Before anything else, I own nothing but the original characters, and content therein related to them. Ben 10 is owned by Cartoon Network, and any mentioned creator's work belongs to them, and them alone.
EPISODE 1 One Small Step.
Ben sat across from his cousin Gwen, and recently (eh it had been a month since he'd tossed Vilgax into the ocean) de-mutated best friend Kevin, outside of his favorite Mr. Smoothie in Bellwood, slurping on what was probably the most interesting smoothie he'd ever had the pleasure of tasting. Mostly because it was the Mr. Smoothie "Sweet 16," a promotional birthday marble cake flavored smoothie that was mostly made out of wheat and sugar as he understood it. He was 2 months overdue for the free smoothie, but he had no control over the Mr. Smoothie limited smoothie release schedule.
"So…?" Kevin started.
"Sort of heavy on the vanilla, not a lot of the advertised frosting flavor… 7 out of 10." Ben said with a shrug before he finished the smoothie and threw it in the nearest trash can, before belching loudly.
"I was going to ask when exactly you were going to let me take a look at the new watch." Kevin said blankly.
"Because that worked out so well before?" Gwen asked her boyfriend.
"I'm not gonna mess with it, I just… Ok, running a few diagnostic tests is sort of messing with it, but to be fair, I wouldn't trust Albedo to not put some sort of time bomb, or limited transformations setting into the thing so only he could use it. It's been a month since you put that thing on, and honestly I'm worried it's gonna come back to bite us in the butt." Kevin reasoned.
"Azmuth put a time bomb in the original Omnitrix. If it starts ticking we can just call him and have him disarm it again." Ben said, waving off his friend's concern.
"I'm so reassured by your confidence." Kevin said sarcastically.
Suddenly the air around them shook with the boom of a nearby explosion. Looking towards the source of the sound, the three saw smoke rising west of them. Wasting no time, the three piled into Kevin's car, and peeled rubber to reach the source of the smoke.
As Kevin slowed down, ultimately coming to a full stop, he whistled. One of the gas stations he frequented was nothing more than flaming ruble, but there was no sign of anything unusual, well unusual for them. "I'm not thinkin' this is alien related." Kevin said.
"People might be hurt Kevin." Gwen said, as she got out of the car.
"Just making an observation, I was gonna' do the hero thing anyway." Kevin said, as he put his car in park and stepped out, absorbing the green metal for his own protection.
With a flash Ben transformed into Big Chill, and phased out of the car to get a bird's eye view of the scene. After only a few minutes of Kevin clearing rocks, Ben extinguishing fires with his ice breath, and Gwen scanning the mounds of concrete and metal for signs of life, did the mage among them nearly jolt as she felt a surge of energy from beneath a fallen wall.
"Under here!" Gwen shouted, prompting Kevin and Ben to come closer to help her pull the rebar reinforced cinder block wall off of when she initially believed to be a human. The three pulled back slightly as they saw the limp form of what they assumed was a male Anodite, a clothed, and armed Anodite. It's "hair," or rather untamed and excess mana couldn't have been more than a few inches long. It's clothing was torn and dirty, as well stained by blood… Red Human blood. The right sleeve was torn, or rather burned off of it's jacket, but it's left was covered by a dark green gauntlet that they couldn't quite see in it's entirety as the Anodite was laying on it's left side.
As Kevin pushed the wall away from the alien and let it fall to the ground, he hummed. "Male Anodite… Human military clothing and camouflage pattern. Unit patch, unknown. Human weapon… And hello, what are you?" Kevin asked, as he knelt down and reached for the gauntlet on the Anodite's left arm.
Without warning, the Anodite's eyes shot open, glowing a bright pink, just before it planted it's boot into Kevin's gut and sent him flying into what remained of the gas station's electronic price sign. The Anodite scrambled to it's feet, and drew the handgun from it's holster on his thigh, pointing it at the nearest perceived threats, before the fierce snarl that it wore was softened, then replaced with what looked like relife. "Gwen?" He asked.
"You… Know her?" Ben asked, Big Chill's voice sending a shiver through the air.
"Gwen." The Anodite repeated, as it took the three steps between them, dropping his gun, before hugging the girl so tight she feared that he might have cracked a rib.
"Ummm. Yup, I'm Gwen, that's me." Gwen said, looking at her cousin for some sort of answer as to why the alien had gone from hostile to all touchy feely in a matter of seconds. Ben simply scratched one of the antennas on his head.
The Anodite finally broke away, and chuckled. "It worked then… I'm really here… You're really alive." He said, as he picked up his hand gun, and stowed it in his drop leg holster.
"Why wouldn't she be?" Ben asked.
"Yeah, I'd also like to know why exactly I wouldn't be alive too." Gwen seconded, putting her hands on her hips.
"Well… This might sound crazy, but… I'm from the future, or at least my future." The Anodite said, before a rock smashed into his head, causing him to nearly fall over, as Kevin ran back into the field of rubble with a fist cocked back.
Kevin got another good hit in, before the Anodite male managed to hold up a guard and block Kevin's next strike with the metal backside of the gauntlet he wore, before grabbing what would have been the scruff of his shirt. The Anodite's mana powered body was easily able to crumple the metal coating his clothing, and scrunch up a fist full of the material to keep Kevin at arm's length. Suddenly Kevin felt several sharp pains in his gut following the resounding POP POP POP of the 9mm handgun going off. Kevin was shoved away, and held the indented wounds that the bullet's had left in him, as Gwen and Ben finally got back into the fight.
Ben rushed the Anodite down and attempted to freeze him by flying through his body, only for the Anodite to roll out of the way and retrain his aim on him. With two more pops of the handgun Ben noticed the bullets whizz through him and come out the other side of his body covered in frost, doing little more than tickling him. Still having a good view of things, he watched as Gwen attempted to distract the man with a blast of mana to the back. The male Anodite seemed to stumble but was uninjured.
Kevin got back up, and seeing that the Anodite's back was to him, he put the alien into a choke hold, and dragged him to the ground face down. Keven got punched in the forehead twice and felt his metal skin chip away to be replaced by flesh and blood once more, but the blows were becoming increasingly more futile, and the handgun was firmly being stepped on by Gwen. Ben landed beside Gwen, and the Ultimatrix timed out, returning him to his normal form.
"You gonna use your words now big guy, or am I gonna' have to knock your lights out?" Kevin asked, before he felt a sharp pain in the spot where he'd lost the metal armor on his forehead. "OOW!" Kevin yelled, releasing the Anodite and clutching at his forehead, as blood trickled down a large slit running diagonally along his brow. The Anodite released the gun it had, and sprang to it's feet, revealing a 6 inch needle jutting out of the gauntlet on it's left arm. The needle retracted, and after looking at the gauntlet, and pressing 2 buttons there was a green flash. The treo shielded their eyes, and once they looked at the Anodite again, they grew surprised, as the purple skin and pink energy tendrils and eyes of the Anodite were replaced with pale flesh, blond hair, and blue eyes. Keeping his hand pressed to the material of the dial pad on his gauntlet, the now seemingly human male's arm began to turn into a dark green plastic.
Ben, Gwen and Kevin all looked at the man, (really a boy closer to their age than that now that he looked human,) mouths agape, before he took a deep breath. "I suppose I have some explaining to do." He said with a sigh. "Priva…" The boy cut himself short, before standing up straight. "Colonel Killion Israel Mille. United States Space Corps."
The four all piled into Kevin's car, and took off for his garage. On the way the young man now known as Killion gave them a rundown of what was going on. "My world was attacked by an alien warlord called Vilgax. I assume you know him?" Killion asked.
"Tall, green, squid-faced dictator? Never heard of him." Kevin said sarcastically, looking at Killion in the rear view mirror.
"I'll ignore the sarcasm… Anyway, the war between our world and his fleet of ships lasted 7 years before my people noticed an anomaly with the stars. They started going out. We thought it was some sort of trick at first, but we had a visitor from some dimension between universes, and she explained that my reality, or all of them, were collapsing in on themselves because of something Vilgax did, or is going to do in what she referred to as the "Prime Timeline." A bomb or something like it. Honestly I wouldn't believe any of it if I wasn't guarding the meeting. The majority of the timelines were recreated I think, but the one's "without a Ben Tennyson," according to her, all end up erased by August 4th 2018 in my universe, which is about 4 years ahead of yours, and there was nothing that the Prime Timeline or other Ben's could do about it because there was no Ben in that universe for the repairs to originate from… Quick question: what year is it?" Killion asked.
"2011" Ben said. "And what exactly was the name of this woman who warned you about all this?"
Killion shrugged. "I don't really know. She went by the code name "Blind Luck." She was sort of young. Maybe 25. She had silver hair if that means anything." Killion said.
"Sounds like Charmcaster to me." Gwen said. "A future Charmcaster, but still Charmcaster. Not that I'd trust a word of what she says, but you're here now, so that's gotta count for something."
"Yeah, well she had an entire plan laid out for us to save our world, so she's ok in my book. She said that Gwen Tennyson could cross the veil, and stop the Prime Timeline bomb from even going off, but she'd need this…" Killion raised his left arm and pointed to the gauntlet. "If she was going to stand a chance against Vilgax."
"Well… What happened?" Kevin asked. "I mean, if your universe's Gwen was supposed to be coming here, why is it you showed up? And why wouldn't your universe have a Ben, if it had a Gwen? These two are practically twins, to the birth day. Why not send Mr. Hero?"
Killion swallowed a lump in his throat. "Ben… According to Gwen he died of leukemia in 2003."
Ben raised an eyebrow, and Keven just turned his attention back to the road. "That's horrible." Gwen said, covering her mouth.
"Yeah…" Killion said before taking a deep breath to calm himself.
"The higher ups needed an Anodite to pass through The Breach, something about life energy or reality manipulation resistance that would keep them safe on a trip so far from our home universe. Gwen was our only known Anodite on the planet." Killion continued.
"But, you're an Anodite… Right?" Gwen asked.
Killion took a breath. "I wasn't before today."
Kevin looked back in the reir view at the gauntlet on Killion's arm. "That home built Omni-Matrix on your arm have something to do with it?"
"The what?" Killion asked, looking at the device in question.
"That thing, it's called an Omnitrix. It lets you transform into different types of aliens." Ben tried to explain.
"Dr. Animo called it a DNA-Matrix, which I guess is whatever you're talking about." Killion shrugged.
"But that's impossible, Anodites don't have DNA so they can't be scanned into the Omnitrix." Gwen reasoned, holding her temple.
"I think the fact that a guy who was glowing purple 2 minutes ago and has an Omnitrix on him is evidence enough that it's possible, Gwen." Ben said. "Also Dr. Animo, he's a good guy where you're from?"
"I mean, good in that he was trying to stop our universe from imploding? Yeah. Mad scientist who nearly created a zombie plague? Also yeah." Killion said. "He figured out how Anodite DNA works… I think… Something about waves being chained like acid…" Killion trailed off.
"Of course! Subatomic particles acting as waves of energy within human DNA. Pure energy like a photon! That's what a spark is!" Gwen said suddenly becoming ecstatic that she'd made a discovery of such a magnitude. "I mean, you'd need to get DNA from an Anodite who hasn't completely shed their physical body yet, then subject it to acceleration and match the energy to the output of the original Anodite, but I guess that it was possible since… Since I could provide that data in your world…" Everyone in the car looked at Gwen as if she'd grown a second head. "Which… How'd Dr. Animo get my DNA?" Gwen asked Killion, fearing she already knew the answer.
Killion looked down to his blood stained body armor for a second. "I still have a lot of your DNA on me." Gwen paused as she looked down at her sweater where Killion had smeared blood while hugging her. Quietly she turned to look out the passenger window, an unsettling feeling of existential dread washing over her. "My unit was tasked with escorting you and the last piece of the device to A-53 for your jump through The Breach. We got ambushed right outside... You didn't make it." Killion said somberly.
"OoooooK…? That's interesting and all, but if you're supposed to be the replacement to stop this bomb from going off, where exactly is it?" Kevin asked. "I'd kind of like to know when I'm about to be fried alive."
"Well that's just it, I undershot my projected window by… Something like 3 years… And the woman, Charmcaster or whatever, said that "there'd be enough context." Which I think means that I'd know about it when you guys knew about it." Killion said.
"Oh, great. So we're clueless." Kevin said with an eye roll.
"Not entirely, I was able to get instructions and information from Max Tennyson on a USB. So I know we're in Bellwood now, and I know that I should be within one or two streams of the Prime Timeline, but according to everything I've seen so far, this is the Prime Timeline." Killion said.
"How'd you end up blowing the gas station up?" Ben asked.
"That's the question we're asking after everything else?" Kevin asked his friend.
"I mean, yeah. If that's how it's going to be for any other time travelers it might help us to keep an eye out for huge explosions." Ben said, leaning on Gwen's seat.
"Actually, I kind of just stepped out of a portal. The explosion was from the USB. It had a built-in self destruct I didn't know about until the last 5 seconds, and I broke into the gas station so I could use the computer to read it. Figures the first thing I do in this universe is bring a grenade into a place full of combustible fuel." Killion said.
"That explains the missing right sleeve then." Kevin said, before looking back at Killion. "So what about your world? What kind of tech knowledge can I expect from you? Level 3 or higher?"
"Uhh. Tech Level? I mean, we have nukes, uh, they put a man on mars just before the invasion… Dabbling in nano tech towards the end of the war. This thing?" Killion raised the gauntlet.
"Uh huh… Well aside from that thing, being level 19, maybe, if it's a kitbashed Omnitrix made from parts of the original and whatever else your best and brightest could scrape together, your word was probably getting into into level 4 tech. Our earth just started looking into locally making level 5 stuff. Don't be surprised by any… Weird gear you might not recognize in my garage… And don't touch it either, especially if you don't know what it does." Kevin warned. "If you're staying over, I don't want you blowing anything else up."
"You guys are giving me a place to sleep?" Killion asked.
"I mean, what else are we supposed to do? Let you camp out with the hobos?" Ben asked.
"It'll just be for one night. I've got a couch in the garage I'm not using right now." Kevin said, as he pulled into the rental lot where his garage was. "And please… Use the shower in the back."
"I don't know what to say." Killion said, as Kevin got out and pulled the driver seat forward for him to get out of the back row.
"A thank you would be nice." Kevin said.
"Yeah, I… Thank you… Really…" Killion said, getting out of the car.
Kevin got back in his car, and gave Killion a look. "I gotta take these two home… I expect to find you here when I get back." Kevin said, before he closed the door, and backed out of the lot.
Killion just stood in the open doorway to the garage, watching as the car got smaller in the distance. Killion walked around, until he found the small standing shower in the back of the shop. Turning on the water, he almost broke out into joyous laughter as he reached his sleeveless hand under the stream and felt the water start to warm up. Quickly removing all his clothing, Killion got in, not bothering to draw the curtain, as he just stood beneath the soothing hot water. He hadn't had propper hot shower since he was 9, and it had been a month since he'd had the ability to wash himself in the last stream he'd come across.
Once out of the shower, Killion put his combat pants back on for modesty sake, packed all his things into his body armor like it was a basket, then found the couch he was afforded. Laying on his side, Killion sighed, both exhausted and relieved that he'd made it to this new world. "It's just one small step…" He said to himself, before finding sleep.