Hello all! This is a little something I wrote for funsies and to go along with a Ben 10 fanart I drew titled 'Twisted Heroes.' Check it out at the link below, just remove the spaces!
http :/ / derangedblackkitten. deviantart. com /#/d34i372
I also wrote this because I felt like writing something with a lot of swearing in it (so WARNING for SWEARING!), and I also wanted to experiment with a different way of writing where I didn't get so caught up in all the tiny details of a story like I so frequently do.
Disclaimer: I don't own Ben 10. Don't sue me.
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Twisted
God-damn Ben Tennyson. He acted like he understood how shitty the universe was, like he had seen enough during his career as a hero to know that not everything was sunshine and roses, but in reality, he was too fucking naïve.
Too optimistic.
Far too willing to see the good in people and try and think the best of them.
He was also too self-sacrificing for his own good. He always had to try and help everyone, try and save everyone, even if it was at his own expense.
And all of that right there was just a bad fucking combination and Kevin was surprised that Tennyson even made it to the age of eighteen.
Kevin liked to think that he had a big hand in Ben's continued existence in the world of the living. He'd been looking out for the other boy for a long time now, though not so much out on the so-called battle field because Tennyson could take care of himself, but when it came to a back-stabbing alien who had seemed good-willed at first, well, let's just say that Kevin was there to catch the knife before it could go in.
It was only a matter of time though before their luck ran out, and of course Ben willingly walked right into the fucking arms of the ones who would be their downfall.
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There was some kind of disease. It was rapidly spreading to all the inhabited planets and it didn't seem to care what alien species you were.
Aliens were dropping like flies and the leaders of the different planets, of the different solar systems, were having a fucking conniption.
Then Ben used the omnitrix to cure his parents and that council of alien leaders' eyes lit up like they had discovered the god-damned cure-all pill.
Except Ben was that pill, and there wasn't enough of him to go around for the entire universe.
That didn't stop the Council from fucking trying though.
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The problem with all those damn leaders was that they wanted to take the easy way out. Rather than pool their resources into finding an actual cure for the disease, one that could be mass-produced, they decided to go for the quick fix via Ben's omnitrix.
And Ben just fucking let them.
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Kevin didn't need to be Azmuth to see that this was a bad idea, but Ben was determined to help everyone, just like he always fucking was.
God-damned hero.
And damn-it if Kevin didn't tag along with him on the journey to their destruction.
He only wished that Gwen didn't decide to come too, but then it would seem that stubbornness ran through the veins of all the Tennyson family and there was no changing her mind just like there was no changing Ben's.
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They were happily welcomed onto the Council's space station, their central headquarters. They were treated like royalty, and Kevin made sure to enjoy it while it lasted because things like this, things that were too fucking good to be true always were.
And of course he was right even though he wished he hadn't been.
Ben cured three planets worth of alien species before it occurred to him that maybe he was in over his head.
Fucking duh, you moron.
Always the good-natured hero, Ben tried reasoning with the Council, tried to explain to them that they needed to approach things more carefully and with a little less force, that using the omnitrix like this was burning him out and that there was no way he'd be able to cure everyone if they kept going like they were.
It was a nice little speech, but Ben might as well have been talking to a wall.
The Council had sent them away, back to their rooms to wait while all the alien leaders talked amongst themselves, and Kevin was just waiting for it, waiting for a fight or some sort of over-reaction.
Instead, he ended up drugged on a space ship whose autopilot was set to go back to Earth, and a drugged Gwen was in the seat next to him, but Ben was nowhere in sight.
Fucking kidnapped.
He shouldn't have been surprised, but he was.
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The alien species of the universe continued to be cured, slowly at first, and then suddenly at an alarmingly rapid rate, and Ben and the Council's space station were nowhere to be found.
They tried doing things the right way first, the legal way, tried going through the right channels to get Ben back. They joined up with several Plumbers who were high up in the chain of command, but it would seem that even those who worked for the Plumbers had their own agenda.
It was a bullshit 'the ends justify the means' sort of thing. There were too many aliens in the Plumber chain of command that were just happy that everyone was being cured, that the disease was being eradicated, and so what did it matter how it was being done. Not even Max Tennyson, with all the pull he had with the Plumbers, could get any results.
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If one more alien told him that 'the needs of the many out-weigh those of the few,' Kevin was going to smash their face in.
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They were run around in circles and made to jump through hoops and still weren't any closer to getting Ben back.
Fucking politics.
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The day everything changed, the day they finally said fuck it to doing things the 'right way,' they were going to do it their way, an entire alien species suddenly dropped dead on their planet. It wasn't the disease, there was nothing to be found that could have caused their deaths, they were just alive one second and dead the next.
That very same day, a war broke out between the dead species' allies and another alien species that had apparently been having various conflicts with the dead species for a while now.
Kevin didn't give a flying fuck about some random solar system's sudden war, but he'd be stupid not to notice that the aliens currently warring with each other were the same species as some of the Council members that were part of the Council's top chain of command.
Something messed-up was going on, and Kevin wanted to get Ben out of the Council's grasp before anything else happened, the 'right way' be damned.
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He and Gwen went separate ways, each with a different game-plan in mind, and they agreed to meet up later.
Kevin had no idea what Gwen had planned, but she looked determined when she left and he had no doubts that she'd accomplish what she set out to do.
Kevin used his contacts to track down Azmuth, because if anyone could find the omnitrix and thus find Ben, it was the omnitrix's creator.
Why the fuck he didn't think of that before, he had no idea.
He'd been ready to bully Azmuth into helping him, had planned on sticking the little alien in a pickle jar and shaking it until Azmuth agreed to find Ben. No such action was needed though, and Kevin was admittedly a little disappointed. He'd kind of been looking forward to taking his aggression out on the one who created the device that got Ben into this mess in the first place.
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"It was the omnitrix that killed those aliens."
Well damn.
"I won't stand by any longer and let them abuse the omnitrix's powers the way they have been."
Kevin wanted to ask why Azmuth stood by at all when the Council first started abusing the omnitrix, but he kept his mouth shut because he still needed the little bastard's help.
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So now they knew where the omnitrix was, and hopefully Ben was still attached to it.
Kevin was pretty confident in his abilities, but he knew that just him and Azmuth wouldn't be a strong enough force to break into the space station, getting past all the hundreds of ships the station now had to defend itself, and get inside to rescue Ben.
Which meant that they were pretty well fucked and it was infuriating to be so close and yet so far.
And then Gwen showed up with a fleet of Highbreed warships on her side.
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Kevin honestly didn't know what to expect for when they finally did find Ben. The teen had been held captive for months now. He knew he wouldn't like it though, whatever condition they found the other boy in, and he couldn't have been more right.
Held up in the air in some sort of high-tech-looking room, Ben was hooked up to dozens of equally high-tech-looking devices and machines.
The brunette stared sightlessly ahead with wide glowing green eyes. He was pale as a sheet and the veins that were visible through his skin shone green. It was unnatural, and his stillness was unnatural.
The omnitrix, which also had a dozen different cables and devices hooked up to it, looked as if it had mutated and fused to Ben's arm in a way that made Kevin cringe.
Kevin was very glad he had brought Azmuth along with him for the rescue because although he may know a lot about alien tech, Kevin didn't have the time or patience to figure out how to safely unhook Ben from the monster of a machine he was attached to. Kevin wanted the brunette free and off this space station yesterday.
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They managed to safely free Ben from the machine he was attached to, but nothing could have prepared them for this new, twisted form of the omnitrix.
The power the device gave off was completely out of control. It threw them back against the walls and only Gwen's mana saved them from having the flesh peeled off from their bones.
And through this all, Ben just fucking laughed.
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Kevin didn't really want to know what the Council did to Ben, but he wanted to gut them all the same for it.
He shouted out to the brunette, trying to snap Ben out of whatever sort of fucking breakdown he was having, but nothing he said was getting through. Either the power of the omnitrix was too overwhelming or Ben was just too shattered to register Kevin's words, maybe it was a combination of the two.
From beside him, struggling to hold up her mana shields, Gwen stared out at her cousin with a wide-eyed horrified expression.
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It wasn't an option he even wanted to consider, it wasn't something he had ever planned on doing again in his life, but Kevin wasn't about to just sit by and let Ben get torn apart by that stupid fucking omnitrix.
Gwen didn't want him to do it, said he couldn't handle it, but he was gonna try with or without her help, so in the end, she cleared a path for him with her mana, and with his body coated in the steel of the room's walls, he managed to get close enough to slap one hand over the mutated omnitrix, hoping to drain some of its power, lessen its strength and lessen its hold over Ben.
What he didn't know when he did this though was that it wasn't just ten or twenty aliens he was draining the energy of, it was all of them, every single species of alien that the omnitrix had cataloged.
Kevin's mind was lost to the power in just seconds.
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He never expected his mind to come back to him, but it did.
There was a lingering rage though, a lingering paranoia and hints of insanity and all the things that usually overpowered his mind whenever he mutated from the omnitrix's energy. It was all right there at the corners of his mind, and the mutations that usually accompanied it was there as well, but the mutations, the rage and irrational thinking, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, as it had been in the past.
It was like he was the lite beer version of his dark inner-self, of Kevin 11.
And standing over him, standing over Ben who sat on the ground next to him – the brunette giggling with his teeth lightly locked around the dial of his mutated omnitrix – was Gwen.
She never looked more badass in her life than she did right now.
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Her eyes glowed pink, strands of her hair glowed pink, and there were areas where her skin was peeling away to reveal her Anodite form that was a purple so deep, it almost looked black.
Her human body was damaged, just on the cusp of going full Anodite, and she didn't seem to give a damn about it at all.
She stared down at him and Ben. Her expression too hard to read, but when the guards of the space station burst onto the scene, she looked up at their newest opponents with a look of rage.
It was pretty fucking hot.
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Getting out of the space station was pie.
Azmuth was dragged along for the ride because even though Kevin didn't like the little fucker, he did help them get Ben back in the end, so they sort of owed it to him, making sure he got off the space station safely as well.
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Kevin remembered a time when they were so careful about defeating their enemies, but not killing them. He remembered how much Ben had valued the lives of others.
Not anymore though.
Leaving the space station, it was only Azmuth who protested the pile of bodies they left in their wake.
And Ben laughed the whole time, laughed with each alien they cut down, laughed each time alien blood was spilled.
Kevin did feel some satisfaction with getting revenge on the aliens that had wronged them, but even he had to admit that it was a little fucking creepy how much Ben was enjoying the blood-shed.
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Everything was all peaches and cream with Azmuth.
At least, Ben seemed to think so, up until Azmuth tried to remove the omnitrix and then Ben completely flipped out.
They almost ended up with Azmuth on a stick.
But then Gwen smacked Ben up-side the head and the brunette went back to... well, not normal.
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Azmuth was sent away and they took refuge on the Highbreed ships, because even with Ben being a glowy-eyed bucket of crazy, Reinrassic III (or 'Reiny,' or once even 'Reiny, Reiny, quite cont-reiny, how does your garden grown?' Really Ben, what the hell?) still had the omnitrix wielder's back.
The Highbreed seemed to be the only ones though.
Everyone else was wary of them. Everyone else had seen the footage of them storming the space station's hallways and cutting down any alien that got in their way.
They had also seen the video feed of Ben, laughing as aliens were taken down around them, and they had even seen some of the footage of Ben's crazy, omnitrix power-trip when they had first freed him from the Council's machines.
So many aliens were afraid of them. Civilians were calling for some sort of action to be taken.
The Plumbers felt that the best course of action would be for Ben to relinquish control of the omnitrix. The Plumbers wanted to put all three of them under observation. They specifically wanted to put Kevin in a kind of rehab, put Ben in a mental hospital 'for his own good' if removing the omnitrix didn't 'fix him,' and Verdona wanted to take Gwen away for training.
All of this had been communicated through video feed.
The Highbreed were staying good to their word of keeping the three safe, but Kevin knew that they couldn't stay there forever, and he was sure that Gwen knew this as well.
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"So what do you think?" Kevin finally asked the red-head one day.
Gwen's glowing pink eyes narrowed and then she said exactly what Kevin was thinking.
"I think I'm pretty damn tired of everyone telling us what to do and making decisions for us," she looked over at him, crossing her arms over her chest. "I don't want to do things their way any more, look where their way got us. And maybe I don't want to go back to being 'normal.'"
Kevin grinned a fanged grin.
Being 'normal' was fucking over-rated these days anyway.
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That's all for now. I plan on writing a chapter of the events from Ben's perspective and then another from Gwen's perspective. Also, if I ever come up with any more ideas for oneshots that take place in this universe (and most likely I will, with some of the story involving AU good-versions of themselves meeting up with these twisted Ben 10 versions), I will be posting anything like that here.
Huh, so this is the first Ben 10 fic I wrote that wasn't slash. Funny. And it even has a hint of Gwevin in it. As a warning though for non-slashers, my brain tends to try and add slash to any story in this fandom. I'm not saying there will be slash, but there's always that possibility of it sneaking in here. I'll be sure to set a warning at the beginning of the chapter if that's the case.
At the very least, I might have something with crazy!Ben being mildly inappropriate to another guy without even realizing that it's inappropriate, because in my deranged mind, that just seems kind of funny. (shrugs) I'm damaged.
Review please and tell me what you think!