KneeOfJustice99

You can barely see three feet in front of you, as the air is filled with vape juice. Your ears are full, ringing, with around a hundred twelve year olds screaming "Suuuuuu" in reference to the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, in between taking huge huffs of strawberry juice for a solid 30 seconds at a time. Many of them don't know who he is, as they flick between increasingly nonsensical TikToks on their phones - worth more than most of the contents of their homes. The almost cult-like screaming is enhanced by the sound of grime music being played at around the same level as the average jet engine, and you can hardly hear the ringing in your ears. The windows are steamed up, all of them having phallic objects drawn on them as well as the occasional smiley face. The seat in front of you is coated in phone numbers offering... shall we say "not above board" favours, as well as the occasional slander of people you don't know.

The only things you can see around you aside from the seats are what looks like a sea of black, poofy jackets wrapped around 4 foot tall children, all of which look like they came off a production line with their curly hair on only the top of their heads and compete lack of eyebrows. The back of the bus is where you see the 13/14 year olds, and as you move further back in the bus, the number of hate symbols scrawled onto the windows and seating increases exponentially. Every single stop has what seems to be around 10 more of these... beings step onto the bus. The driver groans as the suspension does the same, trying desperately to hold around double its intended capacity of small, loud beings as they spew smoke into the air.

It begins to rain as you arrive at your stop. Clambering through, and in many cases over, the creatures filling the bus far beyond intended limits, you squeeze out of the doors. You check your pockets... your phone is gone, and you don't know whether it was pickpocketed or simply fell out within the chaos. The rain is falling harder now, and you find a tear on the arm of your coat... it was your favourite coat, once upon a time, and yet now it is coated in a layer of the same dirt that coats every surface in your estate. You'd buy a new coat, but it'd be too expensive.

The road is busy, filled with underage drivers racing along and schoolchildren trying to survive the process of getting home. You manage to get to your house. Someone's dumped furniture in your front garden again. You try to ignore it as a rat crawls out, and your home is cold, uninviting. You slide off your trainers, the only shoes you own, as you step into the kitchen - a simple, prefabricated affair built in bulk some 50 years ago. You turn on the kettle, reaching up into the cupboard to get a mug. The cupboard door falls off, like it always did. You take the Sports Direct mug you own, with a chip within it, filling it with a Yorkshire Tea teabag and a spoonful of slightly off-tasting sugar. You pull out the milk. It's off. You throw it in the bin outside, and now it's pouring, as you step back inside, dripping wet. Your tea doesn't have milk, but you drink it anyway.

You need to make something to eat. Opening your cupboard once more, you find little more than slightly stale bread and a line of tins, mostly beans. You know you can't afford a takeout tonight, so you reach inside, pulling out a tin of minced beef, spreading it on the bread and sitting in the slightly damp sofa. Taking a bite, a single tear leaves your eye as you overhear your neighbours screaming about getting a divorce for the 12th time this week. The television flicks on with a flick of the remote, as politicians explain taxes are increasing again... it turns off. The electricity got shut off, and now you need to go to the corner shop to turn it back on again.

Half-finishing your delectable meal, you slip your shoes on once more, grabbing a month-old copy of the Sun and using it as a makeshift umbrella. The rain seems to melt it into mush, as you step inside the corner shop, filled with people as grey as you are. One of the creatures from the buses rushes out with a vape he stole, but the shop owners don't stop him. You stand in line, and minutes, hours pass. Everyone's talking, saying the same things, asking about the weather, about pets, or family, or the news, or the sports. Your legs tire... you've spent the day at work, slaving away packing boxes for 10 straight hours. You don't need this. After an agonisingly long time, you get to the front... the price they're asking for is more than it was last week. You're a few pounds short. They turn you away.

As you shamble home, you pass a bin, overflowing... it hasn't been collected in months. Even stepping near it startles the overweight, waddling rats that scurry away into the cracks of the homes and the grates of the sewers nearby. You feel empty, but nothing changed. Everything's grey, the skies, the ground, your home... and you know it'll be the same tomorrow.

So, first of all I think it's important to ask the question - how would Ben's primary mechanic, his aliens, work? This might sound like an odd question to start with, but if the gameplay we've seen of MultiVersus so far is anything to go by, I feel like it's unlikely they'd give a menu like Shulk's Monado Arts to him to allow him to play as like, multiple different aliens. It seems like it'd be too complex to code - especially when you consider that the F2P model means they'd need fairly quick turnarounds for character reveals and the like. So, that's off the table - what's the alternative?

I see one of two things happening. See, characters like Finn and Jake have been seperated out into their own character slots, so the first plausible thing is that each alien transformation has it's own roster slot... but I feel like that would miss the point of Ben 10 as a concept - that is, being able to switch between unique aliens to solve problems in a unique way. Here's a few ideas.


Aside from that, it's also possible that they'd take inspiration from Punch Time Explosion, having Ben as the playable character as certain attacks change his model into that of an alien, then changes him back into Ben afterward. Personally... I'd prefer this, as it'd really lean into ways we could make Ben unique from the rest of the cast - though implementing alternate costumes might be difficult with a style like this.

On that, his visual style is a little complex to try and work out. My own suggestion is that his base appearance is his Omniverse self (a fairly recent and well-recieved series, which also canonically has Ben with the highest number of aliens in the franchise) but with other appearances, perhaps based on the classic series and Alien Force, as alts.