Disclaimer: Ben 10 and The Boys do not belong to me. Ben 10 is owned by Cartoon Network and Man of Action and The Boys is owned by Amazon Studios, Dynamite Entertainment and Wildstorm.
AN: Hello everyone from FanFiction Land! How are you doing today? This is Mr. Raleigh D giving you a new chapter for the new story, Ben 10: A True Hero. Now you are thinking...what took this man so long? The original author only had 2 chapters so with this one as well as the upcoming one, I have to craft on my own, so a lot of planning and revising had to take place. So anyway, I hope you all enjoy this fic as much as I had writing it. Please always leave reviews, they are always appreciated! :)
CHAPTER 3: SEE THE LIGHT AT THE OTHER END OF THE TUNNEL
Ben being at a surveillance lab was nothing new to the young hero; however, operating as some sort of Black Ops operative, that is not extraterrestrial based, was kind of new. Though he was no stranger to fighting crime, but this, this was some straight Black Hat stuff the hero was witnessing. He stood behind the gruff older man leaning forward towards the computer where the Operator zoomed in to a footage of the same Speedster Ben had encountered a few days ago. His eyes hardened on the man in blue at a table accompanied with a lot of empty bottles of strong drinks.
Ben stood in the back, arms crossed, as his eyes locked on the Speedster. "So I am guessing this friendly fella who tried to kill that harmless couple is A-Train?" Ben guessed.
"Yep," Billy said.
"More like A-Hole sounds fitting for a man of his ego," Ben thought in his head; "When was this footage?"
"Last night," Billy said, turning to the Operator, "Zoom in. There. Turn it up."
In the footage, A-Train was joined by a half-naked man in a speedo wearing the same, if not so, pair of goggles he wore. Ben joined Billy as the footage played.
"You want to know something crazy? Promise to keep this between us? I don't want anyone else hearing about this shit," A-Train said.
"Alright," said the half-naked man.
"This man in purple laughed as I ran to a fucking brick wall. Broke my fucking legs and cracked my skull. He accused me of almost killing some stupid bitch off a curb. I don't know what the fuck he did, but I'm gonna find out who it is, and I'm gonna pay him a fucking visit," he said.
This made Ben go on a tiff. He was not yelling or screaming. No tears streamed down his line. His heartbeat slowly paced up, and his Ultimatrix dimly shone to show his anger. He hid his rage in a fit of a small chuckle, writing him off as nothing but scum that needed to be washed away from a glass window.
"No regrets. No...no nothing. He blamed me for something he almost did to that poor couple. Had I not did what I did, the consequences of his actions would have been dire," he said.
"It could be that new guy who showed up out of nowhere," said the half-naked man.
"You might be right. If I see him, whoever this fucker is, I'mma break his neck, like he did with my legs," A-Train threatened.
"I think it's hilarious that he thinks he can take you on. A man of your power versus his is like measuring an elephant dick to a twink's," Billy said.
"You sound like a fan," Ben said.
"Fuck no. You have a cereal box toy for a weapon that gave you tremendous power, power to which I know you are keeping secret. Humungasaur and Four Arms aren't your only heavy hitters I expect. Just so I make myself clear, sunshine, I don't know you, like you, or trust you; but I do find you entertaining that you made the Seven quiver a bit. You do not have to prove to me how powerful you are. Your little gadget on your forearm was activated without you even touching it. You were pissed," Billy said.
"It's that obvious huh?"
"You're not hard to read, even without that gizmo on your arm," Billy continued; "You want to know if the Supes are like him? Here's your answer."
000
Back at Vought, Starlight came out of the bathroom stall vomiting after her traumatic, unpleasant experience from a certain member of the group. She walked into the mirror trying to fix herself, however, as her heart started to crack and ripple, her nose puffed up as her eyes started to water. Next to her was the amazon lady, Queen Maeve who just finished doing her business in the bathroom as she washed her hands. She saw the young hero next to her sobbing. She looked like she was trying to ignore her, but instead took pity and gave her something to wipe her eyes with, again, out of pity.
"For Christ sakes, clean yourself up," she handed her the napkin from her end to Starlight. "Never let them see you like this."
Queen Maeve walked away as Starlight continued to look at herself in the mirror. As she turned, Maeve sighed frustratingly, throwing her napkin to the back.
"Translucent, you goddamn perv," she said as she stormed off. Starlight tries to look to where Translucent was at, however, like a magician, he appeared from behind him, butt ass naked, his manhood dangling like a coat hanger as he leaned against the wall with a smug look on his face. Starlight quickly turned away.
"I'll just go," he said as the severe awkwardness of the situation sat in. Starlight shook as the perv left the room.
000
"So everyone is a piece of work, including that Captain America Man with a Cape? I forgot his name," Ben said.
"Homelander," Billy said.
"That sounds...actually pretty awesome! I should name one of my new aliens that. I got Krypto Knight, but meh," Ben said, excitedly.
"Please no. One Homelander is enough; and no, he's the exception. He doesn't drink, doesn't smoke. Man's a saint. But the rest of 'em, yeah. Pardon my French, but fuck those fuckers," he expressed as he pulled out a thick manila folder from his lap and slid it towards a curious Ben.
"Have a shufti at that," Billy said.
"What's this?" Ben asked.
"That's the police log the day you saved the girl and her twink the other day. A couple of bar fights, a few cars got nicked, but you wanna know what's not in there? No bank alarms going off. No one charged at Central Booking. A-Train stopped two bank robbers in my arse. Someone's fucking hiding something," Billy explained.
"Hiding what?"
"Well I don't know, some dodgy shit he was up to that night. Why couldn't he stop? I mean, what was in that bag? You know? What was he running from?"
"Or where was he running to?"
"Bingo. I expect that you were a crimefighter back where you from," Billy added.
"Impressed?"
"No. Aside from that Ultima-Transformer-Doohikey, or whatever the fuck is called, nothing surprises me," Billy said. "Work that out and we'll have the fucker. I can smell it."
"Well, I'm interested. What can I do to help?" Ben asked.
"Depends. How many of those Space Pokemon can you turn into?" Billy asked.
"...enough," Ben said.
"How many of those are stealthy?" Billy asked.
000
Vought had its shady dealings, brilliant ones, but shady nonetheless. Stillwell was a presentable, but casual woman with a lot of class, but deep inside that professional shell was a vindictive shark of a manager, a good, vindictive shark who knows how to go around people. In turn, Vought was like any other multinational corporation in the world today. Stillwell, had met with the mayor with a proposal, starting with flirting his interest with a signed photo of Homelander to which she had promptly handed to him.
"Thank you for this, my kid is going to lose his mind!" the Mayor said.
"Ah, it is our pleasure! Just do not sell it online," Stillwell chuckled.
The Mayor picked up his glass of alcohol, not wanting to pussyfoot the issue, "Alright, what are you thinking?"
"Well, Baltimore is a beautiful town, but you have a problem," she began. "Your homicide rates are, what, 62%? The police are not closing cases. You're on the verge of meeting a federal lifeline…"
"Cut to the chase, Madelyn," the Mayor said, not wanting to hear her advertisement pitch. "Who are you proposing?"
Madelyn's smile became bigger as she leaned back with her remote and cut on the screen behind her showing a buff African man wearing West-African attire added with some armor here and there.
"Nubian Prince," she said. "Fits your population's demo, but not too militant. Causcasians love him too, with a 59% approval rate. I am willing to give you a three year exclusive contract, with full PR support and I'm gonna give you nine and a half points of the merchandising."
"I thought he was in Detroit," the Mayor said, aided with his confusion behind Nubian Prince.
"Well we're thinking about making a move," Stillwell said.
"How much?"
"$300 million a year," she tossed her hand like it was nothing. Both laughed at the proposal—mostly the Mayor.
"I know, I know, it's a tough pill to swallow, but we both know your city needs a hero."
The Mayor leaned forward at Stillwell, still interested in the Nubian Prince, however was not impressed with the price tag, "$200 million for Nubian Prince. I can sell that."
"Mm. I'm sorry Steve, I can't do it. We got Atlanta waiting in the wings."
"I think maybe you can."
Stillwell laughed, "Why is that?"
"Two things: I happen to know about Compound V," hge said leaning forward towards her before leaning back.
A quick, dead silence reigned in the air in the room. Stillwell, looking nervous, still kept the smile on her face.
"What is Compound V?" she asked, with an advertising smile.
"It's a type of rumor that can ruin your heroes; however, not the one that's been popping up. This Ben 10,000 guy, guy who came out of nowhere, unlicensed by Vought, has untold power with unknown origins. As we know, Compound V happens to be some...I dunno, genetic editing serum that can give someone powers. I mean...it's a rumor, no push and all. But if this rumor gets out, your company tanks, Ben 10,000 takes over. He's becoming a small bane, a bane no less, but a small bane. I'll make sure that stays a rumor, because I'm a friend, but friendships do cut both ways."
"I'm sorry, but I don;t know what you are talking about. $300 million is the price, or we move to Atlanta," she said.
000
At home, Ben was at his computer looking up a few things. It wasn;t the history of the world, to which it wasn't that different from his, aside from the fact that there was no mention of aliens in this timeline at all. Nothing of Old George or anything about Los Soledad (since the military base didn't exist in this universe. There was a town called Soledad, but it was just an old Spanish town.
No. Ben was looking up a specific company that caught his eye since arriving here.
Vought.
He was kind of disappointed with what he found. There was nothing illegal or nefarious about the company. It was just a generic corporation. Nothing scary at all. To add insult to injury, it was just a pharmaceutical company. That was all. Nothing special at all about this company. Though it did peak his interest in the conspiracy around Vought. Ben was not the person to dismiss anything, even if it kind of sounded nutty.
He would have dozed off a bit in his universe and focused on bigger issues on a galactic scale in his universe rather than corporate conspiracies, but since he is here, this warranted his attention, specifically since A-Train was a part of this company.
As his eyes were laser focused on the Vought main page, he got a visit from an...uninvited-invited guest.
"Hello, Ben!" said a charming British man standing behind him, hands behind his back with a fixed smile on his face. Ben jumped a little and turned around, sighing that it was nothing but…
"Paradox," Ben named, "You know I have a door."
"I tried knocking, but time has its ways of allowing me to enter specific spaces in the universe," Paradox charmed.
"Right," Ben said. "I am currently looking up this company here. There's nothing about this industry that sparked any red flags, except upcharging on insulin and other medications. Greedy jerks," Ben said.
"There is more to the story, Ben. Not all tales are direct, sometimes you need to read between the lines to get to the truth. Context clues and reading comprehension skills are the friend of the curious and the knowledgeable but are enemies of the lazy and the bilkers. You must be the former rather than the latter, Ben; it is dangerous to underestimate what you are facing," he said.
"Yeah, I know," Ben said. "It's been about a month and I still found anything. No leads or anything. They're clean! What if this whole thing is just hogwash…"
"Nothing is ever hogwash, Benjamin. Everything in every time, space, and molecular matter has a meaning. Besides, this whole adventure will finally bring you close to what you are looking for," Paradox finished with a smile.
"What I'm looking for? What are you…?" Ben turned around and just like that, Paradox was gone.
"Talking about?" Ben finished, turning back to the computer.
"Hate it when he does that," Ben mumbled.
000
As Ben was busy unraveling what he was sent to do, his cousin Gwen was doing the quite opposite. She was walking about at the Plumber's Tower carrying what looked like a small Manila folder with her. People walked past her, greeting her and such.
As she walked down this narrow hallway, she finally stopped by her office, finally finished and exhausted from all the Diplomatic trips she had to do with Alan Albright, who was the Department of Defense of the USP (United System of Planets).
Gwen no longer wore her attire like she did when she was a teen. Instead she sported her old Lucky Girl costume, but with some adjustments. She wore a blue and black spandex suit and the Charms of Bezel on her right arm. She had a hood and only sometimes wore it. She had a belt with a cat on it, the same cat Gwen wore on her shirt when she was ten.
She placed her hand on the scanner, prompting the door to slide open to her office. Her office wasn't all that big, it was bedroom sized. The walls and the ceiling were all made of glass, giving her a spontaneous view of Bellwood, which was now as large, if not larger than Tokyo. The floors were green, but hardwood. She had an Omnitrix Matt on the floor near her mahogany desk which contained her laptop, a small lamp, some papers, neatly organized on a tray to the right and a picture of her missing grandfather Max Tennyson and her late husband, Kevin E. Levin.
The battle they had against the galactic was no ordinary fight, this...this was something to which Earth as well as the planets controlled by the blue planet had to face. It was something out of World War II, but much, much worse.
It was a hard fought war, but like all wars, it came with an ultimate price.
She sat at her desk, opened her dresser-drawer and pulled out a note, written by said late-husband. He had horrible penmanship, but it didn't matter to this red-head. It was readable enough for tears to start sliding.
Suddenly, a buzz shook her away from the moment.
"Who is it?" She asked frantically, putting the note away.
"It's me, Eunice."
Gwen sighed, "Come in."
Eunice entered the room as the door slid open. Eunice still sported a white jumpsuit with black stripes in the middle. However, she did let out a bit of cleavage. She wore a black belt containing various Level 5 and 6 gadgets and weapons. She wore her hair short with a single bang and wore a chrome backpack.
"I'm just checking on you to see if you are okay," she said.
"I'm fine," Gwen answered.
"Are you sure? With Ben missing, I can see if I can…"
"No. That's fine. Thanks Eunice," Gwen said.
Eunice sighed, "If you need to talk, just call me. Oh, and just to let you know, we have a visitor, but she seems...shaken," she said.
Gwen furrowed, "Shaken? She needs help?"
"Worse. She needs a psychiatrist...and LSD," Eunice said.
AN: Alrighty then! I'm just gonna end this here! Sorry it took me so long. After the second chapter, I have to plan these chapters out from scratch lol. Anyway, just so that way you all are excited here, I'm gonna have Ben meet Annie in the next chapter. Plus, what do you guys think the pairing should be, let me know in the comments. Until next time!
PEACE!
