A/N: Technically I'm not suppose to post this till a little under a week from now but I got it done so early I didn't see a point to hold out on it until Monday. Also for those who haven't seen my page I will be attempting to update every other Monday.

I continued to pack supplies into my car all the while ignoring the awkward tension between us. Rook was currently staring at me. That's it. That's all he was doing. Usually I could care less if people were staring at me but the face he was making was really starting to piss me off. Finally I decided to stare back with a scowl as I slammed the trunk shut.

"What?" I had snapped.

Averting his eyes and scratching the back of his head he said, "Are you feeling well?" I gave him a hard look which made him look at his feet. Whether it was because he felt equally as awkward or maybe because I was scaring him I couldn't tell.

Finally I answered him, "I feel fine. Why do you want to know anyway?"

Looking at me with concerned eyes he said, "You just seem… out of sorts. You are not acting like your usual self."

"Shows what you know." I grumbled under my breath.

"Excuse me?"

"I-er it's nothing. Think you can help get the rest of these boxes into the back seat, Partner?" Still looking concerned Rook allowed a smile to spread on his face as he grabbed a couple of the boxes. I didn't mean to worry anyone, honestly. I just got like this sometimes. Just about everyone I'm close to except for Rook knows this part of me. They've seen me at my worst. Like when I was willing to kill Kevin, one of my best friends, when his powers drove him crazy again. Or when I threatened to exterminate the Forever Knights when they killed Pierce in cold blood. Then of course there was the Ascalon incident. But Rook wasn't there for any of that. He didn't know how I could get, and I wanted it to stay that way.

The worst part about this whole thing? I have no idea what triggers it most of the time. This ruthless, cold and calculating side of me. It's helped during the Highbreed Invasion, and on several other occasions too. Yet I get scared whenever I start acting this way, because of the things I've almost done. Acting the way I have been since Rook came to Earth, it makes me feel safer.

"Ben?" I was being weird, getting lost in thought while I stood by the small pile of supplies. "Sorry!" I shouted quickly before I started putting boxes into the back seat. Finally we had managed to cram it all into my car. Getting in I started the engine as I was about to leave the base and go on the ridiculously boring road trip to Los Soledad. However, Rook stopped me before I could even drive a foot forward.

Rolling down the window I asked, "What, did I forget something?"

For a moment he just looked at me, confusion and worry clear on his face, and then he asked for what had to be the twelfth time, "Are you sure you will be alright my friend?"

I gritted my teeth for about a second before smiling and saying, "I'm fine! What are you so worried about anyway?"

Thoughtfully he said, "As I did before I must note that you are acting… strangely. Plus there is the fact that you and I are not usually separated like this during missions."

"Is that all? Look dude, everything is going to fine. I'm just going over to Los Soledad to port some off worlders here. Then I just have to stay for a couple of days and boss them around 'till they understand their jobs. Meanwhile you get to go hang out with the research team. Nothing to worry about on either end."

"But…"

"Dude, I've been on solo missions before. Everything is going to be fine." I said as I started driving away slowly. "I'll see you in about a week, Partner." Rolling up the mirror I waved and quickly "put the pedal to the metal." I had just wanted to get out of there. Not because I wanted to avoid Rook or anything. I just felt like I needed time to myself is all. I felt bad. Worried about getting too serious, or not letting myself be serious enough. That and I seemed to have managed to get everyone else on edge with my "new found" straight to the point attitude.

When I hit a red light I looked up briefly and said, "Yup, the sky is still green.", and something that was getting closer and closer to Earth was the cause. For a moment I looked out into the streets and saw humans and aliens alike looking towards the sky. Seeing the aliens outside of Undertown made me happy yet even more worried. Seeing humans and the Earth dwelling aliens together always made me happy. Especially with all the low tolerance of each other that had been rearing it's ugly head within the past few weeks. However, the fact that were so interested in the sky told me that whatever was coming next wouldn't be pretty.

"Guwah!" I hollered when loud beeping sounded behind me. Guess the light itself had been green for a little while. I drove off quickly as I hopped none of the angry drivers that had been behind me would try and tail me.

Eventually I found myself driving past the "Now Leaving Bellwood!" sign. Soon after that green fields turned into a desert. I was on this road again. There was nothing really interesting out here. It was just one long road stretching across the desert that had become so familiar during the Highbreed invasion.

It was a calm ride. I figured I might have been able to sort everything out in my head - Get to a healthy medium, but then everything started to change. Miles and miles of sand transformed into a rain forest and back again within seconds. The sky illuminated in green waves that crashed into each other from every direction. Then there was this blinding light, and when it faded I was still driving on that long road. However, instead of the oh so familiar desert there were fields of grass surrounding me, and in front of me, in front of my car, was a girl wearing a red hat.

"Shit!" I panicked. I turned the steering wheel with such force I swear I almost ripped it out as I instinctively hit the breaks. I managed to avoid hitting her but before I could breath a sigh of relief my car went tumbling down a ditch that hadn't been there moments before, and everything went black.

I woke up to a voice yelling at me, "C'mon mister, you gotta wake up!"

Groaning I sat up a rubbed my head, "Ugh… What happened?"

"You almost hit Numbuh Five is what happened."

Confused I repeated, "Number Five?" I blinked a few times as my vision swam. When I could see again I realized that this was in fact the kid I had almost ran over. "But why is she calling herself a number?", I wondered.

"Can you stand mister?" She asked as she looked down at me from her kneeling position.

"Don't call me 'mister', and yeah - I can stand."

As I stood up on shaky legs she asked, "Then what is Numbuh Five suppose to call you?"

To say I gave her a unbelieving look would be an understatement. Pointing to myself I said, "You don't know who I am?" She shook her head. "What kid doesn't know who I am?" I thought. "You seriously don't recognize me? I'm Ben Tennyson!" I asked dumbfounded.

Tilting her head she said, "Five don't think she's ever seen you until now. Have you met Numbuh Five before or something?"

"Again with the number thing! Why do you keep doing that?" Now it was her turn to look dumbfounded.

"You mean you don't know? You are a teenager right?"

"What is there to understand? You keep calling yourself a number." I said. Not whined. I don't whine. Nope.

"You're really out of the loop in this whole thing aren't you mister?" She said as she stared up at me with a… What was the word. Oh, right perplexed. To my extreme annoyance she had a very perplexed look on her face.

Glaring down at her I said, "I was going to say the same about you."

"Five" tilted her hat down in a way that covered her eyes and said, "Well, this is going nowhere. Better go find Two." Turning she started scaling up the side of the ditch.

"Wait, where do you think you're going?" I called up after her.

Still climbing she said, "Like I said, Numbuh Five gotta go find Two now. Good luck with your car by the way."

"My car? Oh shit, my car!" I shouted as I turned and ran towards it. There really wasn't a reason to run towards it. After all it was only a few feet away, but I ran anyway. It was flipped over onto it's back, the driver's door open. "Did she drag me out?" I wondered. Looking through the door I peered over at the boxes, most of which were miraculously unharmed. In fact the car itself didn't look to damaged. A few dings here and there but most definitely savable and capable of being driven. "I just got to get it out of this ditch."

"Well, there is a simple solution here." I said as I looked at my wrist. Cycling through the various icons I tried to figure who would work best. Rath would just try to throw the car to the top of the ditch, Four Arms, while strong, could end up dropping it easily due to my own klutziness, so Humungousaur seemed like the best bet. I raised my hand up and then slammed on the hourglass piece.

The familiar green light encased me and I felt my body change. Skin turning to scale, bones growing and stretching, every last part of myself changing into a Vaxasaurian, into Humungousaur, except for my mind. As the light faded I carefully scooped my car into my now giant hands and easily made it out of the ditch. When I got to the rode I put it down wheels first onto the asphalt. I then slapped the circled hourglass on my chest and transformed back into the real me.

Only to hear the horrifyingly familiar sound of a blaster being locked and loaded. Slowly turning around I raised my hands in defense as I stared at the girl. Only seconds later did I find myself staring into the barrel of the strange gun she had pointed at me.

A/N: The Ben 10 series is complicated when it comes to continuity. From the first series until the first two seasons of Alien Force the continuity was pretty set in stone, minus the few retcons AF made. However when the third season came along the writers confirmed that they started using DC's concept of "Hypertime." The basic idea of this is that there is no continuity between episodes. (Or in DC's case, issues.) This means every episode existed in it's own timeline and just because something happened to one Ben doesn't mean it happened to some Alternate!Ben that lived in a different, if similar timeline of his own.

Confused yet? Well, the short version is that from season 3 of AF through all of Ultimate Alien we were (possibly) watching a different Ben every single episode. This was essentially the writer's excuse to ignore their own continuity along with the original continuity. During the early production of Omniverse the CN executives told the current writers to "clean up the continuity." Therefor making Hypertime a big no-no. The writers were also told to make the show more like the original. These factor into making Omniverse feel... out of place for a lot of people.

Basically me explaining all this is to help you all understand why certain things from Ben 10 are in this story when others aren't as I had to "clean up the continuity" myself in order to make the Ben 10 characters easier to write.

The things in continuity to this fic are...

The original series

All of seasons one and two of Alien Force

A few episodes episodes of AF season three

The main story arcs of Ultimate Alien

Heroes United

And some aspects of Omniverse, such as Rook, Undertown, and The Secret Saturdays crossover. (The reason I'm adding the crossover is because I felt like the episode respected TSS continuity a great deal despite how awful I found the character designs were.)

Also in the case you are wondering why Numbuh Five helped Ben I would like to point out that while she fights teens on a daily basis I highly doubt she, or the rest of Sector V for that matter, would leave a potentially innocent teen their to die.