Psyphon is Vilgax's servant and right-hand man. He is and will always be extremely loyal to Vilgax.[1] He will follow his will completely. He helped Vilgax drain all the powers of the heroes of the 10 worlds he had conquered (one of these worlds being his own home planet). Still, nothing much is known about Psyphon, except for the fact that he appears devoted to Vilgax and he also shows signs of arrogance towards humans.
He currently runs his own operations in Omniverse.
Appearance
Psyphon bears a resemblance to a To'kustar. He has a skeletal appearance. His body is white with black markings, and he wears a black robe with red marks in the middle.
In Omniverse, his overall body shape is much slimmer and even more skeletal. His fin has became round, like a spike, and has become mostly black with one white strip. He now has spikes on his left and right hands and a mark on his chin. His eyes now contain pupils and a short black line, and he no longer has a nose. His voice has also become deeper and raspier.
History
Alien Force
He first appears in Vengeance of Vilgax, helping Vilgax absorb Ultimos' powers with his power-absorbing machine and came to Earth with Vilgax so he could challenge Ben to a fight. He fended off some police officers with a button on his watch and placed a bomb if Ben would not show up. Ben even asked if Psyphon would work for him if he won.
Psyphon also appeared briefly at the beginning of Primus, and made a non-speaking cameo at the end of The Secret of Chromastone, handing a tissue to Vilgax, who had caught Ben's cold. According to Dwayne McDuffie, during the Final Battle, he was tending to Vilgax's empire.
Ultimate Alien
His first appearance in the series is Reflected Glory, where he is the main villain and wants to avenge his master's defeat by destroying Cash and J.T. He then realizes they were not the brains behind Ben so he goes and battles Ben. He is now stronger than in the Alien Force series, he took some of Vilgax's equipment and he has now almost indestructible assassination droids called R.E.D.s. He also managed to defeat Ultimate Spidermonkey, marking him the first villain to defeat an Ultimate form, something not even his master could do. In the end he was defeated by Cash and J.T. when they shot an energy decoupler at him, weakening him, allowing Ultimate Spidermonkey to knock him out with a single weak punch.
In The Ultimate Enemy: Part 1, Psyphon arrived near the end of the episode with the machine used to take the powers of Vilgax's enemies and insert them into Vilgax. Then, as he prepares to fight Ben and his team, Diagon is released.
In The Ultimate Enemy: Part 2, Psyphon uses the machine to absorb Diagon and transfers it to Vilgax.
Omniverse
Psyphon reappeared in The More Things Change: Part 2. He now runs his own operations, like a protection racket on alien markets in Bellwood and Undertown, threatening to blow them up with bombs and accepting only Taydenite as payment. He plots to expand the protection racket to the human stores in Bellwood and since they lack the Taydenite to pay him, this will result in dozens of bombs going off in Bellwood, which is his intent.
During the battle with Ben, he demonstrated a device designed to overload the nervous systems of aliens, thus causing them to lose control of their powers. Psyphon and Ben were separated by Buglizard and instead fought Ben's new partner, a Revonnahgander named Rook Blonko. During the resulting fight with Rook, Psyphon developed a lustful craving for Rook's Proto-Tech Armor, wanting its technology.
He and his gang are arrested by the Plumbers at the end of the episode and imprisoned inside the Plumber's base underneath Max's store.
He later appears in Outbreak, where after Dr. Psychobos steals a vital stabilizer chip from the Omnitrix, he is transformed into a half Pyronite creature along with his gang Liam, Fistina, and Bubble Helmet, who are transformed into half a Vaxasaurian, half a Galvanic Mechamorph, and half a Gimlinopithecus respectively.
He then devised a plan to escape from the Plumber's prison. First, he allowed his three super powered minions to attempt a direct escape, buying him time to hack the base's Null Void gate and commit the full power of the base to it, thus threatening to suck Bellwood into the Null Void. He knew that the Plumber's would shut down the gate, and in doing so they also deactivated the secondary security field that was trapping him and his minions in the base.
Luckily, Blukic and Driba were able to fix Ben's Omnitrix, returning those affected by it back to normal, much to Psyphon's chagrin, and caused him and his minions to be re-imprisoned in the base.
In Special Delivery, he wanted to auction a package that contained the Dwarf Star in a containment sphere. He attached it to his own suit and defeated Ben as Humungousaur, but Ben later defeated him as Toepick.
In Mud Is Thicker Than Water, he stole Plumber technology with the help of his spy, Gorvan. His plans were ruined when he realized that Liam, was actually Lucy Mann. He was quickly defeated by Crashhopper.
In Bengeance Is Mine, he believed he had been reunited with Vilgax, though it was actually Bill Gacks. He did everything for him, even robbed a bank (what Bill never asked). He encounters some Squid Monsters and realizes that he can control them. He was fooled by Bill who, using and ID Mask faked to be Vilgax. At the end of the episode he was trapped in a pipe by Snare-oh.
Three days before the events of Cough It Up, he tried to rob a a truck which was transporting a dangerous weapon but was preceded by Argit. He hired bounty hunters to get Argit for him, with the retriever receiving double the reward. At the Black Hole, after Sevenseven took Argit, he threatened him to hand over the dehydrated Techadon army. Argit swallowed the cube, which made Psyphon incredibly desperate and angry. Argit wanted to get the cube out of his body and Psyphon was about to do it with pleasure. Ben, knowing Psyphon's weakness, transformed into Toepick, which made Psyphon faint. At the end of the episode, he got banned from Undertown.
Powers and Abilities
Psyphon possesses no natural powers, but has advanced technology far beyond Earth standards.
During the episode Vengeance of Vilgax: Part 1 when the police attack him, Psyphon stops the attack by pressing a button on his wrist and a force field appears. He then throws a grenade at the police and detonates it, destroying everything within its large blast radius.
In the Vilgax Attacks game, his abilities range from orbital lasers, force fields, energy attacks, and grenades. He was also able to bring a Mr. Smoothie drawing to life with a laser and make it into the boss in the level.
In Reflected Glory, Psyphon claimed after Vilgax was blown up, he "wouldn't let all that power go to waste", exhibiting levitation, and enhanced strength, being stronger than Ultimate Spidermonkey, and the ability to shoot powerful beams of energy from his hands and create shields from them. He also reveals he has a massive amount of R.E.D.s.
In Omniverse, Psyphon has regained some of his Ultimate Alien powers through unknown means, in addition to some new ones. He exhibited flight, enhanced strength, eye beams, some durability, plus he now has several kinds of beams from wrist devices which can burn objects, cause nervous system damage and many more unseen ones.
When he charged his suit with the Dwarf Star, he gained the ability to create a more powerful blast and strong force field, along with teleportation.
Weaknesses
Psyphon's egomaniacal plans normally go astray when some unforeseen factor or missed detail comes into play.
He will grovel or panic in front of Vilgax.
Psyphon has admitted to himself that he is no leader as even his own gang makes fun of him.
Appearances
Ben 10: Alien Force
- Vengeance of Vilgax: Part 1 (first appearance)
- Vengeance of Vilgax: Part 2
- Primus
- The Secret of Chromastone (cameo)
Ben 10: Ultimate Alien
- Reflected Glory (first re-appearance)
- The Ultimate Enemy: Part 1
- The Ultimate Enemy: Part 2
Ben 10: Omniverse
- The More Things Change: Part 2 (first re-appearance)
- Outbreak
- Special Delivery
- Mud Is Thicker Than Water
- Bengeance Is Mine
- Cough It Up
Video Games
Ben 10: Vilgax Attacks
Psyphon made an appearance in the game Vilgax Attacks as a mini boss and is met by Ben on the rooftops in Bellwood. He attacks with missiles and uses a shield to defend himself. After being defeated he brings the Mr. Smoothy sign to life. At the end of the game, he was sent into the Null Void with Vilgax by Alien X. At the end of the game he also reveals that Vilgax beamed him back aboard his ship after Ben defeated him.
Ben 10: Cosmic Destruction
Psyphon appears in Cosmic Destruction where he serves Evil Way Big/Albedo. He mentioned the reason why he decided to leave Vilgax, which was because he wanted to serve the most powerful, but he could just have been flattering Evil Way Big. He mentioned considering working for Aggregor, but Aggregor said he worked alone, and Psyphon said "and look where that got him". Evil Way Big interpreted Psyphon's comment that he couldn't be trusted and kept him around only because of his usefulness, first with his army of R.E.D.s, later by brain washing Cooper to attack Ben and retrieve the Potis Altiare, and finally holding off Ben himself. In the DS Version, Ben encounters Psyphon at the Robotics Lab in Tokyo.
Ben 10: Omniverse
Psyphon appears in Omniverse as a Boss. He once again takes the role of a lackey having kidnapped Blukic and Driba to construct holographic converters for Malware. He was hunted down and defeated by Ben and Rook and his prisoners defeated.
Etymology
Psyphon's name is a corruption of the word siphon, meaning to draw out. This is because he is the one who controls the machine that siphons power out of Vilgax's enemies and into Vilgax.
Trivia
- Psyphon revealed in Bengeance Is Mine that his gang makes fun of him and he'd much rather serve Vilgax.