Despite his grumbling, his body was already moving, adrenaline surging through his veins. His fingers brushed the Omnitrix, its surface warm and humming with potential. He ducked into a nearby alley, his heart pounding with a mix of dread and excitement. The Marvel Universe didn't waste time, did it? Trouble was already knocking, and like it or not, he was in the thick of it.
He pressed the Omnitrix dial, the holographic display springing to life. The silhouettes of his ten aliens flickered before him, each one a ticket to possibilities. His mind raced. Speed? Strength? Flight? He needed something versatile, something that could handle whatever chaos was unfolding.
His thumb hovered over XLR8, the Kineceleran speedster. Perfect for scouting, escaping, or getting the drop on whatever was causing that explosion.
"Okay," he whispered, steeling himself. "Let's do this."
He slammed the dial down, and the world erupted in a flash of green light. His body stretched and streamlined, his legs morphing into powerful, clawed limbs with rollers beneath them built for impossible speed. And negating any friction with the ground.
A visor snapped over his face, his senses sharpening as the Omnitrix rewrote his DNA. He was XLR8 now, a blur of white and black, his tail whipping behind him as he crouched in the alley.
As the green flash of the Omnitrix faded, Ben felt the transformation complete, his body now sleek and streamlined in the form of XLR8. The Kineceleran's helmet snapped into place over his head, its tinted visor sharpening his vision with an almost predatory clarity.
His heart raced, not from fear but from the raw, electric thrill of becoming something more than human. "XLR8," he shouted, his voice a high-pitched rasp that echoed faintly in the alley. "Alright, let's see how fast I really am."
Without a moment's hesitation, he launched forward, the balls at his feet acted like roller skates accelerated toward the explosion site. The world slowed to a crawl around him, the building blurring into streaks of color and light. Cars crawled through intersections, their drivers frozen mid-gesture.
Pedestrians seemed suspended in time, their faces caught in expressions of shock or indifference. Streetlights and neon signs melted into glowing trails as he weaved effortlessly through traffic, leaping over obstacles with a precision that felt instinctive. He wasn't even pushing XLR8's full speed, but the rush of moving beyond human limits flooded his veins with exhilaration, a heady mix of power and freedom.
In mere seconds, he arrived at the scene, stopping instantly with a grace that set him apart from other speedsters. Unlike FastTrack, who skidded stop a by dragging his feet, XLR8's movements were fluid, almost balletic.
The burning apartment building loomed before him, a five-story inferno spitting thick, black smoke into the night sky. Flames licked at shattered windows, and the air was heavy with the acrid stench of charred wood and melting metal. The explosion had been contained to the lower floors, but the fire was spreading fast, its hungry tendrils climbing the structure like a living thing.
"Crap… what caused this? A bomb?" Ben muttered, his visor scanning the devastation. The blast had torn through the building's base, leaving a jagged wound of exposed rebar and crumbled concrete. His mind raced, piecing together possibilities—arson, a gas leak, or something more sinister, like one of the Marvel Universe's countless villains. Whatever it was, he didn't have time to speculate.
In his Kineceleran form, Ben cut an imposing figure against the flickering glow of the flames. His sleek black suit hugged his lithe, raptor-like frame, white stripes racing down his limbs and tail, glowing faintly under the streetlights. The Omnitrix symbol on his chest pulsed a vivid green, a beacon of alien power. Bystanders gawked from a safe distance, their faces a mix of awe and terror.
To them, he was an enigma—a black-and-white blur that didn't belong in their world. But Ben ignored their stares. There were people trapped inside, and every second counted.
XLR8's enhanced senses kicked in, his visor amplifying his vision to cut through the smoke and chaos. He could hear faint cries from within, muffled by the roar of the flames. His eyes darted across the building, mapping its layout in an instant—entrances, exits, weak points. Then, with a burst of speed, he became a shadow, a streak of motion too fast for the human eye to follow. To the crowd, it was as if a phantom had passed through, leaving only a gust of wind and a faint ripple in the air.
Inside the building, XLR8 was a force of nature. He darted through flaming hallways, his feet barely touching the ground as he navigated crumbling walls and sagging ceilings. Sparks rained down, but he barely registered the heat. His focus was absolute, his mind processing every detail at hyperspeed.
He scanned each room in a fraction of a second, his visor locking onto signs of life—heartbeats, shallow breaths, faint movements beneath the rubble.
One by one, he found survivors. A woman in a tattered pink nightrobe, her dark skin streaked with soot, stumbled as he scooped her up and raced her to safety. Before she could even scream, she was standing on the sidewalk, trembling, her wide eyes searching for the figure that had saved her.
Another blur, and a middle-aged man appeared beside her, coughing violently, his clothes singed. Then a teenager, a grandmother, a young couple—each materialized as if by magic, disoriented but alive. The crowd gasped, their phones raised to capture the impossible scene unfolding before them.
Ben moved with relentless precision, his speed a lifeline for those trapped in the inferno. The heat was oppressive, the flames roaring louder with every passing second, but XLR8's biology thrived under pressure. His tail whipped behind him, stabilizing his movements as he wove through collapsing corridors.
He found a family of three in a smoke-filled apartment, their faces pressed to the floor as they gasped for air. He grabbed them all at once, cradling them carefully to avoid whiplash, and bolted for the exit. The force of his speed could injure them if he wasn't cautious, so he tempered his pace, his mind overriding his biological instincts to push XLR8's limits.
As he passed the blast zone, his visor caught sight of the ones who hadn't made it. Charred bodies lay motionless, too close to the explosion's epicenter to have had a chance. The sight hit him like a punch to the gut, a wave of nausea threatening to break his focus. He forced himself to look away, swallowing the grief. There was no time to mourn—not yet. Not while there were still lives to save.
In a third-floor apartment, he found two young children—a boy and a girl, no older than six—huddled beside a man pinned under a fallen beam. The man's breaths were shallow, his face pale beneath a layer of ash. Ben's heart clenched, but he prioritized the kids.
Scooping them up gently, he murmured, "Sorry, this must be scary for you."
His voice, distorted by XLR8's alien physiology, came out as a sharp, rasping hiss that only made the children scream louder. He winced but didn't stop, racing them to the street and setting them down beside a paramedic who had just arrived.
Without pausing, he dove back into the building, returning for the pinned man. The beam was heavy, its jagged edges digging into the floor, but XLR8's strength was just enough to shift it. He freed the man and carried him to safety, the man's lungs burning from the smoke. By the time he emerged, the crowd had doubled, their phones capturing every moment of the black-and-white blur's heroics.
In just under a minutes, Ben had rescued seventeen people from the inferno. He stood on the street, his chest heaving as he surveyed the survivors. Some were burned, others limping or coughing, but they were alive. Yet the weight of those he couldn't save pressed down on him, a heavy ache in his chest. He saw the faces of the ones left behind, their lifeless forms etched into his memory.
Being a hero wasn't supposed to feel like this—like failure, despite the lives he'd saved. The doubt crept in, cold and insidious. Had he done enough? Could he have been faster, smarter, better?
His gaze shifted to the building, where the flames still raged, threatening to spread to nearby structures.
Then an idea sparked, something he'd seen in a comic book or a TV show—could he pull it off? XLR8's physiology was built for speed, and speed could manipulate air. He planted his feet, and began to spin his arms at superhuman velocity. The air around him shifted, a low hum building into a roar as twin vortexes formed. The crowd gasped, stepping back as the fiery spirals were pulled upward, drawn into the spinning funnels of wind.
"Faster," Ben growled, pushing his limits. His arms blurred, the vortexes growing stronger, sucking the oxygen from the flames. The fire flickered, weakened, then died, snuffed out by the sheer force of the air currents. The building smoldered, its once-raging blaze reduced to embers.
Silence fell over the street, broken only by the distant wail of sirens. Fire trucks and police cars scre.'What the hell…?' A voice broke the hush, trembling with disbelief.
Ben stood still, his visor scanning the crowd. For the first time, they got a clear look at him—XLR8's sleek, raptor-like form gleaming in the dim light, the Omnitrix symbol glowing like a beacon on his chest. Whispers rippled through the onlookers, a mix of fear and fascination. They weren't just seeing a superhero; they were seeing something alien, something beyond their understanding.
Ben could feel their eyes boring into him, and the weight of their scrutiny only deepened his doubt. Some of these people had lost everything—homes, loved ones, futures. He'd saved who he could, but it didn't feel like enough. Heroism wasn't about glory or adrenaline; it was about the lives you could save, and those ones that you couldn't.
The sirens grew louder, red and blue lights flashing as emergency vehicles closed in. More phones were raised now, recording the alien figure who had appeared from nowhere and extinguished a fire in seconds. Ben's instincts screamed at him to move—he couldn't afford to be caught, not yet.
With a final glance at the survivors, he took off in a blur, vanishing down a side street before anyone could approach. The crowd erupted in gasps and shouts, their voices overlapping in confusion.
"Hey! Who—or what—the hell was that?" a young man called out, his phone still raised, capturing the empty space where Ben had stood.
"How the hell should any of us know?" an older man muttered, his eyes still fixed on the direction the blur had vanished. "Just be thankful it's gone… for now."
Ducking into the shadowed mouth of a subway tunnel, Ben found a secluded alcove where the dim flicker of fluorescent lights barely reached. He pressed himself against the cold, graffiti-streaked wall, the rough concrete grounding him as he reverted to human form in a flash of green light.
His blood still pumping. He slumped against the wall with a dull thud, his breath ragged, the Omnitrix's faint glow casting eerie shadows across the tunnel.
Images flooded his mind—charred bodies crumpled in the wreckage, limbs twisted at unnatural angles, some victims gasping their final, desperate breaths. The memory was a vise around his chest, squeezing tighter with every flash of the inferno he'd just left.
He'd hesitated with the most severely injured, paralyzed by the fear that moving them could worsen their condition. He wasn't a doctor; all he could do was clear debris where possible, stabilize the area, and pray the firefighters would arrive in time. But the faces of those he'd left behind haunted him, their stillness a silent accusation. Had he made the right call?
"Come on, Ben, this isn't the time to wallow," he muttered, slapping his cheek hard enough to sting. The sharp pain snapped him out of his spiraling thoughts. He'd done what he could in the moment—saved seventeen lives in under two minutes. Could he have done more? Probably. But this was his first real attempt at being a hero, and mistakes were inevitable.
He wasn't the Ben Tennyson, the battle-hardened kid from the cartoons. He'd yet to live up to that name, just a construction worker turned time-displaced alien shapeshifter over night, and he was learning on the fly.
A realization hit him, sharp and bitter. Brainstorm could have helped. The hyper-intelligent Galvan's analytical mind could've devised a safer way to move the injured, calculating risks and variables in seconds.
Ben pinched the bridge of his nose, groaning. "Why didn't I think of that earlier? XLR8's got accelerated thinking, but I need to *use* it consciously." His frustration was palpable, but dwelling on it was pointless. What was done was done. He'd be smarter next time.
Dusting off his jeans, Ben glanced around the tunnel, ensuring no one had followed him. The distant rumble of a subway train echoed through the concrete, but he was alone. His eyes fell to the Omnitrix, its green hourglass emblem pulsing faintly, as if urging him to act. He needed to move, to disappear before the authorities—or worse, S.H.I.E.L.D.—caught up with him.
The Marvel Universe wasn't kind to unknowns, especially ones with alien tech strapped to their wrists.
He pressed the Omnitrix dial, the holographic interface springing to life. Flicking through the silhouettes, he paused on a form that would let him vanish completely. "Time to go ghost," he muttered, slamming the dial down.
A chilling mist escaped his mouth as the transformation began, his body dissolving into a spectral figure. His skin became translucent, cloaked in a dark, tattered robe that flowed like liquid shadow. Jagged, glowing blue patterns pulsed across the fabric, casting an eerie glow in the dim tunnel.
His face was shrouded in darkness, save for piercing green eyes that gleamed with an otherworldly intensity and a sharp, menacing grin that seemed to cut through the gloom. His clawed hands flickered with a spectral blue energy, and his talon-like feet hovered inches above the ground, untethered by gravity. The Omnitrix symbol glowed faintly on his chest, a beacon of power in his ghostly form.
"Big Chill," he whispered, his voice a haunting, resonant echo that sent a shiver down his own spine.
Spreading his massive, moth-like wings, Ben turned intangible, his body phasing through the tunnel's ceiling as effortlessly as a shadow passing through light. He emerged into the night sky, the city sprawling beneath him, its lights twinkling like stars against the dark canvas of New York. He soared silently, the cold air rushing through his intangible form. For the first time since arriving in this universe, he felt a flicker of control—a moment to breathe, to plan, to process.
But even as he glided above the city, the weight of what he'd seen in the fire lingered. He'd saved lives, but the cost of failure was a shadow he couldn't outrun. Not yet.
---
**Unknown Location – S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters**
Hours later, in a sterile, dimly lit room buried deep within S.H.I.E.L.D.'s clandestine headquarters, the soft glow of a monitor illuminated Director Nick Fury's stern features. His single eye, sharp and unyielding, studied the grainy footage looping on the screen.
The video—cobbled together from shaky cell phone recordings and traffic camera fragments—showed a black-and-white blur darting through a burning apartment building, pulling survivors from the flames at impossible speeds. The figure was a phantom, too fast for any clear shot, but the glowing green symbol on its chest was unmistakable.
"You're telling me you can't track this thing?" Fury's voice was low, calm, but carried a weight that made the air in the room feel heavier. It wasn't a question—it was a demand for answers, laced with the unspoken promise of consequences.
Agent Phil Coulson, standing rigidly behind him, adjusted his tie. "No, sir. We've got teams working on it, but whoever—or whatever—this is, they went underground the moment they left the scene. Literally. No trace on our satellite feeds, and our cameras can't get a clear image. It's too fast, and it to fast for our tracking systems to get a read."
Fury's gaze remained fixed on the footage, his expression unreadable. The figure moved like nothing he'd seen before—not the Hulk's raw power, not Captain America's disciplined precision. This was something else entirely. It darted through flames, pulling civilians to safety with a speed that defied physics, then extinguished the fire with what looked like controlled vortexes.
The implications were troubling. Was this a enhanced, tech? Or something extraterrestrial?
"Could it be another Banner situation?" Coulson ventured, his tone cautious. "Someone enhanced, like the Hulk?"
Fury's brow furrowed, his eye narrowing. "Possible, but unlikely. Banner's a walking disaster zone—uncontrolled, chaotic. This thing is precise, deliberate. It's either highly trained or something not human at all." He paused, replaying the footage one last time, his mind turning over possibilities. "So far, it hasn't shown hostility. But that doesn't mean it's friendly."
He turned away from the screen, his boots clicking against the polished floor as he paced. "I want a full investigation. Every angle— enhanced, alien, tech-based, all of it. Find out who this is, what they want, and what that system on their chest means. Understood, Agent Romanoff?"
From the shadows of the room, Natasha Romanoff leaned forward on a sleek leather sofa, her long, curly red hair catching the faint light. Her black leather suit hugged her frame, exuding a quiet, lethal confidence. A knowing smirk played on her lips as she met Fury's gaze.
"Understood, Director," she replied, her voice sharp and steady, a blade wrapped in silk. She rose gracefully, her movements fluid as she crossed the room and slipped out the door, closing it with a soft click.
Fury turned back to the monitor, his eye lingering on the frozen image of the alien figure. On his desk, a file labeled **Avengers Initiative** sat unopened, its edges slightly worn from being handled. His brow tightened as he replayed the footage again, the glowing green symbol searing itself into his mind. Whatever this thing was, it had just changed the game.
---
High above the city, Ben floated as Big Chill, his ghostly form invisible against the night sky. The wind whispered through his intangible wings, carrying the distant wail of sirens and the hum of New York's endless pulse. He didn't know S.H.I.E.L.D. was already watching, their eyes narrowing on the enigma he'd become. But he felt the weight of the Omnitrix, the power it promised, and the responsibility it demanded.
////
Big Chill
General Information
Species:
Necrofriggian
Home World:
Kylmyss
DNA source:
Unknown
Body:
Humanoid Moth
Abilities:
Cryokinesis
Freeze Breath
Ice Generation
Freeze Touch
Flight
Temperature Resistance
Intangibility
Strong Bite
Space Survivability
Underwater Breathing
Enhanced Strength
Enhanced Durability
Enhanced Agility
Appreance:
Big Chill is a blue and black insect humanoid alien with navy-blue wings, green eyes, and dark blue fur on the top of his shoulders to the bottom of his thighs. Big Chill has light blue spots on his forelimbs, antennas, claws, and head.
The Omnitrix symbol is located on his chest.