Disclaimer: I do not own Ben 10 or its sequels, spin-off and related characters. All is the property of Man of Action and Cartoon Network. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.

Lock Eleven

Chapter One: Homecoming

"I'm really flattered that the first person you wanted to see after you got back was me." Cooper said, rolling over in the bed to watch her redress.

Gwendolyn muttered something noncommittal. She hadn't really come here out of any great desire to see him over her family first thing after arriving back on Earth. It was just that it had been a while since she'd last had a good tumble and Cooper was almost always available for her. He made himself available for her. Which, if she was actually ever honest with herself, was pretty unfair to him and Gwendolyn should feel bad about it.

Cooper was practically in love with her. Had been since they were kids, actually. Since before they even knew what their parts were for and how to fit them together oh so pleasurably. But Gwendolyn did not share those romantic inclinations. Not towards Cooper, or any of the men she'd been with ever, not really. Not since her first. She learned her lesson and didn't need to learn it twice. She didn't need a repeat of Michael.

Oh, she tried falling in love. When she was younger. Still in her teens and early twenties, new to the dating game and naively brainwashed by Disney. She fell easily and fell hard. But that was a long time ago. Gwendolyn was older now, and jaded. She understood that sex and love were not the same thing and that it was entirely possible to have one without the accompaniment of the other. She had sex with Cooper, but she did not love him. The arrangement was supposed to be casual. Recreational. And Cooper was supposed to understand that.

But every now and again, she would pull something like this. Something innocent that Gwendolyn didn't think much of at the time, but that he would read more into. See something that wasn't there. Like right now.

As soon as she got back plant side, was debriefed, and free to go, instead of returning home to see her cousin and meet the new addition adopted into the family, she came to Cooper for a bit of hot, sticky, recreational sex.

To Gwendolyn it meant nothing.

To Cooper it said he meant more to her than anyone else.

Which was completely untrue. But that was the way he thought. That was the way most men thought, actually, and it was annoying. It was the main reason Gwendolyn was forced to end the good majority of her casual arrangements. They stopped being casual. They got to attached to her. They all got to attached and started entertaining ideas of being more than what they were -workout partners, exercise buddies, friends with benefits. They started to fall in love and imagined she was in love in return.

Gwendolyn had hoped that things would be different with Cooper. Yes, he was already in love with her before this arrangement started. But he was also intelligent enough to understand that the arrangement was out of a biological imperative. An instinctual desire ingrained in all members of the species. Humans were sexual beings and as such they craves sex. That did not mean that they had to fall in love to have it, or that they were in love with every person they had it with. Gwendolyn thought Cooper understood this. But apparently she was wrong.

"Your place was closer and I wanted a shower." She replied in an attempt to remind him that what they just did was supposed to be meaningless.

"Hm. And after that shower we went and got all dirty again." He smiled as she pulled her shirt down over her breasts, concealing the bite marks he'd left there. "Maybe we should take another shower."

"I'm already running late." She informed him, sitting down on the bed to pull her boots on. "You take forever to cum."

He sat up in bed.

Wrapping his arms around her, Cooper pulled Gwendolyn back down to lay with him, trailing butterfly kisses up her neck. Starting from the collar bone, up her neck, over her jaw line, across the cheek, and finally to the mouth. She stopped him before his lips could brush against hers. Not on the mouth. No kisses on the mouth. That was one of her rules. That was one of the important rules. Sex was casual. But mouth kissing was intimate. It meant something. So she would not allow a man to kiss her on the mouth. Not unless she actually managed to fall in love with him -which she highly doubted she ever would.

The kind of man Gwendolyn wanted -imagined she could fall in love with- just didn't exist.

"Why won't you let me kiss you ever?" He asked.

"I let you kiss me plenty." She shot back. Pushing him away, Gwendolyn rolled out of bed and picked up her hooded scarf. "You know the rules, Cooper, and if you can't follow them then we should end this before you get hurt."

Cooper shook his head, confident in his own imagined perceptions of her feelings. "You can leave me any time, Gwen."

"Alight then." She shrugged and walked out of his apartment.

…

It had been several weeks since Kevin 11,000's attack on Ben 10,000 and the Plumber's Headquarters, and construction of the repairs from the fight were finally nearing their completion. Devlin stared down at them simply for a lack of something better to do.

It had also been several weeks since his adoption into the Tennyson family and he had met every member of the family but one. Ken accepted him almost instantly, Ben and Max following close on his heels. After meeting Kai, Ben's wife, it took her a few days to warm up to him. Ben hadn't exactly discussed the decision with her at all before hand and she didn't take kindly to having a new child shoved on her with no warning or consultation.

But that was more Ben's fault than it was Devlin's, and Kai recognized that. So she adjusted to having him around rather quickly, while Ben was still listening to lectures about how their marriage was supposed to be an equal partnership and if Ben couldn't handle that then maybe she should just leave. Devlin really hoped he wasn't going to turn out to be the catalyst for their divorce -if that was indeed what happened. Kai threatened it a lot, but being new to the family and not really knowing every one very well or how their relationships worked, he didn't really know if it was just words or a legitimate possibility.

He remembered his own parents fighting almost every time they were in the same room together.

Which, admittedly, wasn't often. Kevin had been absent for most of Devlin's young life. Really, only showing up every now and again to tech him how to use his powers -to control the shift between his mutant alien from and human form. That was the only reason they even got married in the first place. Because of him. Neither of his parents made any secret of that. Because when he came out, he was born in his mutant form and his mother could prove without need of a DNA test that her bastard was the seed of Kevin E. Levin, the Boss of the Lock Eleven gang. She used that fact to force him into a marriage contract. Purely for the financial gain.

At the time, Kevin ran a surprisingly successful smuggling business. Lock Eleven. Mostly dealing in black market technology from across the galaxy.

To his mother, Devlin was nothing more than a hideously misshapen meal ticket. At least his father seemed to stay for slightly more emotionally driven reasons. Kevin had grown up never knowing his own father and at some point vowed that no child of his would ever have to endure the same hardship. So, he married Devlin's mother out of personal obligation. He made sure Devlin knew who his father was and how to use the abilities he inherited from him. And Devlin supposed that this satisfied Kevin that he was adequately present in his son's life. More so than his own father had ever been.

And for a while, Devlin might have agreed. There was a time when he thought he loved his father more than his mother. At least his father would look at him in his mutant alien form and not turn away in horror. That was something his mother never did. She never looked at him. She always focused her eyes on something else, he mouth set in a grim line of disgust she was attempting to conceal.

That was why he was so willing to rescue Kevin from the Null Void. Because out of the two people who were ever supposed to love and care for him, Kevin cared for him the most (comparatively speaking, of course).

But now, after only a few weeks living in the Tennyson household, Devlin came to realize just how far that small level of caring really fell. The attention and affection Kevin ever gave him paled in comparison to what Kenny received form his own parents, and even from the hesitant, still unsure and a little awkward attention and affection they gave him.

Everyone in the Tennyson family loved and cared for each other so deeply, and that unconditional affection was shared with him freely, with only minor hesitation and awkwardness. Sometimes, seeing what he had been missing out on for the first decade of his life, it made Devlin want to cry. He wondered how things might have been different if his parents had actually loved each other and weren't just fuck-buddies who broke a condom. But then, that would mean that they would have to be capable of loving something besides themselves. That was something Devlin was convinced was impossible.

Still, he supposed he had to admit that there just might be that point zero, zero, zero, one percent chance of his father finding someone he could actually love. It wouldn't be him. Neither of his parents ever loved him and Devlin was coming to terms with that. But someone.

Not that Kevin would ever find that someone in the Null Void.

…

Escaping the Null Void had become almost mundane to Kevin by this point. Benji might as well just install a revolving door. It took Kevin a couple of weeks without help, but he was out again before the month was ended.

He thought about going back to Bellwood and giving Tennyson and his brat a piece of his mind. But decided to put his personal vendetta on hold for the moment. Ben would always be there when Kevin was ready to try killing him again -and he would try again. The sun rises in the East and Kevin 11,000 will try to kill Ben 10,000. It was just one of those unchangeable facts of the universe.

But as much as he wanted to go back there and beat that heroic smirk right off of Tennyson's stupid face, Kevin also had a business to run. A business that he was ninety percent sure was being run into the ground with Leeta in charge. Devlin's mother. The bitch didn't know the first thing about running a marginally successful clandestine smuggling operation. But then, her brains had never been her most attractive feature. Not that Kevin could even remember any of her attractive features anymore.

The material point was that he couldn't leave a thoughtless cunt-bag like her in charge.

So, as much as Kevin wanted to return to Bellwood and resume the fight where he and Ben left off, he instead made his first stop the Saturn Colony -and home.

Saturn Colony was started as a mining colony, harvesting Saturn of it fortune in elemental gasses. Hydrogen, helium, ammonia, and methane. Originally, the station was just the syphons and refining factory. But, as with every mining phenomenon in history, a small community sprang up around it and grew from there. The residential sections of the Saturn Colony Station were already old by the time Kevin made his first visit to the operation. Still young enough to be seeking thrills, he was just looking for a quick score. Something easy but profitable enough to give him the start-up he needed for his real goal.

Kevin had been dealing in interplanetary contraband since his teens. But he was always just a middle man. He wanted to expand that middle man position into an actual business. As a smuggler, he would still -technically- be the middle man, but the money would be better, the work better for his rep.

He did better than he expected to do on that first trip, and so when he did finally make it big, he returned to Saturn Colony. This time as a head Boss of his own smuggler's group. The Lock Eleven. He set up a base on the station and made it the seat of his operations.

That was when he met Leeta. She was never really his ideal woman, but she was pleasant enough to be around and he could feel comfortable enough to be himself around her. All that changed when she got pregnant however. The easy relationship he enjoyed with her evaporated and suddenly it all became about what he was going to do to make up for what he did to her. As if pregnancy was some sort of death sentence. Devlin wasn't even a year old before Kevin came to the conclusion that he actually hated the woman whom had once been his lover.

He married her for his son. Because Kevin himself had been a fatherless child. Growing up with a mother who didn't understand him or his powers. It was what drove Kevin to run away at such a young age. It was why he grew up on the streets instead of in a home with a family that loved and understood him. And Kevin vowed that any child of his would never know the same hardship. Would never suffer the same troubled childhood.

No. His son got to suffer an entirely different troubled childhood.

Leeta was not exactly the maternal type. Combine that with the fact that Devlin wasn't the perfect and beautiful baby she wanted, and you had the ingredients for a resentful and negligent mother-son relationship. Leeta hardly ever held him. Made others comfort him when he cried. Hell! She didn't even look at him when he was in his alien form! And he was born that way! For the first year of Devlin's life, his mother didn't even look at him. What kind of bullshit was that!?

Kevin wasn't exactly the perfect pillar of parenthood either, but at least he made an effort to spend time with the kid! Not much, mind you. He did have a business to run. And then there were those pesky and infernal involuntary trips to the Null Void in between. But at least enough time to teach Devlin how to transform into a human shape and train him enough to be able to change back and forth at will. That meant something, right? It was at least more than his mother had ever given him.

As the business grew, Kevin started taking more and more risks, thinking no one could touch him. The Lock Eleven were gaining quite an infamous reputation. But, Ben Tennyson could sometimes be a force of nature and Kevin was -inevitably- sent back to the Null Void. Several times.

After a wile, he began to realize he'd need to set up a second-in-command to handle the gang while he was away. Or else, one day he'd come out of the Null Void to find the Lock Eleven broken and scattered. Ideally, Kevin wanted his son to take over and learn what would eventually become the 'family business' but Devlin was only nine at the time and not fit to run his toy spaceships without supervision, never mind an interplanetary smuggling operation. So, Leeta volunteered instead.

Of course she would have. She wanted the power, and more importantly, the access to the accounts it would give her.

Truth be told, she was the last person Kevin wanted at the head of his gang. But no one else who he would have preferred stepped up and those that did were even worse choices than Leeta. So, he began grooming her as his second and the rest of the gang accused him of nepotism. She was his wife, after all. Ha! If only they knew how much he loathed the woman.

Although, Kevin did have to begrudgingly admit, for the first year at least, she was good at it. Most likely because it finally gave her a legitimate excuse to ignore their son. Kevin was pretty sure Devlin didn't hear more than two words together from his mother that whole year.

But there wasn't much Kevin could do about that, because the very next fiscal quarter, Tennyson caught up with him again and he was back in the Null Void.

Having Devlin bust him out was a surprise. A real and true surprise. Kevin didn't even think the kid had ever set foot off of Saturn Colony before. Yet, there he was, inside the Null Void chamber at Tennyson's Plumbers Headquarters on Earth. It really was a true testament to just how miserable Leeta made the boy if he was that desperate to get Kevin back.

He really should have reacted differently when the kid stepped between him and Tennyson.

Devlin didn't know the history between them. Benji had always been a thorn in Kevin's side. Always ruining his fun and thwarting his plans. Taking him away from his business and the small criminal empire he was building. Taking him away from his son when Kevin was probably the only thing keeping the kid from going crazy under his mother's neglect. Devlin didn't understand and just assumed it was about pride. Yes. That as a part of it. (Okay, a big part of it.) But it was also about principals and business. Devlin's assumption that it was just about his stupid pride pissed him off and he shoved the kid to the side.

Bad move.

After all Leeta's neglect, Devlin probably misinterpreted the move as Kevin metaphorically tossing him aside just as much as he literally did. His mother already hated him and never wanted him. It wouldn't take much to convince him that his father didn't want him anymore either.

There was no doubt why the kid had betrayed him. Throwing his lot in with Tennyosn's brat. Using one of their Null Void grenades to trap him in the very same prison he'd just been freed from.

But the boy would realize the mistake he made and come home. Of that, Kevin was sure. After all, he was the only friend Devlin had in the world. Devlin would come back to him and Kevin would deal with him and his betrayal then.

For now, however, he had to deal with Leeta.

The bitch was sitting in his office. In his chair in his office.

And it seemed she had redecorated during his absence. Well, that certainly didn't take long.

Where once there had been an ebon-black carpet (all the better to hide blood stains) there was instead an orange and black leopard print rug. The armchair had been redone in a matching leopard fabric with burgundy piping, and the curtains that concealed the window overlooking Saturn's inner rings were likewise burgundy. Where once the office had been a formal place of business, it now looked like a cheap and tacky cocktail lounge.

"The fuck did you do to my office!?" He exclaimed when he entered. It wasn't what he planned to say to her first thing. It just came out.

Leeta was sitting at the desk, elbows propped, fingers interlaced, chin resting on her hands. She was talking to two of the guys when he interrupted them. A seven and a nine, Kevin noted when they turned at his outburst. The padlocks they wore on heavy chains around their necks proclaiming how many powers or alien abilities they had.

"Kevin!" She smiled. It was a fake smile. Plastic and transparent. Like she was. "I wasn't expecting you back so soon."

She said this as if he'd just gone out to get a newspaper and wasn't incarcerated in a pocket dimension set apart from the normal world from which there wasn't supposed to be any return. He was not amused.

"Clearly." He commented, eyes indicating the new decor. She wasn't expecting him back at all.

The two she'd been speaking to earlier backed away, finding places out of the way against opposite walls. No one wanted to get between the Boss and his woman when they rowed.

"Oh, do you like it? I thought it was time for a change. It was so drab in here." She bit her bottom lip in a way that he used to think was sexy. Now it just annoyed him.

"I hate it." He informed her plainly. "But I didn't come here to dick around about your white-trash interior designs. Do you know what your son has been up to?"

That fake plastic smile crumbled like the Ottoman Empire. Leeta could never even bring herself to pretend she cared about Devlin. "Your Devil-child? He's been very good. Hasn't bothered me once since you've been gone. I don't think I've had such an easy time in eleven years."

She didn't even know he was gone!

Kevin wanted to strangle her. Had entertained fantasies of strangling her for many years, actually. But he never gave in to them. Why didn't he ever give into them? What did he have to lose? It wasn't like Devlin would miss her, and he certainly wouldn't lose any sleep over it. But he refrained. Because, as much as he might hate her, and as terrible a mother as she was, she was still the mother of his child and that earned her some small level of dispensation from his usually volatile temper.

"Devlin," he growled, enunciating their son's name. He had always hated how she called the kid his 'Devil-child'. "Somehow made it to Earth. Into the house of my most hated enemy! He sprung me from the Null Void. Tell me, Leeta, can you hazard a guess what might motivate an eleven-year-old boy to do something like that?"

She shrugged. "Solidarity between monsters, I suppose."

He chose not to react to that. Closing his eyes for a moment. Kevin was used to being called a monster. He didn't like it. Would never like it. But he was old enough now to let the insult roll off his skin. Besides, let's face it, he really was a monster and he owned that fact. But no one -no one- got to call his son a monster and get away with it! "Ya know what I think? I think that Devlin felt you are such a horrible cunt-bag that he'd rather travel half-way across the solar system alone, infiltrate enemy territory, and break into the Null Void chamber to free me, than have to spend another moment living with you."

And that was it. Saying it out loud made Kevin realize that it was true. As terrible a father as he really was -and he knew he was terrible- Leeta was a worse mother. With her neglect and silent scorn, she had hurt his son for the last time.

Kevin wasn't planning to kill her when he came in here. But after their short conversation, he realized that offing the bitch was something he should have done a long time ago. Not just for his son's sake, but also the sake of his own sanity. With a snarl, Kevin transformed.

Claws and tentacles closed around Leeta. Lifting her up out of that gawd-awful leopard chair.

"K-Kevin…?" She stammered, eyes wide with fear. "What are you doing Sweetheart? You don't want to do this."

"Oh, but I do." He cackled. "I've wanted to do this for a long time. You've hurt my son for the last time."

And with that, he pulled. Arms, claws, talons, and tentacles pulling in every direction. Until Leeta's body split and broke. Tearing into eleven pieces. Blood spattered all over the room. Satining and ruining the gaudy animal print decor. It splattered over Kevin's limbs and the faces of the other two men in the room. The whole place was covered in blood!

Kevin dropped the pieces he was holding and shifted back to his human form. That felt so good! He should have done that years ago! He looked up to see the other two watching him, with wide, terrified eyes. Her blood dripping down their shocked faces. He was pretty scary. Kevin ran a bloody hand through his dark hair, pushing it out of his face.

"You," he pointed to the Seven, "start cleaning this up and get someone to redecorate in here. Something business appropriate. None of this tacky jungle shit. You," he points to the Nine, "put together a financial report for me. I'll need to know just how badly my wife fucked up the accounts. And while you're at it, get someone to watch the public transits between here and Earth. I want to know the moment Devlin returns."

"Um, Boss…" The Nine hesitated. That would only mean he was about to inform Kevin of something that would not make him happy. At all.

"What?" He demanded.

The Nine looked to the Seven, as if for help. But the Seven just took a step back. No one wanted to be the bearer of bad news if that news had to be delivered to Kevin 11,000.

"Well, spit it out. I don't have all day!"

"Its Devlin, sir." He began. "He's… he's not coming back. Probably."

Oh god! Why not!? Had Tennyson done something to him? Devlin wasn't thrown into the Null Void with him, of that Kevin was sure. They would have crossed paths. Confined to a terrestrial Earth prison, maybe? Some juvenile facility where he would be treated like a freak because of his transformation. Or did Benji just kill him? It wasn't the obnoxiously altruistic hero's style, but Kevin was perfectly willing to kill Ben's brat. Perhaps Tennyson felt the same way.

"Explain."

The man hesitated just a moment longer before finally answering. "Latest word from the gang's contact on Earth is that he's, uh, he's gonna be adopted into the Tennyson family. I'm sorry, Boss. He's not coming back."

Bullshit.

Bull fucking shit!

Devlin wouldn't leave the gang. Devlin knew he couldn't leave the gang.

"Tell me, why do we call ourselves the Lock Eleven?" Kevin asked, very, very calmly. Devlin knew. And that was why he would come back. Why he had to come back.

"Be-because we're 'locked in' for life, sir."

"That's right." Kevin nodded. "Devlin's locked in for life. There's only one way to leave the Lock Eleven." A piece of Leeta's flesh dripped from the wall to a squishy landing on the gaudy carpet. "Send the appropriate warning."

Kevin moved to exit the room. The scent of blood was beginning to make the air heavy and he had other things to do anyway.

"Issue the warning, sir?" Ah, so Seven finally decided to join the conversation. "But… but Devlin's your son, Boss! He's Little 11."

"I know who he is! And that's how I know that he'll know the warning is serious and come back." Kevin nodded before slipping out of the room.

...