The Elohim were very rare in the world that they heralded in. Nestled in the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy, lay a very bright world with a sun so large that it should have by all accounts consumed the surrounding planets with its pull. Like a miracle, it survived on just enough distance and just enough revolutions around its star to maintain itself while also fostering enough habitability to contain life. The sentient beings were nomadic and had no interest to stay in their own world, believing that the answers to their questions of life and existence was far beyond their immediate reach. So they travelled all over and returned only to divulge knowledge to the young so they may eventually go forth and seek. They had no need to propagate in large numbers with their long lifespan and were generally quite isolated in nature. Each of their communities were small and tended to themselves with their own focuses and ways of lives. Certain races stayed within their own communities, occasionally becoming parts of others but then excluding themselves to those new communities then. They were civil with each other, but coldly, distantly so. The Seraphim focused on music and culture, the Thrones with their desire to build travelling machines and continue gaining more technological advancements to further this, the Angelos with their belief in security and using fighting techniques as a means to reach a higher state of being, and many other subspecies.

The one that had strayed over to the Milky Way galaxy was from the Cherubim. It was purely by chance that this one had stumbled into a noted hero, known all over the universe for his exploits, for this one did not tend towards violence. There were fighters borne of this one's world, but it was not in the Cherub community to foster in those ideals, so very rare were those who looked to fight especially for violence's sake.

This one was – well – scanned by some device. There were some information regarding it that was known, with its great capacity to contain many other creatures with which its wielder could then use. The Cherub had flown off, uncertain and mildly anxious of the event. There were principles in the communities of Elohim to avoid being captured in any device for it took a part of the nefesh. Such devices that communicated their image in a permanent form were ominous. The cameras of the human world, these photographs and televisions, were foreboding. Perhaps there were others who had had their images captured and had passed down their knowledge to others after their travels. It was an old story, it had been centuries since this one had returned to the homeworld. Perhaps it was time again to do so. The Source should hopefully bless this one with better luck and be able to continue travelling without due punishment for being lax regarding the image catching device.

Ben had no idea what that alien was, but he did note that it was a powerful one. The Omnitrix hadn't recognised what it was so it spent most of the fight in scan mode, much to his chagrin. The alien had been quiet and weird, and had responded skittishly in his and Rook's presence. It was a cause of much suspicion and he'd tried to gather more information since there were illegal activities down in the alien marketplace for a while, only to be met with a very cold shoulder. Well, actually having his face nearly burnt off after he'd gotten too close to it. He'd only responded in turn since it was getting violent at him and evasive, which increased the suspicion.

For the most part it was Rook who had been holding it off from truly damaging him while he did evasive tactics, accidentally toppling carts and shop tables along the way.

When it had run off, he growled in frustration since their investigation trail had gone cold again.

"Perhaps this person was only a visitor, he had not seemed interested in fighting you," Rook suggested mildly, placing the gun back on top of his shoulder.

"It fried off my eyebrow!" he retorted, pointing at the offending blank space over his one twitching green eye.

"Well, you were not exactly very polite while you questioned him," his partner added, raising his finger as if to remind him.

There was a sigh, and the hero shook his head at his partner's rather naïve comment. "It's interrogation, we don't do small talk with bad guys."

The taller plumber considered this for a moment before stating, "We do not entirely have confirmation that he is a bad guy. Perhaps his presence in the scene is incidental."

Flat impatient expression in place, the savior of the universe sharply pointed at his missing eyebrow as if it was all they needed. "Besides even if it isn't the main baddie, it could've seen something. Like, you know, the people who were doing all the illegal dealings. We might have found the underground fight ring."

"Perhaps," his partner had to concede with this particular argument.

"The only good thing I got there was its alien form," the Tennyson hero said neutrally, shrugging as if to say he believed that it was enough of a counterpoint for why they should be there. Fiddling with the dial, he eventually stumbled into the actual form and slammed his hand on the choice. After a blazing transformation, he exclaimed, "Angelfire!"

Then he swiftly started to nudge his elbow at his partner, who now appeared at least a head shorter than his current form due to its size, taking care not to directly shove the flames right on the other man's clothes. "Eh? Eh?"

The Revonnahgander stared at his arm movements as if he was seeing Ben trying to lick his elbow again like that one time, blinked several times and smiled uncertainly as if to simply be polite because he assumed that it was supposed to be a joke. That he didn't understand.

The hero of heroes of sighed to himself, drooped his shoulders defeatedly and said, "I need to introduce you to the internet."

It wasn't long before the alien form disappeared mysteriously from his playlist, which he had reacted to with much panic since he had only managed to use it a few times. It wasn't like his socks or anything like that he could easily have just dropped in the messy pile that was his bedroom floor, it was an alien form in the Omnitrix.

This baffled him that he had wanted to bug Azmuth regarding the event, but the Galvan had been busy on some project to watch him flail cluelessly about just another thing regarding the Omnitrix he didn't know about. So he was pushed to Blukic and Driba, who only used him as a test subject for stupid things that had gotten him nowhere to finding out the answer to his missing alien form problem.

In the meantime, a slight young man crawled out from underneath a tree shade in a Bellwood park then staggered through the town in mild confusion for the better part of the day. He walked around the town, passing by Mr. Smoothie, going to the local public school, stumbling on a certain suburban area and managed to find himself in front of the Tennyson household.

His hand had been reaching out to the front door but had immediately stopped upon hearing the sounds of activity inside the house. It was the voices of Carl and Sandra discussing what they planned to do for a holiday and asking their son whether he wanted to go or stay in Bellwood during the time. The young man stopped dead in his tracks as he heard the mildly disinterested response of the one called Ben, and scrunched his eyebrows.

For a time he had no idea what to do, sincerely baffled by what was happening. The rain had fallen all over the town before he slowly started to back away from the front door, only stopping yet again upon seeing something strange in the reflection from a puddle that had formed on the pavement. Squinting hard and falling to his knees, he stared at much brighter green eyes than he had expected, softer shaped and surrounded by long eyelashes. Eyelashes too pale for what he had expected. In fact, his hair was unusual, not just because it was matted to his face from the droplets of rain. Even in the darkened, drenched color, it was still too pale. His face was not angled enough. His shoulders too broad. The figure, even crouched like this, was too tall. He had wondered if this was the reason for the poor sense of balance. But then-

Who was the person he stared at in the puddle? That couldn't be him. In a voice that he thought was too deep and too throaty sounding, he stated into the rainwater, "This is weird. Even for me."

Finally seeing the mouth in the image move, following all of the words that he had iterated, made him jump up to his feet in response. Then he ran. He ran away from the street where the Tennysons lived, ran away as far back until he was too drenched in rain and too tired to keep going.

The revelation was easy enough to accept after he had woken up from his exhaustion induced sleep inside an abandoned warehouse when he quickly transformed into another being. Angelfire. Why that name popped in his head was something he did not dwell on for too long. He simply tried to transform back and put out the fire on the wooden beam with his shirt. There was a lot of sheepishness that rolled into his chest when he saw the blackened part of the wooden beam, regardless of whether the place was already abandoned. He was happy that he didn't turn the whole street into a flaming ball after his incredibly emotional response.

Trying to fill in the silence, he remarked, "Wow, being me must be a total insurance nightmare." He laughed to himself, but the echoes in the empty building coaxed it to slowly die down.

Scrunching his eyebrows to wonder about himself and what was going on, a name simply formed in his mind. "Evan Sullivan," he mumbled, rolling the words in his tongue. "I guess that's me then." He paused. "I think." Then his stomach started to rumble loudly enough for the building to also cause to echo, much to his embarrassment. "I guess thinking on an empty stomach's not on the list of things I do very well."

Fumbling around in his pockets, he searched every single corner of whichever hole the clothes actually offered for any money or anything like a candy bar to at least satisfy his current predicament. But he turned out with nothing. Looking increasingly worried, he groaned, "You're kidding." His mind wasn't helping him with any sense of where he was supposed to live or what he was supposed to do next.

Since there was nothing else he could do for the moment that would be an assured source of continued nourishment, he had decided to walk around the streets of Bellwood. It was a bright sunny morning, with plenty of people who were off to go to work and school. Everyone seemed to have an aim of where to go. He wondered if perhaps he was supposed to go to the city, sit down the side walks and beg for food, at least for the meantime. Stomach doing flips at the sheer misery of the idea, he considered that it was much better for him to look out for the fact that he was going hungry. There was nowhere to go.

Thinking back to the time he stumbled into a house the previous day, he shut his mind out of thinking much further. It wasn't time to start feeling sorry for himself when he should be more active in tending to his immediate need. Eventually getting coaxed by the increasingly strong clawing in his gut, he had gone to Bellwood city and sat down to beg. Fries in Burger Shack were currently a deal because of some promotion for a show that the food was attached to. He just needed maybe three dollars for something to eat. A few more dollars and he could beeline for Mr. Smoothie as well.

Maybe.

The entire day was harsh for him. He had not anticipated how hard it actually was to wrangle up those few dollars. It was only around the end of school time for everybody when he managed to collect everything. A young woman with long dark hair and a pink sweater handed him five dollars. There were others with a few coins over the course of the day, but most just ignored him. Perhaps he didn't look pathetic enough for them to take pity. But he had been close to passing out due to the hunger near the end of the day.

When he looked up to take it, his hands actually shaking from the low blood sugar, he was met with a kind sympathetic smile.

"Are you okay?" the young woman asked.

"Hungry, but still alive and kicking," he responded amicably, incredibly grateful. He could feel his spirits raising upon the realization he could actually eat now. "Mostly just alive. Kicking's probably not recommended right now." When he moved up to get off the pavement, he nearly fell down again. His blood pressure was probably low too, because his eyes could see black dots that darkened his vision for a few seconds. Heart racing, he tried to right himself quickly. That was when he realized the young woman was holding on to his arm to make sure he didn't smack back down to the pavement and injure himself.

"I guess you're not doing too well," she responded with come concern.

"I guess," he admitted shyly, scrunching up the note in his hand. Then shoving one of his hands in his pockets where the rest of the coins were. "Thank you. This is just enough for me to go and eat."

"Why don't I go with you until you get there? Can't have you passing out on the middle of the street now, can we?" she recommended, giving him another kind smile.

"I don't wanna bother you," he said hurriedly, waving his hands in embarrassment over troubling her.

"I haven't got tennis practice or anything I need to go to," she responded, shrugging her shoulders as if to say it's no problem. "And don't worry about getting mugged or anything by me-"

"I've got nothing to mug anyway," he snorted out in self-depreciation.

Then with a very optimistic, happy, gentle smile, she asked, "So, what do you say?"

"I say: what's your name?" he asked in a light tone, finding it easy to get on good terms with someone who seemed so friendly.

"Julie Yamamoto," she answered confidently, yet in a voice that was so pleasant and sweet sounding instead of how he'd expected the voice to be like. "Nice to meet you."

"Ben Tennyson. Hi."

"Julie. I know who you are."

Shaking his head for a minute, he tried to wrestle his mind back to the real world and stop being weird. He was just so hungry that he was zoning out so much. What was he even thinking?

"Evan Sullivan," he introduced himself, stretching out a friendly hand which she took to shake. "I'm, uh, new around here. And very hungry."

"You can tell me all about it after you've eaten," she giggled lightly, making sure to hold his arm to support him as he wobbled off to a stand again.

After they talked in Burger Shack, he'd found out about her career in tennis, the college that she was about to apply for, her life in Bellwood, and was introduced to her galvanic mechamorph pet named Ship who was her bag at the time. He'd told her about the fact that he was not from around here and she'd managed to deduce easily that he was an alien, which he had promptly admitted. She also now knew of his lack of a home, his complete confusion as he appeared in Bellwood. But he hadn't told her of other things inside his head that he himself didn't particularly like thinking about. He didn't think they were important. Evidently he was an Angelfire thing and was lost, probably watched a silly television news of a hero and clueslessly latched on to the information while he was confused. However, the more he searched himself the less true it felt that he was any kind of hero. He was just some guy. A very hungry, homeless, lonely guy. Who also happened to be an alien.

It probably made sense that she wanted to help him along. After all, he looked like a lost little puppy. Due to how close she was with the whole alien situation, it was much easier for her to feel sympathetic for aliens in dire straits. She's seen a lot of them, almost as much as seeing aliens who wanted to steal her dog or attack her planet.

At the end of their dinner, she had asked him if there was anywhere that he was going to stay for the night. It made him perk up in surprise. He hadn't expected to be receiving this much charity.

"Thanks again," he said for the umpteenth time.

"And you're still very welcome," she giggled, leading him over to a small shop over to the corner of Bellwood city, just near the entrance to the suburban areas. When they finally entered the quaint establishment, she called out, "Mr. Chan!"

A short, balding old man appeared out a door from behind the cashier, crabbily responding, "Store's closing! Please come back tomorrow! We had the sign up on the door." There was mumbling that sounded like he was grumpily getting annoyed over being old and forgetting to lock up.

"Mr. Chan, do you still have that lodging open for your place?" the young woman beside him asked, unperturbed and still smiling.

On the other hand, he was standing there looking even more agitated and wanting to run off. He didn't want to impose on the increasingly annoyed old man. He sidled closer to her to whisper nervously, "You know what, Julie? It's okay. I still have that abandoned warehouse at Industry Boulevard. I think I can deal." There was a bead of sweat forming on the side of his temple.

"Don't be silly," she whispered back. "I'm sure Mr. Chan can take you in. He has space."

"It looks like it's not available," he whimpered to her, as the old man glowered him up and down. Even with the man's obviously bad back and potentially arthritis ridden joints, the force of his glare could probably melt stone.

The young woman looked at him fondly while he cowered behind her. "He's nice when you get to know him."

"You got the money for rent?" the old man hissed at the teenagers, holding on to the antique Victorian chair and walked past the old wooden clock.

"Not even a little bit, sir," the fair-haired young man answered honestly, trying to slowly walk off back to the door before Julie decided to grab his shirt to pull him back.

"But he's gonna be sleeping alone without any kind of air conditioning or fan in the hot weather tonight and he'll just die of heatstroke in his sleep," she rationalized, pleading as sweetly as she could to the impatient elderly shopkeeper. "There's no one else he could go to and I'd take him back at my place but my dad's not gonna let him stay. Please, Mr. Chan. You're not gonna let a poor kid just be out there on the streets at such late hours, would you? He'll get hurt and what would we do then?"

"I'm okay!" said poor kid interjected, waving his hands around reassuringly. "I'll be fine! It's no problem at all. It was very nice to meet you, Mr. Chan. Great shop you have here."

"Most of them teenagers don't care about my house being safe anyway, why would he be any safer in here than out there?" Mr. Chan stated flatly, staring particularly at Julie instead of the young man who would supposedly sleep in his rented room. The old man crossed his arms as well as his poorly articulated joints could do.

For a moment, Evan watched his new friend's face shift into a sadder expression before reclaiming the smile on her face and responding, "Because he'd be with you, Mr. Chan. Please?"

Sighing in the most defeated and angry fashion, the crabby old man finally accepted with, "Fine." Glaring at the dark haired young girl who seemed especially happy at her success, he added: "You're lucky you're a good kid. And you're dad's a nice man who helped me after that last schtick with that dumb boyfriend of yours."

"He's not my boyfriend anymore, Mr. Chan," she said reassuringly, laughing as if it was so silly that they were still talking about such old news.

"Thank goodness you're a smart girl," the old man added with a tsk, as if feeling sorry for her the entire time that she actually was dating said boyfriend. "Or I wouldn't trust your people you bring in here."

Evan just felt completely out of the loop over the conversation, but he stayed quiet and listened politely.

"What's your name, boy?" the old man finally turned to him, both hands behind his back as if to look imposing and critical. Which would have been particularly hard with the man's deficient height, he was smaller than even the tiny young woman who accosted him here was. Unfortunately he had guessed then – correctly he would later realize – that the old man must have been an officer or part of the military back in the day.

"E-Evan Sullivan, sir," he replied shyly, extending a hand that the old man only stared at for a while before returning his gaze back to the overly nervous teenaged boy. "Nice to meet you."

"Hmph. Well-mannered at least," Mr. Chan grumbled, finally turning around to head over back to his home attached to the back of his store. Which gave Evan the excuse to finally loosen up and express dread and terror over the idea of having to stay with such a critical old man, which he shared with his friend. Julie only seemed to find his quietly complaining facial expression amusing enough to start giggling again. "Close the door behind you, store's shutting up now."

When he said goodbye to her as he closed the door to the store, he smiled as she waved sweetly and headed off. He lingered for far longer than he intended before going up to be introduced to his new home.

Despite the facade of someone intensely abrasive and easily irritable, Mr Chan was actually a very good shopkeeper and tended to be quite pleasant with his customers. The good sales pitch on the history of the antiques and the sense of being able to trust in the old man's words due to his air of authority made people want to buy what he sold. Although with Evan in particular, he was less personable and would just order him around to do dishes after dinner and sweep up floors. In the end, he hadn't minded since he was actually just living there with no payment for the lodgings and it was the least he could do to help out.

He was slowly getting used to Mr Chan in a way that he had actually been responding to the snide comments in turn too, not overly disrespectfully, but just enough to answer back. It seemed that since he hadn't gotten kicked out that Mr Chan didn't mind his occasional lip either. Some moments he would see the old man smile to himself, but not when he knew that Evan could see, because he actually found the kid's comeback pretty funny. It made Evan feel just that much more accepted and happy where he was.

Occasionally, he still met up and hung out with Julie because he had nothing else to do. After she finished school or tennis practice, he'd mosey around to where he believed she'd be and pretend he'd just been passing by. So they'd catch up over at her mom's garden or play fetch with Ship at the street just outside her house. It was going home on one of those days that he stumbled into an alien attack.

Ben Tennyson and Rook were pursuing Sunder who had taken an artefact that was actually found in the underground alien market – its presence of which was illegal in the first place – through the streets of Bellwood. At first, Evan had simply tried to stay away from the cause of the commotion, but as people were trying to scurry away from the damage of the fights he couldn't bring himself to ignore it. Almost immediately, there was something inside his chest that clenched so hard at the sight of pieces of fence and concrete flying off at people who were just walking to home or somewhere minding their own business. Transforming swiftly into his alien form, he flew as quickly as he could towards a child that a slightly older young girl had accidentally let go off and was about to meet with a wooden beam that had come off of a house after an energy blast from Chromastone accidentally dislodged it to attack Sunder.

Grabbing the young boy who had been too petrified to run out of the way, he immediately handed the child over to the young girl. He'd then found out she was the older sister as she cried and hugged the little boy. Thinking quickly, he'd told them as well as the other civilians in the area to move as far away from the street as possible while he raised a shield of the wind formed from his spinning wings. He wasn't used to the technique, so that when he'd stopped as they were all safely out of the way, he had to force himself to hold in his lunch and stumbled in circles for a while.

As one of the houses in the adjacent street caught fire from the shots of fireballs from Swampfire that were missing Sunder only by inches, Evan himself rushed over to a nearby street water pump in a panic, grabbed the valve and just melted it right off with the fire from his hand to gush water. With his wings, he redirected the water to specifically put out the fires before the rest of the street started burning.

Watching the scene, he realized that the alien tech was now in Ben's hands – or rather, Echo Echo's hands and were being passed around amongst the different clones and at Rook. In the meantime, Sunder swung his axe around and smashed the weapon into light poles, into trees, into the fronts of houses.

All the time, Evan was getting increasingly frustrated. How much more damage was going to occur before they actually decided to leave that area and head over to less compromising places? They finally had the tech, what was the point of staying here in the suburbs? They should already be going so they could lead their enemy into a much easier place to arrest him.

At the transformation of Humongousaur, Ben grabbed the now much smaller form of Sunder and smashed him right into a house.

At this, the Elohim's stomach lurched painfully and he could feel the lips of all of the Cherub heads trembling, his fists shaking and the brightness around his form lessen. In his mind, all Evan could do was pray that nobody was in that house. That nobody else had been hurt. Because he would hate himself if he hadn't been able to save that person. This was wrong. Why was this happening?

As the hero collected his enemy and both he and his partner went off on their way, Evan rushed over to the wrecked house. Traversing over to the hole made in the place, he carefully navigated himself inside. Perhaps he should have transformed back to human so he wouldn't collide with the part of the wall that was still intact as he was much too tall. But he hadn't been thinking that well with the panic settling in his mind far higher than rationality. There was ringing in his ears and gut wrenching fear coiling like snakes in his center. He pleaded for the place to be empty. An unwelcome sight of an elderly lady on the floor clutching at her leg that had a piece of concrete right on top of it greeted him instead. It was far too dark to see when he was still outside that there was someone in there. Only after he went in did he confirm that she was there.

Trying to soothe her as she cried out in fear over him, he told her that he was just here to help her. Gently picking her up in his arms he toned down the fires and brightness in his form so that he wouldn't be too eye-scorching and flew to Bellwood City to get her to a nearby hospital. As it turned out, the old lady had mobility problems which was why she hadn't had the chance to move out of the way or leave the house in time after hearing the commotion outside.

As he sat in the hospital, waiting for Mr Chan to pick him up after he had been comforted by the nurses and the doctor that the old lady would be okay and taken care of, he seethed to himself.

He hadn't been willing to talk about it as they took the bus back home. All of his anger was so quiet, so frigid, that it was frankly quite terrifying to Mr Chan as he hadn't seen the boy act this way before. The old man left him alone and hadn't asked. They ate dinner quietly and hadn't spoken a word.

Finally winding down for the night, the elderly man watched the news while somebody was talking about what had happened in Bellwood that night involving the deeds of one named Ben Tennyson.

"Would you believe that girl, Julie, used to date that boy?" Mr Chan finally decided to say, as he watched disapprovingly upon seeing even more damage to the streets. "He destroyed my roof that one time, you know, said he was sorry but left it like that anyway. Mr. Yamamoto had to help with fixing it up, what with my premium being so low. Stupid boy."

The pale haired young man who had simply sat rigidly by the windowsill for most of the night slowly turned his head to the news, and without saying anything stood up, picked up the remote and shut off the television. Unceremoniously, he headed over to where his room was supposed to be.

This was how he knew for certain that he was not Ben Tennyson. And he never wanted to be him.

Fate obviously hated him because this was just the beginning and he had no idea what was about to come.