As Ben moved toward the unconscious villains, his boots crunching over debris and sparking circuitry. The warehouse's exposed steel beams creaked overhead, still settling after the battle. He intended to get some answers before the authorities arrived—Villans sudden appearance in the city had disrupted his sleep them knowing about the shit ton of things going through his mind.
Baymax's voice, smooth but insistent, chimed in his ear. "Incoming call from Gwen Stacy."
Ben frowned, tapping his comms device to dismiss it. He crouched beside Electro, studying the faint crackles of residual electricity flickering over the villain's suit like dying fireflies. The neural inhibitor he'd attached to Electro's neck pulsed with a steady blue light—it would keep him down for at least another hour.
Then, the call came again. And again. Each chime more urgent than the last.
That was unusual. Gwen didn't call repeatedly unless something was seriously wrong. A cold thread of apprehension wound its way up Ben's spine.
With a sigh that fogged in the cool air of the warehouse, Ben tapped his earpiece. "Gwen, I'm kind of busy—"
Before he could finish, Gwen's voice cut through, sharp and demanding, tinged with something he rarely heard from her—fear disguised as anger.
"Why the hell haven't you been answering my calls or texts for three days?"
Ben blinked, straightening up from his crouch. His brows furrowed, creating a shadow across his features in the dim light. "Three days? I literally saw you yesterday. We had coffee and dinner at that place at Restaurant , remember? You helped me lab works ."
A long silence stretched between them, heavy and tense. The only sound was the distant wail of approaching sirens and the soft hum of Baymax's systems as the AI continued working on the damaged Null Void containment gun.
Then, Gwen's voice turned colder, more serious—a tone that made the hairs on the back of Ben's neck stand up. "Ben... are you okay? Are you sick or something? Having blackouts? Memory lapses?"
Ben sat back on his heels, confusion settling in like a weight in his stomach. He glanced over at Spider-Man, who was securing the other fallen villains with webbing, completely unaware of the conversation taking place. "I'm fine. What are you talking about?"
"What am I talking about?!" Gwen snapped, her voice cracking slightly. "I've been gone for wedding in Coast City! I just got back last night, and my ID card to the lab is missing. And the worst part? You've been ghosting me since I left! I called you fourteen times from Coast City. Fourteen! I had to borrow someone else's ID just to get into my own lab!"
Ben froze, his breath catching in his throat.
His mind reeled, scrambling to piece it together, like trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing. The implication hit him like a physical blow. If Gwen had been gone for three days... then who had he been with?
Every interaction from the past few days flashed in his mind in rapid succession—the way "Gwen" had looked at him with those eyes, her subtle shifts in behavior, her voice that sometimes seemed a pitch too low, her sudden interest knowing about his habit seeing through him , peter being captured here than who was with him ...
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
His stomach dropped as adrenaline surged through his system. The warehouse suddenly seemed too quiet, too still—like the calm before a storm.
Ben's voice darkened to a low, dangerous timbre. "Baymax. Stop repairing the Null Void gun. Lock it down. Authorization code: Tennyson-Omega-479."
Silence.
The seconds stretched like hours as Ben waited for confirmation that never came.
Then Baymax's voice responded, slow and mechanical, with none of its usual warm inflection.
"I am unable to comply with your request. I have been disconnected from the primary network. System override protocols have been activated."
Ben's hands clenched into fists so tight his knuckles turned white. His entire body tensed as realization crystallized into certainty.
"Sound the alarms. Evacuate the building. NOW."
Immediately, red warning lights flooded the warehouse, casting everything in a bloody glow. A blaring siren rang out, echoing through the facility and bouncing off the metal walls. Overhead, a robotic voice repeated the message with mechanical precision:
"EMERGENCY DETECTED. SECURITY BREACH LEVEL ALPHA. ALL PERSONNEL, EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY."
Spider-Man's head snapped up, his mechanical eyes widening as he abandoned his task and rushed over. "What's happening?"
On the other end of the call, Gwen's voice sharpened with panic. "Ben?! What the hell is happening? What evacuation?! I'm at the east wing lab! There are people rushing past me—"
Before Ben could answer, another voice cut in on Gwen's end—a voice that sent ice through his veins because it was one he knew intimately.
It was peters voice.
"Hello, Benjamin. I was hoping we'd have more time together before you figured it out."
Ben didn't answer. He was already on his feet, heart hammering against his ribs, muscles coiled and ready to spring.
Then—
BOOOOM!
An explosion erupted through the line, so powerful that Ben instinctively flinched away from the sound. Static crackled in his earpiece, punctuated by distant screams and the groan of collapsing structure.
His blood turned ice-cold. "Gwen! Get out of there! I'm coming!"
He didn't wait for a response. There wasn't time.
Ben locked eyes with Spider-Man, a silent communication passing between them. The wall-crawler nodded grimly, understanding the gravity of the situation without needing it explained.
Ben slapped the Omnitrix dial and twisted it with practiced precision, the movement so fluid it was almost unconscious. The core flared to life, casting his determined face in alien green light as it cycled through silhouettes before locking onto one.
"It's hero time."
In a flash of neon blue light that momentarily blinded Spider-Man, Ben's body shifted, molecules rearranging, limbs stretching, armor forming over scaled skin. When the glow faded, he stood on two digitigrade legs, sleek and aerodynamic, visor gleaming with reflected emergency lights. The world around him seemed to slow to a crawl as his perception accelerated, time itself warping around him.
XLR8.
His tail lashed behind him, cutting through the air with a sharp crack. The warehouse now appeared frozen in a moment—dust particles suspended in the emergency lights, Spider-Man caught mid-movement, even the flames from the damaged equipment seemed to barely flicker.
Without hesitation, he turned to Spider-Man, his voice a distorted blur to normal ears. "Handle them! Make sure they don't escape! Meet me at Tennyson Industries—things just got messy!"
Spider-Man gave a quick nod, already firing webs to secure the area. "Go! I got this. Be careful—sounds like you're about to meet your my evil twin."
Ben didn't waste another second. He kicked off the ground with such force that the concrete cracked beneath him, a sonic boom shattering the air as he disappeared in a blur of blue lightning that left a trail of crackling energy in his wake.
Through his mind raced possibilities, each worse than the last. A shape-shifter? A clone? Some twisted version of peter from another timeline? Whatever—or whoever—was waiting for him at Tennyson Industries had made a fatal mistake.
They had threatened Gwen.
The city blurred around him as he pushed his alien form to its limits, weaving through traffic that seemed frozen in time, racing up the sides of buildings when the streets became too congested.
He was coming. And whatever was waiting for him at Tennyson Industries—whatever wore peter face and spoke with his voice—would soon learn why Ben Tennyson was the most feared hero.
This wasn't just a mission anymore.
It was personal