Chapter Text
Main Heroes
This concerns only the main characters. All the other stuff will be chunked into parts.
Ben
The titular hero of the fic, this Ben is a bit different. By virtue of the fact that he is not the one actually doing most of the fighting he has to rely upon his brain more. It’s always been a thing that Ben is smarter than most give him credit for, good examples being any time he wins despite having mismatched powers. Little tangent, but the most prominent example in my mind being how Ben ultimately defeats the Stalker in episode 4 of ultimate alien. Namely he realizes that the Stalker knows all his moves he uses moves that aren’t his as well as the two aliens not programmed into the Stalker, those being Nanomech and Titaness (Way Big). Side note; in this AU’s version of events Nanomech getting shot into the droid despite being able to fly is explained by Ben making the plan. His thought process is that the machine is currently going haywire and being fired at it is the best and fastest way to get to the inner workings of the bot at minimum risk.
But back to this Ben, his inner smarts are more on display because he doesn't transform at all. He instead directs the aliens he summons. Another way this is shown off is in the names he gives the heroes, which are for the most part different than the ones in canon. Some like XLR8, Feedback, and Nanomech just fit to well to change, but I think for the most part the heroines should have names that fit better. And the names are often clever, like Armizon for 4-arms or Heart’s Fire for Heatblast.
Ben still loves Smoothies and Chili Fries, but its more realistic. They might be his favorite drink but the Contumelia won’t be Mr. smoothie to Ben (they appear as whatever is closest to your heart). Side note; at first the heroes don’t trust the Contumelia because they only know that they made the Annihilarrgh.
Ben is also completely resistant to the aliens' flirtations, and his heart chooses its own path. The exact reason depends upon how old he is. In the original series the fact that he’s just ten years old means their innuendos and flirting fly over his head or are considered to be weird/nonsense. Whenever villains or other people comment on it he thinks it’s nonsense or some form of jealousy over the fact that he can summon superheroes.
When he’s eleven he kinda falls in love with Feedback, to the ire of the other girls (though nothing more comes of this than grumbling from them). She becomes his favorite girl, and summons her as much as possible, the boy considering her his best friend mostly because things like romance were still alien to him. Malware killing Feedback hits Ben extremely hard, causing the realization that the heroes are not his pokémon and taking off the watch. Everyone else tries to persuade him to not give up, one notable argument being given by Azmuth himself in that Malware was a fluke, and that barring some extremely unlikely event it won’t happen again (Azmuth does not reveal that Gwen’s right about the aliens and if they are killed but their DNA is still in the data stream they can just be resurrected by summoning them because it might get Ben to start questioning the whole superhero thing). But Ben is insistent.
At 12, Ben realizes that Gwen was right about the heroes coming from the watch by using logic about what he knows about them. This does nothing to make his guilt over Feedback lessen but actually makes it so much worse. Because before he thought that Feedback’s death left behind a mourning family, which was bad enough. But the fact that she and the other heroes literally only have him and the Tennyson family makes the guilt skyrocket because he was practically everything to her and he sent her to die. This leads to a period of depression, albeit one of a more comedic and less serious type especially as he had no desire to hurt or kill himself.
It would be played for laughs at first, with Ben being embarrassed by his mom calling it his emo-period. Then when the equivalent of Omniverse rolls around it gets a major Cerberus callback, with even the stuff that made it closer to being emo being reframed as really dark. The fact that he never wanted to hurt himself is because the emotional hurt was so heavy and it was something he deserved, same reason he felt no suicidal tendencies because he felt he needed to suffer. Mind you he got back to normal, but it’s there in the background.
When he’s about 14 and starts understanding romance, he realizes how flirty the interactions with the aliens were and makes the conclusion that Azmuth designed it so the heroes naturally love the wielder of the watch so as to give them more motivation.
Ultimately he settles on ignoring their advances, though he has a moment of annoyance when the risqué outfits Azmuth added in the definite Chaquetrix are revealed. He only finds out about the true purpose of the Chaquetrix’s original function when he’s 42, after Azmuth got extremely drunk.
Gwen
Ben’s cousin, Gwen is one of the first people to join Ben in his heroism. Gwen at first is skeptical of the alien heroes and of Ben himself, and often times they got into fights during the road trips they took during the ages of ten and eleven. She has the natural gift for magic, though its confused by her strong Anodite heritage, as during alien force she mistakes her mana constructs for magic (when this is revealed Skurd notes it’s a common mistake, and like a lot of these types of secrets known by Skurd/ abilities the slimebiote doesn’t use its justified by him deeming it unnecessary or not important).
She and Ben in the original series have a love/hate relationship more typical of siblings than of cousins. The two form an actual friendship by Alien Force, and this has its seed in the events that caused Ben to remove the Chaquetrix. Namely she sees how heartbroken Ben is by the death of Feedback and stops acting like what might be called a Tsundere, primarily because Ben needs someone his own age that he can talk to.
There really isn’t much else about her differences from either Ben 10 canon or Chaquetrix canon, except for the fact that she’s bi-sexual. And even then I’m kinda unsure if that’s a difference.
Kevin
First up, I hate the retcon that Osmosians (Kevin’s species until omniverse) are just mutants made by some random rouge plumber, so that’s gone. Mind you, Kevin is only half Osmosian, with the other half being human so he doesn’t have horns like Agreggor.
Kevin has a rather shady past, starting out as one of Ben’s most powerful foes and the evil counterpart to Ben. His powers at first are energy absorption, and the whole Kevin 11 thing happens almost completely unchanged, with the only real difference being that before the mutation his alien forms were female and that caused him to start randomly becoming female when human (this sticks with him for the rest of his life, causing comedic situations and angst in equal measures).
He’s not female when he becomes Kevin 11 or Ultimate Kevin, which is actually part of the reason why those forms are so crazy. It’s not just the fact that Osmosians get crazier with the more DNA they absorb (canon to Chaquetrix) or the trauma of being changed into a literal monster/being forced to experience becoming a monster again. You see Kevin’s brain became adapted to being both a male and female, regulating hormones as necessary and such. Becoming Kevin 11 meant his brain suddenly had to rewrite his genetic code to be able to be the mutant he became, things like making sure his unconscious breathing was still through his mouth and not his gills, things like that. The fact that he used to have a mixture of testosterone and estrogen was his brains baseline, but the rewriting used all the estrogen as fuel, but that sudden lack inflicted an extreme hormone imbalance.
When Alien Force rolls around he’s served his time and is at first back to his old self; selling tech far too advanced for the ones paying for it. He joins Ben’s crew because of his crush on Gwen and slowly becomes a real hero. There are many hiccups and backslides, but overall he becomes good, even getting to be an official couple with Gwen.
His powers in Alien Force, i.e., the matter absorption, is something any osmosian can do and is actually the standard because the energy absorption tends to make them crazy. Indeed, its common galactic knowledge that almost every Osmosian with energy absorption as their go to power is criminally insane. It’s not hard and fast, but since its true 95% of the time it’s a good rule of thumb. Kevin’s limit on it, namely that he needs a big thing when absorbing, are wholly mental. This is because he unlocked his powers in the Null Void. But when not really thinking about it or is so desperate that most of his logic centers are shut down he can use something as small as a doorknob, a padlock, or even Gwen’s marbles.
Kevin still loves his car more than anything, and its misfortunes are numerous, even more than in canon due to the aliens being summoned and sticking around for long periods of time.
Skurd
This version of Skurd is radically different from canon because I love his voice and snark but also see him as a bit too broken for him to be used unaltered. So in this AU the Slimebiotes (Skurd’s species) are in many ways an example of the trope In Name Only (although Slimebiotes are still the reason why DNA exists). They function more like the Symbiotes from spiderman, even looking like Venom does in the live action movie, namely the iconic scene in the first movie where Venom reveals himself to Eddie. Skurd’s default look is that but green. They don’t have the broken alien mix and match DNA powers, or more accurately Skurd almost never uses them, and they can easily detach from whoever they are connected to and move around/survive indefinitely without a host.
In my AU, Skurd is actually introduced in Alien Force. He’s just as snarky as ever but is a lot more moral; he works with Magister Labris as his partner. He actually allows Labris to break out of Gwen’s mana constructs, when Ben compliments Gwen he gives the quip, “You may be good, but not good enough!” He manifests and bites into the construct, destroying it and after a comment on how mana tastes good but can’t fill him up he says, “Alright children, know that we are plumbers, the duly deputized law enforcement officers of this galaxy. Before we add assault of an officer to your rap sheet, what’s your motive?” At that the scene progress as it does in ben 10 canon, only without Labris asking to be freed. When Labris dies, he gives Skurd the order to aid Ben and his team, which Skurd honors.
He functions mostly as comedic relief and exposition but is a vital member of the team. Its him who fill the heroes in on things they don’t know and occasionally attacks or goes off and does his own thing. Skurd in this AU actually suffers from a bit of depression at the fact that he’s the last of his kind.
His main help in combat is defending Ben, as while in the later events of the AU Ben gets plumber training and weapons it doesn’t change the fact that as a human he’s the most vulnerable. He doesn’t make a full costume for Ben and mostly fights independently, but he will give Ben any aid he can. It’s not just simple things he can turn into, if he has enough fuel he can turn into practically anything. One good example of this in the episode Something Zombimbo This Way Comes, in which Skurd and Ben are cornered by zombies before he saves them both by becoming a jetpack. Admittedly it quickly turns into a funny moment as he reveals that he has no idea how to stop in this form. In addition, his nature as a higher being means he is immune to mind control/manipulation or other unknowable things and see through any illusion. He can also look at Stheno’s (toepick) face with no problems (though he is properly respectful of it).
He’s also shown to be ravenously hungry, easily able to eat the entire contents of a carnival food stand in mere moments. Most of his solo adventures start with him getting hungry and leaving the group to eat. Skurd is even able to eat things like mana and concepts, even being the one to cause the reveal that DNAliens can be cured by biting the xenocite off of the DNAliens confronting Alan in Everybody Talks About The Weather, while Southerne Belle (swampfire) frees herself and the others.
Skurd is extremely chaotic, loving to play pranks and such, and keeps info to himself if it would be funny, but very serious when the moment calls for it and giving straightforward answers if not doing so would be damaging. He’s also very pop culture savvy, for instance as a jetpack he yells “Skurd Fett away!” (a reference to Crazyfilms1121’s Lego Spongebob Candy Pirates episode) and in his first confrontation with Zombimbo in the first Skurd solo story he sings the Scarm Song.
Skurd has a wary relationship with Azmuth. He’s the only one to have figured out his true perversion and yet not have a friendship with him. Most people who see the hints of his dirty old man nature see it as just eccentric genius, while those who know him just consider it a quirk. He knows Azmuth is a good guy, mostly because not even the Great Thinker could hide any perverted misdeeds completely if he did them. But Skurd is still wary, and the first time he meets Azmuth and they are alone he says the eukaryotic examination line from Malgax Attacks, with Skurd responding with the very uncertain “um… help?” Side note; that line was so funny to me that it caused me to give Skurd the massive promotion he has.
Rook Blonko
Rook is introduced in Omniverse, and is one of the two who replace Gwen and Kevin as full time heroes when the two go off to college (the other, in a reference to Ben 10 Guardians, is Julie Yamamoto). Rook is almost completely unchanged from canon, being a counterpart to Ben in that he’s essentially all training no practical experience in contrast to Ben being no training all practical experience. The only real thing I can point out is that Skurd doesn’t trust him at first, being the only member of Team Tennyson besides Ben that stays on full time in omniverse. Side note; Ben doesn’t go off to college like Gwen and Kevin because he got an honorary degree at some point during Ultimate Alien.
The Chaquetrix itself
In my own opinion, the canon omnitrix has enough personality to be a character despite not being a true character in the show, so I will be giving the Chaquetrix an entry as a hero.
The Chaquetrix was meant to be a tool for understanding, but a combination of young Max Tennyson’s suggestions and this Azmuth being a dirty old man means it’s turned into this form. It’s still a tool for understanding, it’s just that the understanding isn’t in the form of a literal walk a mile in another’s shoes it’s of a more carnal bent.
The Chaquetrix has certain things that all versions share. First is that only a total of three aliens can be summoned at a time unless master control is enabled. Second is that the length of time aliens can be summoned is ultimately up to the plot, but it gets shorter the more aliens are summoned and when they get swapped out (equivalent of form changes). And third is that no matter the version the Chaquetrix is buggy as heck, although some if it is user error (Azmuth says all those times Ben got the wrong form is because he’s hitting the Omnitrix so hard that the select screen is shifting, and I find this so funny that I am making this true for the AU).
The original Chaquetrix is the prototype, and as such it has the aliens not know their true purpose.
The Ultimate Chaquetrix is the equivalent of the ultimatrix, though it is called Chaquetrix most of the time but it’s called Ultimate Chaquetrix when its refered to explicitly as its own thing instead of generally. The aliens don’t know their true purpose because Albedo got rid of that, although he couldn’t get rid of the love thing.
The definitive Chaquetrix has all the hard unlocked aliens (those Ben has actually used) have their own independent lives and human forms. Azmuth actually removed the whole sex thing but kept the love and added features which honored the original purpose (sexy outfits).