"I've heard his brother say he was a total nerd before."

"Really?"

"Yeah!"

"No way! Ben Mason?"

"The one and only. Apparently he used to, like, sit around all day with a book in his hand."

"Well, damn. He doesn't anymore. If he didn't have those nasty ass barbs in his back…"

"And if he didn't act like a freaking weirdo all of the time…"

"He'd be pretty damn hot. I mean have you seen his abs?"

"Yeah, I was with you that one time. He cut his back or whatever and forgot about…well you know, and he, like, took his shirt off. So hot."

"Anyways, he's smart and ripped," the girl released a sigh. "Too bad he's a total psychopath."

Ben flinched at the word. He'd been listening to two of the girls in the Mass who were close to his age for a little over thirty minutes but he hadn't really started paying attention until the mention of his name. His stomach was twisting slightly and his cheeks had warmed.

"Too bad he's a total psychopath."

The girl's words echoed in his head again, snapping him back into reality. Yeah, too bad he was crazy. Before the slimeballs from hell had invaded Ben had been layers of baby fat and math problems hidden behind strands of mousey brown hair and classic literature. Now he was covered in heavy sheets of thick sinew and muscle with metal-like barbs standing between him and any possibility of normality.

He'd gotten close once; with Jimmy. Even that had been yanked hard and fast away from him.

"Is he…"

"Staring? Yeah."

"So frickin' weird."

The two gave him one more reproachful look before pushing themselves up and away from their lunch at the metal card table outside the Mass's makeshift kitchen.

Ben startled and opened his mouth to explain before shutting it and realized it was no use. They were as convinced as he was about his normalcy. He mumbled an apology but he knew they were too far away to hear and returned to pushing his food around the tin plate in front of him.

From a distance he could hear the heavy footed thumps of his brother approaching. Almost instinctively, his eyes rolled back in his head. What could he have possibly done wrong this time? He hadn't left the premise since Weaver had last sent him on a scout with Dai and Anthony. That had been almost a week ago. No way Hal just wanted to talk, he never did. And when he did, he went to Maggie. Never Ben. No, the only reason Hal would be coming for him would be if Weaver had assigned them to go and do something.

"Ben!" his brother shouted though he might have well as whispered for all his little brother would have cared. He would have been heard either way. The younger Mason bit back his snappy response.

"What?" he slipped out quietly.

"Weaver," he began but Ben tuned out after scouting mission. It was all the same as it always was. When Jimmy was around, before Ben had managed to screw the younger teenager into servitude with the Skitters, he and Ben had such good chemistry neither would have had to say a word for the other to understand the meaning of what they were trying to say.

Check out the safest route to Charleston. It would be simple. They didn't have to do anything except keep a low profile because if anything struck either boy as out of the ordinary they'd be avoiding it later. Ben already knew which areas to avoid, he could hear them late at night when he was as close as he got to asleep; that halfway state between lucidity and dreams. He didn't say a word of his prior knowledge to his brother. The oldest Mason sibling already was having trouble adjusting to Ben's new skillset; there was no point in making it more difficult.

"When are we supposed to leave?" Ben asked softly. Nostalgia jabbed at his chest for the days it had been Jimmy, not Hal.

"Uh," Hal narrowed his eyes and glanced up at the sunlight, pretending that he could estimate the time of day that way. Ben knew he bloody well couldn't. "Now," he replied finally.

Ben inhaled slightly, shrugging his shoulders up toward his ears. He mumbled something indistinct about picking up his rifle from their tent and Hal gave him a accusing once over, as if chastising him for not having his weapon with him. Ben suppressed the biting words that bubbled up inside his chest for the second time that day.

They mounted their bikes without a word after Ben had returned with his gun slung over his back. Hal started his slightly ahead of Ben and the shuddering echo of the bikes caused Ben's hypersensitive hearing to squeal momentarily with a high pitched ring. His eyes squelched shut but only for a second. Not long enough for anyone, especially Hal who hardly paid attention anyways, to notice.

Hal lead his sibling through a series of back allies. For the most part the trip went without a hitch. When they ran into a relatively large piece of shrapnel blocking one of the allies Hal got off of his bike and attempted to move it himself before finally looking, begrudgingly, to Ben for help.

Once they were within a half mile of the warehouse Ben could feel the thoughts of the skitters pulsating from the back of his neck down his spine. He clenched his jaw and did his best to ignore to intrusive strumming as it spread from his back and into his head.

Hal stopped. Ben stopped just short of him, ensuring that his brother wouldn't be able to see the battle waging itself behind his pained sage orbs. The elder glanced back at his brother but Ben deflected the dark eyes boring themselves into the top of his head and licked his chapping lips.

"You alright?" Hal called back to him half-heartedly, knowing full well the question was all but rhetoric when directed at Ben. He grumbled back an indistinguishable affirmation before engaging the kick stand on his dirt bike.

Hal strode forward leaving the bikes behind and Ben followed close behind. He stopped and crouched; hidden by a half shredded, broken down car from the enemy ahead and pulled out the map that Weaver had given him to record enemy activity. Ben squinted his eyes partly due to the glare of the late autumn sun and partly due to the pounding migraine growing in his head.

The pounding of Mechs pierced the armor of silence Ben had erected between him and his brother as they streamed out of an oddly well kempt warehouse directly in front of the boy.

"See that steam," Hal finally murmured cautiously, throwing his eyes up toward the slender smokestacks of the white and green building, "the lights are on, building's got power." He looked to Ben, expectant of an explanation. He glared up at the circling Mech, ignoring the question or otherwise believing it needn't an answer. Hal unfolded the map and Ben winced at the noise the crinkling paper made, knowing that if anything had been listening, they had heard. "Well whatever they're doing in there, it's none of our concern. Orders were to find the safest way to Charleston which means we'll steer wide around this place." Ben fought the urge to roll his eyes as Hal reiterated what he already knew. After marking something down on the map, he folded the paper up and began to stuff it back into his pack. The dark featured teen then turned his attention his younger brother. "You've been quiet lately," he noted.

"Nothing to say," Ben breathed out without batting an eye or looking over to his brother. Though he'd done his best to keep the bite out, the bitterness was clear.

"You eat by yourself, you barely sleep," Hal rattled off the abnormalities as one would the times tables of two. Ben felt the steady growth of his anger rising up from the pit of his gut and did his best to bite it back. "It's like you're a different person."

At that he found his knuckles tightening and his fingers curling up into the palm of his hand so fast and hard they bit through the fingerless gloves that adorned them. If he had a skitter kill for every time his brother or one of the other Masons had said those words the aliens would have lost months ago. Every time it was brought up Ben's frustration grew. Like it made so little sense he'd rather be killing the assholes that had ruined his life than be sitting on his ass reading some book by some guy that was more than likely dead? Was it such a freaky thing that the freak wanted revenge more than a degree in biochemistry? The world had changed so why shouldn't he?

"I don't want to talk about it," was all that he managed to chew out in response. He didn't want to talk about it in the least.

"We all miss Jimmy," Hal began to console the obviously pained minor not realizing the full effect of his words. How could he miss Jimmy? Was he the one the young teen had spent a majority of his time with? Was he the one who had gradually eased out the stories of his past? Was he the one who had seen him break down and cry every once and awhile when things got to be too much? The crystal eyed boy hadn't a family member left, there was no one left to care about it, let alone miss him. Aside from a few select fighters, particularly Weaver and Ben, no one had paid much attention to the absence that had brought such an ache to Ben Mason's heart. It was his fault that anyone, if anyone, missed Jimmy at all. "But you gotta find a way to put that behind you."

And just forget about him? A scoff caught itself in Ben's throat and the pattering of feet in the background was heard but didn't quite register. Before Ben had a chance to reply to his brother insensitive attempts at solace the loud rumble of the bikes erupted and the two teens turned around just in time to see the shapes of what appeared to be kids around Hal's age take off with their way back to camp.

"Hey!" Hal shouted futility, springing to his feet and sprinting after the thieves. "Those are our bikes!" He threw a piece of rubble in their direction more out of spite than hopes of stopping them. "Can you believe that? Where the hell did they come from?" he was breathless and his cheeks flushed pink from the chilled air. "We're not going back to camp without those bikes."

Ben had focused his eyes on the fallen leaves and rock beneath the soles of his hiking boots. The whispering static of the skitters nearby crescendo as his senses sharpened and as he shut his eye lids over the sage irises his sense of sound became so entirely acute that he could hear the flapping of a bird's wings two miles away if he concentrated. He had no problem honing in on the borderline deafening roar of the bikes.

"They're headed east," Ben answered his brother's unasked question and did his best to mask the hurt that followed the look he received from him.

"How do you know?"

"I can hear their engines," Ben replied with a sardonic smile and subtle shrug. He began to lead the way, again ensuring that his brother would be unable to scrutinize the pain in his eyes. There was no unseeing what Ben had just witnessed behind the blackness of his shut eyes. Allowing his senses to heighten to such a point, he had allowed the nearby skitters to take over, if only for a moment. He had seen a flash of exactly what they had wanted him to. Jimmy had been harnessed in the facility Ben had just been staring at. Behind his shut eyes, he'd seen again the flash of haunting pain that crossed the crystalline eyes of Jimmy Boland's eyes before they went indefinitely blank.

AN: Hey did you guys miss me? Well Merry Christmas to all! I know I don't have a lot of time, talent, or patience to update as frequently as I wish I did. Part of it is because sometimes I'm as uninspired and uncreative as a rock. Part of it is because I don't have the attention span to sit down and write. A lot of it is I just don't have the time with all of the school work that's been smothering me. I didn't proof read the above. I probably will go back and do it late but I was determined to get this boy out to you guys before the end of break. A couple of things to let you know

Ben and Jimmy's friendship can/should be interpreted however way you want it to be. Romantic, platonic, Ben's-crazy-obsessive, whatever the heck you want. (I personally as a hardcore Ben/Jimmy shipper see it as romantic) I intentionally wrote it so that it was up to interpretation, at least at this point. I can't make any guarantees that I will be able to resist the lull of their potential, precious, perfection forever.

This was mostly a rehash of the beginning of Young Bloods from a Ben-ish perspective. I mean, until they find/get Jimmy back it will be sort of like that because of reasons stated above. Those reasons translate into I AM LAZY.

I love you all. Whether you read and thing God I hope she never writes again to those who think I'll be famous one day (I wish) and I wish you all a safe holiday season.