Unknown Location

In a darkened room where the only light visible was in the center of the room, several shadowed individuals were seen present.

"We have two situations. Each of which requires delicate handling," One individual stated as they walked into the light, revealing themselves to be none other than Eon, "I have every confidence our enforcer can handle the first. But Vilgax, are you certain that your acquaintance is up to the second task?"

It was then that Vilgax revealed himself as well, "Quite certain."

"Then, our good works may proceed."


Several minutes earlier...

Tashigi was practically beside herself.

As her and the other Marines made it into Alubarna, they had walked right into a full-blown civil war, making it hard to determine where Crocodile and his men might have gone. so now, it was up to Tashigi to use her skills to locate the Shichibukai.

Fortune shined down on her when she noticed the eternally wanted criminal Nico Robin leading King Nefertari Cobra down the streets toward the west entrance of this city. They had tried to stop her, but Nico Robin merely played around with them. That is, until one of Tashigi's men recognized her and recalled the crimes that caused her to be wanted by the World Government at the age of eight.

Then she stopped playing around and truly wounded the officers of the law, leaving Tashigi a broken, bloody mess on the ground.

She had done everything in her power to get her to stop, but the woman merely created hands from the ground and choked her into submission. It was a humiliating experience for the young Marine, but she refused to quit. She would save this country and she would do it by the book. There was no way she would allow pirates to help the Marines do their jobs.

"What?! It's that Marine!" a familiar voice yelled out.

Just as Tashigi struggled to remember where she heard that voice before, the man in question came into view: Monkey D. Luffy.

"...you..." Tashigi managed to get out.

"Do you need help?" Luffy asked, hopping off a duck to lend her a hand. "What happened?!"

"I'm fine!" she snapped. "Nico...Nico Robin took...the king!"

"Vivi's dad?!" Luffy was shocked and concerned. "Where are they? What direction did they go?!"

Tashigi thought about it for a moment. Her sense of Justice always told her that pirates were always scum. There was no in-between. Yet here her hated enemy was, checking on her and now showing interest in saving the king. Why was everything today turning upside down?

In the end, she knew what she had to do, though she didn't like it.

"She...she went that way," Tashigi pointed towards the Royal Temple in the distance.

Luffy nodded and then gave her a concerned look. "Are you sure that you don't want help?"

"Get out of here before I arrest you!" Tashigi ordered him. "I said I'll be fine!"

Luffy frowned but then broke into a ridiculous grin. "I'm gonna go rescue the king! If you're still here when I get back, I'm gonna help you whether you like it or not!"

With that, the pirate remounted his duck and then he raced toward the Royal Temple. The sight continued to perplex Tashigi as she began to reevaluate her sense of Justice and her commitment to duty. Though she hated to admit it, she might have had the wrong idea about these pirates. Yes, they were terrible people who should be thrown in jail, but it was becoming clearer that maybe there were cases where these people were on her side.

Perhaps there were times that it was okay to look the other way in order to maintain the peace.


"Gwen-chan! Are you okay?!" Sanji shouted with tears pouring down his face before being shoved aside by Kevin.

"Gwen! What the heck happened to her?!" Kevin cried as he saw Julie carry the limp body of Gwen, finally reuniting most of their two groups. Zoro and Tetrax had yet to make it to them, but the Straw Hats and the Alien Force found an area away from the fighting to assess their situation.

"She got hurt really bad fighting that blue-haired lady," Julie explained. "Chopper, you're the doctor, right? Can you look her over?"

"Right! No problem!" Chopper replied, taking out his medicine bag to procure the necessary tools.

"I'm guessing since you guys don't look too beat up that you took care of the 'Mr. 4 Pair,'" Nami sighed in relief. "Thank goodness for small miracles."

"It was quite a fight," Rook admitted. "Though our adversaries were rather strange..." He looked over to Kevin, who he expected to be joining in with one of those Earth expressions that Ben would often talk about, but instead he was kneeling down beside his girlfriend with a panicked look on his face, holding her hand as Chopper started cleaning out her wounds.

"Well, we took down half of the group...but I assume Tetrax and Zoro are not back yet..." Julie pointed out.

Nami then pointed back towards where they arrived from. "No. They are probably still fighting Mr. 1. I wouldn't worry. Zoro is pretty strong and, from what we saw, Tetrax seems pretty strong too."

"Look!" Usopp pointed away from them. "It's Tetrax...and he's carrying Zoro! Wait, why is he carrying Zoro?!"

"I told you I'm fine!" he was complaining to the mercenary. His entire stomach was wrapped in cloth to stop the bleeding. "There's no need to treat me like a child!"

"I'm not treating you like a human child! Do you have any idea how much blood you lost in that fight?! The fact you are still conscious is a miracle in itself!" Tetrax countered back to the swordsman.

"Zoro! What happened to you?!" Nami asked as she, Julie, Usopp, and Rook met the two of them, letting Chopper do his work.

"He lost so much of his blood!" Tetrax shook his head in disbelief. "He suffered multiple cuts and stab wounds and also refuses to lie down"

"I cut steel!" Zoro grinned.

"That doesn't change the fact you need proper medical attention!" Tetrax lectured. "I don't know human anatomy well enough to do more than stop the bleeding! Now, where is that doctor? He can check you out..."

"Sorry, Tetrax..."Julie informed him with a hint of worry in her voice. "Chopper is a bit busy at the moment."

"What does that... oh no," Tetrax gasped, noticing the unconscious Gwen at last. He ran up beside them. It had been several minutes since Chopper began work on her and she was bandaged up with several bloody gauze pads discarded to the side. "Will she be alright?!"

"She's stabilized," Chopper explained, wiping sweat off of his brow. "Her body took a lot of damage and suffered a lot of trauma...plus her broken leg needs time for the bone to properly reset...but yes, Gwen will be fine."

"That's good," Kevin said as he breathed a heavy sigh of relief, "You're a lifesaver, little bro."

"Stop it, you asshole!" Chopper tried to hide his happiness but failed as per usual.

"Um...Chopper, is it?" Tetrax asked him. "Would you be able to look over Zoro's wounds as well?"

"I SAID I'M FINE!" Zoro yelled. "What's important is that we regroup with the others and try to stop the fighting. First off, where do we stand with Ben and Luffy?"

"We haven't seen them yet," Julie looked around. "We'll probably have to start looking around the city for them."

"For all we know," Rook added. "They could still be searching for the king. With luck, Ben and Luffy will have found the princess and together we all can show the opposing forces that they have been deceived...if we can get them to stop fighting long enough to hear it..."


Back in the desert, the agents of Baroque Works were being weeded out of the ranks of the rebel army, some of them not-so-peacefully if the small pile of wounded soldiers was of any indication. Slamworm's attack made it so that there was little resistance.

"We've got another one, Vivi," Ben called, lumbering through the crowd as Fourarms and carrying a man who was grasping his stomach and wheezing. Vivi then lifted the man's right sleeve to show his Baroque Works tattoo as Ben turned back to normal.

"And that makes twenty," Vivi counted from beside Kohza who still trying to process what he had just been told.

"So, you're telling me that everything that we have been fighting for...that we have been dying for...has been orchestrated by Crocodile this entire time?" Koza asked. "Forgive me if I find that hard to believe."

Ben had been explaining to Koza for the past ten minutes the exact circumstances and details behind Crocodile's plan and Vivi's part in everything. Unfortunately, it did not seem as if he was buying his story.

"It's true, look at this," Ben took out his Plumber's badge and activated its recording feature revealing to rebel every detail that the Warlord couldn't help but blab to his supposed prisoners, "I managed to record everything that Crocodile said when we were captured by him."

Kohza stared at the device and frowned. "If what you are saying is true...then all of this has been for nothing," He then started to laugh, "I'll be damned. I was such a fool...such an idiot..."

Ben and Vivi could only stare in sympathy at the now despairing rebel, finding out that the cause he was fighting for was nothing but a sham couldn't have been easy to deal with to say the very least. But now it was time to make things right.

"Kohza, we need to stop this fighting now before it gets out of control. Crocodile has already been defeated and his top agents are in the process of being taken out as well," Vivi told her closest friend with a determined expression, "Will you help us finally put an end to years of suffering?"

Kohza didn't need to be told twice as he finally spoke, "I'm in."

"Then what we waiting for? It's hero time," Ben grinned.


Elsewhere

The clock tower in the heart of Alubarna was still as the knocked out forms of two people laid on the ground. One of them was a man with weird hair and a purple jacket and the other was a woman wearing a frog outfit. Standing over the unconscious pair was in fact Psyphon who had been sent by his master in order to spy on Tennyson and his new allies. He had already sent out his own personal drones the R.E.D.s to survey the many battles that were occurring around the area. However, something else had caught his attention as Psyphon was now currently analyzing a giant bomb inside of a cannon with a few of the R.E.D.S by his side. It was circular with a giant clock on the front of it. Based on the size of it, it could wipe out the entire city with its blast.

And, judging by the face of the clock, it was set to blow within the next ten minutes.

"How interesting," Psyphon mused, "Despite it being rather primitive, this device has enough power to wipe out this entire city as well as everything within a hundred mile radius...this won't do at all."

Psyphon then walked over to the spherical weapon and pressed a button on his chest plate, sending out an EMP that easily disabled the bomb's timer. Psyphon smirked to himself as he looked over the entire city.

"Consider this your lucky day, Tennyson," Psyphon sneered, "But no one but my master is allowed to destroy you. Rest assured, what we have planned for you will make our past encounters seem like child's play."

Psyphon then proceeded to take out a device, pressed a button, and opened a bright white portal behind him in which he quickly entered leaving the scene as if he was never there to begin with...


"Are you sure this is it?" Nico Robin asked King Nefertari. "This is all of the Poneglyph?"

"Yes," Cobra frowned sadly. "And you can read this thing?"

Robin surveyed the giant stone monolith. Here she was in the room containing Alabasta's greatest secret: the way to the ancient weapon Pluton. Of course, while this was Crocodile's main reason for capturing the country of Alabasta, it was not Robin's reason for being here. All she wanted was more information about the Void Century. She couldn't let Cobra know about it, though. He saw her like everyone else did: a monster.

Admittedly, she did kidnap him and force him to take her to this secret tomb, but it was the only way to get here.

"I can," Robin replied. "Once I finish reading this, you will be free to go."

"Is that supposed to make me feel safe?"

"Take it how you will," Robin sighed. She got to work and started to read the block of text that adorned it. Word by word, sentence by sentence, she scanned for any reference to her prize. By the time she reached the end, she learned the sad truth: this was just a map to one of the ancient weapons of this world, just like Crocodile hoped.

Before anymore could be said, Robin suddenly felt a sharp pain in the side of her neck. Instinctively, she brought her hand to her neck, revealing a dart in her palm. Immediately feeling the effects of the tranquilizer as her vision began to fade, she saw that Cobra also now had a dart in his neck as well. The last thing Robin saw before losing consciousness was a figure in bone armor wearing a horned helmet walking up to her.

Khyber walked up to the giant black cube covered in unknown writing. Now that there was no one to interfere with his current objective, he then proceeded to scan the writing with a feature in his helmet. This language was unlike anything he had ever seen before, even among the millions of others in his universe or any other. There appeared to be more to this planet than meets the eye, his associates would need to be informed about this artifact when he gave his report.

As he was about to finish scanning a voice cried out throughout the tomb beneath the Royal Temple, "HEY! I'M HERE FOR VIVI'S DAD!"

Realizing that it was time to leave, Khyber pressed a button on his wrist as he disappeared in a flash of light before a certain pirate captain arrived at the scene.

Upon reaching the bottom of the hidden stairway, Luffy had found two people in a large room. The king, Vivi's father, Cobra and the Warlord's partner, Ms. All Sunday both lay unmoving in front of a giant rock with weird writing on it. However strange the situation, Luffy did not comment on it as his first priority was finding Vivi's dad and making sure he got him to her safe and sound.


The Chimerian Hammer

"The job is done, and Tennyson will never know," Psyphon informed with a smirk as he entered the war room of his master's flagship to debrief everyone on the success of his mission.

"Excellent work, Psyphon," Eon replied, "You were clearly the right choice to complete this task. As to the other item of business, Despite Khyber's pet failing, killing Tennyson on the first try was never the point."

"We can now confirm that Paradox has sent additional allies to aid Tennyson and his team," Vilgax informed.

"Unacceptable!" The voice of Malware shouted as he stepped into the light, "We may very well lose the element of surprise at this point,"

"There are other options on that front," Vilgax spoke, "But after Tennyson's disappearance, we required confirmation of all we suspected."

"Now we can be certain that Paradox's machinations have allowed a new team of heroes to form," said Eon, "Consisting of Tennyson himself, his cousin, the young Osmosian, Tetrax Shard, the Revonnahgander Plumber, the girl with the Galvanic Mechamorph armor, The Strawhat Pirates' captain, a green haired swordsman, the blonde cook, and their reindeer doctor."

Eon had to admit, this was rather unprecedented. In most timelines where Tennyson had traveled to other realities, it was due to circumstance and that Tennyson had ended up suffering a tragic loss beforehand. Such as that universe full of magic, the one full of Soul Reapers, or the ones where Tennyson allies himself with various superhero groups. This timeline was one of the few were Ben willingly chose to travel to such a reality with his friends by his side. But it didn't matter in the end, there was no way that Tennyson would be prepared for what was in store. The boy will taste despair soon enough.

"Ten champions. An elegant number," Vilgax said with a sneer, "And we've learned to our regret that young heroes like these can cause the ten of us no end of trouble."

Stepping out of the shadows were several individuals that Vilgax had recruited who all shared a mutual hatred for his nemesis. All for his ultimate vengeance.

The first few were of course Albedo and Malware but the next to appear were rather unexpected to say the least. One was a man with long black hair and horns in a red trenchcoat wielding a spear, the next resembled a ghost with an upside-down skull face, another man with pale skin and a skull-like tattoo over his face clad in a dark red hood with a staff that had a bird-like skull on top of it, a giant humanoid turtle with pale green skin and a flaming purple skull for a head, and finally what appeared to be a purple fiddler crab with a large cranium.

"No worries my friends, a plan is in place," An accented voice called out as another figure emerged from the darkness. It was a being that resembled one of Ben's transformations. That being Clockwork. Except his body was black, the glass on his chest was red, and his hands had large, red cannons. He also has=d metallic eyebrows, red eyes, and his mouth appeared to be a red grillplate, "We'll deal with those meddling Kinder in our own good time.

"Indeed. This world is rich in resources," Vilgax declared, "And it will be ours, but before we can overthrow the natives of this planet, we must first deal with the ones who have arrived here as well. And until they fall by my hand, it makes sense that they will interfere with our objective. We have enemies here on this little planet, enemies that we will eliminate. A new war has come my friends and this time it is ours to win!"


AN: Yeah, I just wanted to get this arc over with, I felt like it dragged on for too long. Between school and looking for a job, it left me little time to write so I apologize for the long wait again. So, it looks like the villains have been busy, having formed their own Legion of Doom or Negative 10 to be more accurate. I took inspiration from the Cabal and the Light from Marvel and DC on how the team mainly operates so as to make them a very difficult and dangerous threat for our heroes to overcome. You can probably guess who each member is based on their descriptions, but here's a list of who's a part of the Negative 10 if you can't:

Negative 10: Vilgax, Eon, Aggregor, Zs'Skayr, Albedo, Hex, Addwaitya, Malware, Dr. Psychobos, Maltruant.

Quite the lineup huh? Even though Vilgax has recruited most, if not all, of Ben's enemies, these ten are the ones who lead such an army. But some have not joined by choice or have their own self-interests, you'll see why later on.

Also, I hope you appreciate the special shout outs to other popular Ben 10 fanfics that were mentioned in this chapter:

"Ultimate Fairy" by Ultimate10

"Ben 10: Unlimited" by The Incredible Muffin

"Avenging 10" by CaptainRex75

"Bleach: Ultimate Alien Remake" by Bigby the Big Bad Wolf

As always, be sure to leave any comments or suggestions below. Thank you and I'll see you all next time.

UPDATE: I decided to make some changes to the villain lineup. By making Maltruant a member of the Negative 10 and Khyber being one of their enforcers. I always thought that Maltruant was an underutilized villain in canon given he was the final antagonist Ben faced in the original series, so I plan to have him be more of a legitimate threat in this story.