Ben 10's Hero Academia

Chapter 04: Frightful Fisticuffs

CREEEAK

The sound of Ben opening the heavy and worn down door echoed throughout the entire empty mall, sending shivers down the spine of both Ben and Greymatter but even with this fear in their hearts they marched on chasing after Ripjaws.

The mall must have been abandoned quite a while ago seeing as all walls were covered in graffiti and those that were not were instead covered in slowly growing vines and vegetation. It seemed that all windows had been covered with newspapers and fliers and to make matters worse, with the sun setting on the outside the interior of the mall became darker by the second making it almost impossible to tell what was right in front of Ben, despite this he did not hesitate to continue his search for his aquatic alien, after all there weren't that many places that he could have run off to or so he hoped.

Ben continued walking forward scanning his surroundings carefully in the hopes of spotting a clue to Ripjaws whereabouts when suddenly-

THUD

"AAAAHH"

Ben screamed in shock as he fell and hit the floor. He slowly got back up and rubbed his forehead, looking back he noticed that he had tripped on a chair that had been left on the ground, he let out an annoyed sigh and decided to activate the Omnitrix to use it as a makeshift flashlight so that he could analyze his surroundings before continuing his quest.

Ben began to scan the area in front of him, for the most part it was just like any regular shopping mall, there were stores to his left and there were stores to his right nothing unusual there, he even entered a few but they were all abandoned with maybe a shelf or two still intact, he tried turning on the lights in the hopes of lighting up the area but found no success, the teen also noticed that there was a second floor above him although he couldn't see any nearby escalators or stairs which meant they were probably located on the other side of the mall or maybe hidden in some dark corner he couldn't see as of now, and finally Ben noticed the multiple piles of tables signs and chairs and other worn down junk that rotted away on the floor.

It took Ben some time to dodge all of the rubble and trash but he was able to make it to the other end of the hall which was seemingly devoid of any garbage and rubble, with nothing more on his way Ben decided to check the Omnitrix's radar once more in the hopes of finding Ripjaws current location and lucky for the teen, Ripjaw's icon flashed on the watch's screen and best of all it was just ahead of him, but as Ben took one step forward the icon suddenly vanished from the GPS as if it had never been there in the first place.

Ben was shocked and confused, he moved his wrist around believing that something could have caused some kind of interference to the watch's radar system however no matter where he positioned himself, Ripjaw's icon simply refused to show up again

"Aw come on! Sigh- Say little guy, think you can tell what's wrong with the watch now?"

Ben asked the small frog alien on his pocket, who in response simply shrugged as if to say that he would try to, but before Ben could pick up Greymatter and place him on his wrist

THUD

"Huh! What was that!"

The teen hero jumped in fear as a loud mechanical noise echoed throughout the dark mall's hallways. It was hard to describe what said sound was like but it sounded somewhat similar to an engine of sorts being turned on.

And once again the duo's hearts were filled with fear, even then Ben knew that he had to check the source of the sudden noise after all it could very well have been caused by Ripjaws which meant that he was closer than the Omnitrix's radar had indicated (Although that was not the most comforting of news to have at the moment).