So here it is my second adopted story from Damont Evermore. Once again, it will be a Marvel/Ben 10 mix-em-up, but this time around, it's going to be a lot more mature with content pulled from the MCU and the comics combined with a little flair of my own. FYI, the events of the last season of Omniverse NEVER happened in this story, excluding the final fight with Vilgax and Malware, so say goodbye to the convoluted Time Travel Plot, rushed BenKai romance, and that god awful Skurd alien. I do not own MCU or Ben 10 (Though, considering how the reboot is looking, I wish I did). Italics are flashbacks, and emphasis (Brackets are telepathy) Part two coming at ya!
Infinity Chapter II
A Shattered Dreams II
English Plumber Base(Torchwood), June 19th, 1:40 EDT
"Commander Jack we've got an unexpected entry." A lesser Plumber cried out as an alarm started blaring across the base.
"Oh who's broken in here this time." Jack muttered, pulling his pistol from his belt. He walked around the corner, his eyes peeled for a familiar or maybe this time unfamiliar face.
"If this is another one of his jokes I swear…" He trailed off when he say who was standing before him. She was in her early twenties, with light skin, bright green eyes, and long disheveled red hair. She wore a set of black sweat pants and a blue t-shirt with a cat motif but the most distinctive features was the pink energy coalesced around her clenched fists.
"Gwen?" Jack said, putting on a rather charming smile, "What are you doing here?"
"I need to get a message to my grandfather." Gwen said, barely contained tears marking the sides of her face.
"What's wrong?" Harkness asked, he had worked sporadically with the young woman over the intervening years since her and her cousins retirement from the Plumbers and in all that time he had never seen her like this. He never enjoyed seeing people cry, especially not when they were on the prettier side of things.
"Focus Jack. She's taken. Quit the fantasizing." Jack admonished himself.
"Hex...he's dead." Gwen said, her voice breaking slightly.
Jack froze for several seconds before shouting out several orders, "Get me in touch with HQ now! Someone get a hold of Blanco, he's going to want in on this one, and for the love of what ever god you find holy someone get me a beer!"
"What happened?" He said turning back to Gwen, a storm of emotions flashing behind intense hazel eyes.
Torchwood 7:30 EDT
The teleporter snapped to life, depositing Ben and Rook before closing once more. Ben was dressed his classic green jacket, over a black shirt, cargo pants and shin high combat boots. His face was set in a determined grimace while Rook's was his classic professional deadpan. They walked forward avoiding the looks and mutters of some of the new recruits before finding their way in Harkness's office. Ben's grimace disappeared upon seeing Jack's other visitor.
"Gwen!" Ben cried.
His cousin whirled around, a sad smile crossing across her face. Her hair had been pulled back in a hasty ponytail while she had replaced her sleepwear with a black sweater, black pants and black heels. She almost jumped into his arms as she embraced him, her grief over powering her.
"It's been a while." Ben muttered, putting her down. He looked at her with a quirked eyebrow for several seconds and smirked, "Did you get smaller?"
"Oh hush." She said, smacking on the shoulder lightly before turning to Rook with a more subdued smile, "Hello Rook."
"Good to see you again Gwendolyn." Rook said, a small smile crossing his features.
A cough drew their attention to Harkness who was sitting at his desk his eyes traveling over Ben, "Jack Harkness nice to meet you."
"Oh stop." Gwen said exasperatedly, shooting Jack a piercing look.
"What?" Jack queered, "I'm just saying hi."
"Sure you are." Gwen admonished, turning back to her cousin, "He's the leader of the Plumber's here in Britain and he's worked with Paradox before."
"Actually, I said I worked with a time traveler, I never mentioned…" Jack cut to a halt when Gwen shot him another exhausted look, "Right not the time. So I'm guessing you heard what happened?"
Ben nodded, "Hex was killed in his home by a mysterious assailant. Rook said you found something but wanted me to see it in person.
"Correct." Jack declared, standing up from his desk.
"Why?" Ben asked, following Jack and the others out of the former's office.
"You'll just have to see for yourself." Jack said, turning to Gwen, "If you would amour?"
"I told you to stop saying that." Gwen remarked, her eyes glowing with magical energy, "Kevin doesn't like it."
"What Levin is quite a looked himself you know, it's too bad you found each other before I did." Jack smirked, earning an eye-roll from Gwen and a look of pure confusion from Ben and Rook.
"Ignore him." Gwen advised, the light in her eyes growing brighter, "It's for the best."
"Nos ad Hex Terris!" Gwen cried, a flash of pink light obscuring everyone's sight. When their sight returned the found themselves outside of Hex's home, the sun just peeking from behind the Tower, which had clearly seen it's better days.
"There has been substantial damage all across the uppermost part of the tower." Rook observed, pointing his Omni-Tool at the wreckage around them, "I am also detecting odd energy signatures all along the tower's surface."
"What did this?" Ben asked, staring up at the shattered window.
"It's about time you got here." A voice called out. The assembled heroes looked up to see Kevin Levin, standing atop the outside of wall right next to a pair of large craters, "You're going to want to take a look at this."
"I'll leave you four to it." Jack said, staring around at the forest with his eyes narrowed, "Max wants me to report into HQ, message me if anything comes up."
He then disappeared in a flash of white light but not before shooting the others a playful wink.
"Wait, why did he even come with us if he was just going to leave again?" Rook asked confused.
"Don't ask." Gwen said with an exasperated sigh, "When it comes to Jack, you can never guess what he's going to do next."
Rook nodded, before looking up at the Tower which Ben had already began to walk towards, "Do you sense anything out of place yourself?"
Gwen shivered slightly, "Something inside that Tower feels...twisted. The mana coming of it is just wrong."
"Come on you two!" Ben yelled, already at the based of the Tower, "Let's get this over with."
Inside the Tower
Kevin grimaced slightly as he watched Gwen subduedly walk towards Hex's dead body. The old man had once been her enemy not unlike Levin himself and had also turned over a new leaf. After his true niece had entered self-imposed exile Hex had started to treat Gwen like family, mentoring her in the schools of magic. His sudden and evidently cruel death had his her hard.
"Oh Hex." Gwen muttered, using magic to seal the hole in his chest, while simultaneously wiping the blood away from his lips, "What did this to you?"
"My guess, is one of these...things" Ben snarled, kicking one of the dead Amalgams. He hadn't known Hex as well or as intimately as Gwen had, but seeing the old man tossed aside like a broken doll had set a fire in his belly.
"What are they?" Kevin asked, bending down next to the other creature, which unlike it's comrade who was a mashed up mess, looked largely unharmed. He rolled it over and jumped back slightly as the things fanged jaws fell open suddenly. As he watched a line of black-and-red liquid began to leak from its open jaws.
"Ugly bastard." Kevin muttered, examining the tech embedded into its stony flesh, "These ports look like Psyphon's tech, but he's been locked up in Plumber HQ since that fiasco with the Pyroxivores."
"The stone is similar to that skin of the Rock Golems of Ledgerdomain," Rook said, bending down next to Kevin, "But the metal is reminiscent of that found on Vilgax's old bioids."
"Which went up in flames alongside old squid-face five years ago." Ben muttered, staring down at the amalgam, "Think somebody did some kind of salvage job?"
"The Vreedles maybe?" Rook queered, staring up at the others.
"No." Gwen said, looking up from Hex's corpse, "These things reek of distorted mana and black magic."
"So...a black magic expert made these?" Ben asked, when suddenly the Omnitrix started beeping rapidly.
"Corrupted Galvanic Mechamorph DNA detected," the watch said in Ben's voice, "Would you like to fix?"
"Corrupted Galva-No!" Ben yelled, suddenly, "He died! He and Vilgax, I spaced them!"
"Ben what's wrong?" Gwen asked, taken aback by her cousin's sudden outburst.
"That sludge...it's Malware." Ben stated, glaring intensely down at the amalgam, "And if he's back…."
He stopped talking and suddenly activated the Omnitrix, he dialed past several aliens before coming across the alien he was looking for and locked it in. His skin turned a burnished gold, while his limbs became more and more mechanical. There was a flash of green and standing in his place was Clockwork.
"Ben what are you-?" Rook was silenced by a wave of Ben's hand as the key on top of his head began to turn. The room around them turned green and suddenly they were all back in time.
"Charmcaster!" Gwen cried in surprise, staring at her former rival.
True enough Hex was comforting his niece before turning on his heel and firing an attack at a nearby wall. A shape detached and transformed into a very familiar but somewhat twisted face.
"Albedo." Ben snarled, watching as his doppelganger said something to Hex, leading to two of the amalgams smashing through the window. The assembled heroes watched enraptured as Hex fought off the monsters and then turned on Albedo nearly beating him when a sharp blade suddenly shot across the room and impaled Hex through the chest. Gwen let out a horrified cry while the others flinched away. Ben turned around and pure hate filled his forms mechanical eyes.
"No." he murmured, glaring up at the mangled yet still impressive form of Vilgax before him. THe time wraith payed him no mind as he left Hex drop the ground and then rounded on Charmcaster. Albedo knelt down and snatched Hex's staff from his hand and stood next to Vilgax as he knelt down in front of their captive and began to show her something wrapped in his remaining fist when suddenly and seemingly against Ben's will the vision halted. It then shattered into a million glittering motes of green light and was replaced by the current desolate state of the Tower.
"Vilgax...is alive." Gwen choked out, "He killed Hex, and took Charmcaster!"
"But why?" Kevin asked, putting a consoling hand on his girlfriend's shoulder.
"Does it matter?" Ben snapped, his hands clenched in hard fists, "Vilgax is back and we need to put him down once and for all! Before he kills someone else."
"But he could be anywhere." Rook pointed out, "How will we-"
He was cut off when the mostly undamaged Amalgam sprang to life and launched itself teeth first at the unexpecting Plumbers throat. Rook fell backwards his Omni-Tool the only thing keeping the ravening beast from biting into his throat.
Clockwork marched forward and grabbed the creature by the back of it;s now writhing neck. The ooze squelched under his fingers as he ripped the beast of his friend with a mighty tug and then turned it to face him.
"Tennyssson." The creature rasped, it's voice slick and menacing.
"Where is Vilgax." Ben said, glaring back at the beast as it tried to bite into his metal flesh with little success.
The creature responded with a guttural hiss and tried to bit him once again. Ben grimaced and slammed the creature to the floor using his impressive weight to keep it pinned, "Gwen!"
"What?!" She cried, taking a step towards the writhing pair.
"Read it's mind, sense it's mana! Anything!" Ben yelled, "If this thing is Malware then it will still have a connection to the part stuck to Vilgax. It's our only chance to find him!"
Gwen nodded, her eyes glowing pink as she used her magic to rip into the creatures addled mind and pry out the piece of information she was looking for. With a hard smile she then crushed the creature's head in a pink vise, ending it before it could bite into Ben's more vulnerable face.
Ben sat up, wiping the black-and-red sludge off his face before transforming back to human, "That was...disgusting."
"Sorry." Gwen apologized, giving her cousin a hand-up, "On the bright side though I learned where Vilgax is."
A dark smile crossed Ben's face, "Good, I'm finishing this. Today."
"We're with you." Rook said, readying his Omni-tool, while Kevin just nodded his agreement, hands still wrapped protectively around Gwen's shoulders.
"No, Rook I need you to head back to HQ. Tell Grandpa Max what's coming."
"What will you do?" Rook asked.
"We," Ben said, gesturing at Gwen, Kevin and himself, "Are going to meet Vilgax. Head on."
Translations-Nos ad Hex Terris-Take us to Hex's Tower
And cliffhanger! I'm getting good at those, don't worry though next chapter will be all action all the time! And no cliffhanger I promise *snickers* So yeah I added Jack…why I don't know it just kind of happened. But hey who doesn't love good old Jack Harkness! Except for Gwen of course. Now I will be putting up a poll(which you can find on my profile) to see who our illustrious protag Benjamin Tennyson will end up dating! The names may surprise you and full disclosure my opinion may change as the story goes on so let's say it's a tentative list. Hmmm anything else...oh yes next week I will be aiming to release the first chapter of my RWBY fic Zodiac, so look forward to that! VerBeek signing off!
