Welcome to the latest chapter of The Ultra 10 Chronicles: Volume 2: A Hero Earth Needs! I know that this is quite a bit later than I usually upload on Monday, but at least it is still Monday, right? Gotta give me credit for that!

Trigger warnings for this chapter include several deaths, as well as some instances of choice language. The first instance is in the paragraph after the one which reads, "Dweeb, it's Neb..." The second instance is two paragraphs later. The third instance is in the paragraph after the one which reads, "All available personnel..." The situation involving death begins in the paragraph which reads, "Pyro!" and continues for the next two paragraphs. The second instance of death is in the paragraph which reads, "Ahh! The agent screamed." The last instance of death is in the paragraph which reads, "Oh- The guard tried to shout..."

No soundtrack for this chapter, sorry. Just been super busy with work (which is why the late upload.) to the point that I didn't have the time to come up with a suitable soundtrack. So yeah.

That's all for up here. Enjoy the chapter!

The Ultra 10 Chronicles: Volume 2: A Hero Earth Needs

Chapter 58: Imposters Revealed

"I already hate this world!" Newg shouted in frustration to anyone within earshot. Had she been on her own planet, her teleportation spell would have worked. But, as it were, all it did was teleport her almost two full blocks away, before dropping her off on the pavement of some dirty street.

"Fine, I'll just have to resort to a spell I know will work," she grumbled. "Levetatum!" Slowly, she rose into the sky, floating in the air. With a mental command, she shot off in the direction of the psychiatric hospital.

As Newg flew through the night, she reprimanded herself internally about the stupid mistake. This was like their world, but it wasn't quite it. Of course there'd be something that was different, somewhere. Whether a mountain that didn't exist on her world, or streets laid out differently. Or perhaps it was just a different way that her mana would interact with the world. She would have to wait for her aura to finish conforming to this place before preforming complex spells like teleportation.

Still, she didn't hate casting her levitation spell. She had learned it years ago on their first summer trip with Grandpa Xam. It had come in handy in a quick chase, or in preventing their defeated opponents from escaping. But those days were long over. No, their opponents rarely got the chance to escape anymore, ever since Neb and she had began dealing their own justice.

Now, the spell served as little more than speedy transport when other methods weren't available. At least, that's how it was at first. She usually had preferred to save her strength for the actual fights, but over the years, she'd become more proficient, to the point that she barely even felt the effects of casting such simple spells.

Newg continued her internal musings as she wove and wound through the streets of the city. The PLUMMERs were still working with the local governments to clean up the city, and they had been doing a good job at it. In fact, it almost looked like whatever had happened to introduce such chaos into the city had never even happened.

"Good," Newg thought to herself. She hated the chaos of this realm. She couldn't stand it. Everything should be in its proper place. Every class of people should know their place. Like chess pieces, every piece was important in their own way in protecting their king, as well as her, their queen. Neb, on the other hand, didn't ever seem to mind the chaos. But he didn't particularly care for it either. He mostly left that in her arena.

That was one of the main reasons that she tolerated him. Because by doing so, she could reshape the world to how she saw how it needed to be. That, and because he'd stuck his neck out for her so many times over the years. She'd done so for him as well, of course. It was a mutually-beneficial relationship.

But, despite her almost compulsive need to keep things in their place, Newg understood that chaos often bred the opportunity to reshape. And that was what this world had in its future. She had to introduce some chaos, controlled chaos, in order to bring to pass her, and Neb's, reshaping. And that is what excited her so much!

Finally, she arrived outside of the building she had been looking for. She'd never had any interest in letting out the crazies on her own world, and Neb hadn't either, so their nut house had stayed pretty much the same as this one. It was still a concrete and cinderblock building painted tan. Outside, there was a large wooden sign which read, "Welcome to Bellwood Psychiatric Hospital."

Landing just outside the entrance, she walked inside, confidently strolling up to the check-in desk. She noticed two tall, strong-looking employees that stood by the door, obviously to prevent any patients from escaping accidentally. She didn't see any weapons on them, but that didn't mean that they weren't carrying them. She'd have to take them down quickly.

"Can I help you?" The receptionist asked her politely as Newg leaned on the desk.

"Yes, um… I was wondering if it were visiting hours?" Newg asked innocently, as if she had been asking for ice cream from an ice cream truck.

"Visiting hours are from three to five on weekdays," the lady replied. "But you can still visit outside of those hours if you've made an appointment beforehand."

"Can I see the patients right now?" Newg prodded.

"Unless you have an appointment," the lady repeated. "Then you need to come back during visiting hours."

"I want to see the patients now," Newg pouted, and edge in her voice. "And I get what I want."

"I'm sorry, but you can't visit anyone right now," the receptionist said. "And there's nothing that I can do about that." She quickly glanced at the door, where one of the tall employees casually began to walk over to them. The other employee was watching them out of the corner of his eye, trying not to draw attention.

Newg let out an annoying moan, acting as much as a spoiled child as she could. She even kicked the reception desk in protest. That got the other guard openly looking at her, eying her up.

"Is there a problem here?" The guard that had been walking towards them asked. He had a sternness in his voice. A warning that said, "I will take you down."

"Yeah, there's a problem," Newg complained loudly, turning to him. "This old hag won't let me visit any of the residents! And I always get what I want!"

"I told you before, and I'll tell you again," the receptionist said. "You just can't walk in there and see anyone you want, any time you want. You'll have to come back during visiting hours!"

"Those are the rules," the employee said. "And if you can't respect them, then I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"No!" Newg shouted at him, kicking him in the shin. Her sudden aggression got the other employee to run at her to try to restrain her. That is what she had been waiting for.

"Pyro!" Newg shouted, red and blue flames pouring out from her palms and setting alight the two guards in an instant. They both started to flail about, trying to put themselves out as they began to burn. The scene terrified the receptionist, who stood up and picked up the phone.

"Help! We need-" she tried to call for help in the receiver.

"Fulmenae!" Newg shouted, sending a lethal bolt of electricity from the phone into the woman's head, electrocuting her. She dropped the receiver, as she thudded on the floor. Her muscles frozen by the electrical current still running through her body. By Newg, one of the employees still withered on the ground, orange flames still spiderwebbing across his charred, black body. The other employee had already given up and died.

With a contented huff, Newg jumped up onto the desk and slid over it, looking at the computer screen that the receptionist had been typing on only minutes before. On it were several cameras that were positioned through the facility in the common areas. The cafeteria, the recreation room, and the doctor's offices.

"There's probably a doctor in here with a pass for all of the rooms," she muttered out loud. "I guess that I'm headed there." She pointed at the doctor's offices. With a skip, she made her way down the hallway until she found the offices.

"Bombarda!" Newg shouted, her magic blowing the door wide open and slamming it against the wall. Inside there was a very confused-looking doctor and an even more confused-looking patient. Newg walked confidently in as though she belonged there.

"What on Earth is going on here?" The doctor protested loudly.

"Where are your keys?" Newg asked.

"I beg your pardon?" The old man answered. "I don't have the faintest idea what you're on about, or what you're doing here-"

"Key card, badge, pass of some kind, whatever it is, I need it," Newg interrupted.

"You're mistaken if you think that you could just prance on in here and demand to see my badge pass," the doctor again said. "And you'd best leave this instant if you don't want to be hauled out of here by the security!"

"Badge pass, you say?" Newg piped up. With a waive of her hand, the badge that was hanging off of his pocket floated over towards her.

"You possess the power of the devil!" The patient shouted, utterly loosing his cool. "She's a demon! Kill her!"

"Shut up," Newg shouted at him. A flick of her wrist sent him flying across the room and into the wall, knocking him out cold. Then she returned her glare to the doctor. "Despite your shouting, you weren't entirely resisting me. If I were you, I'd get away from here as quickly as I could…"

"What are you-" he started to say.

"Before I let all of these inmates go," Newg took a dramatic sigh. "Something tells me that one you could handle. But ten of them? Or twenty?" She made a point of looking at her wrist, as if inspecting a nonexistent watch. "Your time is running out…" The doctor looked at the wall clock for a brief second, before making his way quickly to the door. Newg smiled to herself.

"As for you?" She addressed the unconscious patient that was slumped against the wall. "I could care less if you never made it out of here." With that, she exited the room, the door magically slamming shut behind her and welding itself shut.

Newg made her way down the hallway towards the security room a floor above the cells. Using the doctor's badge, she opened up every cell and door before leaving the small room. Upon discovering their unplanned freedom, several of the patients cautiously emerged from their rooms, while others ran out in a manic dash for freedom. A few decided to cower in their rooms, too afraid or too sane to want to leave.

"Well, at least I know which ones will be the interesting ones," Newg remarked to herself. She casually walked back up to the receptionist's desk and called 911.

"I just wanted to let your police officers know," Newg interrupted the dispatcher. "That the Bellwood Psychiatric Hospital is experiencing a jailbreak. All of their patients have escaped." With that, she hung up, walking her way outside.

"That's my job for now," she said amid the rapidly unfolding chaos. "Now it's time for Neb to do his smash and dash… Levetatum!"

Neb sulked around the entrance to the PLUMMER base as Accelerate. He'd been tailing PLUMMER agents for a couple of days, and had discovered the entrance then. Now, he was just waiting for the next patrol to leave, giving him a split moment to sneak past the entrance security and to get inside. One of the most useful aspects about this form was that his speed forced him to gather data and make decisions decades faster than most other lifeforms. He wasn't particularly brilliant in this form, but he didn't need to be. He could work around complex obstacles in less time then it took to blink. And that is what he was relying on.

Off to his side, he heard the entrance to the base open up as a transport van burst through the doors. That was his moment. Dropping whatever thoughts he had been dwelling on, he rushed towards the entrance, managing to slip himself past the vehicle and through the entrance before the shielding went back up. Not stopping to even look around, Accelerate sped through the base gathering his bearings and trying to get the lay of the complex.

He didn't have the intelligence to make much more sense of it other than the layout. But he had another form that would make use of that. One that was much smaller, and easier to overlook. In only a matter of seconds, he'd memorized a pretty thorough lay of the complex, and he found a dark corner to detransform in.

Pressing his Omnitrix symbol, he emerged from the flash of light in his human form. Then, turning the dial again, he activated it, emerging in his Galvan form.

"It seems that the complex is laid out according to the ease of access to the different roles for the wings. Living, armory and administration being the largest," he muttered to himself. "The logical center for the base would be the administrative, however that's not how it's laid out. The center is most likely the cafeteria, a natural meeting place for quicker dissemination of essential information." Mental images appeared in his mind as he continued to talk, diagraming the base as he recalled it.

"The administrative area would be close by, in order to facilitate that information, closer than the other two wings of the base. Additionally, security would be the tightest around it, thusly eyes and cameras would make it difficult to pass by undetected," he continued musing. "However, the Null Void projector would be in the armory, which would be rather far from the terrestrial entrance, in order to protect against a terrestrial threat to the base. I'd need to cross the entire base in order to find the projector. So the questions are risk being seen, or make my way around the outside corridors, and risk taking too long to get there?" He rubbed his chin, deep in thought.

"If I time out too soon, then it's game over," he finally concluded. "However, with my superior intellect, I should be able to escape detection if I cut through the center, right past the administrative wing. It's risky, but I think that it is my best bet." With that, he looked around the corridor he was currently in.

"That is the way I came from," he concluded, looking to his right. "Which means that I've gotta go to the left." With that, he scampered off, sulking around the corners and any boxes or other objects that would conceal him. Although he was taking a rather direct route, his progress was slow, as he was constantly dodging for cover from passing agents, who grew more and more common the deeper he got into the base.

Finally he came to the central cafeteria, which was, for the most part, a wide open room filled with tables and chairs.

"I didn't expect it to be this wide open," Neb muttered, having barely noticed the layout when he'd ran past as Accelerate. "This is going to be a bit more difficult…" Looking around, he noticed all of the cameras up in the corners of the room. Their positions gave them excellent vantage points. It was going to be hard indeed to find any blindspots. He pressed a small button on his wrist, a communicator he kept for talking to Newg.

"Dweeb, it's Neb," he whispered into the communicator. "I may need back up to fight my way out of here. Or at least a distraction. It's quite a bit better designed then I thought that it would be." He didn't hear her answer, which almost never happened. She almost always responded immediately. Her silence likely meant that she had not heard him.

"Damn it, Newg," Neb cursed. "Guess that rules you out…"

Taking a breath, he gaged when the cameras would overlap each other the least on their rotation. If he could avoid showing up on multiple cameras, it would only help him. Seeing his opportunity, he scurried out, weaving in-between chair legs and table stands, doing his best to stay hidden. Timing himself, he sped up, or slowed down, or turned to hide around another table stand to try to stay hidden. He could see the half-wall that signaled the end of the cafeteria. It was only a dozen feet in front of him now. Holding his breath, he made a dash for it. But he'd forgotten his size difference ratio. He'd thought that he had been bigger, with longer legs.

"Shit!" Neb cursed as he took cover around a chair leg. If he hadn't been spotted this entire time, he certainly had been spotted just now. For several moments, his heart was filled with dread, hoping that the alarms wouldn't go off, but somehow knowing they would. Still, he waited and wasted precious time.

But nothing happened. Nothing. It was nerve wracking. There should have been an alarm blaring. Perhaps he was overanalyzing the entire situation. Perhaps he had been attributing a higher form of intellect to these human PLUMMERs. Perhaps it really did have some blindspots. Whatever the case, this was his time to escape! Taking a deep breath, he dashed for the half-wall bordering the closest side of the room, quickly taking cover from the cameras around it.

He waited a moment for his heart beat to resume, before assessing where he was, and how he'd get to where he was headed. Finally, he saw it, the hallway heading towards the armory. Timing the security cameras, he dashed off towards it, staying just behind the line of sight of the cameras. A few minutes of dodging and hiding, he finally made it into the armory.

"Null Void projector, where are you?" Neb said to himself as he ran through the armory. Finally, he saw it. A door headed into a room built into the side of the wall. He had to jump up onto the door handle to reach the scanner, where he quickly sliced inside and began hacking the security system. However, the Omnitrix symbol on his back began beeping, flashing red.

"Come on, just a little bit longer!" Neb pleaded as he continued splicing the wires. The security systems were lightyears ahead of anything else on Earth, but it was still incredibly primitive to this form's intellect. With a beep, the lock on the door clicked.

"Yes!" Neb congratulated himself as he reverted back to his human form. Grabbing the handle, he swung the door open and strode inside. Inside the room there was a large portal ring with the full-sized projector hooked up to it. But on the shelving on the edge of the room, there was a portable projector.

"Come to daddy," Neb whispered as he picked up the portable projector and checked it for charges.

"Four charges before it needs a recharge," Neb noted. "That's more than enough for my purposes." He stuffed it in his pants and checked his Omnitrix.

"Still recharging though," he observed. "I wonder how far out Newg is…" Just then, he heard an alarm start to blare.

"ALL AVAILABLE PERSONNEL TO THE ARMORY, AN INTRUDER HAS BEEN DETECTED!" The disembodied voice shouted. "INTRUDER SHOULD BE TREATED AS ARMED AND DEADLY!"

"Well shit," Neb cursed. "They probably caught my mishap in the cafeteria, and tracked it to my splicing here…" He looked again at his Omnitrix.

"If only you were charged, this would be no problem!" As it were, he'd have to improvise. He quickly walked outside of the room and back into the armory, taking a look around and trying to come up with a plan. The alarms were blaring, and it was seriously distracting.

Finding several canister blasters on the wall, he activated them, as well as stuffing several percussion and thermal grenades into his pockets. They would come in handy in helping him help him make his escape. Distantly, he heard the sound of multiple agents running towards the armory, their military boots thudding across the concrete floor. Neb looked at the entrance to the armory, and readied one of the grenades. The moment he saw the first agent turn around the corner, he threw the explosive at him, intense heat and fire erupting from the grenade.

"Ahh!" The agent screamed, dropping his gun and flailing around, trying to quench the flames. From the sounds of it, there were multiple agents that were on fire. But the chemical that had been inside the grenade wouldn't be put out, and just burned hotter and more intensely.

"He's got grenades!" One of the agents behind the wall shouted, warning the others of the obvious fact.

"It's not going to be long before they bring in a tank," Neb muttered as he moved farther away from the entrance. He looked around the room, trying to find somewhere he could bunker down, at least until he could come up with a way out of here. Distantly, he heard the shouts of the agents trying to put out the fire and gain entrance into the room. Regardless, it wouldn't be long before the chemical had burned up, and the flames would burn out.

Neb moved towards the outer wall, looking for any weaknesses in it that he might exploit. But these were the PLUMMERs. They rarely did anything halfway, or let anything go unchecked. As far as he could see, there were no flaws.

But then his Omnitrix beeped, signaling that it was charged and ready to go. Dropping one of his pistols, he activated the watch and slammed down on a selection. In an explosion of green light, he vanished, emerging only a moment later.

"Oh yeah, I can make this one work!" He shouted as he assumed the gelatinous form of Goop. Reaching down, he picked up the canister blaster he'd dropped. From the other side of the room, he heard the agents shouting to each other as the entered and spread out, searching for him.

Getting an idea, he covered the gun with his acidic goo and activated the explosive in the stock of the gun. The countdown began instantly. Running towards the entrance, he surprised the agents that were still covering the entryway.

"Stop!" One of the agents shouted, aiming his gun at Neb. But he only threw down his blaster and dodged to the side, taking cover from the scene.

"Oh-" the guard tried to shout before the explosive went off, covering everything and everyone nearby in his acidic goo. With a smirk, Neb relished in the screams of agony the agents let out as they felt the acid eating through their suits and helmets, burning and eating into them. Coming out of his cover, he saw the desperate agents clawing to rip off their armor and scratching at their faces. Neb stepped over them and out into the corridor.

"INTRUDER ALERT," the alarms continued to blare. "INTRUDER IS ARMED AND EXTREMELY DEADLY!"

"Shut up!" He shouted annoyed, as he threw a glob of slime at the nearest speaker, watching it fizzle and spark as it was melted away by the acid. He looked around, trying to determine which way would lead him out. Finally deciding on a direction, he sprinted down the hallway.

"Not the cafeteria," Neb noted as he entered the hangar. "But I can make do with a tank." He ran up to the nearest one and pressed his hand on the hatch, allowing it to melt through the lock before opening it up.

"I probably want to be human for this part," Neb said, pressing the Omnitrix symbol as he plopped down inside the tank. Powering on the large vehicle, he began to spin the barrel around and to aim it at the far wall, away from the rest of the base. Behind him, he heard a dozen agents shouting and rushing to get in the other tanks, in order to take his out. A mobile turret was brought in and set up, warming up and firing at his tank. But Neb ignored it. He needed to focus to make it out of here.

Lining the barrel up to a section that looked like it had been patched and replaced, he fired, the missile smashing into the concrete, and sending fragments flying through the air. The turret gun stopped firing briefly in response, which Neb took as his moment to escape. He activated the Omnitrix, quickly scrolling through the aliens before selecting one.

In a moment, he emerged as his Kineceleran form. Opening the hatch, he dropped another thermal grenade inside before he sped out of the tank, clutching to his prized projector. Activating a percussion grenade, he sped towards the exit he'd made, dropping it right at the base of a column holding up the ceiling. In a flash, he was outside of the base, zooming through the streets of Bellwood, back towards his convenience store base. He still hadn't heard anything from Newg, but she shouldn't have much of a problem against some low-paid security guards.

"Newg, do you hear me?" He spoke into his communicator on his wrist.

"Sorry, I got held up at the psych hospital, I didn't hear you before," she apologized.

"I made do," he said. "Meet me at the store, I've got the projector with me."

"See you there in a few minutes," she responded.

"On second thought," Neb responded. "Meet me at my counterpart's old house. There's no reason to delay the next part of our plan."

"What about observing the super team?" Newg asked.

"The PLUMMERs saw me, and it's not going to be long before they put it together that I'm not their Ultra 10," Neb explained. "So we'll have to use the advantage of the chaos we've caused tonight to push our plans." With that, he ended the call, and continued speeding through the streets towards Ben's old home.

That's going to be it for the chapter. Neb's plan hit an unexpected bump, which is accelerating his plans. Any ideas how this is going to impact his fight with Team Ultra, without the ability to study them first? What did you think of Newg's savagery in the hospital? Any other ideas, comments or critiques? Please leave them in a review! I enjoy reading them, and I'm sure that there are multiple areas that I can improve in, so don't hold back! Thanks for the reviews, and thanks for reading! Have a great day!

Review Responses:

Kingpizzathe3: I enjoyed the chapter and would be interested in the spin-off story.

Thanks, Kingpizzathe3! I've been doing some plot-planning for Neb's universe's backstory, and I think that it is going to be pretty cool!

Ushindi: It's a cool origin for Zombozo, I kinda feel bad that Tom died. Neb and Newg are turning out to be very dangerous villains. It's going to be quite intense when Ben and Gwen met their other counterparts.

I'm glad that you enjoyed Zombozo's origin story! Like I said, I always wished that we got to know how Zombozo came to be, and how he met up and started working with the circus freak trio. So I took, what I thought would be a cool origin, and adapted it for The U10C-verse. As for Neb and Newg, they are indeed dangerous, and are seriously going to be a challenge for Ben and company. However, our hero has allies, and that may be the edge he needs to take them down. We shall see... Thanks for the review!

Darth Dresden: Dude, the villains are really getting serious now. Zombozo's origin story is so cool. And raising an army of evil vampires, that's just so bad***. Ultra's gotta really tighten his grip on his powers, or someone's gonna pay soon, with their blood.

And ya, I would love to see the Neb spinoff.

Thanks for the review! Yeah, Volume 1 was Ben becoming a hero, and this volume is him beginning to face his different enemies, and growing into the Hero of Heroes. So yeah, the villains are becoming larger and more dangerous as Ben and his team continue to become more powerful in order to face them. Thanks for reading!