Chapter Text
| Cedar City, Utah, USA
| June 01, 02:27 PDT
Ben was woken by a boot in his face.
He was pretty sure it was his face at least, since the slime of his body congealed back into a pair of eyes around the fresh bootprint as whoever it was stepped off him. Either way, rude.
“Ugh, what is this?” A gruff voice asked, and Ben felt the part of himself still stuck on the bottom of the boot get scraped against the ground.
“Nasty is what it is,” a second voice replied. “Maybe our friend here made a mess.”
Ben pushed his antigrav projector up, pulling his liquid body behind it to raise his ‘head’ off the ground just in time to see a scrawny guy in a jacket plant a foot on Albedo’s shoulder and roll him over.
Albedo started awake only for the guy’s partner, a burlier man in a nearly identical jacket, to step on his wrist. “You just stay down there. This is our turf you’re sleeping on, and that means there’s a fee.”
Even blinking groggily, Albedo was already awake enough to give the guys the most disdainful sneer Ben’s face could manage. “I’m sleeping in an alley. Surely there are more suitable targets for extortion, or are you delinquents of such shoddy stock that sleeping vagrants are all you can overpower?”
Ben’s first thought was ‘I was right, this is a mugging alley.’ His second thought as the guy drew back his foot to kick Albedo, was ‘oh absolutely not.’
Big Guy’s first mistake was choosing to be a mugger at all, and his second mistake was doing it anywhere Ben could see it, but his third mistake was trying to kick Albedo with the foot still coated with Goop slime.
With the ease of curling a finger, Ben snapped it out to stick to the ground like the world’s biggest, slimiest piece of gum, and Big Guy nearly fell on his face as he tried to swing his foot forward and found it didn’t move at all. If Ben wanted to, Goop was more than enough to handle two muggers. But he was tired and annoyed, and that was just from being woken up.
For a moment he didn’t see Albedo, the alien villain who’d nearly ruined his life more than once. He just saw a person on the ground getting picked on by people stronger than them, and that was enough to push him all the way into furious.
He surged upwards and slapped a tendril of slime against the Omnitrix. Big Guy stumbled forward as the slime restraining him suddenly vanished, while Ben felt his liquid body congeal and solidify, from liquid to something like flesh and then to something much more dense as he grew to a frame that stood head and shoulders above the bigger guy.
Skinny had been torn between following up on the kick that never came and looking back to see what was up with his partner when the green flash of the transformation behind them settled matters. He turned around just in time for Ben to grab him by the collar instead of the scruff of his neck and throw the lowlife bodily down the alley.
His trailing cry ended in a crash against the ground, by which point Ben was already grabbing the mugger’s partner by the arm and sending him after the first. The two were left in a tangled pile of limbs, trying to push themselves back to their feet and already yelling confused threats.
Ben put a stop to that by taking a heavy step closer to them, drawing their attention away from where Albedo was appraising them and towards the figure towering over them.
“Get lost. Now.”
It had been a while since Ben couldn’t count on the celebrity factor of his identity to shock common thugs like this into surrender. But even back when he’d been more of a cryptid than a superhero, seven feet of diamond and menace usually made guys like this think twice.
Usually. Not-So-Big-Anymore Guy was already up and hauling Skinny with him, bracing himself like he was getting ready to throw a punch instead of turn and run. “We don’t take orders from freaks!”
Okay maybe these guys were dumb enough to need more than two thoughts. But Ben was a generous guy, he could help them along.
Ben raised a fist, which didn’t stay a fist for long as it formed into a jagged collection of crystal before firing a shard into the ground between the mugger’s feet. It was closer than it would have been if he hadn’t made the freak comment, but Ben was careful enough to make sure the mugger wouldn’t lose any toes.
The guy’s face went pale, and only went paler as Ben’s arm continued the upward arc until those crystals were aimed straight at his chest.
“That’s fine. Make my day.”
Skinny broke first, turning and bolting down the alley as fast as his legs could carry him. Without his friend to back him up, Formerly-Big Guy didn’t last much longer before he made a run for it too.
Ben waited for them to get out of sight before he let the crystal cluster shift back into a hand and turned to Albedo. “You alright?”
Albedo shot him a glare as he pushed himself up to sitting. “I didn’t need your assistance, Tennyson. I had it under control.”
Ben bristled at that. Okay maybe he hadn’t been expecting a ‘thank you,’ but… no, he actually had been expecting that. It was pretty much the bare minimum people usually gave him after he rescued them from muggers or robbers or the rampaging robot of the week.
He’d done the same thing with the ride to the city too, was Albedo just allergic to manners?
“Oh yeah? What part were you controlling? The mugging? The guy about to kick you in the ribs?”
“It was two human thugs!” Albedo snapped. “I’ve dealt with worse without needing you to run to my rescue.”
“So you’d rather get robbed than have me help you?” Ben asked in disbelief. The brief moment seeing Albedo as just another person in need of help was long gone, now it was just his annoying, arrogant doppelganger.
“The only money I have on me is yours,” Albedo said, his expression finally twisting out of annoyance and anger into a smirk. Somehow, Ben was not pleased with this development. “I’d survive the loss.”
“You… gah!” Ben spun on his heel so he didn’t have to look at the world’s most ungrateful albino mirror. Kicking the crystal in the ground to tear it free of the concrete and send it skittering down the alley was petty too, but he was willing to cut himself some slack. Who was gonna judge him for it, the super villain? “I can’t wait until I don’t have to deal with you anymore.”
“Yes, that makes two of us,” Albedo retorted. “How much longer until we can go to your miserable human library without offending your conscious?””
“The sign said they open at 9 AM.” Because of course the super genius couldn’t be bothered to putting some of those IQ points to work remembering business hours for himself.
“And currently it is…”
Ben looked at his watchless wrist. “Night.”
Albedo sighed. “Fine, be that way. You said we’re in the Rockies, which are in the northern hemisphere, correct? A simple observation of the stars should tell me the time.”
A few seconds of silence passed while Ben waited for the inevitable smug reply, tapping his finger on his arm with a clink-clink-clink of crystal against crystal, before Ben finally got curious enough to look back and see Albedo craning his head back to look up at the sky. “So? What time is it?”
“Polluted.”
“Fan-tastic,” Ben drawled, rolling his eyes before hitting the Omnitrix to switch to XLR8. It was a weird feeling going from being that big and heavy to something so much lighter and faster, it almost felt like he’d become weightless. “I’m gonna go grab those guys and drop them at the nearest police station. You stay here and sulk or whatever.”
He let his visor snap down and seal his helmet, but paused before he could tear off after the thieves. Right now his eyes and brain were meant to take in and process details to the tune of miles per second, and they couldn’t help but latch onto the glimmer of the crystal he’d kicked down the alley.
“And when I get back, I’m going to solve our money problem.”
| Cedar City
| June 01, 09:04 PDT
The pawn broker adjusted her eyepiece, leaning closer to her subject as Albedo tapped his foot impatiently.
“Relax,” Ben whispered, leaning in behind him. “This is normal for selling stuff like this.”
Without a visible target to glare at, Albedo just glared at the pawn broker.
“And try smiling instead of glaring,” Ben added, “You’re just a normal guy, here to pawn off some old jewelry.”
“This isn’t jewelry, this is loose gems. I look like I robbed a jeweller and I’m selling the goods.” Albedo hissed under his breath.
He did try to follow Ben’s advice though. Or maybe he was just trying to spite him, because Ben had seen him smile before and normally it didn’t look nearly that much like a death grimace.
“Okay, fine, drop the smile,” Ben hastily corrected. “And you’re the one who wanted to do this first thing in the morning.”
“We don’t have time to waste, Tennyson!”
The pawn broker looked up at the noise and Albedo shut up, while Ben tucked his wings closer around him and double checked he was still invisible. Maybe in West Virginia he could get away with being seen as a giant moth man, but he didn’t want to deal with the panic that would cause in Utah.
“Apologies,” Albedo said, “just a… cough.”
She seemed to buy that at least and went back to turning over the green-blue gem in her hands. It had taken Ben a while to chip and scrape Diamondhead’s crystal shard into something passable as a gemstone, especially since all he had to work with was more of the same while hunched under a back alley light. But Albedo hadn’t gotten thrown out as soon as he put it on the counter, so he’d count it as a solid B+.
“If this doesn’t work, or she gets suspicious-”
“Then we’ll move towns and try again,” Ben cut him off before he could work himself back up. “Sooner or later we’ll find someone willing to take a mysterious gem without asking questions. And it’s not like we stole it in the first place. Honestly I’m surprised you never did this back on our Earth.”
“On our Earth, petrosapien crystals are too well known to extraterrestrial merchants to be valuable, except to anthropological collectors during the period where Vilgax had exterminated the majority of their population. And I had assumed humans would be able to recognize they weren’t a traditional gem and would refuse to purchase them.”
“Half right, but you got the second part wrong.” Ben said, jumping on the chance to be the one correcting Albedo for a change. “Maybe she’ll be able to tell it’s not a diamond, but as long as she knows it isn’t glass, it being a mystery is just gonna make her want to buy it more.”
“I find it unlikely that’s-”
“Okay,” the pawn broker said, returning to the counter. Albedo hastily stopped talking again, though Ben could tell he was getting increasingly annoyed about being interrupted so many times. “It’s not diamond, I can tell you that much. And you were right about it being some kind of gem. Where did you say you found it?”
“The woods,” Albedo said stiffly. At least he wasn’t glaring at her anymore.
“Right…” she said, giving him an odd look before almost visibly choosing not to press harder. “Anyways, it’s pretty but it’s not worth much, especially since it’s just loose.”
She didn’t say anything else, just gave Albedo a pointed look.
Oh, Ben knew this one. Kevin had taught him during one of his stories from his… shadier business deals, letting the other person make assumptions about price and lead them into naming a higher or lower amount than the thing was actually worth.
“Ask for one thousand,” he hissed at Albedo.
Albedo got halfway through an annoyed glance into thin air before correcting himself. “Then I think one thousand dollars would be a fair price.”
From the way she grimaced, she’d been hoping for him to guess lower. One point to Team Tennyson!
“You’d be lucky to get one hundred for this,” she said, “but I’ll go two hundred to be generous.”
“Don’t accept, she’s haggling.”
“Why would she-”
“Stop talking to me! Ask for eight hundred.”
“Eight hundred.” Albedo repeated mechanically.
“Look, kid, this thing’s barely cut,” she said, gesturing with the crystal.
“Rude,” whispered Ben.
“I can break the bank and do three hundred.”
“It’s big enough for her to get recut,” Ben urged, which Albedo repeated for him, “seven hundred’s more than fair.”
“Four.”
“Six.”
“Four-fifty, and you can pick out something for free,” she said, gesturing to the shelves full of stuff.
“...Well?” Albedo whispered.
“Decent enough,” Ben admitted, “take it.”
He let Albedo handle the last details of the sale as he wandered around the store to take a peek at what they had. There was a lot of themed stuff, way more than he’d ever seen before. Lunchboxes and blankets and decorations, plastered in bright colors and bold fonts proclaiming names like Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Captain Atom.
So these would be the superheroes Albedo had mentioned. He picked up a bright orange mug with a fishscale pattern, turning it over to show off a cartoonish depiction of a blonde bearded man in a similarly orange top leaping out of what had very clearly been waves that were then recolored as coffee.
He hadn’t had much time to really sit and dwell on it before, but he wasn’t really sure how to feel about there being other heroes. Sure, home had Lucky Girl and Captain Nemesis and Kangaroo Commando, and sort of the Galactic Enforcers, but they focused too small on a single town, or too big with Earth as nothing but a name on a list of dozens of planets, or just flat-out turned evil.
He’d been Earth’s only real superhero. He was the one saving people and getting on the news and having terrible themed mugs made about him. And now he was… what, one of a dozen? More?
And he couldn’t even team up with them. Instead he was stuck partnered with/babysitting his supervillain doppelganger working on a science project to get them home. Which hopefully he’d be able to do, because if not…
Ben shivered and put the mug back before he could accidentally freeze and shatter it into pieces. Time for the classic trick of distracting himself from things he didn’t want to think about by focusing on literally anything else.
And a perfect distraction was leaving the counter now, tucking away the money along with an old cellphone.
Ben stepped straight through a shelf to get behind Albedo, doing his best to take his annoyance at the villain and his insistence on avoiding other superheroes and put it in with all the other thoughts he was trying not to think about.
“Why a cellphone?”
Albedo waited until they got out the door and didn’t have to whisper before replying. “It’s a simplistic device, but its components should be useful enough to repurpose. I’m surprised you didn’t micromanage my purchase like you did the sale. Have your fill of bossing me around?”
“Hey, if there’d been a Sumo Slammers card pack there, I’d have made you get that instead.”
“Of course you would have,” Albedo sighed. “Should I be concerned about the proprietor calling the police on me now that I’m not in the store?”
“Nah, not after she paid for it.” Ben waved off the concern, even knowing Albedo couldn’t see it. “If she did that, the cops would take the gem as evidence, and then she’d be out four hundred bucks and change for nothing. She’ll probably stay quiet and sell it off to someone else for ten times as much.”
“If your planet finds gems like that so valuable, why did you settle for such a low price!?”
“Chill, man,” Ben said, trying and mostly failing to grin at his own joke with Big Chill’s inflexible mouth. “We can always make more and sell them off somewhere else. But you have got to get way better at talking with people, she probably would have thrown you out if you had to haggle with her much longer.”
“All the more reason to get a bigger payout in one fell swoop instead of making me go through this more than we need to,” Albedo grumbled as he marched into the library.
“You were about ready,” Ben said normally, before hastily correcting to a whisper at the distant ‘shh!’ of some unseen librarian, “to take her first deal without haggling for it at all!”
“How was I supposed to know such a common material was worth any more to you primates? Her first figure already seemed exceedingly generous.”
“Yeah, see, that’s why I’m in charge of the haggling.”
“Your wallet contained a grand total of seventeen dollars, fifty four cents, and two taydens before our purchase yesterday and the payment for the gem five minutes ago,” Albedo retorted, “barely enough to purchase anything worth having. I doubt you qualify for a financial expert by any stretch of the definition.”
“Yeah? And how much did you have?”
“...So this is a human library.” Albedo blatantly changed the topic, prodding a book perched on top of a display. It was some cheap fantasy thing whose cover showed a guy with a sword facing off against some burbling slime thing that was clutching a damsel who was probably supposed to look terrified, but mostly just looked bored and kind of disgusted. From the way he was looking at it, Albedo empathized with her the most. “It’s… quaint.”
“I mean, it’s a library,” Ben shrugged, not feeling any particular need to defend a place he never wanted to visit anyways. “As long as they’ve got good internet the rest doesn’t matter.”
“Such low standards for a repository of knowledge,” Albedo sighed, giving the book one last disdainful glare before walking past to the computer corner. “I lament for the quality of your species’ scholars.”
Ben followed and claimed a computer for himself. While Albedo started fumbling his way through turning his on, Ben looked around to make sure they were alone, then hit the Omnitrix.
The bright green flash felt as conspicuous as letting the microwave go off at night, even more so when he wasn’t able to hide behind invisibility as his body expanded and liquified into a metallic slime. But if he was going to be surfing the web, better to do it as a living computer than a ghost moth.
“Tennyson!” Albedo hissed, looking around the same way Ben had a few seconds ago.
“Relax,” he said as he enveloped the computer, pulling himself into it and oozing through its circuits so the rest of his sentence came from its tinny speakers, “I already checked to make sure no one would see.”
“As if I would trust your attention to detail,” Albedo sneered, then flinched at a distant ‘shhh!’ But when a few seconds went by and no one jumped out to yell about aliens, he reluctantly went back to his own computer.
Ben was almost certain Albedo was disappointed that no one had come to investigate, if only because it meant he didn’t get to gloat about ‘I told you so.’ The guy really needed to learn to relax, but right now Ben had more important things to pay attention to. Namely the internet connection unfolding in his awareness as he finished integrating the computer’s internals.
It was only a second more before those internals dissolved and reformed better than before in a wave of Upgrade’s nanites, and then Ben was practically swimming in better internet speeds than even money could buy. Oh internet, how Ben had missed you and your endless entertainment.
But first things first, seeing if Albedo had lied to him. He pulled up the first search engine the library computer browser had available, nearly gagged when he realized this thing hadn’t been updated probably since before he was born, and then spent a few seconds upgrading that too.
Working with software rather than hardware was a weirder feeling, more like static electricity than moving his body, but it wasn’t actually that hard. But once he was finished, he pulled up the shiny new browser and did a search for ‘Ben 10.’
Absolutely nothing.
‘Ben Ten,’ ‘Ben Tennyson,’ and ‘Ben savior of the universe’ got, respectively, zero, zilch, and nada. So maybe Albedo had been telling the truth on that one. ‘Lucky Girl,’ ‘plumbers,’ ‘plumbers space cops,’ ‘Omnitrix,’ and then for good measure, ‘Providence,’ ‘EVO,’ and ‘nanite event’ also got nothing.
So not home, any of the alternate versions of home, or even the other dimension he got stranded in for a while. Man, why couldn’t anything ever be easy?
‘Bellwood’ at least got him something, though apparently in Pennsylvania, and he set that tab aside to commit the map to memory so he could track the town down later. ‘Sumo Slammers’ only got him a correction to something called ‘Samurai Slicers.’ But ‘Mr. Smoothy’ did get him a proper Wikipedia page for a fast food chain that looked almost identical to the one back home… until he read further down and found out it had gone out of business in 1996 because of a sanitation scandal it had never fully recovered from.
Okay, maybe he’d been too hasty in taking Albedo’s word that this ‘alternate reality’ thing was scientific. Maybe it was magic instead and this world was some kind of shadow realm designed to feed on his misery.
Then he tried ‘aliens’ and that was when he hit the jackpot. So many results flooded in that he oozed back from the computer’s processor to avoid taking the sheer number of webpages directly to his brain, letting the poor public machine handle it before he moved back in to look it over.
This was… a lot. Almost as much as he’d expect from back home. ‘Alien invasion’ narrowed it down only slightly, also like back home. So, who was talked about the most? That would be either the most important or the most recent, which looked like… something about a kryptonian invasion force.
He opened up the first article and read the first few paragraphs before distorting his circular eye that had taken over the computer screen into a harsh V, the closest he could get to pulling a face as Upgrade, and he hastily closed it. Right, he’d forgotten the other reason people would talk about something a lot: sheer petty spite.
Ben didn’t know who Superman was besides a name on some pawn shop lunchboxes, but the general tone of the article felt too Harangue-y to believe even half of what it was saying. At least whoever wrote that was only getting an article column instead of a full show.
‘First alien invasion’ then. That got better results, and a full Wikipedia page about something called apellaxians. He skimmed through that and a few of the articles, enough to get a gist about energy beings making bodies out of whatever materials they found laying around until they got stopped by the formation of the Justice League.
Which led him to the Wikipedia page about the Justice League, which quickly branched out into individual pages about its founding members. Superman (he knew that first article couldn’t be trusted), Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Flash, Aquaman… oh hey, he recognized that last one from the mug.
His first takeaway was that this Earth really did have more heroes than his. His second was that this Earth had way more problems too. Seriously, back home he could handle most of the planet’s big problems as one guy, but skimming through the pages for the various heroes he kept finding more and more links for different villains and disasters.
Within a few minutes he had fifty different tabs open, skimming and flipping between them as new details caught his attention. From heroes to villains to cities… Gotham City in particular kept coming up a lot, why did anyone still live there?
But otherwise it was pretty impressive. Lots of stories and videos of cities being rescued from natural disasters, villains being thwarted, people being saved. If he grew up here, Ben could totally see himself wearing a Superman shirt every day as a kid or arguing about which hero was the strongest on the playground.
“You sure we can’t just talk to the superheroes?” Ben asked, morphing his head back out of the computer screen to look at Albedo. “One of ‘em has to have some kind of secret lab or magic spell that can help us.”
“Absolutely,” Albedo retorted, not even looking away from his own computer as he typed. “Ability to help does not guarantee willingness to do so. Especially in my case, and I will remind you that I am your best chance of finding a way home. We will handle this on our own without exposing ourselves to this world’s heroes.”
“You’re being paranoid,” Ben complained.
“No, you’re being careless,” Albedo hissed. “How many times have you had to break the law or defy the Plumbers because doing good wasn’t the same as doing what authority wanted? Can you genuinely not imagine any circumstance in which we would be imprisoned or exploited by this authority just because some of them wear capes and bright costumes? Two individuals adrift from another dimension, carrying incredibly advanced technology and repositories of alien DNA, and in one case possessed of vast intellect, with no one to advocate for or rescue them?”
Ben wavered as he considered it. Albedo made some good points, but on the other hand, it didn’t hold as much weight now that he had names and faces (or logos in some cases) to put to the idea of this world’s heroes. “Well…”
“Or,” Albedo fully turned away from his computer to fix Ben with a glare, “would you like to have a discussion about Area 51?”
That got a full wince out of Ben, even as a one-eyed metallic blob. There was really no good argument against that, not after he’d seen what that prison was like himself. If there was even the possibility that this Earth had something like that, he couldn’t hold it against Albedo for wanting to take every possible precaution to avoid it.
Actually, Albedo looked human, so really it was Ben who was more at risk of ending up in some test tube under a government blacksite while he walked free. Had Albedo even realized that yet?
Probably not, otherwise the guy wouldn’t be shutting up about going to the heroes for help.
“That’s what I thought,” Albedo said when Ben didn’t reply, turning back to his computer. Ben would have expected him to seem smug after winning an argument, but instead he just looked… tired.
Okay, lesson learned, don’t keep prodding him with that plan. In fact, better to avoid talking about superheroes altogether and find something else to discuss, which ruled out everything Ben had been looking at. Villain’s browsing history it is.
“So what are you doing?” Ben stretched his head to twist it around and look at Albedo’s screen.
He’d been expecting news articles or scientific blueprints. Instead he just saw a document filled with more words than Ben could have typed in twice the time they’d been there.
Albedo sighed, but at least he didn’t shove Ben’s head away, so he was technically more relaxed about the invasion of his workspace than most people Ben hung out with. “I am working to secure gainful and productive employment for myself.”
“Gainful and… you’re job hunting?!” Ben squawked.
Albedo and the distant librarian shushed him in unison.
The screen of the computer Ben was inhabiting lit up with a volume bar that dropped to the bottom as he cranked the speakers down, then repeated with much less volume and just as much shock, “You’re job hunting?!”
He looked Albedo up and down. ‘His evil doppelganger submitting resumes’ was something he’d never, ever have imagined seeing. He’d smack himself to see if he was dreaming if not for the fact that he was worried about breaking the computer he was in.
“Of course not,” Albedo scoffed, “I’ve already found a job. I’m simply working to make it mine.”
It took a second for Ben to fully process the words. Okay that sounded way more suspicious than just getting a gig at the local pizza joint. And much more like Albedo.
“Albedo,” he said warningly, “tell me that somebody doesn’t already have that job and you’re stealing it from them.”
The villain cocked his head in thought. “I’m not, but now that you’ve suggested it-”
“Albedo!”
“Fine, fine.” Albedo grumbled. “No, I merely located an employment position that should meet our needs and is requesting applicants, with a high enough salary to obviate the need for further pawn shop visits and replete with resources with which to work on our main task of returning home.”
Now that he knew Albedo wasn’t actively committing crimes to get the job, it honestly sounded pretty good. Not having to make any more gems to sell would save him a lot of time, save Albedo the trouble of having to make the sale, and save any more employees from having to interact with him. Win-win-win.
And anything that got them home faster was good. Especially if it meant they just gave Albedo the tech he needed to work on it instead of them having to scrounge and barter for it.
“Of course, the application process would be a waste of my time and talents,” Albedo continued, his tone starting to lapse from informational into bragging, “so I bypassed the electronic portion of the hiring process to add myself to the list of finalists. With a few filed patents with falsified backdates and some records to establish my identity, I will easily surpass whatever pitiful human competition there is for the position.”
“No worries about your glowing personality, I see.” Ben deadpanned.
Albedo scoffed. “As if any competent business would turn down an intellect like mine because of my personality.”
It was hard with only a single eye to work with, but Ben did his best to fix Albedo with an unimpressed look.
“And I made certain to find a position with an organization known for prioritizing results over people,” Albedo admitted. “The benefits are less robust than many of its competitors, but it should allow me significantly more freedom to operate. As long as I produce satisfactory work, which would be exemplary work by your species’ pitiful standards, then they will turn a blind eye to-”
“To you being a jerk?” Ben finished for him.
“To any abrasive personality traits,” Albedo spoke over him with a glare. “I understand that you’ve never actually had to bother seeking employment for yourself, but rest assured, I know what I’m doing. By this time next week I’ll be lucratively employed at Lexcorp.”