Ben Tennyson

**Benjamin Kirby "Ben 10" Tennyson**is the leading superheroic defender of the parallel Earth and Universe known as The Ben Prime Timeline. In his efforts to protect his world and many others, he wields the incredible metamorphic power of The Omnitrix.

## Personality

Initially cocky, childish and arrogant, Ben's immaturity and attention-seeking behavior often lead him to joke around, regardless of the situation. His allies have often criticized this attitude, sometimes unaware of the fact that he uses humor to mask his fears. Despite some childish behaviors, he remains 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, willing to sacrifice even his own life for others. His idealistic views and unwillingness to compromise his values sometimes drive him to act against reason, such as helping his enemies if they need it. Others have praised Ben's good nature, going so far as to say he has the gift to make the right choices at the right moments.

However, when Ben fails to save someone, or if someone gets hurt because of his failures, he can become angry and much more violent-- though he always comes back to himself in the end.

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 wants.

More recently, Ben has started remarking that he's not a cop, but a superhero. Although he has once again become cocky and impulsive, he retains his selfless and heroic nature.

This writer plays Ben as pansexual, though as a teenager he is still growing and learning about himself.

## Appearance

Ben's physical appearance has changed throughout the years from a ten-year-old to a sixteen-year-old. However, he retains some recurring characteristics. He has shaggy 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.

These days, Ben wears a black shirt that has a green stripe in the middle with a white 10 and green stripes on the sides of his shirt. He wears brown cargo pants with pockets at the knees and green and white shoes. He also sometimes sports a white hooded jacket with green stripes on both arms and a green number 10 on the right side. He wears The Omnitrix on his left wrist.

## Abilities

Ben has been trained in hand-to-hand combat by his black belt cousin Gwendolyn, his Plumber grandfather Max, as well as various years fighting aliens, and has received basic Plumber training. He has proven to be quite skilled in basic hand-to-hand combat as well as armed and unarmed combat, being able to easily dodge shots from blasters and able to disarm alien and human foes even while in his own human form. Max has hinted that Ben is a highly skilled fighter, even as a human. Another hint of his exceptional hand-to-hand skill is when he succeeded in the Plumbers' Academy basic training with a 95 out of a 100. He is also a crafty fighter and actually uses freestyle fighting.

While he outwardly shuns book learning, it's evident that Ben is smart in some respects, possessing an above average intelligence. It has even been stated by Gwen that he really isn't working up to his potential at school. He has fairly moderate grades. Physics and Chemistry are his toughest subjects, yet he still maintains a B+ average.

Ben has a good memory, possibly eidetic, as he was once perfectly capable of remembering and writing down mystic rune-like symbols with just one glance from a distance.

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

Ben has further demonstrated talents and athleticism in parkour and freerunning, as well as sports such as baseball, basketball, and soccer-- the latter of which excelling at goalkeeping.

In fact, Ben demonstrates excellent-- sometimes borderline praeternatural --general-purpose reflexes and agility, as particularly evidenced by dodging multiple laser bolts at nearly point-blank range.

While Ben usually leaves the driving/piloting to his companions, he is a licensed driver and has been shown to use cars, motorcycles, and hoverboards.

He can also snowboard and play guitar.

## Equipment

Ben is the wielder of The Omnitrix (formerly The Ultimatrix and the prototype Omnitrix), created by extraterrestrial supergenius Azmuth, which gives him the power to transmogrify his own genetic code into various alien creatures' for varyingly brief periods before The Omnitrix times out.
Initially, he could only transform into ten aliens, but he has over the years gained additional forms by either unlocking them or by scanning the DNA of aliens he meets. The alien heroes that Ben accesses can be found in the incalculable genetic database known as The Codon Stream.

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 Rath and Jury Rigg.

Though he usually uses his alien forms to fight or perform search-and-rescue, he can impersonate aliens for undercover work or diplomatic relations.

In addition to the primary transformations and evolutionary function, The Omnitrix can be used for various purposes. For instance, it has a built-in Universal Translator that allows Ben to communicate with most aliens that don't speak English.

The Omnitrix displays 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 Omnitrix to bring back to life any species stored in The Codon Stream, the genetic energy matrix contained within and powering The Omnitrix.

The Omnitrix also has a failsafe to try and 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. Additionally, sometimes when The Omnitrix senses that Ben has carried out his task with an alien form, it will time out automatically to return him to human form.

Ben also has a smartphone and a hoverboard.

## Weaknesses

Whenever the Omnitrix times out, Ben is left powerless until it recharges and he can switch to a new alien form.

In addition to gaining a selected alien's powers and strengths, he gains its weaknesses. Additionally, 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. Furthermore, any illness Ben is experiencing in his human form will also affect his alien forms.

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 the new alien.

Despite his experience in using the Omnitrixes 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.

Ben claims that The Omnitrix mistransforms him on purpose frequently, though this is at least partly due to his lack of precision when using its hologlyphic dial interface. His tendency to slap the watch to activate it also randomizes the timeout function, which is at least partly responsible for The Omnitrix' timing out at inopportune moments.

While Ben claims to be primarily self-sufficient (and he's no slouch), he has grown accustomed to having support from well-trained partners (such as Max, Gwen, Kevin Levin, and more recently Rook Blonko); having to learn the idiosyncrasies and skills of new friends in MD-4061 may frustrate him and put him off his game.

Ben has an allergy to peanuts and has a fear of peacocks. He also has coulrophobia, the fear of clowns.

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

Ben appears to have a short attention span at times-- which this writer headcanons as a full ADD diagnosis --and more often than not it can get him into trouble. His natural agility, grace, and reflexes can sometimes abandon him when he's distracted, for instance.

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.

This version of Ben has also voluntarily locked away access to the Celestialsapien form of Alien X, whose powers would have granted him nigh-omnipotence. Azmuth could hypothetically provide him with an unlock code as need be, but given that Ben will be dimensions away in The Horizon for the duration, such help will likely not be accessible during this story arc.

## Biography

### Pre-Horizon

In Ben's home universe, in his home town of Bellwood, Ben was an average underachieving fourth-grader with big dreams and a big heart, always itching to play the comic-book hero and help others-- though this often ended in embarrassment for him when bullies foiled his attempts to save the day.

His entire life changed, however, on the first night of a fateful summer road trip with his cousin Gwen and their Grandpa Max, when a mysterious alien device fell from the sky and attached itself upon his wrists with secrets that it hid. This was the original Omnitrix, and Ben immediately decided to use its great power for heroic deeds... and some great irresponsibility.

Over the ensuing 6 years, Ben has faced unimaginable foes, learned incredible secrets, suffered traumatic losses, and saved his entire universe on multiple occasions. His name is known on Earth and in deep space as a Hero of Heroes. He has traveled forward and backwards in time, ventured into the parallels of The Omniverse, and even borne witness to the Big Bang of his own timeline. (Also this one time he fought aliens and zombies with George Washington, funny story.) Throughout all of this, Ben has continued to discover new aliens within The Omnitrix ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, and forever uses them to find new ways to help those around him and have a whole mess of fun doing it.

## Trivia

* Benjamin is a name from the Hebrew name בִּנְיָמִין (Binyamin) which means "son of the south" or "son of the right hand" going back into the Tanakh (called the Hebrew Bible by Christian scholars), a name of one of the sons of Jacob. His name, "Ben," is to create a rhyming effect between his first name and the number Ten. Also, his surname is a reference to 'Ten' of Ben 10. His middle name, Kirby, is in reference to comic book legend Jack Kirby.
* Ben has an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, which he references frequently in his dialogue, though his very favorite franchise is the in-universe "Sumo Slammers," which has movies, cartoons, videogames, and collectible trading cards.
* His favorite foods are smoothies (particularly from in-universe restaurant Mr. Smoothy) and chili fries.
* He has a scar/birthmark in the shape of New Jersey.

## External References

* Much of this article's material is derived from articles on The Ben 10 Wiki, though tailored to fit this writer's needs, headcanons, and grammatical preferences. All credit is due the canon's original creators and to the work of the fans who curate that wiki.
* This version of the character is set post-Omniverse canon, and is played by this writer on Tumblr at omniuniversal.tumblr.com, with headcanons found here. Events from this Tumblr continuity may be referenced in this roleplay, and vice versa once Ben returns to his home timeline.