Every Superman Needs A Lois Lane
By BenRG
Disclaimer
'Ben 10' and 'Ben 10 – Alien Force' were created by Man of Action for The Cartoon Network.
The author claims no ownership or rights over the copyrighted and trademarked entities portrayed herein. This is a not-for-profit fan story for free distribution through the world-wide web.
Censor: T
Chapter 4 – The Secret War
Freshman year came and went. Gwen and I were slowly getting closer again. It had been a hard, traumatic break and it was difficult for us to regain that sense of trust and mutual devotion that we had as ten-year-olds.
Rebuilding our friendship was that much harder because there remained things that Gwen and I could not even talk about in private, let alone openly. She had secrets about which I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that I would never be allowed to know them. Gwen insisted that this was for my protection and that I would be better off pretending that the Plumbers and the secret world that they inhabited didn't exist. I told her that it would be easier for me to feign blindness.
Nonetheless, we were friends once again and were spending time together, regaining our close understanding of each other, our dreams, our fears and our ambitions and our loves.
I quickly learnt that, despite her having become more socially outgoing, Gwen was still considered an outsider and 'abnormal' by many of her peers. People looked at me strangely for hanging out with Gwen. They wanted to know what was wrong with me; didn't I have enough 'normal' friends? I told them that I had plenty but that a girl needed a little abnormality in her life. Gwen thought that was very funny and I later learned that she adopted that as a catch-phrase when dealing with the stranger aspects of her own life.
Meanwhile, I had found that my new pass-time of 'Ben watching' was turning into a serious hobby to the point where, much to my horror, I found myself actually keeping a notebook of my observations. The blow was made that much more bitter by the fact that Gwen considered my obsession hilarious and fodder for endless good-natured teasing (although her hacking into my cellphone and changing the ring-tone to Michael Jackson's 'Ben' was a step too far and led to our first public fight).
However, it seemed that I had not been as subtle as I had thought. Ben had noticed me watching him and I caught him looking back at soccer games. I blushed like I was that ten-year-old with a crush again. I would have suspected Gwen of informing on me to her cousin if she had not sworn she had not done so and I felt a tingling in my left hand that assured me she was telling the truth.
Ben was so much nicer now, in these early weeks of sophomore year, than he was as a ten-year-old. He had an easy-going wit but it was the magnetic level of subtle self-confidence (which, frankly, Gwen shared) that caught and held the feminine attention. He never lacked for fans from the more socially outgoing groups of girls who often subtly or even overtly fought for his attention. I have to say that I despaired as to whether I would have any chance to build a relationship with him. After all, I was hardly a buxom blonde bombshell.
Gwen told me that I was being stupid and insisted that I take the initiative. "He's a boy!" she reminded me. "He isn't going to figure this out himself so you'll have to take him by the nose and lead him to it yourself!" Then my best friend added in a more sotto voice: "Though why you are interested in him, I'll never know!"
I was fretting about this issue when I realised that, for the fourth or fifth time, Ben Tennyson had been watching me at Tennis practice. Okay, this is it, girl, I told myself. It isn't exactly launching a surprise attack on the Pacific Fleet, but it is still a time to find your courage and see if you've got the guts to cash the check you've been writing out for a year now.
After wiping off the worst of my sweat, I wandered over to where Ben, who was looking a bit nervous, was standing by the chain-link fence around the school's tennis courts. As I approached, I caught Ben's eye and the boy watched me warily. I wondered if I should have showered first. I have never understood those who claim the smell of sweat is attractive. "Um… Hi!" I said. "Been a long time since we've had the chance to talk!"
At my words, Ben Tennyson, the cousin of Gwen Tennyson, the boy who I knew for a fact had faced down creatures that exclusively populate only the worst nightmares of most boys of his age, blushed and looked ready to run. "Um… yeah!" he agreed, a bit sheepishly. "You… you're really good at tennis! I mean, not pro good yet… Um.. I mean, you're still better than everyone else on the team! Anyway, you're better than Gwen, I know that!"
I would have been offended at Ben's critique of my skills if I had not seen him visibly wince and mentally slap himself for it. I tried to think of something to say and, in the absence of any thoughts, my mouth decided to make stuff up. "Thanks! You're really good at soccer too! You were great at your last game!" I couldn't resist adding: "Not pro good yet, of course!"
Ben grimaced but couldn't help chuckle. "Walked into that one didn't I?" I nodded with what I was worried was a silly-looking smile. "I caught you watching me. I guess that's why I'm returning the favour!"
I opened my mouth and then closed it again. I was by no means the only girl who watched Ben play. Somehow I doubted that he was doing the same for them too. "Yeah, well you know me and Gwen have got our friendship working again?" Ben nodded. "Well… I guess that I've been looking for a chance to talk to you too. I…" I broke off. "I guess I was nervous about how you'd react!"
Ben looked at me in the strangest way and I felt my treacherous blush start again. His regard was a bit too close and I wondered if his unspecified powers included mind-reading or something similar. "Julie…" he said at last. Then he smiled, a smile that I hadn't seen of late. It had the same effect as that last time that I saw it, when we were both ten and swinging from ropes over the Bellwood River – it made my stomach go flip-flops and made my cheeks burn. "Julie, you shouldn't ever feel afraid of me! I mean… weren't we friends too? Anyway, Gwen was so miserable when you stopped being her friend! Having you back has made her a lot easier to deal with, so I think I owe you one!"
This made me blink. Ben and Gwen fought like wildcats when they were younger. That had stopped (at least in public) as they grew up but this was still the first time I'd heard him admit with his own lips that her happiness was important to him. "I missed her too," I admitted.
Whilst my mind tried to come up with some further conversational tack, Ben looked around nervously and half-turned to leave. "Look… uh… you probably want a shower. It's… uh… been good to talk to you again. See you around?" He started to go and panic overrode my nervousness.
"Ben, wait!" Ben turned back to look at me, a look of genuine surprise on his face. "Um… maybe…? Maybe after practice one day…? Uh… Yours or mine… Um… We could…? We could… hang out together maybe?"
Ben's face did an interesting thing. First he went bleached white, then bright red whilst he swallowed convulsively several times. Finally, he grinned in a genuinely happy way. "Um… Yeah! Yeah, that'd be cool!" Suddenly, his fingers were touching the back of my hand and I felt my heart begin to race like after a long, hard rally. "Uh… nothing formal, I mean…!" he murmured in embarrassment.
"No, of course not!" I agreed, hardly aware of what I was agreeing to.
Suddenly, Ben's cellphone rang. His ring-tone was, perhaps inevitably, Bonnie Tyler's 'I'm Holding Out For a Hero'. "Oh man," Ben spat as he saw the caller ID. "Julie, can I take a rain-check? Something's come up!" I nodded, still in a bit of a trance, and watched him run off.
I watched him go and suddenly, felt lighter and happier than I could remember ever having been before.
When it began, it began in the most anticlimactic way imaginable. There were no mysterious meteors falling from the skies. There were no alien ultimatums transmitted on all Earth's TV channels. There were no fifteen-mile-wide UFOs hovering over Earth's greatest cities. It began with the disappearances.
Now, in any given year, there are tens of thousands of unexplained disappearances. People have accidents out in the wilderness or simply lose contact with everyone they know and never see the need (or have the ability) to reconnect to them. However, no matter how well the authorities tried to hide it, this rash of disappearances was something unusual, occurring as it did in a sudden spike of events all over the globe. They were also not the usual kind of people either – they included family men and women, sometimes entire families who just suddenly vanished leaving behind jobs, dependants, homes and sometimes even children who were at school or camp when the adults simply vanished.
My parents tried to reassure me. It was somehow both comforting and annoying that they tried to hide the significance of the sudden increased police presence in town and the tightened security at school. They simply advised me to be careful and imposed a pretty rigorous sunset curfew – just about everyone's parents did; lots of places became ghost-towns after sunset.
After the initial surge, the disappearances continued at a low 'noise' level and remained stubbornly outside of the stereotype of the single adult or teenager. The initial panic died down and I was allowed out after sunset again. However, people remained on edge. My own fears were only amplified by the fact that Gwen confirmed that the Plumbers were concerned enough to re-activate her grandfather to full active status and assign him to find the answers to this mystery. This was an enormous relief to Gwen because amongst the 'disappeared' was her older brother, Ken.
The threat hung over us all for those closing months of autumn. I could tell that Ben and Gwen were both worried about their grandfather and what these events might mean for the greater safety of the world. Their grade averages began to drop and I noticed that the harshness and hardness that had frightened me off years ago was back. This time, though, I swore that I would not abandon them, especially now, when I was needed.
Another oath that would have effects that I could not have possibly have guessed.
Maybe I just have an enhanced sense of aesthetics thanks to my mother's artistic nature but I could sit for hours watching Gwen meditate as she seeks to centre herself and focus her powers. Maybe it is just the place she chooses to sit, in the woods just to the east of town where the river isn't cluttered with boat traffic. She sits in a shaft of sunlight, cross-legged wearing nothing but a beautiful white silk shift, bound at the waist with a thick blue belt with bronze ornaments that she calls 'The Five Charms of Bezel'. As I watch, the whole world seems to fall into her as if she was drawing on the sunlight, the flow of the river, the breeze and on even the sound of the wind to give herself strength and focus.
I was so far gone into a trance of my own that I didn't immediately notice when Gwen came out of her own trance and turned to look at me. "Julie?"
I blinked a bit to get my brain on-line again and was shocked by the look of grief on my normally-strong best friend's face. "Gwen! What…?"
"They took Grandpa, Julie! They took him!" Suddenly, Gwen was in my arms, weeping like a baby, desperate for reassurance.
It all came out in a rush. 'They' were called the Highbreed.
The Highbreed were an ancient race, far older than any of the other civilisations of the galaxy. With that age came arrogance. They assumed that they were inherently superior to the younger species of the galaxy. It was somehow depressing that racism, something that was a continual and irritating thorn in my side, should be a universal constant in the galaxy at large. Not just idle prejudice either, but a genocidal xenophobia of the same kind that motivated the worst atrocities of human history. It would have been bad enough if the Highbreed's chauvinism had led to prejudice, injustice and empire-building. However, they had taken it to the ultimate degree. In their perverted view of the universe, as they were the oldest and most 'perfect' form of life in the galaxy, then the 'inferior' younger races were 'mongrels' – an imperfection on the face of creation that needed to be eradicated. Their goal was simply to exterminate every other sentient race in the universe.
And now they were pursuing their aims here on Earth.
Gwen explained that the Highbreed were responsible for the rash of disappearances. They had developed a biological weapon called the Xenocite that, when attached to a sentient life-form, mutated it into a mind-controlled worker/soldier drone unable to do anything but carry out its' masters' collective will. The army of these creatures (which Gwen told me Ben had dubbed 'DNAliens') that my friends had faced in a pitched battle included tens of thousands of abducted humans; men, women and children. I could feel the utter horror in her voice as she recalled being forced to use lethal force to protect herself against what she knew were innocent and helpless pawns of the Highbreed's plots.
I was still in utter shock, unable to process the scale of the threat suddenly facing the world as Gwen continued her story. Her grandfather had gone missing whilst looking into Highbreed activity on Earth. Very much against the instructions of the Plumbers' leadership, over the past month or so, Ben and Gwen, aided by someone named Kevin, had followed up on a few of Max Tennyson's leads, which had led them to rescuing Gwen's older brother, Ken, from being turned into a DNAlien. In turn, Ken was able to remember enough from his time as a transformed slave to lead them to a Highbreed base not far from Bellwood! There they had witnessed what Gwen was sure were her grandfather's last moments alive when he used some kind of Plumber weapon to suck the contents of the entire Highbreed base into a parallel dimension.
"J… Just before he went through the portal, he said something to Ben," Gwen murmured into my chest as I hugged her.
"What?"
"He said… He said: 'Take it from here.'"
I didn't know what to do or what to think. It was strangely easy beforehand, to simply ignore the fact that my best friend was a trainee superhero whose desired career involved fighting aliens, superhumans and monsters from other planes of existence. Then the threat was 'out there' and looking me in the face.
My first instinct was to run and hide but where could I go? The Highbreed had been planning to destroy Bellwood and 'sterilise' the entire county with nuclear bombs when Ben and Gwen stopped them for the first time (leading to Ben's injuries that had raised such suspicions amongst the school authorities at the time). Yet… what else could I do? I didn't have super powers; I had an acceptable level of proficiency at Judo, Kung-fu and Kendo, but that was nothing against super-strong aliens and their mind-controlled tools! Worse, how could I fight something that would take control of my body away from me?
My dad probably thought I was either hysterical or going mad when I begged him for his advice that night. I don't know how I explained my dilemma to him without exposing Gwen and Ben's secrets but I will always remember what he told me:
"Julie, I was so proud when you befriended the Tennyson kids. Do you know why? Because you refused to let injustice stand. By your actions, you forced me to face up to the fact that by allowing injustice you give it your tacit support. You reminded me that our family is by heritage a family of warriors and do not cower before 'popular opinion' or any other supposedly-overwhelming force. We always should live by our honour, no matter how hard or how frightening the responsibilities that this brings upon us."
I spent a long time thinking about that. I'm pretty sure Gwen and my other friends at school wondered why I looked like I hadn't slept a wink the night before. That was because I hadn't.
Dad was right. I couldn't run and, most importantly, I shouldn't run. I'm no superhero, I know, but that doesn't relieve me of my responsibility towards my friends, my community, my species and my world. Whatever small part I could play, even if it was nothing more than loading guns or running a desk in a supply depot somewhere, whatever contribution I could make to this fight I had a moral obligation to offer.
However, even then, I realised that my part wasn't going to be the obvious one. Just as Gwen needed a friend, then so did Ben, even more so with the clear fact that his grandfather had chosen him as his successor to complete his last mission. Such a burden would crush a grown man, let alone a barely fifteen-year-old boy. More than anything else, someone in such a position would need a friend, someone to ease the burden upon him.
Until I found some way to convince Gwen to let me join the Plumbers, if only as a reservist, this is the part that I would play in this undeclared war.
To be continued…
