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

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 saw who was standing before him. She was in her early twenties, with pale 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 his eyes were more immediately drawn to the pink energy coalesced around her shaking 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 she and her cousin had retired from the Plumbers, and in all that time he had never seen her like this. He never enjoyed seeing people cry.

"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! Recall Blanco, he's going to want in on this one, and for the love of whatever god you find holy, someone grab me a beer!"

"What happened?" he asked, 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 in 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 overpowering 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 queried, "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."

"That Levin is quite a looker himself you know, it's too bad you found each other before I did," Jack stated nonchalantly, 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 is 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 the 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 begun to walk towards, "Do you sense anything out of place here other than what is evident?"

Gwen shivered slightly, "Something inside that Tower feels twisted. The mana coming from it is just wrong."

"Come on you two!" Ben yelled, already at the base of the Tower.

Inside the Tower

Kevin grimaced slightly as he watched Gwen stumble towards Hex's dead body. The old man had been an enemy turned compatriot, not unlike Levin himself. 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 was hitting 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 muttered, kicking one of the dead Amalgams. He hadn't known Hex as intimately as Gwen had but seeing the old man's body tossed aside like a broken doll was clearly angering him.

"What are they?" Kevin asked, bending down next to the other creature, which unlike its 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 black magic."

"So, a black magic expert made these?" Ben asked, kneeling down next to the body. The Omnitrix lit up suddenly, a projection scanning up and down the creature's form.

"Corrupted Galvanic Mechamorph DNA detected," the watch said in Ben's voice, "Would you like to attempt repair?"

"Corrupted Galva-No!" Ben yelled, a look of shocked anger and disappointment on his face, "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, activating the Omnitrix. He dialed past several aliens before finally locking in a transformation. His skin turned a burnished gold, while his limbs extended, metallic plating forming across them. There was a flash of green and standing in his place was Clockwork.

The key in the top of the alien's head began to spin, the room around them flashed 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 muttered, 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.

The group winced, Gwen reaching for the image of Hex with tears in her eyes, while Ben turned, his metallic hands clenching into tight fists at the sight of the attacker.

"No." he murmured, glaring up at the mangled yet still menacing form of Vilgax before him. The time wraith paid him no mind as he let Hex drop the ground and then rounded on Charmcaster. Albedo knelt down, snatching Hex's staff from his hand. He walked up next to Vilgax as he knelt down in front of their captive and began to show her something wrapped in his remaining fist when the vision guttered to a stop as a black light filled the assembled heroes' sight.

Kevin blinked several times, fighting to get his vision back, "What was that?"

"I don't know," Gwen muttered, rubbing the tears from her eyes, "Vilgax never showed any inkling of interest in Magic before, it doesn't make sense that he'd come after Hex and Charmcaster."

"Something has clearly changed then," Rook noted, "Though if he was just after Magic, why did he leave all of Hex's books untouched?"

"So he's got something new up his sleeve, the only mystery is what exactly it might be," Kevin stated, putting a consoling hand on his girlfriend's shoulder.

"Does it even matter?" Ben snapped, his hands trembling slightly, "He's back, and he needs to be put down 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 Plumber's throat. Rook fell backward, 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 bite him once again. Ben grimaced and slammed the creature to the floor using his impressive weight to keep it pinned, "Gwen!"

"What?" she asked, taking a step towards the writhing pair.

"Read its 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 harsh 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."

And cliffhanger! I'm getting good at those, don't worry though the 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 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!