If anyone reads my other stories y'all know I talk a lot in these notes. I really don't have much to say before this story, anything I want to say is spoilers. This story sets up things happening later on.

This story takes place during the time frame of the previous story and during Alien Force's Season 3 Episode Ghost Town.

In a remote location out in space, a squid-like alien sits at the controls of his spaceship. He gets interrupted by a call coming in through his screen. He accepted the call and a dark green alien with light green spots popped up on screen.

"Master Vilgax I have news that may interest you," he said.

"Speak," Vilgax said.

"While doing my surveillance, I ended up finding out some information about someone who could help in your quest to get the Omnitrix," he explained before pausing. Vilgax had a curious look on his face and the green alien continued his explanation, "In the prison you had me infiltrate, there is a prisoner who swears revenge on Ben Tennyson and Azmuth of the Galvan."

On the screen a photo popped up near the associate's screen. The picture was of a human teenager with grey hair, a red jacket (almost similar to Ben Tennyson's Vilgax thought), and red eyes. The picture looked like it was taken through a jail cell door. If Vilgax didn't know that Ben Tennyson was an only child, he would've thought this teenager was his twin.

"Rumors have been going around the prison about him. From the files I was able to access, his name seems to be Albedo. I did more research and it seems like he was Azmuth of the Galvan's old assistant," he explained further, "Apparently the poor lad got himself stuck with Ben Tennyson's DNA and the Galvan refuses to help him. He's been here ever since."

Vilgax was intrigued by that. Azmuth's old assistant was bitter and wanted revenge? That seemed like someone he could work with to better his own goals.

"Tell me Hakkle," Vilgax said, "How easy would it be to start a riot there to release this Albedo fellow?"

"Security is so low here I'm shocked there hasn't been any escaped prisoners," Hakkle said, "It was very easy for me to infiltrate, but I guess that wasn't hard by pretending to be my brother."

Vilgax remembered how he got Hakkle to be a covert associate. He wanted to get away from his older brother's shadow. Everyone on their homeworld expected Hakkle to be a Plumber just like Hobble, but Hakkle had no interest in doing that. Their parents never understood, so he ran off. Ended up finding a listing to be an associate to some alien overlord and jumped at the chance. His latest mission has been infiltrating prisons to find any worthy allies for Vilgax's conquest, but most of the time he came up short.
"I could have a riot started by the end of the night if you require Master Vilgax," Hakkle said, "It would take a few days to reach your planet with the boy, but it's possible."

"See to it that it is," Vilgax said, "The coordinates to my homeworld will be forwarded over our secure channel. We shall plan our next move further once you've acquired the boy."

Hakkle ended the call and Vilgax leaned forward on his chair. It was a waiting game at this point, and he'd have to plan accordingly to make sure this Albedo child would work with him until he wasn't useful to him anymore.

Hakkle quickly hid any traces of him communicating with the outside world and erased the calling log. It would be hard to explain why he was communicating with Vilgax, the conqueror of 10 worlds. Hobble would certainly have no reason to communicate with Vilgax, not even for Plumber business. He doesn't care about his brother's reputation but he has a cover to maintain.

Hakkle went through the cameras to see where Albedo was, like usual he was sulking in his jail cell. This prison started to let prisoners outside their jail cells and eat inside of the newly built cafeteria. In all his time on camera duty, he's never seen Albedo leave his jail cell. The other prisoners would constantly talk about why there is a human teenager in one of the cells, what was his crime? No one knew for sure, but everyone knew the lad wanted revenge on Ben Tennyson and Azmuth. The boy never shut up about it. He was also asking for something called chili fries? What were those? No one knew.

Hakkle changed from the cameras to blueprints of the prison. He knew how to start a riot without getting his hands dirty, just pay a prisoner and they'd do it. In all the commotion, he could escape here with Albedo. He'd just have to figure out a good way to convince him to leave the jail cell. He made all the necessary preparations, this might just be his best prison breakout yet and he wasn't even a convict this time. If the prisoner tried to blame Hakkle for it, no one would believe them. No one knew who he truly was, and would never believe that the great Plumber Hobble would ever work together with a criminal. If only they knew.

Albedo heard a somewhat familiar noise and turned himself towards his jail cell door that was opening. He was used to this, but he never left his jail cell. He had no interest in interacting with the scum this prison had. Everyone in this prison was unworthy to even breathe the same air as him. One of these days he'd be able to escape this prison and get his revenge on Ben Tennyson and Azmuth, maybe pick up some chili fries on the way. He just had to bide his time.

The door stayed open for a while. Albedo was never able to keep time, but it seemed like the door was open longer than it usually would be. This was peculiar, maybe something was happening that the doors were open longer. Albedo would keep tabs on the gossip going around the prison, and nothing indicated that there was anything different going on. They were lucky the Plumbers' provided them a cafeteria to eat in, they didn't even deserve that if Albedo was being honest.

A siren went off and all the lights started to flash red. Albedo could hear all the prison doors lock except for his. His stayed open. Albedo decided that this was fate giving him a chance to escape and bolted through the open jail cell. Albedo almost regretted spending all his time in a jail cell since he had no idea what the layout of the prison was.

"Come with me if you want to escape!" A voice yelled.

Albedo had heard that voice before, it was one of the guards assigned near his cell block. For the last few days he noticed that this guard was paying very close attention to him. He stopped in his tracks debating what to do. Should he trust this guard?

"There's not much time!" He yelled again.

Albedo knew this was probably a terrible idea, but he quickly ran towards where the voice was coming from. He saw a small, green, insectoid alien in a standard Plumber uniform. He was holding a standard Plumber blaster.

"You will do as I say if you want to leave this prison," He threatened.

"And what's a small insect going to do if I don't comply?" Albedo asked, raising an eyebrow. He crossed his arms and looked down at the Plumber guard. How can this smallfry think he could threaten the smartest being in the galaxy?

The Plumber guard raised his weapon and pointed it directly at Albedo.

"I will not hesitate to put you in your place," He said glaring at Albedo, "But my boss wants you alive. We can do this the easy way or the hard way."

"Oh?" Albedo asked with curiosity in his voice, "Who's the big man in charge?"

"Vilgax," He said.

Albedo's eyes widened. This Plumber guard was working with Vilgax? Things just got interesting. There's a mole in the prison and said mole was trying to orchestrate an escape with him? It made Albedo curious. Albedo raised his hands in defense. The guard forced Albedo to put his hands behind his back, and he put handcuffs on the boy's wrists. He walked behind Albedo with his weapon on his back. Neither said a word as this was going on, but the siren was still blaring in the background.

"I will walk you towards the space pods and we will make our escape to where Vilgax wants you," He said as the two started walking, "You will act like I'm taking you back to your cell if someone sees us. That shouldn't happen though because of the riot."

Albedo raised an eyebrow. Things got more interesting. What business does a Plumber have to start a riot in a low budget prison just to help him escape? This could also be a ruse to get Albedo in a higher security prison, but why would the prison be essentially in lockdown because of it? Why would a Plumber he could effectively fight and win against be the one in charge of him?

The two kept walking until they made it to the space pods, fortunately not running into everyone. The guard put his weapon back in its holster and uncuffed Albedo. Silently the two made their way towards a space pod that could fit the both of them. The guard made his way towards the control panel to open up his secure channel with Vilgax. The screen flickered and instead of Vilgax, Psyphon was on screen.

"Who invaded this secure-" Psyphon started to say before realizing who was on the line, "Hakkle have you finished your mission?"

"Psyphon tell Master Vilgax that I have acquired Albedo," Hakkle said while typing on the control panel, "I should be at the location specified in a few days."

"We will be waiting," Psyphon said with a grin on his face, "Get here as soon as possible, you know how much Master Vilgax hates waiting."

The connection cut off and Hakkle was typing away at the control panel punching in the coordinates. All Albedo could do was stand there and watch. Any moment now they would be out of this prison.

"They went over here!" A loud voice said, "We can't let these prisoners escape!"

Hakkle grumbled. He was so close of getting this escape pod out of the ship, and other guards were about to ruin it. He couldn't blame them, they were just doing their job but it was an inconvenience. Everything he worked so hard for was about to be taken away from him if he couldn't get this escape pod to leave. Albedo rushed over to the control panel and tried to help with getting the escape pod into orbit. Anywhere would be better than here.

"What are you doing?" Hakkle yelled trying to shove Albedo's hands off the panel.

"Getting us out of here!" Albedo yelled back while pushing buttons.

By some sheer luck the escape pod was able to get itself into orbit and auto piloted itself to the location that was programmed into it. Hakkle was able to see where the ship would be going, and it was not where he was specified to go by his master. The coordinates were on some planet called Earth, that was way off where Vilgax wanted them to be.

"Master Vilgax will not be pleased with this," Hakkle said with annoyance in his voice, "What even is Earth anyway?"

"A backwater planet," Albedo said crossing his arms, "Your coordinates were taking too long."

"Master Vilgax wanted us on Vilgaxia," Hakkle said. He tried to open up the communication channel to inform Master Vilgax of this slight detour, but there was no connection.

The space pod was connected to the prison's resources, and once they left its orbit there was no connection. Seems like a pretty big design flaw, especially if an actual guard was blackmailed into stealing a space pod with a prisoner. The guard would be at the prisoner's mercy. Hakkle wasn't surprised, this was a low budget Plumber's prison. No wonder it was so easy to have a prisoner start a riot and make his escape with a 'high priority' prisoner.

It was a waiting game at this point, once they got to Earth Hakkle could reprogram the space pod and take them to Vilgaxa. What could go wrong?

I wanna explain the OC I made for this, for some reason when I was writing it and needed an associate of Vilgax I was thinking of Hobble. I haven't seen enough of him in Omniverse to want to make him Vilgax's associate so I went with making an OC that's his brother. I needed a new character as opposed to using Psyphon, and other canon characters didn't work. I originally was going to use Sunder since he has worked with Vilgax according to the wiki (Maybe the AF episode he was in but I don't remember), but by this point he's canonically in the Null Void (Singlehanded) and doesn't get out until Ultimate Alien (The Transmogrification of Eunice).

Despite the AUness of this, I wanna keep canon stuff that doesn't affect this story the same. I think using the OC worked out well considering he's the brother of a Plumber and could do more as opposed to Sunder since it would be obvious he doesn't belong there. All things considered, it's working out the way I need it to.

As I was writing this AN I probably got myself into a corner with canon here cause of how close Ghost Town is to In Charm's Way and Trade Off. (Since Trade Off does happen during the time it takes Hakkle and Albedo to get to Earth.) I didn't realize Ghost Town was right after that episode, although I knew it happened due to the fact I had Psyphon answer Hakkle's call instead of Vilgax. Vilgax still does his thing because he wanted to explore every possible avenue he could in order to get all the secrets of the Omnitrix he possibly could. (Also I don't think Vilgax knows that Albedo would know more about the Omnitrix than Zs'Skayr.)

Despite all that I have written for this AU so far, I don't have the next story in this installment written yet. Albedo hasn't found his way to Hex's Mansion yet, but he's getting there. Making the coordinates to Earth is just one step closer to being at the mansion.