's shoulder and picked her up, turning her invisible and intangible, then grabbed Max and phased them both through the wall into the Library of Congress.

He let them go in a sizable crowd so they wouldn't be noticed, and then flew up, looking for Dr. Lancer. He stared around the room, then phased through a few floors up and down, looking.

There was a special room on the first floor that he stumbled into, with several very well-dressed individuals sitting in fashionable chairs in front of a man at a podium; this must be the place where the ceremony was being held. He was about to phase out to find Max and Gwen when the door was kicked down, and Lancer burst in with the same Shake Spear he had flaunted in the convenience store.

All of the people in the room stood up and gasped. "Yes, it's me," Lancer said, walking forward.

Ben smirked at the perfectly timed arrival.

"You thought you could just not invite the greatest mechanical genius that the literary world has ever seen?" Lancer roared. "My work will do far more than any novel has done in history, and you forget about me?"

The man at the podium whipped out a cell phone. "Doctor, this gala was intended for those in the literary world whose works have moved the minds of millions," he said. "You have written nothing; you claim yourself a part of literary history despite this. You are mentally disturbed, Doctor. I am calling the police if you do not step out immediately."

"Oh, really?" Dr. Lancer announced. "Try calling the police when you can only speak like Lewis Carroll at his worst!"

The man at the podium had time to give a questioning "What?" before a blast of light rippled across the room from Lancer's device and struck him in the face.

He ducked down and dialed on his cell phone, and the police picked up. Ben drew closer.

"Hello? This croozy looge did moble in and surptly shasted shardly in my trest!"

The people in the room gasped as Lancer held up the machine triumphantly. "This is my Shake Spear!" he laughed. "Capable of transforming anyone's way of speech into that of another, so long as I program it in first!"

A woman in the back pointed. "But if it fires like a gun, then it's not a spear."

"Shut up!" Lancer shouted. "It used to be a spear!"

He turned a dial and fired at the woman who had spoken; she tumbled over her chair and screamed, "This is the most amazing of times, this is the most frightening of times!"

Ben had seen enough. As Max and Gwen appeared at the door, having heard the commotion, Ben suddenly appeared in the sky and tackled Lancer to the ground.

Lancer shrieked and aimed his gun at Ben again, but Ben growled and fired a red-hot laser from his eyes which blasted Lancer over backwards, and he lost his grip on the gun.

Ben caught the gun before it hit the ground—he didn't want it to break, in case Lancer needed it to fix him. But Lancer suddenly darted forward and grabbed the gun again, aiming it with a shaky hand as he stared at the shade before him.

"A g-g-ghost?" Lancer stammered. "W-What are you? You are a ghost? A spirit?" He glared and turned the dial again. "A ghost sounds like some Shakespeare to me!" He blasted again before Ben could close in, and the blast hit Ben in the chest in the same spot—suddenly, he felt a constriction in his chest loosen and relax.

"Hey, thanks," Ben said. "I think that undid itself!"

He phased through the floor as Lancer stared in confusion, and then blasted back into the room directly under Lancer. He phased Lancer through the ceiling, through every floor and through the ceiling, and then pinned him to the floor of the roof.

"You're going to explain to the police what happened, aren't you," Ben said, growling into Lancer's face as the man quivered and shook. "You're going to explain to them how to reverse the effects of your little play-toy, and you're not going to try it again."

"P-Please, spirit," Lancer stuttered. "I just wanted to share with the world a way of making different people understand each other."

"Then you're going to stop doing it in a way that comes off as threatening," Ben said. "Do we understand each other?"

Lancer nodded, and Ben phased back through the floor. He reached the celebration room, still invisible, but the watch began to beep. He flew just outside the door as it changed him back into Ben, and he ran in to find Max and Gwen giving him a silent thumbs-up and wink.

"I have to admit, Ben," Max said. "I'm pretty impressed with the way you handled that. You didn't beat the tar out of him—you handled it very maturely. Not to mention you've got great control over your powers now."

Ben smiled. "Thanks, Grandpa."

"Which is why I've been thinking," he continued. "We're pretty far from Amity Park. I think, if we started driving there now and if you got enough practice on the way, you could fight this Danny Phantom character. He doesn't look so tough when I compare him to how far you've come already."

"Really?" Ben shouted in excitement.

"Yep," Max said. "Amity Park, here we come. You'll get your showdown, Ben." He winked, and they drove off into the distance.

Max kept one part of decision silent—that if Ben was having trouble, he would have some back-up. Max had, after all, hunted so many ghosts in his lifetime that he could hardly remember if the number was in the hundreds or the thousands.

But he also did truly believe that, in the short week since the incident, Ben had already become so proficient with that device… He was ready to take on a real ghost. A teen ghost didn't seem so tough.

But one unknown factor did still worry him. What was that device attached to Ben's wrist…?

Spoiler: It's the Omnitrix.

Anyway, now that I've gotten my first four chapters uploaded, I will tell you my new schedule: Every week following this one, I will upload a Part One every Friday night/Saturday morning and a Part Two every Saturday night/Sunday morning. Also, I know that there hasn't been much tense action yet… That goes for this episode, too. The fights have been pretty simple. That'll all change, next episode.

Hope that you all enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy!

-Cody