Ben 10: Rising of the Shield Hero

ベン・テン: 盾の勇者の成り上がり

Written by Chris Chronos.

Sadly, this chapter is also another extra chapter, with the story unable to progress again. It's been much over a year since this story was put on an unannounced, but indefinite hiatus. As the author, I didn't write this chapter out of obligation, or to compensate for the hiatus. But instead, this is a heartfelt apology letter that I wanted to write as a milestone.

The Heartfelt Apology letter will be accompanied by a story for, well, reasons. This is mainly intended for people waiting for the update, if there were some, but I tried to make this as interesting as possible. So I believe it'll be a tad bit entertaining if anything. Alright, without further ado…


"Are you people ready?" A male voice asked, which was responded to by a calm female voice.

"We are almost done. Just a minute."

The scene was set in a hall, with a lot of camera setups and such, as if it was prepared for shooting. Well, it indeed was. A few meters away from the camera had some mic setups for "speakers."

Let's revise the main and main supporting characters then…

Here we have a humble, brown-haired, green-eyed young man sitting on a plastic chair. With his uncharacteristically combed hair, he was well dressed up in a neat green jacket and dark blue pants. The most conspicuous was something attached to his right arm — a large disk-shaped shield with a large Omnitrix symbol printed on it.

Yeah, without a doubt he was…

Ben Tennyson (ベン・テニソン)

Human; The Hero of the Shield.

The one chosen by the Holy Shield, he is the titular protagonist of this fanfiction, where most part of the story is told from his perspective.

Two seats away to his left was a child-like figure— a blonde little girl with a pair of pure white wings on her back, dressed up in a new, freshly bought dress. Judging from that, it seemed her father figure, Ben, might have been spoilt her…

Filo (フィーロ)

Filolial;

The Filolial Queen Candidate

To his right was his right-hand man. A tanned young man with goggles on his forehead, wearing an orange/ black jacket and black pants. He also had uncharacteristically combed hair, accompanied by a confused smile as he was still wondering if his hairstyle was really "right." But yeah, this gentleman was…

Rex Salazar (レックス・サラザール)

EVO; The Duke of Lurolona;

The Orange Devil

The fourth member of the party wasn't here yet. Rex leaned back in his seat and complained…

"She's taking her sweet time, isn't she?"

"Well…" Ben grinned in response, joking, "Girls need more time to change."

"Who's taking her sweet time?"

A calm female voice interrupted the two, accompanied by consistently paced footsteps.

"Ah, no, ma'am…" Ben looked back at Rex who shrugged in response.

Meanwhile, the fourth figure showed up and graced the room with her appearance— a beautiful blonde woman in a silver-colored party dress, complete with a weapon she hung on her back. Her eyes were elegantly blue, accompanied by her calm expression, but not without her self-awareness as she approached the man of the center— Ben.

"Yo… it's been so long," she said.

"You just went to change a few minutes ago!" Ben exclaimed before calming down himself. "Anyway…"

Aria Brambila (アリア・ブランビラ)

Human; The Female Knight in Blue Armor

"Can you finish it fast?" Filo groaned in annoyance, "Filo wants to go have dinner with Rifana and everyone already."

A surprised expression was obvious on Rex's face when he turned to look back at his comrades.

"Ben, your kid is entering her rebellious phase," he commented monotonously.

"Kids grow up," said Ben, patting Rex's shoulders in response, "This is a good sign, nii-chan."

"Don't call me nii-chan!"

"Well, she's right," Aria agreed with Filo, nodding, "We shouldn't drag this out more than necessary. We have… like only four people here."

"Oh, now you remind me, where's Melty?" Ben asked, looking around.

"Melty-chan's learning how to cook Lurolona's traditional dishes," Filo answered.

Rex widened his eyes. "Lurolona has traditional dishes? First time I'm hearing about that!"

"Don't sweat the details, Rex-sama," Ben jokingly said, "Anyway, let's begin the ceremony already."

"Ugh, alright," Rex got up from his seat and walked up to the setup to grab a microphone.

"Hello, testing, a, i, u, e, o," he uttered into the mic, "It's working. Hello, I'm Rex Salazar, the co-organizer of this program. I'm now inviting the organizer to the stage. Mr. Christopher Paradox Chronos, please."

With that, a human body manifested out of nowhere before the four, before clothes formed on it. The view became clearer in a few seconds and the four members of Ben's Shield Hero party weren't even taken aback. It was almost like they were used to it.

The body, now turned into a man well-dressed in a black suit with a dark blue necktie, walked up to Rex and received the microphone from him.

Chris Chronos (クリス・クロノス)

Human; Fanfiction Writer

"Thanks, Rex."

"The stage is yours," replied the goggle boy before stepping back to the seats.

"Is this really necessary?" said Aria in annoyance, "This fancy ceremony and all…"

"Well, a new chapter hasn't been published in over a year," replied Ben, "Furthermore, we have rules preventing authors from posting author-notes as chapters."

"So we fabricated it to make it look like a proper story, alright," Rex chimed in, grinning proudly.

"So you're making use of a loophole," the girl commented monotonously, "uh, whatever."

"That's right," Mr Chris Chronos said, his voice masculine, lovely, and dignified. Peace spreads where his voice is heard. Mr Chris Chronos was such a dignified gentleman who would be easily mistaken for a noble of Melromarc.

"Thus I shall begin my heartfelt apology," Mr Chris Chronos continued, "I shall also include my plans for the future, regarding my fanfictions. Well, particularly about this one, Ben 10: Rising of the Shield Hero.

The story was published on January 21st of 2022. It's been over a year – almost two years since I started writing fanfics. It was a fun start and it took only a few days to finish the first chapter before uploading it on here, fanfiction net.

The main reason I wrote a fanfiction was… frustration I felt when I saw all fanfics under the Ben 10- Rising of the Shield Hero crossover category were discontinued. I wanted continuations, I wished to know what happened after the cliffhangers they left. So I decided to work on one myself, resulting in Ben 10: Rising of the Shield Hero fanfic. It was such a simple title because I was bad at naming. In fact, I didn't think about how to title the fic at all during the first chapter. But I decided on a simple name and published it anyway.

As I said a long time ago, I'm not an English speaker. But I appreciate those who put up with my bad language and endured reading my fanfics.

In the last year, I experimented with new writing styles on my own, searching for ways that would help the readers understand better or perfectly cultivate their attention. I also did research on stuff, trying to figure out what would attract the attention and keep the readers. At first, I wrote for myself and myself alone, to ease my frustration. Then I began to learn to write for people and want to know what people think of my fanfics and how they'd like me to improve them.

To be honest, my hobby in fanfictions has also helped me improve myself. I learned a lot of things just to write better fanfics, and I needed to be a better person. I needed to understand people better, but there were a lot of merits I gained in return.

But while I've said things like "Open for critique and advice" and such, I occasionally failed to listen to my readers, which I must apologize for. Sometimes, I was a not-very-nice, stubborn kid. Now I've decided to listen to people better and change things. If you're aware of the updates in my profile… I'm planning to rewrite and improve most of my fanfics. Looking back, some of them were pretty bad and barely readable. I've been wanting to improve them for a long time, but I couldn't find time for it. Months passed and the planned rewrites were forgotten. I'm planning to revive them for now.

Throughout my fanfiction career, the protagonists of my fanfics pretty much represented my "phase." Simply a mood, or a state of my mind."

"There's no end to it," Filo complained, "We're in hell, are we?"

She didn't even get a response from Mr Chris Chronos, who only went on talking without much concern.

"Heartfelt, my ass," Aria muttered under her breath. But Rex and Ben meditated in silence, enduring the hell of text walls.

Without care, Mr Chris Chronos then elegantly continued with his back facing the hero party.

"Ben 2040, Shield Hero Ben… He was such a simple character based on Ben Prime of the Classic Continuity. He's pure and heroic, wasn't complex or evil at all. I actually admire this one to some extent. I was kinda frustrated by how Naofumi was treated in the original story. I dropped Ben there and had him mock the antagonists.

Bad Ben, from the One Who Defies Gods… To be frank, I wanted to make him more complex and badass, and I think it was pretty obvious. Back then, I wanted to write an edgy character and then came across Arifureta. Hajime, the protagonist of Arifureta, was in a similar situation as Naofumi. I went through the list of evil Ben to figure out which one I should use. It settled on Bad Ben, I gave him an edgy and morally bad backstory.

Here, I'd also like to include the fact that he became much less "bad" in later chapters because I thought it was inappropriate. Looking back at it, I guess I will re-include Ben's "bad" points when I rewrite it.

Ben 69, from The Unidentified Lifeform… Now we're talking. To be frank, I had the most fun writing this one. Not because he was complicated or interesting. He's just fun and entertaining to write/ watch. TUL was a comedy/ action story, and I experimented with several new traits when I wrote this fanfic. But it only lasted about two months and then I ultimately abandoned it. I wanted to write something fun, and that desire resulted in this masterpiece.

I wished I could have done it better. The concept, that is.

Hiroki Tennyson… Soon near the end of 2022, I wanted to write a new Ben 10-themed Kamen Rider fanfic, and it resulted in this. Hiroki represented the confused state of my mind – he was pure but complicated, with a sad backstory, unconventional attachments, and loneliness. I didn't give any of my previous stories an M-rating. But Hiroki's story was a far more mature one. Every episode was filled with either sadness or gloom. Sometimes they end with depression Hiroki feels.

Finally…"

Rex and Ben glanced at each other, their eyes filled with hope. It was coming to an end!

Or were they wrong?

"And lastly… my newest addition…" Mr Chris Chronos continued, "Benji Tenzaki! The reincarnation of Ben Tennyson with a tragic past… He represented my inner identity crisis and–"

"Mental disorders?" Aria said.

"Yup, that is– Wrong! Keep my mental disorders out of this," Mr Chris Chronos aggressively replied, "Ugh, anyway, I wanted to do something new and reincarnation was a genre I hadn't touched. There were indeed some scrapped fanfics, like Secretly Unmagicified, which was the Ben 10 X Mushoku Tensei crossover. It's not that reincarnation itself was a bad concept, I just had no idea how a reincarnation of Ben Tennyson would go.

Looking back, it was also inspired by the fact that Naruto and Sasuke are reincarnations of Asura and Indra respectively. So far, Benji Tenzaki has the darkest and the most tragic backstory I've worked on. But it's not what I want to talk about right now.

What I want to say is, uh, I've experimented with and tried writing combinations of such concepts and such. I'm still trying to find something genuine, and I still have a long way to go.

Another factor that encouraged me was–"

"Benny-sama," Aria whispered with a scowl on her face, "When is he going to stop talking? Can I murder him? Right?"

"Of course, you can't!" Ben whispered back, "You can't murder a writer. That's a violation of free-speech laws, you know."

"Silence, you people!" Mr Chris Chronos shut them up before proceeding.

"... Another factor that encouraged me was… Some fanfiction stories I came across on Wattpad. Normally, Wattpad fanfic community is frowned upon for some reason, but the first Ben 10 fanfic I've ever read was on wattpad. And then I followed the author to fanfiction net, though nowadays the author in question had deleted his fanfics due to harassment. That's so bad.

As a child, my dream was to write the most interesting story I would read. Years after years, I wrote a lot of novels, until I took a break and started writing fanfics. I'm still willing to improve the stuff I've written before. Thus, thank you all for your support.

This is a long, uh, right, heartfelt apology letter. Incidentally, this particular chapter is written in the writing style I've been fond of lately. Pretty cool, right? I included the katakana for character names like Ben Tennyson, Aria Brambila, etc, to make it feel more like a light novel. In addition, I alternate between the first-person and third-person styles to keep the readers entertained, instead of viewing the world I created through a narrow tunnel.

I'll now give you a glimpse of my future plans regarding my fanfics, though I can't say anything for sure. Nothing's set in stone. But this isn't a promise. I could only hope it wouldn't be false hopes.

Starting from 2024 Feb, I'll start working on an update for Ben 10: The One Who Defies Gods. A new chapter for The One True Monster will also be published in the same month. Only if we're lucky, I'll be able to update Ben 10: Rising of the Shield Hero and The Unidentified Lifeform. So my current list of priorities is… (BOWDG, BOTM, TUL, BROSH, Alterum). Kamen Rider Omni-X is on a hiatus.

Alright, everyone, that's all from me. Thanks for being here and lending me an ear. And have a nice day."

And so Mr Chris Chronos elegantly bowed at the invisible audience and elegantly took his leave briefly after.

"Now what?" Rex groaned, exchanging glances with Ben.

"Closing ceremony…" the latter muttered, which the former agreed with a nod.

Filo quickly left the room, pressing her growling stomach with her hand. She was going to join Rifana and friends— Raphtalia and Keel.

"Okay, ladies and gentlemen, our program has come to an end. Thank you so much for being here with us along the ride—"

The scene then switched to a certain red-haired woman with a mischievous grin, holding a lever switch. She mercilessly pulled it down… And the entire room went dark.

"Wh-what is going on!?"

And so the chapter ended with Rex yelling in panic.

18th December, 2023.

Written for the second anniversary of Ben 10: Rising of the Shield Hero. The writer will be incredibly busy by then, which is why this chapter is released much earlier.

Chris Chronos.

Discord: christopherchronos09