Ben Tennyson

## Benjamin Kirby Tennyson

> "*Thanks to Omnitrix, I get to walk a mile in other lifeforms' shoes. So, I can totally understand what it's like to be them since... I have been them.*"
> ― Ben speaking of the gift that being the bearer of the Omnitrix has bestowed upon him.
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**Benjamin Kirby "Ben" Tennyson** is the titular main protagonist of the Ben 10 Franchise. He was an ordinary ten-year-old boy until he found the Omnitrix, a powerful watch-like device that allowed him to turn into ten different aliens. Though initially immature and clumsy, Ben grew to be a true hero. By the time he was sixteen, he had become famous in not only his hometown of Bellwood but on Earth and beyond. Ben has also been deputized by the Plumbers and has gained more aliens as time progressed. He is also part Anodite. He is also the boyfriend of Kai Green.

## Appearance

Ben's physical appearance is that of an athletic eighteen-year-old. However, he retains some recurring characteristics. He has unkept brown hair, green eyes, pale skin, and he's quite skinny for his age, though he shows a lot of muscle definition due to being athletic.

In **Omniverse**, Ben wears a green shirt that has a horizontal white stripe in the middle. He wears brown cargo shorts with pockets just above the knees with a brown belt hidden under the shirt and green and white shoes. He later gains a white hooded jacket with green stripes on both arms and a green number 10 on the right side for some time. He wears the Omnitrix on his left wrist.

## Personality

> "*You think I don't know? When it's hero time, if I mess up, somebody could die. From what you told me, if we mess up this time, everybody could die... Maybe that's too much to have in your head when you have to win. Maybe if I pretend everything is a big joke, when the time comes, I'll be able to do what I have to do.*"
> ― 10-year-old Ben to 17-year-old Kevin asking him to be serious.
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Initially cocky, childish, and selfish, Ben's immaturity and attention-seeking behavior often led him to joke around, regardless of the situation. His allies often criticized his attitude, unaware of the fact that he used humor to mask his fears. Despite some childish attitude, he was heroic, caring, and generally good-natured, always willing to save others at any time.

Over the years, Ben has displayed good leadership skills, as well as the ability to adapt his attitude to a situation, becoming serious when it's called for. He became more mature, responsible, and sensible. He's kind-hearted, and willing to sacrifice even his own life for others. His idealistic views and unwillingness to compromise his values – aspects condemned by Azmuth, yet commended by others – sometimes drive him to act against reason, such as helping his enemies if they need it (most remarkably Vilgax). Professor Paradox has praised Ben's good nature, going so far as to say he had the gift to make the right choices at the right moments. Also, Ben doesn't give up and wouldn't let anyone stop him from doing what's right for those in need, especially his family, friends, and mentors, or to bring enemies down, even when he once got a broken arm.

However, when Ben fails to save someone, or if someone gets hurt because of his failures, he becomes angry and much more violent. Perhaps the most notable of these instances is when Kevin willingly mutated himself to succeed where Ben had failed and stop Aggregor, Ben was set on killing Kevin, even fighting Ben when he refused to help him. He also threatened to hunt down and destroy the Forever Knights once making Driscoll promise to cease the hunting of aliens.

Though often stated to be silly or unintelligent because of his immaturity, Ben is cunning and resourceful when needed, quickly adapting when the Omnitrix doesn't provide him with the alien he wanted.

Later on, Ben starts thinking of himself as more of a superhero than a Plumber, often remarking that he's not a cop, but a superhero. Although he once again became cocky, he retained his selfless and heroic nature.

Once he met Jordan. He became much more calm, attentive, and thoughtful.

## Powers and Abilities

Ben is a crafty, intelligent fighter, having trained in hand-to-hand combat by black belt Jordan and Max. He has also received basic Plumber training, having succeeded in the Plumbers' Academy with a 95 out of a 100. On top of that, he has gained practical experience from various years of fighting aliens.

Ben is quite agile and acrobatic, being able to easily dodge shots from Manny's blasters before disarming him while in human form.

Ben actually uses freestyle fighting, being able to hold his own against Pierce. Max has hinted that Ben was a highly-skilled fighter, even as a human.

It is evident that Ben is smart in some respects, possessing an above-average intelligence. Ben even stated that he really is not working up to his potential at school. He also has fairly moderate grades, maintaining a B+ average in his toughest subjects Physics and Chemistry.

Ben has an extraordinarily sharp memory, as he was perfectly capable of remembering and writing down the mystic rune-like symbols for entering the inter-dimensional realm of Legerdomain with just one glance from a distance. This is even more true for things that interest him.

Ben is a cross dominant, skillfully wielding tools and weapons in either hand, inhuman or alien form.

Ben has a knack for turning his weaknesses into strengths.

Ben is surprisingly a natural at hoverboard-based combat, which generally requires intensive training and the use of holographic simulators. This is most likely because he can snowboard.

Ben has remarkable pilot skills that function like a combination of playing video games and tap lessons Sandra made him take, but he would never admit it.

Ben is a decent musician, as he can play the guitar.

Jordan was able to teach Ben several languages which were: Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, and Hebrew.

Ben had his Anodite spark unlocked by Jordan. Jordan used his Anodite sparkler wand to unlock the spark.

### Mana Manipulation and Energy Control

Ben's magical powers are of alien descent from his grandmother Verdona, a member of a free-spirited alien race of pure energy beings known as Anodites, from the planet Anodyne. Though he did not inherit these powers, he shares a "knack" for mana manipulation. This is possible because Verdona manipulated mana in his human form.

Because Ben is an Anodite and has "the spark", he is able to freely manipulate and control mana or life energy, the substance of magic. Whereas Charmcaster had to "work [her] butt off for [her] powers", Ben is filled with mana, having been born made of magic.

Ben's mana powers are mainly used like energy constructs, allowing him to make many different types of structures, including energy blasts, streams, waves, and bolts as offensive projectile attacks; energy force-fields, shields, and barriers to protect herself and others; melee weapons such as hammers, swords, blades, and fists; tools such as protective helmets, battering rams, and safety nets; energy beams to grab and throw enemies; and stepping stones or platforms to carry him and others through air. Ben can also synchronize his martial arts styles with his energy manipulation abilities.

Ben can use mana to track down any living thing he wants by either following their energy trail, detecting the traces of mana that they left, or being at one with the cosmic mana. As of **Omniverse**, Ben is able to scan the universe with apparent ease, including Ledgerdomain, as he did when searching for Kevin's car.

Ben can distinguish beings with physical similarities, such as Ben and Albedo, by reading their auras. He can also draw in mana from everything around him.

Ben can use his mana to perform telekinesis, teleportation, heat vision, clairvoyance, telepathy, and healing for both himself and other living beings.

Ben can transform into an Anodite, which greatly enhances his other powers and expands to include flight and size alteration. In addition, his Anodite powers get stronger over time.

Because Anodites lack DNA, Ben is immune to being reverted into human form by the Forever Knights' DNA Scanner, as well as the lethal effects the device has on hybrids.

### Magic and Spells

Ben is seen using magic through casting magical, mystical spells, and reciting spoken incantations thus enabling him to use various magical powers and abilities.

On two occasions, Ben used the five mystical Charms of Bezel to become a superhero by the name of Lucky Boy before retiring after destroying whatever relics gave him those powers. At first, they drew from the luck-granting Charm of Bezel, which innately gave him complete and perfect luck in everything he did. While wearing the charm, any action he took would result in a chain reaction benefiting his original intent, but usually injuring Gwen in the process.

When Ben brought back his superhero identity, it was from obtaining the legendary lost Keystone of Bezel, which greatly increased his natural abilities to superhuman levels rather than just affecting his luck.

Ben claims that being self-taught in magic is not as easy as it looks. For example, when trying to get into Yahwahtacsip, he mistakes its name for "Wah Di Tah". Technically speaking, he knows how to read that name but not how to pronounce it correctly.

Ben can cast spells and recite spoken incantations. Despite being both less knowledgeable than either Charmcaster or Hex and self-taught, he is more powerful than the former for a time. After Charmcaster obtained the Alpha Rune, he became powerful enough to defeat Ben with ease. Nevertheless, Ben is already catching up to Charmcaster as of **Omniverse**.

Ben has learned to astral project through magic, like when he found Ben inside the Ultimatrix.

Ben's spells seem to react to Ben's emotional desires.

Ben can fire magic blasts from his eyes.

### Athletics and Martial Arts

Ben is a capable gymnast and martial artist. Even in the original series, he was occasionally shown to be quite good in hand-to-hand combat fights against enemies who had normal strength levels. he was part of his school's Jujutsu team. By age fifteen, he has already received a black belt in Taekwondo.

When preferring to use his athletics during fights or when he cannot rely on his magical and Anodite powers, he is shown to be highly skilled in hand-to-hand combat.

Besides martial arts, Ben also does horseback riding, softball, skiing, and cross country.

Ben has been shown creating a whip of mana energy and using it as a weapon along with his fighting skills. When Kevin asks him how he learned it, he states that he remembered it from an old movie.

### Other Skills and Abilities

Ben is very intelligent and knowledgeable. Before discovering his dormant Anodite powers. he is shown to be a bit of computer and tech wiz as well. he has his own laptop which he uses to research enemies he meets.

Ben has a degree of enhanced strength, being able to physically break free from bindings that were allegedly as strong as steel.

Ben has a degree of enhanced durability, as he endured being thrown at a statue without being visibly injured.

Ben is a powerful and highly skilled magician that can manipulate the forces of magic for many feats. These can range from levitation of himself and objects, projecting force blasts and defense barriers, scrying (to locate magical artifacts), control over matter and elemental forces, bringing inanimate objects to life, and teleportation.

If Ben focused enough, he could be doing magic on par with the power of Alien X.

In addition to his magical abilities, Ben is also very agile.

Ben can summon creatures from other dimensions.

### Equipment

Ben is the wielder of the Omnitrix (formerly the Ultimatrix and first Omnitrix), which gave him the power to modify his own genetic code in order to turn into various alien creatures. Traditionally, he could only transform into ten aliens at the beginning of both the original series and **Alien Force**, but he later gains additional forms by either unlocking them or by scanning the DNA of aliens he meets.

When transforming into an alien, Ben gets all the creature's features, including its appearance, voice, all of its unique and special abilities and powers, strengths and weaknesses. Though he mostly retains his personality, there are some cases where the transformation causes a change in it, like with Catclaws and Juryrigg.

Though he usually uses his alien forms to fight, he can impersonate aliens as he did with Water Hazard to convince P'andor to go home, though he was only successful at getting P'andor to believe he was Bivalvan.

In addition to transforming into aliens, the Ultimatrix included what is referred as an "evolutionary function", that allowed Ben to evolve his alien forms in order to get upgraded versions of them, referred to as Ultimate Forms.

In addition to the primary transformations and evolutionary function, the Omnitrices and Ultimatrix can both be used for various purposes. Both have a built-in Universal Translator that allows Ben to communicate with most aliens that do not speak English.

The prototype Omnitrix displayed the ability to manipulate and repair genetic damage, a function he used to cure DNAliens and save the Highbreed from extinction. Azmuth also mentioned that Ben could use the prototype Omnitrix to bring back to life any species stored on Primus.

The Omnitrix also has a failsafe to help prevent Ben from dying. If Ben is in mortal danger and the Omnitrix is in recharge mode, it will automatically go into active mode.

### Equipment

* Ben owns a spell book which he used to cast various spells.
* Ben briefly possesses the Titan Gauntlets.

Ben also possesses the Grimoire of Archamada which he uses to increase his magical powers and turn himself into a giant snake-like creature. However, he still the book while fighting Hex, thus losing the powers he had gained from him.

* Ben also possesses the Wand of Merlin. However, he was tricked by Gwen disguised as 'Lucky Girl' into believing that it is not the real one, upon which he threw it away, but he found again later.
* Ben possesses an artifact called the Eye of Wotan, which he uses to give life to a monster. The monster has the ability to open a portal to the "gates of light" in which Ben revitalizes his powers.

## Weaknesses

Whenever the Omnitrix times out, Ben is left powerless until he either dodges or switches to a new alien form. In addition to gaining the selected alien's powers and strengths, he gains its weaknesses.

Whenever Ben unlocks a new alien form, he is at a disadvantage of not knowing its abilities and weaknesses until he gains experience with using that alien. While later series will have this weakness downplayed due to differences in Omnitrix features and models, Ben still takes some time to fully master a alien form's potential.

Though he has matured substantially since receiving the original Omnitrix, he is still a teenager with much to learn and is prone to irrational impulses and recklessness.

Despite his experience in using the Omnitrices and Ultimatrix, Ben still does not know every function of them. Due to his inquisitive nature and impatience, he has accidentally unlocked new functions such as the Master Control and the randomizer, which can at times do more harm than good.

Though the current Omnitrix is designed to work only for him, Ben still has not mastered it. According to Azmuth, Ben may get the Master Control on his 18th birthday.

The Omnitrix does not actually mistransform, but rather it is due to Ben hitting the Omnitrix too hard, thereby causing the time-out function to select another alien at random.

At times, the natural biological behavior of certain aliens can override Ben's behavior, such as Big Chill's reproductive phase or Swampfire's blossoming process.

Any illness Ben is experiencing in his human form will affect his alien forms.

Ben appears to have a short attention span at times, and more often than not it can get him into trouble.

Ben has an allergy to peanuts.

Ben has coulrophobia (i.e. the fear of clowns), which was indirectly caused by Max.

Ben's worst fear is that of peacocks.

Ben is not immune to Corrodium and will be mutated when exposed to this mineral unless he either wears special protection or transforms into an alien.

Ben's left eye twitches whenever he tells a lie, but only Kevin appears to notice this.

Despite his piloting skills, Kevin is considered to be a better pilot than Ben.

Ben's worst subject is Physics, followed by Chemistry.

Ben is vulnerable to being erased from existence by a Chronosapien Time Bomb.

Ben can be banihed back to his original timelines by a Chronosapien, as demonstrated with some of his alternate counterparts.

Ben can experience pain from electricity, such as that generated by a Nosedeenian.

Although his intelligence and knowledge have only increased since his youth, Ben is not completely free of his naivete. At times, he can become arrogant.

Ben can occasionally be too trusting with people who want to exploit his good will, leading his or others into harm's way.

Unless he is wearing a protective metal helmet, Ben is vulnerable to the mind-controlling abilities of Dagon and the Lucubra.

Ben cannot use his mana to track Ectonurites, as they have no mana themselves. Likewise, his tracking does work well with non-biological life forms such as robots and Galvanic Mechamorphs.

Ben is vulnerable to being possessed by an Ectonurite.

Though Ben is skilled with mana constructs, there is a limit to what types of constructs he is capable of creating.

Ben's Anodite energy can have trouble with technology and vice versa. For example, he can struggle to divine the location of someone in an area riddled with technology.

Certain teleportation spells exhaust Ben the point of having to rest and recover. These spells can even make his faint if he is sick. The distance between his and the location he is teleporting to is a factor to this weakness.

Most of Ben's Anodite powers can be neutralized by wearing a bracelet used by a member of the Synthroid race, as demonstrated with Verdona.

Ben's raw mana attacks are useless and ineffective against certain species such as Geochelone Aerios and Transylians.

Ben can be drained of their energy to the point of either being rendered powerless or death, as nearly demonstrated with Verdona.

Ben has arachnophobia, the fear of spiders. She also has claustrophobia, the fear of tight spaces.

Up until Omniverse, Ben was seemingly unable to transform into his Anodite form at will without being sufficiently angered.

Overall, while Ben is immensely powerful, he almost always holds back in battle in order to avoid severely damaging his opponents. As such, this can potentially lead to his opponents gaining the upper hand, thus injuring his instead.

1. ↑ *Alone Together*
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 *The Forge of Creation*
3. ↑ *Ghost Town*
4. ↑ *Catch a Falling Star*
5. ↑ *Absolute Power: Part 1*
6. ↑ *The Purge*
7. ↑ *The More Things Change: Part 2*
8. ↑ *Above and Beyond*
9. ↑ *Voided*
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 *Where the Magic Happens*
11. ↑ *Monster Weather*
12. ↑ *What Are Little Girls Made Of?*
13. ↑ Charmcaster
14. ↑ *In Charm's Way*
15. ↑ *Kevin's Big Score*
16. ↑ *Plumbers' Helpers*
17. ↑ *War of the Worlds: Part 2*
18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 *Hit 'Em Where They Live*
19. ↑ *Lucky Girl*
20. ↑ *Tough Luck*
21. ↑ *Where the Magic Happens*
22. ↑ *Map of Infinity*
23. ↑ *The Ultimate Sacrifice*
24. ↑ *Good Copy, Bad Copy*
25. ↑ *Max Out*
26. ↑ *Ben 10 Returns: Part 1*
27. ↑ *Ben 10,000 Returns*
28. ↑ *Washington B.C.*
29. ↑ *Too Hot to Handle*
30. ↑ *Escape from Aggregor*
31. ↑ *Max Out*
32. ↑ *War of the Worlds: Part 2*
33. ↑ *Primus*
34. ↑ *Back with a Vengeance*
35. ↑ *The Frogs of War: Part 1*
36. ↑ *The Ultimate Enemy: Part 2*
37. ↑ *For a Few Brains More*
38. ↑ *Save the Last Dance*
39. ↑ *Charmed, I'm Sure*
40. ↑ *Side Effects*
41. ↑ *The Secret of Chromastone*
42. ↑ *Blukic and Driba Go to Mr. Smoothy's*
43. ↑ *Last Laugh*
44. ↑ *Something Zombozo This Way Comes*
45. ↑ *Arrested Development*
46. ↑ Rook Blonko
47. ↑ *Showdown: Part 1*
48. ↑ *Under Wraps*
49. ↑ *Be Afraid of the Dark*
50. ↑ 50.0 50.1 *Good Copy, Bad Copy*
51. ↑ *Animo Crackers*
52. ↑ *And Then There Were None*
53. ↑ *And Then There Was Ben*
54. ↑ *The End of an Era*