| Name | Dennis Blake |
| Species | Human |
| Home Planet | Earth |
| Status | Alive |
| Age | 43 |
| Occupation | Police detective Freelance investigator (formerly) Vigilante (formerly) CIA assassin (formerly) CIA analyst (formerly) FBI agent (formerly) |
| Residence | Bellwood, USA |
| Affiliation | Bellwood Police Department (BPD) 10th precinct CIA (formerly) FBI (formerly) |
| Associates | James Rozum |
| First appearance | "Authorities" |
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Detective Dennis Blake is a newly-rejoined police detective and former vigilante, CIA member, and FBI agent, and a high school/college friend of police captain James Rozum. He is an original character from Ben 10: Heroes of Evolution.
Character Background[]
Blake and Rozum were best friends in high school and college. Blake, while being an exemplary student, was so focused on his educational years and never had much insight on his future - Rozum always had ambition to be a cop, but Blake saw his reasoning as flawed, as though having a longtime passion is the only way to find a future.
Rozum went on to become a captain while Blake secretly joined the CIA, periodically switching between being an analyst and working out in the field. He also did work for the FBI - however, he decided to face the fact that he too had a cop's ambition - finally seeing the flaw in this as nonexistent, he went on to pursue his belief that work closer to home was more meaningful - it served as a strong motivator and made Blake an accomplished detective. He was then removed from his job for unknown reasons, though Blake vaguely claims it as an "accident", implied to be on his part. His records, however, were preserved. Ben Tennyson is able to quickly deduce that Blake was involuntarily discharged from the police force because he continues to fight crime in the present day.
Blake, still wishing to serve the same cause, becomes a freelance investigator and vigilante going undercover under the codename and alias "Arrowhead". While he tends to evade the law often, the work he does, despite volatility, is a great contribution to the city of Bellwood. Blake has little respect for criminals and tackles mostly underground markets and small-time businesses with little risks to be taken due to relatively unintelligent kingpins.
Blake undertakes in investigating a large drug cartel which interests him as a challenge - during a mission in a factory, Blake is captured - he uses his wits to outsmart his interrogators as he undoes his cuffs and subdues them, as well as breaking out. Blake runs into the drug lab and witnesses the effects of a corrosive chemical called CRO-117, known as "Demon's Blood", firsthand on humans. He steals a can and escapes the cartel leader: Ssserpent. He uses the Demon's Blood to corrode the factory's electrical systems and make its central interiors collapse, before driving off in a truck carrying the shipment.
Under the Arrowhead moniker, Blake's activities were tracked by Rozum for a month and following the investigation of the drug lab, the M.O. is confirmed to match and Ben, Gwen and Kevin accompany Rozum in a hunt for Arrowhead. They find a digital chart belonging to Huntington Foods, a facade for a cocaine smuggling ring whose owner was recently deceased. The newest shipment is reported to take place the same night the chart is found.
A masked Blake intercepts a deal at an abandoned railroad and hops on a train carrying the rest of the shipment - Blake is able to overpower Spidermonkey, Gwen and Kevin, but Ben uses Ultimate Spidermonkey to stop the train and defeat Blake. Rozum unmasks Blake and is shocked to learn the truth, not having seen Blake for 27 years. Blake is taken back to the precinct for further interrogation.
Blake informs the cops that the dealers mentioned something called "FumeX", which is a public heroin company. Blake also shows off his near-superhuman observational prowess and while being extremely rude to Rozum's incompetent detectives, they manage to track the next shipment from FumeX using a similar live-updating chart. Blake uses quite risky stunts but the shipment is stopped. Edgar Castillo, one of the dealers, is taken back to the precinct.
Castillo divulges the little information he knows because he is unsettled by the possible lies Ssserpent could be feeding his dealers. That night, FumeX head Santiago Menendez is murdered by getting shot off of a rooftop, but Blake arrives at the scene the following afternoon and uses intricate deductive reasoning to find out that Menendez was not a suicide victim.
Blake and Rozum learn that FumeX could be a shell corporation. A new shipment from Huntington shows up but the chart's last update is covered in frowning faces. Everyone figures it could be a death threat to a Huntington dealer.
Blake calls Ben that night while on the way to the last-known location of Rafael "Rafe" Mendoza, the dealer who they triangulated down to bearing the responsibility for the shipment. Ssserpent murders the assassins sent after Rafe and kidnaps him before the police arrive on the scene, and Blake and the others find a beheaded body among several other mangled corpses.
Castillo calls Blake the following evening to tell him the address of the FumeX headquarters. Blake is confused as to why he didn't hear this earlier, not knowing that Castillo is murdered in jail after the call. Blake finds the address to be genuine. He, Rozum and Ben's team arrive at the facility, destroy it and take down the dealers. Blake kills Rafe before he can kill Ssserpent in a misunderstanding, and then tackles Ssserpent through an overhead glass pane and into a storage room he imprisons him in.
Ssserpent reveals he used to work for an anonymous man, who Ben said was responsible for the deaths of ex-Plumbers Krill and Wyatt Herman prior to the assault because the brothers used Demon's Blood on him. Ssserpent says that the man lost faith in him but went on to pick apart the cartel. The man texts Ssserpent that FumeX is in fact his corporation and he has installed "precautions" - an old Null Void projector is activated and Ssserpent is consumed. Blake, Rozum and Ben's team make it out safely.
Blake and Rozum pay first-time visits to Mr. Smoothy's along with Ben's team. Rozum reveals to Blake that he restored his preserved police records, on which he came across as clean and the reasons for his discharge are likely illegitimate. With this "transfer" already put into place, Blake gladly accepts his re-appointed position as a police detective and begins working for the BPD.
Personality[]
Blake's character in the series is designed to be very volatile, adventurous, confident, risk-taking, intelligent, and having a "justified recklessness", though he is a lot like Ben, but with a tad higher sense of dignity, and doesn't hesitate in being rude to those he tags as "inferior" following quick analysis. Blake constantly makes use of his rude sense of humor, which still manages to amuse a bittersweet audience, and takes friends' fallout quite lightly.
Blake is shown to nonetheless be quite calculating, and his observational prowess enables him to identify any trait on anything despite intimacy with no hesitation. Blake also comes with a rebellious edge to him and doesn't hesitate to defy certain borders to quench his thirst for adventure. He treats most things like a challenge, and this degree of commonality between him and Ben quickly dissolves their fallout and instead develops their mutually appreciative yet friendly-rivaled friendship.
With Kevin and Gwen, however, their higher level of sensitivity seems to put Blake off enough to the point where he ignores it. While Blake is clearly not insensitive himself, his impatience comes for things he deems unimportant. Kevin's possession by more aggressive side seems to be a necessity in order to maintain a friendship with Blake, who admires Ben's spunk, but doesn't include scorn when doing likewise with Kevin. Gwen is more compassionate and actively tries to put aside her snobbishness as a child, though Blake has a chance of pulling it back into her at times and fueling her more impulsive sense of adventure with his exciting lifestyle and "guilty-pleasure-inducing" presence.
Powers/Abilities[]
Blake's most prominently featured ability is his unbelievable sense of observation, which he has developed and continues to exercise when studying escape artistry... while captive. He is not uncomfortable being caught in the criminal world during his freelance escapades as he shows little regard for any "threat" imposed and treats small-time criminals like games. Blake uses his observation for intricate deductions and despite his rudeness, he proves to be an instrumental asset in police cases.
Blake's combat ability is extremely sharp and he is a dangerously formidable opponent, having gotten training through both personal, self-taught experience as well as his time in the CIA, FBI and police. He is able to overpower Spidermonkey despite the alien's primary trait of enhanced stamina, and utilizes several forms of martial arts and combat-based athletics in his brutal, swift fighting style.
Blake is also a skilled marksman, being able to use merely a pistol to take down over three, moving long-range targets in rapid succession, all spot-on shots. He appears so confident of his aim that he considers where he shoots as induced by his own will - this means he just knows that he will hit where he aims every time. Blake does not exercise his stealth skills all that much as he has no problem being caught, but it is suggested his stealth is still sharp due to his experience with CIA fieldwork and environmental analysis.
Trivia[]
- Blake's deductive skills are loosely based off of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, though I plan to focus more on his wit and combat skills to avoid my original character ending being too derivative.
- Rozum gives Blake Ben's number.
- Blake appears to enjoy the drinks at Mr. Smoothy's.
- When it comes to the law pertaining to Rozum, Blake's care for it seems to be automatically triggered - this is recognized by Rozum as the key motivator to his non-hesitant recruiting of Blake to the police.
- Blake owns a property in Bellwood which the police use as a temporary safe house during his short-lived custody