Archive of Our Own ^beta

At Gwen’s insistence, Ben ran into the alleyway. He didn’t care if his flashy alien transformations attracted attention – he’s a hero he’s supposed to be flashy and attract attention – but Gwen cared about “protecting your secret identity” and some other craziness, so he obliged.

He turned the dial, selected Heatblast, and slammed his watch down, only to be met with the disappointment of having transformed into Stinkfly instead. Sometimes the omnitrix feels like it has a mind of its own, because the alien transformations always work out in the end – Ben tries not to think too hard about it.

The clearing was being attacked by some flying green animals and were shooting green blasts at the people and trees – Ben responded with his own green blasts from his eyes and shot down a couple of the flying octopi, pinning them to the ground. There were flying green eagles in the air, and a few glowing green tigers at ground level.

He wasn’t the only one fighting the glowing green animals – there were some guys in white suits gunning down the green tigers, so Ben decided to figure out what was going on with the green eagles in the sky.

Another boy in black and white was flying around the green eagles, shooting them with green blasts from his hand – now that guy was a hero. Super cool outfit, super cool powers. Glowing white hair. Sure, Ben could also fly and shoot green blasts, but he wasn’t as cool as that guy. It was obvious that he was outnumbered though, something like 6 eagles pecking and surrounding him.

Ben got closer and fired his snot shots, hitting a couple of the eagles which gave the flying guy an opening to escape. The guy was littered with bleeding – green? – bruises across his torso, but that didn’t stop him from reaching to his side and pulling out a metal tube, opening its top and sucking in a couple of the green eagles.

A few more minutes of snot shots, green blasts going back and forth, and the sucking tube, and all the green eagles were taken care of. The floating guy in black and white was breathing heavily, cushioning his stomach in pain.

And then he aimed the tube at Ben.

“Hey, that’s rude!” Ben said. That startled the guy.

“You’re not a ghost?”

“Ghost? No, obviously not!” Ben responded. “You mean you’re not an alien? I mean you’re flying around and everything,” That guy couldn’t possibly be human, even if he looked like one.

“You can talk?”

“Duh,”

The boy laughed a huff before scrunching his stomach in pain.

“You okay?”

“I’ll be fine. We still have to get those ghosts that are down there,”

“Oh yeah! There’re some guys in white suits down there who look like they’ve got it handled, but maybe we can help them.” Ben responded. “You sure you can handle it though?”

“Guys in white?” The guy responded in a panic, “Oh no, I can’t – they can’t – But–!” He scrunched his eyes in pain, mumbled an apology, and flew away.

“Hey, wait!” Ben flew after the guy, but he disappeared in thin air – just like a ghost. With no idea where the very cool hero ghost guy went, Ben sighed in resignation and flew down to ground level.

There was the ghost guy again. It looked like one of the white suited guys – were those government agents? – was trapped underneath a ghost tiger’s paw, and the rest of the agents were at a standoff, guns hesitantly drawn.

The ghost guy flew in fast, using his body to snipe the tiger off the white suited adult before Ben could do anything. It was so cool.

The men helped their guy off the ground and fired freely at the tiger, but a couple of them began chasing the ghost guy too. The ghost guy flew around some building corner and disappeared.

The white suited agents sighed and looked down at some scanners. It was then that they noticed Stinkfly.

“Ghost?!” One of them pointed at Ben in panic. “It doesn’t even show up in the radar!”

Ben was beginning to think they thought he was a ghost just because Stinkfly was green. It felt kind of racist. The watch plate on Stinkfly’s face started to beep, indicating that he would detransform soon, and Ben flew away. He may have liked transforming in public – that was always cool and flashy – but he didn’t want to detransform in public, especially not in front of those white suit guys. The cool hero ghost guy didn’t like them, and Ben thinks he might not like them either.

He flew high, avoiding some green gun blasts from the white suits, ducked into an alleyway from above. His transformation timed out; he detransformed into his human self, landing ontop of a large closed garbage bin. He heard the white suits calling and searching for “the ghost fly” and Ben decided to hide in the garbage bin until they left. Before he could hop off the top and open the lid, a white suit entered the mouth of the alleyway.

“The green glow was here!” the white suit looked up. “Kid! Did you see any giant ghosts around here?”

“Ghost?” Ben hoped that playing dumb would work.

“A giant green fly? Very ugly, mutated creature. Or a ghost that looked like a boy, either is fine,”

He just barely held back his protests, and decided on a bluff.

“He went that way as soon as the green glow disappeared!” Ben pointed back out the alleyway, behind the white suit. The white suit yelled a thanks before running away. Ben sighed in relief.

His relief was cut short when the garbage bin’s lid thumped from underneath. And then opened. A tall boy with black hair crawled out, flopping to the ground and heaving deep heavy breaths. He cradled his stomach suspiciously.

“Hey, you okay?” Ben asked. He offered his left hand to the boy on the ground. The boy took Ben’s hand and stood up, taking note of the omnitrix’s decal on the watch face.

“Y-Yeah, thanks,” The boy turned around, took two swaying steps before collapsing again.

“Hey!” Ben rushed forward to the boy lying on his stomach, rolling him over to his back. His white shirt was dirty, but there were red splotches he hadn’t noticed earlier.

“I don’t think you’re fine,” Ben said. “I’ll call an ambul–”

“No ambulance!” The boy heaved. “No hospital!”

“Okay then at least let me call my grandpa!”

“N-No! I’ll be fine! I’ll walk it off!”

“You couldn’t even walk two steps!” Ben retorted. He ran out of the alleyway, finding Gwen and Grandpa not too far from where he left them. He’s not sure why the guy doesn’t want to go to the hospital, but maybe Gwen or Grandpa can convince the guy bleeding on the ground that it would be a good idea to go.

He yelled at them to follow him, the urgency in his voice forgoing any explanation. They follow, and Ben leads them to the boy on the ground next to a garbage bin in the alleyway, bleeding on the floor and on the verge of passing out.

When Ben explained that the boy didn’t want a hospital, Grandpa scooped the boy up and carried him to the trailer. The boy protested at first, but soon passed out.

Ben and Gwen waited outside the trailer while Grandpa dressed the wounds on the boy inside. Ben would say he’s shocked that Grandpa knows first aid and has a lot of the necessary first aid supplies, but he’s not, because Grandpa knows a lot of things actually. Grandpa let them in when he finished bandaging the boy, who was sleeping on an extra pull out bed.

“Ben, did you manage to get a name from him? Maybe we can contact his family,” Grandpa asked. The boy looked just a little older than Ben and Gwen, so he must have some family looking for him. Unless…

“I didn’t, but he was hiding inside the trash,” Ben pointed out. “I don’t even know why he was out there,” Unless he doesn’t have any family left? Unless he was running away from home?

“Well, no matter what he said, he needs a hospital. Let’s take him to the nearest one.”

They drive for just a few minutes when the boy gasped awake, turning his head wildly and attempting to sit up, before the pain stopped him.

“W-Where? What?” The boy gasped.

“We’re taking you to a hospital,” Grandpa Max said sternly from the driver’s seat.

“N-No you can’t!” The boy groaned but managed to sit up successfully. Ben wondered if the guy was worried about paying for hospital bills or something.

“As the adult in this situation, it would be irresponsible of me if I didn’t help you get medical care in your current situation.” Grandpa Max replied. Ben thought he sounded kind of badass, but he would have hated that tone if it were directed at him.

“I– the thing is–” the boy took a deep breath. After a pause, he said, “The hospital won’t help me. They’ll make things worse. I’m not–” He gulped. “The hospitals are going to find something suspicious in my blood, and then they’ll contact other organizations about it, who won’t treat me… with human rights,”

The silence was looming. Grandpa Max slowed down the vehicle, before moving to the shoulder of the road and pressing the hazard lights. He turned back to face the boy.

“Then how can we help you, if the hospital isn’t an option?” Grandpa asked. Ben was a little surprised that Grandpa agreed to the ‘no hospital’ request, but maybe Grandpa knew more than either he or Gwen did. Grandpa did meet all sorts of interesting people from his days as a plumber – even if Ben sometimes doubted that Grandpa was actually a plumber.

“Would you believe me if I said I heal fast? Because I do. I can walk it off eventually, as long as I get enough food and sleep,”

“I can believe that,” Grandpa responded with a smile. “Which reminds me, it’s almost time for dinner,”

This riled up Ben and Gwen.

“Grandpa, can we please get something normal like pizza or burgers or something?!” Gwen cried. “Just this once! We don’t know if –” Gwen points to the new guy who was beginning to lie back down again –” we don’t know if the new guy can handle your specialty cooking!”

“Why don’t we let him – young man, what’s your name?”

“Danny,”

“Why don’t we let Danny decide what’s for dinner?”

Ben and Gwen gave the boy their best puppy dog stares.

“I… dunno? I’ll just eat whatever you guys normally eat?”

Ben and Gwen sighed in defeat, while Grandpa Max chuckled.

“Don’t worry Danny, I’ll cook you something so nutritious, you’ll be back on your feet in no time,”

Danny stayed silent in the drive, lying down and trying to stay awake. Ben and Gwen tried talking to Danny, but mostly got one worded responses back from him. They decided that watching some DVDs would help pass the time, but they inevitably began to argue over what to watch.

“Let’s watch Sumo Slammers!” Ben said. “I bet Danny would like Sumo Slammers!”

“But we watched Sumo Slammers last time, Ben! I wanna watch Lucky Cat! I didn’t even get to watch this one yet!”

“Lucky Cat?” Danny stirred from his bed. “Y-you have Lucky Cat DVDs?”

“Yes! The latest movie! In limited edition packaging to celebrate the serie’s 20th anniversary!” Gwen beamed.

"Can we watch that?"

Okay, Danny doesn’t know how terrible Grandpa Max’s cooking was, and that’s why he didn’t pick anything for dinner, but Danny must know that Lucky Cat is for girls and Sumo Slammers is for boys! His taste can’t be that bad!

“Why would you pick Lucky Cat?” Ben asked Danny.

“My sister used to watch it,”

Oh. Ben decided to stop questioning Danny’s decisions.

They drove for a little over an hour to get to a specialty shop that Grandpa Max wanted to get ingredients from. Danny fell asleep part way through the movie – Ben would gloat that it’s because the movie was boring, but he knew it’s because Danny’s in recovery. Ben stayed with Danny in the RustBucket while Gwen and Grandpa went into the shop to buy the still alive ingredients of their dinner.

Danny woke up from his nap, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He took stock of his surroundings, noticing Gwen and Grandpa’s absence and the darkening of the sky outside.

“Hey Ben, what time is it?” Danny asked.

Ben looked at the clock next to the driver’s seat.

“7:45 PM,” he answered.

“Why didn’t you look at your watch to answer that question?” Danny asked pointedly.

“It doesn't work,” Ben replied sheepishly.

“Then why wear a watch that doesn’t work?” A pause. Then, “Ben, are you that giant ghost fly?”

“Ghost? Wait, are you that ghost guy?” Ben asked.

“I-I mean, I am but–”

“You were so cool! The way you flew around all flashy and shot down those eagles and –”

“Shhhh!! Don’t be so loud about it! You can’t tell anyone!” Danny panicked. “You can’t! Don’t want the Guys in White to find me again,”

Ben remembered how panicked that ghost guy was when he mentioned white suit guys, and suddenly Danny’s ‘no hospital’ demand made a lot of sense.

“Don’t tell Gwen or your grandpa,” Danny pleaded. “I don’t want to freak them out, I’m already intruding in your RV,”

“Why? It wouldn’t matter to them. I mean, I have this watch that lets me transform into aliens like Stinkfly, so it’s fine,” Ben wondered if Grandpa already figured out that the white suited guys were after Danny, even without knowing the full story.

Danny narrowed his eyes.

“Are you saying they know? That you have –” Danny hesitantly pointed to the watch on Ben’s wrist. “That you have those powers and that you used them and,... everything?”

“Well, yeah,” Ben nodded.

“And no one kicked you out?” Danny gulped.

“I mean, my parents don’t know, but that’s because I got this watch while on this road trip. I haven’t figured out how to tell that yet but I know Gwen and Grandpa will help me figure that part out.”

Ben wondered just what Danny had gone through to ask questions like that.

The next couple hours were largely uneventful as Grandpa Max cooked his surprise dinner while Ben, Gwen, and Danny rewatched the parts of the Lucky Girl movie that Danny missed earlier from falling asleep.

When Grandpa was done cooking dinner, he came and gave them all their plates, but Danny insisted he could get out of bed and sit on the benches outside with them.

“Grilled octopus.” Grandpa Max exclaimed. “Incredibly nutritious and high calorie meat. This one’s a rare breed! And their eyeballs are a delicacy.”

Ben and Gwen wrinkled their noses, but Danny took a bite. They watched, hoping the new guy would come to his senses soon enough.

A single tear rolled down Danny’s eye.

“How does it taste?” Grandpa asked.

“It’s so good,” Danny said in awe. “It tastes so,” he gulped. “So good!”

The tears welled up into sobbing.

“I-I can’t believe you made this, it’s–it’s amazing! I mean you made so much, and for everyone!”

“Eat up, kiddo. You can have seconds or thirds if you want,”

Ben thought Grandpa would be delighted that someone loved his cooking, but he looked a lot more concerned instead.

During the entire time they’ve spent with Danny, Ben couldn’t help but think about that Kevin guy from last month.

Kevin was homeless because his folks didn’t accept his power – and yet he and Danny couldn’t be any more opposite of each other. Kevin cared more about doing what he wanted when he wanted, but Ben saw Danny help people out – people he was afraid of and running away from. Danny missed his family, and appreciated what he and Gwen couldn’t.

And while Kevin was what Grandpa Max called a “bad influence”, Danny was probably the opposite of that too. He wouldn’t mind if Danny stuck around with them for the rest of their summer vacation.