BEN 10: ULTIMATE ALIEN
"Borrowed Time"
A Fan-Made Episode Script (Original Story)
COLD OPEN
Place BELLWOOD HIGH SCHOOL — HALLWAY — DAY
Ordinary chaos: lockers slamming, students rushing to class. BEN TENNYSON jogs down the hall, late, backpack half-zipped.
He passes a classroom clock. 9:14.
He turns a corner, passes another clock. 9:09.
Ben stops dead, backs up, stares at it.
BEN
(muttering)
...Okay, that's not how clocks are supposed to work.
He glances back the way he came. The first clock now reads 9:21. The second one, behind him, still reads 9:09. Both stuck, both wrong, both different kinds of wrong.
GWEN TENNYSON catches up, slightly out of breath.
GWEN
You're going to be late for— why are you staring at the clock?
BEN
Because it just lost twelve minutes. And that one—
(pointing back)
—hasn't moved in at least ten.
Gwen frowns, pulling out her phone. She checks the time, then checks it again a second later.
GWEN
(slowly)
Ben. My phone just jumped backward four minutes.
Down the hall, a teacher steps out of a classroom, looking around in confusion.
TEACHER
(to no one in particular)
Did the bell already ring? It feels like it should've rung already.
Ben and Gwen share a look.
BEN
Yeah. I don't think we're going to make first period.
ACT ONE
EXT. BELLWOOD HIGH SCHOOL — COURTYARD — LATER
KEVIN LEVIN leans against his parked car outside school, arms crossed, looking unimpressed as Ben and Gwen jog up.
KEVIN
You two skipping class to come bother me?
GWEN
Time inside that building is breaking. Clocks don't match, people are losing track of conversations mid-sentence — something's wrong.
KEVIN
(checking his own watch, raising an eyebrow)
Funny. Mine says it's 9:05. Which it was ten minutes ago.
A beat. All three look back at the school. Through the windows, students mill around, confused, several checking phones and watches with the same puzzled expression.
BEN
Localized. Whatever's doing this is centered on the school.
GWEN
(already scanning with a mana-sensor)
I'm getting a weird temporal-energy signature. Faint, but it's definitely radiating from somewhere inside.
KEVIN
Great. So we're dealing with a time bandit.
BEN
(grim determination, heading for the doors)
Then let's go catch a thief.
INT. BELLWOOD HIGH SCHOOL — SCIENCE WING — CONTINUOUS
The hallway here is unnervingly quiet — no students, lights flickering between "on" and "slightly dimmer" in a way that doesn't look electrical. A faint, high WHIR hangs in the air.
Ben slaps the Ultimatrix.
[TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE]
Green energy wraps him — but stutters, the holographic projection flickering between several silhouettes before settling on something new: a sleek, slender humanoid form, skin like brushed silver-grey metal inlaid with thin glowing amber lines that pulse like a heartbeat. A circular device, like a small clock face, sits embedded in his chest.
BEN (AS CHRONOSTRIDE)
(voice oddly layered, like two beats slightly out of sync)
Whoa. Okay. New one.
He looks down at his glowing amber hands.
BEN (AS CHRONOSTRIDE) (CONT'D)
Chronostride. Sounds about right, given the theme of the day.
KEVIN
(deadpan)
You just made that name up.
BEN (AS CHRONOSTRIDE)
The Ultimatrix usually does. I just say it confidently.
[NEW ALIEN INTRODUCED: "CHRONOSTRIDE"]
Species: Unknown — Tempori, a rare species theorized to exist partially outside conventional time, sampled by the Ultimatrix during the temporal disturbance.
Appearance: A slim, silver-grey humanoid with glowing amber circuitry-like markings and a clock-face emblem embedded in the chest, where the Ultimatrix symbol normally sits.
Powers: Can perceive and briefly step into "lag" — short slivers of time other beings can't sense — allowing him to react faster than anything should be able to, create brief stutter-step afterimages when moving quickly, and sense the "shape" of nearby temporal disturbances like ripples on water.
Weakness: Using his abilities too long causes him to fall out of sync with normal time, making him briefly disoriented and vulnerable when he "catches up."
ACT TWO
Chronostride moves down the hallway, head tilted, clearly "listening" to something the others can't perceive.
CHRONOSTRIDE
(quietly)
There. Room 114. Whatever's doing this, it's not broadcasting the disturbance — it's leaking it. Like something's struggling to hold itself together.
GWEN
Struggling how?
CHRONOSTRIDE
(uncertain)
Like it's running out of time. Pun unintended. Mostly.
They reach Room 114 — an old, unused storage classroom. Through the door's narrow window, a faint amber glow pulses in rhythm with the hallway lights.
Kevin reaches for the door. Chronostride catches his wrist.
CHRONOSTRIDE
Wait.
He focuses — and for a half-second, his form blurs, stutter-stepping slightly ahead of himself, seeing a flicker of what's about to happen: the door, opening on its own a beat before Kevin touches it.
CHRONOSTRIDE (CONT'D)
(letting go)
Never mind. Go ahead.
Kevin, confused, opens the door — and it swings open on its own a half-second later, as if his hand passed through nothing.
KEVIN
(staring at his own hand)
...I'm gonna need you to explain that one later.
INT. STORAGE CLASSROOM — CONTINUOUS
Stacked desks, broken projectors, dust. In the center of the room, hovering a few inches off the floor, is a small, fractured ORB — translucent, amber, cracked through with dark fissures, pulsing weakly like a dying heartbeat. Each pulse sends a faint ripple of distorted air outward.
GWEN
(scanning, hushed)
That's the source. It's... leaking time itself. Like a wound.
Chronostride approaches carefully, kneeling near it without touching it.
CHRONOSTRIDE
(focusing)
It's not a weapon. It's not attacking the school on purpose.
A brief, jarring vision flickers through his mind — afterimage upon afterimage, fast, layered: a STUDENT, alone in this room days ago, fiddling with some kind of homemade device; a flash of light; the device shattering into this very orb.
CHRONOSTRIDE (CONT'D)
(eyes widening)
Someone made this. By accident. A science project gone catastrophically right.
KEVIN
(blinking)
There's a kid running around school with the ability to build a literal time bomb and nobody noticed?
CHRONOSTRIDE
(standing, grim)
We need to find them. Fast. That orb's not just leaking time — it's unraveling. If it goes all the way, it's not gonna stutter the school. It's gonna stutter the whole city, permanently, in pieces.
ACT THREE
A nervous-looking TEEN BOY (CALEB, 15, science-fair lanyard still around his neck) bursts into the room, breathless, phone in hand.
CALEB
(panicked)
Okay, please don't be mad, I can explain, I just wanted to win the regional fair and I might have slightly miscalculated a temporal-displacement —
GWEN
(gentler than Kevin's glare suggests he deserves)
Caleb. Breathe. We're not mad. We just need to know how to shut it down.
CALEB
(staring at Chronostride, eyes wide)
You're... not gonna smash it, right? Because I read somewhere that smashing unstable temporal fields might cause—
CHRONOSTRIDE
(firmly)
Nobody's smashing anything. Tell me what you built.
CALEB
(talking fast, terrified)
It was supposed to create a tiny, contained time-loop, like, half a second, totally harmless, for the science fair demo! But the containment field cracked and now it's just... bleeding everywhere and I don't know how to close it back up because the math only works if someone can actually see the different time-states clearly enough to re-align them and that's basically impossible for a person to —
CHRONOSTRIDE
(quiet realization)
Not for a person. Maybe for me.
He looks at the Ultimatrix-clock-face emblem on his chest. It flickers — the familiar pre-Ultimate stutter.
CHRONOSTRIDE (CONT'D)
If lag is something I can step into for a second at a time... maybe I need to live in it long enough to actually fix this.
[ULTIMATE TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE]
The clock-face emblem on Chronostride's chest SNAPS OPEN, deploying mechanical petals. His sleek form grows more intricate — additional clock-gear plating layers across his limbs, the amber circuitry brightening into a steady, controlled glow rather than a flickering pulse. A faint, visible "afterimage trail" now follows his every movement permanently, like he exists in several adjacent moments at once.
BEN (AS ULTIMATE CHRONOSTRIDE)
(voice resonant, layered smoothly rather than stuttering)
Ultimate Chronostride.
He kneels back beside the fractured orb, hands hovering over it, no longer just sensing the lag — visibly existing within several overlapping slices of it at once, faint duplicate afterimages of his hands moving in near-sync.
ULTIMATE CHRONOSTRIDE
(calm, focused)
Okay, little guy. Let's put you back together.
Multiple translucent afterimages of his hands reach into the orb's fractures from slightly different temporal angles, each one nudging a different fissure back into alignment simultaneously — something only achievable by a being who isn't limited to one single moment at a time.
The orb's pulsing rhythm slows, stabilizes, the dark fissures sealing one by one, light shifting from a desperate flicker to a steady, calm glow.
GWEN
(watching, amazed)
He's not fighting it. He's stitching it.
KEVIN
(to Caleb, dryly)
You're welcome, by the way. For not getting erased from causality.
CALEB
(small, mortified voice)
...Noted. Adding "supervised testing" to next year's science fair proposal.
With a final, gentle pulse, the orb seals completely, its amber glow softening to something stable and harmless, hovering quietly in place. Down the hallway, the flickering lights steady. Somewhere distant, a bell rings — on time, for the first time all day.
ULTIMATE CHRONOSTRIDE
(standing, exhaling)
There. Time's allowed to be boring again.
TAG SCENE
EXT. BELLWOOD HIGH SCHOOL — LATER
Ben, back to human, sits with Gwen and Kevin on the front steps as students filter out for the day, blissfully unaware anything happened. Caleb hovers nearby, holding a small containment box Gwen rigged up for the now-dormant orb.
CALEB
(holding the box like it might bite him)
So... regional science fair's probably off the table this year.
KEVIN
(taking the box from him, examining it)
Yeah. Plumbers are gonna want a chat with you about "containment protocols," and also possibly "please never build this again."
CALEB
(sighing)
Fair.
He wanders off. Gwen watches him go, then looks at Ben.
GWEN
A whole new alien, and the big twist was a science fair project.
BEN
(shrugging, grinning)
Hey, not every mystery's gotta be Vilgax. Sometimes the universe almost ends because some kid wanted a blue ribbon.
KEVIN
(standing, stretching)
I liked this one. Nobody got punched through a wall.
BEN
(glancing at the Ultimatrix, dial calm and green again)
Don't get used to it.
He stands, and the three head down the steps together as the school bell rings again behind them — right on schedule.
FADE OUT.
END OF EPISODE