Ben opened the door to find his eyes blinded by a host of military lights pointed in his face. The entire building seemed to be surrounded by JSDF tanks and even helicopters, with soldiers pointing their guns at the entrance. 

Ben frowned at Shi-Jian and Mika, as they stepped out slowly, their hands raised. "Are we sure we're doing this?"

"I mean we're going to loop again anyways, might as well find out what's going to happen before it all loops."

"But this is the anomaly, what if they are aware of the loop and they decide not to do it this time?" Ben asked. 

"If it were THAT easy then they would've just shot us by now. Whoever this Maltruant is, I doubt he's a merciful type." said Shi-Jian. 

"What makes you say that?" Ben asked. 

"Gut feeling, and my gut feelings have a history of being trustworthy." Muttered Shi-Jian. "I know that's not much to go on.. but-."

"It's fine, not like we don't need info anyways." Ben muttered. "Get ready to slow time and activate my Omnitrix  at the slightest sign of danger though."

"Right." said Shi-Jian. 

The JSDF soldiers approached, still pointing their guns.

"Down on your knees, hands behind your backs!!"

Ben, Mika and Shi-Jian slowly did as they indicated, and the soldiers began to vigorously pat them down before locking handcuffs onto their wrists. 

"You don't want to touch that." Shi-Jian warned as some of the soldiers began pulling out his Time Pistol and looking for a latch to release his belt. "It's tuned to me, security measures will fry you to a crisp if you so much as touch the trigger."

"Oh I do believe we can handle a few accidental deaths, there are plenty in the JSDF after all, you have to give a hand to the military forces of the human race at least, as meager and weak as they are.."

A voice clunked out as a large shadow approached from inside what appeared to be a large black car with miniature versions of a country Flag waving on its corners. It wasn't a flag that Ben recognized, showing an image of the Earth behind what looked like a shape that looked like a familiar alien's head.. an alien he could've sworn he might've transformed into at some point... 

"Emperor Maltruant, Prime Minister of the JSDF and all of Earth's Military Organizations." said one official, saluting as the car door opened.  "Grand Chancellor of the United Nations, and overall leader of the United Planets of Sol! Attention!!"

All the soldiers saluted and faced the car as a large robotic creature stepped out.

It looked like a huge living windup robot. It had stumpy legs and humanoid arms, with a barrel shaped body that had a viewing port on its chest showing multiple glowing red clock gears churning inside.  The top of his red eyed robotic head had a windup dial-like structure protruding from it. 

It looked wrong to Ben, as he knew that the species of alien he was looking at should've had a bronze colored body, not black like this individual, and there were signs of mutated mechanisms on the alien overall.. but despite the differences he now knew why this being had seemed so familiar before. 

"A Chronosapien." Ben said as the being clunked forward. "An alien that has the ability to move through time and manipulate it. He looks different, but there's no doubt about it, he looks like an evil version of Clockwork."

"I take it he's Maltruant then. And given his origins as an alien you recognize from your world, I take that he knows you." Shi-Jian muttered. "It might explain why you are one of the people aware of the loop-."

"HAHAHA! Close Shi-Jian the Time Traveler. I suppose that is the logical answer." said Maltruant  in his German-accented metallic voice.  I can't blame you for coming to that conclusion, however you are only partly correct. Me and Ben don't know each other, at least, he doesn't know me, but I know him in another sense.."

Ben frowned, straining his mind, then his eyes widened as the realization hit him. "You and I haven't met, but you've met another me. You're from a separate crosstime version of my world."

"Precisely." said Maltruant. "You and I.. well in that timeline we had some disagreements, and you could say I possess a special hatred to all Ben Tennysons from all time lines.. and to think, who would've suspected that the world I ended up in after you HURLED ME into an ACCURSED ETERNAL TIME LOOP.. would be the Radiant War!! HAHAHAHA such an interesting coincidence.. "

Maltruant lowered his head down closed to Ben. "It took me years.. of suffering.. an eternity of pain.. of losing my sanity, regaining it, losing it, regaining it.. again and again for hundreds of millions of years of the same time repeating in the blank dimension of nothingness.. to find my way out of where you left me."

Maltruant's red glowing eyes flickered as his voice trembled like a terrible plague. The sheer pain and ferocity of his whisper was such that Mika squeaked in fear and Ben felt an incredible unease in the pit of his stomach akin to anxiety attack. 

This guy, he had enough bloodlust to power a nuclear plant. 

"Th-that wasn't me." Ben said. "T-technically speaking. You know that."

"Of course, forgive me." said Maltruant as he leaned back.  "I don't hold too much of a grudge however. It is thanks to this.. this.. defeat at the hands of the other you that I was able to learn from my encounter. I was too arrogant and therefore fell to defeat.  If I am to be the very face of the Universe itself, then I must also be humble so that I might be greater than any other."

Ben's memories flashed as he remembered the Eyes of Maltruant club.. and the history book from his class. 

"Every single loop.." Ben murmured. "You've been tweaking something. Every  single loop you've gone back and changed something more. You've been using your powers to mold this world into your image!"

"And quite successfully  I might add." said Maltruant with a chuckle. 

"That's such a stereotypical Time Villain plot that I'm convinced you watched too much TV." Shi-Jian growled. "Seriously? That's it? No nuance! Loki's Kang had a better plot twist!"

"I suppose to you, my vision must seem narrow, as you come from a world where your glorious leader has managed to conquer multiple timelines across the same present." said Maltruant. "But my dear Time officer.. have you ever asked yourself what the face of your ruler looks like?"

"What are you-?" 

"Nothing.. nothing. I have nothing to do with that me anyways.. I am this me.. and this me has simpler goals that are no less grand. I intend to clear my original goal, the goal I had before Ben 10 stopped me in the original timeline. To remake all of time in  my image. And in order to do that I must remake the weaker worlds first.  This world is a world without Heroes, and the heroes who dwell here are too enthralled with their own war to lift a finger to stop us.. except for you meddlesome lot.. attacking my glorious Temporal Abominations like a bunch of-."

"OF COURSE!" Shi-Jian suddenly roared out, startling both Ben and Mika. "I knew it, so your plan the whole time was to continue to tweak the timeline as you looped it!!"

"Uh.. right." said Maltruant. "Did you really have to shout-?"

"And of course in order to do that! You recruited your Temporal Monsters and had them feed at the end of this timeline to keep people from going after you before you looped it!!" roared Shi-Jian.

"Yes that's obvious." said Maltruant. 

"And you couldn't stand us fighting off your monsters because if we continued to do so, there's no doubt we would've figured out their weakness!" yelled Shi-Jian. "But its too late! We already know the weakness!! The Temporal Beasts are weak against Tachyon Particle type weapons! As soon as we free ourselves, we'll find your abominations and destroy them!!"

Ben and Mika just blinked at Shi-Jian, too shocked by his blatant shouting to say anything themselves. 

"My you're an idiot aren't you?" Maltruant muttered. "I heard you were a pervert but this is just a detriment to the reputation of your species as a whole.  Captain, you may kill these fools.. keep a sharp eye on their hands, don't let Tennyson touch the device on his wrist no matter what."

"Yep.." growled one of the soldiers as the guns cocked in preparation to fire on the group. 

Shi-Jian grinned. "Well, I guess in the meantime you're going to get your soldiers to start constructing Tachyon Weapons, am I right?"

Maltruant froze. "STOP! Don't fire.."

Maltruant turned his metallic head to glare down at Shi-Jian. "You clever bastard.

"Sh-Shi-Jian? What the heck-?" Ben exclaimed. 

"I get it now. I started to suspect as soon as you said we were meddling. If we WERE meddling, and stopping us was your plan, you wouldn't do what you're doing now, sending soldiers after us, keeping us here to explain your grand plan instead of killing us right away." said Shi-Jian. "I suspect the old you might've done this out of sheer arrogance, but like you said, I think you learned from your previous mistakes fighting the other Ben Tennyson. Millions of years of never-ending looping madness would not let you make such a careless mistake again, monologuing to the hero so they can escape and stop your plan later. But there are still glaring flaws with your current tactics."

"C-current tactics?" Mika murmured.

"Wait..that's right. If Maltruant was responsible for the Time Looping.. then he could simply kill us after his tweaking with the timeline was done under our noses, or if he was still in need of looping the timeline, he could simply force us to loop any time we came to confront him." Ben murmured. "Plus if he was still looping, killing us would do nothing if we came back after we looped again."

"Indeed, and its not as if he can tweak the timeline in this world to when we were never born.. we weren't born in this world, and something tells me as Maltruant is now, he can't just travel to one of our worlds easily." said Shi-Jian. "You knew the whole time we were investigating the loop and the Temporal Abominations who showed up at the end of the previous loop.. you were hoping to bluff us into revealing a solution to you.. the fact of the matter is.. you aren't the cause of the Time Loop at all, are you? You're in the dark as well!"

Maltruant remained silent for a moment, his eyes blazing with fury. "Well, I underestimated you.. Shi-Jian the Time Traveler. It is no wonder that Shub Niggurath selected you as one of the 7 this time around. 

"You're stuck in the loop just like us. Difference is, you still can travel back to the past of this world beyond where the loop starts, as its just the future being re-erased and rewritten. So while you've left us to investigate for you, you've been securing your foothold in this world's timeline. Of course ruling all of this planet's time from the very beginning to our current present is a HUGE empire.. but it's not enough is it?"

"Tsk.. The difference between ruling time and ruling simply a world, is that while a world ends eventually, time itself is constantly expanding." said Maltruant. "The future continues without end. There is no end to time because then time would have to be subject to some bigger time like a bullshit Russian Nesting Doll. When you rule ALL of time.. you rule infinity itself.  But a Timeline that's constantly looping due to Erasure Phenomena like that the Temporal Abominations cause-.."

"- It's significantly smaller." Finished Shi-Jian. "Miniscule.. what are millions.. or even billions years.. to an infinitely expanding empire? It infuriates you that the borders of your empire must stop at this loop.  Of course time runs differently in every Universe.. if you had the power to travel back to Ben's Universe or mine.. or a random other one, you'd abandon this world and go rule another world instead.. but you can't.. whatever the other Ben did to you, it limited you somehow.. weakened you. And of course you can't travel to an alternate cross time version of this world either, because aside from this timeline.. everything else is ruled by Shub Niggurath, leaving you stuck with this timeline to put your ambitions on.. ambitions that have been put on hold by the Time Loop, which you deem much more solvable than taking on an Eldritch God or attempting to bullshit a way into another Universe. After all Time Travel is much different than Traversing Dimensional Space. 

"Yes, it is as you said, I'm stuck here.. in both this world, and this world's Cross Time. But it matters not. Even if I only rule a single crosstime version of a single world, time is unending, my kingdom would still be completely infinite." said Maltruant. 

"Indeed.." said Shi-Jian. "I'm guessing after you thought you got what you needed from us, you were going to kill us to buy time before the loop started back up and we tried to stop. Then after you killed the Temporal Abominations, the loop would presumably stop, and you wouldn't need to worry about us resurrecting.. or perhaps that's too risky. You ought to know that Ben's allied with the Vampire, The Fairy and The Killer. Maybe you'd kill us and while we were dead, construct a plan before the loop started up, then attempt to kill all of Ben's allies as soon as the loop reset, and then see to the beasts... all of those have a large margin for error though, that's assuming the loop you do it guarantees the timeline goes far enough for the beasts to show up on schedule."

Shi-Jian grinned. "You're in a very tight situation. It's literally a race between both sides you cannot guarantee a win for, and as of now you don't even know how to win. How unfortunate."

"Hmmm, you say that." said Maltruant. "But you forget I've been surveilling you both quite closely. I know who you've been watching and taking an interest in. That teacher in your class, she isn't who she seems is she?"

Shi-Jian's eyes widened. 

"I wonder if I kill you now, if I'll have enough time to torture the information out of her.. yes?" Maltruant said with a metallic chuckle.

"SHI-JIAN!" Mika yelled.

"Alright! Belt voice command!!" Shi-Jian's body turned into a blur as he slowed time-.

"FOOOOM!" Suddenly Shi-Jian glowed red as his time slowing power stopped and he appeared midway to Ben, as if about to turn around and fiddle with the Omnitrix with his handcuffed wrists from behind. 

"Wh-wha? Time is-?"

"Fool! You are AWARE of what I am aren't you!?" said Maltruant. "Your equipment is nothing to my natural powers!"

Maltruant hurled out a powerful red beam of strange energy that rippled space around its edges, distorting vision. 

Ben tackled Shi-Jian out of the way barely in time as the beam exploded into a metal pole behind him, and the pole was aged instantly to dust."

"Holy shit! You have NO idea the amount of complicated crap you have to do to do something like THAT!" Shi-Jian stammered.

"Yeah I know I know.. you have to make a beam that traps the object in an alternate pocket where eroding stuff like wind and bacteria move faster.. whatever we need to go!" Ben roared as soldiers trained their guns on the group. 

"There is no escape.. your one escape plan has gone up in flames Ben Tennyson!" Maltruant exclaimed gleefully. 

"I see, so this is the disturbance that has happened. A time manipulator hmm?" 

Maltruant froze, his red eyes flickering for a second before he looked up, as did the other soldiers. 

"Ohhhhhh shit.." Shi-Jian turned pale. "Why HER!?"

In full armor, Ben could see her.. the girl he had watched throw an entire mini-sun at him and nearly blow him to kingdom come. 

https://youtu.be/NT5iwfD3EGk

The Demon Dragfeld was levitating above the area.. her eyes glowing golden as a horrible aura exploded around her.. invisible, but felt by all.

It was like a supreme dominating pressure that threatened to choke out Ben's very lungs. 

"The same day looping over and over.." Dragfeld growled, looking at Maltruant with vicious hell in her soul.  "You are responsible aren't you?"

"MUAHAHAHA! So you are one of those silly heroes from the Radiant War as well?" said Maltruant. "What designation are you? The Celebrity? The Demon? Judging from those horns, I'd say it was pretty obvious. Do not patronize me girl. I am a supreme being of perfection, filled with humility and power, and domination over time itself! Your power is inconsequential to me, even in my weakened state!!"

"Hmph.. you don't look very powerful to me.. you look oh so ugly." whispered Dragfeld. "Tsk.. disgusting, such an ugly soul, filled with disgusting thoughts."

"WHAAAAT!?" Maltruant twitched furiously, his eyes flickering on and off like a strobe light as his arms trembled. "You.. YOU DARE CALL PERFECTION DISGUSTING!? DISAPPEAR AND KNOW YOUR PLACE!!"

Maltruant shimmered and suddenly multiple doppelgangers of himself appeared in a ring around Dragfeld. 

"Manipulating time speed and travel to create a phenomenon of multiplication, interesting." grunted Shi-Jian, he has variety, I'll give him that."

All the Maltruants fired their Time Rays at Dragfeld. 

The beams hammered into Dragfeld, but as soon as the smoke cleared. Dragfeld was still levitating there, unharmed. 

"Wh-what!?" Maltruant stammered. "H-HOW!?"

"I am an Immortal Demon with many blessings, your power relies on many different factors to be of use. Simply speeding up time in an area does not age an inanimate object, as inanimate objects don't need food to survive, so you speed up the wind erosion instead. If there is no wind to erode an object or other force of nature, it becomes less effective. Organics are easier as you can simply age them till they die of starvation. As my body is divine and possibly possesses durability against wind, even that which slowly erodes my skin, your easiest option is to starve me, as a demon still requires food. But I am able to find alternative methods of automatically feeding myself.   Simply put some of my enchantments meant to increase my  durability include my ability to feed off life force instead of food.. a last resort.. however.."

Maltruant stared as he saw several of his soldiers collapse and turn to piles of dust. "You tricky de- SHNNNNKKKKKKKKK!!!"

"The ability to manipulate time to the degree you do is a dangerous ability." said Dragfeld as her hand pierced through Maltruant's chest, oily substances and gears pouring from the biomech alien's body.  In the next loop perhaps you will not fall for the same trick twice, I will have to show no mercy during any of our encounters during the next loops."

Dragfeld's merciless eyes now fell upon Ben and Shi-Jian as the remaining soldiers all backed up in terror. 

"Now, I do believe there is a discussion to be had here. Especially concerning that girl in your company... Ben Tennyson."

Author Notes: (For those of you still confused about Cross Time and Multiverse being separate things. Think of it this way.The Multiverse is like a bunch of houses in a neighborhood. It's a big space or dimensional thing where a bunch of universes are sitting next to each other like houses living next door to each other in a neighborhood.  However a Cross Time worlds are alternate versions of the Multiverse itself.  Like that same housing neighborhood, only different versions of it if the houses were built differently and etc.   

Maltruant can traverse time, so he can go to alternate versions of the world he is in.. but he can't go to another actual world, just the different versions of the world he moves around in.   This is why the Cross Time is gauranteed to have different versions of people we know, while the Multiverse being inifinite SHOULD have at least a few worlds that are identical, but it's not as guaranteed, and they aren't different "Versions" but just twins who happen to resemble each other through sheer coincidence. 

Erice's World is a "Twin" to Ben's world. It has similar countries, cities, people, and historical figures. However the Benjamin Franklin of Erice's world is not the Benjamin Franklin of Ben's world. They are simply people who resemble each other to the point that they're near indistinguishable.  So they aren't "alternate versions" of each other. 

However, if you went to Ben 23's timeline, and then went to Erice's world again while in that timeline, you'd meet the Ben 23 version of Erice and her world, as that entire multiverse is in the same Ben 23 timeline. )