The Hero Code

[Thegameaholic]

The sky over Bellwood was usually a pristine, postcard-perfect blue, but today it was currently being painted with streaks of obnoxious neon pink and radioactive green.

"I'm telling you, Rhombus, the package said highly explosive, not highly flammable! You went and ruined the structural integrity of the Plumber transport before we even got to raid the good stuff!"

"Aw, shut yer trap, Octagon! A boom is a boom, and this here boom got us a whole crate of Level 5 sub-atomic disruptors! Ma's gonna be so proud she might actually let us keep our allowance this week!"

Ben Tennyson skidded around the corner of an overturned hovering semi-truck, his green and black jacket catching the wind. The Omnitrix on his left wrist gleamed with a familiar, comforting emerald hum. Beside him, Rook Blonko moved with fluent, practiced agility, his Proto-Tool already shifting into its blaster configuration.

"Vreedles," Ben groaned, rubbing his temples. "Why is it always the Vreedles on a Tuesday? Don't they have a galaxy-wide restraining order against existing within three sectors of Earth?"

"Technically, Ben, their legal counsel managed to reduce the restriction to Earth's upper atmosphere," Rook corrected smoothly, firing a non-lethal energy snare toward Rhombus Vreedle. "Regrettably, they appear to have a very loose interpretation of the word 'atmosphere'."

"Heads up!" Ben slapped the faceplate of the Omnitrix. The dial popped up, displaying the holographic silhouette of a massive, rocky brawler. "Time to weigh in!"

He slammed the dial down. In a flash of blinding green light, his form expanded. Rigid, deep-red skin erupted over massive muscles; a second pair of arms burst from his torso, and four piercing yellow eyes locked onto the bumbling clone brothers.

"FOUR ARMS!" the Tetramand roared, his voice shaking the asphalt.

"Aw, look at that, Octagon! The Omnitrix boy wants to play rassle!" Rhombus grinned, lifting a weapon that looked entirely too large for any living creature to hold safely.

Before the trigger could be pulled, a strange sensation washed over Ben. It didn't start in his body; it started in his mind. It wasn't the usual tactical overlay or the genetic echo of the Tetramand DNA. It was an agonizing, jagged spike of pure, unadulterated misery.

Ben stumbled, his four massive hands dropping to his knees. The green light of the Omnitrix flickered violently—an occurrence that hadn't happened since the universe reset.

"Someone... please..."

The voice didn't belong to anyone he knew. It was a girl. She sounded young, entirely broken, and buried under a suffocating weight of absolute terror. The sound wasn't coming from the street, or from the sky, or even from the Plumber comm-links. It was echoing directly from the core of his soul, vibrating through the very fabric of the Omnitrix.

"Ben?" Rook's voice sounded muffled, as if he were underwater. "Ben, your biometric readings are fluctuating erratically. Are you experiencing a feedback loop?"

"Please... I can't breathe... someone, anyone... be a hero..."

The desperate prayer tore through Ben's consciousness like a physical blade. A localized distortion field began to warp the space directly around Four Arms. The air pressure dropped instantly, howling with the sound of a violent, cross-dimensional vacuum.

"Rook!" Ben gasped out, his Tetramand vocal cords straining as the green energy of his transformation began to violently unravel, snapping back into human form. "Something's... something's pulling me!"

"Hold on!" Rook leaped forward, reaching out with his Proto-Tool's grappling hook, but the silver light fractured like breaking glass.



With a sound like a collapsing star, Ben Tennyson vanished from the streets of Bellwood, leaving behind nothing but a faint scent of ozone and two very confused Vreedle brothers.

Inside the dark, rusted vertical coffin of Locker 82, Taylor Hebert was dying.

It wasn't a quick death. It was the slow, agonizing asphyxiation of the soul. The air was thick, rancid, and heavy with the putrid stench of used feminine hygiene products, rotting waste, and toxic chemicals that had been fermenting in the enclosed space for days. Every breath she took filled her lungs with a biohazardous miasma that made her violently ill, but there was nowhere to turn, nowhere to vomit without it coating her own skin.

She had been screaming for hours. Her throat was raw, bleeding, scraping against itself like sandpaper. Outside, the muffled sounds of Winslow High School's hallway had transitioned from cruel, mocking laughter to the mundane drone of changing periods, and finally, to a terrifying, hollow silence.

They had left her. Emma. Sophia. Madison. The entire world.

Why? The question repeated in her mind like a broken record, a rhythmic torture device. What did I do to deserve this? Why doesn't anyone help me?

Her fingers clawed at the rusted metal slats, her fingernails tearing until they bled, leaving dark streaks against the grime. The darkness began to warp. Her mind, pushed past the absolute brink of human endurance, started to fracture.

Suddenly, her perception exploded.

She wasn't just inside the locker anymore. She was everywhere. She could feel the structural geometry of the school, the wiring in the walls, the microscopic dust motes floating in the air. And then, she saw it a massive, multi-dimensional entity, vast beyond human comprehension, unfolding like an impossible flower made of crystalline math and starlight. It was looking for a connection. It was looking for a way to express its purpose: Administration.

But Taylor didn't want to administrate. She didn't want to control. She didn't want to adapt to this filth.

With the final, dying embers of her sanity, her mind screamed out a desperate, furious counter-command to the cosmos. She didn't want a tool to survive the dark. She wanted a savior. She wanted a light.

I need a hero!

The entity paused. The crystalline network of the Shard recoiled, its algorithmic progression disrupted by an anomalous, foreign signal bleeding into the dimensional fold. A secondary anchor forged not from the entity's own energy, but from a cosmic device that held the genetic blueprints of a million worlds slammed into Taylor's nervous system.

The Shard connected and tore open a localized wormhole, dragging a living catalyst across the multiverse to answer the specific, literal parameters of her dying wish.

Ben Tennyson hit the floor hard, the breath leaving his lungs in a sharp woosh.

Instantly, his senses were assaulted. The air didn't smell like Bellwood. It didn't smell like the Undertown markets, which was saying something because Undertown smelled like sour milk and damp alien fur. This smell was foul, biological, and dripping with a malice that made his stomach turn instantly.

"Ugh... what thehell..." Ben groaned, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees.

He was in a hallway. The floors were covered in scuffed, institutional linoleum. The walls were a depressing, sickly shade of institutional beige, lined with rows of battered, olive-green metal lockers. The lighting flickered with a depressing hum that suggested a total lack of maintenance.

"...help..."

The sound was tiny. It was right next to him.

Ben bolted to his feet, his heroic instincts overriding the massive headache pounding against his skull. He spun around and locked his eyes on Locker 82. The metal door was vibrating slightly. From the narrow ventilation slats at the top, a sickening odor wafted out, alongside the faint, wet sound of a girl sobbing.

"Hey! Hang on!" Ben yelled, rushing over to the locker. He grabbed the padlock hanging from the latch. It was heavy, industrial, and completely locked.

Inside, Taylor heard a voice. It wasn't the mocking sneer of Sophia or the cold, detached dismissal of Principal Blackwell. It was a boy's voice. It sounded loud, clear, and dripping with genuine, unforced concern.

"Who's... who's there?" she rasped, her voice barely a whisper.

"My name's Ben! I'm getting you out of there right now, just hold on!"

Ben didn't waste time looking for a key. He didn't look for a crowbar. He reached for the Omnitrix, his thumb hitting the activation button. The faceplate popped up, glowing with its characteristic, vibrant green hue—a stark, almost offensive contrast to the dismal surroundings of Winslow High.

"Let's see who's up for some heavy lifting," Ben muttered, spinning the dial. He needed someone strong, someone precise. He bypassed his heavier, more destructive aliens like Way Big or Atomix. He didn't want to bring the whole building down on top of her.

He settled on an old reliable. A silhouette with a crystalline structure appeared.

"Diamondhead. Perfect."

Ben slammed his palm onto the faceplate.

A brilliant flash of emerald light illuminated the dingy hallway. From the center of the light, Ben's body rapidly transformed. His skin hardened into flawless, pale-green silicon crystal. Sharp, angular shards erupted from his back, and his clothing merged into a sleek, black-and-green uniform.

Ben raised his right hand. With a fluid thought, his fingers fused and lengthened, morphing into a sharp, gleaming blade of unbreakable diamond. He didn't even need to swing hard. He slid the crystalline blade through the heavy steel padlock as if it were warm butter. The lock shattered, pieces of metal clattering to the floor.

With his left hand, he gripped the edge of the locker door. The metal groaned, buckling under the immense strength of a Petrosapien. With a firm, controlled pull, Ben ripped the locker door completely off its hinges, tossing it aside like a piece of cardboard.

The contents of the locker spilled outward.

Ben's crystalline eyes widened in absolute horror. A young girl, gaunt, covered in horrific, unmentionable filth, with matted dark hair and broken glasses hanging from one ear, collapsed forward. She didn't hit the floor; Diamondhead's massive, crystal arms caught her gently, cradling her frail form against his chest.

"I've got you. I've got you, you're safe," Ben said, his metallic voice dropping to the softest register he could manage.

Taylor looked up through blurred, tear-stained vision. She didn't see a boy anymore. She saw a creature made of living, beautiful gemstone. He was radiating a faint, comforting warmth, and despite his intimidating appearance, his grip was incredibly gentle.

"You... you came," she whispered, her consciousness fraying at the edges.

"Yeah. I came," Ben replied. He looked at her state—the bruises, the chemical burns on her skin, the sheer trauma radiating from her small frame. A deep, righteous fury sparked in his chest. Who would do this to someone? What kind of sick monsters live here?

He realized she needed medical attention immediately. The smell alone told him she had been exposed to severe bio-contaminants.

"Hold on tight," Ben told her.

He tapped the hourglass symbol on his chest. In another flash of green light, the crystalline form of Diamondhead melted away, replaced instantly by a sleek, feline humanoid creature with blue and black fur, wearing a pointed mask and a pair of high-tech running shoes built naturally into his anatomy.

"Fasttrack!" the alien declared, his voice high-pitched and bursting with energy.

Taylor didn't even have time to gasp. Ben adjusted his grip, lifting her securely in a bridal carry. He looked down the hallway, spotting the 'Exit' sign at the far end.

"Time to jet."

To the average citizen of Brockton Bay, the world was a series of gray gradients. It was a city defined by its decay, its corruption, and the ever-present shadow of the gangs.

But to Ben Tennyson, traveling at Mach 3, Brockton Bay looked like a living nightmare of a dystopian alternate timeline.

As Fasttrack blurred through the school doors, shattering the glass with the sheer force of his sonic boom, he hit the streets. He didn't know where the nearest hospital was, but a quick scan of the horizon revealed a massive building with a glowing red cross a few miles away near the city center.

As he ran, the world passed by in a slow-motion smear, allowing him to take in the sheer, suffocating atmosphere of this new environment.

What is wrong with this place? Ben thought, his feline eyes darting from left to right.

The buildings were covered in soot, rust, and graffiti that didn't look like the artistic expressions of Bellwood teenagers it looked like territory markings. He saw symbols of stylized skulls, coiled snakes, and crude hooked crosses. The streets were filled with potholes, abandoned vehicles, and people who walked with their heads down, their shoulders hunched, radiating a collective aura of hopeless defeat.

There were no alien tourists walking the streets. There were no Plumber hover-ships patrolling the sky. There were no colorful billboard advertisements for Mr. Smoothy. Everything was bleak, industrial, and profoundly depressing. It felt more alien to Ben than Anur Transyl.

"Hang in there, kid," Ben muttered, feeling the girl's shallow breathing against his chest. "Almost there."

He pushed his legs harder, his paws striking the asphalt with rhythmic, thunderous cracks. He dodged around a rusty city bus, the passengers inside only seeing a blue-and-black blur and feeling a sudden gust of wind that rocked the vehicle.

Within less than thirty seconds, Fasttrack skidded to a halt outside the emergency room entrance of Brockton General Hospital. The friction from his sudden stop left smoking black skid marks on the concrete.

The automatic glass doors slid open as Ben walked in, still in his alien form.

The waiting room was moderately crowded. A tired-looking nurse behind the triage desk looked up, her eyes widening in immediate, practiced panic. A strange, unknown Case 53 walking into an ER was usually a sign of an impending gang war.

"Step back! Is it a villain attack?!" a security guard shouted, his hand instantly going to his holster, though his fingers trembled violently.

"Whoa, whoa! Lower the pea-shooter, pal! I'm a good guy!" Ben shouted, his Fasttrack voice dripping with urgency. He stepped forward, carefully presenting the unconscious Taylor. "She needs a doctor right now! She was locked in a school locker filled with biological waste! She's dehydrated, she's got chemical burns, and she's barely breathing!"

The nurse behind the desk looked past the alien appearance of the savior and saw the horrific condition of the patient. The sheer smell of rotten filth finally caught up with the room, causing several waiting patients to gag.

"Code Blue in the lobby! Get a gurney out here now!" the nurse yelled into her intercom.

Within seconds, two orderlies rushed out with a rolling stretcher. Ben gently, meticulously lowered Taylor onto the white sheets. As her body left his arms, he felt a strange, physical resistance like an invisible, elastic cord pulling at his chest, trying to drag him closer to her.

Taylor's hand randomly twitched, her fingers brushing against the Omnitrix symbol on Ben's chest before she was wheeled away through the double doors.

The moment the contact occurred, a violent jolt of golden-green electricity arced between the two of them.

Ben gasped, stumbling backward as the Omnitrix timed out, flashing red before reverting him back into his human form. The sleek, blue-and-black feline mask and fur melted away in a shower of vibrant green particles, leaving a completely ordinary, brown-haired teenage boy in a green jacket standing in the center of the room.

The entire hospital lobby went dead silent.

The security guard dropped his jaw, his hand freezing on his holster. The nurse gasped, her hands flying over her mouth. Several patients in the waiting chairs stood up, staring at Ben with expressions of absolute, profound shock.

"Oh my god," someone whispered from the back of the room. "He just... he just unmasked."

"Is he insane? Right out in the open?" another patient muttered, pulling out a cell phone to snap a frantic, blurry photo. "Wait... green jacket... no mask... is he a new member of New Wave? Did Carol and Mark adopt another kid?"

"He looks too young to be an independent. It has to be New Wave. They're the only ones crazy enough to walk around showing their real faces to the world!"

Ben blinked, looking around the room at the whispering, staring crowd. He looked down at his clothes, then back at the panicked, awestruck faces of the citizens.

"Uh... New Wave?" Ben asked aloud, scratching the back of his neck, completely bewildered. "Is that a band? Look, I don't know what kind of music you guys are into, but I really just need to know where the bathroom is so I can wash this smell off my hands."

The crowd only stared harder, utterly flabbergasted by his casual dismissal of what they assumed was a massive, career-ending security breach.

Ben sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair of the hospital waiting room, his legs swinging restlessly. He had spent the last two hours ignoring the blatant stares of the hospital staff, who kept looking at him as if he were a walking dead man walking.

His Plumber badge had no signal. The Omnitrix's universal distress beacon was flashing a geometric error code he had never seen before. When he had slipped outside earlier to escape the suffocating stares, he had noticed the newspapers in a nearby vending machine.

The Brockton Bay Yacht Club Bombing. Protectorate ENE Welcomes New Ward. The Year: 2011.

"Great. Just great," Ben whispered to himself, leaning his head back against the wall. "Not only am I in a completely different city, I think I'm in a completely different dimension. And the calendar is backwards."

"Excuse me? Son?"

Ben blinked, looking up. A tall, gaunt man with messy dark hair and a deeply lined face was standing in front of him. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week, his clothes were wrinkled, and his eyes were bloodshot and swimming with a mixture of terror and profound gratitude.

"Are you the boy who brought my daughter here?" Danny Hebert asked, his voice shaking.

Ben stood up immediately, extending a hand. "Ben. Ben Tennyson. And yeah, I found her at the school. I couldn't just leave her there."

Danny didn't shake his hand. Instead, the older man collapsed forward, throwing his arms around Ben in a desperate, weeping hug. "Thank you... oh God, thank you... the doctors said if she had been in there another hour... the infection... the toxic shock..."

Ben, slightly uncomfortable but understanding the raw emotion, patted Danny's back gently. "It's fine, Mr. Hebert. Anyone would have done it."

Though, looking at that school, apparently a lot of people didn't, Ben thought grimly.

"They're allowing me to see her now," Danny said, pulling back and wiping his eyes. He looked at Ben with a deeply troubled, anxious expression. "The nurse said... she said the boy who brought her in should come too. She keeps calling for your name in her sleep. And, Ben... there's something wrong with her medical readings. The doctors are completely baffled."

Ben's brow furrowed. "Baffled how?"

"They said her DNA is fluctuating. They think... oh god, they think she might be a parahuman now," Danny whispered, his voice cracking with the specific dread of a parent whose child had just been thrust into a dangerous, violent world of capes and villains. He didn't know how or why people gained powers the public only knew that some people suddenly changed after horrific tragedies but the mere reality of it terrified him. "They think whatever happened to her in that locker caused her to change."

Before Ben could ask what a parahuman was, a loud alarm began to blare from the intensive care corridor.

Beep-beep-beep-beep!

"Doctor! Her vitals are spiking! We have an anomalous power manifestation!" a voice screamed from down the hall.

Ben didn't wait for Danny. He bolted down the corridor, his sneakers squeaking against the clean floors. He followed the sound of the shouting straight to Room 104.

When he threw the door open, the sight inside made his jaw drop.

Taylor Hebert was awake, sitting upright in her hospital bed. Her eyes were glowing with a vibrant, glowing green hue, entirely devoid of her pupils. Her entire left arm had transformed into the massive, fiery, molten-rock limb of a Pyronite—Heatblast. Sparks of intense, white-hot fire were leaping from her fingers, scorching the sterile hospital sheets.

The doctors and nurses were cowering against the far wall, holding up medical trays like shields.

"I can't... I can't control it!" Taylor screamed, her voice layering into a dual resonance—her own voice mixed with the crackling, volcanic roar of a Pyronite. "It burns! No, wait, it doesn't burn, but it's too much! There's too much inside my head!"

The moment Ben stepped into the room, the Omnitrix on his wrist flared to life without him touching it. A stream of green data-energy arced from his watch, connecting directly to the molten rock of Taylor's arm.

"Taylor! Calm down!" Ben yelled, rushing past the terrified doctors. He didn't care about the fire; he had dealt with Heatblast for years. He reached out and grabbed her fiery hand with his bare hand.

The moment their skin met, the fire didn't burn him. Instead, the molten rock rapidly cooled, turning into gray ash before flaking away to reveal her normal, pale skin underneath.

Taylor gasped, her chest heaving as the green glow faded from her eyes. She slumped back against the pillows, completely exhausted, sweating profusely. She looked at Ben, her eyes wide with a terrifying realization.

"You're... you're inside my head," she whispered, her voice trembling. "I can feel your watch. I can feel... everything it holds. A million voices... a million shapes..."

Ben looked down at the Omnitrix, which had returned to its calm, green standby mode. Then he looked at Taylor, who was staring at him as if he held the keys to the universe.

"Okay," Ben said, scratching the back of his neck with a wry, nervous grin. "This is definitely a new one. I think we need to talk."

 

[Thegameaholic]

The sterile, white fluorescent lights of Room 104 hummed with a monotonous, clinical vibration that did nothing to soothe the ringing in Ben Tennyson's ears. The scent of ozone and burnt hospital sheets still hung faintly in the air, a stubborn ghost of the brief, terrifying manifestation of Pyronite fire that had nearly incinerated the room's medical equipment.

Ben sat on a squeaky plastic stool, leaning his elbows on his knees, his eyes fixed on the teenager resting in the elevated hospital bed. Taylor Hebert looked impossibly fragile beneath the heavy layers of standard-issue cotton blankets. Her face was pale, almost translucent, save for the dark, bruised hollows beneath her eyes and the angry red angry patches where chemical burns were slowly beginning to blister.

Beside her, Danny Hebert stood like a sentinel, his hand gripping his daughter's uninjured right hand with a white-knuckled desperation. The man looked completely drained, his shoulders slumped beneath a frayed jacket that smelled faintly of salt air and industrial tobacco. Every few seconds, Danny's eyes would flicker toward the closed door of the hospital room, his jaw tightening in anticipation of the inevitable storm. The PRT had been called. In Brockton Bay, when a new Cape manifested with enough force to warp reality and melt medical equipment, the authorities didn't just send a memo; they sent heavily armed men in power armor.

"So," Ben began, his voice breaking the heavy silence. He ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair, letting out a breath that was half-laugh, half-sigh. "We're waiting for the local superhero cops, I'm stuck in a city that looks like a rainy Tuesday in Anur Transyl, and my universe-hopper beacon is completely dead. I guess now is as good a time as any to exchange life stories. I'll go first, since I'm technically the alien element here."

Taylor shifted slightly, her gaze tracking him with an intensity that made him feel like he was being dissected under a microscope. "You keep saying that word," she rasped, her voice still raw and scraping against her throat. "Alien."

"Because it's true," Ben said simply, tapping the faceplate of the Omnitrix resting against his left wrist. The device sat dormant, its emerald hourglass glowing with a soft, steady pulse. "Look, I know this is going to sound completely insane, but I am not from your version of Earth. In my dimension, the year is 2019. We've got space-travel down to a science, alien refugees living in underground cities beneath major metropolitan areas, and an intergalactic law enforcement agency called the Plumbers keeping the peace. I was literally in the middle of fighting a pair of immortal, low-IQ clone brothers named the Vreedles in my hometown of Bellwood when... well, when whatever happened to you dragged me through a cosmic drainpipe."

Danny and Taylor shared a brief, heavy look. It was a silent communication born of years of shared grief and mutual understanding, but right now, it was dripping with a profound, quiet skepticism.

"Ben," Danny said, his voice slow and deliberately gentle, the way one might speak to someone standing too close to the edge of a roof. "We know about parallel worlds. Everyone does. There's Earth-Aleph.They're a few years behind us technologically, sure, and they don't have many capes, but... they don't have aliens, Ben. No one has aliens. The only things that come from the stars are... well, things we don't like to think about."

"I'm not talking about Earth-Aleph, Mr. Hebert," Ben insisted, leaning forward, his tone earnest. "I'm talking about a completely separate multiverse structure. And this watch? It's called the Omnitrix. It doesn't give me superpowers because I'm special. It's a highly advanced genetic catalog. When I slap this dial, it literally overwrites my human DNA with the genetic code of a completely different species. The crystal guy you saw? Petrosapien from the planet Petropia. The fast cat? A Citrakayah from Chalybeas. It's a diplomatic tool designed to let the wearer walk a mile in another species' shoes. Or, you know, paws."

Taylor closed her eyes for a long moment, a faint, weary sigh escaping her lips. When she opened them, there was a profound sense of pity in her expression. To her, the story made perfect sense through the cruel, distorted lens of her own world's logic.

He's a Tinker, she thought, a wave of cold certainty washing over her. A high-level Tinker who suffered a horrific psychological break during his own Trigger Event. His brain couldn't handle the strain of the data influx from his passenger, so it built a massive, elaborate delusion to protect itself. He built a watch that lets him change shapes, and his mind invented an entire sci-fi universe of aliens and space-cops to justify why he has those forms. He thinks it's 2019 because his internal clock is completely shattered.

"It's a beautiful piece of technology, Ben," Taylor said softly, her voice laced with a gentle condescension she didn't mean to project, but couldn't entirely hide. "The watch... it's amazing Tinkertech. Truly. The way you changed in the lobby, the way you bypassed the lock on the... on the locker... you must have spent months, maybe years, designing the blueprints in your head before it finally came together. But you don't have to lie to us. You don't have to pretend you're from space. The PRT is going to evaluate you anyway. They'll probably classify you as a Tinker/Changer."

Ben stared at her, his jaw slightly slack. He looked down at the Omnitrix, then back at Taylor's utterly convinced face. "Tinkertech? You think I built this?I can barely wire a DVD player without my cousin Gwen yelling at me. This was made by Azmuth! He's a Galvan! He's basically a three-inch-tall super-genius frog who lives on a planet called Galvan Prime!"

"Ben, please," Danny interrupted, placing a comforting hand on Ben's shoulder. The grip was heavy with a father's exhaustion. "We understand. Cape minds... they work differently. The stress of gaining powers can do strange things to a person's memories. We aren't judging you. You saved my daughter's life today. If you want to tell the PRT you're from the year 2019 and that you work with space frogs, that's your business. But you're safe here. You don't need to keep the act up for us."

Ben opened his mouth to argue, the sheer, ridiculous irony of the situation threatening to make him laugh. He was a universal hero, a guy who had literally held the weight of the Big Bang in his bare hands, and here he was being treated like a confused teenager who had read too many comic books. But as he looked at the profound weariness in Danny's eyes and the absolute conviction in Taylor's, he realized it was a losing battle. They were trapped in their own worldview, conditioned by whatever messed-up reality they lived in.

"Alright," Ben muttered, throwing his hands up in a gesture of temporary surrender. "Fine. We'll circle back to the 'space frog' conversation later. If I'm in a different version of Earth, you guys owe me an explanation. What is this place? Because from what I saw out there on the highway, Brockton Bay looks like it's one bad day away from falling into the ocean."

Taylor let out a dry, bitter sound that might have been a laugh if her lungs didn't burn so badly. "It is. That's just Earth-Bet for you."

For the next twenty minutes, Danny and Taylor took turns painting a picture of their world, and with every sentence, Ben felt a cold weight settling deeper into his chest. They spoke of Scion—a golden, silent god who had descended from the sky three decades ago, handing out miracles but offering no real answers. They spoke of the PRT, the Protectorate, and the strict, unyielding laws of the Cape subculture.

But it was when Danny mentioned the Endbringers that the atmosphere in the room completely froze.

"Behemoth. Leviathan. the Simurgh," Danny whispered, his hands trembling slightly as he recited the names like a dark prayer. "They're... monsters, Ben. Walking disasters. Every few months, one of them appears at a random major city on the globe. Leviathan sinks landmasses. Behemoth burns cities to ash. The Simurgh... she drives people mad just by singing. We lose thousands of heroes every year just trying to slow them down. Humanity is losing. We're losing a slow, agonizing war of attrition, and there's nothing anyone can do but watch the clock tick down."

Ben listened, his typical lighthearted demeanor completely evaporating. His mind raced, comparing these 'Endbringers' to the threats he knew. Vilgax, the Highbreed, Malware, even the Diagon he had faced world-ending entities before. But the way Danny spoke of them wasn't the way people spoke of a villain who could be defeated. It was the way people spoke of the weather. It was an inevitable, malicious force of nature that the entire planet had simply accepted as a tax for existing.

"That's... horrible," Ben said softly, the wit completely gone from his tone. "A whole world just waiting to die. No wonder this city feels like a tomb."

He turned his gaze back to Taylor, his green eyes sharpening with a sudden, localized focus. "Which brings us back to you. Your dad said you 'triggered' because of what happened in that school. How did you end up inside a locked container filled with... with that kind of biological nightmare, Taylor? Who did that to you?"

Taylor's entire body went rigid beneath the blankets. The fragile peace she had found in the room shattered instantly, replaced by a suffocating wall of defensive panic. Her fingers curled into the fabric of the hospital sheets, her knuckles turning stark white.

No, her mind screamed. No, no, no. I can't tell him. I can't tell my dad.

If she told them the truth if she told them that Emma, her former best friend, the girl her dad still thought of as a second daughter, was the architect of her torment—it would destroy Danny. He was already hanging on by a thread, blaming himself for his inability to provide for her, blaming himself for his grief over her mother. If he knew that the bullying had escalated to a literal attempted murder while the school administration watched and smiled, he would go to the school with a pipe or a gun. He would get himself killed, or thrown into the Birdcage, and she would be entirely alone.

And Ben? Ben was a literal superhero, whether his memories were broken or not. He was a boy who looked at the world with a bright, unclouded confidence that she couldn't even begin to comprehend. If he knew how pathetic she was how she had spent months taking the insults, the ruined homework, the shoved shoulders, the stolen clothes, only to end up weeping and begging in a box of human filth he would look at her with disgust. He would see her as a victim. A charity case. A broken, useless girl who couldn't even stand up for herself.

"It... it doesn't matter," Taylor muttered, her eyes darting away to fixate on a generic landscape painting on the opposite wall. "It was just... some people at school. Some miserable people who wanted to make someone else miserable. A prank that went entirely too far."

"A prank?" Danny's voice rose, a dangerous, trembling edge cutting through his grief. "Taylor, they locked you in a hazardous waste dump! You have internal infections! You almost died! That isn't a prank, that's attempted murder! I need names, Taylor. Tell me who did this. Tell me who Blackwell is protecting!"

"I don't know!" Taylor lied, her voice cracking as a single, hot tear escaped her eye and slid down her cheek. "It was dark, Dad! I was shoved from behind before first period! I didn't see their faces! It could have been anyone from the gangs, or just... just random kids who thought it would be funny to pick on the quiet girl! Please, just... let it go. It's over. I'm out."

Ben watched her closely. His experience with a wide variety of liars—from intergalactic warlords to Kevin Levin trying to explain why his car was covered in pink spray paint—told him instantly that she was hiding something massive. The specific way her shoulders hitched, the defensive posture, the sheer terror not of the memory, but of the admission. She wasn't protecting her attackers out of loyalty; she was protecting something else. Her own pride, or perhaps her father's safety.

He opened his mouth to press her, to tell her that heroes don't let monsters get away with stuff like this, but Danny let out a ragged, defeated sigh, burying his face in his hands. The man was too exhausted to fight her right now, and Ben realized that pushing a freshly traumatized girl into a panic attack wasn't going to solve anything.

"Alright," Ben said gently, throwing a warning glance at Danny to signal that they should drop it for the moment. "We'll let it rest for now. But for the record? Where I come from, guys who do stuff like that don't get to just walk away because they call it a prank."

He leaned back, shifting the topic to something more technical. "So, you asked what your powers are. From what I saw when you woke up, whatever happened to you in that locker... it didn't just give you a standard ability. When your mind was breaking down, looking for a way out, it tapped into a massive energy source. Specifically, it hijacked the wireless configuration matrix of the Omnitrix."

Taylor blinked, looking down at her left arm, which still felt strangely warm, as if a faint current of electricity was constantly humming just beneath her skin. "I... I can still feel it. It's like a phantom limb, but instead of an arm, it's a massive, shifting library of... shapes. When I panicked earlier, I didn't mean to turn into that fire thing. I just wanted the doctors to step away, and my arm... it just became that."

"A Pyronite," Ben corrected with a grin. "Heatblast. You only shifted your arm because your body isn't configured to handle a full transformation yet. The Omnitrix has a built-in safety protocol that prevents genetic degradation. Since you're tapping into it without the actual watch interface on your body, your brain is acting like a firewall, throttling the power so you don't accidentally burn your own nervous system out. You're like a mini-Omnitrix, Taylor. You can shift parts of yourself, or maybe even do brief full transformations eventually, but it's going to take a lot out of you."

Before Taylor could respond, the heavy atmospheric pressure in the room shifted. It wasn't a superpower manifestation; it was the unmistakable, deliberate sound of heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoing down the tiled hallway outside. Heavy steel plates clanked against the linoleum, accompanied by the lighter, swishing sound of a fabric cloak.

The door to Room 104 clicked and swung open.

Standing in the doorway was a man who looked like he had stepped straight out of a military-industrial sci-fi convention. He was clad in massive, meticulously polished blue power armor accented with silver filigree. A heavy, high-tech visor covered the upper half of his face, glowing with a soft blue status light, and in his right hand, he held a massive, mechanical halberd that looked entirely too complex to be a simple melee weapon.

Beside him stood a young girl, perhaps a year or two older than Taylor. She wore a simple white cloak adorned with a stylized red cross over her ordinary clothes. Her face was dusted with freckles, her brown hair pulled back into a messy, utilitarian ponytail. She looked utterly exhausted, her eyes carrying a deep, cynical weariness that seemed entirely unnatural for someone her age.

Ben didn't move from his stool, but his entire posture shifted from relaxed to alert in a fraction of a second. His left hand hovered naturally over the dial of the Omnitrix.

"Mr. Hebert. Miss Hebert," the armored man spoke, his voice modulated through his helmet's speakers into a deep, authoritative baritone. "I am Armsmaster, leader of the Protectorate ENE. This is Panacea of New Wave. We received reports of a high-tier Changer manifestation and an unmasked rogue Cape operating within the hospital parameters."

The armored hero's visor shifted, the blue light tracking across the room until it locked directly onto Ben Tennyson.

"And you," Armsmaster said, his halberd shifting a fraction of an inch in a calculated display of readiness. "Must be the individual the internet is currently calling 'The Emerald Kid'. We need to have a very long conversation about your lack of a mask, your lack of registration, and the highly illegal piece of unauthorized Tinkertech on your wrist."

Ben slowly stood up from his stool, stretching his arms over his head with an infuriatingly casual air. He offered Armsmaster a sharp, entirely unbothered grin.

"Look, armor-guy," Ben said, tapping the Omnitrix. "First of all, the name is Ben 10. Second of all, I don't know what kind of tech budget you're working with here, but this isn't Tinkertech. And third? If you think a fancy tin suit and a oversized butter knife are going to intimidate me, you should talk to a guy named Vilgax."

Panacea let out a faint, irritated scoff from behind Armsmaster's shoulder. "Great. Another arrogant brat with an ego bigger than his rating. Armsmaster, can I please just do my job so I can go home? I have thirty more patients waiting at the university hospital."

Armsmaster paused, his visor cycling through several diagnostic scans as he evaluated Ben's biometric data and the strange, impossible energy signatures bleeding from the watch. "Very well. Panacea, check the victim for biological stability. Subject 'Ben' will remain stationary for questioning."

Amy Dallon rolled her eyes and stepped past the towering armored hero. She walked over to the side of the bed, entirely ignoring Ben, and looked down at Taylor. Her expression softened just a fraction, a brief flash of genuine medical concern breaking through her cynical exterior.

"Hey," Amy said softly to Taylor. "I'm going to look at what's going on inside. This won't hurt, but you might feel a weird tingling sensation. Just try to relax."

Taylor nodded numbly, her eyes wide as she looked at the famous healer.

Amy reached out, her bare hand making contact with the skin of Taylor's uninjured right forearm. Her power, a deep, instinctual understanding of biological systems down to the cellular and genetic level, instantly flooded across the connection. Normally, a human body was a map she could read in a glance a standard blueprint of blood vessels, organs, DNA strands, and the occasional anomalous parahuman corona pollentia in the brain.

But the moment Amy's power touched Taylor Hebert, her entire world exploded into absolute, incomprehensible chaos.

Amy gasped, her eyes flying open as her body jerked violently backward. She snatched her hand away from Taylor's arm as if she had just touched a white-hot stove. She stumbled, nearly tripping over her own cloak before slamming her back against the hospital wall, her chest heaving as she stared at Taylor with an expression of pure, unadulterated terror.

"What... what the hell are you?!" Amy shrieked, her voice cracking with a panic that none of them had ever heard from the stoic healer before.

Armsmaster immediately raised his halberd, the weapon humming to life with a crackling blue plasma edge. "Panacea! Report! Is the subject a biological threat?"

"No!" Amy screamed, her hands clutching her head as she tried to process the impossible data her power had just fed into her brain. She pointed a trembling, white-knuckled finger at Taylor, and then at Ben. "Her DNA... it's not human! No, wait, it is human, but there's... there's an active evolutionary engine stitched into her genetic code! I tried to read her biology, and my power gave me the blueprints for a thousand different species that shouldn't exist! They aren't Earth biology! They don't have carbon structures that make sense! One of them is a living silicon crystal structure, another is a localized volcanic core, and there's... there's something in there that looks like a star-spawn!"

She locked her eyes onto Ben, her face completely drained of color. "And it's all coming from him. She's a mirror, Armsmaster! Her power isn't a normal Changer form! She's tethered to whatever is inside that watch on his wrist, and if that connection stabilizes... she won't just be a parahuman. She's going to be something completely outside the laws of nature!"

Ben simply crossed his arms, his confident grin returning in full force as he looked at the terrified healer and the utterly stunned leader of the Protectorate.

The silence that followed Panacea's frantic declaration was heavy, suffocating, and punctuated only by the rhythmic, clinical beep of the heart monitor attached to Taylor Hebert.

Armsmaster did not move. To a casual observer, the leader of the Protectorate ENE appeared as an unyielding statue of blue and silver steel, a monument to law and order. But inside his helmet, a cascade of data was violently overwhelming his heads-up display. The auxiliary sensors built into his power armor designed to analyze energy outputs, structural density, and localized radiation were cycling through error codes. The algorithms that usually categorized Parahuman abilities into neat, predictable boxes were stuttering against the sheer impossibility of what they were trying to scan.

"Panacea," Armsmaster said, his modulated baritone dropping into a dangerously sharp, analytical register. "Clarify your assessment. Are you stating the subject exhibits a high-level Changer state, or is this a localized Master effect altering her baseline genetic structure?"

Amy Dallon was still pressed against the far wall of the hospital room, her hands trembling as she rubbed her palms against the fabric of her white, cross-adorned cloak. Her face was entirely bloodless, the freckles across her nose standing out like drops of ink on parchment. She looked at Taylor, then darted her eyes toward Ben Tennyson, who remained standing with his arms crossed, a look of mild amusement dancing in his green eyes.

"I'm saying she doesn't have a baseline anymore, Armsmaster!" Amy hissed, her voice cracking with an anxiety she rarely allowed the public to see. "When a normal Changer shifts it rearranges their existing mass, or borrows material from a breaker state to mimic an animal, a monster, or whatever. But her? Her cells are... they're resting on a razor's edge. The moment I touched her, her biology was trying to compute a million different evolutionary paths simultaneously. It's like her body was handed an encyclopedia of impossible lifeforms and told to choose one at random. And the tether...It's radiating from that thing on his wrist."

Armsmaster's visor slowly turned back toward Ben. The mechanical lenses clicked, zooming in on the dormant green faceplate of the Omnitrix. "An external power battery with genetic broadcast capabilities. Highly advanced. Distinctly Tinkertech in nature, regardless of your claims."

Ben let out a long, theatrical groan, tossing his head back. "Oh my gosh, you guys are like a broken record. Look, I'm going to say this one more time, very clearly, so the guy in the tin suit can understand I did not build this. It is not 'Tinkertech'. It's an Omnitrix. It was built by a three-inch-tall alien frog-genius named Azmuth who lives on a planet that would make your entire civilization look like it's still playing with pointy sticks in caves. It doesn't broadcast 'power' to Taylor. Her... Powers or whatever must have hitched a ride on my watch's wireless genetic sync network when she dragged me into this dimension."

"A Trigger Event," Armsmaster interrupted, his voice dropping into a formal, lecturing tone that suggested he was reciting a manual from memory. "Since you claim to be entirely ignorant of our world's dynamics, listen carefully. A Trigger Event is the precise psychological and physiological breaking point of a human being. When an individual is subjected to an amount of trauma, terror, or despair that the human mind is fundamentally incapable of processing, a latent anomalous potential within their biology activates. They gain parahuman abilities powers designed, ironically, to reflect or address the specific nature of the trauma that broke them."

The armored hero shifted his weight, his heavy gauntlets resting on the shaft of his mechanical halberd. He cast a brief, disapproving glance toward Taylor before looking back at Ben.

"In Miss Hebert's case, she experienced a severe, prolonged confinement within a biohazardous space. Under normal circumstances, a parahuman triggering in such conditions would manifest a Mover classification to escape, a Shaker classification to alter her surroundings, or perhaps a Master classification to command the minor biological organisms within the space. Instead, her psychological collapse somehow breached a dimensional vector, anchoring onto you and utilizing your device as a biological template. It is an anomalous, highly irregular event, but it remains a Trigger."

Taylor pulled the hospital blankets higher around her chest, her chin trembling. Hearing the leader of the city's greatest heroes speak about her absolute breaking point in such cold, clinical, mechanical terms felt like a fresh violation. To Armsmaster, she wasn't a girl who had been tortured by her peers while her school ignored her screams; she was a data point. A "highly irregular event" with a set of classifications.

"But that does not excuse your current conduct, Ben 10," Armsmaster continued, his visor locking onto Ben with an icy intensity. "You operated in a public space. You utilized high-tier Mover and Changer abilities to traverse the city at supersonic speeds, breaking the sound barrier over a civilian highway. And worst of all, you entered a public medical facility and allowed your transformation to lapse entirely in front of civilian witnesses, exposing your face, your age, and your unmasked identity to the public."

Ben blinked, entirely unfazed by the armored man's mounting anger. "Yeah? And? I was trying to save a girl's life. Pardon me for not stopping at a costume shop to pick out a matching set of spandex and a leather mask while her lungs were shutting down."

"It is not a matter of aesthetics!" Armsmaster snapped, his gauntlet tightening around his halberd with a sharp clack. "It is a matter of the Unwritten Rules. This city—this entire world—maintains a delicate, highly precarious balance between parahuman forces. Heroes wear masks to protect their civilian lives, their careers, and most importantly, their families. Villains respect the mask because they understand that if they cross that line—if they target a hero's home, their parents, or their children—the heroes will strip away their own restraints and retaliate with lethal, unrestrained force. By walking into this hospital with your face uncovered, you have violated the foundational safety net of the parahuman community. You have invited every gang in Brockton Bay to search for your records, your home, and anyone associated with you."

"Let them try," Ben said, his voice dropping its sarcastic edge, replaced instantly by a quiet, absolute confidence that made even Danny Hebert look up in surprise. "Look, armor-guy, I get that your world is built on fear. I've been listening to you and Mr. Hebert talk for the last hour, and honestly? It sounds miserable. You're all hiding in the dark, wearing masks, terrified that some lunatic is going to show up at your house because you did the right thing."

Ben stepped closer to Armsmaster, entirely ignoring the humming plasma edge of the mechanical halberd. He tapped his own chest, right over his green jacket.

"In my world, I haven't had a secret identity in over a year. A ten-year-old kid named Jimmy Jones found out who I was and posted it on the internet. At first, everyone panicked. My parents were worried, the government wanted to put me in a cage, and every bad guy I ever locked up came knocking on my door at the exact same time."

Ben smiled, a bright, triumphant expression that seemed entirely alien to the grim atmosphere of Brockton Bay. "And you know what happened? It worked out absolute wonders. Because when the bad guys realized that everyone knew my face, they also realized they couldn't hide in the shadows anymore either. They couldn't just target 'Ben 10'—they had to face the reality that if they came after my family, the entire world was watching. And more than that, it meant the people didn't have to look up at a mask and wonder if the guy saving them was a monster underneath. They knew exactly who I was. They knew my name was Ben Tennyson, they knew I liked green, and they knew that if they screamed for help, I'd show up. No secrets. No hiding. Just a guy doing the right thing because he can."

"This is not your world," Armsmaster said coldly. "Your lack of caution is a liability. If you refuse to operate within our parameters, the PRT will be forced to classify you as a rogue element, or worse, a threat to public safety. However, given your apparent displacement and Miss Hebert's recent manifestation, there is a protocol designed specifically for situations like this. The Wards."

Armsmaster turned his gaze slightly toward Taylor, though his focus remained broad enough to include Ben.

"The Wards program is the youth division of the Protectorate," Armsmaster explained, his tone shifting into a practiced, promotional delivery. "It offers a safe, structured, and legally protected environment for parahumans under the age of eighteen. By joining the Wards, Miss Hebert, you will receive an immediate, comprehensive medical evaluation, direct protection from the Protectorate ENE, a monthly stipend, and an escorted education plan. Your civilian identity will be completely protected by federal law, and you will be trained by seasoned professionals to understand, control, and utilize your abilities safely. For you, Ben, it offers a path to legal registration, a controlled environment to evaluate your... unique technology, and an opportunity to integrate into our society without facing immediate criminal charges for vigilantism."

Taylor listened, her mind whirling. The Wards. She knew about them, of course. Vista, Gallant, Clockblocker, Aegis. They were the golden children of the city, plastered on billboards and trading cards. For a split second, the offer sounded like a life raft. It meant safety. It meant she wouldn't have to go back to Winslow High. It meant she wouldn't have to face Emma, Sophia, and Madison alone in those depressing hallways.

But then she looked at Armsmaster's rigid, unyielding armor. She remembered how the school administration had ignored her. The PRT was a government agency. The school board was a government agency. Were they really any different? Would they just turn her into a weapon? A political tool to be paraded around until she broke again?

Before she could speak, a sharp, bitter laugh cut through the room.

"Oh, please, Armsmaster, don't give them the corporate brochure," Amy Dallon said, stepping away from the wall, her arms crossed over her chest as she walked toward the foot of Taylor's bed. Her tone was dripping with heavy sarcasm. "You forgot to mention the part where they muzzle you with public relations meetings, dictate exactly what you can say to the media, and turn your entire life into a government-owned brand. If Ben here joins the Wards, the first thing your bosses at the PRT are going to do is drag him into a laboratory, strip that watch off his arm, and spend the next five years trying to reverse-engineer it for the military while keeping him locked in a basement under 'protective custody'."

Armsmaster's visor flared. "Panacea. You are walking a very fine line regarding Department of parahuman Affairs protocols."

"I don't care about your protocols" Amy snapped. She turned her attention entirely to Ben and Taylor, her expression dead serious. "Look, if you want an alternative a real alternative where you aren't treated like government property you should look at New Wave."

She took a breath, straightening her white cloak. "My family... we founded New Wave on a simple principle: total transparency. We don't wear masks. My mother, Brandish, and my aunt, Lady Photon, unmasked themselves to the public years ago. We don't hide behind secret identities, we don't take government paychecks, and we don't let bureaucrats tell us who we can and cannot save. We operate as a family. We protect our own, we live in the real world, and the public trusts us because they know exactly who we are when we're at the grocery store or at home."

Amy looked directly at Ben, her eyes softening just a fraction. "The people in the lobby already think you're one of us because you don't wear a mask and you have a brain. If you and Taylor come with me if you join New Wave we can protect you. My mom is one of the best parahuman defense lawyers in the country. She can tie the PRT in legal knots for months before they can even think about touching that watch. We can teach you how to be heroes without turning you into soldiers."

Ben listened to both pitches, his head tilting to the side as he evaluated the two local parahumans. He looked at Armsmaster the rigid, rules-obsessed soldier who saw everything as a tactical equation. Then he looked at Amy the exhausted, cynical healer who clearly hated the system she was trapped in but loved the freedom her family fought for.

"Wow," Ben muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "You guys really have a whole system set up here, don't you? Government squads versus independent families. It's like the Plumber Academy clashing with a bunch of rogue Bounty Hunters, except everyone is way more stressed out."

Ben stood up straight, his easygoing smirk returning as he looked at Armsmaster. "But I think you're both missing the bigger picture here. You keep talking about my watch like it's some weapon I built in a garage, and you're trying to figure out how to fit me into your little Cape ecosystem. So, let me give you a quick summary of where I actually come from, and what I can actually do. Maybe then you'll realize why your little rules don't really apply to me."

Ben took a step toward the center of the room, his voice taking on a narrative, commanding quality that immediately drew the attention of everyone present, including the quiet, observing Danny Hebert.

"Like I said, my name is Ben Tennyson. In my world, I'm a Level 5 Plumber which means I'm an officer in an intergalactic peace-keeping force that spans across thousands of galaxies. My hometown, Bellwood, is a place where humans and aliens live side-by-side. We've got an entire underground city called Undertown where species from across the universe trade, open restaurants, and live their lives. I don't deal with 'Capes' or 'Parahumans'. I deal with intergalactic warlords, rogue geneticists, mutant dictators, and cosmic entities that eat stars for breakfast."

He held up his left wrist, displaying the Omnitrix proudly.

"And this? The Omnitrix doesn't just 'change my shape'. Inside this watch is a direct connection to a universal digital database that holds the pure, uncorrupted DNA profiles of over one million distinct alien species from across the cosmos. When I activate it..."

Ben tapped the outer rim of the dial. The faceplate popped up, casting a vibrant, deep emerald light that illuminated the sterile white walls of the hospital room, washing over Armsmaster's blue armor and Amy's white cloak. A series of microscopic, green holographic icons began to scroll rapidly above the watch, displaying silhouettes of creatures that defied every law of Earthly biology

"...I can choose any of them," Ben said, his voice echoing with a quiet power. "If I need to put out a fire, I turn into a Pyronite. If I need to fix a machine, I turn into a Galvanic Mechamorph a living bio-mechanical construct that can merge with and upgrade any piece of technology it touches. If I need to move a mountain, I turn into a To'kustar."

He looked directly into Armsmaster's visor, his smile sharp and confident. "The girl you saw me carrying earlier? I used Fasttrack to get her here. He's a Citrakayah. He can run fast enough to outrun a localized explosion without breaking a sweat. And the reason Taylor's biology is acting up? It's because the Omnitrix is designed to protect life. When she triggered and called for a hero, her power didn't just give her an ability it recognized the Omnitrix as the ultimate survival tool. It connected her to my watch's database. She isn't a 'Changer' or a 'Tinker', Armsmaster. She's a user of the most powerful diplomatic and survival device in the known universe."

Armsmaster stood entirely motionless, his onboard computer system working at absolute maximum capacity to record and process Ben's statement. The internal lie-detectors built into his helmet's vocal scanners designed to track micro-tremors, heart rate, and pupil dilation were returning a steady, unyielding result: TRUTH.

The boy wasn't lying. He wasn't experiencing a delusion. He genuinely believed every word he was saying, and his physiological responses matched those of a seasoned officer delivering a tactical brief.

"A million distinct species," Armsmaster repeated, his voice devoid of its earlier lecturing tone, replaced by a profound, cold realization of what such an asset would mean for the global balance of power. "An alien database. If what you are saying is true, Ben Tennyson... you are not a parahuman. You are an unquantifiable foreign context. A single individual possessing the strategic versatility of an entire global army."

"Exactly," Ben said, hitting the faceplate back down, the emerald light snapping off and leaving the room in the mundane glare of the hospital lights. "So you can see why I don't really care about your masks, your registration papers, or your Wards program. I'm here because she called for help. And until I figure out how to get back to my Bellwood, I'm going to make sure she's safe."

Amy Dallon stared at Ben, her jaw slightly loose as she slowly digested his words. She had spent her entire life surrounded by the greatest heroes on Earth her adoptive father, her mother, her sister Glory Girl who could fly and shrug off bullets like flies. But the way this boy spoke... he didn't talk about his powers like they were a burden, a curse, or a weapon to be managed. He spoke about them like they were a gift. A beautiful, expansive tapestry of life meant to protect others.

She looked down at her own hands-hands that could reshape flesh, cure cancer, or create plagues with a single thought, hands that she terrified herself with every single day. For the first time in her life, she felt a profound wave of envy toward someone else's power.

"Ben," Danny Hebert spoke up, his voice trembling but clear as he stepped forward, placing himself between Armsmaster and the two teenagers. "I don't care about space, or aliens, or your government programs, Armsmaster. My daughter is lying in a hospital bed because her school let her get tortured. Right now, the only person who actually lifted a finger to save her life was this boy. So if he says he's going to stay and protect her, then as her father, I am telling you that he has my permission to be here. Now, unless you're going to arrest us for surviving, I want you out of my daughter's room."

Armsmaster's visor remained fixed on Danny for a long, tense three seconds. The mechanical hum of his power armor seemed to grow louder in the quiet room.

"The Protectorate will not force a conflict within a medical facility," Armsmaster finally declared, his voice returning to its rigid, modulated baritone. He turned toward the door, his heavy boots clicking against the floor. "However, do not mistake this for dismissal. Director Piggot and the PRT youth division will be informed of this encounter. A formal evaluation of Miss Hebert's parahuman classification and your legal status, Ben Tennyson, will be conducted within forty-eight hours. I advise you to use that time to consider the consequences of operating outside the law."

With a sharp, precise turn, the leader of the Protectorate walked out of the room, his heavy armored footsteps fading down the hallway.

Amy Dallon lingered for a moment, looking at Taylor, then at Ben. She reached into her cloak, pulled out a small, crumpled piece of paper with a phone number scribbled on it, and tossed it onto the bedside table next to Taylor's IV line.

"That's my mom's direct office line," Amy said, her tone returning to its guarded, cynical default. "If the men in the blue suits show up with a warrant or a cage before those forty-eight hours are up... call her. She hates the PRT bureaucrats as much as I do. And Taylor? Try not to use that fire arm again until your body stops shaking. You look like hell."

Without waiting for a response, the young healer turned and vanished out the door, her white cloak swirling behind her.

The room was suddenly quiet again, the immediate threat of the authorities passing like a summer storm, leaving behind a deep, lingering tension that promised far greater challenges on the horizon.

Ben let out a soft whistle, turning back toward the bed and hopping back onto his plastic stool. "Well. They seem lovely. Especially the guy with the glowing stick. Very charming."

Taylor looked down at the piece of paper Amy had left, then up at Ben. A strange, small feeling of warmth was beginning to take root in her chest, displacing the cold, hollow despair that had defined her existence for the past several months. She wasn't safe not really. The gangs would be looking for the unmasked hero, the government was writing up files on her biology, and her own power felt like a sleeping volcano inside her mind.

But as she looked at Ben Tennyson who was currently trying to figure out if the hospital's mechanical bed controls could make him hover she realized she wasn't alone in the dark anymore.

"Ben?" Taylor asked softly, her voice steadying.

"Yeah, kid?"

"What's the name of the alien that turns into fire again?"

Ben grinned, his green eyes flashing with an unmistakable, heroic spark. "Heatblast. And trust me, once you get the hang of him... he's an absolute blast."

 

[Thegameaholic]

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Boards > Regional > United States > New England > Brockton Bay

Topic: Holy shit did anyone else see that blue streak?! Sonic booms downtown! (VIDEOS ATTACHED)

Bagrat (Original Poster)Posted on January 4th, 2011:
Okay, so I was literally just sitting in my car near the intersection on 5th when my entire chassis started violently shaking. I thought it was an earthquake or Leviathan waking up early, but then this massive CRACK happened. A literal sonic boom. Blew out the windows of the electronics store across the street and set off every car alarm within three blocks.
A second later, a massive gust of wind almost flipped a cyclist over. I looked toward the highway and all I saw was this blurry blue and black streak tearing absolute ass toward Brockton General Hospital.
My dashcam caught a few frames of it, and my buddy who works security at the hospital sent me a clip from their exterior loop. Look at the speed on this guy.

[Attachment: Dashcam_Clip_01.mp4](The video shows a stationary car. Suddenly, a massive, deafening acoustic boom rattles the audio receiver. A blur of neon blue and black zips through the frame, kicking up a violent vortex of trash, leaves, and dust that leaves the trees bending backward.)

[Attachment: Hosp_Lobby_Secure.mp4](The video is grainy security footage from Brockton General's ambulance bay. A blue, sleek, humanoid figure with feline features arrives in a literal instantaneous skid, completely ignoring the laws of friction. In its arms is a teenage girl covered in grime. The blue figure dashes through the sliding doors. A second later, a blinding flash of emerald-green light floods the entire camera sensor, whiting it out. When the light clears, the alien figure is gone. Standing in its place is a normal-looking teenager in a green jacket, completely unmasked, yelling for a doctor.)
Any idea who this is? New Protectorate recruit? Velocity on steroids?

Tin_Mother (Global Moderator)Posted on January 4th, 2011:
MOD NOTE: READ BEFORE POSTING
This thread is being heavily monitored.
The individual in the video chose to de-transform in a public area, but Rule 1 and Rule 4 are strictly in effect for this thread.
Do NOT attempt to reverse-image search the teenager's face. Do NOT speculate on his real name, his age, his school, his potential family members, or his civilian identity. Do NOT try to identify the girl he brought into the hospital. Any violation of the Unwritten Rules or attempt at doxxing will result in an immediate, permanent IP ban from Parahuman Online and your details will be forwarded to the local PRT cyber-division.
Per an official press advisory just released by the PRT ENE, the confirmed alias for the blue-streak Mover form is Fasttrack.
Keep the discussion strictly to his capabilities and cape actions. You have been warned.

CapeWatch_BB (Unverified User)Posted on January 4th, 2011:

Bagrat: Blew out the windows of the electronics store across the street and set off every car alarm within three blocks.

Click to shrink...

Jesus. Breaking the sound barrier at street level inside city limits? That's not just a Mover, that's a walking public hazard. If he's a hero, the PRT is going to fine him into the next century for property damage. If he's a villain... well, good luck to the Wards trying to catch someone moving at Mach 1 down the boardwalk.

Specific_Gravity (Verified PRT Corporate Liaison)Posted on January 4th, 2011:
The PRT ENE is currently assessing the situation. We ask that all citizens remain calm. The individual known as 'Fasttrack' is not currently classified as a hostile threat, but an investigation into the property damage and the unauthorized deployment of parahuman abilities within a civilian zone is underway. If you have any information, please contact the PRT hotline.

Point_Me_The_Way (Wards Enthusiast)Posted on January 4th, 2011:
Wait, did anyone watch the second video carefully? Look at the flash of light.
That wasn't a standard Mover deceleration. The blue cat-guy turned into the kid in the green jacket. Is Fasttrack a Breaker form? Or is he a Changer who just happens to have insane speed in that specific shape?

X_Gamer_Tag_X (Local BB User)Posted on January 4th, 2011:

Hosp_Lobby_Secure.mp4 at 0:14Standing in its place is a normal-looking teenager in a green jacket, completely unmasked...

Click to shrink...

Bro, he literally didn't even try to hide his face. He didn't look around for cameras, he didn't pull up a hoodie, nothing. He just dropped the form right there in the middle of the lobby. He's either completely suicidal or he's the cockiest rogue to ever step foot in Brockton Bay.
Does he not know what city he's in? The Empire or the ABB are going to map his face to a residential address by midnight.

Rebel_Yell (Independent Cape Fan)Posted on January 4th, 2011:

X_Gamer_Tag_X: Does he not know what city he's in? The Empire or the ABB are going to map his face to a residential address by midnight.

Click to shrink...

Honestly? Based on the video, he looked like he didn't give a single shit. The girl he was holding looked like she was dying. Maybe he valued a human life over keeping his secret identity safe? If so, respect. We need more capes who care more about saving people than keeping up appearances for the PRT cameras.
Glow-worm (Unverified User)Posted on January 4th, 2011:

Tin_Mother: Per an official press advisory just released by the PRT ENE, the confirmed alias for the blue-streak Mover form is Fasttrack.

Click to shrink...

"Fasttrack"? Sounds a bit basic, but it fits.
But what about the girl? Anyone know what happened? The video shows her covered in... I don't even know, looks like toxic waste or sewage? Was there an attack downtown that the PRT is covering up?

Line_Cook_Hero (Local BB User)Posted on January 4th, 2011:
I work down near the hospital, and Armsmaster's van was parked outside the emergency bay about twenty minutes after that blue streak hit. Panacea was there too—someone saw her rushing into the back elevator.
If they called in Panacea and Armsmaster, whatever that kid brought in was a major deal.

Worm_Food (Conspiracy Board Regular)Posted on January 4th, 2011:
Calling it now: Case 53.
Look at the blue form. Feline ears, spikes on the arms, completely non-human anatomy. Then a massive green flash and he looks like a normal human? It's got to be some kind of weird, unstable biological trigger. Maybe the green light is his actual power, and "Fasttrack" is just a meat-suit his shard grows around him.

Bagrat (Guy in the Know) (Original Poster)Posted on January 4th, 2011:

Worm_Food: Calling it now: Case 53.

Click to shrink...

Nah, Case 53s don't usually turn back into normal teenagers, do they? Every Case 53 we know about is stuck in their monstrous form. Weld, Gregor, Newter—they don't get to just put on a green jacket and blend into a crowd.
This feels different. The unmasking is what's melting my brain. The sheer confidence it takes to just stand there in a public hospital lobby with no mask, yelling at the nurses while looking like a regular high school junior. He didn't even look stressed about the cameras. It's like the concept of a secret identity doesn't even exist to him.

Tin_Mother (Global Moderator)Posted on January 4th, 2011:

Worm_Food: Deleted for violating Rule 4 (Speculation on Cape Origins/Triggers).X_Gamer_Tag_X: User warned for hinting at tracking methods.

Click to shrink...

Keep the thread clean, people. Focus on the facts. We have a new high-speed Mover/Changer in the city, an unknown civilian casualty, and a massive PRT/Protectorate response at Brockton General.
Any further deviations or attempts to dig into the kid's background will result in this thread being locked permanently.

 

[Thegameaholic]

The air in the secure briefing room of the PRT ENE headquarters was thick with the sterile scent of ozone and stale coffee. On the primary wall-mounted display, the grainy security footage from Brockton Bay General Hospital's ambulance bay played on a continuous, maddening loop.

A streak of neon blue. A blinding flash of emerald light. And then, a teenage boy in a green jacket, completely bare-faced, shouting for medical personnel.

Director any-but-fragile Emily Piggot shifted slightly in her specialized chair, her sharp eyes narrowing as she slapped a heavy manila folder onto the center of the frosted-glass conference table. The sound cracked through the room like a pistol shot.

"The internet is a total containment failure," Piggot growled, her harsh, authoritative voice cutting through the hum of the cooling fans. She glared across the table, her eyes locking onto the members of New Wave. "The Parahuman Online thread has over ten thousand hits already. The local media is screaming about a rogue sonic boom downtown, and half the city thinks the Protectorate is hiding a Case 53 at Brockton General. Care to explain why your daughter was handing out legal lifelines to an unregistered, unmasked kinetic missile, Carol?"

Carol Dallon, seated rigidly in her civilian suit with her hands clasped tightly in front of her, didn't flinch. Beside her, her sister Sarah—Lady Photon—leaned back with an expression of calm defiance. The rest of the New Wave roster—Mark, Neil, and Victoria—sat in a united front. Amy Dallon sat at the far end of the table, looking pale, her right hand still loosely wrapped in a tensor bandage.

Across from them sat the heavy hitters of the local Protectorate. Armsmaster stood in full, unyielding armor. Miss Militia sat with her arms crossed, her expression stoic. Beside them sat Assault, leaning back with a rare, uncharacteristic frown; Battery, tracing a finger over the table; and Dauntless, his shield and helmet resting beside his chair. On the far side of the table, Velocity sat forward, his eyes glued to the security footage. Above them all, a glowing green emblem on a secondary monitor indicated that Dragon was patched into the meeting via a secure feed.

"Director, I've looked at the telemetry Dragon pulled from the municipal dashcams," Velocity spoke up, his voice tight. He shook his head, looking visibly shaken. "This isn't just a high-tier Mover. This kid is fast. Much faster than me. When I push my speed and enter my breaker state, I lose mass. I lose the ability to affect the world with real physical force I can't even carry a heavy object without dropping out of it. This 'Fasttrack' broke the sound barrier at street level while carrying a passenger, and he didn't drop a single fraction of his physical momentum. The kinetic displacement alone should have torn that girl apart, but somehow he kept her completely structurally stable. It defies everything we know about kinetic acceleration."

"Which makes him an extreme public safety hazard," Piggot snapped, turning her gaze toward the head of the table. "Armsmaster. Give them the data. Let's disabuse New Wave of the idea that they're dealing with a standard rogue teenager."

Armsmaster tapped the console on his forearm. The security loop minimized, replaced by a series of complex biological charts and a transcribed block of text.

"At approximately 1642 hours, I commanded Panacea to perform a targeted biological evaluation of the individual identifying himself as Ben Tennyson," Armsmaster stated, his mechanical baritone echoing off the walls. "The objective was to identify the presence of a Corona Pollentia and a Gemma Pollentia, thereby establishing his parahuman classification and identifying any potential cognitive instability related to his trigger."

Piggot leaned forward, her gaze landing heavily on Amy. "Tell them what you found, Panacea."

Amy swallowed hard, shifting uncomfortably beneath the collective gaze of her family and the city's top heroes. She kept her hands close, careful to frame her response entirely around her public persona as a touch-based diagnostic healer, burying the terrifying true depth of her biokinetic control deep down.

"He doesn't have them," Amy said softly.

Carol blinked, her sharp demeanor cracking slightly. "What do you mean he doesn't have them? Is he a Tinker who built an external interface?"

"No, Mom, you don't understand," Amy said, her voice rising with an undercurrent of genuine anxiety. "My power lets me map out an organism's biology so I can understand what's wrong and heal it. When I checked his brain, it was completely, flawlessly baseline. There is no Corona Pollentia. There is no Gemma Pollentia. On a neurological level, he is completely devoid of the physical biological structures that every single parahuman on Earth possesses. He has no physical connection to a power source."

"But he transformed," Victoria chimed in, her brow furrowed as she leaned forward, her fingers tapping against the table. "We all saw the footage. He crossed half the city in three seconds. If he doesn't have a parahuman biology, how is he doing that?"

"The device on his wrist," Armsmaster answered, bringing up a high-resolution, enhanced capture of the Omnitrix. "According to Tennyson's own testimony—which my helmet's internal vocal and physiological scanners verified as absolute subjective truth—the device is an external archive containing over one million distinct non-human DNA profiles. It alters his baseline genetic structure on command, converting him entirely into foreign biological entities."

"A million?" Mark Dallon muttered, his jaw dropping slightly as he looked at Neil, who simply stared at the screen in disbelief. "That's... that's statistically impossible. A single cape with a million high-tier Changer forms?"

"It gets worse," Piggot said grimly, leaning back and crossing her arms. "Panacea, tell them what happened when you tried to evaluate his deeper cell structure."

Amy instinctively pulled her bandaged hand closer to her chest. "When I confirmed his brain was baseline, I tried to look closer at his cells to see how the watch was anchoring to him. But underneath the human anatomy, woven into his deeper genetic code, I hit a massive reservoir of pure, blinding energy. It wasn't a parahuman signature, and it wasn't radiation. It felt like raw, concentrated Life Force. It was completely alien."

She took a shaky breath, remembering the sensation. "The moment my power brushed against that energy, his biology reacted like an immune system spotting a virus. It didn't just block me It discharged a massive spike of magenta light, threw me across the room, and completely short-circuited my mapping sense. I couldn't perceive biological structures for a solid ten minutes afterward."

(Pretend this happened offscreen i added this in so last minute and i forgot to change the other chapters)

"Analysis of the energy spike recorded by Armsmaster's armor confirms Panacea's assessment," Dragon's calm, synthesized voice echoed from the overhead speakers. "The energetic discharge does not match any known parahuman wavelength or kinetic output on record, Director Piggot. It appears to be an entirely unique, biological defensive mechanism."

A heavy, stunned silence descended upon the briefing room. Assault whistled low through his teeth, while Battery and Dauntless exchanged a deeply concerned look.

"An unquantifiable foreign context," Miss Militia spoke up quietly, her tone far softer and more analytical than Piggot's aggressive posturing. "He claims to be an officer in an intergalactic peacekeeping force called the Plumbers. He speaks of a universe where humans and aliens co-exist. And Armsmaster's lie detector readings were completely clear. He isn't delusional, Director. He genuinely believes he is a global protector from another reality."

"And he doesn't wear a mask," Sarah Pelham said, a faint, thoughtful smile touching her lips as she looked at the transcript of Ben's speech. "'The people didn't have to look up at a mask and wonder if the guy saving them was a monster underneath.' I have to admit, Carol, his philosophy aligns almost perfectly with our foundational principles."

"Except his world didn't have the structural realities of ours to contend with," Carol countered sharply, though her eyes remained fixed on the data regarding the watch. "He's operating on an idealist's playground. Brockton Bay is divided by volatile gang lines. Walking around here without a mask isn't just brave; it's a structural liability to everyone around him."

"Which is precisely why the PRT must take immediate administrative custody of both Tennyson and the Hebert girl," Piggot demanded, leaning forward over the table. "Taylor Hebert triggered in a biohazardous environment, but her biology somehow hijacked Tennyson's device as a biological template. She's currently exhibiting erratic, highly volatile Changer capabilities derived from his watch. We have an unknown teenager who can turn into a walking thermodynamic meltdown, and a boy who commands a million alien forms, both sitting in a public hospital room entirely outside our legal structure."

"You aren't touching them, Director," Carol said, standing up from her chair, her eyes flashing with a cold, legal fury. "If you issue a dynamic containment warrant for a boy who just saved a civilian life and a girl who was a victim of institutional negligence at a public school, New Wave will take this entire brief directly to the media. We will represent them pro-bono. We will have a federal injunction on your desk before your PRT squads can even load their containment foam."

Piggot glared at Carol, her jaw tightening as she calculated the political fallout. She looked at Armsmaster, who gave a single, almost imperceptible nod of agreement. Fighting a foreign entity with unknown capabilities over a legal technicality was a logistical nightmare the department could not afford.

"Forty-eight hours," Piggot spat, her voice dropping into a dangerous register. "Armsmaster gave them forty-eight hours for a formal evaluation. I will honor that window. New Wave has two days to convince Ben Tennyson to cooperate with local authorities, register his transformations under standard PRT classifications, and establish a secure, managed routine. If he refuses, or if he violates the Unwritten Rules again by causing another sonic boom over a civilian area, I will classify him as an S-Class rogue element and request external assistance from the Triumvirate."

"We'll take those terms," Carol said coldly. She gathered her legal documents, tucking them neatly back into her briefcase. She looked down at her daughter. "Amy, let's go. We have a lot of work to do."

As the members of New Wave filed out of the secure room, Victoria lingered by the door for a moment, looking back at the frozen image of the boy in the green jacket on the screen.

"A million different shapes," she muttered to herself, a mixture of awe and competitive excitement swirling in her chest. "And he doesn't even wear a cape."

The door slid shut, leaving the Protectorate heroes alone with their Director in the darkening briefing room.

"Do you think they can manage him, Colin?" Miss Militia asked softly, turning to her partner.

Armsmaster watched the security loop reset, the blue flash of Fasttrack tearing across the screen once more. "The boy is an anomaly. His psychological profile suggests an extreme resistance to institutional authority but a highly developed altruistic drive. New Wave's structure may appeal to him, but if his claims regarding his world's technological capability are accurate... we aren't managing him, Hannah. We are merely tolerating a cosmic exception."

The cheap, government-issued laptop Carol Dallon had pulled from her briefcase before she left sat on the hospital overbed table, its screen casting a pale, clinical glow over Ben Tennyson's face. The room was quiet, save for the hum of the laptop's overworked fan and the steady, reassuring rhythm of Taylor's heart monitor. Danny Hebert had finally succumbed to sheer exhaustion, currently dead to the world in a nearby recliner, snoring softly.

Back with Ben:

Ben stared at the screen, his green eyes reflecting lines of text, graphs, and casualty statistics. His usual easygoing smirk was entirely gone, replaced by a hard, tight line. His brow was furrowed so deeply it looked like it was carved from stone.

"Holy crap," Ben muttered under his breath, his finger scrolling aggressively down a public wiki page. "This place is an absolute shit fest."

He had spent the last three hours doing a deep dive into Earth-Bet's history, and the more he read, the more his stomach violently churned. He had fought intergalactic warlords, multidimensional tyrants, and literal gods, but the sheer, systematic misery of this world was unparalleled.

First, there were the Endbringers. Leviathan. Behemoth. The Simurgh. Ben read the logs of their attacks, his chest tightening at the sheer scale of the horror. Leviathan sinking the entire island of Kyushu. Behemoth turning metropolis after metropolis into irradiated radioactive tombs. The Simurgh driving entire populations into homicidal madness. The sheer feats of these things were horrifying monsters that didn't want to conquer or rule, but just existed to slowly grind human civilization into dust.

But it wasn't just the giant monsters. It was the people.

Ben scrolled through the profiles of the global villains. Warlords ruled entire continents in all but name. There was the Slaughterhouse Nine, a roving band of literal psychopaths who tortured and murdered their way across the country like a sick road trip, and the authorities just... let them? They couldn't catch them?

Then he looked at the local files for Brockton Bay.

"Actual Neo-Nazis," Ben whispered, a dark, dangerous spark igniting in his eyes as he read about Empire 88. It reminded him uncomfortably of the Forever Knights with their bizarre, fanatical obsession with purity, or the early Highbreed before he had literally been forced to rewrite their entire genetic code to fix their little inbred problem. To see humans doing it to other humans over something as stupid as skin color made him want to turn into Four Arms and start cracking skulls.

And they weren't alone. You had the ABB, a gang run by a pyrokinetic dragon-man who forced girls into brothels. You had the Merchants, a bunch of heavily armed drug dealers turning teenagers into addicts.

Globally, it only got stupider. The Three Blasphemies living constructs destabilizing European governments. Ash-Beast—a walking, screaming explosion wandering across Africa. And Heartbreaker a man who used emotional manipulation to enslave women and build a cult of forced adoration. Ben's jaw clenched so hard his teeth clicked. As a guy who valued free will above almost everything else, the concept of Heartbreaker made him physically sick.

And what was the government doing about it? The PRT, the Protectorate, the global authorities?

"They're twiddling their thumbs," Ben growled, tossing his head back against the wall in frustration. "They're playing defense. Just sitting on their hands, waiting for the next disaster to strike."

The sheer mathematics of the world were insane. Villains vastly outnumbered the heroes. It wasn't even close. In his world, the Plumbers kept the peace because the law had teeth. If a warlord tried to take over a city, a strike team of elite alien officers would drop from orbit and lock them in a specialized sci-fi containment cell by dinner time. Here? The villains ran the streets, and the heroes just established 'containment zones' and hoped for the best.

And then he found the page on the "Unwritten Rules."

Ben let out a sharp, bitter laugh that was entirely devoid of humor. The Endbringer Truce? Okay, that made sense. When a giant, planet-killing water lizard shows up, you put aside your differences and fight together. Even Vilgax and he had teamed up when Za'Skyar came knocking on the Warlord's Home World. That part was logical.

But the rest of it? The 'cops and robbers' dynamic? The idea that heroes shouldn't push too hard, that villains shouldn't target civilian identities, and that everyone should just let the status quo drag on because the heroes needed the villains to help fight the Endbringers?

"It's so stupid," Ben muttered, rubbing his temples. "It's a giant, sick cycle. You're letting monsters walk away from fights so they can terrorize more people, just so you have extra bodies for the next kaiju attack. You aren't saving anyone. You're just managing the expiration date of the planet."

He clicked on another link. The Birdcage. A maximum-security, inescapable pocket-dimension prison where they threw the worst of the worst, completely abandoning them to lord over each other instead of actually fixing the systemic issues or doling out real, permanent justice.

He couldn't stop reading. The sheer weight of Earth-Bet's despair felt like a physical pressure in the room.

"Ben?"

A soft, raspy voice broke through his spiraling thoughts.

Ben blinked, snapping out of his trance. He looked over at the hospital bed. Taylor Hebert was awake, leaning back against her propped-up pillows. Her eyes, magnified slightly behind her glasses, were fixed on him. She looked exhausted, but the frantic, terrifying biological fluctuating from earlier had completely settled down.

"Hey, kid," Ben said, his tone instantly shifting, dropping the intense, dark edge and adopting his usual casual, easygoing demeanor. He slid the laptop closed, cutting off the grim statistics of Earth-Bet. "How are you feeling? Body still trying to figure out how to turn into a giant blue cat?"

Taylor offered a tiny, tentative smile. "No. Everything feels... quiet now. Like my brain finally figured out how to lock the door." She looked down at his left wrist, where the Omnitrix sat silently, its green faceplate dark. "I was just... watching you. You looked really mad. What were you reading?"

"Ah, just the local news," Ben said, waving a hand dismissively as he spun his plastic stool around to face her. "Turns out your world's political system is kind of a mess. And by a mess, I mean it's a total garbage fire run by lunatics."

Taylor let out a weak, hollow breath. "Yeah. That sounds about right. Brockton Bay isn't exactly a vacation spot." She paused, her eyes lingering on the watch again. Her curiosity, a spark of life that had been buried under months of bullying and trauma, finally broke through. "Ben... can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"How did you get that? The Omnitrix. You said an alien frog-genius built it, but... how did it end up on your wrist? Are you a super-soldier? An astronaut?"

Ben let out a genuine laugh this time, leaning back and locking his hands behind his head. "Oh, man. I wish. No, way better story. You want story time? Anything to keep our minds off this depressing place."

Taylor nodded, shifting under her blankets to get more comfortable.

"Alright, so boom," Ben began, his green eyes flashing with fondness as he went into classic storytelling mode. "I was ten years old. Total dork. I wore a white t-shirt with a black stripe, spent all my time playing video games, and was completely dreading summer vacation because I had to spend it on a road trip in a giant, beat-up RV called the Rust Bucket with my Grandpa Max and my cousin Gwen."

"A cousin?" Taylor asked.

"My twin cousin. Well, not twin, we just have the same birthday. And let me tell you, back then, we hated each other. We argued about everything. Anyway, first night of the trip, we camp out in the woods. I'm annoyed, so I go for a walk in the forest to blow off some steam. I'm looking up at the sky, and suddenly, I see a shooting star."

Ben grinned, pointing a finger dramatically upward. "Except, it wasn't a shooting star. It changed direction. It was a space pod, crashing directly toward Earth. It hits the ground right in front of me, blasting a giant crater into the dirt. I climb down, entirely expecting to find a satellite or something, and the pod opens up. Inside, resting on a pedestal, is this weird, glowing green watch."

Taylor listened, completely captivated. For a moment, the sterile hospital room vanished, replaced by the image of a ten-year-old boy in a dark forest.

"So, being a dumb ten-year-old, what do I do?" Ben chuckled, tapping his wrist. "I reach my hand out to touch it. The second I get close, the watch literally jumps out of the pod, wraps itself around my wrist like a metal parasite, and fuses to my skin. I panicked, tried to rip it off, hit a button by accident, and—BOOM—the dial pops up. I push it down, and suddenly my skin turns to molten rock, my head catches fire, and I'm a seven-foot-tall living volcano shouting about how I'm burning alive."

Taylor's eyes widened. "Heatblast."

"Exactly! Heatblast. I accidentally set half the forest on fire before I figured out how to shoot blocks of flame instead of just melting everything. My grandpa and Gwen had to put it out with fire extinguishers." Ben's smile softened, a distant look entering his eyes. "At first, I thought it was just a cool toy. A way to play superhero. But then the bad guys started coming. Vilgax—this giant, terrifying alien warlord with octopus tentacles for a face—sent drones to rip the watch off my arm. I had to learn, real fast, that having this thing wasn't a game. It was a massive responsibility."

"Did you ever get it off?" Taylor asked softly.

"A few times," Ben admitted. "I actually took it off for a few years when I wanted to try being a normal teenager. But destiny has a weird way of knocking on your door. When Grandpa Max went missing, I had to put it back on. The watch recalibrated, gave me a whole new set of aliens, and I've been wearing it ever since. I've saved the universe a bunch of times, rebuilt broken planets, and like I told the tin suit earlier, I eventually lost my secret identity. Now, I'm just Ben."

Taylor looked at him, her expression a mix of awe and a strange, deep-seated envy. "You've been a hero since you were ten. You knew exactly what to do."

"Trust me, I had no clue what I was doing half the time," Ben said honestly. "I made a million mistakes. But you learn. You figure it out."

He looked at Taylor, his eyes drifting back toward the closed laptop.

Originally, his plan had been incredibly simple. He was going to sit tight in this hospital room, help Taylor get her newly copied alien DNA under control so she didn't accidentally vaporize a nurse, and then use one of his smarter transformations—like Grey Matter or Brainstorm—to build a dimensional trans-phasic engine out of hospital equipment and wireless routers to get back to Bellwood. Back to Rook, back to his parents, back to Mr. Smoothy.

But now? Looking at the data on that laptop? Looking at the sheer, unadulterated nightmare this world lived in every single day?

He couldn't leave.

Ben Tennyson may not act like the smartest guy in the room. He actively preferred to play the goofy, video-game-loving teenager. He let his friends think he was impulsive, and he let his enemies think he was arrogant and short-sighted.

But people forgot. They forgot that he had successfully navigated intergalactic politics, organized global defense strategies, and possessed a deeply tactical mind that could analyze an enemy's weakness in a fraction of a second while dodging plasma fire.

He wasn't an idiot. He just liked to make people think he was, because enemies who underestimate you make catastrophic mistakes.

This world, Earth-Bet, was bleeding out. It was a sick patient being treated by doctors who were too terrified of the disease to actually operate. The PRT was trapped in its own bureaucracy, the heroes were handcuffed by their own 'Unwritten Rules', and the villains were running rampant because nobody had the spine to completely tear up the rulebook and start fresh.

Well, Ben Tennyson didn't give a single, solitary shit about their rulebook.

If he left this world right now, he wouldn't be a hero. He'd be a coward walking away from an active war zone. He was going to stay. He was going to help Taylor stabilize her powers, yeah, but after that?

He was going to clean up this town. And then, he was going to clean up this planet.

"Ben?" Taylor asked, noticing the sudden, heavy silence that had fallen over him. "Are you okay?"

Ben snapped out of his tactical calculations, the easy, confident smirk instantly plastering back across his face. He reached out, gently patting her blanketed shoulder.

"I'm great, Taylor. Better than great." He stood up, stretching his arms over his head until his spine popped. "I was just thinking. I'm gonna be sticking around a lot longer than I thought. This world needs a serious reality check, and honestly? I think a guy with a million alien options is just the right person to deliver it."

He turned back to the laptop, a plan already forming in the back of his mind. If the local gangs and the PRT thought they knew how the game was played, they were about to find out what happened when the rules were rewritten by a cosmic exception.

 

[Thegameaholic]

Danny Hebert had woken up somewhere around the part where Ben was explaining how his watch could mistransform him if he hit the faceplate too hard, and now, the older man was leaning forward in his vinyl hospital chair, looking at the teenager with a expression of profound, near-paralytic bewilderment.

But Taylor wasn't bewildered. She was envious.

In fact, Taylor was so goddamn envious of Ben Tennyson in that exact moment that she felt like she could be mistaken for a fresh coat of bright green paint. It was a ugly, toxic, suffocating feeling that pooled right in the center of her stomach, burning hotter than the literal alien fire that had raged through her veins just hours prior.

She watched the way he moved. Even sitting on a cheap plastic stool, Ben possessed a fluid, effortless grace, completely unburdened by the weight of the world. She listened to the way he talked his voice carried a natural, easy rhythmic confidence that didn't need to be forced or practiced. He spoke about saving the universe the way normal people spoke about finishing a difficult math test.

And now, he was casually dropping a story that made the entire concept of Earth-Bet's physics look like a joke.

"So, I was ten, right? Total kid, still figuring things out," Ben was saying, using his hands to animate the story while Danny watched with wide eyes. "And suddenly, boom, I get dragged through a temporal tear. I end up thirty years in the future, in this massive, hyper-advanced city, and I run face-first into my future self. Ben 10,000. The Hero of Heroes."

Ben rolled his eyes, leaning back on the stool. "And let me tell you, future me? Total hardass. Always working and no fun. He just stayed as an alien twenty-four-seven, never smiled, didn't joke around, treated saving lives like a punch-clock corporate job. I had to literally remind him how to have fun. But, hey, we teamed up, I unlocked a couple of new guys, and together we beat Future Vilgax who by that point was basically a giant, cybernetic mass of anger."

"You... you traveled through time," Danny said, his voice faint, his mind clearly struggling to process the implications. "At ten years old."

"Oh, yeah. That was just the first time," Ben chuckled, waving a hand offhandedly. "I've met multiple versions of my future self since then. Ben 10K changes every single time I team up with him, because the timeline is constantly shifting based on the choices I make in the present. They all technically still exist due to the multiverse but eh. Met one version who built a 'Biomnitrix' to fuse two aliens together, met another who could use his alien powers in his human form... it's a whole thing. Time travel is a headache, honestly."

Taylor stared at him, her hands tightening into white-knuckled fists beneath the hospital blankets.

Time travel.

Multiple futures. Fighting cyborg space tyrants at ten years old. Helping his own adult self remember how to be a hero.

What was she compared to this? How could she even dare to breathe the same air as him?

The contrast between them was a physical ache. Ben had been a savior, a cosmic protector, since the fourth grade. And her? She was a pathetic, broken teenager who, just last week, had spent her entire lunch period hiding inside a locked toilet stall in the third-floor bathroom of Winslow High, quietly eating a soggy peanut butter sandwich while checking her shoes under the door to make sure nobody was coming in to dump a bucket of dirty mop water over her head.

She had been the victim of a systematic, agonizingly cruel bullying campaign for over a year. She had curled up on her bedroom floor and cried multiple times until her chest felt like it was cracking open, all because her ex-best friend, Emma, had smiled and insulted her dead mother.

The worst part the part that made Taylor's throat tighten with a bitter, hysterical rage was that most of the insults Emma, Sophia, and Madison hurled at her didn't even make sense. They called her a waste of space, they called her disgusting, they made weird, irrational jabs at her hair, her clothes, her very existence that defied any form of logic. They were just senseless, chaotic cruelties meant purely to twist the knife, and yet, Taylor had let them break her. She had let them push her into a biohazardous locker until her mind snapped and she had powers.

She was standing in the presence of a literal comic book tier bullshit superhero. A silver-age, larger-than-life savior who re-wrote timelines and wore a smile while doing it.

And she was a girl who couldn't even stand up to three high school mean girls.

The jealousy was an ugly monster clawing at her ribs. She didn't want to feel it Ben had saved her life, he had carried her out of that hellhole, he had stood up to Armsmaster for her but she couldn't stop it. She wanted his confidence. She wanted his lack of fear. She wanted a universe where the bad guys wore bright colors and could be punched into a sci-fi jail cell, instead of a gray, miserable world where the villains ran the docks and the heroes told you to follow the 'Unwritten Rules' while your school got covered in filth.

"Wow," Danny murmured, rubbing his face with his hands, looking older than his years. "Ben... I don't even know what to say to that. A universe with aliens... time travel... it's a lot to take in."

"Eh, you get used to it," Ben said with a bright, easy smile, entirely oblivious to the toxic storm brewing inside Taylor's head. He looked over at her, his green eyes softening with genuine concern. "Hey, Taylor, you're being pretty quiet. You okay?"

Taylor forced her face to smoothen out. She swallowed the bile in her throat, plastering a blank, neutral expression over her features. She absolutely, under no circumstances, wanted to tell him the truth. She didn't want to tell him about the locker. She didn't want to tell him about Emma, or the garbage, or how utterly, profoundly pathetic her life was. If this cosmic savior looked at her and realized just how small and weak she really was, she thought she might actually die of shame.

"I'm fine," Taylor lied, her voice sounding tight and hollow even to her own ears. "Just... tired. Trying to understand it all." Which was honestly true all things considered

"Fair enough," Ben said, stretching his arms out. "It's a lot of sci-fi nonsense. Just get some rest, kid. Like I said, I'm sticking around. We're gonna get your powers sorted out, and then we're gonna figure out what to do with this city."

Taylor nodded, slowly sinking back down into her hospital pillows, turning her face away from the pale light of the room.

As she lay there, listening to the steady, mechanical beep of the heart monitor, she felt the invisible weight on her shoulders grow significantly heavier. It wasn't just the trauma of the locker anymore. It wasn't just the threat of the PRT, or the gangs.

It was the fact that she was now anchored to a living god. Her power had copied his DNA. Her future as a parahuman was completely tethered to the most powerful device in the universe, and she was expected to live up to that. She was expected to stand beside a guy who fought cyborgs at ten years old, while she was still trying to wash the scent of Winslow High's toxic waste out of her hair.

Closing her eyes, Taylor pressed her cheek against the rough hospital pillow, the green monster of envy whispering in the dark of her mind, reminding her just how far she had to climb.