Ben 10 and all associated characters are owned by Man of Action and Cartoon Network.

The following story depicts incest between first cousins, any who would be triggered by such content are advised to stop reading immediately.

Leonard lay on the floor, an aching pain in his back and in his skull. His vision was blurry, seeing only the barest outlines of his surroundings. He tried to push himself upright, but his arms were too sore to manage it. Actually, everything was too sore to manage. His entire body felt like he'd run a marathon and his heart couldn't keep up with his breathing, leaving him stumbling about on the floor with the dexterity of an infant.

Resorting instead to just awkwardly roll over, trying to spot his sister, although that was hard when he couldn't spot anything.

"Hey, sis, you there?" he called out.

No response. His eye immediately darted around, but he could only make out blobs of color and ineffable decor. Nothing solid or defined enough to be Jenny. As his eyes tilted upwards, they burned as a brutal light shined into the room. It appeared his eye hadn't had time enough to adjust to the day. An often overlooked consequence of time travel.

"Sis? Sis?! Oh, Christ," Len called out again. He bumbled around on the floor, trying to feel around for his sister, but it was all just concrete. His vision began to clear somewhat, noting the iron pillars again, but he failed to see their level of decay or rust, something that would have helped him date the structure. All he knew was that he was still in one piece (probably) and Jenny probably was too. But if she was, she wasn't talking.

"Oh, Christ, Jenny!" he cried. He began to panic, wondering what he could have done wrong. What he could have miscalculated, misread, or misspoken. There were a million potential things capable of being screwed up, but none of those mattered right now. His heart sank as he began to take in the reality of what had happened, but his fears were relieved as quickly as they began when he heard a sharp grunt from a familiar voice across the room.

"Okay, ouch. I am giving this flight a fucking horrid review on the Extranet," Jen grumbled.

"Oh, thank God. You're alright. And I'm glad to know your sense of humor survived the trip, sis." Len said as he lay on the floor. He could start to make out his surroundings well enough by now. It was the same factory they'd been in prior, but things were different. The iron pillars had lost most of their rust, and the shattered windows were still mostly intact, although still heavily cracked. And the evening sky had been replaced with the auburn light of midday. Seems they picked a good spot, as the factory was still abandoned even decades before their births.

"Yeah, I think that's about all that survived. My back feels like it went through a meat grinder. You need to work on your passenger safety," she said as she cracked her knuckles.

Len laughed. "You are such a spoiled brat."

Jen couldn't hold back a chuckle in response. "And you're a pedantic imp," she said. "By-the-by, are you still in the pink? Or do yah need to take five?" By now, Jen had managed to get herself to her feet, stretching as she tried to soothe her still aching muscles.

"I'm fine, just need to — eh — take a breather. Time travel is hell on your nervous system. Considering everything that has the potential to go tits up, we got off lightly."

"Still, you're not looking too hot as is," Jen said. "Hey, while you're resting, mind telling me if you know when we are? You nailed the where, but I have absolutely no idea what year it is."

"I can assure you, I did the spell correctly. We're in the right time."

"And what's your proof of that?" Jen said, crossing her arms.

"If I hadn't, we would've been ripped apart on the subatomic level with every particle combusting in nuclear hellfire in the infinite and boundless vacuum of space."

Jen blinked for a moment. "You didn't mention that caveat when we planned this!"

"You didn't ask," Len said. "But, I pulled it off, didn't I?"

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that and we were always going to be fine."

"If that helps you sleep at night, sis," Len called out. "But I got us to the right time, but I'm still a bit uncertain about the where. Are you still sure yah picked the right spot? Are they going to be nearby like you said?"

"Mom was pretty thorough in her diaries, always making notes of where she was during the summer trips," Jen said as she rubbed her back. "Though I'll admit, half the landmarks she mentioned were a bit obscure, and the other half were so vague I couldn't be certain what she was talking about."

"Couldn't you cross-reference?"

"Tried. Didn't help that cities in the United States had a dozen names they recycled through. I think there were around a dozen Bostons at one point? I could only be absolutely certain of a few places, and I had to choose one that I thought was a surefire guarantee, or as close to that as we could hope to get. All on top of picking somewhere out of the way enough that we wouldn't risk any unwanted fucking of the timeline."

"So that knocked out New York, D.C., the famous Boston, etc."

"Bingo. But I gotta say… it felt weird reading all that stuff."

"Whaddya mean?" Len said, finally bringing himself to his feet. He needed a moment to get his bearings, as he almost teetered over at first, but his balance came back to him after a few seconds.

"Mom talked about a lot of shit she'd seen. And she wasn't as used to it as she was when we were born. She was still new to that whole heroing deal. Seeing aliens or warlocks or whatever drop out of the sky and start blowing shit up wasn't her world yet. She got scared. A lot."

"I don't think you can judge. Didn't you throw up when we first fought that mutated Sotoraggian?"

"Didn't you piss your pants when we first fought that rogue Tetramand?"

Len blushed. "Hey, what do you want me to say? The spell was designed to restrain two hands, not four!" he said, now busy dusting off his grime-coated jacket. "By the way, would it kill yah to show a little appreciation? I just pulled off what some wizards train their entire lives to do!"

"Technically, so did you," Jen said smiling, only for the grin to fade as the full connotations of what she'd said turned in her mind. "Wait, Len, I'm sorry. I… I didn't mean t—"

"Save it, Jen," Len interjected. "It's not a big deal. Like I said, you haven't lost your sense of humor."

Jen scratched the beck of her head, running her hand through her brown hair. "Imma head Fasttrack for a minute, get a feel for what's going on outside." She began to fiddle with her Omnitrix, trying to find the blue speed demon of an alien.

"Wouldn't recommend it, Jen," Len said between heavy breaths. "I remember how you did on Earth history tests. I'll be the tour guide for this portion of the trip. Besides, we don't wanna stick out too much. We just gotta do what we came here for… and then we'll be done."

Jen looked up for a moment to eye her brother, before returning to the Omnitrix.

"Also, why do you even use Fasttrack? He's just a crummier XLR8. His top speed doesn't even compare!"

"Hey, don't go dissing Fasttrack! The guy might not have the same speed as XLR8, but I'll be damned if he doesn't pack a better punch. Plus, that tail was just another thing for bad guys to grab onto. And I don't even wanna start with how nauseating it gets when you stay XLR8 too long. Yuck."

"Still, wait a minute, I'll be ready in just a sec—" Len was about to finish before his clearing vision was flooded with a green light.

"Fasttrack!"

"Jen, I said wait a second!"

"Relax, I'll be back in a moment," she said in a high-pitched voice. And in the next moment, she was gone, leaving behind a tempest in her wake.

"Ugh, sometimes I hate that girl," Len said with a final stretch.

The front doors were still swinging back and forth, even after Fasttrack was probably a mile ahead already. Len considered just waiting for a while until Jenny returned, but knowing that girl, 'a moment' could be a couple of hours at most. Conceding defeat to brotherly instinct, Len stepped outside into the daylight. The quality of the air struck him the hardest, causing him to cough. It was heavy and had a sour taste to it, like he was breathing in rocket exhaust. He'd completely forgotten how different technology was just a few decades before he was born. Air filtration had been horrid at the time, or is horrid, depending on how you want to look at it.

How looked down from where he was standing. The factory sat adopt a hill nearby a road that bordered a woodland. He saw cars driving by, but they looked so strange to him, being crude hunks of metal that made so much noise. So unlike the floating vehicles of his own time. Everything about where he was looked so old and archaic, like he was visiting a museum or watching an Earth documentary. There were no spaceships, hoverboards, or aliens. Everything was so mundane, so banal, so… human.

This was an older Earth. A less enlightened time still prone to bigotry and superstition. He considered himself lucky to be a human, because any other form of sapient life wouldn't last long on this planet.

He made his way down the hill, coughing as his lungs adjusted to the inferior air quality. His knowledge of this era was decent, but actually seeing this time period before him showed him how little he actually knew. He realized he had no idea where he was supposed to go. Jen was the one who needed to tell him just where the hell their mom was, and Jen had run off to fuck knows where!

"Jen, I swear to God, sometimes you—"

"Sometimes I what?" Fasttrack said behind him.

Len nearly jumped out of his skin as he heard her voice, almost falling down in shock before catching himself.

"Yah! What did I say about sneaking up on me, Jen? You know I fricking hate that!" he yelled.

"Sorry, but we got trouble!" Jen said.

"Trouble? Dear God, what the hell did you do? We just got here!" If she'd managed to make a mess of things in less than five minutes, she'd have broken her record. But who was keeping score?

"Hey! For once, I'm innocent in all this. There's a fire at a nearby town. Looks like it was a residential that got out of hand from the summer heat. And it doesn't look like they have the manpower to contain it. It could destroy the whole town!"

Len blinked. "And? What's your point?"

"What do you mean?! People could die!"

"Jen, from our point of view, anyone who dies there today already died decades ago! We already agreed that we don't want to start changing history."

"We came here for the express purpose of changing history!"

"That's different! We're fixing one person's life! We can't go about playing hero in this era. This isn't our world. These aren't our contemporaries. This planet right now is not our responsibility."

"Are you saying we just do nothing?!" Jen exclaimed. Her brother's sordid attitude was so unlike him. Any other time, he'd be clamoring to save everyone.

"That's an odd question to posit someone when they haven't technically been born yet. But let's play with hypotheticals for a moment. Assume we do save the day. Assume we get the fire under control and everything is hunky-dory again. We don't know how those people surviving is going to impact history in the long term. What if someone there is supposed to die and ends up marrying someone who was still alive in this era? What if that person was supposed to marry someone else? It's not possible to account for every potential factor. Sometimes the best option is literally to do nothing. I'd rather wash my hands of this whole ordeal than risk unforeseen consequences down the road."

"Pandering, Len? Really? You know damn well 'nothing' is my go-to option for mostly anything," Fasttrack murmured.

"Then why are you arguing with me about this?" Len grumbled.

"Because there are people in there who could be dying and you're saying we should let them die."

"Did you pay attention to anything I just said?!"

"I did, and I have my own question: what would Mom do in this circumstance?"

"Don't bring Mom into this. She has nothing to… You know what I mean!"

"It's a fair question, Leonard. What would Mom argue we should do?"

Leonard sighed. He knew what his sister was driving at. She knew the lectures on heroism Mom gave just as well as he did. She always told them that being a hero meant doing what you thought was right, even when you were told it was wrong.

"Weaponizing Mom's own lectures against me. That's something I never expected from you."

"First time for everything, bro."

"Gimme a piggyback. How far away is the town?" he chided. He didn't necessarily want to do this, but he knew that his sister would never let him live it down if he didn't. Besides, she was right, they couldn't just let people die. He was going to regret this, sure, but he was going to regret it more if he didn't.

"At my top speed? I'd put it at maybe three minutes."

Leonard hopped onto the alien's back and Fasttrack bolted down the highway in a blur of blue streaks, before the boy could even get a wisecrack out.