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 power 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.

 

[Thegameaholic]

Song:Soul Eater Resonance by Natewantstobattle

[0:00 - 0:15] INTRO / THE HOOK

(The screen is pitch black. A heavy, rhythmic electronic bassline begins to throb like a digital heartbeat.)

Lyrics:

Two become one, our souls have been connected

A bond that's stronger than words

Visuals:

0:00: A drop of dark, oily water falls in ultra-slow motion, hitting a surface and rippling out. Inside the reflection of the ripple, we see a close-up of Taylor Hebert's eye behind her cracked glasses, wide with terror and drowning in darkness.

0:04: MATCH CUT to Ben Tennyson's vibrant green eye, sharp and focused.

0:07: A stylized, split-screen animation. On the left, Taylor is curled up in the pitch-black claustrophobia of the locker, surrounded by rusted iron. On the right, Ben is standing under the starry sky of Bellwood.

0:10: A brilliant, glowing neon-green circuit line erupts from the center of the screen, violently shattering the barrier between the two sides like breaking glass. The circuit line wraps around Taylor's wrist and locks directly onto the faceplate of the Omnitrix on Ben's arm.

Lyrics:

And now in sync we scream, our fates will come together

And it will not go unheard

Visuals:

0:12: The camera pulls back into a massive, panoramic orbital shot of Earth-Bet. The planet is shrouded in a depressing, dark purple mist.

0:14: Suddenly, a massive beam of emerald-green light pierces straight through the atmosphere from deep space, striking Brockton Bay and blowing the dark clouds away in a violent shockwave as the song's main guitar riff kicks in hard.

[0:15 - 0:35] VERSE 1: THE TWO WORLDS

(The tempo settles into a driving, steady rock rhythm.)

Lyrics:

Locking eyes, becoming intertwined

You'll be sharing your fate with mine

Visuals:

0:15: A panning shot of the Brockton Bay boardwalk under a miserable, drizzling rain. The civilians walk with their heads down, completely shadowed.

0:19: Ben walks through the crowd. He's wearing his signature green-and-white Omniverse jacket, hands casually shoved into his pockets. He looks up at the gray sky, entirely unfazed by the gloom, a smirk tugging at his lips.

0:22: As he walks past a puddle, his reflection doesn't show a human teenager—it rapidly cycles through the silhouettes of Feedback, Swampfire, and Diamondhead.

Lyrics:

Side by side, we'll battle through the night

And soon enough we'll find our way

Visuals:

0:25: Cut to the interior of the hospital room. Taylor is sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at her trembling hands. Microscopic green embers and sparks of magenta light dance between her fingertips.

0:29: Ben steps into the frame, silhouetted by the window. He extends a hand toward her. Taylor looks up, the harsh shadows fading from her face as she reaches out to take it.

0:32: The camera spins 360-degrees around them, transitioning the setting from the sterile white hospital room to the gritty, rain-slicked streets of the city at twilight.

[0:35 - 0:45] PRE-CHORUS: THE NIGHTMARE OF EARTH-BET

(The music builds tension, the drums accelerating into a frantic, driving beat.)

Lyrics:

When the sun has set, we'll battle through nightmares

We won't give up

Visuals:

0:35: Rapid, stylized cuts of the local threats. Lung stands in an alleyway, his body erupting into molten metallic scales and roaring into the sky as flames consume the camera.

0:38: Kaiser stands on a skyscraper, his arms crossed as massive, jagged steel blades sprout from the concrete around him like a forest of iron.

0:40: A horrifying, ink-blot transition shows the silhouettes of the Slaughterhouse Nine walking down a fog-filled road, their eyes glowing an ominous red.

Lyrics:

I will stay by your side as we slip into madness

Visuals:

0:42: The sky turns a blood-red color. The colossal, terrifying shadow of Leviathan looms over the Brockton Bay bay, its massive tail cutting through the water.

0:44: Taylor falls backward into an endless ocean of darkness, looking overwhelmed. But a hand catches her wrist tightly—it's Ben. The Omnitrix on his wrist flashes with a violent, protective green light that blindingly whitens out the screen.

[0:45 - 1:15] CHORUS: THE ROAR OF THE COSMIC EXCEPTION

(The beat drops with maximum intensity. Heavy guitars, screaming synths.)

Lyrics:

Two become one, our souls have been connected

A bond that's stronger than words

Visuals:

0:45: SMASH CUT TO ACTION. Ben's hand slams down on the raised dial of the Omnitrix in a hyper-stylized, high-frame-rate close-up.

0:48: A brilliant green explosion sweeps across the screen. Out of the smoke, Fasttrack tears forward! He becomes a neon blue-and-black blur, sprinting down the highway at Mach 1, leaving a trail of shattered glass and sonic boom rings in his wake.

0:52: Right beside him, Taylor leaps into the air. Her body shifts dynamically, encasing in dark, molten rock and bright magma—she transforms into Heatblast! She thrusts her hands forward, unleashing a twin torrent of brilliant pyronite fire that incinerates a wave of incoming ABB thugs.

Lyrics:

And now in sync we scream, our fates will come together

And it will not go unheard

Visuals:

0:57: Back-to-back combat. Fasttrack circles around Hookwolf, moving so fast he creates three after-images, striking the metallic brute from all sides with concussive force.

1:02: Taylor (as Heatblast) flies through the air on a surfboard of solid fire, dodging a barrage of Kaiser's iron spikes, leaving a streak of beautiful, roaring flame across the night sky.

1:06: The camera tracks a single, continuous shot: Ben drops out of his alien form, hits the watch again, and instantly shifts into Four Arms, catching a thrown car, while Taylor lands right beside him, her hands glowing with white-hot plasma.

[1:15 - 1:30] POST-CHORUS / OUTRO

(The music begins to wind down, transitioning into a melodic, lingering guitar solo.)

Lyrics:

Yeah, I-I-I could care less where it is you came from

'Cause we see what's waiting ahead

Visuals:

1:15: Cut to a high rooftop. The members of New Wave—Glory Girl, Lady Photon, and Brandish—stand under the moonlight, looking down at the city with expressions of profound awe. Panacea stands slightly behind them, looking down at her bandaged hand with a complicated, thoughtful expression.

1:20: Cut to the PRT building. Armsmaster stands behind a glass window, his blue visor reflecting the distant green glow of an alien transformation in the city below. Miss Militia stands beside him, looking toward the horizon.

Lyrics:

I knew from the first time that we became connected

I'll be with you 'til the end

Visuals:

1:24: The battle scene fades away. The camera pans across the legendary line-up of the Omnitrix aliens—Bloxx, Rath, Humungousaur, and Feedback—all standing as towering, translucent statues in the starry cosmos.

1:27: The final shot pulls back to the real world. Ben and Taylor (back in their human forms) are standing side-by-side on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ruined boardwalk of the Docks. The wind whips through Ben's green jacket and Taylor's dark hair.

1:29: The heavy, depressing gray clouds of Brockton Bay finally crack open, allowing a single, brilliant beam of golden morning sunlight to wash over them both.

1:30: Ben glances at Taylor and flashes his signature, confident hero smirk. Taylor looks at him, the envy fading from her eyes, replaced by a quiet, fierce determination. She nods back.

(The screen fades to black as the final guitar chord echoes out, revealing the title card written in a bold, metallic green font: HERO CODE.)

A/N:I'm sorry if this is going way to slow for you guys but i'm trying my best to keep it as evenly paced as possible but i can't go too fast i honestly don't know about this chapter i've been contemplating it and if you guys don't like it imma scrap it and remake the whole arc

The rhythmic, clinical beep of the patient monitor in Room 104 was the only sound anchoring the space to the present. Outside the window, Brockton Bay lay sprawled like a dying leviathan under the midnight sky a jagged silhouette of rusty shipping cranes, dark water, and crumbling industrial architecture, illuminated only by the sickly orange glow of sodium streetlights.

Inside the hospital room, Taylor Hebert slept fitfully. Her brow was tightly furrowed beneath her dark curls, her hands twitching against the starched white sheets as if she were still fighting off an invisible nightmare. In the corner recliner, Danny Hebert was entirely dead to the world, his gaunt face lined with an exhaustion that went deeper than simple lack of sleep. He looked like a man who had been hollowed out by grief and worry, his breathing heavy and ragged.

Ben Tennyson sat on his plastic stool, his green-and-white Omniverse jacket draped over the back of the chair. He wasn't looking at the cheap laptop Carol Dallon had left behind anymore. He was looking at Taylor.

When she had briefly awakened earlier, she had brushed off the entire locker incident with a quiet, hollow shrug. "Just a prank, Ben," she had muttered, her voice cracking as she turned her face toward the wall, trying to hide the tears leaking from beneath her eyelids. "A stupid high school prank that went too far. It doesn't matter. It's over."

Ben had nodded, smiled his classic, easygoing hero smile, and told her to get some rest. He had played the part of the oblivious, comforting teenager perfectly.

But the moment her eyes closed and her breathing evened out into sleep, that easygoing smile vanished entirely.

Ben Tennyson had spent six years dealing with some of the most deceptive, manipulative, and downright sociopathic beings in the known universe. He had negotiated with the treacherous Incurseans, traded wits with his dark mirror Albedo, and stared down the genocidal fury of Vilgax. He knew exactly what a lie sounded like. More importantly, he knew what a victim of severe trauma looked like when they were trying to bury the truth to protect whatever shattered dignity they had left.

A prank gone wrong was his cousin Gwen accidentally turning his hair neon blue with a miscast spell. A prank gone wrong was Kevin filling his plumbing truck with packing peanuts.

A prank gone wrong did not leave a teenage girl's biology so profoundly, violently traumatized that her mind fractured, triggering a parahuman connection that nearly caused her to spontaneously combust into a walking thermodynamic nightmare.

Ben stood up, his sneakers making absolutely no sound against the linoleum floor. He glanced at Danny, ensuring the man was deeply asleep, before stepping out into the dim, quiet hallway of the hospital's secure wing. The night nurse was busy at her station down the hall, her back turned as she typed away at a monitor.

Ben reached down, his thumb brushing the dial of the Omnitrix. The faceplate slid open with a soft, mechanical hiss, emitting a localized green glow that illuminated his sharp features. He rotated the dial, scrolling past the silhouettes of his heavy hitters until he found the distinct, hooded form he needed for an undercover excursion.

He didn't slam the dial down. Over the years, he had learned precision. He pressed it with a practiced, silent click, a faint flash of green light washing over his skin before collapsing inward, swallowing his physical form entirely without a sound.

Where a human teenager had stood a second ago, there was now a tall, ethereal, ghostly figure. His skin was a deep, midnight blue, patterned with small, white spots that resembled a distant galaxy. Folded over his chest like a heavy cloak were four large, insectoid wings, hiding his long, slender limbs. From beneath his deep hood, a pair of large, pupilless green eyes glowed with an icy, supernatural intensity.

Big Chill.

Without uttering a word, the Necrofriggian drifted forward. His body shifted its density, passing cleanly through the solid concrete wall of the hospital room and stepping out into the cold, open air of the Brockton Bay night. He spread his massive wings, the membrane catching the bitter wind as a frigid mist trailed behind him, instantly freezing the moisture in the air into tiny, glittering crystals.

He had pulled Winslow High's address from the laptop before leaving. It didn't take him long to find it.

Even from the air, Winslow looked less like an educational institution and more like a low-security prison. It was a ugly, sprawling concrete block covered in faded graffiti, surrounded by a sagging chain-link fence topped with rusty barbed wire. The windows were small, dark, and heavily barred. The entire place oozed a heavy, suffocating aura of institutional neglect and systemic failure.

Big Chill dropped from the sky like a falling leaf, his wings folding back over his torso to form his cloak. He glided straight toward the heavy, reinforced steel front doors of the school. He didn't bother looking for a key or trying to pick the lock. He simply walked forward, his density shifting to absolute zero as he phased cleanly through the metal, stepping into the dark, silent main corridor.

The interior of Winslow smelled like mold, cheap floor wax, and old dust. It was completely silent, the kind of heavy, unnatural silence that felt like a secret being kept in the dark.

Big Chill drifted down the hall, his glowing green eyes scanning the rows of identical, battered metal lockers. He didn't know the exact locker number, but he didn't need to. He followed the faint, lingering scent of industrial chemicals and bleach. Even after days, the smell was a glaring anomaly in a school that clearly neglected its janitorial duties.

He turned a corner into the junior hallway, and his eyes locked onto a specific locker near the center of the row.

It stood out instantly. While every other locker in the hallway was dented, covered in scratched-in obscenities, or coated in layers of old grime, this specific locker was pristine. It had been scrubbed raw. The metal was unnaturally bright, completely stripped of any personal markings, and the distinct, sharp stench of industrial-strength bleach and chemical neutralizers hung heavily in the air around it.

Big Chill drifted closer, hovering an inch off the linoleum floor. He reached out a long, three-fingered hand, his clawed fingers passing through the vents of the locker door.

"They cleaned it," his voice echoed out, a chilling, dual-toned whisper that vibrated with a raspy, low-frequency growl. "They bleached the whole thing. Tried to wipe it all away like it never happened."

The anger in his chest flared, a cold, icy spike. They had tried to erase the physical evidence. The school, the administration, whoever had done this they wanted this atrocity to vanish into the background noise of a failing city.

"Fine," Big Chill whispered, his wings expanding. "We'll just have to look a little deeper."

A bright green flash erupted from the center of his chest, expanding outward until it swallowed the ghostly form. The midnight-blue wings vanished, replaced by a heavy, metallic weight that slammed down onto the linoleum floor with a solid, echoing thud.

The new form was short, stocky, and built entirely out of thick, ornate brass and copper plating. Heavy, interlocking gears turned smoothly within his transparent torso, ticking with a steady, rhythmic cadence. A large, circular winding key sat on top of his head, rotating slowly, while a single, large green lens stared out from the center of his metallic face.

Clockwork.

The Chronosapien raised his thick, mechanical arms, his three-jointed fingers spreading wide as the gears inside his chest began to spin at a blinding velocity. A deep, resonant hum vibrated through the metal of the hallway, a sound that transcended physical space, echoing through the very fabric of time itself.

From the green lens on his face, a brilliant, shimmering wave of golden, chronokinetic energy erupted, washing over the bleached locker and the surrounding hallway.

"Let's zee ze truth," Clockwork's voice rumbled, a deep,German mechanical baritone

The golden light didn't illuminate the dark hallway it unraveled it.

Suddenly, the darkness of the night began to violently rewind. The shadows on the wall shifted, spinning backward like a time-lapse video. The sun rose and fell in a fraction of a second, the hallways filling with blurred, ghostly silhouettes of screaming teenagers running backward, trash flying out of bins and into students' hands, before vanishing into the past.

Clockwork focused his energy, narrowing the chronokinetic field down to yesterday

The golden light stabilized, freezing the temporal playback into a vivid, hyper-realistic holographic projection of the past. To anyone else, it would look like a ghost story. To a Chronosapien, it was reality, replayed with absolute, unyielding precision.

Clockwork watched as the hallway filled with the morning rush of students. And then, he saw her.

A past version of Taylor Hebert walked into the corridor. She looked incredibly small, her shoulders hunched inward as if she were trying to occupy as little space as humanly possible. She was clutching a worn backpack to her chest like a shield, her eyes cast downward, completely avoiding the gazes of the people around her.

She walked over to her locker, her fingers trembling slightly as she reached for her combination lock.

And then, three other girls entered the frame.

Clockwork's single green lens tracked them. One was a tall, athletic Black girl with a fierce, intensely aggressive posture, wearing an expensive leather jacket. Another was a short, plain-looking girl with a clipboard, looking around layout nervously but with a cruel, smug smirk on her face. And the leader a strikingly beautiful girl with vibrant, cascading red hair and a smile that looked like it had been synthesized in a laboratory to look perfect while hiding a black, rotten core..

The Chronosapien stood perfectly still, his internal gears ticking with a heavy, ominous rhythm as his top piece turns as he watched the scene unfold.

The three girls approached Taylor. There was a brief exchange of words. The holographic playback didn't carry perfect audio, but the chronokinetic resonance allowed Clockwork to catch the sharp, biting frequencies of their voices. He watched Taylor try to ignore them, her jaw tightening as she reached for her locker door.

The red-headed girl, Emma, gave a subtle, practiced nod.

The athletic girl, Sophia, stepped forward. She didn't just push Taylor aside. She reached out toward the lock on the locker door. Clockwork watched closely, his mechanical eye zooming in with microscopic precision.

As Sophia's hand touched the heavy steel padlock, her entire physical form suddenly shifted. For a fraction of a second, her body lost its solid consistency, turning into a dark, smokey, translucent shadow state. She phased her hand directly through the solid steel housing of the lock, manipulating the internal tumblers from the inside out with an effortless, practiced motion. The lock clicked open instantly, completely undamaged on the outside, but entirely compromised.

Clockwork's gears stalled for a microsecond. A parahuman, he realized, a cold, lethal calculation running through his brass mind. She used a shadow-phasing power to break into the locker.

What happened next was a genuine, unadulterated what the fuck moment.

Sophia slammed the locker door open. Inside, the locker wasn't empty. It was filled to the absolute brim with a rotting, horrific, shifting mass of brown and black filth. Even though the chronokinetic playback carried no physical scent, the sheer visual density of the material made Clockwork's internal systems register a phantom biological hazard warning. It was a toxic, biohazardous cocktail of rotting garbage, used feminine hygiene products, stagnant septic waste, and decomposed organic matter that had clearly been festering in a sealed container for weeks.

Taylor took a step back, her face turning pale with absolute horror, her hands flying to her mouth.

The three girls didn't hesitate. Sophia grabbed Taylor by the hair, her grip brutal and uncompromising. Taylor screamed, struggling, her hands flailing wildly as she tried to break free. But Sophia was stronger, more aggressive, shoving her backward with terrifying, calculated force. Madison and Emma blocked the hallway, their bodies forming a barrier, their faces twisted into expressions of pure, unadulterated sadistic glee.

They shoved Taylor forward. She tripped, falling backward directly into the rotting, biohazardous filth of the locker.

The stench must have been instantaneous, a suffocating, blinding assault on her senses. Before Taylor could even scramble out, Sophia slammed the heavy steel door shut. The padlock was thrown into place, clicking locked with a definitive, metallic snap.

Inside the locker, the ghostly silhouette of Taylor began to violently beat against the metal door. The metal rattled, her muffled, desperate screams echoing through the temporal playback.

Clockwork watched the hallway. He watched as Emma, Sophia, and Madison walked away, laughing, high-fiving each other as if they had just won a prize. He watched as the minutes ticked by. Ten minutes. Thirty minutes. An hour.

Students walked past the locker. They heard the banging. They heard the desperate, muffled crying. Some of them paused, looked at the locker with amusement, whispered to their friends, and walked away.

A teacher walked past. A heavy-set man with a mustache. He stopped, looked directly at the vibrating locker door, shook his head with an expression of profound annoyance, and walked away.

Inside the locker, Taylor's thrashing grew weaker. The oxygen was running out. The toxic fumes of the chemical waste and rotting biological material were filling her lungs. The holographic projection of her body began to glow with an erratic, terrifying purple and magenta light—the physical manifestation of her mind fracturing under the absolute, claustrophobic terror, her brain screaming for escape until her parahuman connection slammed into place.

"Enough," Clockwork rumbled.

He dropped his arms. The golden light snapped back into his lens, the holographic past shattering into thousands of glittering particles before vanishing entirely. The hallway returned to its dark, quiet, bleached reality.

Ben Tennyson was pissed.

No, pissed wasn't the right word. He was absolutely, white-hot, explosively furious.

In his six years of being a hero, Ben had fought every flavor of villain imaginable. He had fought megalomaniacs who wanted to rule galaxies, warlords who wanted power, and bounty hunters who did it for the money. But he absolutely, fundamentally hated bullies. Bullies were pathetic, small-minded creatures who tore others down simply because they were too weak and insecure to build themselves up.

But what he had just witnessed wasn't just bullying. It was an attempted execution. It was a systematic, institutionally tolerated torture campaign that a public school administration had actively chosen to ignore. Those girls weren't just bullies Ben genuinely questioned if they even deserved to be classified as human. To look at another living, breathing person and do that to them, to laugh while they suffocated in filth, was a level of casual malice that made space pirates look stable.

"Two years," Ben whispered, his brass fingers clenching into fists so hard the metal groaned. "Danny said this has been going on for almost two years."

He didn't have the time to sit around and manually gather the evidence he needed. He couldn't spend weeks playing detective, interviewing students who were too terrified of social suicide to speak, or digging through paper trails that the school principal had probably already shredded. He could use Clockwork to literally travel back in time and do it or undo it entirely make no mistake he had the power to rewrite the timeline completely.

But rewriting the past wouldn't fix the rot. If he just stopped the locker, those monsters would still be walking the halls, looking for another victim. The school would still be a corrupt, failing institution. The system would remain completely broken.

No. He didn't want to change what happened. He wanted to completely destroy the people who let it happen.

"New plan," Clockwork said, his voice dropping an octave as his internal gears began to turn backwards.

The brass armor didn't just flash green; it expanded, dissolving into a blinding, transcendent white-hot radiance that didn't cast shadows it eliminated them entirely. The physical walls of Winslow High seemed to lose their meaning, bowing outward as if the very architecture of the building was kneeling in the presence of what was coming.

The light faded, revealing a figure that didn't belong in this universe.

He was tall, perfectly proportioned, and entirely black, his body resembling a flawless, solid silhouette cut directly out of the deep cosmos. Infinite, glittering stars and distant nebulae shifted and spun within his skin like a living galaxy. Three sharp, horn-like protrusions grew from his head, and his eyes were pure, piercing pools of solid green light.

Alien X.

The moment the Celestialsapien manifested, the entire world stopped. Literally. The hum of the wind outside died. The falling rain froze in mid-air. The steady passage of time ceased to exist within a three-mile radius, locked in a perfect, unbreakable stasis.

Inside the vast, infinite ocean of Alien X's internal consciousness, Ben Tennyson opened his eyes.

He was floating in a purple, star-lit void. Floating directly in front of him were two colossal stone faces. To his left was Serena, the Voice of Love and Compassion a beautiful, serene female face with soft, weeping eyes. To his right was Bellicus, the Voice of Anger and Aggression a jagged, terrifying male face twisted into a permanent, roaring scowl.

Long ago, Ben had convince them to give him complete full control of Alien X's reality-warping capabilities to him. He didn't need their permission anymore. He didn't need to argue, plead, or wait for a vote. He held the keys to the kingdom.

He had simply popped into the mindscape to say a polite hello.

"Hey, guys," Ben said, giving a casual wave as he floated in the cosmic space. "Just stopping by to say greetings. Got a quick piece of business to take care of down below."

"Ah, the boy returns," Bellicus rumbled, though there was no real venom in his voice anymore, merely his usual gruff demeanor. "Do what you must, Tennyson."

"Be kind, Ben," Serena whispered softly, her massive eyes shining with starlight. "Fix what is broken."

"Count on it," Ben said.

In the real world, Alien X raised his right hand. His cosmic fingers aligned, and with a simple, effortless motion, he snapped his fingers.

The sound of the snap didn't create a physical shockwave. It created a profound ripple through the baseline data of reality.

Instantly, the Celestialsapien power reached out across the entire infrastructure of Brockton Bay. It bypassed local firewalls, tore through hidden desktop directories, and completely reconstructed deleted hard drives. It retrieved encrypted text messages from Madison Clements' phone, pulled erased emails from Emma Barnes' personal computer, and extracted every single shred of data regarding the systemic harassment of Taylor Hebert.

On the floor of the dark hallway, right at Alien X's feet, reality began to fold in on itself.

Dozens of high-capacity flash drives, pristine legal manila folders filled with thousands of pages of printed emails, cross-referenced receipts, and internal administrative logs materialized out of thin air, stacking themselves into a neat, perfectly organized pile.

Alien X's eyes drifted to the locker door. He reached out with his mind, tracing the temporal path of the items that had been stolen from Taylor over the two-year campaign.

He saw it. A beautiful, handcrafted silver flute, tucked away inside a velvet case. Annette Hebert's final gift to her daughter. He saw Sophia Hess phasing her hand into Taylor's locker months ago, stealing the case, and tossing it into a dumpster behind a grocery store downtown, where it had been crushed and destroyed by a garbage truck days later.

Alien X focused his gaze. The cosmic energy surged.

In a flash of soft green stasis, the molecular structure of the crushed, melted silver reassembled itself. The atoms aligned perfectly, the velvet case restoring its pristine texture, the silver flute polished to a mirror shine, completely untainted by time or destruction. The flute materialized gently on top of the pile of evidence.

"Done," Ben's voice echoed through the cosmic form.

A bright green flash consumed the hallway once more, and Ben Tennyson stepped out of the light, back in his human form. Time instantly snapped back into motion with a loud, sudden intake of air as the frozen rain outside slammed back into the asphalt.

Ben looked down at the massive pile of evidence at his feet. He picked up the velvet flute case first, opening it slightly. The silver caught the dim light of the hallway. He closed it with a soft, bittersweet smile, tucking it securely under his arm.

Then, he reached down and picked up the top folder of the evidence pile, which contained a series of private, unindexed documents from Principal Blackwell's personal filing cabinet and a secure, non-government hard drive belonging to a specific PRT official.

Ben flipped it open, scanning the text by the light of his phone. His expression darkened all over again, a deep hiss escaping his teeth.

"Wow," Ben whispered, flipping through the pages. "It's not even the whole PRT. It's way sleazier than that."

The evidence pulled by Alien X revealed the exact mechanics of the cover-up. Director Piggot and the higher-ups at the PRT ENE department didn't actually know about Sophia Hess's horrific behavior or the locker incident at all. The corruption was entirely localized.

Sophia Hess's assigned PRT Probation Officer had been actively burying every single incident report, police notification, and complaint that came out of Winslow High. The probation officer was doing it entirely to protect their own career; if their star probationary Ward asset was revealed to be a violent, unhinged torturer violating her juvenile parahuman parole, the officer's record would be ruined, and Sophia would be sent straight to juvenile detention or the Birdcage.

And Principal Blackwell was actively colluding with the handler. Blackwell had suppressed the school records, threatened teachers who wanted to report the bullying, and ordered the janitors to bleach the locker immediately. She didn't do it out of love for Sophia Hess; she did it because Winslow High received massive, specialized federal grant funding specifically for hosting a Ward under its roof. If Sophia was removed or exposed, the school would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in institutional funding.

They had literally sold Taylor Hebert's safety and sanity for budget allocations and career security.

"A sleazy principal and a corrupt handler," Ben growled, slamming the folder shut. "They buried a girl alive so they could keep their hands in the cash register. Unbelievable."

Ben crouched down, gathering the heavy stack of manila folders and the bag of flash drives. It was a massive pile, weighing at least thirty pounds, but his baseline physical conditioning allowed him to carry it effortlessly.

He tucked the flute case tightly under his arm and hoisted the box. "Alright," Ben whispered into the empty hallway, his green eyes burning with a cold, calculated fire. "Let's see how your little financial arrangement holds up when a real lawyer gets ahold of your throats."

The Dallon household in the upper-class neighborhood of Arcadia was completely dark when the soft, rhythmic knocking began on the front door.

Carol Dallon was already awake, sitting at her kitchen island in a silk robe, a mug of black coffee cooling in her hands as she reviewed the legal precedents for parahuman custody cases. Her mind was a chaotic storm of worry. The arrival of Ben Tennyson had completely thrown the delicate political(Delusional fr fr) balance of Brockton Bay into jeopardy, and the sheer hostility Director Piggot had shown during the briefing was a clear sign that the authorities were preparing to move aggressively against the teenagers.

When the knock came, her hand instantly froze. She stood up smoothly, her internal power humming slightly beneath her skin, ready to manifest the hard-light barrier of Brandish at a fraction of a second's notice if the PRT had sent a containment team to her home.

She walked to the front door, peering through the security peephole.

Standing on her porch, illuminated by the porch light, was Ben Tennyson. He was wearing his green jacket, looking completely relaxed, a large, velvet case tucked under his arm and a massive, overflowing cardboard box resting on the deck beside his feet.

Carol blinked in surprise. She deactivated her power, unlocked the deadbolt, and pulled the heavy wooden door open.

"Ben?" Carol asked, her voice low but sharp as she looked past him into the quiet street, checking the treeline for any signs of PRT surveillance vans. "What are you doing here? It's three in the morning. You're supposed to be at the hospital with the Heberts."

"Hey, Carol," Ben said with his signature, easygoing grin, waving a casual hand. "Sorry for the late-night drop-in. But, honestly? I couldn't sleep. And once I start a project, I kind of have to finish it."

Carol's eyes drifted down to the massive cardboard box at his feet. Through the open top, she could see hundreds of neatly organized legal folders, bundles of printed documents, and a plastic bag filled with high-capacity USB drives.

"What is this?" she asked, her sharp lawyer instincts instantly flaring as she noted the sheer volume of the paperwork.

"This," Ben said, his grin shifting into something much colder, much more deliberate, "is a legal nuclear bomb. And since you're the best lawyer in town who doesn't like institutional nonsense, I figured I'd deliver it directly to the launch pad."

Carol stared at him for a long moment before stepping aside, opening the door wider. "Bring it inside. Quickly."

Ben hoisted the heavy box with one arm, walking into the pristine, modern kitchen and setting it down on the granite island with a heavy thud. Carol closed the front door, locking it securely before walking over to stand across from him.

"Explain," Carol commanded, her eyes narrowing as she crossed her arms.

Ben leaned against the counter. He knew he needed to tell her an absolute, flawless line of sci-fi bullshit. If he told her that he turned into a giant brass clock and a cosmic space god to manifest this data out of thin air, she'd think he was either insane or an apocalyptic threat, which would instantly make her treat him like an enemy. He needed to frame the evidence around the advanced technological capabilities she already knew he possessed.

"Alright, so after you guys left the hospital, I started talking to Danny," Ben began, his voice adopting a perfect, serious-but-casual storytelling cadence. "He was telling me about how Taylor's been having a really rough time at school for the last two years. Grades dropping, isolating herself, coming home with ruined clothes. And then Taylor tells me the locker was just a 'prank gone wrong'. My dad's a businessman, Carol. I know what people look like when they're hiding a total disaster. So, I decided to do a little off-the-books investigation."

Ben reached into the box and pulled out the primary file on the Winslow administration, sliding it across the granite counter toward her.

"The PRT higher-ups like Piggot don't even know about this," Ben explained, his eyes narrowing. "One of the girls who shoved Taylor into that locker is Sophia Hess—the probationary Ward known as Shadow Stalker. It turns out, Sophia's specific PRT Probation Officer has been actively intercepting and burying every single police report and incident notification that came out of Winslow regarding her. The handler did it to keep their own career record clean and protect their star asset from being thrown into juvenile detention."

Carol snatched the folder, her eyes tearing through the pages.

"And Principal Blackwell went right along with it," Ben continued, pointing at a highlighted spreadsheet. "Winslow High receives massive federal and PRT grant funding specifically for hosting a Ward under probation. If Sophia got pulled out or exposed as a monster, Blackwell loses her funding. So, the principal ordered the cameras wiped, threatened the staff, and had the locker bleached immediately after Taylor was taken to the hospital to protect her pocketbook."

The Heroine's sharp eyes tracked the signatures, the financial receipts, and the encrypted message logs between Blackwell and the specific PRT handler. The sheer, systematic corruption printed on the pages made the color completely drain from her face.

"My God," Carol whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of profound professional disgust and white-hot fury. "This... this isn't just a school disciplinary issue. This is a localized criminal conspiracy. An administrative handler and a school principal actively colluding to suppress the ongoing torture of a minor to preserve corporate funding and career advancement."

"There's more," Ben said, pointing to the flash drives in the plastic bag. "I compiled every single text message, every private chat log from the bullies' phones, and the complete, unedited security footage from the hallway that morning. I've already organized it all. There's video evidence of Hess using her shadow power to phase through the locker locks to steal Taylor's personal property. There's footage showing the teachers actively walking past the locker while she was screaming inside."

She slammed the folder down on the granite counter and looked up at Ben, her eyes boring into him.

"Ben, do you have any idea what you've actually done here?" Carol asked, her voice dropping into a tense, dangerous whisper. "Setting aside how completely horrific this locker situation is... look at how you obtained this. You just admitted to illegally hacking a public school's network servers. You've intercepted private text messages and invaded the privacy of three minor girls without a warrant. And worst of all? You're using that data to unmask a Ward. That is a direct, catastrophic violation of the Unwritten Rules."

Ben didn't flinch. He just leaned back against the kitchen island, crossing his arms with an utterly relaxed, cocky smile.

"First of all, I didn't unmask her," Ben said smoothly. "Sophia Hess unmasked herself the exact second she decided to use a classified parahuman ability to commit an active felony on a public high school security camera. The Unwritten Rules are supposed to protect capes in their civilian lives, right? Well, she brought her cape life into a school hallway to torture a regular girl. If a speedster robs a bank without a mask on, you don't blame the camera for catching their face."

Carol opened her mouth to argue, but Ben waved a hand, cutting her off to drop his explanation for the technical side of things.

"And as for the hacking and privacy stuff? I didn't actually touch their network files directly. Before I went in, I used an alien form called Grey Matter. He's about six inches tall, gray skin, and has a brain that operates on a cognitive frequency that makes Earth's supercomputers look like a bunch of pocket calculators. He built this tiny, pocket-sized device out of a few spare junk i found." Ben tapped the watch on his wrist.

"I slipped into the school's server room as an invisible ghost and attached Grey Matter's device—a Galvanic data-siphon directly to the primary broadband trunk line. It didn't crack their firewalls it just absorbed the raw, microscopic electromagnetic echoes of every file, email, and text that had passed through that building over the last two years. It even reconstructed the deleted hard drives by reading the magnetic polarity left on the server ribbons. Technically, the school's hardware volunteered the data to an advanced interstellar receiver. It's entirely external data retrieval. Completely legal by deep-space standards."

Carol stared at him, her brain spinning as she tried to process the absolute absurdity of a teenager using alien engineering and outer-space property laws to justify a complete lack of a search warrant. Yet, looking down at the pristine, indisputable data sitting on her counter, she knew a federal judge wouldn't care about the physics of a data-siphon once they saw the text logs.

"Fine," Carol sighed, rubbing her temples as she felt a massive headache forming. "Let's say I can spin this as an independent, third-party discovery that bypasses standard police protocols. Everything here is in perfect legal order to absolutely destroy Blackwell, the handler, and those girls. If we play our cards right and present this cleanly, we might actually get lucky. Director Piggot is a pragmatist. She hates loose cannons, and Sophia Hess was only a probationary Ward anyway her leash was already incredibly short."

Carol leaned forward, her eyes narrowing slightly as she studied Ben's face.

"If Piggot sees this mountain of evidence, she'll realize Hess is a massive institutional liability. She will gladly toss that girl to the wolves if it means protecting the PRT's reputation and, more importantly, getting on the good side of the Eidolon of Changers."

Ben kept his expression perfectly still, nodding slowly with a confident, knowing look.

The Eidolon of Changers? Ben thought to himself, a massive question mark popping up in his head. Who the heck is Eidolon? Is that some local hero? Whatever. Just play it cool.

"Yeah," Ben said out loud, tossing out a casual shrug. "Makes sense. Keep the big guys happy."

"Exactly," Carol said, turning her attention back to the papers. "But even with Piggot potentially cutting Hess loose to appease you, there is still one major, insurmountable issue."

She tapped her fingers against the thick stack of manila folders.

"Money, Ben. As much as I want to take this case and personally drag these people through the mud, a federal lawsuit against a school board, a teacher's union, and a shadow division of the PRT is going to be a long, nightmarish, bureaucratic war. It takes an astronomical amount of money to fund a case like this court fees, independent depositions, expert testimonies, security details. I can't fund a multi-year federal battle out of my own pocket.I assume you don't exactly have a bank account in this dimension."

Ben's smile faltered for a second. The realization hit him like a bucket of cold water.

Think, Tennyson.

She was right. He didn't have a single dollar to his name here. Plumber credits were completely worthless on Earth-Bet, and he couldn't exactly walk into a local bank and ask for a stack of cash. If they couldn't pay the legal fees, all this flawless evidence would just sit in a box while the corrupt system swept Taylor under the rug.

Wait a minute...

Ben blinked, his mind flashing back to the hours he had spent scrolling through the laptop Carol had lent him back at the hospital. He had been looking up the local laws, trying to understand how capes operated under the government.

Oh, that's good. That is really good.

A slow, brilliant, incredibly dangerous grin spread across Ben's face. He remembered the specific legal loophole he had come across while skimming the government's parahuman legislative database.

Kill Orders.

On Earth-Bet, when a parahuman threat became too destructive, monstrous, or completely unmanageable, the government declared them an S-Class threat and issued an official, legally binding Kill Order. It was essentially a state-sanctioned bounty. And because the government was absolutely desperate to get rid of these monsters, the law was written with zero restrictions: anyone who eliminated an active Kill Order target whether they were a hero, a rogue, a villain, or a completely unregistered civilian was legally entitled to the payout. The government was constitutionally obligated to pay the bounty regardless of the hunter's 'Cape Status.'

Ben reached over, tapping Carol's laptop screen to wake it up. He quickly typed in a search query, pulling up the current active bounties for the most infamous S-Class threat roaming the country: the Slaughterhouse Nine.

He looked at the numbers glowing on the screen. Between Jack Slash, Siberian, Crawler, and the rest of the psychotic circus, the collective bounty placed on their heads by the federal government added up to roughly half a billion dollars.

Five hundred million dollars. More than enough to fund a thousand lawsuits, rebuild Winslow High from the ground up, and buy Taylor Hebert her own private island if she wanted one.

Ben looked up at Carol, his green eyes burning with a sudden, lethal intensity that made the veteran hero take a half-step back. He tapped the faceplate of the Omnitrix, the green dial popping up with a sharp, mechanical hiss.

"Don't worry about the money, Carol," Ben said, his voice dropping into a calm, confident, and terrifyingly casual tone. "Go ahead and draft those filings. Build the strongest case you can."

Carol looked from the laptop screen back to Ben, her eyes wide as she realized exactly what he was implying. "Ben... you can't be serious. The Slaughterhouse Nine are monsters. Entire protectorate teams have been wiped out trying to—"

"They've never fought me," Ben interrupted smoothly, turning back toward the front door. He paused, looking over his shoulder with a sharp, fearless grin. "The government legally owes half a billion dollars to whoever sweeps those trash bags off the streets. Tell your clerks to get to work it's time for me to go hunting."

The Universe's greatest hero was not planning on fighting them now however it sems like he has no choice now he was a man on a mission

Hopefully they live up to hype

 

[Thegameaholic]

To Jacob Black, the world was nothing more than an exceptionally poorly constructed stage, and its inhabitants were merely bad actors begging for a director who understood the true value of a tragedy.

He had long since discarded the name Jacob, burying it deep in the dirt of the dark, suffocating bunker where his half-mad parents had raised him to fear an apocalypse that had already come and gone. When he had stepped out of that hole into the light of the real world, he hadn't found a society; he had found a playground of soft, fragile things that broke if you pressed them in just the right spots. He had taken a straight razor to his old life, carving out a new identity from the raw, bleeding throat of the parahuman underworld.

Jack Slash.

It was a name that carried a weight heavier than the iron cranes lining the rusty shores of Brockton Bay. It was a name that caused veteran heroes to wake up in a cold sweat, their hands trembling as they checked the locks on their windows. To Jack, every wide-scale atrocity he coordinated, every small-scale piece of personal torment he inflicted, was an act of pure artistic expression. He possessed a playful, almost whimsical demeanor that remained entirely unbothered whether he was casually skinning a local gang leader alive or directing the systematic slaughter of an entire town.

Every single move, every calculated glance, every flick of his wrist was designed to afflict change on the world around him—and always, without fail, for the worse. Humanity was a stagnant, boring pool of water; Jack considered it his sacred duty to throw massive, jagged rocks into it just to watch the mud swirl to the surface. He didn't just want to participate in the end of the world. He wanted to orchestrate it. He wanted to carve his name so deeply into the collective consciousness of the human race that if the sky split open and the world burned to ash, the very last word whispered by the survivors would be his. He would ensure that the name Jack Slash was synonymous with absolute, paralyzing fear.

Right now, the maestro was at work in his temporary theater.

The hideout was an abandoned, salt-crusted marine warehouse on the desolate edge of the Docks. The air inside smelled of rotting wood, rusted iron, and the sharp, chemical tang of the horrific experiments currently bubbling away in the makeshift laboratory below. Moonlight filtered down through the shattered glass of the skylights, casting long, skeletal shadows across the concrete floor.

Jack sat casually on an overturned wooden crate, his long legs crossed, his fingers effortlessly spinning a pristine, ivory-handled straight razor. The silver blade caught the moonlight, flashing like a tiny, lethal mirror. Around him, the nightmare circus that was the Slaughterhouse Nine loomed in the dark, a collection of living gods and broken monsters waiting for their cues.

"Brockton Bay is an absolute goldmine of potential, my family," Jack murmured, his voice smooth, theatrical, and dripping with an easygoing warmth that entirely contrasted his words. He gave a small, playful smirk, looking around the room. "The local flavor here is so delightfully... volatile. You have the structural decay, the desperate gangs clawing at each other's throats, and a local Protectorate department that is practically begging to be shattered into pieces. I do believe our little vacation here is going to leave a lasting impression."

From the shadows near a rusted support pillar, Shatterbird shifted, the delicate, intricate silks of her costume rustling softly. She ran a pale, elegant hand through her brilliant hair, a soft, musical chime echoing from her lips. "The architecture of this city is remarkably fragile, Jack. So much glass. Miles and miles of pristine, structural silicon just waiting for the right pitch. I could sing a song that would blind half the population before breakfast."

"And a beautiful symphony it would be, dear," Jack chuckled, flipping his razor closed with a soft click. "But we mustn't rush the opening act. Pacing is everything in a masterpiece."

"I want to play with the local capes," Bonesaw chirped, her sweet, childlike voice echoing unnaturally in the vast, hollow space. She was sitting on a stained medical gurney, her small legs swinging back and forth, her hands busy stitching a pair of rotted canine ears onto a human scalp she had preserved in a jar. "The Wards here look so adorable! I think it would be so much fun to open up Pancea don't you think that would be pretty, Jack?"

"I don't care about the children," Hatchet Face grunted, his massive, hulking frame leaning heavily against a stack of moldering shipping pallets. He ran a thick, calloused thumb over the edge of his brutal, blood-stained hatchet, his breathing a heavy, wet rasp. "I just want to find their heavy hitters. Let me get close enough to stifle their little sparks, and I'll split their skulls open. Simple. Clean."

"You always lack a certain poetic nuance, Hatchet," Cherish purred, stepping out from the edge of the moonlight. She leaned against a crate, her fingers tracing the edge of her collar, a cruel, mocking smile playing on her lips. She could feel the ambient emotions in the room the stagnant, terrifying vacuum of the Siberian, the burning furnace of Burnscar, the chaotic itch of Crawler. She turned her focus toward the city outside, her eyes narrowing. "The emotional landscape of this bay is absolutely delicious right now. It's like a bruised fruit, ready to burst. I can feel the despair radiating from the wards downtown. I could make half the city walk into the ocean with a single tug."

"A tempting offer, Cherish," Jack said, his eyes dancing with amusement. "But we must allow them to hope first. Despair is far more potent when it's preceded by a sudden, devastating loss of hope."

Across the room, Mannequin shifted his weight, his white, porcelain-plated joints clicking and whirring with a sterile, mechanical precision. He didn't speak—he couldn't—but the slow, deliberate tilt of his spherical head toward Jack conveyed a cold, calculated agreement. Beside him, Burnscar sat on a pile of charred timbers, a tiny, flickering flame dancing between her fingertips. Her eyes were glazed over, staring blankly into the fire, her mind clearly wandering through the black, scorched memories of the towns she had reduced to ash.

In the furthest, darkest corner of the warehouse, completely removed from the discussion, sat a massive, grotesque shape. Crawler. The multi-limbed, heavily armored monstrosity shifted, his colossal bulk scraping against the concrete, a low, rumbling growl vibrating deep within his chest. His multiple glowing eyes stared out into the dark, entirely uninterested in the politics of the gang, his biology aching, pleading for something—anything—that could actually hurt him enough to force a new adaptation.

And right beside Jack, sitting completely still on a rusted steel beam, was the Siberian. The naked, tiger-striped woman didn't make a sound. She didn't breathe. She didn't blink. She was an absolute, terrifying void in reality, a living weapon that defied every known law of physics, watching the maestro with an unreadable, feral intensity.

"So," Jack said, standing up smoothly and spreading his arms wide as if addressing a packed auditorium. "Our agenda is clear. We squeeze the bay until it snaps. We—"

The warehouse door didn't just open. It ceased to exist.

A sudden, deafening CRACK of displaced air tore through the structure, a sound so violent it shattered the remaining glass in the overhead skylights, sending a rain of sharp shards clattering to the floor. The massive, reinforced corrugated steel doors of the warehouse were violently torn from their hinges, buckling inward like cheap tinfoil as they flew across the room, slamming into the concrete with a deafening, metallic roar.

The members of the Nine didn't panic they were gods of ruin but every eye instantly snapped toward the cloud of dust and pulverized concrete settling at the entrance.

As the dust began to clear, a figure stabilized in the center of the doorway.

It wasn't a hero(Not that they knew of). It wasn't a villain. It wasn't even human.

The creature was built entirely for terrifying, unnatural velocity. It stood on two long, slender legs, balanced perfectly on a pair of rolling, spherical black orbs where feet should have been. Its body was a sleek, aerodynamic frame of deep midnight blue and obsidian black, its long, lithe torso tapering up into a pointed, helmet-like head. A dark, translucent visor covered its face, reflecting the pale moonlight. From its back trailed a long, prehensile tail striped in black and blue, twitching with an erratic, restless energy. Its arms ended in three sharp, scissor-like claws that clicked together with a fast, rhythmic precision.

The creature reached up with a claw, sliding its dark visor upward. Beneath it, a pair of sharp, expressive reptilian green eyes locked directly onto Jack Slash.

"Man, chirp, you guys are seriously a pain to track down," the creature spoke. Its voice was light, raspy, and completely alien, punctuated by a distinct, high-frequency cricket-like chirp every single time it uttered a sentence. "You'd think a bunch of colorfully dressed psychopaths would leave a bigger electronic footprint, chirp, but you were actually somewhat well-hidden. Too bad for you, chirp, when you can run across the surface of the ocean and travel the world in a few seconds, it makes finding things a whole lot easier."

A/N:I Actually like how Omniverse XLR8 sounds like a cricket

Jack didn't move. He kept his straight razor loosely in his hand, his expression remaining entirely nonchalant, a soft, amused chuckle escaping his lips. "Well, well. What a delightfully exotic little creature. Did one of the local heroes lose their pet tinker project? Or are you a brand new flavor of mutant deviation?"

Outwardly, Jack looked perfectly calm. He looked like a man who was entirely in control of his surroundings.

But deep within the hidden, subconscious architecture of his mind, a profound, terrifying anomaly was occurring.

For over twenty years, Jack Slash had survived the parahuman world because of a secret, secondary power that even he didn't know about at all. His shard, the Broadcast entity, was the primary communications hub of the entire parahuman network. Whenever Jack was in the presence of a parahuman, his shard was constantly working behind the scenes. It spoke to the shards of his enemies, reading their intents, predicting their attacks, and subtly nudging their hosts.

A/N: No Jack doesn't know about shards or this ability this is just me explaining the Power in general to you and how it works and feels for him

If a parahuman tried to attack Jack, Broadcast would alert his instincts, giving him a perfect, supernatural awareness of the danger. It would whisper to the hostile parahuman's shard, causing them to hesitate, to misaim, or to feel a sudden, overwhelming sense of dread that ruined their offensive momentum. If Jack was isolated, Broadcast would manipulate the shards of the other Nine members, drawing them to his location like moths to a flame. It would even liberally interpret the existing drawbacks of an enemy's power, causing their abilities to work sub-optimally just to ensure Jack walked away without a scratch.

Jack Slash was unkillable because the entire parahuman system was rigged in his favor.

But right now, as Jack looked at the black-and-blue creature standing in the doorway, the Broadcast shard was dead silent.

It wasn't whispering. It wasn't negotiating. It was screaming into an absolute, empty vacuum. The creature in front of him had no shard. It had no connection to the entities. It possessed no passenger, no broken psychology to manipulate, no parahuman architecture to exploit. It was a completely independent, foreign biological organism from a completely different universe.

For the first time in his entire life, Jack Slash was completely, entirely on his own. His supernatural instincts were gone. His perfect evasion was gone. The safety net that had kept him alive through a hundred battles had vanished into thin air.

He didn't show it. He couldn't. He kept his theatrical smile plastered across his face, though his knuckles whitened slightly around the handle of his razor.

"I'm not anyone's pet, chirp," the velociraptor-like being said, clicking its claws together as its tail lashed behind it. "The name's XLR8. And I'm here because I did a little reading on a laptop earlier, chirp, and it turns out the government has a really, really large stack of money waiting for whoever sweeps you guys off the streets. Half a billion dollars, chirp, to be exact. That's a lot of legal fees."

"Money?" Jack laughed, a rich, mocking sound that echoed through the warehouse. "You broke down our door for a bounty? How terribly mundane. I expected something a bit more... righteous."

"Oh, the righteousness is just a bonus, chirp," XLR8 said, his visor sliding back down over his face, locking into place with a sharp click. "You guys are serial killers. You hurt people because you think it's funny, chirp. Where I come from, guys like you get locked up in the Null Void. But here? The rules are a lot simpler."

Before Jack could even utter a response, the massive, grotesque bulk of Crawler erupted from the shadows.

The colossal monstrosity let out a deafening, wet roar that shook the very foundations of the warehouse, his multiple limbs tearing chunks out of the concrete floor as he charged forward. Crawler was an engine of pure, unadulterated destruction, his massive jaws dripping with a highly concentrated, corrosive acid that hissed as it hit the air. He didn't care about bounties, he didn't care about space laws he just wanted to feel this fast, strange creature tear into his flesh so he could adapt to it. He wanted the pain. He wanted the evolution.

XLR8 didn't move. He didn't run. He didn't even shift his stance.

He stood perfectly still on his rolling black orbs, watching as the mountain of mutated flesh and armor hurtled toward him at a terrifying speed. Crawler was fifty feet away. Thirty feet. Ten feet. The monstrosity raised a massive, clawed appendage, ready to slam it down and paste the speedster into the concrete.

Right as Crawler was a single microsecond away from crushing him, XLR8 raised his right claw and slammed it directly into the glowing green hourglass symbol situated on the center of his chest.

A brilliant, blinding flash of emerald-green light erupted from the symbol, illuminating the entire warehouse with the intensity of a dying star. The light was so bright it forced Jack to shield his eyes, a sharp hiss escaping his teeth.

When the light snapped back into nonexistence a fraction of a second later, XLR8 was gone. The doorway was completely empty.

Crawler's massive claw slammed into the empty concrete where the speedster had been standing, pulverizing the linoleum into a massive crater of dust and debris. The giant monstrosity skidded to a halt, his multiple eyes spinning around in confusion as he looked for his target.

"Where did the little lizard go?!" Jack called out, his voice sharp, his theatrical mask cracking just a fraction as he scanned the rafters. "Shatterbird, check the roof! Bonesaw, get back!"

Crawler didn't move, though.

The colossal monstrosity stood perfectly still in the center of the warehouse, his massive limbs locked in place. He didn't roar. He didn't turn around. He just... stopped.

"Crawler?" Jack asked, his brow furrowing as he took a step forward. "What are you doing? Find him."

Crawler didn't answer.

A second later, the colossal, unkillable engine of destruction went entirely, completely limp. The multiple glowing eyes in his head went dark, the vibrant, chaotic energy leaving his massive frame in an instant. His colossal body fell forward, hitting the concrete floor with a massive, earth-shaking thud, rolling onto its side like a cut tree or a heavy sack of potatoes.

He wasn't breathing. He wasn't regenerating. The heart that had survived tank shells and parahuman strikes had simply ceased to beat.

"Well," a raspy, bone-chilling voice echoed from the deep shadows near the ceiling, a sound that felt like a freezing hand sliding down Jack's spine. "That's one down."

Jack's head snapped upward.

Floating effortlessly twenty feet in the air was a being that looked like it had been pulled directly out of a nightmare's nightmare. It was a tall, eerie, phantom-like alien with a pale, almost bone-white body and a slender, floating physique that gave it the appearance of a restless spirit. its head is elongated and curves backward like a twisted hood or skull, featuring a single green eye set within a black, jagged marking that resembles a crack or stitched wound. The beings arms are long and thin, ending in sharp, branch-like claws that look more like skeletal fingers than hands. Black vein-like lines run across its body, contrasting with the ghostly complexion, while bright green bands encircle its neck, wrists, and waist, with chains crossing the torso and connecting to a strange hourglass symbol at its chest. Instead of legs, the lower body tapers into a wispy, tail-like form, making the being seem as though he is perpetually levitating above the ground. It's very presence evoked a sinister specter or imprisoned wraith the single, piercing eye moved with a slow, mechanical precision, tracking the remaining members of the Nine with a cold, supernatural intensity.

And in its long, clawed right hand, the entity was holding a glowing, vibrant pinkish-purple ball of pure, swirling energy. The light from the sphere cast eerie, flickering shadows across the creature's pale hide.

"What... what are you?" Cherish whispered, her voice trembling as she staggered back a step. She reached out with her power, trying desperately to sense the emotions of the floating nightmare. But the moment her parahuman senses touched the entity, she was hit with a wave of absolute, freezing emptiness. There were no human emotions inside that form. No fear, no anger, no joy just a vast, infinite, alien void that threatened to swallow her mind whole if she looked too closely.

"The name's Ghostfreak," the Ectonurite rumbled, his voice a layered, dual-toned whisper that sounded like a dozen dead men speaking in perfect unison. He tilted his upside-down eye toward the massive, lifeless corpse of Crawler below him. "You know, I did some digging into your little powers on that wiki page about you all. And while i'm positive there was a lot of data it probably didn't cover... it seems the notes were right about one thing. Crawler's adaptation powers take time to process physical damage."

Ghostfreak raised the glowing pinkish-purple ball, his clawed fingers tightening around it.

"But I guess the big guy couldn't adapt to getting his soul ripped straight out of his chest in time, huh?"

With a sudden, brutal motion, Ghostfreak squeezed his claw.

The pinkish-purple sphere didn't pop it shattered like cheap glass, a sharp, resonant chime echoing through the warehouse as the fragments of Crawler's essential life force dissolved into tiny, glittering particles before vanishing into absolute nothingness.

The moment the soul shattered, all hell broke loose.

"Kill it! Kill it right now!" Jack screamed, his theatrical demeanor completely evaporating into a raw, white-hot panic. He didn't have his instincts. He didn't have his warnings. He was completely blind, and one of his strongest pieces on the board had just been eliminated without a single drop of blood being spilled.

From the dark corners of the warehouse, Bonesaw's stitched horrors—grotesque, multi-legged abominations made from the combined body parts of dozens of victims—burst from their cages and rushed toward the floating ghost, their rusted blades and bone-needles snapping wildly in the air.

"Burn, you freak!" Burnscar roared, her face twisting into a manic, terrified grimace as she unleashed a massive, roaring torrent of white-hot flame from both hands. The fire erupted across the warehouse, a blinding furnace of heat that consumed the rafters, turning the old wood into a roaring inferno within seconds.

Beside her, Mannequin launched himself into the air, his porcelain limbs detaching on high-tensile wires as his built-in blades extended, spinning like a localized blender as he swept toward the entity's position.

Shatterbird let out a high-pitched, shattering scream, a sound frequency so precise, so devastating, that it tapped directly into the molecular structure of every piece of silicon in the area. The remaining glass in the skylights, the sand lining the old foundations, and the concrete walls of the warehouse began to violently vibrate, before shattering into a swirling, lethal storm of millions of microscopic siliceous blades that circled the room like a localized tornado, completely under her perfect control.

Hatchet Face let out a guttural roar, his massive frame bounding forward as he expanded his anti-parahuman aura to its absolute limit, a field of energy designed to instantly choke out the connection between a cape and their shard, leaving them entirely human and defenseless.

And Jack Slash flicked his wrist, utilizing his kinetic blade projection to extend the cutting edge of his straight razor across the vast room, a localized tear in space designed to slice cleanly through Ghostfreak's neck from thirty feet away.

The entire warehouse exploded into a chaotic maelstrom of fire, shattered glass, spinning blades, and raw, destructive parahuman power that completely obliterated half of structure, turning parts old building into a burning, hollow shell open to the midnight sky.

But Ghostfreak didn't even try to fight them head-on.

The Ectonurite simply drifted backward, his green form turning completely translucent as he phased through the roaring wall of Burnscar's flames without taking a single scratch. The white-hot fire passed cleanly through his spectral biology, unable to find any physical matter to consume. Jack's kinetic blade projection sliced through the air exactly where the ghost's neck had been a second ago, but the invisible edge passed through the intangible form like a knife through smoke.

Hatchet Face slammed his heavy boots into the concrete right beneath the ghost, his dampening aura flaring with a violent intensity. He looked up, expecting to see the creature collapse to the ground, gasping for air as its power failed.

But Ghostfreak didn't even notice. The anti-parahuman field washed over him, completely unable to find a parahuman connection to sever. The Omnitrix wasn't a shard it didn't rely on the entities' network. The alien biology remained completely unaffected, floating effortlessly above the hulking brute.

A/N:Again just describing how the powers operate none of them have knowledge of the shards

"Is that really the best you guys can do?" Ghostfreak mocked, his eye tracking the chaos below.

Suddenly, the green skin on his torso split wide open along a jagged seam, revealing a mass of writhing, muscular black and purple tentacles that burst out of his chest like a nest of hungry serpents. The tentacles extended with a terrifying velocity, moving with a strength that defied their ethereal appearance. They wrapped tightly around Bonesaw's stitched monsters mid-air, their clawed tips digging into the dead flesh. With a brutal, fluid twist, Ghostfreak slammed the abominations into each other, ripping them into bloody, useless ribbons of meat and bone before tossing them into Burnscar's fire.

The Siberian let out a feral roar, her striped form leaping off the rusted beam with a force that shattered the metal beneath her. She flew through the air like a localized comet of absolute, unyielding destruction, her hands extended to tear the ghost to pieces.

Ghostfreak didn't dodge. He stood his ground, letting the naked tiger-woman slam directly into his chest.

He didn't try to block her physical force. Instead, he utilized his natural Ectonurite abilities, attempting to phase into her body to take full control of her mind and motor functions from the inside out. He had read the wiki the notes said the Siberian was a practically invincible force on the outside, a living boulder that couldn't be harmed by conventional weapons.

Fine, Ben thought within the ghostly mindscape. If she's unkillable on the outside, let's see how her organs handle an alien possession from the inside.

Ghostfreak's translucent form slipped cleanly through her striped skin, sinking deep into her torso.

But the moment he fully entered her physical space, Ghostfreak's internal systems hit an absolute, incomprehensible wall.

There were no lungs. There was no heart. There was no brain, no nervous system, no blood vessels, no biological tissue whatsoever. The interior of the Siberian wasn't a body it was an absolute, hollow vacuum of pure, localized spatial distortion. It was like trying to possess a hole in the universe. There was literally nothing there for his spectral form to latch onto, no biology to manipulate, no mind to control.

Ghostfreak violently phased back out of her body, his single eye widening with a look of genuine, unfiltered shock as he hovered in the air, narrowly dodging a swipe from Mannequin's detached blade.

"What the fuck?!" Ghostfreak exclaimed, his raspy voice cracking into a high-pitched yell of pure confusion. "What kind of biology is this?! There's literally nothing inside of her!"

The Siberian turned in mid-air, landing gracefully on a piece of debris before leaping at him again, her movements entirely unbothered by his attempt. Ghostfreak drifted backward at a sharp angle, his mind racing as he narrowly avoided another torrent of fire from Burnscar.

He tried to phase into her a second time as she passed by, his hand sinking into her shoulder, but the result was exactly the same pure, unadulterated nothingness. He couldn't possess her because there was no her to possess.

"This makes absolutely no sense!" Ghostfreak growled, his chains clattering violently as he spun in the air.

As he turned, Hatchet Face let out another guttural roar, leaping off a crumbling concrete block to swing his massive axe directly at the ghost's head. The heavy iron blade whistled through the air, dripping with the blood of a dozen previous victims.

Ghostfreak didn't look back. He simply reached out with one of his long, thick tentacles, wrapping it tightly around Hatchet Face's thick neck mid-dive. The impact carried a massive amount of momentum, but Ghostfreak didn't try to fight the weight.

Instead, he gripped the brute's throat, turned himself entirely intangible, and dove straight down toward the floor.

Because the tentacle was wrapped around Hatchet Face, the ghost's localized intangibility field extended to the villain's neck, dragging his massive body down through the solid concrete floor of the warehouse as if it were nothing more than water. Hatchet Face's eyes widened with a look of absolute, claustrophobic terror as the physical world swallowed him whole, the dark, solid earth closing around his limbs.

Once they were twenty feet deep into the dark, subterranean bedrock beneath the Docks, Ghostfreak stopped his descent.

He solidified his physical form just enough to regain his mass, while keeping Hatchet Face trapped within the solid dirt. With an uncompromising, brutal force, Ghostfreak slammed Hatchet Face's head forward, driving his face directly into a massive, jagged shelf of subterranean concrete and solid rock.

The impact was deafening in the enclosed space. The brute's skull cracked, the blunt force shattering his nose and jaw instantly. Before Hatchet Face could even attempt to struggle or choke out a sound in the suffocating darkness, Ghostfreak raised his razor-sharp, clawed right hand.

With a single, fluid, and lethal strike, his claws pierced straight through Hatchet Face's visage, tearing through the flesh, bone, and brain matter with absolute, unyielding precision. Blood splattered across the dark subterranean dirt, instantly staining the earth. The massive villain's body went entirely limp, his connection to his shard snapping forever as his mind went dark.

Ghostfreak released his grip, leaving the corpse buried deep within the dark foundations of the city.

A second later, the pale, grey ghost floated back up through the concrete floor of the ruined warehouse, stepping out into the smoke and moonlight. He shook his clawed hand, wiping a few drops of dark blood onto the floor, before looking back at the remaining members of the Nine.

"Two down," Ghostfreak whispered, his single upside-down eye tracking Jack Slash, who was now backed up against a crumpled steel beam, surrounded by Shatterbird and Cherish.

Shatterbird unleashed another massive wave of glass shards, the millions of microscopic blades flying toward the ghost like a silver cloud. Burnscar filled the space with a localized firestorm, while Cherish continued to scream in frustration as her emotional manipulation failed to find a single target. The Siberian bounded forward once more, her tiger-striped form an engine of unyielding, unstoppable physical force.

Ghostfreak weaved through the advances, shifting his density to absolute zero whenever an attack came too close, his gray hide remaining completely untouched by the desperate onslaught.

But as he dodged, Ben's mind was working at a blinding velocity within the Ectonurite form.

He looked at the Siberian. He watched her tear through a concrete support pillar to get to him, her physical force completely ignoring the laws of momentum and mass. And then he remembered the absolute nothingness he had encountered when he tried to possess her. There were no organs. No blood. No heart. It was a hollow shell of distorted space.

Think, Tennyson, Ben told himself, his single eye narrowing as he floated out of the reach of a swirling vortex of glass. I read about this on the laptop. There are capes who can create physical illusions, duplicates... projections.

The realization hit him like a lightning bolt.

The Siberian wasn't a human cape wearing a costume. She wasn't an invincible mutant. She was a projection. A hyper-advanced, solid-light or spatial manifestation controlled by a Master-class parahuman hiding somewhere in the background. Her insides weren't there because she didn't exist as a biological entity at all. She was just a puppet.

And if she was a puppet... that meant the puppeteer had to be close. A Master who could control a weapon this powerful wouldn't risk being too far from the action, but they certainly wouldn't be standing out in the open where they could get their skull cracked. They had to be hiding, tucked away in the shadows, watching the battle through the puppet's eyes while keeping their own fragile, human body safe from harm.

Ghostfreak weaved through another desperate swipe from the Siberian, his single eye shifting away from the immediate threat of the tiger-woman.

He began to scan the surrounding dark terrain, the ruined containers, and the shadows lining the edge of the Docks, his alien vision searching for the true master of the nightmare.

Jack Slash looked up at the floating, monochromatic specter, his breath catching in his throat as he realized the creature wasn't even looking at them anymore. It was looking for something else. It was calculating. And for the first time in his life, Jack felt the icy, suffocating grip of a target on his back with absolutely no rules left to protect him.

The roar of the collapsing remnants of the warehouse was a deafening symphony of tearing metal and shattering concrete. The massive structure bowed under the intense heat of Burnscar's roaring flames, the remaining support beams groaning before the entire roof caved inward, sending a mountain of burning debris and choking ash cascading down onto the floor.

Jacob Black stood amidst the ruin, his ivory-handled straight razor clutched tight in a white-knuckled grip. For the first time since he had taken the name Jack Slash, the stage was entirely out of his control. His Broadcast shard was spinning in a useless, frantic loop, offering him absolutely no insight, no premonitions, and no edge against the entity hunting them.

Under the cover of the cascading rubble and the blinding wall of fire, Ghostfreak slipped away. He drifted through the outer perimeter of the ruined facility, ducking behind a massive, jagged ridge of bedrock that lined the edge of the Docks.

The moment he was obscured from the Nine's line of sight, a brilliant flash of emerald light erupted behind the stone. The ghostly form vanished, replaced by a small, short, stubby alien built of white, silicon-based armor with headphones integrated into its head and a speaker-like mouth.

Echo Echo.

Without wasting a single microsecond, the small alien planted his feet and let out a sharp, vibrating hum. In a fluid, overlapping blur, his form split perfectly down the middle, producing an exact physical clone of himself.

The prime Echo Echo pointed a stubby hand out toward the dark, labyrinthine rows of shipping containers and abandoned buildings surrounding the docks. "Search for any leads in the area!" he commanded, his voice carrying a metallic, high-frequency resonance.

The clone gave a sharp, decisive nod. "Got it!"

The clone slammed its hand down on the green hourglass symbol on its chest. In a brilliant flash of light, the small white form expanded into a sleek, muscular, feline-like humanoid creature clad in a deep blue and black bodysuit, with sharp black patterns resembling lightning bolts running down its limbs.

Fasttrack.

With a explosive burst of speed that kicked up a localized shockwave of dirt and gravel, the blue-and-black speedster vanished into the night, tearing through the docks like a streak of cerulean lightning to hunt down the hidden Master controlling the Siberian.

Back behind the rock, the main Echo Echo struck his own chest symbol. The green light flared once more, and the pale, shrouded, chain-wrapped nightmare of Ghostfreak materialized back into existence.

He wasn't a second too late.

"Over there!" Cherish's voice suddenly screamed from across the clearing. Her parahuman senses had finally locked onto the sharp, alien spike of intent radiating from behind the bedrock.

Before the echo of her voice could even fade, a massive, concentrated torrent of compressed glass and kinetic force slammed directly into the boulder. The massive stone was violently blown to absolute bits, exploding into a lethal cloud of jagged shrapnel and pulverized dust.

But the crater was empty.

Ghostfreak had already faded into complete, absolute invisibility. Shifting his density to zero, he glided effortlessly through the air, completely undetected by the frantic parahumans. He drifted directly through the swirling storm of ash and fire, slipping silently behind Cherish as she stood near the edge of the clearing, her face twisted in a mask of manic concentration.

She didn't hear the soft clink of his heavy iron chains. She didn't feel the sudden, freezing drop in the ambient temperature around her neck.

With a brutal, unyielding motion, Ghostfreak shoved his completely intangible, clawed hands straight through the back of Cherish's skull.

The moment his spectral, alien fingers materialized inside her brain tissue, he violently disrupted the delicate bio-electric currents running through her nervous system. Cherish's eyes instantly rolled back into her head, her pupils disappearing as her body went completely rigid. Before Mannequin or Burnscar could even register the movement behind them, a massive, hyper-acute lethal seizure racked Cherish's entire frame. Blood leaked from her nose and ears as her heart gave a final, violent spasm.

She collapsed forward into the dirt like a dropped doll.

Three down.

"Cherish!" Burnscar roared in a pitch of pure, unadulterated rage. The fragile, shattered psyche of the pyromaniac completely snapped at the sight of her teammate's lifeless body. She lost all semblance of tactical restraint, her eyes burning with a blinding, manic white fire as she threw both her hands forward, unleashing a colossal, roaring blast of apocalyptic flame that threatened to turn the entire coastline into slag.

Ghostfreak floated backward, his single eye tracking the incoming inferno. He dodged and weaved through the chaotic, desperate advances of the remaining members. Jack's kinetic blades sliced through the empty space centimeters from his shroud; the Siberian lunged with feral fury, her hands clawing through his translucent form Mannequin's porcelain limbs spun like a blender, and Shatterbird's glass storm tore up the earth beneath him.

But Ben Tennyson was completely in the zone. Reacting with the flawless precision of a universal protector, Ghostfreak stabilized his position in mid-air.

The jagged seam running down the center of his textured grey chest violently split wide open. Instead of tentacles, a swirling, volatile vortex of deep, dark, necrotic energy began to coalesce within his exposed chest cavity.

"Let's see how you handle a real blast," Ghostfreak rumbled.

A massive, devastating beam of dark, purplish-black energy erupted from his chest, tearing through the night sky with a terrifying, hollow roar. The necrotic beam collided head-on with Burnscar's column of fire. There was no explosion, no struggle of dominance the alien energy completely and effortlessly overpowered her parahuman flames, swallowing the fire whole and aging the very air around it to absolute dust.

The dark beam slammed directly into Burnscar before she could even attempt to step through her flames to escape. The raw, cosmic force completely vaporized her upper half in a fraction of a second, leaving nothing but her lower half.

Four down.

Before the remaining members could even process the absolute annihilation of their pyromaniac, Ghostfreak extended multiple thick, muscular black-and-purple tentacles from his torso. With a brutal, whip-like motion, he slammed the appendages violently into the shattered concrete floor.

The impact created a massive, towering cloud of pulverized dust, soot, and blinding gray ash that instantly blanketed the entire clearing, completely blinding Jack Slash, Shatterbird, and Bonesaw.

When the thick shroud of dust finally began to settle under the moonlight, the sky was empty. The ghost was gone.

"Move! Book it! Right now!" Jack Slash barked, his voice losing all of its theatrical, smooth cadence, replaced by a raw, jagged panic that he had never experienced in his entire life. His mind was screaming at him to run, to get out of this cursed city, to find a way to regroup. "Shatterbird, cover our retreat! Mannequin, get the girl and—"

Jack's orders were violently cut short by a sharp, horrific shredding sound.

Through the thinning dust, a swirling ribbon of razor-sharp glass daggers suddenly erupted from the perimeter. But the weapons weren't flying toward the empty sky. They flew directly inward, piercing straight through the delicate, porcelain-plated joints of Mannequin's neck and chest core.

The microscopic silicon blades sliced through his high-tensile wires, severing his internal machinery and fluid lines with surgical precision. Mannequin's white, spherical head tumbled off his shoulders, hitting the dirt with a hollow, ceramic clink, followed immediately by his heavy, metallic torso. The great tinker of ruin dropped completely dead.

Five down.

What the fuck?!

Jack's jaw dropped, his eyes widening in absolute horror as he whipped his head around to face his remaining heavy hitter. "Shatterbird! What the hell are you doing?!" he screamed, his voice cracking with a terrifying realization.

Shatterbird didn't answer him with a song.

She stood perfectly rigid in the center of the clearing, her head tilting to a grotesque, unnatural angle. Slowly, her eyes rolled forward. Her brilliant pupils had turned a piercing, glowing emerald green. The white sclera of her eyes had completely darkened into a deep, purplish-black void, with thick, pulsing veins of the same horrific color spreading across her pale skin like a localized infection.

When she spoke, her elegant, musical voice was entirely gone. Instead, the raspy, dual-toned, bone-chilling whisper of the Ectonurite emitted directly from her throat.

"Sorry," the ghost spoke through her stolen lips, a cruel, mocking edge in the tone. "She's not home right now."

Before Jack could even attempt to throw a blade, Shatterbird's physical form went entirely limp, her muscles turning to mush as she collapsed straight into the dirt.

A fraction of a second later, the pale, shrouded form of Ghostfreak phased cleanly upward out of her back, hovering effortlessly over her corpse. In his long, clawed right hand, he was holding another vibrant, glowing pinkish-purple ball of pure, swirling energy Shatterbird's essential life force.

With a slow, deliberate smirk hidden beneath his shrouded face, Ghostfreak closed his claws, crushing her soul into absolute nothingness.

Six down.

The Siberian let out a terrifying shriek of feral rage. Her tiger-striped form crouched low, her legs coiling like heavy iron springs as she prepared to launch herself into the air to tear the ghost's throat out, her absolute, physics-defying invincibility ready to crush anything in her path.

She leaped.

But mid-air, right as her clawed fingers were inches away from Ghostfreak's face, the Siberian suddenly... snapped.

Her solid, terrifying form simply popped out of existence like a fragile soap bubble, leaving absolutely nothing but the empty night air behind.

Ghostfreak paused, his single eye blinking as he looked at the space where the living weapon had been a microsecond ago. A low, raspy chuckle escaped his chest cavity.

"Oh?" Ghostfreak murmured, tilting his head toward the distant, dark rows of the shipping yard where a faint trail of blue lightning had just vanished. "Guess he found the Master."

Jacob Black had never been so afraid.

He stood entirely alone in the blood-stained, scorched clearing, the ashes of his family swirling around his boots like a mocking shroud. The Broadcast shard inside his head was completely inert, offering him nothing but a cold, heavy sense of absolute isolation. The grand coordinator, the maestro of the apocalypse, was nothing more than a pathetic, fragile man with a pocket knife, standing in the shadow of a god that didn't play by his rules.

Beside him, Bonesaw had completely cowered to the side, her small body curled into a tight, shivering ball against a piece of crumpled steel. The sweet, childlike confidence she always held had been utterly shattered. She had nothing left. The monster in the sky had systematically slaughtered every single one of her toys, dismantled her family, and left her entirely defenseless in the dark.

Ghostfreak slowly drifted downward, his heavy iron chains clattering softly in the dead silence of the Brockton Bay night, his single, piercing eye locking onto the remaining leader of the Nine.

"Now," the ghost whispered, his voice echoing like a death knell. "Where were we?"

Meanwhile during the battle

A few blocks away from the burning ruin of the warehouse, nestled deep within the labyrinth of rusted shipping containers and overgrown weeds of an abandoned railyard, sat a faded, dented white panel van. To any casual observer, it was just another piece of industrial junk rotting away in the Docks.

But inside the cramped, windowless cargo bay of the vehicle, an old man sat in the absolute dark.

William Manton His mind was permanently, intricately wired into the consciousness of his masterpiece. His eyes were completely glazed over, staring blankly into the pitch blackness of the van as his awareness existed miles away, experiencing the world through the eyes of the Siberian.

She was his grief made manifest, a projection of absolute spatial distortion. She was entirely capable of operating autonomously—hunting, tearing, and killing on her own feral instincts—but Manton could step into the driver's seat whenever he pleased. More importantly, no matter how far she roamed, he was her physical anchor to reality.

Until tonight, he had been an untouchable ghost.

But through the mental link, a cold, hollow dread spiked deep within Manton's chest. He felt the phantom sensation of the shrouded ghost back at the clearing trying to phase into the Siberian, only to find an absolute, hollow vacuum.

He knows she's empty, panic screamed in Manton's brain.

Manton didn't need to manually command her to return; the Siberian's autonomous instincts immediately flared with a protective urge, preparing to lunge at the ghost to defend her creator. Manton just needed to stay hidden. As long as his fragile, sixty-year-old human body remained tucked away in this van, the Siberian would remain an unstoppable force.

BOOM.

The heavily reinforced, locked steel rear doors of the panel van were violently torn open with a screeching, metallic roar. The sheer force of the decompression ripped the doors completely off their hinges, sending them flying into the dark railyard outside.

The sudden rush of cool night air and bright moonlight flooded the dark cargo bay, blinding Manton. He gasped, his heart hammering against his ribs as he instinctively cringed backward.

He didn't even have time to scream.

There was no witty banter. There was no casual monologue. The entity that burst through the threshold was a blur of pure, terrifying hypersonic motion a sleek, muscular, feline-like humanoid creature clad in a midnight-blue and black bodysuit, its green eyes burning like twin stars.

Fasttrack.

The speedster had to make this quick. He had zero way to communicate with his prime self back at the warehouse, meaning every second he wasted was another second his original form had to dodge an invincible tiger-woman.

In a fraction of a millisecond, Fasttrack closed the distance. As he blurred across the floor of the van, his arm extended, his razor-sharp claws catching the moonlight. His raspy voice was a rapid-fire, overlapping blur of words delivered in the exact same heartbeat as his lethal strike.

"All the anomalies within the Siberion points to a projection, which means a Master anchor hiding within a Three-mile radius," Fasttrack hissed, the words coming out in a single, breathless second. "Enhanced feline senses followed the heartbeat. Found you."

Pft.

Before Manton's brain could even process the shadow crossing the light, Fasttrack's claws pierced cleanly through his sternum. The raw kinetic force of the hypersonic strike completely crushed the old man's ribs, tearing through his human heart in a microsecond.

Manton's eyes widened, a sharp choke of air escaping his throat as his life force instantly evaporated. He didn't know who this alien was, and the alien didn't care who he was. He was just the anchor. And the anchor had just been cut.

Miles away, mid-air, the Siberian's fingers were a millimeter away from Ghostfreak's face. But the exact moment Manton's heart ceased to beat, the spatial connection severed. The invincible, terrifying matriarch of the Nine suddenly popped completely out of existence like a fragile soap bubble, leaving absolutely nothing but empty air.

Inside the van, Fasttrack smoothly retracted his claw, wiping the dark blood onto the floor. He looked down at the lifeless, slumped body of the old man, completely confident that back at the warehouse, his prime self had just watched the puppet vanish.

The speedster tapped the green hourglass symbol on his chest, dissolving into a flash of emerald light as the clone prepared to sprint back to the theater of war.

Seven down. Two to go.

The Citrakayah retreated back to the battle scene in a blur of blue and black

Back to the Present:

FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

The mantra screamed in a frantic, non-stop loop inside Jacob Black's mind. It shattered the elegant, theatrical architecture of his thoughts, leaving behind nothing but the raw, primordial panic of a cornered animal.

It was all gone. The grand stage, the masterpiece, the slaughterhouse—obliterated in a matter of minutes. He needed to get out. He needed to survive. He always survived! For over twenty years, he had danced through rainstorms of capes and stepped over the corpses of heroes because the world was rigged in his favor. He was Jack Slash! He was the director! The world was supposed to bend to his whims!

But as he backed up against a crumpled, half-melted steel support beam, his boots slipping in a pool of mixed parahuman blood, reality slammed into him with the weight of a dying planet. His USELESS power was completely, utterly dead

He was just a man. A pathetic, fragile, middle-aged man holding a bloody piece of ivory-handled steel.

"Bonesaw! Riley! Do something!" Jack shrieked, his voice completely stripping away its smooth, charismatic cadence, cracking into a desperate, high-pitched wail. He whipped his head toward the dark corner of the clearing. "Unleash the atmospheric plagues! Where are the flesh-eating parasites?! Get up and fight!"

But the brilliant little bio-tinker didn't move. Riley had long since abandoned the theater of war. She was curled into a tight, shivering fetal position beneath a jagged sheet of corrugated tinfoil, her small hands clamped over her ears as she wept hysterically. The entity in the sky had systematically slaughtered every single one of her "toys." Her stitched abominations were nothing but smoking piles of charcoal; her family was dead. She was just an eleven-year-old child left entirely defenseless in a nightmare of fire and ash.

The pale, shrouded, chain-wrapped nightmare of Ghostfreak floated downward from the smoke.

He didn't rush. He dragged it out, moving with a slow, agonizingly deliberate velocity that felt like a physical weight pressing down on Jack's chest. The heavy black iron chains wrapped around the Ectonurite's torso clattered softly against each other, a rhythmic, metallic death knell echoing through the ruined railyard.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

Jack's knees buckled. The ivory-handled straight razor slipped from his trembling fingers, clattering uselessly against the scorched concrete. The pride, the malice, the decades of cultivated terror—it all evaporated, leaving nothing but a pathetically weeping coward.

"Please! Please!" Jack cried out, dropping directly into the dirt, his hands clasping together as he looked up at the floating specter. Tears cut clean tracks through the soot on his pale face. "Spare me! Whatever you are, I can give you anything! Power, wealth, information! I know about Cauldron! I can help you rule this world! Just let me live! Please!"

Ghostfreak hovered exactly five feet above him. His smooth, green-shrouded head tilted to a chilling angle, the single, eye shifting slowly within its dark vertical track to look down at the groveling villain.

When the entity spoke, his raspy, dual-toned voice cut through the howling wind like an icy razor.

"Tell me, Jack... how many of your victims begged you exactly like this?"

"Thousands!" Jack confessed frantically, his voice a desperate, breathless stammer as he tried to pray to the dark god floating above him. "Thousands of them! But it wasn't me! It was my power it twisted my mind! It forced me to do it! I'm just a victim of the system! Please, have mercy! Please, please, please!"

The dark god didn't care.

The jagged seam running down the center of Ghostfreak's textured grey torso violently split wide open. Before Jack could even attempt to scramble backward, another thick, muscular, purple-and-black tentacle shot out of the chest cavity like a striking viper.

The appendage coiled brutally around Jack's head, clamping down tightly over his mouth and nose, instantly silencing his pathetic, muffled whimpers. The physical strength behind the alien biology was absolute, locking Jack's skull in an unbreakable, supernatural vice.

Ghostfreak lowered himself slightly, his single eye staring directly into Jack's terrified, wide-open pupils.

"God forgives," the ghost whispered, a dark, final serenity in his layered voice. "Tell him I said hello."

With a sudden, wordless surge of force, Ghostfreak violently constricted the tentacle.

CRACK.

The pressure was instantaneous and catastrophic. Jacob Black's skull popped like a ripe balloon under the immense, crushing weight of the Ectonurite's grip. Blood and gray matter splattered across the scorched concrete, the headless corpse of the Slaughterhouse Nine's grand maestro collapsing forward into the dirt with a hollow, definitive thud.

Eight down.

Ghostfreak smoothly retracted the tentacle back into his chest, the jagged seam closing shut with a sickening squelch. He turned his cold, monochromatic gaze toward the corner of the ruined facility where the sobbing, hyperventilating form of Bonesaw was still hiding.

He drifted over, his translucent form passing cleanly through the sheet of tinfoil before extending a pair of smaller tentacles to gently, but firmly, lift the weeping child into the moonlit air.

"No! No! Please don't open me up! Don't make me pretty!" Riley screamed, her eyes tightly shut as she flailed her small limbs, expecting the same brutal execution she had just witnessed.

Ben Tennyson looked at her through the Ectonurite's eye, and a profound, heavy weight settled into his chest.

Shit.

He couldn't do it. As much as he wanted the full half-billion-dollar bounty, and as much as this girl had participated in some of the most horrific, nauseating bio-tinker atrocities across the continent... she was a literal child. Biologically, she was an eleven-year-old kid. Ben was a hero. He didn't execute children in the dirt, no matter what their rap sheet looked like. The bounties from the other eight members would total up to nearly four hundred and fifty million dollars anyway more than enough to pay Carol's legal fees, rebuild Winslow, and take care of Taylor for life.

But he couldn't just hand her over to the authorities either. If he dumped her at the steps of the PRT, Director Piggot would either have her summarily executed as an S-Class threat or lock her away in a dark, subterranean hole for the rest of her miserable life. And he certainly couldn't let her run free her bio-tinker knowledge was a walking, ticking apocalyptic plague waiting to happen.

Ben let out a long, mental sigh. He was going to have to do something he never, ever thought he'd do to a human being.

"Hold still, kiddo," Ghostfreak whispered.

Shifting his density to absolute zero, the Ectonurite flew straight forward, diving directly into the small girl's chest and possessing her physical form.

Instantly, Ben found himself standing within the internal mindscape of Bonesaw. It was a labyrinth of pure, unadulterated horror a house of mirrors filled with blood, severed limbs, ticking gears, and screaming ghosts, all wrapped around a tiny, terrified version of Riley crying in the center of the dark.

Utilizing Ghostfreak's profound telepathic control, Ben didn't just suppress her motor functions. He went to war with her memory banks.

Surgically, deliberately, and with absolute finality, Ben began to tear down the walls of her mind. He targeted every single memory associated with the Slaughterhouse Nine. He burned away every recollection of Jack Slash, every horrific medical surgery she had performed, every plague she had engineered, and every shred of her identity as Bonesaw. He wiped the slate completely and totally black. She would never regain them the neural pathways containing the nightmare were completely dissolved into nothingness.

He left only her basic, baseline human memories intact how to speak, how to read, how to walk, and basic childhood knowledge. And during the massive psychic sweep, deep beneath layers of forced trauma and psychological conditioning, Ben uncovered her true name, long forgotten by the world.

Riley Grace Davis.

A sudden, sharp crack of displaced kinetic air echoed outside the van as a blur of blue and black lightning materialized in the clearing. The Fasttrack clone had returned from the railyard, his breathing steady as his green eyes scanned the absolute carnage of the clearing.

"Prime!" the clone called out, looking around at the headless corpse of Jack and the upper half ashes of Burnscar. "The Master's dead. The Siberian is officially out of the script. Are we—wait, what are you doing?"

The little girl slowly opened her eyes. The brilliant blue pupils were gone, replaced by a pair of piercing, glowing emerald green irises, with thick, purplish-black veins tracing across her sclera. When she spoke, Ghostfreak's raspy, layered voice vibrated out of her small throat.

"Yes. It's over," the possessed Riley said, tilting her head. "Eight down. But we have a situation with the kid."

The clone frowned, crossing his arms. "What's the play? We can't leave her here, and we can't kill a kid."

"I know," Prime explained through her lips. "I just did a full psychic sweep. I used Ghostfreak's power to completely erase every single memory of the Slaughterhouse Nine and her time as Bonesaw. It's gone forever. She doesn't remember a single crime, a single surgery, or a single villain. Her real name is Riley Grace Davis. Right now, she's just an innocent girl with a clean slate."

The clone looked down at her bloody, grease-stained dress. "Okay... but if the PRT finds her, they'll still see her face and throw her in the Birdcage."

"Exactly. Which is why you're taking a little trip," Prime commanded. "Grab her. Run across the ocean. Go to Europe, Asia anywhere completely outside the jurisdiction of the PRT or the American capes. Find a good, well-funded, safe orphanage under a fake name where she can grow up normal. But change her clothes first. Get her a regular sweater or something from a store downtown so she doesn't look like a walking crime scene."

"Got it," the clone nodded seriously.

With a soft, fluid motion, Ghostfreak phased cleanly upward out of Riley's back, his pale, shroud-like form materializing in the moonlit sky. The moment he left her body, the small girl's eyes closed, her limp physical form dropping toward the ground.

The Fasttrack clone blurred forward, catching her gently in his muscular arms before she could hit the dirt. He adjusted his grip, ensuring she was secure, before looking up at his prime self. "See you back at the hospital, Prime."

"Keep it under the speed limit," Ghostfreak joked raspy.

With an explosive sonic boom that kicked up a localized cloud of dust, the blue-and-black speedster vanished into the night sky, carrying Riley Grace Davis toward a brand new, peaceful life far away from the horrors of Earth-Bet.

Ghostfreak floated alone in the center of the silent, smoking crater of the area

The Slaughterhouse Nine—the absolute apex predators of the parahuman underworld, the monsters that had terrorized the continent for decades—had been completely wiped off the face of the earth in less than an hour.

The Ectonurite drifted downward, his single upside-down eye scanning the wreckage. He had a lot of physical evidence to collect if he wanted to cash in those federal checks. He'd need to gather Jack's unique straight razor, secure the bodies of the capes, and make sure everything was neatly wrapped for the government claims adjusters.

He raised his clawed hand, tapping the glowing green hourglass symbol on his chest.

"Alright," Ben muttered as the emerald light began to consume his form, shifting him into an alien far better suited for heavy lifting and cargo transport. "Let's get these trash bags packed up. All in a night's work."

A/N:And that's it for this chapter hope you guys enjoyed i had a lot of trouble writing that fighting scene again let me know if you have any issues with the fic and peace out everyone

 

[Thegameaholic]

The main lobby of the PRT ENE headquarters was usually a place of rigid, bureaucratic order. That order evaporated into absolute, unadulterated chaos the exact moment a massive, shimmering green crystalline container materialized smack in the center of the polished linoleum floor.

Alarms wailed in a deafening, rhythmic screech. Containment foam turrets dropped from the ceiling, locking onto the giant crystal construct. PRT troopers in full power armor flooded the room, rifles raised, alongside a heavily armed Miss Militia and an incredibly tense Armsmaster.

Standing right next to the crystal box was Ben Tennyson, casually dusting off his jacket. Inside the transparent structure lay the undeniable, gruesome evidence of a miracle.

The unmistakable, severed porcelain head of Mannequin.

The lifeless, blood-stained form of Shatterbird.

The rigid corpse of Cherish.

The charred, remaining boots of Burnscar.

The horrific, headless body of Jack Slash.

And tucked into the corner, the body of an unidentified old man in civilian clothes.

"Stand down! Nobody shoot!" Miss Militia yelled, her morphing weapon shifting from a grenade launcher back into a sidearm as her eyes widened in sheer, breathless disbelief. She looked from the bodies in the crystal to the teenager standing before her. "Tennyson... what did you do?"

Ben offered a small, tired salute. "Dropped off some trash. I believe you guys owe me about four hundred and fifty million dollars."

Ten minutes later, Ben was sitting in a heavily reinforced interrogation room. Across the steel table stood Armsmaster and Miss Militia. The air in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife.

Ben leaned back, his eyes tracking the subtle, rhythmic blinking of a localized scanner on Armsmaster's armored visor.

He's running a biometric scan, Ben realized instantly. A faint smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. It all clicked into place. The only reason Colin Wallis had believed his story about the Omnitrix being a highly advanced, shapeshifting alien device in the first place was because Ben had been telling the absolute truth. Armsmaster had a built-in lie detector.

But Earth-Bet technology, as advanced as it was, still measured human biology. And Ben had been playing the hero game long enough to know exactly how to handle a bluff under pressure. To beat a parahuman-grade polygraph, you just had to execute complete, absolute self-control.

Heart rate: Kept locked at a steady, resting seventy beats per minute.

Perspiration: Suppressed. No nervous sweating.

Eye contact: Unblinking, direct, and completely level.

Vocal register: Cool, casual, and entirely devoid of defensive micro-tremors.

"We need a full, step-by-step tactical explanation, Tennyson," Armsmaster demanded, his voice echoing with a deep, metallic resonance. "The Slaughterhouse Nine entered the Docks less than two hours ago. Now, eight of them are confirmed dead. Explain the mechanics of the engagement."

Ben took a slow, measured breath, completely leveling his pulse. He had to bullshit his way out of this one, and the stakes were astronomically high.

First, he had to keep Riley safe. He had no way of knowing if his Fasttrack clone had successfully dropped her off at a safe orphanage overseas yet, but he needed to spin a narrative that Bonesaw was completely wiped off the board. Bonesaw—the horrific monster who mutilated people for fun—was dead. That was technically a true statement, which would fly right past Armsmaster's sensors. But since he didn't have her physical body to present as evidence, he had to make the lie airtight to ensure the PRT would still clear her multi-million dollar bounty.

Second, and more importantly, he had to keep Ghostfreak completely under wraps. There was no way in hell he was going to disclose to the PRT that he possessed an alien form capable of manipulating souls and mind-controlling people through possession. Earth-Bet had a massive, completely justified, psychotic bias against Master-class capes. If the Protectorate found out he could body-snatch people, they would classify him as a global threat faster than he could turn into Way Big. He didn't blame them—not with monsters like Heartbreaker running around—but he wasn't going to let them put a target on his back.

"It was a coordinated ambush," Ben began, his face a mask of calm confidence. "They tried to corner me in one of the abandoned warehouses near the shoreline. I used a localized, high-density kinetic impact to collapse the structural supports, burying their primary forces under a few hundred tons of concrete."

Armsmaster's visor remained a steady, calm blue. Truth.

"Shatterbird, Mannequin, and Cherish tried to flank me in the confusion," Ben continued, maintaining direct eye contact. "I rotated through a couple of my energy-absorbing and high-output forms. I hit them with a concentrated, localized electromagnetic feedback loop. It fried Cherish's nervous system and completely overloaded Shatterbird's silicon control. The feedback was so intense, it caused Shatterbird's power to violently backfire, tearing Mannequin apart from the inside before she collapsed."

He omitted the soul-crushing entirely, attributing the fatal damage to a generic "energy discharge." Armsmaster's visor didn't blink. The biometrics were pristine.

"And Bonesaw?" Miss Militia asked, her hands resting on the table. "Her body wasn't in the containment crystal."

"Bonesaw is dead," Ben stated, his voice completely flat, his heart rate remaining entirely unchanged. It was the absolute truth—the bio-tinker persona had been permanently erased from existence. "She was caught directly in the epicenter of the warehouse collapse. Her biological enhancements couldn't save her from that much falling mass. The structure completely pulverized her. There's nothing left to recover, but the threat she posed is entirely gone."

Armsmaster analyzed the readout on his visor. The heart rate was steady, the respiration was level, and the facial tics were nonexistent. The machine registered absolute truth.

"And Jack Slash?" Armsmaster prompted.

"He tried to beg," Ben said, a genuine flash of cold disdain crossing his features. "He realized his little kinetic knife tricks couldn't pierce my armor. He dropped his weapon and started crying. I used a high-pressure physical construct to silence him permanently. He won't be directing any more horror movies."

Miss Militia let out a long, shuddering breath, leaning back in her chair. "Eight of them... in a single night. It's unprecedented. But that still leaves one anomaly, Tennyson." She pointed a finger toward the clipboard containing the intake report. "The unidentified elderly male. Why did you bring his corpse to a PRT facility?"

Ben raised an eyebrow, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the steel table.

"Oh, right. Your invincible, physics-defying tiger lady? The Siberian? Total fake," Ben revealed, a slight smirk playing on his lips. "When I engaged her, I realized she didn't have any organs, a heartbeat, or a brain. She was a hollow, autonomous, spatial projection. A Master-class illusion."

Both Armsmaster and Miss Militia visibly stiffened, their postures instantly locking up.

"I couldn't contact my other forms during the chaos," Ben explained, spinning the clone's actions into his own tactical foresight. "But I realized a projection that powerful needs a localized physical anchor. A human Master hiding close enough to feed her data. So, I deployed one of my speed forms to do a rapid, five-mile sweep of the surrounding grid, looking for any anomalous electronic power draws or hidden occupants. I found that old guy hiding in the back of a heavily modified panel van a few blocks away in an abandoned railyard."

Ben shrugged casually. "The speed form neutralized him to cut the tether. The exact second his heart stopped, the Siberian popped out of existence like a soap bubble. He was the anchor."

For a long, agonizing moment, neither of the PRT leaders spoke. Miss Militia's face had gone entirely pale, her lips parted in absolute, stunned horror. She looked at Armsmaster, whose visor was frantically cycling through data streams, matching the facial structure of the old man's corpse against a highly classified, heavily restricted database.

"That's... that's impossible," Miss Militia whispered, her voice trembling with a historical weight Ben didn't understand. She looked back at Ben, her eyes wide. "Tennyson... do you have any idea who that man is?"

"No clue," Ben said honestly. "Just some old guy running a murder-puppet."

"That is William Manton," Miss Militia declared, her voice dropping to a horrified, breathless whisper. "He was one of the founding members of the Protectorate. A legendary chief scientist. He was supposed to have been killed by the Siberian twenty years ago."

Ben blinked, raising an eyebrow in genuine, completely un-faked confusion.

"Who?"

The name hung in the cramped, sterile air of the interrogation room like a drop of liquid nitrogen splashed onto hot glass.

Miss Militia didn't answer him. She didn't launch into a tactical debrief, she didn't offer a historical context, and she certainly didn't elaborate on the corpse currently sitting in a block of alien crystal down in the holding bay.

Instead, the seasoned hero went utterly, terrifyingly still.

The handkerchief mask covering her lower face fluttered slightly as her breath hitched, a sharp, ragged gasp catching in her throat. Her dark eyes widened until the whites showed all around her pupils. Her right hand, resting casually near her hip, twitched violently as her weapon manifested—shifting from a standard issue sidearm into a heavy combat knife, then into a submachine gun, and finally back into a pistol in the span of two erratic seconds. It was a subtle, visual glitch in her usually flawless motor control that spoke to a deep, primal panic.

Beside her, Armsmaster didn't move a single muscle, but the internal mechanics of his power armor let out a sharp, high-pitched whine. His visor, which had been cycling smoothly through biometric readouts, suddenly went pitch black. The glowing blue interface died, replaced by a single, flashing red warning light on the rim of his helmet display.

A high-level clearance lock. An automatic, hard-coded protocol embedded deep within the PRT's master database, triggered by the exact phonetic match of a name that was never, under any circumstances, supposed to be uttered in an unencrypted room.

"Miss Militia?" Ben asked, tilting his head as he leaned across the steel table, his green eyes scanning her pale face. "Armsmaster? Who is William Manton? Is he some kind of big deal?"

Miss Militia swallowed hard, her throat making a dry, clicking sound. She reached down, her gloved fingers pressing firmly against the side of her helmet to activate a secure, hard-wired comm line that bypassed the room's recording equipment entirely.

"Tennyson," she said, her voice dropping an octave, stripped entirely of its usual warm, authoritative composure. "You will not ask that question again. Not in this room. Not in this building. Not to any member of the Protectorate, the PRT, or the media."

Ben raised his eyebrows, leaning back in his chair. "Whoa. Okay. Touchy subject. I just killed a guy who was controlling an invincible tiger-woman from the back of a delivery van. I feel like I earned a little context."

"The context is classified at a level that does not exist on paper," Armsmaster cut in, his voice distorted by his suit's vocalizer, though the mechanical filter couldn't hide the rigid edge in his posture. "The file regarding the individual you named is locked under Chief Director clearance protocols. Accessing it without explicit authorization from top-tier federal leadership is an act of treason."

"Treason for asking about a dead serial killer's puppeteer?" Ben muttered, shaking his head with a quiet whistle. "Man, your government has issues."

"We need absolute, undeniable biological verification," Armsmaster declared, turning his heavy shoulders toward the door. "The implications of this discovery will shake the entire global hero infrastructure to its foundations. Standard PRT forensics will not suffice. Federal leadership will demand an airtight identity audit before any official report is logged."

"Which means we need Panacea," Miss Militia added, her hands still trembling slightly as she cleared her throat. "Everyone knows her touch acts as an instantaneous, perfect diagnostic tool. She can read a subject's DNA profile, examine their cellular structure, and match it against historical records faster and more accurately than any lab. We need her to verify his body."

Ben blinked. "Amy? You're bringing a teenager into a morgue at two in the morning to do a DNA test on a bunch of chopped-up supervillains?"

"Panacea's gift for reading biological data is unparalleled, Tennyson," Armsmaster explained coldly, reaching for the door handle. "If William Manton's corpse is in that room, her diagnostic touch will confirm it beyond a shadow of a doubt."

The financial negotiation that followed an hour later in Director Piggot's top-floor office was a masterclass in bureaucratic misery.

Director Emily Piggot sat behind her heavy mahogany desk, looking like a woman dragged out of a deep sleep and thrust directly into a nightmare. Her grey hair was pulled back into a tight, severe bun, her sharp eyes rimmed with red exhaustion, and her pale hands rested on a thick stack of federal bounty clearance documents.

Sitting across from her was Carol Dallon—acting in her legal capacity as New Wave's attorney and Ben's court-appointed temporary legal advocate—alongside Ben himself, who was casually sipping a juice box he had commandeered from the breakroom.

"Eight confirmed S-Class and A-Class eliminations," Piggot read from the tablet in front of her, her gravelly voice echoing in the quiet office. "Jack Slash. Shatterbird. Mannequin. Cherish. Burnscar. Crawler. Hatchet Face. And... subject Manton."

Piggot paused on the last name, her jaw tightening so hard a muscle twitched in her cheek, but true to the gag order, she didn't utter the word Siberian.

"The total aggregated federal, state, and municipal bounties for these eight individuals," Piggot continued, tapping a stylus against the screen, "comes out to four hundred and forty-eight million, six hundred thousand dollars."

Ben let out a low, appreciative whistle. "Not bad for an hour's work. That's going to buy a lot of chili fries."

"However," Piggot interjected, her voice hardening as she looked up over her reading glasses, fixing Ben with a glare that could melt steel. "The claim filed for the nine-hundred-thousand-dollar individual bounty on the subject known as 'Bonesaw' is hereby denied."

Ben froze mid-sip, lowering his juice box. "Wait. What? Denied?"

"Denied," Piggot repeated flatly. "PRT bounty disbursement regulations under Section 4, Paragraph 12 of the Parahuman Containment Act are absolute, Mr. Tennyson. To collect an S-Class or A-Class bounty, the claimant must produce physical remains for identification, a verified living subject in secure containment, or absolute video footage confirming complete destruction."

"I told you!" Ben argued, leaning forward, his voice rising in frustration. "She was caught in the epicenter of the warehouse collapse! The concrete and steel pulverized her! She's buried under tons of rubble at the bottom of the Bay!"

"And yet, our containment teams excavating the Docks have retrieved no biological samples matching her profile," Piggot countered calmly, pushing a document across the desk toward Carol. "Without a body, a prisoner, or visual proof, the PRT cannot legally declare Bonesaw deceased. S-Class bio-tinkers have faked their deaths before. For all we know, she dug her way out of the rubble and is currently hiding."

Goddamnit all! Ben screamed internally, slamming his hand against his forehead in silent agony.

He couldn't argue. He couldn't demand an investigation, he couldn't push the issue—because he knew, with one hundred percent certainty, that Riley was currently sitting in the backseat of a stolen car in France, eating a croissant with no memory of who she was! He had literally arranged her disappearance himself! He had sacrificed nearly a million dollars just to give an eleven-year-old kid a chance at a normal life!

Carol Dallon placed a calming, firm hand on Ben's shoulder, reviewing the financial documents with a practiced legal eye.

"Four hundred and forty-eight million is acceptable, Director," Carol said smoothly, signing her name on the trust deposit authorization form. "The funds will be transferred directly into the court-monitored escrow account under Mr. Tennyson's legal trust by end of business today."

"The wire transfer is already processing," Piggot said grumpily, signing the final clearance. She looked at Ben with a mixture of intense lingering suspicion and profound, grudging relief. "You've dismantled the worst terror group in American history in a single night, Tennyson. The city owes you a debt it can never repay. Now get out of my office."

The sky outside the PRT headquarters was beginning to bleed a dull, bruised purple as the first rays of dawn broke over Brockton Bay. Cold, misting rain swept off the harbor, slicking the asphalt of the plaza.

Ben stood on the front steps, stretching his arms over his head with a loud groan. Carol stepped out beside him, adjusting her coat as she tucked her legal briefcase under her arm.

"Carol," Ben said, looking over at the older woman. "How long is it going to take for all these trust funds and legal guardian papers to clear?"

"A few hours at least," Carol sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "I have to head back to the firm to finalize the tax structures and coordinate with federal banking representatives. A payout of this size triggers every automatic financial flag in the Department of the Treasury. I won't be finished until noon at the earliest."

Ben glanced across the plaza, where a white PRT medical transport van was idling near the curb. Stepping out of the side door was Amy Dallon.

She looked awful.

Her brown hair was a matted, unwashed nest pulled into a messy ponytail. Her skin was a sickly, translucent grey, stretching tight over her cheekbones. Dark, swollen, purplish-black rings encircled her eyes. Her shoulders were slouched inward, her white medical jacket stained with dried blood and antiseptic chemicals, her small hands trembling as she pulled her coat tightly around her chest against the cold wind.

She had just spent the last hour down in a freezing basement morgue, using her unique talent to touch the severed, mutilated corpses of the Slaughterhouse Nine, running DNA diagnostics and examining cellular structures for the government database.

"I think I'll head over to Brockton General with Amy," Ben said quietly, watching the girl stagger toward the transport van. "Hang out with her at the hospital until you're done at the firm."

Carol paused, looking over at her adopted daughter with a complicated, heavy expression. "She has rounds until two in the afternoon, Ben. She won't be good company. When Amy is in 'hospital mode,' she doesn't stop. She doesn't talk."

"That's fine," Ben said, stepping down the stairs. "She shouldn't have to be alone."

The ride to Brockton General Hospital was conducted in absolute, suffocating silence.

Ben sat on the bench seat across from Amy inside the armored transport. The low hum of the engine and the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers were the only sounds filling the small space.

Amy sat curled in the corner, her knees pulled up toward her chest, staring blankly at the metal floor.

"Hey," Ben offered gently, pulling a spare granola bar from his jacket pocket and tossing it across the aisle. "You look like you haven't slept since the Bush administration. Eat something."

Amy didn't move. "I'm fine," she rasped, her voice dry as sandpaper.

"Right," Ben chuckled softly. "Seriously, Amy. You just spent an hour doing biological diagnostics on dead supervillains. You're running on fumes."

"There are forty-two people in the ICU right now, Ben," she said, her voice entirely devoid of emotion. "Twelve of them are in critical condition from gang violence. Six are pediatric oncology patients. Three are burn victims."

She turned her head, fixing him with a hollow stare. "Every minute I sit here eating a granola bar is a minute someone's liver fails. My power lets me diagnose and heal physical damage, Ben, but it doesn't run out of battery. If I stop... people die. And if people die because I was tired... that's on me."

"Can't you at least prioritize the worst cases?" Ben asked gently. "Or help with neurological issues to clear beds faster?"

Amy's jaw tightened, a subtle, practiced defense mechanism flaring up. "I can't fix brains, Ben. You know that. I've told everyone a hundred times—the human brain is too complex. Tens of billions of neurons, trillions of synaptic connections. My power can't touch neural wiring or brain tissue without risking making them a vegetable. I physically can't do brains or minds, so I stick to organs, bones, and blood. That's my limit."

Ben watched her closely, noting the rigid way she said it.

To the entire world—and to the PRT—Amy Dallon was a miraculous healer who could read DNA and mend flesh, but possessed a hard, insurmountable power limitation: she couldn't touch brains.

What nobody knew—what not a single soul on Earth-Bet suspected—was that Amy's power was actually absolute, unrestricted biokinesis. She could rewrite biological mass into anything she wanted. She could touch brains. She could heal stroke damage, erase brain tumors, rewrite mental illness, or even rewrite a person's entire personality in a single heartbeat.

And that terrifed her to her very core.

Her refusal to touch brains wasn't a power limitation at all; it was a desperate, self-imposed moral rule. She was terrified of her villainous potential and scared of playing God with human minds. So she had constructed an ironclad lie, convincing the world—and desperately trying to convince herself—that her power was simply incapable of touching the brain.

The Emergency Room at Brockton General Hospital was a living monument to human misery.

The waiting room was overflowing onto the sidewalks outside, packed with weeping families, injured gang members, and coughing patients. The moment Amy stepped through the automatic sliding doors, the atmosphere shifted.

"Panacea's here!" a head nurse yelled. "Clear the hallway!"

Amy walked directly to the first gurney—a young man groaning in agony, his leg shattered from an industrial accident. Amy reached out, her pale fingers brushing against his bloody knee. Her diagnostic sense mapped the damage in an instant, and her healing gift closed the flesh and knit the bone.

"He's stable. Next," Amy said, her voice flat, moving to the next bed.

Touch. Heal. Next. Touch. Heal. Next.

A gunshot victim with a collapsed lung—stabilized in four seconds. An elderly woman with a crushed pelvis—bones mend in six seconds. A child with severe internal hemorrhaging—bleeding sealed in two seconds.

It was a miracle of healing. But whenever a patient came in with a severe stroke, traumatic brain injury, or a pediatric brain tumor, Amy would step back, her hands trembling, repeating her ironclad script to the grieving families: "I'm sorry. My power can't touch the brain. I can't fix neural tissue."

She forced herself to watch them suffer, torturing her own conscience to protect the secret of her true power.

Ben stood near the triage desk, watching her work. With every touch, Amy's knees buckled slightly. Perspiration broke out across her forehead, cold and slick. While using her power didn't cost physical energy, the sheer mental processing required to run constant biological diagnostics and direct her healing was shredding her mind to pieces.

She reached Bay 12. A young girl, no older than eight, lay shivering beneath a thin blanket, her skin yellowed, her body wasted away by late-stage leukemia that had spread into her central nervous system. Amy reached out, her fingers touching the girl's forehead.

Amy's hand began to shake so violently she could barely hold it steady. A sharp gasp escaped her lips as a wave of sheer exhaustion hit her. She stumbled, slamming her hip against the metal frame of the bed, almost collapsing before catching herself.

That's it, Ben thought. I've seen enough.

He had promised himself he would keep Clockwork a secret. Time manipulation was a dangerous force; if the PRT realized he held an alien that could bend and rewrite time, the world would go to war over him.

But as Ben looked at Amy Dallon—a broken teenager destroying herself in public—and looked at the hallway filled with suffering people... he didn't give a damn about secrecy.

Amy had saved Taylor. It was time someone saved Amy.

Ben walked directly into the center of the ER hallway.

"Ben? What are you doing?" Amy rasped, turning her head, her fingers still locked on the girl's forehead. "Get back to the waiting area."

Ben stood in the middle of the corridor. He raised his left arm, slamming his thumb against the side buttons of the Omnitrix. The faceplate popped upward, and he dialed past his usual aliens until the holographic silhouette settled on a stout, rounded frame with a circular chest portal and a broad key on its head.

"Ben, stop!" Amy yelled, panic cracking her voice. "You can't transform in here!"

"Relax, Ames," Ben said softly, his green eyes locking onto hers. "I'm just taking a shift."

Ben slammed his palm down onto the core.

FLASH.

A brilliant, blinding column of emerald-green light erupted in the center of the ER. When the light snapped back, the teenager was gone.

Standing in his place was a stout, heavily built, stocky mechanical entity constructed of thick, copper-and-brass plating. He had short, rounded, bowl-like proportions with broad, thick-set shoulders and stubby, heavy limbs marked with sleek, dark mechanical stripes. In the exact center of his broad chest, behind a thick, circular glass portal, a set of glowing green gears whirled softly around the glowing Omnitrix symbol embedded in the middle. His head was small and dome-shaped, featuring a narrow, glowing green optical slit for eyes, and resting right on top of his head was a wide, brass winding key—shaped like a rounded triangle with two circular cutouts—that clicked with slow, heavy precision.

Clockwork.

The ambient temperature dropped. The chaotic noise of the hospital slowed down, stretching into a low warble.

TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.

"VAIT. ALL OF YOU... STAND STILL," Clockwork spoke.

His voice rattled through the room—a deep, metallic, mechanical chime imbued with a heavy, unmistakably German accent.

Clockwork brought his thick, brass-plated hands together, then swept them outward in a broad arc.

A massive wave of brilliant, shimmering golden light erupted from his circular chest portal. The temporal wave washed over the entire ER floor—passing through walls, gurneys, equipment, and patients alike.

It was pure, unadulterated chronokinesis.

In Bay 3, the young man with the shattered leg gasped as the golden light hit him. The spilled blood flew backward through the air, re-entering his body. The broken bones aligned and knit together in a microsecond. The torn skin zipped closed. His leg was restored to the exact condition it had been in twenty-four hours ago.

Every gunshot wound, laceration, broken bone, and physical trauma that had occurred within the last three days was chronokinetically reversed. Physical damage was erased from the timeline of their bodies.

"Vat... vat is zat?!" a doctor stammered, backing away in shock.

Clockwork turned his green optical lens toward Amy, his chest gears whirring rhythmically.

"ZAT TAKES CARE OF ZE RECENT TRAUMA," Clockwork rumbled, his brass key ticking atop his head. "BUT VE ARE NOT FINISHED, JA?"

Clockwork reached up with his thick right hand, tapping the Omnitrix dial inside his chest portal. A high-frequency chime echoed through the room, and the glowing green light instantly shifted to a bright, solar yellow.

The Genetic Repair Function.

Originally engineered by Azmuth to rewrite corrupted DNA, the Omnitrix's repair protocol scanned biological organisms, identified genetic defects, cancerous mutations, or biological damage, and projected a targeted beam that rewrote the target back to its pristine template.

And unlike Amy's artificial self-imposed rules... the Omnitrix had no reservations about fixing the human brain.

Clockwork raised his hands, pointing his golden fingers toward the ICU and oncology wards. A brilliant beam of solar-yellow light shot from his palms, splitting into hundreds of precise, golden threads that passed through walls and ceilings, locking onto every sick patient in the building.

In the pediatric ward, the yellow light bathed the eight-year-old girl with leukemia. The beam scanned her cells, erased the mutated white blood cells, and instantly re-wrote her bone marrow to produce healthy tissue. But the beam didn't stop there—it swept into her skull, instantly dissolving the cancerous tumors that had metastasized in her brain, repairing damaged neural tissue without a single error.

Down the hallway, an elderly stroke victim lay in a coma, her brain tissue severely damaged by oxygen deprivation. The yellow light washed over her head. In a fraction of a second, the dead brain cells were restored, neural pathways re-stitched, and blood flow perfectly normalized. Her eyes snapped open, completely coherent and fully lucid for the first time in months.

Paralyzed patients had their spinal cords and brainstem connections restored. Genetic birth defects were smoothed out. Brain tumors, aneurysms, and severe neurological degeneration were rewritten back to absolute perfection.

The golden light illuminated the entire six-story hospital, a beacon of life radiating out into the cold morning sky. And then, with a soft chime, the light faded.

The yellow beam died. Clockwork's winding key slowed to a rest.

Silence descended upon the hospital—a quiet broken only by the steady, healthy, seventy-beat-per-minute rhythms echoing from monitors across every ward. Brockton General Hospital had zero critical patients.

FLASH.

A soft green light flared, and Clockwork vanished. Ben Tennyson stood in his place, wearing his jacket, rubbing his shoulder.

"There," Ben said, turning to face Amy. "Zat should clear your schedule. Now you can eat that granola bar."

Amy Dallon didn't eat the granola bar.

She stood in the center of the quiet, cured hallway, her hands hanging limply at her sides. She looked at the stroke victim sitting up and talking. She looked at the eight-year-old girl who was no longer dying of a brain tumor.

She knew—better than anyone—exactly what had just happened. Her diagnostic sense had felt the golden energy sweep through those brains, fixing neural tissue effortlessly, doing in a microsecond what she spent every waking hour telling the world was "physically impossible."

The lie she had built to protect herself—the shield that hid her true, terrifying biokinesis behind a fake limitation—had been shattered by a space watch. And worse... her burden was gone.

There was no emergency. There was no life-or-death crisis waiting for her. She could go home. She could rest. She was free.

The crushing weight lifted off her shoulders, leaving a vast, empty void. And from that void, a terrifying emotion erupted.

It wasn't relief. It was pure, suffocating hatred.

She grabbed Ben by her arm and pulled him away into a lonely hallway much to his confusion

Her chest heaved. Hot, angry tears spilled over her eyelids. Her hands curled into tight, trembling fists. She stomped across the linoleum, marching straight up to Ben until she was inches from his chest.

"I hate you," she choked out, her voice a sharp, venomous hiss.

"Amy? What—"

"I hate you! I hate you! I HATE YOU!" she screamed, her voice exploding through the quiet hallway. She raised her fists and slammed them against Ben's chest. He didn't budge, but the desperate rage behind the strikes made his heart ache.

"Amy, calm down—"

"Don't tell me to calm down!" she sobbed, tears streaming down her face as she struck him again, her voice cracking into a ragged wail. "You think you're a hero?! You think you just played God and saved everyone?! Look at what you did!" She gestured wildly to the empty room. "You did in ten seconds what I've destroyed my entire life trying to do!"

"I helped people, Amy!" Ben said firmly, reaching out to gently grab her wrists, holding her hands steady. "I saved them! I saved you!"

"You didn't save me!" she shrieked, struggling against his grip, her eyes wild and broken. "You broke me! Do you have any idea what you just did?!"

She stopped struggling, her body going limp, her head hanging down as she wept hysterically against his jacket.

"I had a system," she whispered, her voice a shattered thread of sound. "I had my rules. I told everyone I couldn't touch brains so I wouldn't ever be tempted to... to become a monster. I suffered because I had to! I dragged myself through hell every single day because I was the only one who could heal them! It was my cross to bear! It was the only thing keeping me clean!"

She raised her head, looking up at him with agonizing betrayal.

"I built a wall around myself, Ben," Amy sobbed. "I accepted that my life was meant to be miserable. I accepted that I was going to die young, exhausted, and alone in a hospital ward, because that was the price. I made peace with the despair."

She reached up with one trembling hand, grabbing the front of his jacket.

"And then you walked in here with your stupid alien watch," she wept. "And in thirty seconds, you tore my entire life down. You healed brains like it was nothing! You showed me that my lie was useless, that my suffering was meaningless, and that a space clock could do my job better than I ever could!"

She squeezed her eyes shut, fresh tears spilling down her pale cheeks.

"You gave me hope, Ben," Amy whispered, the words sounding like a death sentence. "For two years, I fought so hard to make sure I never hoped for anything. Because hope hurts. Hope makes you weak. And you just forced it down my throat."

She looked at him, her voice dropping into a quiet, broken confession.

"I hate you for giving me hope. Because now... now I have to live."

The Healer Turned around and Bolted

Ben stood in the quiet, sunlit hallway, holding the wrists of the broken girl, listening to the steady, healthy heartbeats echoing around them.

"I know," Ben whispered softly, his voice full of an unyielding warmth. "I know it hurts, Ames. But you don't have to carry the sky anymore."

The wind on the roof of Brockton General Hospital was sharp, carrying the bitter salt of the harbor and the faint smell of exhaust from the streets below.

Amy sat with her back pressed against the rust-streaked brick of the HVAC unit, her knees pulled tight against her chest. Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely hold the crumpled pack of cheap cigarettes she had swiped from an off-duty orderly's coat pocket. It took three fumbling tries to get the plastic lighter to spark, the tiny flame flickering wildly in the morning gale before she managed to touch it to the paper tip.

She drew the hot, bitter smoke deep into her lungs, holding it until her chest burned, then exhaled a grey cloud into the damp air.

Her mind was a war zone. The golden light from that metallic clock creature was still burned into her retinas. In a matter of seconds, Ben had torn down the elaborate, painful lie she had spent two years constructing. She had built a fortress out of her refusal to touch brains—a shield that kept the world from knowing the terrifying truth of her power, a shield that kept her from the temptation of becoming a monster. And in thirty seconds of glowing light, Ben had rendered her suffering pointless. He had cured the incurable. He had erased the impossible.

A sudden, unnatural drop in temperature cut through her spiral.

The wind around the rooftop died down, replaced by a sudden, creeping frost that micro-fractured across the gravel underfoot. The air grew so cold that Amy's next exhale didn't just steam—it crystallized into microscopic ice flakes before drifting down.

A heavy shadow fell over her.

Amy looked up, her blood running cold. Standing on the edge of the roof overhang, framed against the bruised purple dawn, was a towering, moth-like creature. It had broad, hunch-backed shoulders draped in what looked like a heavy, dark blue folded cloak formed from massive, folded wings. Deep, vivid green insectoid eyes glowed from a narrow, stone-carved mask of a face, and dark, sharp claws rested against its chest near a glowing green hourglass emblem.

The creature unfolded its broad wings with a sound like cracking ice, revealing a sleek, dark blue and black torso, its posture stoic and ominous.

"Found you."

The voice didn't sound human. It was ice-cold, deadpan, and raspy—like frozen gravel sliding down a steel chute. It carried a hollow, quiet resonance that made the tiny hairs on the back of Amy's neck stand straight up.

Before Amy could pull herself back, the creature leaned down slightly, opening its mouth. A gentle, whispering wisp of sub-zero wind spilled from its fangs, washing over her face. The tiny ember at the tip of her cigarette instantly froze, turning into a brittle stub of grey ice that snuffed out with a tiny crack.

"That's bad for you, you know," the alien rasped, his expression entirely unreadable, motionless as a statue.

Amy's jaw twitched. A flare of white-hot anger cut right through her shock. "Shut up!" she snapped, violently flicking the frozen cigarette stub off the edge of the roof. "Just... shut the hell up!"

In a brilliant, instantaneous flash of emerald light that illuminated the entire rooftop, the towering icy phantom vanished.

Standing in its place was just Ben. He wore his black-and-green jacket, his hands shoved casually into his pockets, his messy brown hair blowing in the sea wind. He didn't look like a god. He didn't look like a nightmare that could freeze the air in your lungs or rewrite the timeline. He just looked like a tired teenager.

Without a word, Ben walked over and sat down directly on the damp, cold concrete next to her, pulling his knees up and leaning his back against the same rusted brick wall. He didn't force her to talk. He didn't touch her. He just sat there, looking out over the grey horizon of Brockton Bay.

"What do you want?" Amy spat, her voice raspy and raw. "Come to gloat? Come to show off another one of your magic tricks?"

"Nope," Ben said quietly, his voice calm and grounded. "Just making sure you didn't jump."

"I'm not going to jump," she growled, wrapping her arms tighter around her legs. "I'm too much of a coward for that."

Silence stretched between them, heavy and suffocating. But unlike the silence in the PRT van, this wasn't tense. Ben radiated a strange, steady presence—a calm, unyielding aura that felt entirely devoid of judgment, pity, or hidden motives.

It terrified her.

In Brockton Bay, everyone wanted something from Panacea. The PRT wanted a living medical miracle to slap on recruitment posters. The heroes wanted a safety net so they could throw themselves into meat grinders. Her adopted mother, Carol, wanted a respectable, law-abiding legacy to keep the household clean. Victoria wanted a loyal sister to patch her up after every fight.

Nobody ever just sat with Amy Dallon. Nobody ever looked at her without expecting her to fix something.

The sheer pressure built up inside her chest until it felt like her ribs were going to crack. She opened her mouth to yell at him again, to tell him to go away, but the moment she looked at his face, the dam inside her brain simply burst.

"I hate this," she whispered, her voice breaking. "I hate you. I hate... everything."

Ben didn't interrupt. He just inclined his head slightly, listening.

"Why am I even talking to you?" Amy asked, a sudden spike of panic lacing her voice as the thoughts began spilling out of her mouth like spilled acid. She stared at him with wide, bloodshot eyes. "What are you doing to me? Is this a power? Do you have some kind of Master effect? Some aura that makes people spill their guts to you?!"

"No powers, Amy," Ben said softly, turning his head to look her in the eye. "No Master effects. Just a guy on a roof."

"Then why can't I shut up?!" she cried out, slamming her hand against the concrete floor. "Why do I want to tell you?! I don't even know you!"

Tears began to blur her vision, hot and fast, washing paths down her grime-stained cheeks. The secrets she had kept buried in the darkest, most disgusting corners of her mind—secrets she had sworn to take to her grave—started clawing their way out of her throat.

"My power isn't healing," she sobbed, her body shaking violently as the confession tore out of her. "It's not... it's not limited. I lied. I lied to the PRT, I lied to the media, I lied to my family! I can touch organic material and rewrite it into anything. I can make viruses that could wipe out humanity in an afternoon. I can turn a person into a lump of screaming flesh with a single touch. I can rewrite someone's brain, Ben! I can change who they are, how they think, what they feel... I can make someone love me!"

She choked on a sob, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving as two years of absolute isolation collapsed in an instant.

"And I'm disgusted with myself," she howled into her palms, her voice cracking into a guttural, miserable wail. "Every single day I wake up and I look at Victoria... my sister... the girl who called me her family... and I feel things I shouldn't feel! I look at her and I'm... I'm attracted to her! It's sick! It's twisted and monstrous and wrong! I'm just an adopted outsider in their house, Ben! I don't belong there, my blood isn't theirs, and I'm broken inside! I spent every second terrified that if I touched a brain... if I let myself use my power properly... I'd snap. I'd rewrite Victoria's mind so she'd love me back! I'd turn into a monster!"

She raged, she sobbed, she tore at her own hair, pouring out every horrific thought, every sickening fear, every shred of self-loathing that had been poisoning her soul. She braced for the disgust. She braced for him to recoil, to stand up, to look at her with the same horrified revulsion she felt whenever she looked in the mirror.

Ben didn't move an inch.

He stayed sitting right beside her on the cold gravel. He didn't flinch. He didn't look disgusted. His green eyes held only an incredible, profound sorrow—a quiet, steady understanding that absorbed her entire breakdown without breaking.

When her sobs finally slowed into ragged, gasping breaths, Amy wiped her nose on her sleeve, looking up at him through swollen, red-rimmed eyes.

"Why aren't you afraid of me?!" she demanded, her voice rasping as she grasped at straws, desperately trying to push him away, trying to prove to him that she was a monster. "I can literally reshape your entire body as I see fit! Right now! I could touch your arm and turn you into a pig if I wanted to! I could rewrite your entire brain with just a touch! I could erase your memories, strip away your mind, turn you into a mindless puppet!"

Ben looked at her hand—the trembling, pale hand that the entire city viewed as a gift from God, and that she viewed as a curse from Hell.

"But you aren't," Ben said softly.

Amy blinked, stunned. "What?"

"You aren't doing it," Ben repeated, his voice smooth and steady. "You're sitting here telling me you could, but you're holding back. You've been holding back every single day of your life."

He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees.

"You look at every criminal and bad guy that comes through that hospital door," Ben continued, his eyes locking onto hers with absolute clarity. "Monsters, gang members, murderers. You heal them. You fix their broken bones and patch up their lungs, and then you let them walk away. Amy... you could change them. You could touch a murderer's face and rewrite his brain to make him a better person in a single touch. You could turn up his empathy, erase his bad ideals, make him hate violence. You could fix the whole city's crime problem in a week."

Amy swallowed hard, her breath catching in her throat.

"But you don't," Ben said softly. "Why don't you do it, Amy?"

"Because..." Amy whispered, her voice trembling. "Because it... it wouldn't be real. They wouldn't have chosen to be good. I'd be taking away who they are. I'd be destroying their free will."

"Exactly," Ben said, a faint, gentle smile touching his lips. "You could rewrite their entire autonomy, but you don't—because you understand how important free will is. You respect human life so much that you would rather destroy yourself carrying the weight of the world than violate someone else's mind."

Ben leaned back against the brick wall, looking up at the gray sky.

"You ask how I'm not scared of you?" Ben chuckled quietly, shaking his head. "Amy... I have so many forms that could do terrible things. I have a form made of dark energy that can possess people, take over their bodies, and force them to do awful things. I have a form that can reach into a person's chest and destroy their soul. I have forms that can hypnotize entire crowds, forms that radiate pure terror, forms that can age a man to dust in three seconds... or age him backward until he's reduced to a single cell."

He turned his head back to her, his green eyes solemn.

"I have infinite ways to commit atrocities beyond human comprehension, Amy," Ben said quietly. "If I wanted to, I could conquer this planet before lunchtime. But I don't. And if I do use those abilities, it's in the name of all that is good. Having power doesn't make you a monster. Having dark thoughts doesn't make you evil. It doesn't matter what power you have, Amy. It matters how you use it."

Ben reached out. Slowly, deliberately, he extended his open hand toward her. He didn't flinch. He didn't hesitate. He placed his bare palm directly over hers, letting his fingers wrap around her small, cold hand.

"Your power isn't rotten, Amy," Ben said, his voice echoing with an absolute, unshakeable conviction that shattered the last of her defenses. "You aren't a monster. Your fears don't define you. You define you. You ARE a good person. You ARE a true HERO."

Amy stared at their joined hands.

There was no trick. No Master effect. No grand scheme. Just a boy who held the power of a thousand gods, looking at her not as a weapon, not as a healer, and not as a monster—but simply as a person who needed help.

A choked sob escaped her throat.

Amy lunged forward, throwing her arms around Ben's neck, burying her face into his shoulder. She squeezed him with everything she had, clinging to him like a lifeline in a storm.

The tears came anew—not the bitter, angry tears of despair, but hot, cleansing tears that washed away two years of solitary confinement inside her own head. Ben didn't push her away. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her steady against the cold ocean wind, letting her cry until she had nothing left to give.

As the sun finally broke through the heavy gray clouds over Brockton Bay, painting the rooftop in a warm, golden light, the silence returned. But it wasn't empty anymore.

On a cold hospital roof, surrounded by the quiet heartbeats of a cured city, a monster was laid to rest—and a true friendship was born.

Amy pulled back slowly, her chest still hitching with tiny, residual hiccups as the storm of crying finally ebbed away. She wiped her face aggressively with her sleeve, scrubbing at the salt-stings on her cheeks while looking at the teenager sitting next to her.

She was in absolute, breathless disbelief. Less than two hours ago, she had guarded her deepest, most sickening secrets behind an iron vault, willing to take them to her grave. And now, sitting on a damp hospital roof in the cold morning wind, she had just spilled her entire soul to a guy she had barely met again.

Ben stretched his arms over his head, letting out a casual yawn as if they had just finished watching a movie rather than dissecting a nervous breakdown.

"Oh, by the way," Ben added offhandedly, tossing a casual glance over at her. "The sister thing? I don't really think it's that weird. I mean..." He gave a light shrug. "You guys are step-family, right? Adopted. So technically not incest, anyways."

Amy's breath caught sharply in her throat. Her face flushed a violent, beat-red crimson that burned all the way to the tips of her ears. She opened her mouth to snap at him, utterly humiliated, but the words choked in her throat.

Before she could bury her face back in her hands, Ben's playful smirk faded. His green eyes narrowed slightly, his brow furrowing into a deep, contemplated frown as he leaned his head back against the rusted brick unit.

"From what I read online, your sister's aura thingy makes her enemies feel pants-pissing fear, and those she's close to feel awe, admiration, and love, right?"

Amy blinked through her blushes, entirely thrown off by the sudden shift in topic. She gave a confused, slow nod. "Yeah. Victoria's forcefield comes with an emotional aura. It keeps her safe in a fight and makes people trust her. What about it?"

"Then wouldn't it stand to reason," Ben said, turning his head to lock eyes with her, "that long-term exposure could make the effects... alter people?"

Amy frowned, shaking her head defensively. "No. No, Ben, that doesn't make any sense. Her aura doesn't work on family."

Ben raised a single eyebrow, leaning in just a fraction. "Biological family... orrrrr..."

The sentence hung in the air like an unexploded bomb.

Amy stared at him. Ben stared back, his expression completely neutral, letting the logic sit between them.

The confusion on Amy's face held for three agonizing seconds. Then, piece by piece, her mental defenses fractured. Biological family shared genetic signatures and inherited neurological traits—their brains possessed natural biological immunity to their own relatives' powers. But Amy wasn't biological. She was adopted. Her brain had spent years sitting right beside Victoria on the couch, riding in the car, sleeping in the next room—constantly washed in a passive, invisible cloud of artificial awe, forced admiration, and manufactured love, soaking into her neural pathways during her most formative developmental years.

Her eyes dilated in absolute, paralyzing realization. The blood drained out of her face until she was ghostly white.

"Shit," Amy whispered, her voice dropping into pure horror.

Before she could process the terrifying revelation, a loud, high-pitched whoosh tore across the roof. A streak of green and black speed blurred over the concrete, skidding to a halt right at the edge of the HVAC unit. The wind whipped Amy's hair into her face as the blur resolved into a second Ben—this one wearing a sleek, blue-and-black speedster alien form that immediately flashed back into a duplicate human Ben Tennyson.

The Clone Ben stretched his neck, dusted off his jacket, and then paused, looking down at the two of them sitting cramped together against the wall.

"Uhhhh..." Clone Ben scratched the back of his head, raising an eyebrow. "Am I interrupting something?"

Amy's brain completely stalled out. She looked at the Ben sitting beside her, then looked at the Ben standing five feet away, her eyes darting back and forth in utter bewildering shock.

"There's... there's two of you?!" she gasped, clutching her head.

"LONG story," Ben sighed, pushing himself up off the cold concrete floor. He looked over at his duplicate. "Okay, time to merge."

"Right," Clone Ben agreed, stepping forward.

Both Bens reached down to their left wrists, slamming their thumbs against their respective Omnitrix dials.

FLASH.

A brilliant flare of emerald light blinded Amy for a fraction of a second. When it faded, two small, white, robot-like creatures stood on the roof. They had large, round heads, glowing green digital eyes, and tiny MP3-like ports on their backs.

The two small aliens walked toward each other, their bodies vibrating with a strange, high-frequency sonic resonance. They bumped hands, and in a soft chime of light, the duplicate collapsed smoothly into the original, combining back into a single form.

FLASH.

Another green light swept over the roof, and standard Ben Tennyson was standing there alone, casually rolling his shoulders and adjusting his jacket collar as if nothing unusual had happened.

Amy sat frozen on the concrete, her jaw practically touching the floor.

"Well," Ben said, turning back toward her with a small, quiet smile. "I suppose since you shared a huge secret with me... I can share one of mine."

 

[Thegameaholic]

(Hope you guys like this chapter because i am NOT doing another PHO until after leviathan time holy crap this was a pain in the ass to write)

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♦ Topic: THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE 9 ARE DEAD
In: Boards ► News ► International ► Incidents & Outbreaks
Bagrat (Original Poster) (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Posted On Jan 5th 2011:
I am breaking this news before the PRT corporate office can assemble a press conference to pat themselves on the back.

My contacts inside PRT ENE and Interpol have officially cross-referenced police blotters, international cape alerts, and internal memos. It is 100% verified.

The Slaughterhouse Nine are dead. Extinct. Wiped off the face of the Earth in less than forty-five minutes.

First off, get this straight: the actual fight did NOT happen in Brockton Bay. Jack Slash took his traveling death squad across the Atlantic, and the final confrontation took place in an industrial warehouse district just outside Paris, France(A/N:YES i changed where they were stationed). The French Gendarmerie and local Mecha-Capes arrived only in time to find pulverized rubble, frozen infrastructure, and nine bodies ready for the morgue.

Here is the kicker: The guy who killed them immediately flew back across the ocean and walked right into the Brockton Bay PRT Headquarters to report it and claim the bounty.

He didn't make a grand spectacle. He walked into the lobby of PRT ENE in a green jacket, handed over a thick encrypted drive containing photographic and biological proof of all nine kills, gave his bank routing details for the half-million dollar bounty payout, and asked where the nearest coffee shop was.

When the PRT brass pressed him for a tactical breakdown—demanding to know how he killed them and what forms he used—he completely refused to disclose a single detail. He basically told them: "They're dead, the world is safer, process my check."

So no, nobody knows what forms he used against Jack, Siberian, Crawler, or the rest.

What we DO know:

It is the same teenager. The guy who used that neon-blue speedster form ("Fasttrack") to carry that sick girl into Brockton General Hospital yesterday is the exact same individual who collected the S9 bounties today.

He is officially classified as a Multi-Changer. PRT internal memos list him under a draft threat classification of Multi-Changer (Sub-types: EVERYTHING). The current consensus is that Fasttrack is just one of dozens of distinct forms, each possessing its own physical baseline, powerset, and threat rating.



(Showing page 1 of 2)



►AverageAlexandros (Cape Husband) (Cape Groupie)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Wait, hold on. The SLAUGHTERHOUSE NINE?!

Jack Slash? Siberian?! Crawler?! Mannequin?! The monsters that have been terrorizing the entire North American continent for decades?!

One teenager killed ALL of them in minutes, walked into PRT ENE, demanded his money, and walked out without telling them how he did it?!

How is that even mathematically possible?! Siberian is invulnerable! Crawler regenerates from atomic dust! You can't just 'fight' the Nine and win in three-quarters of an hour!

►Brilliger (Moderator: Protectorate Main)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
This thread is subject to strict moderation under Rule 1, Rule 3, and Rule 4.

Do NOT attempt to dox the individual. His face was visible on hospital security footage, but his civilian identity is protected under high-level federal jurisdiction. Any reverse-image searching, address hunting, or family speculation will result in an immediate, permanent IP ban.

Rule 3 (No illegal activity/bounty hunting organization) is active. The Slaughterhouse Nine bounties are officially closed pending identity verification by federal coroners.

Keep discussions civil and focused on verified cape capabilities.

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
@Brilliger: How is that even mathematically possible?!

He's a Multi-Changer with dozens of forms! Think about the tactical flexibility!

If he has a speed form like Fasttrack that can break the sound barrier inside city limits, who knows what else he has in his arsenal? He could have a form that shoots absolute-zero plasma, a form that dissolves matter, or a form that bypasses physical durability altogether!

The fact that he refused to tell the PRT what forms he used against the Nine is such a power move. He's keeping his cards close to his chest.

►bothad
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Let's look at the facts objectively:

1)Kid shows up out of nowhere carrying a girl covered in bio-hazard waste.

2)Breaks the sound barrier without a Mover suit.

3)goes to Paris, wipes out the Nine, flies back to Brockton Bay to claim hundreds of thousands in bounty money.

Refuses to elaborate on his powers to the PRT.

This isn't a standard hero. This is a rogue Case 53 or a runaway experiment with insane multi-power capabilities. Keeping his methods hidden from the PRT shows he doesn't trust official channels at all.

►WagTheDog (Cape Groupie)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
@bothad: This isn't a standard hero.

Who cares if he's not standard?! THE NINE ARE DEAD!

Jack Slash isn't going to murder another town! Siberian isn't going to tear apart another cape team! This kid did more for global security in forty-five minutes than the entire Protectorate has done in twenty years!

Give him his bounty check and build a statue of him in downtown Brockton Bay!

►Acree (Kyushu Survivor)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Okay but seriously, how many forms does he actually have?!

@Bagrat says the PRT draft classification says "dozens."

If Fasttrack is his Mover form... what are his other forms? Brute? Shaker? Blaster? Does every single form have a totally different biological structure? If he has dozens of forms, his overall rating isn't just Mover/Changer—he's essentially a one-man cape team!

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
The PRT Corporate Office and PRT ENE can officially confirm that a party claiming the neutralization of the Slaughterhouse Nine has submitted forensic evidence to our Brockton Bay branch.

Due to the sensitive nature of the multi-jurisdictional investigation involving Interpol and French authorities, we cannot confirm specific details regarding the engagement, the exact status of individual Nine members, or the tactical methodologies utilized.

Regarding the individual operating under the tentative designation "Fasttrack" Negotiations regarding official registration, identity verification, and the processing of international bounty claims are currently underway. We urge the public not to indulge in unverified rumors regarding cape origins or unclassified abilities.

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
@Reave: We urge the public not to indulge in unverified rumors regarding cape origins or unclassified abilities.

Translation: "We have no idea what this kid can do, he won't tell us, he just took out the scariest villains on the planet, and we are absolutely terrified of him."

►Bagrat (Original Poster) (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
UPDATE! NEW VIDEO DROP!

Guys... drop whatever you are doing right now and look at this.

Forget Paris for a second. SOMETHING INSANE JUST HAPPENED AT BROCKTON GENERAL HOSPITAL ER.

About twenty minutes ago, the kid walked back into Brockton General. He wasn't in his Fasttrack form. Just his normal civilian self in that green jacket.

Panacea was in the emergency room trying to stabilize a mass-casualty intake, looking completely exhausted. The kid walked right into the middle of the ER floor and transformed into a BRAND NEW FORM right in front of Amy, doctors, nurses, and armed guards.

My source inside the hospital security room sent me the internal camera feed and audio transcript. Watch this.

[Attachment: Hosp_ER_Incident.mp4]

[VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hosp_ER_Incident.mp4]

►AverageAlexandros (Cape Husband) (Cape Groupie)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL WAS THAT?!

►Answer Key (Wiki Warrior)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Did... did he just turn into a German brass robot, make blood fly BACK into a guy's leg, and then shoot solar-yellow beams through six floors to cure leukemia and stroke damage?!

WHAT IS THIS POWER?

►ArchmageEin
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
My uncle was in ICU on floor 4 following a stroke three days ago. He was non-verbal and brain-damaged.

He just called me on his cell phone. HE IS COMPLETELY CURED. He's sitting up in bed asking for a bacon cheeseburger! The doctors are literally crying in the hallway!

Who IS this kid?!

►Bruce Lao (Veteran Member) (Verified Cape)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
My uncle was in ICU on floor 4 following a stroke three days ago. He was non-verbal and brain-damaged.

He just called me on his cell phone. HE IS COMPLETELY CURED. He's sitting up in bed asking for a bacon cheeseburger! The doctors are literally crying in the hallway!

Who IS this kid?!

►Deimos (Wiki Warrior)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Look at that video again!

"The spilled blood flew backward through the air, re-entering his body... broken bones aligned... skin zipped closed!"

What kind of power IS that?! Is it extreme bio-reversal? Molecular reconstruction? Advanced energy-healing? And then that yellow beam scanned and rewritten their DNA and brain tissue!

He has a form that can completely erase physical trauma and rewrite genetic diseases across a six-story building!

►Feychick (Kyushu Survivor)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Okay, let's tally this up:

1)Mover form (Fasttrack): Mach 1+ speedster.

2)Mystery S9-killing forms: Bypassed Siberian's invulnerability, killed Crawler, smashed Jack Slash in Paris.

3)Brass Robot form: Reverses physical injuries on the spot & projects solar-yellow beams for hospital-wide genetic curing.

How is this ONE cape?! What kind of trigger event produces a living Swiss Army knife of god-tier abilities?!

►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
LISTEN TO ME! ALL OF YOU NEED TO OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE!

The Wrist Device: In EVERY SINGLE VIDEO, right before he transforms, he looks down at his left wrist, manipulates a circular dial on a black-and-green gauntlet/watch, and SLAMS his hand down on it.

Fasttrack had a green hourglass symbol on his chest. This brass form has the EXACT SAME green hourglass symbol in his chest portal!

Neither Fasttrack nor this brass robot look like normal Changer forms. They don't look like parahuman projections or flesh Changers like Night.

HE IS NOT A PARAHUMAN!

HE IS AN ALIEN SHIFTER FROM OUTER SPACE OR ANOTHER DIMENSION! WAKE UP PEOPLE!

►Answer Key (Wiki Warrior)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
XxVoid_CowboyxX: HE IS AN ALIEN SHIFTER FROM OUTER SPACE OR ANOTHER DIMENSION!

Void... please take your meds.

An alien watch? Really? You think an extraterrestrial civilization built a wrist-watch that lets a human teenager turn into speedsters and German brass robots, and he just happened to land in Brockton Bay?

Did you leave your tinfoil hat out in the rain again?

►Bagrat (Original Poster) (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
LOL! Void Cowboy has officially lost his mind!

Bro, it's a Focus Object. Plenty of capes have manifest through a focal item or a Tinker-made interface. He probably got with a Changer/Tinker rating, built a flashy watch to interface with his transformation matrix, and put a cool logo on it.

"Alien watch" LMFAO. What's next? Are the Endbringers actually galactic space whales?

►Coyote-C
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
XxVoid_CowboyxX: "AN ALIEN SHAPESHIFTER"

I love PHO so much. We have a guy who cured an entire hospital and killed the Slaughterhouse Nine, and the local conspiracy theorists are claiming he's something from a Saturday morning cartoon.

Never change, Void. Never change.

►Tin_Mother (Moderator)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
XxVoid_CowboyxX: User warned under Rule 4 (Extreme alien/extraterrestrial conspiracy derailment).

Please keep speculations grounded in known cape science and PRT classification guidelines.

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Hey everyone. I'm Ben Tennyson.

Saw Bagrat's thread blowing up, so I figured I'd make an account and clear a few things up before people start theorizing I'm a secret Endbringer or something.

►WhedonRipperFan
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Wait...@The_Herf_Heroes?

Is this a troll? Mods, can we get a ping check on this?

►Tin_Mother (Moderator)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Account @The_Herf_Heroes has been verified

User is confirmed to be the individual associated with the 'Fasttrack' and 'Clockwork' incidents.

Rule 1 and Rule 4 restrictions remain strictly enforced for all posters interacting with this account.



►Bagrat (Original Poster) (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
HOLY SHIT IT'S ACTUALLY HIM!

Wait, you just dropped your full real name in your very first sentence?! You don't care about keeping a secret identity?!
Also, @The_Herf_Heroes? That is a BOLD username my guy! Respect!

End of Page. 1

(Showing page 2 of 2)

►Bruce Lao (Veteran Member) (Verified Cape)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
He actually joined PHO?!

Dude! Welcome to the forums, Ben! First of all—THANK YOU FOR KILLING THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE NINE! You are an absolute legend!

Can you answer some questions?! Everyone on this board is losing their minds!

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
He actually joined PHO?!

Dude! Welcome to the forums! First of all—THANK YOU FOR KILLING THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE NINE! You are an absolute legend!

Can you answer some questions?! Everyone on this board is losing their minds!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
"Wait, you just dropped your full real name in your very first sentence?! You don't care about keeping a secret identity?! Also, @The_Herf_Heroes? That is a BOLD username my guy! Respect!"

Haha, thanks! The Hero of Heroes is a title a few friends back home gave me a while ago. It kind of stuck, so I figured why not use it here?

And as for my real name: No, I don't care about keeping a secret identity anymore. I don't wear a mask, and I don't hide who I am.

"Can you answer some questions?! Everyone on this board is losing their minds!"

Yeah, I don't mind answering some questions! I noticed there's a ton of crazy rumors floating around, so I'd rather set the record straight myself. Ask away, but keep it reasonable.

►AverageAlexandros (Cape Husband) (Cape Groupie)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
FIRST QUESTIONS!

1)Who was the girl you brought into Brockton General in the Fasttrack video?! What happened to her?!

2)What forms did you use against the Slaughterhouse Nine in Paris?! Why didn't you tell the PRT?!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
"Who was the girl you brought into Brockton General in the Fasttrack video?! What happened to her?!"

Not answering that.

I'm gonna be very clear about this once and once only: leave her alone. She went through absolute hell because of corrupt, cowardly people who were supposed to protect her, and she deserves peace. She's safe now, her legal team is handling things, and that's all any of you need to know. If I catch anyone trying to dox her or dig into her business, I'll personally make sure you regret it.

What forms did you use against the Slaughterhouse Nine in Paris?! Why didn't you tell the PRT?!

"As for the Nine? They were a bunch of psychotic monsters who had been hurting innocent people for way too long. I went in, I handled business, and I made sure they will never, ever hurt anyone again."

I didn't tell the PRT what forms I used because, frankly, it's none of their business. My tactical capabilities are my own. I gave them the bodies for verification, and they're processing the bounty check. That's all that matters.

►Acree (Kyushu Survivor)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
What about the brass clock robot form at the hospital today?!

Why did you use it if you didn't want people knowing about your other forms? And what can that form actually do?!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
"Why did you use it if you didn't want people knowing about your other forms? And what can that form actually do?!"

Honestly? I didn't want to show off Clockwork this early. It's usually wiser to keep your cards close to your chest when you're in a new environment.

But I walked into the ER, and I saw Amy—Panacea—hunched over a gurney, running on absolute empty, working herself to total exhaustion trying to heal people one by one. She looked like she was carrying the weight of the entire world on her shoulders.

I had a form sitting right on my wrist that could take a massive chunk of that load off her back instantly. I couldn't just stand there while she collapsed from fatigue. So I took a shift and cleared her schedule so she could actually take a break and eat her granola bar.

As for what Clockwork does. His main power is actual time manipulation foward,backward or slow down and speed up time around him I just reversed time on the on the bodies of the patients

Clockwork is pretty heavy and slow physically, and his brass plating isn't meant for fast fist-fights, but for time manipulation, he gets the job done.

►Char
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
HOLY SHIT! IT WAS ACTUAL TIME MANIPULATION?!

He literally rewound time on their physical injuries!

►AverageAlexandros (Cape Husband) (Cape Groupie)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
"His main power is actual time manipulation."

That is mind-blowing! temporal control inside an ER floor!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
@XxVoid_CowboyxX

Hey man. I saw your wall of text earlier before the mods punished you.

I just wanted to tell you: You were actually 100% right.

You guys can stop clowning him now. Void hit the nail right on the head.

►Tin_Mother (Moderator)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
The warning previously issued to user XxVoid_CowboyxX under Rule 4 has been officially RESCINDED and stricken from the record.

User technically did not violate forum policy, as the statement has been confirmed as factual by a verified primary source.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
...

WHAT?!

I WAS RIGHT?! AND MY WARNING WAS REMOVED?!

VINDICATION! VINDICATION AT LAST!

THE ALIEN WATCH IS REAL! IN YOUR FACES, PHO! IN YOUR FACES!

►GstringGirl
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Wait... WHAT?!

Ben, you're joking right?! You're trolling us!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
I'm completely serious.

1)The watch on my wrist Is called the Omnitrix. It's not a Tinker object, and it's not a cape power interface. It's a Level-20 alien device that stores the DNA samples of over one million intelligent extraterrestrial species from across the cosmos, and it alters my cellular structure to turn me into them.

2)Aliens are Real: Fasttrack is a Citrakayah, originating from the planet Chalybeas. None of my forms are "Changer projections" or "flesh morphs." They are actual, living alien species with their own unique biology, culture, and homeworlds.

3)I'm from another Earth: I know you guys already know about parallel Earths because of Earth-Aleph, but I don't come from Earth-Aleph either. I come from a different Earth entirely where humans, aliens, and cosmic species co-exist, trade, and travel across galaxies. If you don't believe me, you can check with Director Piggot at PRT or Pancea I gave them the basic rundown when I filed the paperwork for the Nine's bounty.

Also, regarding the secret identity thing I USED to have a secret identity back home, but my real name got leaked to the entire world when I was sixteen. After my identity was out in the open, I realized hiding behind a mask didn't really make sense for me anymore, so I stopped caring about it and just go by my real name, Ben Tennyson. My official superhero alias back home is Ben 10

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Wait... your official hero name is "Ben 10"?!

That is... unbelievably on the nose! Did you pick that name when you were ten years old or something?!

►Answer Key (Wiki Warrior)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
"Did you pick that name when you were ten years old or something?!"

...Yes, actually. I was ten years old when I found the watch, I started with ten aliens, and my name is Ben. It just fit! Don't judge me, ten-year-olds aren't great at branding!

►Laotsunn
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
...This is mind-boggling. Extraterrestrial DNA?! A million alien species stored in a watch?!

Who built a device like that?! That sounds completely impossible!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
"Who built a device like that?! That sounds completely impossible!"

It was created by a Galvan named Azmuth.

Galvans are tiny, frog-like aliens that are only about five inches tall, but Azmuth happens to be the smartest being in 5 galaxies.

And for the record, he didn't build the Omnitrix as a weapon. He built it as a peace tool. The original purpose of the Omnitrix was to allow different species across the universe to walk in each other's shoes, to foster mutual understanding, and to serve as a high-tech Noah's Ark to preserve the genetic heritage of the cosmos if a species ever went extinct.

I just happen to use it to save people and kick villain butt.

►Bagrat (Original Poster) (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
My brain is completely melting right now.

Void Cowboy... I owe you an apology. You were actually right.

►Deimos (Wiki Warrior)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Okay, Ben... if you're from an alternate Earth where aliens exist... what about Capes?

Are there capes in your world? Are there PRT teams or giant monsters like the Endbringers where you come from?

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Nope. None at all.

No PRT, no Endbringers, and no capes like you guys have here.

Where I come from, I'm one of the few full-time superhero defenders on Earth—though I work alongside Plumbers (intergalactic law enforcement, not sink fixers) and a few hero teams.

We don't have "Capes" in my world, but we DO have Mutants—people born with weird genetic traits, meta-abilities, or physical anomalies. I guess Mutants would fall under what you guys call Capes.

For example, back home there's a super weird gang of villain Mutants called the Circus Freaks:

Zombozo: A creepy, vampiric zombie-clown who feeds on happiness and fear.

Frightwig: A girl with super-strong, prehensile hair that she can use like massive whip-tentacles.

Acid Breath: A guy who literally spits corrosive biological bile that can melt through solid steel.

Thumbskull: A giant Brute with super-strength and a skull shaped like a thumb.

We also have people who can manipulate energy or matter. In fact, my best friend, Kevin Levin, used to be a Mutant villain who could absorb energy and raw matter.

He had a pretty rough start, but he turned his life around and became a hero. Now he can touch any solid material—steel, stone, wood, titanium—and coat his entire body in it like a suit of armor. He also drives a super-customized muscle car that he is WAY too protective of. If you so much as scratch the paint on Kevin's car, he'll throw a car at you.

►BadSamurai
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
"A creepy zombie-clown named Zombozo, a hair-tentacle girl named Frightwig, a guy who spits acid, and a Brute named Thumbskull..."

Honestly? Compared to the Slaughterhouse Nine, those "Circus Freaks" sound downright tame!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Oh, absolutely. The Circus Freaks are just petty bank robbers and weirdos. The Slaughterhouse Nine were sickening monsters. Coming to this Earth and seeing how things work here... honestly, it pissed me off.

You guys have lived under the threat of serial killers, corrupt administrators, and terrifying monsters for way too long. People here act like suffering is just "how things are."

Well, I don't buy that.

I've got the Omnitrix, I've got my forms, and I'm not gonna sit back while corrupt systems and psycho villains ruin innocent people's lives. Brockton Bay is gonna change, whether the PRT likes it or not.

Anyway, I gotta go. A lawyer is calling my phone about some legal stuff I'm helping out with, and I need to stop by the deli to get some iced tea.

Catch you guys later!

►Answer Key (Wiki Warrior)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Did... did he just casually drop a multi-dimensional lore dump, confirm alien watches exist, reveal his hero name is literally 'Ben 10', mention a five-inch frog scientist, explain localized time travel, trash the PRT's entire attitude, and log off to drink iced tea?!

I LOVE THIS KID!

►ArchmageEin
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Good luck to whoever tries to stop him in Brockton Bay.



End of Page. 1, 2



■

♦ Topic: Q&A / Ask Ben Tennyson: What was the biggest war or threat you ever faced back home?
In: Boards ► Discussion ► Capes ► Alternate Universes & Cosmology
Answer Key (Original Poster) (Wiki Warrior)
Posted On Jan 5th 2011:
Since Ben (The_Herf_Heroes) confirmed he's an interdimensional alien-shifter from an alternate Earth and actually checks PHO sometimes, I wanted to open a thread to ask a genuine question.

Here on Earth Bet, we deal with S-Class threats, Endbringer attacks, the Slaughterhouse Nine, and apocalyptic scenarios where the only outcome is usually "try to survive and minimize casualties."

Ben, if you see this: what was the existential threat you ever had to deal with in your home universe? How did your world handle an all-out apocalyptic threat?



(Showing page 1 of 2)



►Bagrat (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Subscribing to this thread immediately!

Considering he wiped out the Slaughterhouse Nine in minutes like it was a casual chore, I want to hear what a real high-stakes fight looks like in his universe!

►AverageAlexandros (Cape Husband) (Cape Groupie)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
I'm curious about tactics. In our world, when an S-Class threat or a massive army shows up (like Nilbog or an Endbringer), the PRT's response is containment, lethal force, Tinker-made mass destruction weapons, or glassing the area with artillery.

I want to know how a universe with intergalactic law enforcement handles an actual invasion.

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
You want to know about the threat I ever fought in? That would be the Highbreed Invasion.

To give you an idea of what we were up against: The Highbreed are a massive, hyper-advanced alien empire. Physically, they're about ten feet tall, pale white, built like brick walls, have glowing yellow eyes, and pitch-black wings. They view themselves as the absolute "first and purest" species in the entire universe.

Because of that supreme ego, they viewed every other living creature—humans, Galvans, everyone—as literal vermin or weeds that needed to be cleansed from the galaxy.

And they brought an entire armada of warfleets directly to Earth to start their galactic purging campaign.

►ArchmageEin
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
A TEN-FOOT-TALL EMPIRE OF XENOPHOBIC ALIEN SUPREMACISTS WITH SPACE FLEETS?!

Jesus Christ. How did they even attack?! Did they drop orbital strikes?!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Worse. They used infiltration first.

They sent advance forces to Earth and used parasitic bio-weapons called Xenocytes. A Xenocyte is a creepy, fleshy creature that jumps onto a person's head, attaches to their nervous system, and forcibly mutates their body and rewires their brain.

They turned thousands of innocent, everyday human beings into mind-controlled alien foot soldiers called DNAliens.

Farmers, town mayor staff, police officers, regular teenagers—people were getting snatched in the middle of the night, slapped with a parasite, and forced to build massive weather towers designed to alter Earth's climate into a freezing wasteland suitable for Highbreed biology.

►BadSamurai
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Hold on... parasitic mind-control that forcibly mutates innocent civilians into mindless foot soldiers?!

That sounds EXACTLY like what happens when a Master/Changer cape or a bio-tinker like Nilbog takes over a town!

In PRT protocols, once a civilian is turned into an S-Class bio-puppet or infected host, the PRT issues an immediate Kill-On-Sight Order to stop the spread. There's no saving them. You just have to put them down.(A/Nonno is this is true)

How many thousands of DNAliens did you guys have to kill?!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Too many.

Early on, before we knew what they actually were, we thought DNAliens were just alien monsters invading our planet. We fought back with lethal force because we had to survive. It wasn't until later that we uncovered the horrifying truth—that every single DNAlien was an innocent human host trapped inside a biological parasite.

Finding out we had killed innocent people... people who were just victims trying to protect their families... that hit me hard. It's something I still feel guilty about every single day.

Once we knew the truth, I figured out how to use the Omnitrix's genetic repair function. Whenever we fought DNAliens after that, we changed our entire strategy. I'd use my alien forms to knock them out or restrain them, tap the watch, and hit them with a localized genetic reset pulse. The pulse safely detached the Xenocyte, destroyed the parasite, and restored the human host back to 100% normal health.

We managed to cure and save thousands of people that way. But even after we figured it out, in the chaos of a full-scale galactic war, there were still times where we had no choice but to use lethal force to protect lives or stop an immediate threat. Knowing we couldn't save everyone... that's a heavy weight to carry.

►Dawgsmiles
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
That's tragic about the DNAlien hosts, but amazing that you cured so many!

What about the actual Highbreed army?! If they were ten-foot-tall, ruthless galactic supremacists who wanted to cleanse all life, how did you stop the main fleet?! You must have had to blow up their flagship or use an anti-fleet weapon!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Nope. We ended the war with compassion.

I know that sounds completely insane, but listen.

During the middle of the war, I got stranded on a desolate desert planet called Turrawurf alongside a Highbreed commander named Reinrassig III (or "Reiny," as I called him).

At first, Reiny treated me like absolute dirt. He kept calling me a "filthy worm" and a "lower lifeform," refusing to even touch me because he thought human contact would "soil" his racial purity. But the planet was filled with giant subterranean sand-monsters, and if we didn't work together, we were both going to die.

During one fight, Reiny's arm got severed by a monster saving my life. I transformed into Swampfire, used my plant abilities to reattach his arm, and cauterized his wounds. Because of my alien plant DNA, his new arm grew back green and mutated.

Reiny was utterly horrified. He thought he was ruined forever. But over the days we spent trekking across that desert, sharing food, saving each other's lives, and talking, he started to realize something: I wasn't a monster, and "purity" didn't make him superior. It was just an excuse to be cruel.

When we finally escaped, Reiny willingly exiled himself because he believed his mutated arm made him "unclean" to his people, but he respected me. He called me his friend.

►Miss Mercury (Protectorate Employee)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Wait... you saved an enemy commander's life, reattached his arm with alien plant magic, walked across a desert with him, and befriended an invading xenophobic general?!

That sounds like a movie script! What happened when the main invasion fleet reached Earth?!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
When the main Highbreed armada arrived, we uncovered their secret:

The reason the Highbreed were so obsessed with "purity" was because they had inbred their species for generations. They had destroyed their own immune systems. They were dying of severe genetic degradation, sterility, and cellular decay. Their entire war against the universe was basically a massive, tragic temper tantrum because they knew their species was going extinct and they wanted to take the rest of the galaxy down with them.

So, when we breached the Highbreed Supreme Council's chamber on their homeworld, I didn't attack them.

I set the Omnitrix to maximum power, connected it to the Highbreed galactic transmission network, and sent out an omni-directional genetic pulse across their entire species.

The Omnitrix took random, healthy DNA samples from thousands of different alien species stored in its database and injected them directly into every single Highbreed in the cosmos. It completely rewrote their damaged DNA, cured their sterility, fixed their immune systems, and saved their entire race from extinction.

►AverageAlexandros (Cape Husband) (Cape Groupie)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
...YOU RE-WROTE THE DNA OF AN ENTIRE INVASION RACE TO CURE THEIR EXTINCTION?!

Wait, but if they were purity obsessed, weren't they furious that they weren't "pure" anymore?!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
They were! The Supreme Council was literally preparing to commit mass suicide and order the fleet to destroy everything because they thought being genetically diverse made them "monsters."

And that's when Reinrassig III walked into the council chamber.

Reiny stepped up in front of the entire Highbreed High Command. He showed them his mutated green arm. He told them how a human teenager—a "lower lifeform"—had saved his life on a desert planet when his own code would have left him to die. He told them that "purity" was a lie that was killing them, and that the new alien DNA in their veins was a gift of life, not a curse.

The Supreme Council was so moved by his speech that they unanimously appointed Reinrassig III as the new High Commander of the Highbreed Empire.

Reiny immediately ordered the entire armada to stand down, declared an official end to all hostilities across the galaxy, and established a permanent peace treaty with Earth and the Plumbers.

We didn't destroy their armada. We didn't glass their homeworld. We cured their sickness, showed them mercy, and turned an invading alien empire into our allies.

►Laotsunn
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
...

I... I don't even know what to say.

My brain is genuinely breaking trying to comprehend this.

In our world, if an invading force shows up, half a continent gets turned into a wasteland, millions of people die, capes get mutilated, and the PRT buries the files under S-Class threat lockdowns.

You felt remorse for the mind-controlled victims you couldn't save, cured thousands more, befriended an enemy commander on a desert planet, cured their species-wide genetic sterility, and ended a galactic war by making friends with the new High Commander?!

►Acree (Kyushu Survivor)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Is... is this what superheroes are actually supposed to be like in functional universes?!

I'm sitting here in my kitchen in Brockton Bay, used to hearing about the Slaughterhouse Nine torturing towns and Endbringers drowning cities, and this kid literally ended a universe-ending invasion with GENETIC MEDICINE AND MERCY?!

I feel like I'm reading a fairy tale, except HE ACTUALLY DID IT.



►BadSamurai
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Seriously! If the PRT had been in charge of the Highbreed invasion, they would have dropped a nuclear Tinker-bomb through the jump gate, executed every infected civilian on sight, classified the Highbreed as a Permanent Threat, and spent the next thirty years building bunker walls!

Ben Tennyson solved a galactic war with a wrist-watch, genuine remorse for victims, and a talk about friendship on a desert planet.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
REIN RASSIG THE THIRD IS AN ABSOLUTE GALACTIC CHAD!

Bro got his arm fixed by a plant alien, realized racism is stupid, walked into the supreme council chamber, became KING OF THE ALIENS, and called off a war!

I love Ben's universe so much! It's so much cooler than ours!

►Deimos (Wiki Warrior)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
This kid wiped out the Slaughterhouse Nine in minutes because they were irredeemable monsters who just wanted to inflict pain, but when faced with an entire dying empire, he chose to SAVE them.

That isn't just power. That's true heroism. Brockton Bay doesn't even know how lucky it is to have this guy walking around.

►Chaosfaith
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Ben, thank you SO much for answering! The entire Wards team in my city has been talking about you non-stop ever since the news broke.

if you don't mind me asking

How does your universe's science work compared to Tinkers here? Is alien tech something anyone can learn?

What are your strongest combat transformations? Who do you pick when you need serious firepower?

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
To answer your first question: In my universe, technology is built on actual, universal science.

If a Galvan like Azmuth builds a starship drive, a bio-repair array, or an energy conductor, he can write down the equations, teach it in a university classroom, and manufacture it in a standard factory. It doesn't break down when someone else touches it, and it doesn't require "special brain signals" or mysterious instincts to maintain.

From what I've seen of local "Tinker" tech here, it seems hyper-specialized and locked to the individual creator's mind. In my world, real engineering works for anyone who understands the physics!

Now, for your second question: What are my strongest combat aliens?

Here are some of my heaviest hitters:

Just to tease there is Humungousaur A 12-foot-tall Vaxasaurian that can grow up to 60 feet tall at will. He has raw strength capable of lifting skyscrapers and armor thick enough to shrug off missile strikes.

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Mr. Tennyson. On behalf of PRT Headquarters, we must formally request clarification on several critical regulatory points:

You have been engaging in unauthorized vigilante actions in Brockton Bay outside local law enforcement and NEPEA oversight.

You possess high-grade off-world technology of unknown destructive potential without standard technological registration.

What is your official stance on integrating with the Protectorate, and will you surrender the "Omnitrix" device to federal authorities for security indexing and safety evaluations?

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Haha. Short answer: No. Never.

First off, the Omnitrix is bio-bonded to my DNA profile on a cellular level. Trying to forcibly remove it without proper master clearance triggers automated security countermeasures that you really don't want to test.

Second, the last time an authority group back home tried to seize the watch from me, my Grandpa Max nearly tore down their entire facility, and the creator of the watch personally threatened to show up and intervene.(A/N:i'm just making shit up)

Third, with all due respect... your agency lets local gang bosses and violent criminals run around coastal cities for over a decade because of red tape, political stalling, and jurisdictional posturing. You expect me to hand over a Level 20 galactic peacekeeping instrument to a government bureau?

I'm a Plumber Officer. I answer to intergalactic law and my own conscience, not local paperwork.

►AverageAlexandros (Cape Husband) (Cape Groupie)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
BEN JUST ROASTED THE PRT INTO ASHES!!

"You expect me to hand over a Level 20 galactic peacekeeping instrument to a government bureau?"

Absolute legend! Armsmaster is probably punching a wall right now!



►Vista (Wards ENE) (Verified Cape)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Can confirm: Armsmaster is reading this thread right now in the console room and he looks like he just swallowed an entire lemon.

Ben, you're awesome. Quick question from the Wards rec room: What are your top 5 favorite aliens for combat, and top 5 for everyday stuff like grabbing food or hanging out?



End of Page. 1





(Showing page 2 of 2)



►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Tell Armsmaster I'll show him how alien power regulation works if he buys me lunch!

Here's my list:

Top 5 Combat Aliens:
Humungousaur: Huge, tough, and throwing villains through walls never gets old.

Swampfire: Fire blasts, plant control, and insane regeneration make him super versatile.

Feedback: Absorbing an enemy's biggest energy attack and firing it right back is the best feeling in the world.

XLR8: A speedster who moves over 500 mph. Great for clearing out entire groups before they even realize the fight started.

Cannonbolt: Curling up into an armored ball and bouncing off walls like a giant bowling ball of destruction is wildly effective.

Top 5 Everyday Aliens:
XLR8: Need to grab a burger from two towns over in 3 seconds? XLR8.

Big Chill: Can go intangible, fly through walls, and freeze stuff. Perfect for keeping drinks cold.

Four Arms: Four massive arms make moving heavy furniture or carrying all the groceries in one trip super easy.

Grey Matter: Two inches tall, but a total genius. Great for fixing complex electronics or solving impossible puzzles.

Echo Echo: Can make dozens of duplicate clones of himself. You can have one clone study, one clean the room, and three hang out!

►Meat_Grinder (E88 Sympathizer)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
You're a fake and a glorified freak show. Earth belongs to HUMANS. We don't need alien freaks coming into our city talking about mixing bloodlines and alien peace.

If you're so tough, why don't you face Kaiser and the Empire head-on instead of hiding behind a laptop typing on a forum?!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Listen to me very carefully, @Meat_Grinder.

As I already mentioned in my last thread when I talked about the Highbreed: genetic "purity" is a complete, delusional dead end.

They spent generations looking down on every other species in the galaxy. Do you know what happened to them? Their immune systems collapsed, their birth rates dropped to zero, and their entire civilization was dying of cellular decay from the inside out because their obsession with "purity" ruined their genetic health.

So when I see guys like Kaiser or Hookwolf walking around Brockton Bay talking about "purity"... I don't see scary villains.

I see ignorant toddlers making the exact same stupid mistake a dying alien empire made light-years away.

And as for Kaiser? Tell him to pick a spot. I'll show up as Four Arms, snap his metal blades like twigs, and toss him straight into the bay.

►AverageAlexandros (Cape Husband) (Cape Groupie)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
BOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

BEN TENNYSON JUST DESTROYED E88 IDEOLOGY AGAIN!

Kaiser is probably punching air right now!

►GstringGirl
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Ben, let's talk about the real threat facing this planet.

Behemoth, Leviathan, and the Simurgh have slaughtered tens of millions over twenty years. Cities have been wiped off the map. Kyushu is underwater. Newfoundland is gone. The Triumvirate, the Protectorate, and thousands of capes have fought them for decades and haven't even come close to killing one.

If Leviathan or Behemoth attacks tomorrow... can you actually kill an Endbringer? Or are you just all talk against local gangs?

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Yes. I can kill an Endbringer.

I'm not going to sit here and write out a five-page tactical playbook or explain my alien capabilities for potential enemies to read and analyze. I'm under no obligation to elaborate on my operational strategy to the public.

When one of them shows up, I'll deal with it.

►Weld (Irregulars) (Verified Cape)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Did... did he really just say that?

"Yes. I can kill an Endbringer." Just like that?! No elaboration?

►Bagrat (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Is this kid out of his mind?!

Do you have ANY idea how many capes have said "I can kill an Endbringer" right before getting turned into red mist?! Gavel thought he was hot stuff. Hero thought he had the firepower. Alexandria thought she could handle Leviathan solo.

Saying "Yes, I can kill an Endbringer" without even explaining HOW is the most arrogant, absurd thing I've ever read on these boards!

►WagTheDog (Cape Groupie)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Arrogant? The guy literally wiped out the entire Slaughterhouse Nine in under an hour by himself! He has over A MILLION alien forms! If anyone has earned the right to be confident, it's him!

►White Fairy (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Look, I respect what Ben did to the Nine as much as anyone, but Endbringers aren't human psychopaths. Leviathan sank an entire island nation. Behemoth turns miles of terrain into radioactive glass. The Simurgh drives entire cities mad.

Dismissing an Endbringer threat with a two-sentence reply comes across as extremely naive and dangerously arrogant. Overconfidence gets capes killed in Endbringer fights.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Y'all are malting because he didn't give you a 10,000-word essays on his combat stats!

Why SHOULD he explain his powers to a public forum? So someone can read PHO and prepare for him?! Ben is playing 4D chess while you guys are complaining about his attitude!

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
The PRT strongly cautions all independent capes against underestimating Class-S threats. False confidence regarding Endbringer engagements poses severe operational risks to organized response efforts.

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
You guys can call it whatever you want. Arrogant, overconfident, whatever.

I've fought planet-conquering warlords, cosmic gods, time-traveling conquerors, and species that wipe out entire star systems for fun. I don't need to brag, and I don't need to prove my playbook to a comment section to make people feel comfortable.

When an Endbringer attacks, I'll be on the front lines. You can judge the results then.

►Bruce Lao (Veteran Member) (Verified Cape)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Moving away from the Endbringer debate before the mods lock the thread...

What are your WEIRDEST alien forms? Give us the strange ones!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Oh, I have plenty! Here are five really odd ones:

Walkatrout: A two-foot-tall walking blue fish. No powers, can't fight, but he is insanely slippery. Enemies literally can't hold onto him!

Bloxx: A giant ape made entirely of bright, interlocking building blocks. He can shapeshift into walls, domes, or catapults, stretch his limbs, and reassemble himself if he gets smashed into pieces!

The Worst: A squishy yellow potato alien. Moves slow and can't attack, but his body is 100% indestructible. You can drop a mountain on him and he won't get hurt (though he still feels the pain!).

Juryrigg: A manic red goblin that compulsively takes apart any machinery and rebuilds it into crazy weapons in seconds.

Upchuck: A tiny green alien with stretchy tongues and an infinite stomach. He eats metal, lasers, or bombs, digests them instantly, and spits them back out as explosive plasma!

►Deimos (Wiki Warrior)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
What do you honestly think of Brockton Bay and the people here?

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Brockton Bay has had a rough time. Gangs, corrupt leaders, and too much red tape stopping people from getting the help they need.

But there are amazing people here

This city has hope. And while I'm here, I'm going to make sure it stays safe.

►Brockton_Nurse (Verified Hospital Staff)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Can confirm Ben and Panacea have been absolute miracles in the trauma ward this past week! And the young lady he mentioned is resting comfortably and doing much better today!

►The_Herf_Heroes (Offworlder) (might as well be a cape) (otherworlder refugee) (Superhero)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Glad to hear it!

Alright guys, time's up for today! Amy is glaring at me from across the room and tapping her watch, telling me my break is over and we have patients waiting.

Thanks for the questions! Stay safe, and remember: It's Hero Time!



End of Page. 1, 2

 

[Thegameaholic]

A beat of heavy silence hung over the wind-swept roof of Brockton General Hospital. Amy sat frozen, her chest still heaving with the lingering aftershocks of her breakdown, her bloodshot eyes staring at Ben. The sheer magnitude of what he had just claimed—rescuing Bonesaw, curing her, giving her a clean slate in France—was almost too insane to process.

Then, a sudden, sly smirk tugged at the corner of Ben's mouth.

Amy blinked, her mind catching on a massive, glaring contradiction. Her eyes widened, and before her brain could put a filter on her tongue, the words burst out of her.

"Wait—what?! But what about Armsmaster's lie detector?!"

The moment the sentence left her mouth, Amy's eyes went wide as saucers. Her hands slammed over her mouth so fast her palms made a sharp slap against her lips. Her face flared up in a second wave of burning heat. She had just blabbed about the local hero team's high-tech tactical gear without thinking.

Ben didn't get mad. He just threw his head back and let out a rich, booming chuckle that echoed across the gravel.

"Lie detectors are easy to bypass if you know how to lie well," Ben snickered, leaning back against the brickwork and shaking his head. "And trust me, you get really good at it in my line of work. My left eyebrow used to twitch whenever I tried to lie to my parents or Gwen when I was ten. I had to break out of that habit real fast."

Amy slowly lowered her hands from her mouth, staring at him in utter disbelief. "You... you faked out Armsmaster? His suit measures micro-perspiration, heart rate, voice pitch, neural fluctuations—"

"And all of those things are tied to your stress response," Ben interrupted, flashing a confident grin. "If you genuinely believe what you're saying, or if you just don't give a damn about the guy asking the questions, your heart rate stays completely flat. Armsmaster's visor was reading what I wanted it to read."

Amy let out a hollow, exhausted laugh, burying her face in her knees for a second. "You are absurd. You're actually insane."

"I get that a lot," Ben said blithely.

"Okay, fine," Amy mumbled, lifting her head and tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. She looked at him with genuine curiosity, the raw pain in her chest settling into a quieter, lingering ache. "SOOOO why did you go after the Nine?"

She gestured out toward the Bay, where the smoke from the warehouse district had long since faded into the grey morning air. "You showed up out of nowhere. You obliterated the most dangerous villain group in the country in less than an hour, claimed the bounties, and upended the entire city's political landscape. Why?"

Ben took a deep, heavy breath. The lighthearted smirk vanished from his face, replaced by a dark, simmering anger that made his green eyes look cold as emerald glass. He crossed his arms over his chest, his knuckles whitening slightly inside his jacket pockets.

"Because this city is rotten," Ben said, his voice dropping an octave into something low and harsh. "And not just because of psycho serial killers walking the streets."

Amy leaned in slightly, listening intently.

"A few days ago," Ben began, "I came across a girl named Taylor Hebert."

He laid it all out for her. He told her about Winslow High, a public school left to rot by corrupt administrators and cowardly teachers who turned a blind eye to systematic psychological and physical torture. He told her about the lockers, the biohazardous waste, the months of brutal harassment, and the absolute failure of the system to protect an innocent kid.

And then, his tone turned venomous as he brought up Sophia Hess.

"She's Shadow Stalker," Ben growled, his jaw clenching. "A violent, sadistic vigilante who was given a slap on the wrist by the PRT, put in the Wards program to dodge prison, and allowed to go right back to school so she could keep tormenting a helpless girl. The PRT knew what she was. They just swept it under the rug because having another cape on their roster was more important than protecting a teenager from being broken."

Amy felt a cold pit drop into her stomach. She knew the Wards. She knew Shadow Stalker—or at least, she knew of her. She had seen the crossbow-wielding cape at public events, quiet and aggressive, always radiating a mean, prickly edge. To hear that the PRT was actively covering up a Ward committing criminal abuse made her blood run cold.

"I couldn't just stand by and let that slide," Ben continued, staring out over the rooftops of Brockton Bay. "I gathered evidence. Hard evidence. Video feeds, school records, witness statements, medical files. But I needed a lawyer who wasn't in the PRT's pocket. Someone who had the guts to take on the city council, the school board, and the PRT all at once."

He glanced sideways at Amy, his expression softening slightly. "So I hired your mom."

Amy's eyes went wide. "Carol?!"

"Yeah," Ben nodded. "Carol Dallon. I got to your, laid out the case, and handed her everything she needed to tear those hypocrites to pieces in court. It might just be the biggest case of her entire career. But filing a federal lawsuit against a government agency and a school district takes serious resources. Legal fees, security, protective custody for Taylor and her dad... none of that comes cheap. So, I needed cash."

He shrugged casually, though the fire in his eyes remained. "And wouldn't you know it? The Slaughterhouse Nine happened to wander into town with millions of dollars in total bounties on their heads. It was a win-win. I got the money to fund Taylor's legal war against the PRT, and Brockton Bay got rid of nine monster serial killers in one afternoon."

Amy sat in stunned silence, processing the sheer scale of what he had done. He hadn't just fought villains—he had calculated a complete overhaul of the city's corrupt power structure, funding a massive legal crusade against the local authorities while simultaneously wiping out the worst threat in America.

"Oh my god," Amy whispered, horror and awe twisting together in her gut.

Ben nodded angrily, his voice tight. "Yeah. The system here is broken, Amy. The people in charge care more about optics and cape counts than actually helping people. That's why I had to handle it myself."

He paused, letting out a sharp breath before looking back at her. He leaned in a bit, his expression shifting from anger to genuine, thoughtful concern.

"Which brings us back to you," Ben said softly.

Amy flinched, pulling her legs back toward her chest. "Me?"

"Your sister," Ben clarified. "And that emotional aura of hers."

Amy swallowed hard, the fresh panic returning to her chest. The realization he had dropped on her minutes ago—that Victoria's passive aura of awe and love had been slowly, continuously washing over her adopted brain for years, artificially warping her feelings—was still spinning out of control inside her head.

"I... I don't know what to do about that, Ben," Amy confessed, her voice cracking. "Even if you're right... even if my feelings for her were forced into my head by her power... how do I stop it? It's already in my brain. It's been happening for years. I can't just press a reset button on my own mind!"

"Maybe not a reset button," Ben said softly, a small, confident grin returning to his face as he tapped the dial of the Omnitrix. "But I might have a solution."

Amy blinked. "What?"

"Hold on a second," Ben said, standing up. "This one's a little stinky, so step back."

Before Amy could ask what he meant, Ben slammed his palm down onto the green hourglass emblem.

FLASH.

Emerald light flared across the roof, accompanied by the distinct sound of bubbling liquids and hissing gas. When the light cleared, standing in Ben's place was a bulky, humanoid figure encased in a dark green and purple hazmat-like suit. A thick, transparent chemical chamber formed his midsection, filled with a sloshing, glowing green mist that bubbled continuously. Metal nozzles and exhaust vents were mounted on his shoulders, wrists, and the back of his head, venting faint wisps of harmless steam into the cold morning air.

Amy recoiled slightly, taking a quick step back as the alien let out a deep, heavy exhale through his mechanical mouth-vent.

"Gutrot," the alien announced, his voice raspy, metallic, and deep, carrying a strange, muffled resonance from inside his helmet.

"What... what are you?" Amy asked, wide-eyed, her innate biological senses immediately tingling as her power registered the staggering, incomprehensible chemical factory residing inside the creature's body. To her cape-sense, this alien wasn't just a living organism; he was a walking, sentient periodic table capable of synthesizing virtually any gaseous compound, hormone, or complex chemical structure in existence instantaneously.

"I'm Gutrot," he repeated, tapping his glowing green stomach tank with a heavy, metal-clad fist. "I am a living chemical lab. I can manufacture any gas, pheromone, or compound known to science—and a few hundred thousands that aren't."

Gutrot turned his broad, vented head toward her, his green digital eyes narrowing thoughtfully.

"Your brain is suffering from a long-term, low-dose chemical and psychological compulsion triggered by your sister's aura," Gutrot explained, gesturing with one of his bulky hands. "It boosted your dopamine, oxytocin, and neural reward pathways whenever you were near her, conditioning your mind over years to process that artificial 'awe' as romantic or obsessive affection."

Amy lowered her head, shame burning in her chest. "Yeah. You don't have to spell it out..."

"I'm not shaming you, Amy," Gutrot said calmly, his vents letting out a gentle hiss of sweet-smelling purple vapor that dissipated into the ocean breeze. "I'm diagnosing you. And because it's a chemical and neurological imbalance, I can fix it."

Amy snapped her head up. "You can?!"

"Yep," Gutrot rasped. "I'm currently synthesizing a specialized neuro-inhibitory gas. It targets the specific neural pathways responsible for obsessive compulsion and hyper-fixated affection, while temporarily suppressing the brain's over-production of unearned dopamine. In plain English? It will lower your artificial lust and compulsive attraction to Victoria down to zero, while leaving your normal, genuine family affection completely intact."

Amy stared at him, her jaw agape. "A chemical that can selectively target artificial emotional conditioning?"

"Science is a wonderful thing," Gutrot chuckled, his stomach chamber swirling with a bright, iridescent pink-and-blue mist. "All you need is a standard medical inhaler or a small pressurized canister. Bring it to me, I'll fill it up with a concentrated dose, and whenever you feel that unnatural tug in your chest—whenever her aura starts pressing on your brain—you just take a small puff. It'll neutralize the chemical signal instantly."

A wave of profound, unbelievable relief washed over Amy. For two years, she had felt like a prisoner inside her own skin, trapped in a rotting maze of unwanted desires that she couldn't escape. The idea that there was a simple, non-invasive, purely physiological remedy—a counter-agent to the passive mental fog—felt like being handed the key to her own cage.

"You... you really think that will work?" she asked, her voice trembling with fragile hope.

"I know it will," Gutrot said confidently. "Trust me, I have experience with this kind of stuff."

Amy raised an eyebrow, a faint smirk finally returning to her tired face. "Experience with emotional pheromones?"

Gutrot's shoulder vents released a sheepish puff of gray smoke, his bulky shoulders slouching slightly.

"Okay, funny story," Gutrot admitted, his raspy voice laced with awkward humor. "Back home... well, back in my universe, there was this whole mess in a place called the Null Void. Me, my cousin Gwen, my friends Helen,Alan, Manny, Argit, and Rook were trapped in this massive, desolate dimension dealing with a group called the Rooters."

Amy listened, utterly fascinated despite herself. "The Null Void? Rooters?"

"Yeah, bad guys, crazy ops, long story," Gutrot waved a heavy hand. "Anyway, while we were trying to navigate the terrain, a group of Way Bads showed up."

"What's a Way Bad?"

"Imagine a fifty-foot-tall, hyper-aggressive cosmic mutant monster that can shoot cosmic rays out of its arms," Gutrot said flatly. "Now imagine three of them chasing you across a barren wasteland."

Amy's eyes widened. "Fifty feet tall?!"

"At least," Gutrot nodded. "We were completely outgunned. So, I transformed into Gutrot, analyzed the biology of one of the female Way Bads, and quickly synthesized a hyper-potent, species-specific love pheromone gas."

Amy let out a choked sound that was half-laugh, half-gasp. "You didn't."

"I totally did," Gutrot chuckled, his chest chamber bubbling merrily. "I gassed the female Way Bad. It made her instantly, wildly lustful... toward ME."

Amy buried her face in her hands, snort-laughing out loud for the first time in months. "Oh my god! You made a giant cosmic monster fall in love with you?!"

"Hey, it worked!" Gutrot defended himself, his vents whistling indignantly. "She got so distracted getting in the way of the other Way Bads to protect me! It bought us enough time to escape!"

Amy laughed until her stomach hurt, the heavy dark clouds that had weighed down her soul for years finally burning away under the bright morning sun. For the first time since her trigger event, she felt light. She felt like she could breathe.

"So yeah," Gutrot said, his voice softening into a gentle, reassuring tone. "If I can manipulate the emotions of a fifty-foot cosmic warlord in the middle of an interdimensional wasteland, I can definitely handle a little passive aura conditioning. Get an inhaler, Amy. I'll hook you up."

Amy wiped a tear of genuine amusement from her eye, looking up at the bulky green alien with profound gratitude. "Thank you, Ben. Seriously... thank you."

Gutrot reached down, tapping the Omnitrix emblem on his collarbone.

FLASH.

The green light flashed again, and Ben was standing back on the rooftop in his black-and-green jacket, flashing her a warm, easy smile. "Anytime, Ames. That's what friends are for."

---

Elsewhere in Brockton Bay, deep beneath an unremarkable commercial block in a fortified, subterranean complex, Thomas Calvert sat alone in his darkened office.

To the world, he was a high-ranking PRT officer. To the criminal underworld, he was Coil—the ruthless, calculating mastermind who never lost a game.

His power was his crowning achievement. Coil possessed the unique ability to split his perception of reality into two distinct, fully realized timelines in his own mind. He could live both simultaneously, testing risky actions, gathering intelligence, or carrying out brutal interrogations in one branch while remaining perfectly safe and respectable in the other. Once he reached a desired outcome, he simply collapsed the unwanted timeline, making his preferred choice the sole, undisputed reality. He was a man who played chess with two boards, discarding whichever board held a losing position.

Except today, Thomas Calvert was staring at his hands, trembling with a cold, sickly dread.

An hour ago, when Ben Tennyson had engaged the Slaughterhouse Nine at the harbor warehouse, Coil had activated his power. In Timeline A, he chose to sit back, monitoring security feeds and radio transmissions while gathering data on the unknown cape. In Timeline B, Coil decided to take an aggressive gamble: he ordered an elite squad of his heavily armed mercenaries to position themselves around the warehouse, planning to ambush Tennyson the second the fight concluded while the boy was presumably exhausted.

It should have been a standard tactical play.

Instead, the moment Coil initiated the branch in Timeline B, his own power had turned into a nightmare.

The dual perception in his mind didn't smoothly split as it always did. The instant his mental focus reached out to process the second reality involving Ben Tennyson, a brutal, paralyzing surge of agony tore through Coil's brain. It felt as though an unimaginable weight was pressing down on his skull, flooding his consciousness with blinding white static and a sickening sense of cosmic vertigo.

His secondary perception didn't just fail; it shattered under immense psychological strain. In his physical seat in Timeline A, Coil gasped, clutching his head as blood spurted from his nose, painting his desk red.

Panicked, Coil forced his mind to abandon Timeline B, collapsing the branch before the overwhelming mental feedback could cause permanent neurological damage.

Now, sitting safely in his sole remaining reality, Coil wiped the dried blood from beneath his nose with a silk handkerchief. His breathing was shallow, his heart hammering against his ribs.

His power couldn't handle Ben Tennyson.

When Coil tried to simulate or split realities involving the boy, his mental foresight hit an impassable wall—a complete breakdown of his ability to calculate or predict outcomes. For the first time since gaining his power, Coil was utterly blind. He couldn't test actions against Tennyson. He couldn't predict what Tennyson would do next. He couldn't create a safety net.

A light chimed on his desk console. Coil straightened his posture, pulling his dark suit jacket tight and pressing the intercom button, keeping his voice carefully smooth despite the cold sweat dripping down his neck.

"Speak," Coil commanded.

"Sir," his mercenary captain's voice came through the speaker. "We've confirmed Tennyson's current location on the roof of Brockton General Hospital alongside Panacea. Should we deploy the Travelers or the Undersiders to tail him and gather long-range intelligence?"

Coil stared at the blank monitor screen, the memory of that agonizing mental backlash still throbbing behind his eyes like a hot iron needle.

"No," Coil whispered softly, his voice tight with absolute conviction. "Do not send anyone. Do not engage. Pull all field assets back three miles from his location immediately."

"Sir?" the captain sounded surprised. "Are we giving up on recruiting him?"

"We are avoiding complete destruction," Coil growled quietly, his gloved hand gripping the edge of his desk. "If we press him, if we provoke him, we run the risk of drawing an uncontrollable variable straight to our doorstep. We do nothing. We watch from afar... and we pray he never turns his attention toward us."

---

Amy Suddenly got up stretched and dusted herself off "Well we should get going you need to meet Carol and this is the first time ever i get to leave early" she said with some excitement yet laced with dread

Ben frowned slightly at the tone in her voice when she said her mother's name, but he didn't press it just yet. "Right. Let's get moving. You look like you're about two seconds away from passing out."

The ride across Brockton Bay was quiet. They took a standard bus toward the suburban district where the Pelham and Dallon families lived.

It was a stark contrast to the rest of the city. While the Boardwalk was battered and the Docks were choked with rusted shipping containers and Empire graffiti, the neighborhood New Wave called home looked clean, manicured, and uncomfortably peaceful.

When they walked up the paved driveway toward the Dallons' house, Ben felt an immediate shift in Amy's posture. Her hands slid deep into her hoodie pockets. Her jaw tightened, and her stride slowed down, every step forward looking like a chore.

"You okay?" Ben asked quietly, glancing sideways at her.

"Fine," Amy said clippedly. "Just... brace yourself."

Ben unlocked the front door—Amy had handed him her key—and stepped inside. The house was spotless, bathed in warm lighting, but the atmosphere inside felt colder than the January air outside.

Sitting at the dining table, surrounded by stacks of legal briefs, printed affidavits, and a glowing laptop, was Carol Dallon.

Brandish looked up the moment the front door closed. Her sharp, analytical eyes swept over Ben first, lingering on the glowing hourglass symbol on his jacket, before locking onto her daughter.

Her brow furrowed immediately. She checked her wristwatch, her expression hardening into something cold and thoroughly unpleased.

"Amy," Carol said, her voice clipped, stripped of any warmth. "It's barely six o'clock. Why are you home? The PRT liaison sent an update twenty minutes ago saying the ER waiting room at Brockton General still had a three-hour backlog of trauma patients."

Amy flinched, instinctively pulling her chin down into her collar. "I... the critical cases were done, Carol. I was—"

"You were needed," Carol interrupted, standing up from the table. Her hands rested flat against her legal files. "You have a gift, Amy. People in this city are suffering, and every hour you spend sitting at home is an hour someone else spends in pain. You know what your responsibilities are. You can't just walk out of the hospital whenever you feel tired."

Ben watched the exchange, his eyes narrowing. He had grown up around a loving family—Grandpa Max, Gwen, his parents—where looking out for each other was second nature. Seeing a mother talk to her sixteen-year-old daughter like a drill sergeant addressing an unsatisfactory grunt made his stomach turn.

Before Amy could stutter out an apology, Ben took a firm step forward, placing himself slightly in front of her.

"She didn't walk out," Ben said, his voice calm, even, and entirely devoid of the deference Carol seemed to expect. "I brought her home."

Carol turned her sharp glare to Ben, her eyes narrowing. "Mr. Tennyson. This is a family matter, and Amy's duties at the hospital are—"

"Amy was about to pass out on a breakroom table," Ben cut in smoothly, reaching into his pocket and pulling out an envelope stuffed with crisp bills. "And before we get into a lecture on 'duty,' here's the money for the legal trial expenses and retainer fees you asked about for Taylor's paperwork."

He laid the envelope flat on the table, sliding it across the wood toward Carol. It was bounty money from the Slaughterhouse 9 kill list

Carol looked at the envelope, momentarily thrown off by the sudden financial transaction, before her gaze snapped back to Ben. "That doesn't change the fact that Brockton General relies on her power—"

"And that's the problem," Ben said, crossing his arms. "You're relying on a sixteen-year-old girl to act as a one-person medical system for an entire city. She's human, Carol. She needs sleep, food, and a break. So I stepped in and took off the load for the afternoon so she wouldn't collapse on a hospital floor."

Carol froze. She looked between Ben's casual, unbothered stance and Amy's exhausted, quiet figure.

"You took off the load?" Carol repeated, a flicker of genuine shock cracking through her strict demeanor. "What are you talking about? You... you can heal?"

"Not directly," Ben clarified, tapping the face of the Omnitrix on his wrist. "I don't have a form that manipulates biological tissue line-by-line like Amy does. But I have forms that get the job done."

Carol stared at him, her legal mind clearly trying to recalibrate. "Explain."

"If someone has severe internal bleeding, cellular damage, or broken bones, I can transform into Swampfire," Ben explained calmly. "Methanosapien biology lets me generate concentrated, restorative bio-pollen. It accelerates natural cellular regeneration and resets damaged tissue in seconds. And if a injury is too complex for biological growth? I can turn into Clockwork."

Carol's eyes widened slightly. "Clockwork?"

"Chronosapien," Ben said smoothly. "Manipulates temporal fields. I can localize a time-reversal bubble around a specific injury or fractured bone and rewind the physical state of the tissue to five minutes before the accident ever happened. No surgery, no scarring, no strain."

Silence settled over the living room. Carol looked at Ben as if re-evaluating everything she had read about him in the PRT threat assessments.

A cape who could manipulate time and plant-based cellular restoration... without the mental strain, without the strict biological touch-limitations that governed Panacea's power.

Amy shifted behind him, looking up at Ben with a mixture of quiet gratitude and awe. She hadn't seen Swampfire in action yet at the hospital—she had only witnessed Clockwork's time manipulation earlier that afternoon—but hearing him explain it so matter-of-factly made her realize just how vast the gap was between human powers and intergalactic biology.



Ben looked at Carol's stunned expression, then back at Amy's tired face. A thought began to take root in his mind—one that had been simmering ever since he stepped foot into Brockton General's overcrowded wards.

Why are we treating human medicine like it has to rely on a single teenager's power?

"You know," Ben said aloud, rubbing the back of his neck as his mind began to race, "the more I think about it, relying on alien transformations to patch up hospital wards one patient at a time is still just putting a band-aid on a broken system."

Carol frowned, recovering her composure. "What are you getting at?"

"The Omnitrix isn't just about big combat forms like Humungousaur or speedsters like XLR8," Ben said, his eyes lighting up with the sudden realization. "I have species in this watch that make the smartest human Tinkers on this planet look like kids playing with wooden blocks."

He tapped the dial gently.

"If I turn into Grey Matter—a Galvan—or Brainstorm—a Cerebrocrustacean—I don't just get smart. My brain capacity expands by a factor of thousands. I could sit down for three hours, draft full engineering schematics for automated, mass-producible medical pods, and build regenerative nanite arrays."

Amy blinked, looking up in shock. "Regenerative... nanites?"

"Yeah!" Ben turned to her, a genuine, warm smile breaking across his face. "Nanites programmed with bio-reconstructive algorithms. We could build medical chambers for Brockton General that automatically heal crushed limbs, stitch arterial bleeding, and purge toxins instantly. Anyone could operate them. Standard doctors, nurses, paramedics."

He looked back at Carol, his tone dropping into something firm and resolute.

"We could mass-produce them. Supply every hospital in the state. And then Amy wouldn't have to carry the weight of an entire city on her shoulders every single day just to keep people alive."

Amy stared at Ben, her breath catching in her throat. For months—years, even—she had felt like an atlas holding up the sky, dragged down by the endless, crushing obligation to heal everyone who suffered, knowing that if she stopped for even a moment, people died.

And here was a boy from another universe, casually suggesting that he could turn into a two-foot-tall grey alien, invent a technological solution to her lifelong curse, and give her her life back.

Carol opened her mouth, clearly searching for a legal, tactical, or New Wave policy argument to counter him, but for the first time since Ben had met her, Brandish was completely speechless.

"Think about it," Ben said softly, giving Amy an encouraging nod. "I'm gonna head back to Taylor. Amy, get some sleep. You've earned it."

Without waiting for Carol to process the conversation, Ben turned around, opened the front door, and stepped out into the cool night air, leaving the Dallon household in a stunned, silent quiet.

---

The night air outside Brockton General was crisp, carrying the faint, salty tang of the bay.

Ben walked up the front steps of the hospital, slipping his hands into his jacket pockets. As the automatic glass doors slid open with a soft hiss, he couldn't help but exhale a long breath.

It felt like a lifetime ago, but it had barely been twenty-four hours since he had last stood in this building.

In less than a single day, he had snuck out into the cold streets to investigate Winslow High, dug through dusty filing cabinets and locked administrative offices to uncover the real reason Taylor had been shoved into that biohazard-filled locker, taken the evidence straight to Carol Dallon to set up a ironclad legal case, intercepted and wiped out the entire Slaughterhouse Nine before they could touch a single innocent citizen, traded verbal barbs with the PRT, spent hours alongside Panacea patching up trauma patients, and hosted a viral thread on PHO.

And through all of it—underneath the cosmic battles, the bureaucracy, and the public drama—there was the underlying reality he couldn't ignore.

The biological link. The subtle, microscopic tether flickering between his wrist and the girl lying up on the fourth floor.

When the Omnitrix had calibrated itself upon arriving in this dimension, its bio-feedback sensors had done something entirely unprecedented. It had bonded its core frequency to Taylor Hebert.

Ben made his way down the quiet, dimly lit hospital corridor, his sneakers squeaking softly against the polished floorboards. He stopped in front of Room 412. Through the small rectangular window in the heavy door, he could see the soft, amber glow of a bedside lamp.

He pushed the door open quietly.

The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and clean linen. Taylor was sitting up in the hospital bed, propped up against a stack of white pillows. She looked small in the oversized hospital gown, her dark curly hair framing a pale, drawn face. Her laptop was resting on her lap, turned off.

Beside her bed, sitting in a squeaky vinyl armchair with a half-empty paper cup of lukewarm hospital coffee in his hand, was Danny Hebert.

Danny looked like he hadn't slept in a week. His clothes were rumpled, his wire-rimmed glasses slipped slightly down his nose, and deep shadow lines etched the skin beneath his eyes. But the moment the door creaked open, his head snapped up.

"Ben," Danny breathed, a sudden wave of genuine relief washing over his tired features. He set the coffee down on the nightstand and stood up. "Where have you—we were starting to worry. The nurses said you were downstairs in the trauma ward for hours, and then..."

"Hey, Mr. Hebert," Ben said softly, stepping fully into the room and closing the door behind him. "Sorry for disappearing on you guys. It's been... kind of a wild twenty-four hours."

"You don't need to apologize," Danny said quickly, shaking his head. "Carol Dallon called my cell an hour ago. She told me you personally delivered the retainer money for the legal filings against the school board and the city. Ben, I... I don't even know how to begin thanking you for—"

"Don't worry about it," Ben interrupted with a gentle wave of his hand. "Taylor deserves justice, and the people responsible for letting that happen need to be held accountable. Simple as that."

Ben looked past Danny, meeting Taylor's eyes.

She was staring at him. Her dark eyes were sharp, searching his face, tracking every movement. There was a quiet, brittle tension in her shoulders—the look of someone who was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Ben turned back to Danny, offering a polite, respectful nod.

"Mr. Hebert... do you mind if I talk to Taylor alone for a minute?"

Danny blinked, caught off guard by the request. He looked between Ben's unusually serious expression and his daughter's tense posture. For a second, a flicker of parental instinct seemed to hesitate, but then he saw the steady, quiet gravity in Ben's eyes—the look of an intergalactic officer, not just a teenager.

"Of course," Danny said quietly. He reached over, patted Taylor's arm gently, and picked up his paper cup. "I'm going to head down to the lobby, stretch my legs, and try to find a cup of coffee that doesn't taste like battery acid. Take all the time you need."

Danny walked past Ben, giving his shoulder a firm, grateful squeeze before stepping out into the hallway. The heavy wooden door clicked shut behind him, sealing the room in total silence.

The only sound left was the rhythmic, soft beep of the heart monitor attached to Taylor's finger.

Ben didn't sit in the armchair. He walked slowly over to the edge of the bed, stopping right beside the frame.

The Omnitrix on his wrist gave a faint, almost imperceptible green pulse—a rhythmic resonance vibrating in sync with the bio-electric field of the girl in the bed.

Taylor swallowed hard, her hands pulling the hospital blanket tighter around her chest. The silence between them stretched, thick and suffocating, until she couldn't take it anymore.

"Ben..." her voice was barely above a whisper, rough and uncertain. "What... what did you do today?"

Ben looked down at her. His green eyes held no judgment, no anger—only an unyielding, heavy clarity.

"I went to Winslow, Taylor," Ben said softly.

He didn't yell. He didn't raise his voice. He just stood there, looking directly into her eyes.

"I went through the school. I pulled the administrative records, I talked to the people who knew, and I found out why you were really in that locker. Emma. Sophia. Madison. The months of harassment. The cover-ups."

Ben took a slight breath, his tone dropping into something absolute.

"I know everything."

Taylor's breath hitched in her throat.

All the color drained instantly from her face, leaving her skin as stark and ghostly white as the hospital sheets beneath her.

---

Taylor's POV:

The word hung in the sterile air of Room 412, heavy as lead, suffocating as a locked steel door.

I know everything.

The world seemed to lose its color, draining into shades of dull, suffocating gray. My breath caught in my throat, a hard, sharp lump forming instantly in my chest.

This was it.

The thought screamed through my mind with the volume of a siren. This was the moment.

He knew. He had looked into the dark, filthy underbelly of my life. He had seen the months of endless humiliation, the ruined clothes, the stolen assignments, the whispered taunts in the hallway, the rotting, biohazardous nightmare of that locker. He knew about Emma. He knew about Sophia. He knew that while he was across the universe fighting warlords, gods, and alien conquerors, I was a pathetic, defenseless girl who let three teenagers ruin her life without ever firing a single shot back.

I was exposed. Stripped raw.

A guy who could command armies of aliens, who could rewrite time and shatter metal with his bare hands, now knew the absolute truth: Taylor Hebert was a loser. A helpless, broken, weak little girl who couldn't even defend herself in a high school hallway.

My stomach churned into a tight knot. I braced myself for the reaction. I knew how it went. I had played out this exact scene in my head a thousand times over the last year.

First would come the pity—that suffocating, patronizing look that made me want to curl into a ball and vanish. Then would come the disgust, the quiet realization that I was too much baggage, too broken, too pathetic to waste time on. And finally, the walk to the door. He would step out into the hallway, leave Brockton Bay, and never speak to me again.

I lowered my head, my dark curls falling forward like a curtain to hide the hot, stinging tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. I gripped the coarse hospital blanket until my knuckles turned white.

Just say it, I wanted to scream at him. Just tell me I'm weak and walk away.

The mattress dipped.

I flinched, pulling back instinctively, expecting a cold goodbye or a stiff, awkward retreat.

Instead, Ben sat down on the edge of the bed right beside me.

He didn't pull away. He didn't look disgusted.

When I forced myself to look up through the veil of my hair, I didn't see pity in his bright green eyes. I saw a quiet, roaring fire—a fierce, protective anger that wasn't directed at me, but for me.

Slowly, carefully, Ben reached out. His hand was warm, calloused, and steady as he gently rested it over my trembling, white-knuckled fingers on the blanket.

The Omnitrix on his wrist pulsed—a soft, soothing green hum that vibrated gently through the air, sending a strange, comforting warmth straight through my arm and settling right in the center of my chest. My heart rate monitor, which had been wildly spiking, slowly began to rhythmically settle.

"Taylor," Ben said, his voice dropping into a low, quiet register that was softer than anything I had heard from him before. "I'm not going anywhere."

I blinked, my throat so tight I could barely breathe. "You... you aren't?"

"No," he said firmly, shaking his head. "I spent the last few hours looking at what those girls did to you. I read the logs, I looked at the school's cover-ups, I saw what they let happen. And do you know what I saw?"

He squeezed my hand gently.

"I didn't see a girl who was weak, Taylor. I saw someone who endured months of hell completely alone, without any support, without anyone fighting in her corner, and still didn't let them break her spirit. You didn't give up. You survived."

His eyes held mine with an intensity that made the rest of the cold, sterile hospital room melt into background noise.

"What happened to you wasn't your fault," Ben said, every word hitting me like a physical force. "You weren't weak. They were cruel, coward bullies hiding behind authority figures who turned a blind eye. But it ends now. Carol Dallon is filing the civil lawsuits and criminal charges tomorrow. They are never going to hurt you again. I'm going to make sure of it."

I sat there, frozen, staring at him.

The rejection didn't come. The judgment didn't come. He wasn't leaving. He was sitting on my hospital bed, holding my hand, promising to stand between me and the nightmare that had tormented me for over a year.

Oh.

A tear finally escaped, trailing down my cheek, but the suffocating iron band around my chest suddenly snapped open. A wave of warmth swept over me so fast it made me feel dizzy.

I hadn't had a friend in so very long.

When Emma had ripped my world apart, she had taken the concept of trust and burned it to ash. For a year, I had convinced myself that isolation was the only safe option—that if I never let anyone in, no one could ever betray me again. I had built walls of ice and spite around my heart, waiting for the world to crush me.

And then Ben Tennyson had crashed into my life like a green comet, smashed through every single wall I had built, and handed me a blanket.

I looked at his face—at the messy brown hair framing his features, the earnest, determined curve of his jaw, the gentle warmth in his green eyes, and the quiet confidence radiating off him. My hand felt tiny beneath his, engulfed by a heat that seemed to banish every bit of cold I had carried since January third.

My chest fluttered. A strange, unfamiliar warmth blossomed behind my ribs, fluttering up into my throat like butterflies. My face felt suddenly, undeniably hot.

Was this what a relief felt like?

No. It was deeper than that. Sweeter. Terrifying, yet impossibly comforting.

Was this... what a crush felt like?

"Taylor?" Ben asked softly, his brow furrowing with gentle concern as he saw my red face. "Are you okay? Do you need me to call the nurse?"

"No," I whispered quickly, my voice cracking slightly. I tightened my grip on his hand, terrified that if I let go, I would wake up from a dream. "No... don't call anyone. Just... please stay."

Ben smiled—a small, bright, blindingly genuine smile that made my stomach do a dizzying somersault.

"I'm staying," he said softly. "As long as you need me."

---

In the penthouse suite of the Medhall Building, the air was thick with the scent of expensive dark roast coffee, polished mahogany, and an overriding, suffocating arrogance.

Max Anders—known to the underworld and the select inner circle of the city's largest white supremacist empire as Kaiser—sat behind a desk carved from imported European oak. His tailored suit was immaculate, his hair combed back with mathematical precision. But beneath the polished corporate exterior, his eyes burned with a dark, furious heat.

Framed on his monitor screen was the pinned thread on Parahuman Online.

The_Herf_Heroes (Verified Independent Cape - BEN TENNYSON) ...I see ignorant toddlers making the exact same stupid mistake a dying alien empire made light-years away. And as for Kaiser? Tell him to pick a spot. I'll show up as Four Arms, snap his metal blades like twigs, and toss him straight into the bay.

Click to shrink...

Below it, thousands of comments mocked Empire 88. Memes, roasts, and public laughter had flooded the boards. The delicate balance of fear that Kaiser had spent years cultivating across Brockton Bay was being eroded by a sixteen-year-old alien-shifting interloper.

"He thinks himself a god," Kaiser said, his voice a smooth, dangerous baritone that filled the silent office.

Standing in a semi-circle across the Persian rug were eight of the Empire's most formidable capes.

There was Victor, sharp-suited and cold-eyed, his stolen mastery of a hundred disciplines radiating in his quiet, calculated posture. Beside him stood Othala, her blonde hair neatly styled, her hands glowing with subtle, latent energy ready to grant invulnerability, regeneration, or pyrokinesis at a moment's notice.

Behind them stood the heavy hitters: Stormtiger, his arms crossed, the compressed air around his hands humming like a muted turbine; Cricket, her ears twitching incessantly, her body coiled like a striking viper; Fenja and Menja, the towering twin Valkyries, six feet tall even in their unpowered states, looking down with cold disdain; Rune, the young telekinetic, idly hovering a heavy marble paperweight an inch above her palm; and Alabaster, his porcelain-white skin and pale hair making him look like an alabaster statue carved to perfection, shifting restlessly.

"The public is watching," Victor noted, adjusting his tie. "His disrespect is viral, Max. If we allow an unregistered, off-world entity to publicly mock the Chosen without a swift, lethal response, our control over the East Side weakens. The minor gangs will grow bold. The Merchants will push their borders."

"He was last spotted at Brockton General Hospital," Stormtiger growled, his voice carrying the deep rumble of thunder. "Rumor says he's been playing doctor alongside the Dallon girl. Defending the place."

Kaiser leaned forward, resting his interlaced fingers on the oak desk.

"Then we strike where he feels comfortable," Kaiser declared smoothly. "Take the team. Go to Brockton General. I don't want a negotiation. I don't want a speech. I want him brought down in front of the cameras. Show the city what happens when an alien lover tries to lecture the superior race. Remind Brockton Bay who owns these streets."

Cricket grinned, exposing sharp teeth. "And the hospital staff? The patients?"

"If they stand between you and the target," Kaiser said, turning back to his monitor, "they are collateral damage. Teach them all a lesson."

---

The clock on the wall of Room 412 read 1:15 AM.

Inside the quiet room, the steady, rhythmic beep... beep... beep of the heart monitor provided a peaceful backdrop. Taylor was fast asleep, her breathing deep and even, the tension that had gripped her for months finally melting away under the warm hospital blankets. Danny was asleep in the vinyl armchair nearby, snoring softly with his glasses resting on the nightstand.

Ben sat on the wide windowsill, his back resting against the cold glass, looking out over the sleeping city.

The Omnitrix on his left wrist hummed with a quiet, soothing green ambient light. Ever since he had sit down with Taylor earlier, the biological sync between the watch and her unique neurological matrix had stabilized. The faint green pulse acted like a soft shield, filtering out the constant ambient stress signals in the room.

Suddenly, the Omnitrix's dial flashed bright yellow, a high-pitched sonar chirp chiming softly in Ben's ear.

WARNING: MULTIPLE HIGH-MASS THREAT SIGNALS APPROACHING HOSPITAL PERIMETER. UNORGANIZED COMBAT FORMATION DETECTED.

Ben's eyes snapped open. The casual, relaxed posture vanished instantly, replaced by the sharp, razor-focused instincts of a Plumber officer who had fought through war zones across the Milky Way.

He looked down at the street below.

Creeping through the fog-shrouded parking lot of Brockton General were eight figures.

Even from the fourth floor, Ben recognized them immediately from the PRT database files he had browsed earlier. The iron crosses, the tactical gear, the arrogant, predatory posture.

Fenja and Menja were already beginning to expand, their physical frames swelling from baseline human height into towering fifteen-foot giants, their heavy boots cracking the asphalt of the ambulance bay. Rune was raising her hands, lifting three parked emergency supply vans into the air, hovering them like massive throwing bricks. Stormtiger was flexing his fists, compressing the surrounding atmospheric pressure into localized sonic shockwaves.

They weren't just coming for him. They were setting up a perimeter to tear the entire wing of the hospital down.

Ben glanced back at Taylor's sleeping face, then at Danny.

A cold, hard rage settled deep into his chest. It wasn't the fiery anger he felt when fighting bumbling street thieves or arrogant warlords like Vilgax. It was a dark, disgusted hatred for predators who targeted the weak, the sick, and the defenseless to prove a point.

They came to a hospital, Ben thought, stepping silently off the windowsill and heading toward the door. To make a point about 'purity.'

He paused at the door, glancing at his watch.

"Hey, watch," Ben whispered to the Omnitrix. "Will the local authorities get upset if I take out a couple of literal fascists tonight?"

The Omnitrix beeped twice, a low-toned mechanical response that sounded suspiciously like a shrug.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Ben muttered, his eyes narrowing into slits. "Ah well. They picked the wrong hospital."

Outside, the air in the ambulance bay dropped thirty degrees in less than five seconds.

Stormtiger paused, wiping a sudden coat of frost off his tactical visor. "What the hell? Did the weather report say anything about a cold front?"

"Look!" Rune yelled, pointing up at the night sky.

Floating silently down from the fourth-floor roof was a creature straight out of a nightmare.

It was a tall, sleek, moth-like humanoid covered in dark blue and black velvety skin. Long, folded wing-casings wrapped around its chest like a ragged, haunting cloak. Two massive, glowing, Toxi Green eyes burned through the dark, and its breath billowed out in thick, frozen clouds of absolute-zero vapor.

"There he is!" Menja roared, her voice booming like a cannon as she grew to twenty feet tall, raising a massive iron-spiked club. "Shatter him!"

"Wait!" Victor commanded, his sharp eyes analyzing Big Chill's floating posture. He turned to Othala. "Othala, grant me invulnerability and grant Stormtiger enhanced physical strength! Now!"

Othala reached out, her hands glowing with bright golden energy. "I'm on it—"

She never finished the sentence.

Ben knew from his PRT research that in any squad-based tactical encounter, you kill the support first. Victor was the tactical brain, capable of stealing combat mastery; Othala was the engine that made the rest of the team invincible.

Before Othala could touch Victor's arm, Big Chill's wings unfolded with a sound like cracking glacier ice.

He vanished.

In less than a microsecond, Big Chill drifted straight through the asphalt, reappearing directly inside the physical space occupied by Victor and Othala.

"What—" Victor gasped, feeling an sudden, agonizing, incomprehensible drop in his core body temperature.

Big Chill didn't throw a punch. He didn't fire a beam. He simply phased his arms directly through Victor's and Othala's chests, expanding his icy aura straight into their internal organs.

CRACK.

It was a quiet, horrifying sound. The moisture inside Victor's and Othala's bloodstreams, lungs, hearts, and brain tissue instantly froze solid at absolute zero. The internal cellular structure of both capes collapsed into microscopic ice crystals from the inside out.

Big Chill phased back out, floating three feet above the ground.

Behind him, Victor and Othala stood completely frozen in place, their skin turned a translucent, ghostly blue. Their eyes were wide, glassy, and lifeless. A second later, both of them tipped over backward, hitting the asphalt with the hard, hollow clink of frozen statues, shattering into hundreds of crystalline fragments.

Instantaneous, silent elimination.

"VICTOR! OTHALA!" Stormtiger screamed in horror, backing up a step as the cold realization hit him.

The two most vital members of their strike force had been wiped out in under three seconds without the alien even landing a single physical hit.

"KILL HIM!" Fenja shrieked, swinging her giant iron spear downward with enough force to crush an armored tank.

The massive spear slammed into the asphalt right where Big Chill was hovering—and passed right through his ghostly body as if he were made of smoke.

Big Chill drifted upward, unfolding his wings, his chilling, rasping voice echoing through the frozen parking lot like a winter wind howling through a graveyard.

"My turn," Big Chill rasped.

He opened his jaws and blew a continuous, roaring torrent of Freezing Necro-Frigid Vapor.

The arctic blast engulfed Fenja and Menja instantly. The sheer physical density of the frost hit the twenty-foot giants like a flash flood of liquid nitrogen. Their towering legs locked up; the moisture in their massive muscles froze solid mid-stride. Within seconds, both giant Valkyries were encased in two fifty-foot-tall blocks of solid, unbreakable ice, their eyes wide with frozen terror.

Rune screamed, panicking as she hurled the three hovered emergency vans straight at the floating moth-alien.

Big Chill folded his wings and phased straight through all three vehicles as they exploded harmlessly against the concrete behind him. He reappeared directly in front of Rune's face, his glowing green eyes staring down into her soul.

The sheer, soul-crushing cold radiating off him made Rune drop to her knees, her lungs seizing up as she gasped for warm air that no longer existed.

"You brought war to a place of healing," Big Chill whispered, his voice vibrating with absolute zero energy. "You brought terror to children."

He raised a single, icy claw and flicked her forehead. The shock of frost knocked Rune out instantly, sending her crumpled body sliding across the ice-slicked ground, unconscious but breathing.

Stormtiger and Cricket tried to fire a combined sonic and compressed-air blast, but Big Chill didn't even bother dodging. He phased straight through the shockwave, glided over them, and blew a soft, gentle mist of ice over their faces. Their lungs filled with frost, knocking them out cold in seconds as hypothermia claimed their consciousness.

In less than two minutes, six of the Empire's deadly strike team were dead, frozen, or incapacitated.

Only one remained.

Alabaster stood alone in the center of the frozen carnage.

His white skin was glowing with a strange, rapid bio-luminescence. Every time the ambient cold tried to freeze his skin or stop his heart, his power—his absolute physical reset—triggered. His body constantly reverted back to its baseline state, purging the frost, resetting his tissue, and repairing any cellular damage in real-time.

"You can't kill me!" Alabaster yelled, his voice laced with manic, desperate bravado as he pulled a pair of heavy tactical knives. "No matter what you do, no matter how cold you make it, I COME BACK PERFECT! I AM THE DEFINITION OF SUPERIOR!"

Big Chill floated silently above him, his moth-wings fluttering slowly.

He analyzed the cape.

Resets physical damage, Ben thought. Standard regeneration bypass wouldn't work. Severe trauma just gets rolled back to the original save state.

To permanently stop him without using Ghostfreak to obliterate his consciousness or using high-grade physical violence that would destroy the parking lot... I need to disconnect the engine.

Big Chill folded his wings around himself and folded into the ground, vanishing into the shadow beneath Alabaster's boots.

"Where are you?!" Alabaster screamed, spinning around, slashing his knives at the air. "Face me, alien freak!"

From directly behind him, a shadowy, icy hand reached out from the ether—not touching Alabaster's skin, but phasing straight through his neck and into the base of his skull.

Alabaster froze, his eyes widening in complete, paralyzed shock.

He didn't feel pain. He didn't feel cold. He felt a strange, terrifying sensation—like intangible fingers reaching directly into the deepest, most hidden physical architecture of his brain.

Inside the human brain, parahumans possessed two unique, microscopic biological growths gifted by their alien Shards: the Corona Pollentia and the Gemma. These structures acted as the receiver, the biological antenna that bridged the human mind to the multidimensional entity granting the power.(A/N:this is just me explaining it Ben nor Alablaster has knowledge of shard or anything like that)

Big Chill's intangible fingers wrapped around those tiny, microscopic nerve clusters.

With a smooth, impossibly precise yank, Big Chill pulled his hand backward out of Alabaster's head.

Phased within his icy palm was a tiny, glowing, fleshy mass no larger than a pea—the severed Corona Pollentia and Gemma, pulled cleanly out of Alabaster's nervous system without cutting a single blood vessel, tearing a single brain cell, or cracking his skull.

The moment those biological structures were removed from his body, the invisible link connecting Alabaster to his Shard snapped.

SNAP.

The white glow fading from Alabaster's skin instantly vanished. The pale, porcelain sheen faded into dull, baseline human flesh. His eyes lost their strange, unnatural glow.

Alabaster dropped his knives. He fell to his knees on the cold ice, panting, clutching his head. He tried to summon his reset. He tried to force his body to roll back the cold.

Nothing happened.

He was just a guy. A normal, fragile, baseline human sitting in the freezing cold.

"My... my power..." Alabaster stammered, looking at his shaking, normal hands in sheer, unadulterated horror. "What... what did you do to me?! WHERE IS MY POWER?!"

Big Chill phased back into solid physical form, stepping out of the shadows and standing over the depowered cape. He held up his closed hand, then opened his claws, allowing the tiny, frozen nerve tissue to dissolve into light and vanish into the night air.

"I took it back," Big Chill rasped coldly. "You were given a gift, and you used it to murder the defenseless. Now you're just a man."

Big Chill turned his glowing blue eyes toward Rune, who was groggily waking up on the frozen ground, clutching her chest and shivering uncontrollably.

He glided over to her, his massive moth-wings spreading out, casting a towering, terrifying shadow over the trembling young telekinetic.

"Get up," Big Chill commanded, his voice echoing with authority.

Rune scrambled backward, tears freezing on her cheeks. "P-please... don't kill me... please..."

"I'm letting you live for one reason, girl," Big Chill said, reaching out and grabbing her by the collar of her jacket, lifting her off the ground with one hand. "You are going back to Medhall. You are going to look Max Anders in his eye, and you are going to tell him what happened here tonight."

He leaned in close, his absolute-zero breath frosting over her hair.

"Tell him that if he ever sends his death squads to a hospital again... if he ever threatens innocent people in my city again... I won't stop with his foot soldiers. I will phase into his penthouse, reach into his chest, and freeze his heart before he can even summon his armor."

Big Chill set her back down on her feet. Rune didn't hesitate. She scrambled backward, turned around, and ran into the fog as fast as her shivering legs could carry her, not looking back once.

Ben tapped the green symbol on his chest.

In a flash of bright green light, Big Chill vanished, leaving Ben Tennyson standing in his green jacket in the middle of the frozen, quiet parking lot.

He looked around at the scene: two frozen statues of Victor and Othala, two giant Valkyries trapped in fifty-foot ice blocks, three unconscious capes, and one permanently depowered, crying Alabaster sitting on the ground.

Ben rubbed the back of his neck, exhaling a long plume of mist into the cold air.

"Man," Ben muttered to himself, turning around and walking back toward the hospital entrance. "Armsmaster and the PRT are going to have absolute heart attacks when they see this mess in the morning."

He paused at the glass doors, looking up at the fourth-floor window where Taylor was sleeping peacefully.

"Ah well," Ben smiled softly, stepping inside. "Worth it."

---

The morning sun rose over Brockton Bay, burning away the coastal fog to reveal a scene that looked like a war zone frozen in time.

Yellow PRT police tape stretched across the entire ambulance bay of Brockton General Hospital. Dozens of uniformed officers and PRT troopers in heavy body armor milled around, hauling containment foam sprayers, industrial heat lamps, and transport vans.

In the center of the asphalt sat two massive, fifty-foot blocks of solid ice containing the frozen, incapacitated Valkyrie twins, Fenja and Menja. Nearby, PRT guards were loading Stormtiger and Cricket—both shivering violently in thermal blankets—into heavy power-suppression transports. On the ground rested the shattered, crystalline remains of what had once been Victor and Othala, sparkling unnaturally under the morning sunlight.

Standing near the perimeter, his heavy armored boots planted firmly on the frost-covered concrete, was Armsmaster. His visor glowed with an aggressive blue light as his onboard sensors scanned the residual micro-thermodynamic signatures left in the air. Beside him stood Miss Militia, her iconic American flag scarf pulled up over her nose and mouth, her eyes heavy with a mixture of exhaustion, confusion, and severe concern.

Ben leaned casually against the hood of a PRT cruiser, sipping a cold strawberry-banana smoothie through a thick straw, looking completely unbothered.

"Two dead, Tennyson," Armsmaster said, his synthesized baritone voice cold enough to match the lingering frost. He turned slowly, his hand resting on the shaft of his heavy mechanical halberd. "Victor and Othala are confirmed fatalities. Internal cellular crystallization. Brain death in under a second. The impact with the ground shattered their remains."

"I know," Ben said, taking a quiet sip from his smoothie. "I was there."

"This isn't a joke!" Armsmaster snapped, taking a rigid step forward. "Do you have any idea what you've done? You didn't just engage local capes; you executed two high-ranking members of Empire 88! You shattered the Unwritten Rules into pieces!"

Miss Militia stepped forward, placing a gentle, restraining hand on Armsmaster's shoulder before looking at Ben. Her voice was gentler than her partner's, but laced with grave disappointment.

"Ben... the Unwritten Rules exist for a reason," Miss Militia explained softly. "They keep this city from devolving into total, unbridled warfare. Capes fight, capes get arrested, capes go to the Baiteman or the Cage. But when you start dropping bodies—especially high-profile capes—you escalate the entire playing field. You've just given Kaiser a blood feud."

"He's young, Hannah," Armsmaster said, shaking his head with a harsh, dismissive grunt. "It's the same pattern we see with every teenage cape who wakes up with high-grade firepower. Arrogance. Recklessness. A total belief that because you possess heavy offensive capabilities, you are above the law, above the unwritten codes, and above the consequences."

Ben set his smoothie down on the hood of the cruiser.

He didn't yell. He didn't puff out his chest. He just looked at the leader of the Brockton Bay Protectorate and the seasoned veteran beside him, his green eyes flashing with a cold, incredulous amusement.

"Are you two done?" Ben asked quietly.

Armsmaster's jaw tightened behind his visor. "Watch your tone—"

"No, you listen to me for five seconds," Ben interrupted, crossing his arms over his chest. "First of all: it was self-defense. Eight heavily armed combatants rolled into a hospital parking lot at one in the morning with the explicit intent to destroy the building and murder everyone inside."

He pointed a finger out toward the city.

"Second of all, who sent them? Discount Forever King—Kaiser. He saw me post online, got his feelings hurt, and decided to send an entire hit squad to kill me in my civilian life, at a hospital full of sick people and recovering teenagers."

Ben took a step toward Armsmaster, his posture dropping every ounce of teenage levity.

"Isn't targeting a cape in their civilian identity a violation of your precious 'Unwritten Rules'? Isn't attacking a medical facility full of innocent non-combatants a massive, flagrant violation of those exact codes? Why aren't you out on the streets hunting down Kaiser for sending them here?"

Miss Militia shifted uncomfortably, her eyes darting toward the ground for a fraction of a second. "Ben... the situation with the Empire is complicated. Striking at their leadership without knowing Kaiser's true identity or location risks pulling the entire city into open turf warfare—"

"Oh, 'complicated'!" Ben scoffed, letting out a sharp, harsh laugh. "Right. So when Nazis break the rules to murder people at a hospital, it's 'complicated.' But when I step up and stop them from turning this place into a mass grave, I'm the reckless, arrogant kid who broke the code?"

He gestured toward the ice blocks and the transport vans behind them.

"And don't give me that nonsense about 'less-lethal' cape combat," Ben added, his voice cutting through the morning air like a blade. "Don't most of the Empire capes violate your sacred rule about sticking to archaic, non-lethal gear? Stormtiger shoots compressed sonic shockwaves that rupture human organs. Cricket uses high-frequency sound to cause brain hemorrhages. Kaiser literally summons five-foot steel blades out of the concrete beneath people's feet! None of that is 'archaic' or 'less-lethal'—it's military-grade violence."

Armsmaster opened his mouth to retort, but his gaze drifted past Ben toward one of the open PRT containment vans.

Sitting on the rear bumper, double-cuffed in power-suppression restraints despite making zero effort to fight back, was Alabaster. The white-haired cape was rocking back and forth, clutching his head, sobbing hysterically like a terrified child. Tears streamed down his pale face as he whimpered incoherently, muttering "It's gone... it's gone... I can't feel it... it's gone..." over and over again.

Armsmaster frowned beneath his visor, turning back to Ben. "What did you do to Alabaster? His parahuman ability is an absolute physical reset. He's unharmed, but he's having a complete psychological breakdown. Our medical scanners aren't showing any physical trauma, but his power isn't registering on our diagnostic sensors at all."

Ben picked his smoothie back up and took a long, casual sip through the straw.

"Oh, him?" Ben said offhandedly. "Yeah, his power kept resetting the freezing cold, so standard attacks weren't stopping him. So I turned intangible, reached my hand straight into his skull, and plucked out those tiny biological nodes."

Armsmaster froze. Miss Militia blinked, her face suddenly draining of color.

"You... what?" Miss Militia whispered, her voice barely audible.

"You know, those little brain parts?" Ben gestured vaguely to his own head. "The... what do you guys call them in your medical logs? The Gemma and Corona Pollentia? From my rough understanding of parahuman biology, those are the tiny structures in the brain that actually process and control parahuman abilities, right? Like the receiver antenna."

Ben swallowed another mouthful of smoothie, entirely nonchalant.

"I just phased my claws inside his head, pinched those two little nodes, and pulled them out. Didn't spill a drop of blood, didn't tear a single brain cell. But without the receiver, the car stops running. He's just a normal guy now."

A suffocating, horrific silence fell over the parking lot.

Miss Militia stepped back, her hand flying to her stomach as a wave of genuine, physical nausea hit her. Her eyes widened in absolute, sheer horror as she stared at Ben.

Armsmaster staggered back half a step, a cold, sickening chill running down his spine.

Surgical, intangible brain manipulation. Reaching directly inside a human skull with ghost-like phase powers to permanently, forcibly excise the biological core of a parahuman's power—leaving no physical mark, no surgical wound, but completely erasing their abilities forever. It was a level of terrifying, casual biological control that made even the most dangerous Tinkers look primitive.

"You... you surgically altered his brain..." Miss Militia stammered, her voice trembling slightly.

"I removed a weapon from a guy who was trying to kill people," Ben corrected simply. "Rune was the only one who got away, and that's only because I let her run back to her boss to deliver a message."

Armsmaster forced himself to recover his composure, though his synthesized voice carried a distinct, shaky edge that hadn't been there a minute ago. He tried to reclaim his institutional authority, pulling himself up to his full height.

"That... that is a terrifying, flagrant violation of parahuman safety protocols, Tennyson," Armsmaster said, though he couldn't hide the deep, uneasy tension in his posture. "You do not dictate policy, and you do not perform unauthorized biological extractions on American citizens. The PRT handles jurisdictional oversight."

Armsmaster pointed a gloved finger at Ben, trying to project strength.

"I am giving you a final, binding warning, Ben. Repeated and flagrant breaking of the Unwritten Rules, combined with unauthorized lethal force and power extraction, will not be tolerated. Keep down this path, and the PRT will reclassify you as a villain. Continued escalation will result in a transfer to the Birdcage... or the issuance of an active Kill Order."

Ben stared at Armsmaster.

For a second, the sheer, unbelievable absurdity of the threat hung in the air between them.

The Birdcage? A Kill Order?

A sudden, overwhelming urge to burst out laughing bubbled up in Ben's chest, and he had to physically bite his lip and take another sip of his smoothie to suppress it.

He looked at Armsmaster's high-tech armor, his mechanical halberd, and the PRT troopers standing around with their little foam guns, still looking visibly sickened by what he'd done to Alabaster. They actually thought they held the cards. They actually believed that their little mountain prison in the middle of nowhere could hold a guy who carried a Level 20 bio-DNA vault on his wrist.

The Birdcage? Ben thought, a smirk threatening to break across his lips. If you guys tried to lock me up, I could transform into Jetray, break the sound barrier before your radar even picked me up, and be sitting on the surface of the Moon sipping this smoothie in less than thirty seconds. Good luck serving a warrant in deep space.

He could turn into Way Big and step over their entire headquarters. He could turn into Clockwork and age Armsmaster's fancy halberd into rusted scrap metal before he could pull the trigger.

The utter, blinding arrogance of local bureaucracy thinking they could dictate terms to an intergalactic Plumber officer was almost tragic.

Ben shook his head, looking up at Armsmaster with cool, unshakeable confidence.

"You really don't get it, do you?" Ben said softly. "You're so obsessed with keeping your little 'system' stable that you're letting monsters run your city, just as long as they follow your polite little rules while doing it."

He took a step back, tapping the glowing face of the Omnitrix.

"I'll say it one last time, Armsmaster, so make sure your helmet records it clearly:"

Ben met the visor's glow with an unyielding glare.

"It was self-defense. THEY broke the rules. THEY brought war to a hospital. I ended it. And if Kaiser or any of his remaining goons think they can try it again... they're going to get the exact same answer."

Without waiting for Armsmaster or Miss Militia to reply, Ben turned his back on the leaders of the Protectorate, shoved his free hand into his jacket pocket, and walked back up the hospital steps with his smoothie, leaving the PRT standing in the cold morning frost.

 

[Thegameaholic]

The air inside Conference Room 4B of the PRT East-Ne-East Headquarters smelled faintly of ozone, stale coffee, and the metallic tang of Armsmaster's cooling suit vents. Outside the floor-to-ceiling reinforced armorglass windows, the morning fog over Brockton Bay was burning away, revealing a gray, choppy Atlantic framed by industrial cranes and the scarred skyline of the downtown district.

Director Emily Piggot sat at the head of the long steel conference table. Her arms were folded over her chest, her knuckles pale against the dark fabric of her suit jacket. She looked exhausted, but her small, dark eyes burned with a cold, predatory focus.

Around the table, the local Protectorate assembled in full force.

Armsmaster stood rigid at the right hand of the table, his mechanical halberd docked in its magnetic holster on his spine, his blue visor flickering as it processed internal diagnostic logs. Next to him sat Miss Militia, her eyes fixed on the glossy manila folders spread across the polished surface. Velocity paced near the back wall, his red-and-yellow suit humming faintly with residual kinetic charge. Battery and Assault sat side-by-side; Battery looked sick, her hands resting flat on the table, while Assault's usual smirking demeanor was entirely absent, replaced by a dark, contemplative frown. Further down sat Dauntless, rubbing his temples, and Triumph, his arms crossed tightly over his padded chest plate.

Floating on the primary tactical display at the far wall was the live feed from Dragon, her synthesized, soft-spoken voice broadcasting directly from her workshop in Vancouver.

"The forensic sweep of the Brockton General Hospital ambulance bay is sixty-percent complete," Dragon's voice echoed gently through the room's speakers, breaking the heavy silence. "PRT bio-containment units have secured the remains of Victor and Othala. The structural ice blocks containing Fenja and Menja have been stabilized using localized heat-suppression field generators. Stormtiger and Cricket are currently held in Level-4 power-suppression cells in our subterranean holding facility."

"And Alabaster?" Piggot asked, her raspy voice cutting through the room like coarse sandpaper.

Armsmaster took a step forward, tapping his gauntlet against the table to project a high-resolution neuro-scan onto the central screen. The image showed a three-dimensional rendering of a human brain with highlighted regions around the brainstem.

"Alabaster is currently in the psychiatric ward under heavy sedation," Armsmaster reported, his voice synthetic and entirely devoid of emotion. "Physically, he has suffered zero permanent brain trauma, likely due to a localized flash-freeze Tennyson used to numb and protect the neurological tissue during the extraction. However... his parahuman abilities have been severely compromised. Tennyson forcibly damaged and partially extracted his Corona Pollentia. Without an intact neural structure to govern the ability, Alabaster's power is now activating erratically and unpredictably. He has zero conscious control over it—his breaker state is misfiring at random intervals, causing his physical form to reset without warning."

A heavy silence descended over the room.

Assault leaned back in his chair, staring at the neuro-scan. "Erratic misfires? The guy was a breaker-changer reset cape. You can't tamper with that without killing a man."

"Apparently, you can," Miss Militia said quietly, her voice muffled behind her flag-patterned scarf. She looked up at the ceiling, as if still trying to process the scene she had witnessed at the hospital earlier that morning. "Tennyson phased his hand through Alabaster's skull using that intangible ice form. He reached in, numbed the area with extreme cold, and physically plucked the structure out to stop him from resetting. Now Alabaster is trapped in psychological shock, unable to stop his body from randomly cycling."

"He altered a cape's biology," Piggot said, her tone flat, lethal, and absolute. "He reached into a man's mind, stripped him of his control, and then sat on the hood of a police cruiser drinking a strawberry smoothie."

"He saved the hospital, Director," Miss Militia said firmly, turning her head to meet Piggot's cold stare. "Empire 88 deployed eight heavy-hitters to a public medical facility. If Tennyson hadn't intervened, Brockton General would be a pile of smoking rubble right now. Dozens of civilians, nurses, and doctors would be dead."

"I am well aware of the tactical outcome, Hannah!" Piggot snapped, slamming her palm down onto the steel table. The crack of palm against metal vibrated through the room. "I don't care that two self-proclaimed neo-Nazis are dead! I don't care that Victor and Othala are in plastic bags! What I care about is the precedent!"

Piggot leaned forward, resting her weight on her forearms, her gaze sweeping across the assembled heroes.

"The Unwritten Rules are not a polite gentleman's agreement," Piggot continued, her voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly register. "They are the only thing keeping this godforsaken city from turning into an absolute free-for-all. We let capes play cop-and-robbers because if we don't, they start dropping bombs on water reservoirs and poisoning the air supply. Victor and Othala were terrible people, but they were established players. Tennyson didn't just arrest them. He froze them from the inside out until their cells ruptured, let them hit the pavement, and shattered them into literal ice cubes!"

"It was self-defense," Triumph offered, though he looked visibly uncomfortable under Piggot's glare. "They attacked him at the hospital while he was guarding a patient. That's a direct violation of the rules on the Empire's part. Kaiser broke the truce first."

"Kaiser isn't an un-registered, alien WMD walking around in a green jacket!" Piggot shot back. "Kaiser is a known quantity. We understand his motives, we understand his limits, and we know how to contain him within the municipal political structure! Tennyson is an unknown entity from another universe who possesses technology that violates every known law of physics, biology, and Tinker theory!"

Dragon's avatar on the screen shimmered slightly, her digital eyes narrowing in thought. "Director Piggot is correct regarding the technical threat level. The energy signatures registered during Tennyson's brief engagement at the hospital bypassed all PRT sensory filters. The thermal drain required to instantly freeze two human targets to absolute zero—and maintain that state internally without collateral environmental damage—exceeds the entire power output of the Brockton Bay electrical grid."

"He killed the Slaughterhouse Nine," Velocity added from the back, stopping his pacing to lean against the wall. "Every single one of them. Jack Slash, Siberian, Mannequin, Shatterbird. Gone in less than an hour. The entire country is celebrating, Director. The PRT Board of Directors in D.C. is practically throwing parades in his name."

"And D.C. doesn't have to live with him in their backyard!" Piggot snapped. "The Nine were on a national Kill List. Executing them was legal, encouraged, and politically convenient. Executing local capes—no matter how vile—without a PRT warrant, without a trial, and without authorization, strips us of our authority. If the public sees an independent, sixteen-year-old kid acting as judge, jury, and executioner, the entire legitimacy of the PRT collapses."

Piggot stood up, pacing slowly behind her chair.

"We gave him a soft approach. We offered him a bed, a desk, and a badge. We offered him a place in the Wards. And how did he respond? He simply said no."

"He's a teenager with ultimate power," Battery muttered under her breath, crossing her arms. "If he has a transformation that can travel faster than sound and survive in a vacuum, our containment threat was a joke to him."

Piggot glared at Battery, but didn't refute the point. Instead, she tapped a red button on her console, pulling up a digital dossier on the main screen.

The file displayed two faces: Danny Hebert, a tired-looking, tall man with thin glasses and receding hair, and Taylor Hebert, a slender, dark-haired teenage girl currently recovering in Room 412 of Brockton General Hospital after a severe biohazard bullying incident at Winslow High.

"We are bumping up the deadline," Piggot announced coldly. "Originally, we were going to give Tennyson until the end of the week to consider our offer. That timeline is now dead. He has twenty-four hours to sign the Ward/Protectorate charter, accept PRT oversight, and submit the Omnitrix for technical registry and safety evaluation."

"And if he refuses?" Armsmaster asked, his voice tight.

"If he refuses," Piggot said slowly, emphasizing every word, "I am filing an emergency application with the Chief Director to classify Ben Tennyson as an S-Class Threat. I will request an immediate, active Kill Order."

A wave of quiet shock rippled through the conference room.

"Director, you can't be serious!" Miss Militia stood up, her hands resting on the table, her face flushed with anger. "An S-Class classification? A Kill Order on a kid who spent his first three days in this city saving civilians, killing the S9, defending a hospital, and spending every spare hour helping Panacea heal patients in the overflow ward?"

"He is an unguided missile, Hannah!" Piggot barked back. "He possesses an un-quantifiable arsenal of alien biological transformations! He can alter human genetics, erase parahuman powers at a touch, manipulate time, and level entire city blocks! What happens when he decides he doesn't like how we run the PRT? What happens when he decides the Mayor isn't doing a good enough job? We cannot leave a weapon of that magnitude un-monitored and un-checked!"

"If you issue a Kill Order on him, Director," Assault said, leaning forward with a dark, cynical laugh, "who exactly are you going to send to enforce it? Us? The Empire? Scion? The kid wiped out the Nine like she was a bug on his windshield. If we try to take him by force, half this city will end up as ice cubes or radioactive ash."

"Which is why we are not going to use direct force," Piggot said, her tone dropping into a cold, chillingly pragmatic register. "I know his type. I've read his psychological profile compiled by our Thinkers. Tennyson is stubborn as an ox, hyper-idealistic, arrogant, and possesses a severe hero-complex. You cannot beat him with muscle. But you can compel him through obligation."

Piggot pointed at the screens displaying Danny and Taylor Hebert.

"Tennyson has no home in this world. He hasn't set foot in a residential property since he arrived. Where does he spend all of his time? Brockton General Hospital. Specifically, Room 412. He pulled Taylor Hebert out of that school locker. He's been guarding her bedside twenty-four hours a day, keeping her safe, and assisting Panacea with the hospital overflow. That girl and her father are his only civilian anchors in this entire city."

Miss Militia's eyes narrowed in disgust. "Director... what are you proposing?"

"Taylor Hebert was involved in a severe, undocumented school biohazard incident that led to her hospitalization," Piggot said smoothly, scrolling through a list of legal documents on her tablet. "The PRT has clear, legal grounds to declare her an unregistered parahuman risk and place her under mandatory PRT administrative quarantine. Furthermore, her father, Danny Hebert, is the Head of Operations for the Dockworkers Association—a union currently under federal review. We can initiate an immediate federal audit of the DWU, freeze their operational accounts, and take Taylor into protective custody at our headquarters."

"You're going to quarantine a hospitalized teenage victim and destroy her father's union just to back a sixteen-year-old boy into a corner?" Miss Militia asked, her voice trembling slightly with disgust. "That's extortion, Emily. That goes against everything the Protectorate stands for!"

"It is jurisdictional enforcement, Hannah!" Piggot snapped back, her eyes wide and unblinking. "If Tennyson wants to play hero in my city, he will play by my rules! If he cares about this girl, he will realize that his presence here is putting her in our crosshairs. He can sign the charter, accept PRT guardianship, and protect her under our legal umbrella... or he can watch us dismantle the Heberts' lives piece by piece while he sits in her hospital room!"

Armsmaster stood silent, his visor glowing steadily as he processed Piggot's tactical logic. He didn't object. In his mind, the efficiency of the outcome outweighed the moral discomfort of the methodology. If Tennyson was brought under PRT control, Armsmaster would finally gain access to the Omnitrix's internal database—a technological treasure trove that could revolutionize human Tinkertech for generations.

"Dragon," Piggot called out, turning back to the screen. "Prepare the administrative quarantine warrants for Taylor Hebert and the DWU audit papers. Armsmaster, draft the formal Ward charter with the mandatory oversight clauses. Miss Militia... you will be the one to deliver the ultimatum to Tennyson personally at the hospital."

Miss Militia looked at Piggot, her chest heaving under her uniform, her throat tight with a deep, sickening sense of betrayal. But she was a soldier. She had swallowed horrible orders in the past, and she knew the alternative—a full-scale military mobilization against an alien entity—would end in unthinkable bloodshed.

"Understood, Director," Miss Militia whispered softly, lowering her head.

"Dismissed," Piggot said, leaning back into her chair and picking up her cold cup of coffee. "All of you. We have twenty-four hours to reclaim control of this city."

---

The executive suite on the thirty-second floor of the Medhall Building smelled of expensive mahogany, imported leather, and the heavy, metallic stench of panic.

Max Anders sat behind his massive oak desk, his tailored charcoal suit pristine, his blonde hair combed back flawlessly. But beneath the refined veneer of Brockton Bay's most successful corporate philanthropist, his face was pale, his jaw clenched so tightly that a vein throbbed violently near his temple.

Across the room, sitting on an Italian leather sofa, was Rune.

The teenager was shaking uncontrollably. Her red cape was torn, her combat boots were caked in dried mud and hospital dust, and her hands trembled so violently that the glass of water in her grip rattled against her teeth.

"Tell me again," Max said. His voice was soft, dangerously calm, but the air in the room seemed to drop several degrees. "Every single detail, Rune. From the moment you arrived at Brockton General."

"We... we had the ambulance bay surrounded, Lord Kaiser," Rune stammered, her voice high-pitched, breathless, and terrified. She couldn't look Max in the eye; instead, she stared blankly at the Persian rug beneath her feet. "Victor had the perimeter locked down. Othala was getting ready to buff Stormtiger and Cricket. Fenja and Menja were positioned at the main entrance to get to the alien and the Hebert girl... and then... then he stepped out."

"Describe him," Max commanded quietly.

"He... he was tall and ghostly thin—like a slender phantom made of dark blue and black skin," Rune whimpered, clutching her shoulders. "He had these huge dark blue wings, a glowing green hourglass symbol on his chest, and eyes like green ice."

Rune swallowed hard, shivering as the memory played back in her mind.

"Before Othala could even buff anyone, he turned completely intangible! He flew right at them and pushed his phantom hands straight through Victor and Othala! He froze them from the inside out in a split second! They fell over, Kaiser... they hit the asphalt and they smashed into pieces!"

A heavy, suffocating silence gripped the executive suite.

Max didn't speak. His fingers dug into the armrests of his executive chair, the leather creaking under the pressure.

Victor. His grand strategist. The man who managed the Empire's financial networks, political bribery, and strategic operations. Othala. His premier support cape, the backbone of their combat longevity. Dead. Not just defeated—obliterated. Reduced to frozen gravel in a hospital parking lot.

"And the others?" Max asked, his voice barely a whisper.

"Alabaster... Alabaster went crazy," Rune whimpered, rocking back and forth. "The ghostly moth creature reached its phantom claws straight inside Alabaster's skull! It pinched something inside his brain and pulled it out! Alabaster fell to his knees, screaming... he can't control it, Kaiser! His power is resetting him randomly every few seconds now! The PRT shoved him into a van while he was twitching on the ground! Stormtiger, Cricket, the twins... they were all trapped in massive ice blocks! I... I barely flew away in time on my glider! He let me go! He told me to tell you..."

Rune choked on her own breath, looking up at Max with eyes wide with pure, unadulterated terror.

"What did he tell you to tell me, Rune?" Max demanded, leaning over his desk, his blue eyes flashing with a violent, murderous rage.

"He... he said that if you sent any more 'discount Forever Kings' after him... he was going to come here and freeze Medhall into an iceberg," Rune whispered.

Standing near the floor-to-ceiling windows were three figures, shadowed by the morning sun.

Krieg stood stoic, his dark military trench coat buttoned tightly, his iron-gray eyes fixed on the city below. Beside him hovered Hookwolf, his massive, heavily tattooed frame leaning against a marble pillar, his teeth bared in a continuous, beastly snarl. In the darkest corner of the room stood Night and Fog—silent, motionless, like twin statues of pale death. They were part of the backup squad Kaiser had kept in reserve, but now, seeing the destruction of their vanguard, the atmosphere among them was thick with a toxic mix of bloodlust and hidden dread.

"He mocked the Empire," Hookwolf snarled, his voice like grinding metal. He took a heavy step forward, his fists clenching as tiny steel blades began to sprout from his knuckles, cutting through his skin before retracting. "He murdered our blood-brothers! He maimed Alabaster! And you're sitting here listening to a little girl cry, Max?!"

"Shut your mouth, Hookwolf!" Max barked, standing up from his desk and slamming his fists down. "You think I don't know what happened?! You think I don't feel the blood of our brethren screaming for vengeance?!"

Max walked over to the glass window, looking down at the sprawling expanse of Brockton Bay.

His empire was bleeding. In less than forty-eight hours, an un-registered alien teenager had wiped out his best support capes, captured four of his frontline combatants, and turned his terrifying reputation into a laughingstock among the underworld. If Kaiser did not respond—if he did not drag this 'Ben Tennyson' into the street and gut him in front of the entire city—Empire 88 was finished. The Merchants, the ABB, and the PRT would tear them apart like vultures.

"He wants a war," Max hissed, his hand rising to touch the hidden steel mechanism beneath his suit collar. "He thinks because he carries an alien weapon, he is immortal. He thinks he can disrespect the blood and soil of this city and walk away."

"Let me tear him apart," Hookwolf growled, his entire body shuddering as razor-sharp metal gears and serrated blades erupted from his chest and shoulders, clicking and grinding together in a terrifying display of lethal machinery. "Give me Krieg, Night, and Fog. We will go back to Brockton General. We will butcher every civilian in that hospital until he comes out, and then I will grind his bones into dust!"

"No," Max said coldly, turning back to face his lieutenants. "Brute force alone won't work. You saw what happened to Stormtiger and the twins. He possesses multiple forms. He adapts to tactics in real-time. If we engage him carelessly, we risk losing the rest of our inner circle."

Max walked back to his desk, staring down at his private, encrypted satellite phone resting on the mahogany surface.

"We need overwhelming force," Max said quietly. "We need absolute, undeniable air superiority and heavy artillery. We need to strike him at that hospital from every vector simultaneously, before he has the chance to select a form."

Krieg stepped forward, his cold, German-accented voice smooth and calculated. "You are thinking of calling in our external assets, Max?"

"I am calling in a debt," Max replied, his eyes narrowing.

He picked up the encrypted phone. His fingers hovered over the keypad for a fraction of a second before dialing a number he hadn't called in months.

The line connected. It rang once. It rang twice.

Then, a quiet, distant female voice answered. The background sound of a young child babbling softly echoed over the receiver.

"Hello?"

Max took a slow, deep breath, smoothing down the lapels of his tailored jacket, slipping effortlessly into his most persuasive, charismatic tone.

"Hello, Kayden," Max said smoothly. "How are you?"

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. The sound of shuffling paper, followed by the soft click of a door closing.

"Max," Kayden's voice came back, cold, distant, and instantly guarded. "I told you not to call this number unless it was an absolute emergency regarding Aster. I am trying to build a life away from Medhall. I am trying to keep our daughter out of your war."

"I know, Kayden. And I respect your desire for peace, truly," Max lied effortlessly, his voice dripping with soft, tragic sincerity. "I would never disturb you or Aster if the situation wasn't dire. But... something terrible has happened. Something that threatens every single one of our people in this city."

"What are you talking about, Max?" Kayden asked, her tone shifting slightly, a thread of tension entering her voice. "Did the PRT launch a raid?"

"No," Max said, his tone turning dark and heavy with artificial grief. "An alien entity arrived in Brockton Bay two days ago. An unregistered monster carrying an apocalyptic weapon. Last night... it attacked our people at Brockton General Hospital."

Kayden remained silent, listening.

"Victor... and Othala... are dead, Kayden," Max said, letting his voice tremble slightly. "Murdered in cold blood. Fenja, Menja, Stormtiger, and Cricket have been captured. Alabaster was stripped of his sanity—his power driven wildly out of control by this... this creature."

A sharp intake of breath sounded over the phone. "Victor and Othala? Dead?"

"Execution style," Max emphasized, leaning heavily into the lie. "He froze them alive and shattered their bodies into pieces. He didn't just attack our soldiers, Kayden. He swore to purge every cape in this city who doesn't bow to him. He is currently occupying Brockton General Hospital, holding our wounded hostage. He is targeting our children, our homes, our heritage."

"Max... if this is another one of your political maneuvers—"

"It isn't a game, Kayden!" Max shouted, injecting raw, desperate emotion into his voice. "Look at PHO! Look at the news! The PRT is helpless! They are letting this alien run wild in our medical facilities! If we do not stand together right now—if we do not protect our blood and our city—there won't be a Brockton Bay left for Aster to grow up in!"

Silence stretched across the satellite connection. Max waited, holding his breath, knowing the exact psychological levers to pull. Kayden hated his politics, hated the gang warfare, but her fiercest, most dangerous instinct was her hyper-protective motherly nature. She believed in the sanctity of her people, and above all, she believed in exterminating threats to her daughter's future.

Finally, Kayden spoke, her voice dropping into a register that made the hair on Max's arms stand up. The distant, crackling sound of static-electricity and blinding light hummed through the phone line.

"Where is he?" Kayden asked quietly.

A dark, victorious smile spread across Max's face.

"He is at Brockton General Hospital, guarding a civilian girl named Hebert in Room 412," Max said, his eyes glittering with cold malice. "Gather your strength, Kayden. Come home. Together... Purity, Kaiser, and the Empire will burn this alien out of our world forever."

"I'm coming," Kayden said, and hung up the phone.

Max set the receiver back down on his desk. He turned to Hookwolf, Krieg, Night, and Fog, his posture radiating absolute, unholy authority.

"Assemble the men," Kaiser ordered, his voice echoing through the penthouse like a death sentence. "Prepare every armored transport, every heavy rifle, and every cape we have left. When Purity arrives... we march on Brockton General."

---

The sanctum of Cauldron did not exist on Earth Bet.

It existed in a pocket universe, a sterile, featureless complex constructed from smooth gray alloy and unyielding white light. There were no windows, no clocks, and no ambient noise—only the faint, rhythmic hum of dimensional containment fields maintaining the structural integrity of the facility.

In the center of the primary observation chamber, a massive, holographic projection spun slowly in mid-air. It displayed a detailed three-dimensional reconstruction of the alleyway where the Slaughterhouse Nine had met their demise, alongside high-density tactical footage of the hospital engagement from earlier that morning.

Doctor Mother stood before the screen, her dark hands clasped behind her back, her expression unreadable.

To her right stood Number Man, dressed in a sharp, unwrinkled suit, his thin wire-rimmed glasses catching the harsh white glare of the monitors. Standing near the shadows was Alexandria, her dark cape draped over her indestructible shoulders, her single visible eye fixed on the floating data streams.

Sitting at a sleek metal table in the corner of the room was Contessa.

She was wearing her signature black suit, but her usual unshakeable, perfectly composed posture was gone. She was leaning forward, her elbows resting on her knees, pressing a crisp white silk handkerchief to her nose.

The silk was stained with dark, arterial blood. Her face was pale, glistening with a light sheen of cold sweat, and her breath came in short, shallow gasps. A severe, agonizing migraine pulsed behind her eyes, causing her pupils to dilate wildly.

"Another feedback spike?" Doctor Mother asked softly, turning her head toward Contessa.

Contessa took a slow, painful breath, pulling the blood-soaked handkerchief away from her face and folding it neatly to conceal the stain.

"Yes," Contessa said, her voice hoarse, carrying a rare, disturbing strain of physical exhaustion. "The moment I attempt to model a direct path involving Ben Tennyson... the path fractures. The neurological feedback is immediate and severe."

Number Man adjusted his glasses, tapping a series of mathematical equations onto his handheld tablet. "Fascinating. We have documented blind spots before. Entity chassis, Endbringers, Eidolon under specific cognitive stress parameters, and high-tier precognitive dampening fields. But a feedback loop that causes physical cerebral hemorrhaging in the user? That indicates something fundamentally incompatible with the Shard network's predictive algorithms."

"Explain," Alexandria commanded, her deep, stoic voice echoing off the metallic walls.

"It is a matter of informational physics," Number Man explained smoothly, pointing a slender finger at the screen displaying the Omnitrix. "Our Shards operate by drawing mass, energy, and computational power from parallel dimensions. When Contessa uses Path to Victory, her Shard queries the dimensional matrix, calculating probability vectors based on the movement of matter and energy across all available earths."

Number Man zoomed in on a close-up image of the green-and-black gauntlet resting on Ben's wrist.

"However, Tennyson's device does not draw from the Shard network. The energy signatures registered during his transformations do not originate from localized dimensional wells. They represent a dense, self-contained macro-universal translation matrix. When her Shard attempts to read his future actions, it tries to process a mathematical framework that operates on laws outside our universe's dimensional constants. It is like attempting to run advanced quantum software on an abacus. The Shard overclocks itself, fails to calculate the result, and dumps the raw computational thermal feedback directly into Contessa's brain."

"Can you path around him?" Doctor Mother asked, her voice calm, calculating, and devoid of pity.

Contessa wiped her upper lip with a fresh tissue, her dark eyes hollow but sharp. "Yes. I cannot path 'How do I defeat Ben Tennyson', nor can I path 'How do I acquire the Omnitrix from Ben Tennyson'. Direct queries result in immediate physical trauma."

She paused, taking a breath to steady herself.

"However... I can path peripheral environmental vectors. I can path 'How do I ensure the Mayor signs the emergency PRT authorization order?'. I can path 'How do I delay local traffic to synchronize Kaiser's arrival with the Protectorate vanguard?'. I can weave a web of circumstances around him. But the second he acts—the instant he presses that dial—the path collapses into absolute blind noise."

Alexandria crossed her arms, her jaw set in a hard, unbreakable line. "The Slaughterhouse Nine were our primary stress-testing tool for parahuman development across the Eastern Seaboard. Jack Slash was an essential variable in our long-term projections for the Final Entity Event. Tennyson eliminated them in under an hour. He tracked down Dr. William Manton in his hidden control van, killing him instantly and causing the Siberian projection to simply pop out of existence."

"And that," Doctor Mother said, turning around to face Alexandria, "is precisely why he is the most valuable anomaly we have encountered in thirty years."

Doctor Mother walked over to the central screen, staring at the detailed schematics Number Man had constructed of the Omnitrix.

"For decades, we have been operating under the assumption that the Entities are the absolute pinnacle of existence," Doctor Mother said softly, her eyes glittering with cold, unyielding ambition. "We have been harvesting Shards, creating Case 53s, and building an army of parahumans in the desperate hope that we can find a combination of powers strong enough to kill Scion when he inevitably turns on us."

She pointed at the display showing the glowing green hourglass symbol.

"But here stands a boy who carries the genetic templates of over one million intelligent alien species. A device that can manipulate DNA on a sub-atomic level, rewrite physical matter, control time, and project forces capable of neutralizing threats without touching the Shard network."

"If we can secure that device," Alexandria said, finishing the thought, "we do not need an army of parahumans. We do not need Eidolon. We do not need the Terminus Project."

"Correct," Doctor Mother agreed smoothly. "The Omnitrix is the key to Scion's destruction. It represents a technological and biological framework that completely bypasses the Entity's cycle. If we can harvest the device—or force Tennyson to use its ultimate capabilities against Zion—we win."

"And if he refuses to cooperate?" Number Man asked neutrally. "His psychological profile indicates extreme resistance to authoritarian control. He views himself as an independent peacekeeper. He has already rejected Armsmaster and threatened the local PRT."

"Then we make his environment un-livable," Doctor Mother replied without a single hint of hesitation. "Contessa... begin setting the secondary paths. Manipulate the local factions. Force the Empire, the PRT, and the local villains into an escalating pressure cooker around Brockton General Hospital. Isolate him from his civilian anchors. Squeeze him until he has no choice but to seek an ally."

Contessa stood up, her hand dropping from her face. Her nose had stopped bleeding, her posture instantly snapping back into that eerie, terrifying perfection that defined her existence.

"Path initiated," Contessa said, her voice monotone, devoid of humanity. "Step one: allow Kaiser to launch his full-scale offensive against Brockton General Hospital. Step two: ensure Director Piggot's administrative quarantine warrants are delivered simultaneously. Step three: isolate Tennyson from the civilian girl."

"Do it," Doctor Mother commanded. "The future of humanity will not be dictated by a boy playing hero with an alien watch."

---

Three hundred miles north of Brockton Bay, near the quiet, pine-forested outskirts of a small coastal town in Maine, the sky was a crisp, flawless blue.

A tiny calico kitten, no more than eight weeks old, sat perched on a high, precarious branch of an ancient white oak tree. It whimpered softly, its tiny claws digging into the rough bark, trembling as the wind rustled through the green leaves twenty feet above the ground. Below the tree stood a little girl in a yellow raincoat, tears streaming down her freckled cheeks, clutching her hands together as she looked up at her trapped pet.

"Mitten!" the little girl cried out softly. "Come down, please!"

Then, the air above the backyard turned warm.

A gentle, golden radiance washed over the lawn, painting the green grass in shades of brilliant, metallic amber. The leaves of the oak tree stopped rustling. The wind seemed to die down entirely, replaced by a deep, resonant, soothing hum that vibrated gently in the chests of every living creature within a mile.

Descending slowly from the clouds was Scion.

The golden man floated down with impossible grace, his long, golden hair moving gently around his broad shoulders as if submerged in crystal-clear water. His bare feet touched the grass without making a single blade bend. His face was a masterpiece of flawless, symmetrical proportion—devoid of wrinkles, devoid of age, and completely devoid of human emotion.

He did not look at the little girl. He did not look at the sky.

Scion simply reached out his golden arm. His hand, glowing with the warm, soft light of a dying star, extended toward the high branch.

The calico kitten stopped crying. It looked at the glowing golden hand, purred softly, and unclasped its tiny claws from the bark. It stepped delicately onto Scion's open palm.

Scion lowered his hand, gently placing the kitten onto the soft grass in front of the little girl.

The girl gasped, wiping her tears away, instantly scooping her kitten into her arms. "Thank you, golden man! Thank you!"

Scion did not respond. He did not nod. He did not smile. He simply stood there, his glowing golden eyes staring blankly forward into the middle distance, fulfilling his hard-coded, primitive instinct to help. To perform small, meaningless acts of human preservation while his vast, dying mind passively processed the trillions of data streams flowing through his Shard network across every parallel Earth.

Help.

Preserve.

Wait.

He was waiting for the cycle to complete. He was waiting for the heat death of his own motivation. He was a god without a soul, wandering a tiny blue marble, acting out the hollow pantomime of heroics because he had nothing else left to do.

Then... the universe spiked.

Scion's golden head snapped violently to the south.

It wasn't a Shard ping. It wasn't an Endbringer awakening. It wasn't a dimensional rift opened by Doormaker or a high-tier Tinker device tapping into a parallel Earth.

It was a pulse. A dense, hyper-concentrated, macro-universal biological wave that tore through the local dimensional fabric like a titanium needle passing through wet tissue paper.

Far away, in the hospital parking lot of Brockton Bay, a sixteen-year-old boy had slammed his hand down on a dial, transforming his cellular structure from carbon-based flesh into absolute-zero micro-crystalline alien biology.

Deep within Scion's golden chest, the core of his Entity existence—the vast, continent-sized brain structure floating in a locked, pocket dimension—shuddered.

Query: Origin?

The Entity opened its higher sensory wells, sending a massive wave of analytical energy sweeping across the Eastern Seaboard of Earth Bet. It searched for the Shard that had generated that magnitude of mass-energy conversion. It searched for the dimensional well, the connection to the Shard Network, the designated host, the assigned restriction parameters.

It found... nothing.

There was no Shard connected to that energy burst. There was no extra-dimensional well drawing mass from a dead Earth.

Instead, the Entity sensed a foreign, artificial architecture. A dense, hyper-complex biological database containing genetic information that did not belong to the cycle. Organisms from galaxies far beyond the reach of the Entities' ancestral migrations. Energy structures that operated on macro-cosmic laws so vastly different from the Shard Network that attempting to process them felt like a toxic, invasive corruption attempting to overwrite his internal programming.

It wasn't just foreign. It was... disgustingly strong.

The sheer, concentrated density of energy contained within that single, wrist-mounted pulse dwarf-scaled the energy reserves of entire Shards. It was a self-contained, perfected bio-technological matrix that did not bleed energy into parallel dimensions, did not require a host brain to regulate its function, and possessed zero safety restrictions linked to the Entity cycle.

For the first time since his partner had crashed into the surface of Earth Bet decades ago...

For the first time since he had watched her shattered core rain down across a million worlds...

Scion felt a sensation rise from the deepest, darkest depths of his alien consciousness.

It was not curiosity. It was not grief.

It was threat.

The golden man slowly rose into the air, his glowing eyes fixed entirely on the distant horizon toward Brockton Bay, his golden aura pulsing with a faint, dangerous, erratic flicker.

---

Inside a sprawling, un-marked concrete warehouse tucked deep within ABB territory, the atmosphere was pitch black, thick with stale cigarette smoke and the faint sound of terrified weeping.

Half a dozen armed Asian blood-gang enforcers stood near reinforced steel doors, holding submachine guns, guarding the heavy padlocks that sealed dozens of young, trafficked civilian women into cramped back rooms.

Then, the world slowed down to a crawl.

A sharp, high-pitched screech—like friction-free rubber tearing across polished glass—vibrated through the concrete floor.

A single streak of electric blue light cut through the shadows of the warehouse. Before the first ABB guard's brain could register the sudden gust of wind, his submachine gun vanished from his hands. Before the second guard could pull his finger against a trigger, he was lifted off his feet, spun three times in mid-air, and slammed gently back-first against the wall.

Click-click-click-zip!

In less than three-tenths of a second, eight armed gang members were neatly arranged along the main support pillars, wrapped head-to-toe in industrial-strength plastic zip-ties, their weapons disarmed and stacked in a neat, symmetrical pyramid in the center of the room.

The blue streak skidded to a halt near the reinforced holding doors.

Standing there was a slender, hyper-streamlined alien. His dark blue and black armor gleamed under the faint emergency light, his long, razor-sharp black tail swishing rhythmically, his three-toed feet resting on rotating obsidian spheres. The black visor covering his face retracted up with a soft hiss, revealing Ben's emerald eyes and a smug, satisfied smirk.

"And that," XLR8 said, his voice carrying his distinctive, rapid-fire pitch, "is how you clear a room before the sound of your own footsteps catches up to you."

With two flicks of his scissor-like claws, Ben sliced through the steel padlocks as if they were wet cardboard. He pushed the heavy doors open, stepping into the room.

The trapped women backed into the corners, gasping in shock at the blue-skinned reptilian creature standing in the doorway.

Ben immediately lowered his stance, holding up his clawed hands in a warm, non-threatening gesture, his tone instantly shifting into soft, gentle reassurance.

"Hey, hey... it's okay. You're safe," XLR8 said softly, pointing a thumb back toward the open warehouse exit. "The gang guys outside are completely out of commission. I've already called a fleet of PRT emergency transport buses—they're parked two blocks down out of sight. No more locks, no more guards. You can all go home."

A wave of disbelief swept through the women, followed by quiet, sobbing relief as they began filtering out into the cool night air, running toward the street where medical responders waited.

Ben stepped back out onto the damp street, watching the last of the civilians hurry to safety. The night air was dead quiet. The mist settled over the abandoned shipping containers, creating a ghostly, isolated pocket in the middle of the sprawling industrial park.

Ben cracked his slender neck, snapping his visor back down over his face with a sharp, mechanical click.

"Not a bad night's work," he muttered to himself under his helmet, tapping his clawed feet on the wet asphalt. "Clean, quiet, zero property damage. Armsmaster would probably still find a way to fine me for speeding, though."

He turned to sprint back toward Brockton General Hospital.

He took one step—and the world went dead silent.

The ambient hum of distant city traffic vanished. The ocean wind cut out instantly.

From the shadows of the surrounding alleyways, a thick, unnatural, sulfurous gray smoke began to roll across the pavement. It moved unnaturally fast, eating up the streetlights, choking out the faint illumination, wrapping around Ben's ankles like heavy, ice-cold tendrils.

Fog.

Ben's visor flickered, his alien reflexes instantly placing him on high alert. Before he could accelerate, the ground beneath his feet shuddered.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Dozens of massive, six-foot steel blades erupted straight out of the asphalt in a tight circle around him, creating an impenetrable, razor-sharp cage of spiked iron that cut off every ground-level exit!

Stepping out from the swirling gray mist at the edge of the perimeter was Kaiser, his armor gleaming like polished razors in the gloom. Beside him walked Krieg, his dark trench coat billowing slightly as a visible, heavy distortion of kinetic gravity settled over the street, making the very air around Ben feel five times denser.

From the dark shadows of an overturned shipping container, two more figures materialized: Night, her pale, terrifying shifting form lurking just behind Fog's gaseous cloud, her hollow eyes locked onto Ben.

Above them, hovering twenty feet in the air on a piece of jagged concrete she was levitating with her telekinesis, was Rune.

The teenager was pale as a sheet. Her hands were trembling violently against her red cape, her eyes wide with a deep, visceral terror as she stared at the blue-and-black alien. She looked like she was on the verge of a panic attack, haunted by the lingering memory of her teammates being shattered into bloody ice cubes, yet forced to stand her ground by her leader.

And then, the sound of grinding, screaming metal tore through the quiet night.

Step by step, a towering, metallic nightmare dragged itself into the light. Hookwolf's entire upper torso shuddered as hundreds of serrated steel blades, hooks, and heavy iron gears erupted from his skin, shifting and churning into a massive, multi-bladed beast that bared its metallic teeth at Ben.

"Did you really think you could run around our city forever, alien?" Kaiser's metallic voice echoed through the enclosed street, cold, merciless, and absolute.

Ben slid into a low combat stance, his wheels humming against the wet ground, his eyes narrowing behind his black visor as he scanned the perimeter.

Seven to one. Kaiser, Fog, Night, Hookwolf, Krieg, Rune... and then the sky above them exploded.

The overcast rain clouds tore wide open as a blinding, incandescent column of white light illuminated the entire shipping yard. Hovering fifty feet above the ambush, her body engulfed in a terrifying supernova halo of golden-white plasma, was Purity. Her glowing eyes locked onto the small blue alien trapped in the center of the steel cage.

"You killed our blood," Kaiser commanded, pointing an iron-clad finger at Ben. "Now, Brockton Bay watches you burn."

Ben stood in the center of the trap, surrounded by the full power of Empire 88's inner circle. The gravity field pressed down on him, the steel blades locked him in, Fog's mist crept closer, and Purity's beams charged to a deafening, blinding hum.

XLR8 didn't panic.

His visor snapped up. His green eyes flashed with reckless, unshakeable confidence.

Slowly, deliberately, Ben reached up with his clawed right hand, resting his fingers over the glowing green symbol on his chest.

"You guys really don't learn, do you?" Ben smirked.

The Omnitrix began to beep.

 

[Thegameaholic]

A blinding flash of emerald light flooded the area, forcing Rune to shield her eyes with a frightened squeak. The streamlined, blue-and-black form of XLR8 vanished, replaced by a massive, muscular bipedal feline alien. Orange fur, white chest, long razor-sharp black claws extending from his wrists, and a face locked in an expression of eternal, furious rage.

"LEMME TELL YA SOMETHING, EMPIRE EIGHTY-EIGHT!" Rath bellowed, his voice echoing off the brick walls like a foghorn powered by pure dynamite. "RATH IS NOT TRAPPED IN HERE WITH YOU! YOU ARE ALL TRAPPED IN HERE WITH RATH! AND RATH IS GOING TO USE YOUR FANCY METAL BLADES TO SCRATCH RATH'S BACK!"

"Kill him!" Kaiser ordered, pointing an armored finger down at the orange behemoth.

Purity didn't hesitate. A beam of concentrated, sun-hot white plasma tore through the dark, slamming directly into Rath's massive chest. The kinetic force of the blast blew out the windows of every building on the block and turned the pavement beneath Rath's boots into glowing slag.

When the smoke cleared, Rath was standing in the center of the molten crater. The fur on his chest was lightly singed, looking more like he had stood a little too close to a campfire than taken a tank-destroying energy blast.

Rath cracked his massive knuckles, glowing green eyes locking onto Kaiser. "THAT ALL YOU GOT, GLOW-STICK? RATH HAS TAKEN HOTTER SHOWERS THAN THAT!"

Before Purity could charge a second shot, Kaiser slammed his palms into the stone pillar. Instantly, dozens of four-foot iron spears erupted from the pavement directly beneath Rath, aiming to impale him through the torso.

CRACK! SHATTER!

The iron spikes slammed into Rath's hide and instantly exploded into a shower of useless, twisted metal splinters. Rath didn't even flinch. He reached down, grabbed a foot-thick iron spearhead that had broken against his thigh, casually bit it in half like a pretzel, and spat the iron chunks at Kaiser's feet.

"My turn!" Hookwolf roared.

The white supremacist's body shuddered and dissolved into a ten-foot mass of churning, grinding steel blades, iron chains, and hooked harpoons. The metallic beast lunged forward, a whirlwind of spinning razors capable of shredding armored personnel carriers.

"OH, A PUPPY!" Rath screamed with delight, charging headfirst into the metallic nightmare.

Rath didn't dodge. He dove straight into the spinning blades, his massive, clawed hands reaching into the churning center of Hookwolf's shifting mass. Steel scraped against alien skin with a deafening screech, producing a shower of bright orange sparks, but Rath's thick, hyper-dense hide held firm. Rath grabbed Hookwolf by what roughly passed for a steel jaw and a rear axle-joint, planted his feet into the torn-up road, and began violently wrestling the ten-foot blade-beast.

"LEMME TELL YA SOMETHING, HOOKWOLF!" Rath roared, lifting the multi-ton mass of churning metal clean over his head and slamming him repeatedly into the brick wall of the warehouse. "RATH DOES NOT LIKE DOGS THAT BITE! RATH PREFERS CATS! BECAUSE RATH IS A CAT!"

Hookwolf thritted and snarled, his spinning blades carving shallow, red scratches into Rath's shoulders, but Rath just laughed, his sheer rage completely drowning out any sensation of pain. He pulled Hookwolf into a brutal bearhug, straining the metal monster's inner mechanisms to the breaking point.

"Krieg! Night! Engage him!" Kaiser shouted, panic finally seeping into his metallic voice.

Krieg stepped forward, his expression cold and detached. He raised his hands, and the air surrounding Rath instantly shifted.

Rath suddenly felt like he was moving through thick, frozen molasses. He didn't understand the science of Krieg's power—the way the man unconsciously altered air resistance and kinetic momentum—he just knew that every single muscle movement suddenly felt five times heavier. The atmospheric pressure spiked, compressing against his chest until breathing became a chore. Worse, when a stray piece of flying rebar caught in Krieg's kinetic wave drifted toward him, it accelerated unexpectedly, striking Rath's ribs with the force of an anti-materiel rifle round.

"What is wrong with the air in here?!" Rath growled, his movement slowing to a frustrating crawl.

Before Rath could turn to face Krieg, a terrifying, invisible flurry struck him from behind.

Because Rath was focused on Hookwolf and Krieg, his eyes had drifted away from the alley's dark corners. In that brief window of unobserved darkness, something hit him.

SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!

A brutal, lightning-fast assault of deep, broad cuts shredded across Rath's back. It moved with blinding, impossible agility—a chaotic blender of cutting edges that sliced through his thick hide like paper.

Rath roared in surprise, spinning around with a heavy claw strike to smash whatever had hit him. But the second his eyes swept over the corner of the alley... there was nothing there except Dorothy standing under a broken streetlamp. She looked completely human, completely fragile, and entirely unblemished.

Rath blinked, his rage momentarily derailed by utter confusion. He hadn't seen a monster. He hadn't seen a weapon. He had turned his back, gotten shredded by something hyper-agile, and turned around only to find a normal woman looking back at him.

Wait, Ben's tactical brain thought beneath Rath's screaming fury. Is she doing that only when I'm NOT looking at her?! What the heck is she turning into?!

Meanwhile, Rune—hovering high above on her floating concrete platform—panicked at the sight of Rath's sheer resilience and the bloody gashes on his back. Whimpering in fear, she reached out with her telekinesis, grabbing two nearby parked sedans and hurling them haphazardly down at Rath's head.

BOOM!

The heavy cars crushed down on Rath, pinning his upper body under tons of mangled metal and stone.

Before Rath could push the debris off, a thick, gray cloud of acidic smoke rolled over the wreckage. Fog was back. The mist began aggressively seeping down into the cracks of the broken vehicles, aiming directly for Rath's mouth, nose, and ears to melt his internal organs.

Rath felt the corrosive vapor beginning to sting the wet membranes of his nostrils, preparing to force its way down his throat.

"LEMME TELL YA SOMETHING, SMOKY THE BEAR!" Rath's furious voice boomed from beneath the concrete, vibrating the stone structure. "NOBODY ENTERS RATH'S NOSTRILS WITHOUT RATH'S EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION!"

Trapped flat on his stomach, Rath brought his massive, clawed palms together inside the tight pocket of rubble and struck them together with every ounce of muscle in his alien body.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

A thunderclap of pure, compressed acoustic air erupted from between Rath's hands! The sheer pressure wave shattered the surrounding debris into airborne pebbles and blew the surrounding air outward in a powerful sonic shockwave!

The gray mist of Fog's body was violently blown backward, scattered into thin, wispy vapor across three city blocks, completely disrupting his attempt to invade Rath's body.

Rath burst out of the pulverized rubble like an erupting volcano, his body covered in concrete dust and shallow cuts, but his fury burning brighter than ever. Yet, as he looked around, his sharp tactical instincts began to ring alarm bells.

Purity was charging another massive solar beam overhead. Kaiser was preparing a wall of metal spikes. Krieg's strange kinetic field was making every punch painfully sluggish. Night was lingering just outside his peripheral vision, ready to strike the moment he blinked. Rune was hovering out of reach, telekinetically levitating every piece of loose asphalt on the street, and Fog was already reforming his acidic mist on the wind.

He was getting pelted from every conceivable angle, trapped in a chaotic crossfire against powers he didn't fully comprehend. He needed to break line-of-sight, disrupt their coordination, and change the rules of engagement.

"RATH HAS HAD ENOUGH OF THIS MOB MENTALITY!" Rath screamed.

He drove both of his massive wrist claws deep into the asphalt, flexed his legs, and ripped his arms upward with terrifying strength!

KRA-KATOA!

A massive shockwave tore through the street and erupted upward, hurling huge slabs of pavement, dirt, and pulverized concrete fifty feet into the air. A dense, impenetrable screen of dust and debris instantly enveloped the entire block, blotting out Purity's light and blinding the Empire capes.

Inside the swirling cloud of dust, the green symbol on Rath's chest flashed brightly.

The towering, muscular feline shrank away. In its place, a gelatinous, bright-green, translucent form slithered across the broken street. Floating directly above the green blob was a small, silver, saucer-like device emitting a faint antigravity beam that kept the fluid mass suspended and mobile.

Goop had entered the fight.

Hookwolf was the first to charge blindly through the thick dust cloud. Still trapped in his monstrous form of spinning blades and iron chains, the white supremacist beast roared, searching for the orange fur of Rath.

"Die, you alien bastard!" Hookwolf howled, lunging straight through the dust veil.

He didn't hit fur. He didn't hit flesh.

Hookwolf slammed directly into the center of Goop's body.

Instead of shredding meat, Hookwolf's hundreds of spinning steel blades sank harmlessly into an ultra-viscous, bright green slime. The momentum of his charge carried him deep into Goop's fluid mass, and before Hookwolf could reverse his gears, Ben manipulated his own density.

Goop's slimy form expanded, wrapping completely around Hookwolf's multi-ton metal body like an indestructible, rubbery blanket! The thick, emerald goo flooded into every gear, every spinning blade axle, every chain link, and every structural joint of Hookwolf's metallic form. The friction of the slime instantly seized Hookwolf's internal mechanisms, grinding his spinning blades to a screeching, frozen halt.

"What the—! Get off me!" Hookwolf's muffled voice echoed from deep within the green mass, his metallic form thrashing uselessly against the non-Newtonian fluid.

Inside the green slime, Ben's mind raced.

Goop's body was naturally composed of an incredibly potent, highly controllable acid. If Ben wanted to, he could instantly alter his pH level, turning the green slime into a concentrated chemical bath that would dissolve Hookwolf's steel blades, his iron skeleton, and the human meat trapped inside in less than five seconds. He could reduce one of the Empire's most terrifying enforcers to a steaming puddle of sludge before Kaiser even realized what happened.

Ben hesitated.

No... I can't, Ben thought, his moral compass slamming the brakes on the violent instinct.

If he killed Hookwolf right here, he crossed the point of no return. Director Piggot and the PRT were already looking for any excuse to brand him an S-Class threat. If he started dropping bodies in the streets, Piggot would sign that Kill Order, and the full weight of the PRT, the Wards, and the Protectorate would come crashing down. Worse, they would use it as leverage to target Danny and Taylor Hebert. He couldn't destroy their lives just to win a street fight.

That split-second of hesitation cost him.

Trapped inside the suffocating green mass, Hookwolf panicked. Unable to spin his primary blades, he triggered an explosive ejection mechanism within his power, launching a dozen heavy, six-inch steel harpoons outward in all directions to break free!

THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!

The harpoons tore outward through Goop's liquid body without causing any damage—except for one.

One of the heavy steel harpoons shot straight upward, catching the edge of the floating Anti-Gravity Projector hovering above Goop's head!

CLANG!

The kinetic force of the harpoon struck the small silver saucer, knocking it violently off-balance and launching it across the alleyway!

Because Goop's body was entirely dependent on the Anti-Gravity Projector to maintain cohesion, the moment the saucer flew away, Goop's massive green body instantly lost its structure, melting into an inert, lifeless puddle of goo spread across the asphalt.

"I freed myself!" Hookwolf spat, shaking off the sticky green residue as he emerged from the puddle. "Where did it go?!"

Fifty feet away, the Anti-Gravity Projector skidded across the pavement, beeped urgently, and reactivated its tractor beam. The puddle of green goo on the street instantly converted into a long, liquid stream, flying across the alley at blinding speed to reassemble beneath the projector into Goop's humanoid shape.

"Note to self," Goop muttered, his nasal, liquid voice dripping with annoyance, "protect the shiny floating saucer."

Before he could reorient, the dust cloud was incinerated.

Purity unleashed a wide, sweeping carpet-bombardment of golden plasma from above, scorching the entire street. Kaiser sprouted forest after forest of jagged iron spears from every building wall, while Krieg stepped closer, his invisible field making the air thick and crushing. Rune, growing bolder, telekinetically pelted the green slime with chunks of shattered brick and iron rod.

Goop dodged and weaved, flowing over iron spikes like liquid water and flattening himself into a paper-thin sheet to let Purity's plasma beams pass harmlessly overhead. But every time he tried to maneuver, Krieg's heavy kinetic field caught his liquid form, turning his fluid movements heavy and thick. And in the shadows, whenever Goop turned his attention away, unseen slashes sliced through his liquid body from nowhere, forcing him to waste precious energy maintaining his shape.

Ben's mind was working frantically as he slid beneath a falling dumpster dropped by Rune.

He needed to eliminate their advantages, one by one. And the most pressing, dangerous threat right now was Fog.

He thought back to the wiki entry. Fog's entire power revolved around transforming his body into an acidic gas that eroded living, organic matter. Flesh, muscle, lungs, skin, organs. That's why Fog's mist burned XLR8's skin and tried to suffocate Rath.

If Fog's power relied on eroding living tissue... what happened if he attacked something that wasn't alive? Something that had no lungs, no throat, no internal organs, no blood, and no organic cells whatsoever?

A body made of pure, inorganic, dense mineral crystal.

Diamondhead!

Diamondhead's silicon-based petrosapien physiology was completely non-organic. Fog's corrosive gas couldn't erode Taydenite-hard crystal any more than household vinegar could melt a diamond. And without organs or a respiratory system, Diamondhead didn't even breathe. Fog's primary mode of attack would be completely useless.

The only problem was Fog's gas form made him impossible to hit with normal physical attacks. You can't punch smoke. Diamondhead couldn't crush Fog with a crystal spike if the gas just flowed around it.

Unless, Ben realized, I don't try to touch him. I let him come to me.

Goop flowed across the street, dodging another plasma blast from Purity. He spotted Fog's gray mist rapidly coalescing near the mouth of the alleyway, reforming to block his escape route.

Ben slithered toward his Anti-Gravity Projector, reached up with a liquid hand, and slammed his palm directly onto the glowing Omnitrix symbol on top of the saucer.

A blinding flash of emerald light illuminated the scorched alley.

The green slime and the floating saucer vanished. Standing in the center of the street was a tall, imposing figure carved from flawless, pale-green crystal. Sharply angled jaw, broad chest, black-and-white uniform, and massive, razor-sharp crystal spires protruding from his back.

Diamondhead stood unyielding against the storm.

"Another one?!" Kaiser growled from his steel perch. "It doesn't matter what form you take! Fog, dissolve him! Hookwolf, tear him apart!"

Hookwolf roared, lunging forward with all spinning blades active. At the same time, the thick, gray, acidic cloud of Fog swept across the pavement, rushing straight for Diamondhead's face.

Diamondhead didn't move an inch to dodge. He let it happen.

As Fog's corrosive smoke enveloped his head and upper torso, Diamondhead shifted his stance. He extended his heavy crystal arms, rapidly morphing his hands into giant, broad, spade-like crystal scoops. With a fluid, powerful motion, Diamondhead reached right through the smoke, catching Hookwolf mid-charge between his oversized crystal gauntlets!

Above them, Purity saw the alien manhandling Hookwolf and screamed in fury, unleashing a continuous, heavy barrage of laser blasts straight down onto Diamondhead's back!

ZAP-ZAP-BANG-RICOCHET!

The blinding golden beams slammed into Diamondhead's faceted crystalline back—and instantly ricocheted off his diamond-hard skin in every direction! Beams of reflected laser light bounced wildly off his crystal shoulders, tearing through the brick walls of the surrounding buildings, shattering Kaiser's iron pillars into molten slag, and forcing Rune to shriek and dive for cover on her floating slab as ricocheting plasma singed the air around her!

"Is that the best you got?!" Diamondhead shouted through the rain of bouncing light beams.

Hookwolf's spinning steel blades ground furiously against Diamondhead's arms with a sound that shattered every glass bottle within a mile. Sparks rained down like fireworks, but the Taydenite-hard crystal skin didn't take a single scratch.

"Nice try, doggy!" Diamondhead cracked, his voice deep, smooth, and utterly composed.

With a massive heave of his shoulders, Diamondhead swung his oversized crystal arms and hurled Hookwolf's multi-ton metallic form straight across the alley! Hookwolf crashed violently into Krieg and Kaiser's iron structure, sending both villains tumbling into the rubble in a chaotic heap.

Meanwhile, Fog's gray mist was fully wrapping around Diamondhead's head, trying desperately to find a way inside.

The corrosive vapor washed over the pale-green crystal skin, trying to dissolve the tissue—and failed completely. The acid sizzled harmlessly against the dense, inorganic petrosapien structure like water sliding off a waxed windshield. Fog tried to force his gas down Diamondhead's throat, but Diamondhead's mouth was solid crystal, his throat non-existent, his chest containing no lungs, no heart, and no soft organs to erode.

Inside the mist, Fog was realizing with sudden, creeping horror that his power was completely, utterly useless.

"What's the matter, cloudy?" Diamondhead taunted, his crystalline voice echoing clearly through the dense smoke. "Having performance issues?"

Before Fog could disengage and scatter his mist back into the open air, Diamondhead acted.

He slammed both of his broad crystal palms flat onto the cracked asphalt beneath his feet.

FOOM!

Instantly, massive, thick slabs of pale-green crystal erupted out of the street around them! The crystal walls grew at terrifying speed, curving inward overhead, interlocking with seamless, airtight precision.

In less than a second, Diamondhead built a massive, hollow, completely sealed Taydenite dome around himself and Fog, completely encasing them both inside an impenetrable crystalline vault!

Outside the dome, the alley went dead silent.

"Fog!" Kaiser yelled, picking himself up from the rubble. "Purity, break that thing open!"

Purity flew lower, her glowing eyes flashing as she unleashed her most powerful, concentrated light-beam directly at the apex of the crystal dome. At the same time, Rune hurled five heavy steel girders at the structure, while Night—slipping out of sight behind the dust—slashed viciously at the outer walls in unseen flurries.

BOOM! BANG! SCHRRRRT!

The concentrated golden plasma beam struck the angled facets of the dome—and once again, the laser light ricocheted violently off the crystalline dome! The reflected beam bounced skyward, carving a glowing trench through the clouds, while the steel girders crumpled like paper against the smooth Taydenite surface. The combined assault of the Empire's strongest capes echoed like thunder across the Docks, but when the dust cleared, the pale-green crystal dome stood entirely unblemished. Not a crack. Not a chip. Not even a burn mark. The dense petrosapien structure absorbed and reflected the kinetic and thermal energy effortlessly. They were completely locked out.

Inside the pitch-black, airtight crystal dome, Fog was trapped.

Without an open exit, Fog's gas form was compressed inside the enclosed space. He couldn't reform into his human body without taking a crystal fist to the jaw, and his acidic mist was doing absolutely nothing to the walls or the crystal giant standing in front of him.

"You really thought you were the only one who could play with temperature and states of matter?" Diamondhead said softly in the dark.

Diamondhead raised a crystal hand and brought his thumb down onto the glowing green emblem on his chest.

FLASH!

The pale-green crystal body vanished.

In the pitch darkness of the sealed dome, two glowing green eyes opened. A pair of large, dark-blue moth-like wings unfolded, revealing a frail, ghostly, ice-white figure with long, dark blue antennae and a skeletal, hooded posture.

A bone-chilling, unnatural cold instantly flooded the sealed interior of the vault. The ambient temperature plummeted, dropping toward absolute zero in a fraction of a second. Frost instantly crystallized across the inner walls of the dome.

Fog's gas form slowed down, the molecules of his vapor form shuddering as the extreme cold ripped the kinetic energy right out of his gaseous body.

Big Chill hovered silently in the air, his folded wings giving him the silhouette of a grim reaper in the dark.

"Is it cold in here..." Big Chill rasped, his voice deep, haunting, and echoing with an ethereal, icy whisper, "...or is it just you?"

Fog tried to flee, his gas desperately trying to find a microscopic seam in the Taydenite vault to slip through. But Big Chill didn't give him the chance.

Big Chill spread his massive moth wings, phase-shifted into his intangible phantom state, and glided effortlessly straight through the dense cloud of Fog's body.

As Big Chill passed through the gas, his supernatural frost-breath and extreme endothermic aura washed over every single floating vapor molecule. The absolute-zero cold instantly flash-froze the moisture and gas components of Fog's power.

CRACKLE-CRACKLE-FREEZE!

Inside the sealed dome, a sound like shattering glass echoed through the dark.

Fog's entire gaseous body—every single particle of his corrosive mist—was instantly frozen solid. The gray smoke converted into millions of sparkling frost crystals, which slammed together and fell to the floor of the dome in a heavy, frozen, solid block of ice.

Trapped inside the core of the dense ice block, completely flash-frozen and unconscious before he could even process what had happened, was the shivering form of Fog.

Big Chill slowly drifted back down to the crystal floor, his icy breath pluming in the pitch-black vault. He folded his large wings around his chest like a dark cape, his glowing green eyes staring down at the frozen villain.

He reached out an intangible hand, pressed it against the inner wall of the Taydenite dome, and prepared to shatter the structure to face the remaining six capes waiting outside.

Big Chill's raspy, haunting voice whispered into the quiet darkness of the vault.

"One down... six to go."

The brilliant flash of emerald light died away inside the pitch-black Taydenite vault, leaving only the steady, faint pulse of the Omnitrix faceplate against Ben's chest.

Reverting from Big Chill's ghostly, skeletal frame back to his human form, Ben let out a long breath that instantly bloomed into a cloud of white vapor. The air inside the sealed dome was frigid enough to freeze sweat on his brow, but he paid the cold no mind. Beside him, frozen solid within a multi-ton block of opaque, glinting ice, the unconscious form of Fog remained completely immobile, his gray, acidic mist turned into harmless frost.

Ben dropped down into a cross-legged position on the polished Taydenite floor, resting his elbows on his knees.

Outside the crystal shell, the storm of violence had temporarily ground to a halt. For several minutes, the Empire 88 capes had bombarded the dome with everything they had. Ben had felt the faint, rhythmic thuds of Hookwolf's multi-ton iron mass slamming against the exterior, accompanied by the muffled, high-pitched screech of solar lasers ricocheting harmlessly off the dense crystal facets. But Taydenite was one of the hardest mineral structures in the known galaxy; nothing on Earth Bet was cracking this shell from the outside.

Eventually, the bombardment stopped. A heavy, tense silence fell over the scorched street, broken only by the crackle of burning pavement and distant sirens.

Then, Kaiser's voice echoed through the concrete.

Amplified by a crude metal horn he had shaped directly from his gauntleted hand, the leader of Empire 88 began to speak. His tone was smooth, authoritative, and dripping with theatrical arrogance, designed to echo off the surrounding brick buildings and resonate through the crystal dome itself.

"Listen to me, alien!" Kaiser shouted, his metallic voice carrying a sharp, rhythmic cadence. "You hide behind your crystalline wall, but you have already lost! You bring your illegal alien monstrosities into our city, attacking our people and disrupting order! Step out and face the judgment of Empire Eighty-Eight!"

Inside the dome, Ben rolled his eyes, completely tuning out the pompous lecture.

He didn't know what kind of lies Kaiser had spun to convince Purity to join this raid, nor did he know her real name or personal life. But standing out on the street before he sealed himself away, Ben had been genuinely surprised to see her hovering in the sky. He had spent hours scrolling through public forums on Parahumans Online during his first few nights in Brockton Bay, and the consensus online was that Purity had broken off from the Empire entirely. Seeing her out there, acting as Kaiser's flying artillery, meant Kaiser was posturing for her benefit just as much as his own and that He needed to keep up whatever narrative he'd fed her to keep her on his leash.

So Kaiser kept yapping, his voice droning on about law, order, and alien threats. Inside his dark fortress, Ben's mind was moving at a completely different speed, calculating his options like a chess master analyzing a cluttered board.

Okay, Ben thought, running a thumb along the edge of the Omnitrix faceplate. Let's tally the field.

Fog was out cold beside him, encased in three feet of Taydenite-hard ice. That was one down. Outside, five main threats remained: Kaiser, Purity, Hookwolf, Krieg, Night, and the floating telekinetic girl, Rune.

Ben ran through his roster. Chromastone or Diamondhead could easily handle most of them. Chromastone could absorb Purity's solar beams and feed them right back into Kaiser's metal structures, and Diamondhead's raw crystal generation could match Kaiser blade for blade.

But there's a catch, Ben mused, narrowing his eyes in the dark. Night and Hookwolf.

Night was an absolute nightmare in a crowd control scenario. From the brief, bloody encounter he'd just had as Rath, he knew her Breaker form was terrifyingly fast and absurdly sharp. Her power relied entirely on line-of-sight—she only transformed when unobserved. In a frantic, multi-target brawl where he had to dodge orbital bombardments, avoid Kaiser's floor-spikes, and track flying debris, maintaining uninterrupted eye contact on a single woman standing in the shadow of an alley was practically impossible. The moment he blinked or turned to block a laser, she'd be on his back again.

And then there was Hookwolf. The guy was a multi-ton walking mass of grinding steel, chains, and harpoons. He took an absurd amount of physical punishment, constantly regenerating his metallic mass. Blunt force worked, but it took time—time Ben didn't have while four other capes pelted him from all directions.

I could use Ghostfreak, Ben considered for a split second. Infiltrate Hookwolf's metallic core, possess his body, and use his own strength to clear the field.

He instantly nixed the idea with a sharp grimace.

Again on this world Human Masters—parahumans who could control minds or possess bodies—were viewed with absolute, overwhelming terror. Between the horror stories of villains manipulating minds and driving entire towns mad, mind-control abilities were an absolute taboo. If the PRT or the Protectorate saw Ben possessing people's bodies, any chance of a peaceful resolution would vanish. Piggot would slap an S-Class Master threat rating on his head before sunrise.

To make matters worse, the parahuman wiki entries on Krieg and Night were maddeningly vague. Krieg's power was listed as some form of kinetic manipulation, but standing near him had felt like dragging a body through pressurized mud while stray debris hit like high-caliber rounds. Fighting an unknown kinetic manipulator and a line-of-sight Breaker with incomplete intel was a recipe for getting blindsided.

I need something that controls the battlefield, Ben thought, tapping his chin. Something that doesn't care about line-of-sight, doesn't care about iron walls, can ignore Krieg's kinetic zone by attacking from an angle he isn't watching, and can take down Hookwolf's durability in a single blow.

A lightbulb practically clicked on above his head.

Seismic force.

Ben stood up, brushing the frost off his jeans. He tapped the Omnitrix faceplate. The green interface sprang to life, casting a bright emerald glow across his face. He rotated the digital holowheel, scrolling past the icons of Humungousaur, Four Arms, and XLR8, until he reached the precise silhouette he wanted

The core of the watch popped up with a satisfying mechanical click.

Ben looked at the frozen block of Fog one last time, grinned into the darkness, and brought his palm slamming down onto the dial.

Outside in the scorched, ruinous street, Kaiser was still posturing atop his metal pillar.

"You think your silence protects you?!" Kaiser barked through his iron horn. "Every second you spend cowering in that shell, my men reinforce the perimeter! You will step out and face the justice of Empire Eighty-Eight!"

Beside the pillar, hovering on a jagged slab of concrete four feet off the ground, Tammi—known to the public as Rune—was trembling under her red cape.

Her hands shook so violently that her telekinetic hold on the surrounding debris wobbled erratically. Tammi had never cared about the Empire's hateful ideology. She hadn't joined because she believed in Kaiser's grand speeches about bloodlines or racial supremacy. She was just a teenager who had fled a home filled with controlling, overbearing parents who treated her like a child. When the Empire's recruiters scouted her after her trigger event, they had lavished her with attention, treated her like a capable adult, and offered her a place where she felt important.

Now, standing in a warzone against a shapeshifting alien that had just tanked Purity's full-power solar beam without a scratch, she felt tiny, helpless, and terrified. Tammi never should have joined this group. She just wanted to get away from her parents. She hated this feeling—feeling weak, helpless, and trapped in a nightmare.

Suddenly, a cold shudder ran down her spine.

It wasn't just fear. The ground itself began to hum. A subterranean vibration started deep within the earth, pulsing through the soles of Krieg's boots and rattling the steel plates of Kaiser's pillar. It wasn't a natural earthquake; it was rhythmic, mechanical, and accelerating—like a massive industrial piston pounding against the bedrock beneath the street.

Tammi's breath hitched under her mask. A Shaker power...

The vibration hit a crescendo.

Directly beneath Krieg's feet, the asphalt exploded skyward in a towering geyser of pulverized stone, dirt, and shattered pipes!

BOOM!

Krieg barely had time to widen his eyes before a colossal, bright yellow armored titan erupted from the subterranean breach. The creature was built like a heavy industrial excavator, clad in massive yellow plating, with thick silver hydraulic pistons built into its massive forearms and a heavy, mechanical tail whipping through the air.

Armodrillo!

Before Krieg could activate his kinetic forcefield to cushion the blow, Armodrillo's massive right arm shot upward in a brutal, bone-shattering uppercut.

CLANG-THWACK!

The clawed yellow fist caught Krieg directly under the chin, launching the kinetic cape thirty feet straight up into the air.

As Krieg hung dazed at the apex of his trajectory, Armodrillo didn't pause for a single millisecond. He planted his heavy metallic boots into the torn-up road, pulled his left arm back, and engaged the massive pneumatic piston on his elbow. The mechanism wound back with a high-pressure pneumatic HISSS-CLICK, locking the internal kinetic spring into place.

Armodrillo's glowing green eyes locked onto the airborne cape.

"Hope you like low-altitude travel!" Armodrillo's deep, mechanical voice boomed

He unleashed the punch.

THU-BOOM!

The hydraulic piston fired with terrifying velocity, driving Armodrillo's fist straight into Krieg's exposed stomach while he was still suspended in mid-air.

The kinetic discharge was immense. A visible wave of distorted air erupted from the point of impact. Krieg was propelled horizontally down the street like a artillery shell, blasting clean through the brick facade of a bakery, tearing straight through the back wall of an empty warehouse, and landing with a heavy splash directly inside a stagnant sewage pit down the block. The impact knocked Krieg out instantly.

Two down.

The remaining Empire capes froze in shock.

"KRIEG!" Kaiser shouted, his metallic posture breaking. "Kill it! KILL IT NOW!"

The street erupted into chaos.

Purity descended from the sky, unleashing a rapid-fire barrage of golden plasma bolts. Kaiser slammed his hands together, sprouting a wave of thirty-foot iron spears from the pavement, while Rune, panicking completely, lifted three heavy steel dumpsters and hurled them toward the yellow titan.

Armodrillo moved with surprising agility for a creature built like a tank.

He lowered his heavy shoulders, stepping forward as Purity's plasma blasts slammed into his back. The superheated light scorched his thick yellow hide, but his Talpaedan armor—built to withstand deep-planetary pressure and intense heat—held firm. Iron spears sprouted beneath him, but Armodrillo simply stepped on them, crushing Kaiser's steel spikes into flat metal ribbons under his multi-ton weight.

As he dodged and tanked the incoming projectile barrage, Armodrillo kept his large green eyes pinned firmly on the shadow of a nearby building.

There, standing under the flickering light of a broken lamp, was Dorothy—Night.

She remained entirely human, entirely still, locked in her fragile form because Armodrillo's wide field of vision held her pinned in the dark. She twitched in frustration, unable to transform while his green gaze remained on her.

"Let's see how you handle a little ground instability," Armodrillo grunted, his mechanical voice vibrating through his chest.

Armodrillo flexed his massive hands. His thick, clawed fingers retracted directly into his yellow forearms, forming two smooth, rounded metal spheres. Deep inside his arms, high-frequency kinetic generators whirred to life, sending a sharp hum through the street.

He slammed both vibrating ball-hands straight down into the broken pavement.

KRA-KATOA!

Subterranean seismic waves tore through the earth. Instantly, the ground beneath Kaiser's steel pillar and Rune's position liquefied. A massive sinkhole collapsed inward with a deafening roar, swallowing asphalt, bedrock, and iron spears into a churning pit.

"AH!" Rune cried out in terror.

She instinctively yanked her telekinetic field upward, sending her concrete slab shooting fifty feet into the air to avoid the collapsing trench.

Kaiser wasn't fast enough. His steel pillar lost its foundation, tilting wildly before crashing down into the chasm. Kaiser plummeted into the dark pit, his heavy armor clattering against falling rocks as tons of dirt and gravel collapsed over his legs, burying him to his waist.

"Kaiser!" Purity called out from above.

Seeing her leader buried and helpless, Purity abandoned her aerial assault on Armodrillo, swooping down toward the edge of the chasm to burn away the falling dirt and pull Kaiser free. At the same time, Night, realizing Kaiser was trapped, broke her defensive position and sprinted along the lip of the sinkhole to cover their leader's retreat.

Which left Armodrillo standing alone in the middle of the ruined street.

Facing Hookwolf.

Hookwolf roared—a harsh, metallic sound of grinding gears and tearing iron. The ten-foot beast of blades and chains surged forward, his spinning razors tearing up the pavement as he charged straight at the yellow titan.

"You think armor saves you?!" Hookwolf snarled, his metallic jaws snapping. "I'll turn you into scrap!"

Armodrillo didn't step back. He pulled his right arm back to its maximum limit, winding the silver hydraulic piston on his elbow until the high-pressure mechanism squealed. High-frequency seismic energy pulsed through every plate and hydraulic line in his arm.

Hookwolf leapt into the air, a whirlwind of spinning saw blades, harpoons, and rusted iron hooks aimed directly at Armodrillo's head.

Armodrillo ducked his head, stepped inside the metallic storm, and unleashed the piston.

"Let's see how your blades hold up to structural resonance!" Armodrillo said smoothly, his deep mechanical voice steady despite the chaos.

THU-CLANG!

Armodrillo's piston-driven, seismic-charged fist slammed squarely onto the top of Hookwolf's steel head.

The impact was catastrophic. The seismic energy stored in Armodrillo's forearm detonated like an industrial demolition charge.

BOOM!

A massive shockwave of compressed air and kinetic force erupted outward from the strike. The shockwave tore down the street, expanding in a circular wave that shook the surrounding blocks of the city.

For nearly a mile in every direction, every single glass window on every office building, storefront, and streetlamp instantly exploded outward in a shower of sparkling shards. Car alarms blared in a deafening chorus across dozens of blocks, and the foundations of nearby structures groaned under the sudden tremor.

Hookwolf didn't even have a chance to disperse his mass. The sheer magnitude of the piston strike crushed his multi-ton metallic body directly straight down into the bedrock. His spinning blades flattened, his steel frame crumpled, and his human core was knocked violently unconscious in a fraction of a second.

Hookwolf's collapsed, silent metallic form was driven deep into the solid earth below the street.

Armodrillo quickly extended his claws, jammed his hands into the edges of the crater, and gave his arms a quick, high-frequency vibrate. The surrounding dirt and broken concrete instantly collapsed inward over the crater, sealing the unconscious Hookwolf inside a dense earthen pit, completely trapping him underground.

Armodrillo pulled his arms out of the dirt, stood up to his full height, and casually slapped his heavy yellow palms together with a loud metallic CLACK-CLACK, dusting off the concrete powder.

Fifty feet away, the dust slowly cleared.

Purity hovered near the lip of the sinkhole, her face pale as she held a battered, bleeding Kaiser by his armor. Night stood beside the pit, Dorothy's pale eyes wide with shock. High above, Rune floated on her concrete slab, clutching her knees and weeping silently, completely shaken by the demonstration of raw force.

Armodrillo flexed his massive yellow arms, the hydraulic pistons on his elbows hissing softly as the green Omnitrix badge on his chest gleamed under the shattered streetlamps. He took a heavy, deliberate step forward, his green eyes locking onto Kaiser.

"Night! Kill him!" Kaiser spat, his metallic voice raw. "Take his head while he's slow!"

The shadows beneath the ruined storefronts liquefied. The moment Armodrillo glanced toward Kaiser, line-of-sight broke for a fraction of a second—and Dorothy vanished.

In her place, the monstrous, shifting silhouette of Night's Breaker form erupted into motion.Limbs blurred across the street, tearing up the pavement in a silent, terrifying charge directly at Armodrillo's blind spot.

High above, floating on her trembling concrete slab, Rune squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back tears of sheer panic. Tammi was terrified out of her mind, but seeing Kaiser back on his feet and Night moving forced a surge of desperate adrenaline through her. She couldn't just sit here. Gathering every ounce of her remaining concentration, she locked her telekinesis onto two abandoned sedans and a cluster of heavy brick rubble, hurling them down in a frantic wave of cover fire to pin the yellow titan in place.

Armodrillo spun his heavy upper body, hydraulic pistons whining as he tried to sweep his vision across the street to lock eyes on Night. But she was too fast, weaving effortlessly through the falling debris Rune tossed down, flickering in and out of his peripheral vision every time a flying car broke his line of sight.

"Oh, come on!" Ben grunted, his mechanical voice vibrating with irritation as a flying sedan shattered against his armored shoulder. "Tracking a hyper-agile shadowy monster with two eyes on a bulky frame? Yeah, not happening."

Tired of playing hide-and-seek with a Breaker, Armodrillo slammed his clawed hand directly down onto the glowing green symbol on his chest.

Emerald energy flared out in a brilliant, blinding sphere, swallowing his multi-ton frame and forcing Night to skitter backward as the sheer light threatened to burn her unobserved state.

When the flash faded, Armodrillo was gone.

Standing in his place was a lean, muscular alien with soft tan-and-yellow hide, dark green athletic bands wrapped around his limbs, and a pair of massive, bat-like ears fanning out from the top of his head where his face should have been. But what drew the eye—literally—were the dozens of large, glowing green eyeballs covering his shoulders, chest, forearms, back, and thighs.

Eye Guy!

Ben stretched his arms, every single pupil on his body dilating and focusing simultaneously in a complete three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of view.

"Eye gotta say," Eye Guy's voice echoed, resonant and slightly layered, "you guys are really starting to get on my nerves! But don't worry—Eye've got my eye on all of you!"

Night froze mid-stride.

With eyes literally covering every square inch of Eye Guy's upper body—including the back of his neck and the palms of his hands—there was no blind spot. There was no shadow to hide in. No matter where she bounded, at least six glowing green pupils were locked directly onto her. Her Breaker transformation slammed to a halt, forcing her back into her fragile, human form.

Dorothy's pale face twisted in desperation. She couldn't transform, but she wasn't completely helpless. Reaching into the tactical pouches at her belt, she pulled two cylindrical canisters, pulled the pins with her teeth, and hurled them straight at Eye Guy's feet.

BANG-FLASH!

A pair of high-grade military flashbangs detonated simultaneously alongside a dense cloud of thick tactical smoke.

"GAHH!" Eye Guy shrieked, instantly clapping his large hands over his head.

While the blinding light did little to bother his multi-directional vision, the deafening shockwave hit him like a physical sledgehammer. Because Eye Guy's face consisted almost entirely of two massive, hyper-sensitive auditory ears, the sound of the flashbangs echoed inside his skull like a concussive bomb, sending a jolt of agonizing pressure through his nervous system.

"My ears! Oh, that was a visionary level of cheap!" Eye Guy groaned, staggering back a step as his vision swam.

Taking advantage of his momentary disorientation, Dorothy drew two combat knives and lunged through the thick smoke cloud, aiming straight for his exposed chest.

Even with his ears ringing furiously, Eye Guy's instinct kicked in. Raising his muscular forearms, he crossed them in front of his torso, the dense, leather-like skin on his arms easily catching and turning away Dorothy's desperate knife strikes. The steel blades sparked uselessly against his hide.

"Nice try, but eye don't think so!" Eye Guy grunted.

Before Dorothy could pull back into the smoke, the center of Eye Guy's right palm split open, revealing a large, gleaming green eye right in the middle of his hand.

ZZZZZZZZ-TAP!

A violent arc of blue, crackling bio-electricity erupted directly from the palm-eye at point-blank range! The high-voltage arc hit Dorothy squarely in the center of her chest, illuminating her skeleton through her clothes as thousands of volts coursed through her body. She let out a strangled gasp, her eyes rolling back as her muscles locked up, before collapsing limply onto the scorched pavement, completely unconscious.

High above, Rune gasped, her eyes widening in horror as Night fell. Panicking even further, the teenage cape frantically directed a massive piece of jagged iron building frame to drop straight onto the back of Eye Guy's head.

"Look out below!" Rune whimpered.

An eye situated right between Eye Guy's shoulder blades blinked open, tracking the falling iron structure instantly.

"Eye see you up there, kid!" Eye Guy called out over his shoulder.

The eye on his upper back dilated, glowing with intense thermal energy, and unleashed a thick, emerald laser beam straight up into the air.

BOOM!

The green laser sliced clean through the heavy iron frame, disintegrating it into harmless glowing cinders. The beam continued upward, clipping the edge of Rune's floating concrete slab. The telekinetic platform shattered into dust, sending Rune tumbling through the air with a terrified shriek. She landed with a loud THWACK directly inside a soft, open industrial recycling dumpster on the side of the street, completely knocked out from the shock and impact.

Eye Guy dusted off his forearms, all his eyes blinking in sequence. "And that's how you keep your eyes on the prize."

Across the street, Kaiser stepped over the lip of the sinkhole, his silver armor dented and smoking, his eyes wide with disbelief as he watched the last of his ground forces crumble.

"Purity!" Kaiser bellowed, his voice echoing frantically down the empty avenue. "Synchronize with me! Now! We crush this monster together!"

Hovering fifty feet up, Purity's golden light flared to brilliant, blinding intensity. She looked down at the street, her expression torn between absolute terror and burning rage. Suppressing her doubts, she aligned her hands with Kaiser's.

Kaiser slammed his armored palms onto the ground, raising a dense, forest of hundreds of razor-sharp steel blades that surged forward like a metal wave. Simultaneously, Purity channeled her full power, unleashing a continuous, town-destroying beam of pure golden solar plasma directly down the center of the street.

The combined attack turned the avenue into a hellscape of flying iron and incinerating heat, rushing straight toward Eye Guy.

Ben looked at the incoming wall of death, then down at the Omnitrix dial on his chest.

"Alright," Ben muttered, his eyes narrowing. "Time to wrap this up."

He slammed his hand down on the faceplate once more.

Emerald light erupted, washing over the street. The incoming solar beam and steel wave collided with the flash of light with an explosive roar.

When the dust settled, the metal blades were mangled heaps on the ground, and Purity's solar beam was being drawn directly into a tall, slender figure standing unharmed in the crater.

The entity was composed of dense, dark violet silicon crystal, studded with vibrant magenta spikes along his shoulders, head, and limbs. A single, glowing green eye sat in the center of his faceted face, and the Omnitrix symbol gleamed proudly on his chest.

Chromastone!

Purity's massive solar beam wasn't vaporizing him—it was flowing smoothly into Chromastone's body. The magenta crystals along his back flared with radiant, prismatic light, humming with absorbed energy as he stored the immense power without taking a single scratch.

Kaiser's jaw dropped beneath his silver helmet. "What... what is that?!"

"My turn," Chromastone said, his voice deep, smooth, and echoing with crystalline resonance.

Chromastone raised both hands, aiming them straight up at Purity. The absorbed solar energy was converted in an instant inside his crystal core, and he unleashed a thick, roaring multi-colored beam of rainbow energy straight into the sky!

FWUUUUUUUU-BOOM!

The prismatic beam slammed into Purity's light-shield with catastrophic force. The raw kinetic and energy output shattered her defensive aura like glass, launching her backward through the sky like a shooting star.

Purity tumbled through the air, groaning as she stabilized herself a hundred feet up, shaking the spots from her vision. She frantically turned her head, searching around for the crystal alien. "Where did he—?"

"Looking for me?" a voice purred directly behind her ear.

Purity's heart stopped. She whipped her head around, her eyes widening in sheer shock to find Chromastone floating mid-air directly behind her, his single green eye staring down at her coldly.

Before she could even raise a hand to blast him, Chromastone leaned back and delivered a brutal, sweeping backhand with his rock-hard crystal arm.

CLANG-THWACK!

The strike caught Purity cleanly across the face. The force of the blow sent her spinning violently out of control, accelerating downward like a falling meteor before crashing straight into the asphalt of the street below!

BOOOOOOM!

The impact tore through the pavement, throwing up a massive cloud of dust, stone, and pulverized concrete. Ben silently offered a quick prayer of thanks to the universe that no civilians were anywhere near this block—the street was completely deserted, leaving only the Empire's wreckage behind.

Down in the crater, the dust slowly cleared to reveal a wide, twenty-foot trench carved into the road. Purity lay at the center of it, her golden light flickering weakly, her mouth stained with blood as she gasped for air, her ribs aching terribly as she struggled to push herself up onto her hands and knees.

A heavy THUD echoed through the trench as Chromastone landed gracefully at the edge of the crater.

He walked forward, his heavy crystalline boot coming down directly onto the center of Purity's chest, pinning her firmly back against the broken asphalt. Purity let out a sharp grunt of pain, her hands clawing futilely at his unyielding violet ankle.

Across the street, Kaiser went pale. "Purity!"

Panicking, Kaiser raised his hands, manifesting dozens of iron spears from the surrounding walls and hurling them frantically toward Chromastone's back.

Chromastone didn't even turn around. He casually extended his left hand, projecting a shimmering, crackling dome of multi-colored energy around himself and Purity. Kaiser's iron spears slammed into the electric forcefield, instantly shattering into bent, useless scrap metal that fell harmlessly to the ground.

Inside the bubble, Chromastone leaned down, his green eye fixing Purity with a sharp, demanding stare.

"Alright, lady," Chromastone demanded, his voice stern. "Why the hell are you back with the Empire? Last I checked on the internet, you defected from these scumbags. What are you doing out here taking orders from Kaiser?"

Purity coughed up a fleck of blood, glaring up at him with fierce, tear-filled eyes, but remained tight-lipped.

Chromastone narrowed his eye and applied a tiny fraction more pressure to her chest with his foot.

Purity winced, gritting her teeth against the pain before breaking down, her voice trembling with raw, venomous rage. "Because of what you did! Kaiser told me everything! He showed me the reports! He said you attacked our people at Brockton General Hospital! He said you swore to purge every cape in this city who doesn't bow to you! That you're occupying the hospital right now, holding our wounded hostage! That you're targeting our children, our homes, our heritage!"

Chromastone froze.

For three agonizing seconds, absolute silence hung inside the energy bubble.

Then, Chromastone threw his head back and let out a loud, booming, crystalline laugh that echoed off the walls of the forcefield. He laughed so hard his shoulders shook, wiping a non-existent tear from his single green eye.

"Holy shit!" Ben wheezed, his voice filled with pure, unadulterated disbelief. "That is comedy gold! Wow. He really laid it on thick, didn't he?!"

Purity stared up at him, utterly bewildered and furious. "What is so funny to you?!"

"What's funny is how completely gullible you are!" Chromastone snapped, his tone shifting back to sharp, deadpan annoyance. "Let me set the record straight: I was at Brockton General Hospital because Kaiser sent a freaking hit squad after me while I was literally just visiting my friends! I killed Othala and Victor because they came after ME in a public place. I lobotomized Alabaster because he was a threat I didn't attack any hospital staff, I didn't take any hostages, and I sure as hell didn't make some evil warlord speech about purging the city!"

Purity gasped, her chest heaving as she processed his words. "How... how am I supposed to trust anything you say?! You're an alien! A monster!"

"Use your brain!" Chromastone shouted down at her. "Look around you! If I was the bloodthirsty, murderous psycho Kaiser claimed I was, why are you still breathing right now?! Why didn't I shoot a hole through your chest the second you hit the ground? Why didn't I pulverize Hookwolf into dog food or shatter Fog? I've only killed two capes from your entire stupid faction—and both of them were trying to murder me first in self-defense!"

Purity went completely still.

The cold, logical truth of his words hit her like a physical blow. She looked up at the towering crystal entity holding her down. He had absorbed her full-power solar beam, beaten her in mid-air, and had total dominance over the battlefield. If he wanted her dead, she'd be a smoldering pile of ash. Kaiser's story—the image of an unhinged, bloodthirsty alien butcher out to slaughter their families—completely collapsed under the weight of reality.

A wave of sick, burning realization washed over her. Kaiser had lied to her. Again. He had used her fear for her child and her city to drag her back into his dirty war as his personal weapon.

Seeing the horror and understanding dawn on her face, Chromastone lifted his boot off her chest and took a step back.

"Seriously, just go home," Ben groaned, throwing his crystalline hands up in total exasperation. "And while you're at it, stop all this racist nonsense! It's so unbelievably stupid! Who the hell condemns other human beings just because of their skin color? Do you have any idea how much of the modern world was built by the people you look down on? Goddamnit, even the TRAFFIC LIGHTS were invented by a Black man!"

Purity lay in the crater, staring up at him in utter, stunned bewilderment. Her mouth opened slightly, completely speechless as she watched a multi-colored alien crystal god stand in the middle of a ruined street, furiously lecturing her on civil rights and traffic history.

Chromastone stopped his rant, rubbed the bridge of his snout, and dismissively waved his hand toward the skyline. "Just get out of here. Go."

Purity hesitated, clutching her bruised ribs as she slowly pushed herself up. She looked at Chromastone, then turned her head toward the forcefield, where Kaiser was still frantically pounding on the energy barrier, screaming her name in desperate, pathetic demands for her to fight.

Disgusted, betrayed, and completely done, Purity ignited her golden light. Without casting a single glance back at Kaiser, she shot straight into the night sky, disappearing into the clouds over the city.

"Purity! No! Come back here, you traitorous bitch!" Kaiser shrieked, his voice cracking with desperation as he watched his strongest cape vanish.

Chromastone lowered his hand, letting the electric forcefield vanish into thin air.

Kaiser's incoming wave of steel blades slammed directly into Chromastone's chest—and instantly shattered into thousands of useless metal splinters on impact.

Chromastone didn't even flinch. He slowly dusted a speck of metal powder off his violet chest.

"And then there was one," Chromastone said softly.

He took a slow, heavy, ominous step toward Kaiser.

Kaiser backed away in total panic, his boots stumbling over the broken asphalt. All his calm, refined arrogance was completely gone, replaced by the naked terror of a man who realized his kingdom had just been dismantled in under ten minutes.

"Stay back!" Kaiser screamed, his hands shaking violently as he drew every bit of his power.

A massive, six-foot iron greatsword materialized in his gauntleted hands, glowing with jagged, razor-sharp edges.

"I am the leader of Empire Eighty-Eight!" Kaiser roared in a desperate, frantic bid for control, charging forward with his sword raised high. "Our blood is superior! You cannot defeat us!"

Kaiser swung the massive iron sword with all his strength, aiming a decapitating strike straight at Chromastone's neck.

CLANG-SHATTER!

The iron greatsword struck Chromastone's crystalline skin and instantly exploded into a cloud of useless metallic dust.

Kaiser stumbled back, staring in horror at his empty, vibrating gauntlets. He looked up into the single, cold green eye of Chromastone.

"Superior huh?" Chromastone said dryly. "Let's see if your armor is superior to THIS."

Chromastone pulled back his right fist, pulling energy into his arm until his fist glowed with a brilliant, pulsing violet light.

He unleashed a swift, brutal right hook straight into Kaiser's silver helmet.

BOOM!

The energy-infused punch hit Kaiser with the force of a battering ram. The impact shattered his silver helmet visor, launching his heavy frame backward across the street. Kaiser crashed straight through the front glass windows of an abandoned coffee shop, tumbling over broken tables before slamming face-first into the wooden counter, completely unconscious.

Silence fell over the street.

Every member of the Empire 88 strike team—Fog, Krieg, Hookwolf, Night, Rune, and Kaiser—lay defeated, trapped, or unconscious.

Chromastone stood alone amidst the smoldering craters, shattered pavement, and broken steel. He let out a long, crystalline sigh, stretching his arms.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-FLASH!

The Omnitrix symbol on his chest flashed a brilliant crimson, and in a flash of red light, Chromastone shrank down, reverting back to Ben Tennyson in his jacket and jeans.

Ben rubbed the back of his neck, groaning as his human muscles settled. "Man... my back is killing me."

Before he could take two steps toward the sidewalk, the loud, wailing sirens of approaching PRT cruisers and police cars began to echo down the block, their red and blue lights flashing against the surrounding buildings.

And over the sirens, a very distinct, deep, mechanical roar of a high-tech motorcycle engine rumbled down the street.

Ben stopped in his tracks, dropping his head into his hands with a heavy groan.

"Armsmaster," Ben muttered, rolling his eyes toward the moon. "Seriously? This is gonna be such a pain in the ass..."

All he wanted to do was wrap this up, get some food, and head back to the hospital to check on Taylor and Danny Hebert.

"Ah well," Ben chuckled softly to himself, adjusting his jacket as the motorcycle headlights rounded the corner. "Such is the life of a hero."

 

[Thegameaholic]

The heavy roar of a custom high-performance motorcycle engine echoed off the surrounding brick facades, punctuated by the rhythmic, mechanical thud of heavy-duty suspension slamming over fractured asphalt.

Flashing red and blue emergency lights washed over the devastated street in strobing sweeps, cutting through the swirling dust and smoke left behind by Armodrillo's seismic rampage. Half a dozen black-and-yellow PRT armored containment vans pulled into the intersection, their tires screeching as they formed a tactical barricade. Heavy metal doors slammed open in rapid succession. PRT troopers in full foam-dispensing armor poured out, rifles raised, establishing a perimeter.

At the center of the line, Armsmaster dismounted from his sleek, silver-and-blue motorcycle, his powered armor humming with internal servos. His signature halberd was locked in a low guard, its micro-fusion edge sparking with a subtle electric hum. Beside him, Miss Militia stepped off her own vehicle, her eyes sharp above her patriotic bandana, a shifting green aura of energy hovering around her hands as it materialized into a heavy tactical carbine.

Ben stood in the middle of the empty street, wearing his green jacket and jeans, his hands buried deep in his pockets. He looked around at the dozen foam rifles pointed directly at his chest and let out a long, heavy sigh.

He had assumed the PRT was just responding to the apocalyptic noise of a dozen blocks' worth of glass shattering. But the deliberate, coordinated way the containment troops fanned out—flanking his left and right sides while keeping their distance—made it glaringly obvious.

They weren't just here to clean up the Empire 88 strike team. They were here for him.

Ben groaned, throwing his head back toward the night sky. "Seriously? Do you guys have like a tracking beacon on my bad mood or something? I just finished putting out a five-alarm dumpster fire."

Armsmaster took three heavy, measured steps forward, his mechanical visor sweeping across the ruined avenue. His gaze lingered on the shattered storefronts, the massive sinkholes, the mangled metal spikes, and the lingering smell of ozone in the air.

"Stand down, Tennyson," Armsmaster's synthesized voice boomed through his helmet speaker, stern and devoid of warmth. "Keep your hands where we can see them. You are currently in violation of multiple municipal parahuman containment protocols, participating in an unsanctioned conflict, and engaging high-threat capes in a densely populated zone."

"Oh, please," Ben deadpanned, gesturing vaguely at the empty street. "Look around, Armsy. There isn't a single civilian on this block. And for the record, I didn't start this party. Kaiser and his whole circus ambushed me. I was just wrapping up the guest list."

Miss Militia stepped forward, her voice much calmer than her partner's, though her rifle remained leveled at his midsection. "Where are the Empire capes, Ben? We registered massive seismic output and solar plasma discharges. Where is the rest of the strike team?"

Ben shrugged, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

"Well, let's see," Ben began, counting off on his fingers. "Kaiser is currently passed out behind the counter of that coffee shop over there after I put him through the front window. Hookwolf is about forty feet deep under that mound of dirt—he's whole, just buried and knocked out cold. Night and Rune are both out cold over by the alley; Rune's resting in a recycling dumpster. And Krieg..."

Ben paused, scratching his cheek. "Krieg took a direct flight. He got launched about a mile that way into a sewage treatment pit behind the docks. He's probably still unconscious, assuming he didn't drown in the sludge."

Armsmaster's visor flickered with internal readouts as his tactical computer cross-referenced the terrain damage and mapped the potential landing zones.

"And Purity?" Armsmaster demanded, his voice dropping an octave. His helmet's internal lie-detection suite locked onto Ben's facial movements, vocal pitch, and micro-expressions. "Our sensors picked up a massive sustained solar output before it abruptly cut out. Did you execute her?"

Ben kept his heart rate steady, his posture relaxed.If he said he let her go, Armsmaster would press him about it and suspect a villainous collusion.

So Ben spoke the absolute, literal truth.

"Purity flew off and escaped into the sky," Ben stated clearly, looking Armsmaster right in the visor. "She left the battlefield completely."

Inside Armsmaster's helmet, the bio-monitor icon flashed a solid, reassuring green. Truth.

Armsmaster tightened his grip on his halberd, though his posture remained rigid. "And the cape known as Fog?"

Ben pointed his thumb toward the center of the street, where a towering, fifty-foot dome of opaque, translucent green crystal stood completely solid, reflecting the flashing red-and-blue PRT lights.

"Fog is currently frozen solid inside a multi-ton block of ice inside that crystal dome," Ben explained smoothly. "He tried to turn into acid gas, so I gave him the deep freeze. He's fine, just chilly."

Miss Militia let out a quiet breath, her weapon dipping an inch. "No casualties? You neutralized six high-tier Empire capes by yourself without a single fatality?"

"I told you, I'm not a murderer I don't kill senselessly I have restraint," Ben said, rolling his eyes. "Unlike the guys you usually fight."

"Be that as it may," Armsmaster interrupted, stepping forward to reclaim control of the scene, "the sheer scale of structural destruction here is unacceptable. Look at this street. Millions of dollars in municipal infrastructure smashed. Bedrock displaced. Every window within a one-mile radius pulverized by your seismic stunt. You operated with complete disregard for city property and PRT authority."

Ben stared at Armsmaster for three long seconds. His expression shifted from mild annoyance to pure, unadulterated deadpan.

"Are you seriously giving me a lecture about property damage right now?" Ben asked, his voice dripping with dry disbelief. "I just single-handedly wiped out the entire active leadership of Brockton Bay's biggest neo-Nazi gang in under fifteen minutes, and your biggest concern is the asphalt?"

"Protocol dictates—" Armsmaster began.

"Yeah, yeah. Protocol," Ben cut him off.

Before the PRT troops or the two heroes could react, Ben brought his left hand up and tapped the faceplate of the Omnitrix. The green dial popped upward with a sharp, mechanical click. He dialed the interface with a quick flick of his wrist.

"Hold!" Armsmaster shouted, bringing his halberd up to a strike position. "Do not engage that device!"

"Stand down, Ben!" Miss Militia warned, her energy weapon shifting into a heavy containment foam launcher.

Ben didn't even blink. He slammed his palm down onto the watch.

A blinding sphere of emerald light exploded from his wrist, illuminating the entire street and forcing the PRT troopers to shield their visors.

When the green glow faded, Ben was gone. Standing in his place was a stocky, metallic entity built like a antique clockwork automaton. His body was constructed of thick, polished bronze and gold brass, adorned with intricate black gear patterns and heavy metallic rivets. In the center of his chest sat a round, transparent glass portal showing glowing green internal gears whirring rhythmically. A rounded brass key sat atop his head like a mechanical crown, and his face consisted of two glowing green eyes set above a simple, slotted mechanical mouth.

Clockwork!

The PRT troopers flinched, several of them taking an involuntary step back, their foam rifles trembling.

Armsmaster and Miss Militia instantly recognized the form. Videos of this exact alien had gone viral on Parahumans Online only hours ago—the strange, brass time-manipulator who had walked into Brockton General Hospital alongside Panacea, casually reversing massive trauma and healing critical injuries with a wave of his green light.

"He's using the Chronosapien form!" Miss Militia warned, her voice tense. "Armsmaster, stay back! We don't know the full operational parameters of his temporal manipulation!"

Clockwork raised his thick, brass arms. His internal gears began to spin, producing a rhythmic, soothing tick-tock sound that resonated clearly through the quiet street.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

"You guys worry way too much about the small stuff," Clockwork's voice echoed, layered, metallic, and carrying the precise, rhythmic cadence of a grandfather clock. "You want your street back? Fine. Take a look at how a real Master of Time handles property damage."

Clockwork leaned his heavy brass body back. The green circular core in his chest flared with brilliant, temporal energy.

FWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

A thick, radiant beam of golden-green temporal light erupted straight out of Clockwork's chest, shooting high into the night sky!

At the apex of its ascent, roughly three hundred feet above the street, the beam detonated in a silent, breathtaking burst. A massive, shimmering dome of translucent golden-green energy expanded rapidly outward, cascading down like a glowing waterfall until it enclosed a full one-mile radius around the battleground.

Inside the temporal field, time stopped.

Then, with a gentle, sweeping hum, the golden light began to flow backward.

The PRT troopers gasped in absolute shock. Armsmaster's visor HUD flickered wildly, displaying error messages across his entire interface as his internal sensors failed to process the localized temporal anomaly.

Before their very eyes, reality began to rewind.

Across the entire block, millions of shattered glass shards lifted off the asphalt, glowing with faint golden light as they zoomed backward through the air, perfectly reassembling themselves into pristine, unbroken window panes along every storefront and high-rise office building.

The twenty-foot trench carved by Purity's crash landing closed up seamlessly. Pulverized asphalt flowed back into place like liquid black glass, smoothing out into pristine, freshly paved road. Deep underground, shattered water mains welded themselves back together, and crushed bedrock expanded back to its original position.

Kaiser's mangled iron spikes dissolved backward into the air. The brick facade of the bakery that Krieg had blasted through reassembled brick by brick, mortar sealing instantly without a crack. The massive sinkhole created by Armodrillo smoothed over, the dirt rising up to fill the chasm as the road restored itself to absolute perfection.

Even the scorched marks left by Purity's plasma beams vanished, the carbonized paint on the streetlamps restoring itself to factory-new condition.

In less than ten seconds, an entire square mile of catastrophic battle damage was completely undone. The street looked as if the Empire 88 attack had never happened. It was pristine, clean, and perfectly intact.

The golden dome dissolved into sparkling green motes of light that faded into the night air.

Silence settled over the street—a deep, stunned, absolute silence.

The PRT troopers stood frozen, their weapons sagging slightly as they stared at the unbroken windows and smooth asphalt beneath their boots. Miss Militia's jaw dropped beneath her patriotic bandana, her shifting energy weapon momentarily flickering into instability. Even Armsmaster stood motionless, his halberd lowered, his visor rapidly cycling through diagnostic screens in a desperate attempt to find a logical explanation for what he had just witnessed.

Clockwork raised a brass hand, casually tapping the Omnitrix symbol on his chest.

BEEP-BEEP-FLASH!

In a flash of red light, the Chronosapien vanished, leaving Ben standing in the middle of the perfectly restored street in his jacket and jeans.

Ben dusted off his sleeves, looking around at the pristine environment with a satisfied nod.

"There," Ben said, smirking at Armsmaster. "Property damage fixed. No harm, no foul. Brockton Bay city council can thank me later."

However, as Ben looked over his shoulder, his smirk faltered slightly.

Standing right in the center of the newly restored asphalt was the giant, translucent green Taydenite dome he had created earlier as Diamondhead. Inside it, the multi-ton block of ice containing Fog remained completely untouched, frozen solid and perfectly intact.

Ben blinked, scratching his chin. "Oh, yeah... right. I forgot."

Petrospapien crystal was dense enough to possess a timeless atomic lattice. It was naturally resistant, if not outright immune, to direct localized temporal rewinding or fastfowarding. Clockwork's time beam had restored the entire street around the dome, but the crystal shell itself had remained completely unaffected by the temporal wave.

"Hold on a sec," Ben said to the frozen PRT squad.

He tapped the watch again, dialed the interface, and slammed his hand down.

FLASH!

Emerald light erupted, and in his place stood the sharp, towering form of Diamondhead, his dark green jacket-clad torso and pale teal crystalline skin glinting under the streetlamps.

Diamondhead simply raised his sharp crystal hand, snapping his long fingers with a crisp CLINK.

The massive Taydenite dome dissolved instantly into a shower of harmless, sparkling green dust, leaving the frozen block of ice containing Fog resting safely on the street.

Diamondhead tapped the Omnitrix badge on his chest once more, instantly reverting back to human form.

Ben stretched his neck, letting out a satisfied breath as he turned back to face the heroes. "Alright. Now we good?"

Armsmaster took a long, ragged breath through his nose. He visibly swallowed, his throat moving as he recovered from his momentary stutter.

"No," Armsmaster said, his voice strained, tight, and edged with a dark, bureaucratic authority. "We are not 'good.'"

Miss Militia took a step forward, her eyes filled with a desperate, pleading urgency. "Ben, please. You don't understand the situation you've put yourself in."

Armsmaster stepped past her, leveling his halberd directly at Ben's chest once more.

"You possess uncontained, unregistered abilities of an unprecedented scale," Armsmaster declared, his voice cold and uncompromising, reading directly from a PRT internal directive. "You have operated as an unsanctioned vigilante, temporal forces, and neutralized high-ranking parahumans without oversight. Director Piggot has issued a direct mandate."

Armsmaster paused, his visor glowing brightly in the dark.

"You must immediately make a decision," Armsmaster commanded. "You will surrender, submit to PRT intake processing, and join the Wards under full Protectorate oversight. If you refuse to comply right now, you will be officially designated an uncontained S-Class threat. An immediate Kill Order will be authorized, and the full force of the PRT and the Protectorate will be deployed to eliminate you."

Miss Militia's hands tightened on her weapon, her face pale. "Ben, please! Just comply! Don't make us do this! Director Piggot will not back down on an S-Class directive. If you walk away, they will hunt you with everything the government has!"

Ben stood in the middle of the street, his hands still in his pockets.

Inside his head, his mind was racing.

An S-Class rating? A Kill Order? Over property damage and beating up neo-Nazis? Piggot is completely out of her mind.

His first instinct was to laugh in Armsmaster's face. He could turn into XLR8, blitz out of the city in three seconds, and be halfway across the country before Armsmaster could even process the movement. Or he could turn into Humungosaur, step over the PRT barricade, and wave goodbye.

But as Ben looked at Armsmaster's rigid, unyielding posture and Miss Militia's desperate, pleading eyes, a cold, harsh reality set in.

He wasn't just fighting for himself anymore.

He was basically staying with the Heberts at this point. He had spent the last two days sitting by Taylor's hospital bed, helping Danny navigate the worst tragedy of his life. If Ben ran—if he turned into a fugitive with an S-Class Kill Order on his head—the PRT wouldn't just search for him in the dark.

They wouldn't be able to touch them legally, sure. But Director Piggot and the PRT bureaucracy would turn Taylor and Danny's lives into an absolute living hell. They'd freeze Danny's assets under suspicion of aiding an unregistered cape. They'd put Brockton General Hospital under federal lockdown. They'd interrogate a recovering, traumatized teenage girl in a hospital bed, putting relentless legal pressure on the Hebert family until Ben showed his face.

They can't touch me, Ben realized, his green eyes narrowing slightly. So they'll use the system to squeeze the people I care about.

Unless...

A sudden, sharp idea clicked into place. A grin slowly spread across Ben's face.

If Piggot wants a conversation so badly, Ben thought, maybe it's time I gave her one. Right in her own office.

If he went with them voluntarily, under his own terms, he took away their excuse to hunt him. He kept the target firmly painted on his own back, far away from Taylor and Danny. And more importantly, he'd get face-to-face with the person running this circus.

Ben slowly raised both of his hands into the air, palms open, a broad, confident smirk plastered across his face.

"Alright, Armsy," Ben said, his tone casual and completely lighthearted. "Alright, Miss Bandana. You win. Take me to your leader."

---

The cold, sterile fluorescent lights of the Brockton Bay PRT headquarters hummed with a low, oppressive buzz inside Interrogation Room 3.

Ben sat slouched in a reinforced steel chair, his feet kicked back comfortably onto the polished surface of the metal table. Wrapped around his wrists was a massive, heavy-duty pair of Tinker-tech parahuman restraints. The solid metal cuffs were thick, gleaming with reinforced alloy plating, and engineered specifically to encase his left forearm entirely—effectively boxing in the faceplate of the Omnitrix beneath a heavy layer of locking mechanisms and dampening fields.

Of course, the PRT tech teams had already spent the last forty-five minutes trying to remove the watch entirely while Ben sat back and watched them sweat. They had brought out laser cutters, diamond-tipped saws, and specialized Tinker disassembly tools, only for the Omnitrix's built-in defense protocols to instantly flare up. A single microscopic pulse of green plasma had short-circuited their tools, melted their diamond blades into glowing slag, and fried three thousand dollars worth of PRT diagnostic scanners in a fraction of a second. The Level 20 Galvan biotech was fused directly into Ben's genetic code; trying to force it off him was like trying to peel away his skin.

So, they had settled for boxing it in.

Ben didn't mind. He just leaned back on two legs of his chair, whistling a catchy, upbeat tune—the old theme song someone had written for him back in his home universe—letting the bright, rhythmic melody echo off the bare concrete walls.

Through the heavy, reinforced one-way glass window looking out into the holding corridor, Ben watched the defeated remnants of Empire 88 being paraded down the hall in high-security isolation gear.

Hookwolf was locked inside a heavy, armored cage-cart, his body still coated in dirt from where Armodrillo had buried him. Krieg stumbled along with a severe concussion, supported on both sides by armed PRT troopers. Kaiser was stripped of his silver armor, looking pale, bruised, and thoroughly humiliated in standard orange jump gear. Night was locked in a blindfold and heavy restraints, while Rune walked with her head hung low, tear tracks drying on her dirt-smudged face. Even Fog was being transported in a sealed, pressurized containment vessel.

Ben paused his whistling just long enough to flash them a lazy, two-finger salute through the glass before returning to his tune.

A heavy electronic hiss echoed through the room as the magnetic locks on the door disengaged. The thick steel door swung open, and Director Emily Piggot stepped inside.

She was an imposing figure—stern-faced, heavy-set, with sharp, cold eyes that had survived the horrors of Ellisburg and years of managing Brockton Bay's parahuman nightmare. Flanking her on either side was the absolute heavy artillery of the local Protectorate: Armsmaster standing tall with his halberd held at ready; Miss Militia watching with a somber, conflicted expression; and behind them stood Assault and Battery, their arms crossed, looking remarkably tense for a pair of veteran heroes.

Ben didn't even take his feet off the table. He just finished the final bar of his tune, hit a crisp high note, and smiled.

"Nice office," Ben said, nodding toward the concrete walls. "A little gray for my taste, but hey, at least the lighting makes my hair look good."

Director Piggot didn't smile. She walked up to the opposite side of the table and dropped a thick, leather-bound case file onto the metal surface with a loud, heavy THUD.

"Ben Tennyson," Piggot began, her voice a dry, gravelly rasp that carried absolute authority. "Age sixteen. Confirmed extra-dimensional entity, designated by internal department protocol as originating from Earth-Gimel."

She opened the file, running a thick finger down a list of logged transcripts. "According to your public posts on Parahumans Online and your recorded debriefs with Armsmaster, you claim to hail from a universe where human beings co-exist alongside alien civilizations across thousands of star systems. You claim that the device encasing your left wrist—the 'Omnitrix'—was created by an extraterrestrial thinker known as 'Azmuth'."

Ben lazily tilted his head back. "Yep. Standard bio. Got my name right at least."

Piggot slammed the folder shut, leaning her hands on the table as she glared down at him. "Since your arrival in Brockton Bay, Tennyson, you have caused nothing but localized chaos. While I am bureaucratically forced to acknowledge that your neutralization of Jack Slash and the Slaughterhouse Nine spared this city an unimaginable catastrophe..." Her eyes narrowed to slits. "...your actions at Brockton General Hospital were an unmitigated disaster. The summary execution of Othala and Victor violated the fundamental Unwritten Rules that keep this city from falling into absolute anarchy."

She straightened up, pulling a stack of legal documents from her coat pocket.

"You are an unregistered, volatile, extra-galactic threat," Piggot declared coldly. "So here is how this plays out. Option one: You sign these papers immediately, surrender your autonomy, and enter the PRT Wards program under twenty-four-hour armed oversight. Option two: You surrender that device on your wrist to the United States government, and you spend the rest of your natural life in a high-security containment facility."

Ben stared at her for a long, silent second.

Then, he threw his head back and burst into a loud, hysterical fit of laughter.

"HAHAHAHAHA!" Ben wheezed, his shoulders shaking so hard the heavy Tinker-tech restraints clunked loudly against the metal table. "Hand over the Omnitrix she said! Oh man, HAHAHAHA!"

Piggot's face turned an unhealthy shade of crimson. Behind her, Assault shifted his weight uncomfortably, while Battery blinked in sheer shock at the teenager laughing directly into the face of the PRT Director.

Ben finally composed himself, wiping a tear from his eye as he took his feet off the table and leaned forward, resting his cuffed hands on the steel surface.

"Okay, okay, wait," Ben chuckled, gasping for air. "Let me get this straight. You want me to hand over the watch. Tell me, Director... what exactly do you think you'd do with the Omnitrix if I handed it to you?"

"We would confiscate it," Piggot replied without a single second of hesitation, her tone dripping with disdain. "We would entrust it to a properly trained, disciplined, and responsible adult operative—not a reckless, arrogant child who thinks he can throw godlike weight around without answering to a chain of command."

Ben stared at her, blinked once, and then collapsed sideways in his chair, wheezing and pounding his cuffed fists onto the table in another fit of uncontrollable laughter.

"P-Properly trained?!" Ben gasped, pounding the table again. "A child?! Oh, stop, please, my ribs hurt!"

"That is enough!" Piggot snapped, her voice echoing off the concrete walls like a whip crack.

Armsmaster gripped his halberd tighter, his visor flickered with irritation. Miss Militia looked visibly pained, while Assault scratched the back of his neck, muttering under his breath, "Kid's got guts, I'll give him that."

Ben wiped his eyes, leaning back up in his chair as his expression shifted from wild amusement to a cold, razor-sharp seriousness that instantly silenced the room. The casual, teenage goofiness evaporated, replaced by the weight of someone who had carried the fate of worlds on his shoulders.

"First of all, Director," Ben said, his voice dropping into a calm, steady register that cut through the tension, "you don't get to decide whether I'm worthy or not. The guy who built this thing—Azmuth, First Thinker of Galvan Prime, literally the smartest mind in five whole galaxies—already decided I was worthy. And his opinion is the only one in the entire cosmos that actually counts."

He raised his cuffed left arm, tapping the solid Tinker alloy encasing the watch.

"Second of all, don't bother wasting your time trying to get it off me. As your Tinkers just found out when they nearly melted their own equipment, it's bonded directly to my DNA. It might as well be my arm at this point. And even IF you chopped my arm off and managed to bypass the genetic lock, it won't work for you. Azmuth hard-coded the security protocols into the core. It answers to exactly two people in the entire universe: Azmuth himself... and me. Without my genetic signature, that watch is nothing more than paperweight."

Ben leaned forward, staring directly into Piggot's cold eyes.

"Thirdly... who the hell are you to say I'm not worthy?"

Piggot's jaw tightened, but Ben didn't give her a chance to speak.

"I've saved my home planet more times than I can count," Ben said, his eyes burning with quiet intensity. "I've stopped full-scale alien armadas from enslaving humanity. I've saved my entire universe on multiple occasions. I've fought across parallel dimensions, stopped temporal paradoxes from wiping out reality, and stood toe-to-toe with warlords that make your Endbringers look like minor inconveniences. I have saved more lives than every hero in this world—past, present, and future—will ever save in their entire damn careers. And I've been doing it since I was ten years old."

The interrogation room fell into a suffocating silence.

Miss Militia swallowed hard, her eyes wide as she looked at the teenager sitting before them. Assault and Battery exchanged a long, heavy glance, the cocky smirks entirely gone from their faces. Armsmaster remained stoic, but his suit's internal processors were running endless tactical simulations, failing to find a single lie in Ben's vocal patterns.

Piggot ground her teeth so hard her jaw muscles bulged. Her face flushed with fury at having her authority torn to shreds in front of her senior staff.

"If we cannot use your device, Tennyson," Piggot growled through her teeth, her fists trembling on the table, "then we will simply have our Tinkers reverse-engineer it and build another one!"

Ben let out his third laugh of the night—a short, dry chuckle of absolute pity.

"Good luck with that," Ben said smoothly. "You want to replicate Galvan technology? The only guy who ever managed to build a working duplicate Omnitrix using stripped-down alien components was Albedo. And Albedo's mind makes a Cerebrocrustacean look like an amateur. Do you know what a Cerebrocrustacean is, Director? It's an alien species with a calculated IQ of one nonillion. That is a one followed by thirty zeros."

Ben leaned back, flashing a mocking smile.

"Do you have anyone in this city—or on this entire planet—with an IQ of one nonillion? Because if your Tinkers try to poke around a Galvan neural blueprint, their brains will melt before they get past the first line of code."

He pointed to the heavy cuff covering his wrist.

"And even IF by some impossible miracle your Tinkers managed to draft a functional housing, what are you gonna power it with? The Omnitrix runs on Omni-energy—a self-sustaining universal force more potent than Sub-energy, which is already twenty times more powerful than the core of the first star in our sky! Your city's power grid would turn into a nuclear crater before the main core even booted up!"

Piggot stood frozen, her chest heaving, her knuckles white as she gripped the edge of the table. She had lost complete control of the room. The bureaucratic legal traps, the threats of S-Class classifications, the intimidation tactics—all of it had shattered against the sheer, ridiculous reality of the entity sitting across from her.

Ben leaned back in his chair once more, crossing his heavy, cuffed hands behind his head with a relaxed, triumphant grin.

"So yeah, Director," Ben said, his eyes sparkling with quiet amusement. "I'm not joining your Wards program. I don't take orders from people who bully teenagers and threaten kids with Kill Orders because they're terrified of things they don't understand."

He lowered his arms, resting his chin on his hands as he looked Piggot dead in the eye.

"However... I do have an offer for you. And trust me, Director... it's an offer you really can't afford to refuse."

Ben leaned back, the thick metal Tinker-tech cuffs clanking heavily against the table as he gestured with his bound hands.

"Your Tinker tech? It's cute, really," Ben said, his tone dripping with casual expertise. "But on a cosmic scale, your entire department is hovering at a Level 3. Maybe Level 4 if I'm feeling generous. You think you're at the bleeding edge of science, but you're throwing rocks compared to what's out there."

He turned his head toward Armsmaster. "Take your motorcycle, Armsy. Give me one afternoon with Grey Matter or Brainstorm, and I could re-engineer that engine to push near-light speeds. I could make it all-terrain, turn it into a deep-sea submersible, or even shield it for orbital space travel. Want a global teleporter built before lunch? Easy. I could snap one together in an hour. Hell, I have a form called Upgrade—a Galvanic Mechamorph—that can merge with any kind of machinery or tech and rewrite its specs beyond your wildest imagination. You want your breakroom coffee machine to double as a plasma charge that could vaporize matter? Done. I could even synthesize old Plumber gear for your troopers. How about pocket-sized nuclear fusion grenades?"

Ben leaned forward, his green eyes locking onto Piggot. "I can upgrade your entire arsenal to make the PRT ten times more effective than it's ever been. And just to sweeten the pot, I'll even offer to train the Wards and overhaul their gear."

Armsmaster's visor flickered, his posture stiffening as his internal Tinkering instincts practically screamed at the mention of light-speed engine schematics and Mechamorph integration. But he forced a rigid, authoritative stance to flex control. "The Wards receive rigorous tactical training from certified Protectorate veterans," Armsmaster declared, his voice tight. "Their equipment is optimized for their safety and operational roles."

Ben snorted loudly. "Rigorous? Is that why Vista is running around in a ridiculous cloth outfit with zero kinetic armor?"

Miss Militia winced, stepping forward to softly interject. "Vista is young, Ben. Her uniform is designed to be approachable and PR-friendly for public morale—"

"So because she's young, you'd rather leave her completely under-equipped on the frontlines?" Ben cut her off, his voice dropping into a hard, unforgiving register. "You put public relations over actual armor, drastically increasing her chances of getting killed in a firefight? Isn't she supposed to be one of your most veteran Ward members? That's not tactics, Miss Bandana. That's gross negligence."

Miss Militia's face flushed as she flinched, looking down. Beside her, Assault silently turned his head away, and whatever scathing rebuttal Battery had been preparing died instantly on her lips.

Ben didn't let up. "You can get them real combat training from someone who's survived warzones across the galaxy. And let's be real—the gangs in this city have you backed into a corner. Brockton Bay is drowning, and you know it. Don't you want to retake this city? Think about what your higher-ups in will say when the PRT suddenly sweeps every syndicate off the map. And the best part? I don't care about your cameras or your press conferences. I'll let the PRT take one hundred percent of the credit for everything I do."

A heavy, suffocating silence descended on Interrogation Room 3.

The sheer weight of Ben's words hung in the air like lead. Director Piggot didn't even realize she had stopped breathing. Cold sweat beaded along her brow, mirroring the visible tension on the faces of every veteran hero in the room. Even Dragon, monitoring the room's feed remotely through Armsmaster's helmet HUD, felt her processing units lock up under the sheer impossibility of the data being presented.

Piggot swallowed hard, forcing her raspy voice through a dry throat. "What's the catch, Tennyson? What do you want?"

"Simple," Ben said smoothly. "First, I'm not joining the Wards. I'm operating as an independent hero, and you will stay out of my way. Second, you are going to arrange an immediate, hassle-free school transfer for Taylor Hebert away from Winslow High and straight into Arcadia. I don't care about going to school myself—screw that—but she deserves a real chance."

His expression darkened, becoming dangerously quiet. "Third, you will leave Taylor and her father, Danny, completely alone. No PRT surveillance vans outside their house, no interrogations, no legal harassment. If Taylor decides she wants to join the Wards later on her own terms, that's her choice. But you don't push her. And like I said... every villain I drop, every crisis I avert, you can plaster your logo on it and take the glory."

Ben stretched his cuffed hands across the metal table, resting his wrists on the steel.

"Do we have a deal?"

In that frozen moment, Piggot and the assembled heroes realized the terrifying truth: this sixteen-year-old kid held every single card in his hands. They had zero leverage. Zero counter-threats.

To Piggot, a suffocating aura seemed to radiate from the boy. His emerald eyes glowed with an unnatural, predatory light in the harsh fluorescent glare, and his sharp smile felt less like a teenager's grin and more like a contract offered by a cosmic entity. It was like standing across from the devil himself—a masterclass in backing an opponent so completely into a corner that compliance was the only path left.

Piggot hesitated, her instincts screaming at her to refuse, to maintain the authority of the law.

Seeing her resolve flicker, Ben delivered the final, inescapable blow.

"Tell you what, Director..." Ben purred, his smile widening. "I'll even let your team study all my forms."

Deep inside his mind, Ben chuckled. Yeah, right. I'm never letting you anywhere near Way Big, Atomix, Gravattack, or Alien X.

Because Ben genuinely intended to let them study some of his safer forms down the line, his statement carried enough fundamental truth to pass Armsmaster's lie detector without raising a single alarm. The suit's HUD flashed a bright, solid green: STATEMENT VERIFIED: TRUE.

Piggot stared at the green verification light on Armsmaster's visor, her last defense collapsing entirely. The kid knew exactly what he was doing.

Ben Tennyson was a hero, but he possessed the terrifying tactical mind of someone who knew how to play the villain's game to absolute perfection. And as Piggot knew all too well from years of managing Brockton Bay... it was always better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

Piggot reached across the table, taking his cuffed hands, and firmly shook them.

"We have a deal."

---

The heavy hydraulic locks on the Tinker-tech restraints disengaged with a sharp, pneumatic HISSS-CLACK, followed by the dull metallic thud of the dampening plates falling away.

Ben flexed his left fingers, rotating his wrist with a soft sigh of relief. The moment the specialized alloy housing pulled back, the Omnitrix's interface instantly flared to life, its familiar hourglass faceplate pulsing with a warm, emerald glow against his skin. The device hummed faintly, performing a rapid internal self-diagnostic that crackled with tiny, harmless green static before settling back into a quiet standby mode. It was like watching a loyal hound stretch its legs after being locked in a cage—eager, alert, and ready for action at a moment's notice.

Armsmaster stepped back, carefully pulling his disassembly tools away while keeping his eyes glued to the watch's interface. His helmet's HUD lit up with a barrage of readouts, frantically trying to scan the alien bio-technology the moment it was exposed, only for his sensors to register complete gibberish—data streams encoded in a logic structure far beyond Earth's current comprehension.

"Fascinating..." Armsmaster muttered under his breath, his voice laced with reluctant, analytical awe. "The energy signature is unlike anything i've ever seen."

"Yeah, and it's not gonna give up its secrets to a helmet scanner either, Armsy," Ben said cheerfully, rubbing his wrist where the heavy metal had pressed against his skin. "I told you, Galvan tech doesn't like being spied on. You're lucky it didn't trigger a failsafe and turn your visor into a toaster."

Director Piggot stood by the open door of Interrogation Room 3, her arms folded tightly over her chest. Her expression remained as hard as granite, but the slight twitch in her jaw betrayed the intense pressure she was under. She had just signed away the PRT's authority over the most powerful entity on the planet, secured an unprecedented tech-upgrade agreement, and agreed to protect two civilians—all because a sixteen-year-old kid from another universe had played her like a grandmaster on a chessboard.

"The paperwork for your independent status and Miss Hebert's transfer to Arcadia will be finalized by morning," Piggot said, her raspy voice completely devoid of warmth. "Miss Militia will personally oversee the security detail to ensure the Hebert family is untouched by both gang retaliations and PRT overreach. But make no mistake, Tennyson—if you break your end of this bargain, if you cause catastrophic civilian casualties, this deal is null and void."

"I don't break my word, Director," Ben replied smoothly, sliding his hands into his green jacket pockets as he stood up from the steel table. "I'm a hero. It's kinda what I do."

"Follow me," Piggot grunted, turning on her heel. "We're escorting you out through the lower containment wing. The main lobby is currently swarming with media, and until our public relations team drafts an official press release regarding your status, you are not to make contact with the press."

Ben fell into step behind Piggot, flanked by Armsmaster and Miss Militia, while Assault and Battery trailed a few paces behind to cover the rear.

They stepped out of the interrogation wing and entered the heavy security corridor leading toward Sub-Level 2—the PRT's high-security parahuman holding facility. The corridor was a fortress of cold, reinforced concrete, lined with blast doors, automated foam turrets, and thick, transparent containment cells reinforced with heavy-duty structural forcefields.

As they walked down the long, echoing hall, the quiet humming of the facility's power generators was suddenly drowned out by a chorus of furious, echoing screams and metallic banging.

Inside the holding cells lining the left side of the hallway, the defeated leadership of Empire 88 was currently being processed for federal transfer.

"You freaked-out alien scum!" Kaiser's voice roared through the cell's speaker grate, raw and unhinged. Stripped of his silver armor, dressed in a bright orange PRT jumpsuit with heavy power-dampening cuffs locking his hands to a waist belt, the supreme leader of the Empire looked less like a noble king and more like a desperate, caged animal. He slammed his body against the reinforced viewing glass, his face contorted in pure, venomous rage. "You think you've won?! You think this city belongs to you?! I'll see you dead! I'll put a price on your head that every cape in the state will fight to collect!"

Right in the adjacent cell, Hookwolf was thrashing furiously against a massive magnetic restraint harness that kept his limbs pinned to the floor. "Let me out of this rig, you alien freak!" Hookwolf snarled, his eyes bloodshot, spit flying from his mouth as he strained against the heavy magnetic locks. "Put me in a ring with you without your little watch! I'll tear your throat out with my bare teeth! I'll grind your bones into dust!"

Further down, Krieg sat on his concrete bench, his head bandaged from the bone-shattering uppercut he had taken from Armodrillo. He glared through the glass with silent, icy hatred, muttering guttural German curses under his breath while clutching his bruised ribs.Fog erratically slammed harmlessly against the thick acrylic walls to get out, while Night sat in total darkness in an isolated isolation cell, her eyes locked onto the floor in cold, sociopathic silence.

Ben didn't even turn his head. He kept walking down the center of the corridor, his hands casually shoved into his jacket pockets, a bored, lazy smirk playing on his lips as the tide of threats and racial slurs washed right over him.

"Man, you guys really need new material," Ben called out casually over the noise, not even breaking his stride. "It's always 'I'll tear your throat out' or 'I'll put a price on your head.' Honestly, Vilgax used to threaten to vaporize my entire solar system before breakfast. You guys are barely a blip on my schedule."

"You subhuman trash!" Kaiser shrieked, his fists beating against the glass. "You ruined everything!"

"Yeah, yeah, save it for your cellmate, shiny," Ben chuckled, tossing a dismissive wave over his shoulder. "I hear the federal prisons have great library programs."

Armsmaster adjusted his grip on his halberd, glaring at the cells. "Ignore them, Tennyson. They'll be transferred to the Birdcage within forty-eight hours." he muttered hopefully under his breathe

"Oh, trust me, Armsy, I'm ignoring them," Ben said, rolling his eyes. "Hard to take a guy seriously when he's throwing a temper tantrum in bright orange sweatpants."

Ben continued walking down the hall, passing the row of furious, screaming villains. But as he approached the very last cell at the end of the block, his footsteps naturally slowed to a complete halt.

Inside Cell 104, there were no screams. There were no slurs, no threats, and no violent banging against the glass.

Sitting on the far corner of a cold, metal bench was Rune.

The teenage cape looked small—far smaller than she had looked while floating high in the sky on her telekinetic platforms, hurling dumpsters and concrete blocks Her dark blue robe was stained with dumpster grime, grease, and street soot. Her blindfold mask was askew, revealing the upper half of her pale, freckled face, where dirt was smeared across her cheeks by the steady stream of quiet tears pouring from her eyes.

She had her knees pulled tightly up against her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins, trembling violently in the cold holding cell. She wasn't an ideological monster like Kaiser, nor a bloodthirsty brute like Hookwolf. She was just Tammi—a terrified, runaway teenager who had fled a controlling home, gotten swept up by the Empire's manipulative recruiters, and suddenly realized that the violent warzone she had stepped into was going to swallow her alive.

Ben stopped dead in his tracks. The arrogant, sarcastic hero persona completely vanished in a single heartbeat.

He stepped away from the escort group and walked directly up to the reinforced glass window of Cell 104.

Inside the cell, Tammi caught the motion in her peripheral vision. She looked up, her wide, tear-filled eyes locking onto the green jacket and the glowing alien device on Ben's wrist. The sight of the boy who had single-handedly annihilated her entire faction sent a jolt of pure, instinctual terror through her frame.

Tammi flinched violently, letting out a sharp, choked gasp. She scrambled backward on the bench, desperately scooting herself as far away from the glass as humanly possible, pressing her back flush against the cold concrete corner of the wall as if trying to shrink into nothingness. She hugged her knees tighter, burying her face in her arms, her shoulders shaking with terrified, silent sobs.

Please don't hurt me... please don't turn into a monster again...

Ben stared through the glass at her for a long, quiet moment. He tilted his head slightly, his eyes softening with deep, genuine empathy.

He had seen this look before. He had seen it on Kevin Levin back when Kevin was a mutated, angry kid hiding in the subway tunnels of New York, convinced the whole world was out to destroy him. He had seen it on young alien refugees and on kids who had made terrible choices because bad people had offered them the only sense of family they had ever known.

Ben let out a quiet breath, straightened his posture, and turned his head back toward Director Piggot.

"Hey, Director," Ben called out, his voice calm, clear, and utterly serious. "I'm adding a clause to our deal."

Director Piggot stopped, her brow furrowing in instant suspicion as she turned to face him. "What are you talking about, Tennyson? The terms are already set."

Ben pointed a thumb back over his shoulder at Cell 104.

"I want Rune in the Wards," Ben declared. "Right now. Full amnesty for tonight's incident, immediate transfer out of holding, and a spot in your juvenile rehabilitation program."

A sudden, suffocating shock fell over the corridor.

Inside the cell, Tammi's sobs choked off in her throat. She slowly lifted her tear-streaked face from her knees, staring through the glass at Ben in complete, unadulterated disbelief.

Piggot's face hardened instantly, her eyes flashing with outrage. "What?! Absolutely not! Are you out of your mind?!"

"I'm completely sane, Director," Ben replied smoothly, crossing his arms over his chest.

"She is an active, confirmed combatant for Empire Eighty-Eight!" Piggot snapped, her raspy voice rising in anger as she stepped closer to Ben. "She participated in an organized, armed parahuman assault on a commercial district! She hurled heavy ordnance at you with clear intent to inflict lethal damage! She is a neo-Nazi terrorist operative, Tennyson! She belongs in a federal juvenile detention facility, if not the Birdcage!"

"She's a kid!" Ben shouted back, stepping right into Piggot's space without a shred of hesitation, his green eyes burning with fierce intensity. "Look at her! Look at her through that glass and tell me you see a hardened terrorist! She's teenager, Director! She's scared out of her mind, covered in dirt, and crying her eyes out in a concrete box!"

"Her age does not absolve her of her actions!" Piggot argued, her knuckles white as she gestured wildly at the holding cells down the hall. "She chose to align herself with a white supremacist syndicate! She flew their colors, she fought their battles—"

"You throw her into a federal supermax, and what do you think happens to her?" Ben demanded, staring down Piggot. "She spends the next ten years surrounded by actual monsters, getting hardened, bitter, and ruined beyond repair. Or worse—she gets recruited by even uglier villains the second she gets out. You don't fix a broken kid by throwing them in a dungeon, Piggot. You fix them by giving them a way out."

Piggot ground her teeth, her chest heaving as she glared at him. "The legal framework for parahuman combatants does not permit casual amnesties for high-tier Shakers! The Department of Justice will never sign off on letting an Empire cape walk freely into the Wards!"

"They will if you tell them it's part of the deal that secured an independent cosmic powerhouse and ten times tech upgrades for the entire PRT East Coast branch," Ben countered instantly, leaning in with a cold, knowing smirk. "You have total leverage here, Director. Call it a high-profile rehabilitation initiative. Call it a tactical asset recruitment. Tell whatever lies you need to tell them to make the paperwork look pretty. But she comes out of that cell, or the whole deal we just made goes right into the incinerator."

Piggot looked as if she were about to burst a blood vessel. "You are blackmailing me for an Empire cape?!"

"I'm giving a scared kid a second chance," Ben said softly, his voice dropping into a quiet, unwavering frequency. "Because where I come from... that's what heroes do."

Silence fell over the hall once more.

Beside Piggot, Miss Militia looked down at the floor, a deep, conflicted sorrow in her eyes. She slowly stepped forward, placing a gentle, gloved hand on Piggot's shoulder.

Piggot closed her eyes, letting out a long, shuddering breath that sounded like grinding stones. She stood there for ten agonizing seconds, the silence stretching so thick you could hear the air filtration units humming overhead.

Finally, Piggot opened her eyes, glaring at Ben with pure, exhausted defeat.

"Armsmaster," Piggot grunted, her voice tight. "Contact the legal department. Draft a provisional probation and rehabilitation transfer for Rune. Place her under Level 4 Wards oversight, effective immediately."

Armsmaster paused for a fraction of a second before nodding smoothly. "Understood, Director. Processing the directive now."

Piggot turned her harsh glare back to Ben, poking a finger firmly into his chest. "If she steps out of line once, Tennyson—if she uses her power offensively against an officer or a Ward—she goes straight to a federal facility, and no amount of alien technology will save her. Am I understood?"

"Crystal clear, Director," Ben said, a genuine, warm smile finally breaking across his face. "Thanks. You're alright under all that grumpiness."

"Don't push it," Piggot barked, turning around and marching toward the exit doors. "Get him out of my sight before I change my mind."

As Piggot, Armsmaster, Assault, and Battery walked ahead toward the security checkpoint, Ben lingered behind for just a moment. He walked up to the glass of Cell 104, looking down at Tammi.

The teenage girl was still sitting on the bench, but her hands had slowly uncurled from her shins. She was staring up at Ben through the glass, her eyes wide, tears still glistening on her cheeks, but the sheer, blinding terror in her face had been replaced by a stunned, fragile sense of hope.

Ben tapped two fingers lightly against the glass, giving her a gentle, reassuring smile and a small, friendly nod.

"Don't blow your second chance" Ben said softly, his voice carrying through the cell speaker. "Welcome to the good guys."

Tammi stared at him, her lips trembling, before she let out a quiet, gasping breath and slowly, tentatively nodded back.

Ben turned around, sliding his hands back into his green jacket pockets, and jogged up to catch up with Miss Militia, ready to take his first real step toward changing Brockton Bay for good.