Tenn
It was a peculiar thing to take a walk in a dusty campsite, and have your whole world view flipped on its head, and then indeed expanded to catastrophically large borders that cannot be seen via traditional means.
The campsite was very very ordinary in accordance to any other american campsite seated in a woodland copse. It smelled like earth and wood and charcoal, and underfoot was soil, sand, coarse aggregate and wood chips which felt uncomfortable under foot if one wasn't wearing the correct footwear. Which of course he wasn't.
"You know i bought you those boots for a reason"
Fourteen year old Benjamin Tennyson glanced over his shoulder, to his grandfather, Max, who was unpacking things from the old RV. He shrugged in a nonchalant manner, smiling coyly.
"They make my heels chaff, and they're a little tight on my toes" it wasn't a lie, not entirely. The truth was that they needed to be broken in, which Ben was of course aware of. Not that he would admit it.
His cousin was stepping from the RV, carrying was looked to be a decrepit tent, rolled up tightly and held tidy by a length of bungee cord. She shook her head in a disapproving manner, her fiery hair short hair falling about her face. "Are you gonna help?"
He ruffled his hair, and bowed his head slightly, "I don't even want to be here, there a million other places more interesting than here"
"Don't be dweeb. Every generic shopping mall, and movie theater is going to be there when we leave" She sniped.
He sighed, toying the dirt with the front of his shoe. She wasn't wrong, but there were still places he'd rather be on summer vacation.
"There's gonna be a meteor shower tonight you know? You cant see that with the lights of the city mucking up the sky" Grandpa dropped the load he was carrying, a stack of rolled sleeping bags and an electric lantern. He stepped towards Ben, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Look up son" He said gently.
Ben complied, glancing past the tree tops, to wear the sky was steadily darkening as the sun disappeared behind the tree tops.
"What am i looking for?"
"Nothing just yet, its not quit dark enough, but later tonight when the sun's gone down, you'll understand. Me and your dad used to love the night sky, was his favorite thing in the world"
There was tense second. "I'm not my dad"
"No you're not, but you're like him in a lot of ways"
...
It was a good few hours later when Ben sort of understood. He'd followed one of the dirt trails as the night fell, walking through the woods with only a torch for light, enjoying the quiet and the light twinge of fear that made him feel excited. Every so often a fox would run across the trail and his heart would beat a little faster.
An owl had flown by him then, close enough that the feathers had brushed his shirt, and he had followed the owls flight by and up into the sky.
And oh the sky. The stars were beautiful, though he really wasn't that interested in them. Gwen could reel of every constellation, but to him they were just peculiar pretty lights.
There was an energy about the forest, little noises and breaths of wind, the hoots and peeps of birds and little creatures that quested through the underbrush for dinner and shelter. It was nothing to the meteors. They weren't that visible, but the added activity to the sky, blazing little dots of fire that burned bright and then to nothing, all except one.
It was a little bold thing that flew straight and bright, never decreasing in speed or brightness. And the all of a sudden it sharply changed direction.
It was like it had turned a corner, instead of curving through the sky, and it plummeted sharply to the earth. And it was growing bigger too.
It was like a missile, he could even hear it, a dull roar like an engine growing closer.
Ben took a step back. And then another. The forest around him was becoming brighter. The center of the meteor was white hot.
He took another step back as he began to feel its heat. Then the roaring properly hit. The meteor made a thunderous screech of fire and metal and passed over the trees and struck, presumably, the ground with a crack of thunder. He could smell smoke.
He looked through the trees, the dense trunks scarcely hiding the glow of fire.
He probably shouldn't. Ben new it was dangerous.
He might get burnt. Or hit with rubble or burnt wood.
He was obviously not really thinking these things. Ben began to jog carefully away from the trail, through the underbrush, towards the light of the fire.
...
"Don't go that way!" Yelled a camper coming from the trees with a look of shock and fear on her face. "There's a demon in those damn woods!"
Grandpa max, who was carrying a bucket of water, quickly glanced around the campsite. He had of course dismissed the warning as that of a scared lady. A forest fire was no joke, and of course rational though was a thing of a sound mind, not that of a frightened human being. He could see Gwendolyn carrying buckets, and also looking around frightened.
"Gwen!"
She looked towards Max with a panicked face, "I think Ben's in the woods!"
...
A watch. A chunky glowy watch with a mind of its own.
What was a watch doing in a meteor. He had approached the sphere of finely polished metal, careful to avoid the little fires and broken splinters of charred wood, sliding into the crater and touching the metal with tentative finger tips.
It was cold to the touch, icy cold, and had shivered as if it could feel how cold it was when Ben had touched it. It had split open, shifting plates of metal like a precise man made egg, revealing, upon a cushioned white surface, a brightly glowing watch, made of what looked like black latex or leather, with silver cords and a wide circular face that glowed brighter than the fire around it.
Then it had jumped, like actually jumped, and opened. It was much to quick to even comprehend before it had actually attached itself to his arm, and the pain. Oh the pain in his head and his arm and his chest, and the sick feeling in his stomach. He had blacked out for just a moment, before stumbling from the crater, fumbling with the watch. The face had blinked and beeped and turned while it shrunk and stretched and seemed to lay flat against the contours of his arm while he struggled and cried out and began to panic.
He leaned against a tree and slammed the watch against the hot bark, on the first hit it beeped, on the second hit, the face lifted and turned from the watch. On the third hit, the face sank back into the watch and then the watch exploded, enveloping him in a green mist while his arm began to burn.
It was a feeling that spread from his arm and across his whole body, and he fell to his knees as his breath began to taste like smoke.
He blacked out again for just a moment and fell to his knees.
He came too, and shook his head and fumbled for his wrist only to find...
Rock. His wrist felt like stone, and it felt bigger and it felt hot.
He looked at his hands, seeing the glowing embers that was now his skin, and the fire that dripped like magma from the tips of his fingers.
"I'm..."
He coughed. He felt bigger, his lungs felt dry, and his voice sounded deeper and dryer like he had been smoking twenty cigarettes a day for the last ten years.
"I'm on fire"
An: hiya, this is just a test. I wanted to make ben ten but a little more mature and a little more linear than the original show. While the original was quite linear it was also a mix of standard monster of the week kinda stuff. Its just an experiment again, but i wanna put my own twist on the franchise and feedback would be cool.
