Ben 10: Justice Incarnate

Settling In

3:46 PM

"Man, that walk took forever." Ben reached the end of a forest line near the city limits. 'I don't want to scare people, so I better change back.' With a thought, he reverted back to human. He checked his jeans, black shirt, and a green jacket to make sure nothing made him stand out too much. Seeing nothing wrong, he continued walking toward the city and approached a large green sign. "Welcome to Central City. Huh. Not much of a creative name there." He shrugged. 'Well, time to explore the place.'

The city had its usual social classes: upper, middle, working, and lower. After exploring the middle of the city, his stomach growled. Reaching into his pockets for his wallet, he he only found his ID, credit, and debit card. 'Of all the days, I forgot to bring cash.' Ben sighed at his situation, deciding to take a look around town. Seeing a pawn shop, he had an idea. After confirming that it was empty, he walked into a nearby alley and activated the Omnitrix, transforming into Diamondhead.

Ben remembered the time when Kevin's body was used to farm taydenite. Initially, Diamondhead could only control silicone crystal, but after much training and focus, he could control crystals of varying compositions. Calming his mind, Ben grew a high-grade sapphire from the ground. He decided against making a diamond since he learned that diamonds are intrinsically worthless. He dug up the sapphire and transformed back to human. From there, he went to the pawnshop and spoke to the manager.

The man examined the stone with his eye piece. "This is some high-grade crystal. You didn't steal this, did you?"

"No, I didn't." He gave a slight glare to the rather large pawnshop owner. Ben lied, giving an innocent smile. "It's been in my family for generations."

The man sighed and took another look at the rock. 'There is definitely no professional cut, so it wasn't from any high-end place. There also doesn't seem to be any identifying marks. Even if this was stolen, there would be no way for police to identify it.' He gave a small smile. "Okay kid, I'll believe you."

The semi-high grade crystal was about 1 carat, so Ben received a respectable 10 grand.

The first purchases he made was chili fries from a nearby vendor. 'Thank whatever God exists that chili fries are an Omniversal concept.' Now that his hunger was taken care of, he had to rebuild a life here. He walked near the government district and found the city library. Luckily, people only needed a library card to borrow books. He walked to a computer terminal in an empty corner of the room.

Ben decided to update himself on this Earth's current events. What surprised him was that there were a good amount of superheroes and supervillains around. The US even made a prison specifically for villains and criminal "meta-humans" as the article said. Apparently, there is a group of superheroes that formed an organization called the Justice League that works alongside the UN for the world crisis. 'They remind me of The Galactic Enforcers. I really hope that they aren't similar in personality.'

He continued to browse through various articles learning about the members of the league and the respective adversaries. One article came from a newspaper called The Daily Planet from Metropolis. 'Did they really use a word that describes a city as the city's name?' What really caught his attention was the headline "Superman Prevents Plane Crash". The cover photo showed a Caucasian man in a blue suit and red cape and tights holding up a plane that has its engines in flames. On his chest was an emblem with the letter "S". 'So that's Superman. From what Swamp Thing said, he's an alien.' He looked up some general info about the guy and was surprised. 'Apparently, he's the last of his kind. I wonder if I can get his DNA in the database later.' He looked back at the Omnitrix. 'Other than helping people understand other species, the Omnitrix is also an Ark of sorts for the DNA of many sentient beings. What's more surprising is that Martians exist. I never did ask Orb and Decka if there were any Martians there. They called it the popcorn planet, but where did it come from? In any case, I'm pretty sure that the other heroes will take care of any trouble while I settle down here.'