Into the Light is the premiere episode of DC's Hero of Heroes.
Story[]
[Exterior of a lone convenience store in the middle of nowhere: Skrrt. A rusted RV, tan with a single red and single blue stripe horizontally down the middle, stops in a parking spot. Some kind of pipe clangs to the floor.]
| New Style |
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| Hey, this episode is one of 31 classic episodes and 6 Shorts converted from a legacy style to a more clearly readable and consistent format/style using a Python script. The script is not absolutely perfect, and I'm continuing to try to squash any weird formatting bugs that occur. If you spot one, please let me know in the comments or on my page! -COLOR (Wall) |
The door pops open. Out come the red Hawaiian-shirt wearing driver and a 10 year old freckled redhead in a two-tone sky blue short-sleeve hoodie, shorts and white flip flops.
She turns and speaks just slightly louder but ever so sharply.
Still no response from inside the vehicle.
He slams the door after they hit the ground.
The driver – and the girl’s grandfather – proceeds to lock the Rustbucket as the two proceed inside.
[Minutes later, inside the convenience store: An idle teenager leans in a chair at the checkout counter, with a TV on overhead.]
Meanwhile in the snack aisle, the young girl stands, paralyzed by an impossible choice. A small section with a green label reads “Healthy Foods.” She pans over this, inspecting each item, fighting the urge to dart her eyes just slightly to her right over into the candy aisle, where such sugary snacks as KC Krunchies are available. Before long, as if she’d blacked out, she’s holding as many as she can carry in her arms, well away from the healthy options she’d come in for.]
She drops the pile on the floor in shame as he rounds the corner.
A bell chimes at the store entrance. They turn, expecting the absent Ben to be there, but find instead two all-black helmed bikers parading sawed-off shotguns.
Gwen screams, the second biker shooting the ceiling. Her grandfather, continuing to hold a hand up, covers Gwen with his body.
As the second biker maintains their aim on Gwen and her grandfather, the first approaches the teenage cashier, recording the bikers on their phone. The biker, red-streaked ponytail bobbing in the back of their helmet as they move, cocks their gun.
The teenager’s hands clam up. They visibly shake as the biker places the gun directly across them on the counter. They keep one hand on their weapon as they snatch the phone, noticing it’s not a recording but a live stream.
The biker lowers the phone to find themselves at the end of the teenager’s own weapon. They duck swiftly, Gwen’s grandfather quickly pushing him and her down to the ground to dodge the ensuing battle.
Dale touches the nose of their shotgun to the grandfather’s head, facing the teenager.
They point their weapon to the teenager.
The ground rumbles. Eardrum-shatteringly loud jackhammering sounds, as if right in front of everyone in the store. Everyone collapses, the bikers dropping their guns.
The ceiling begins to crack, dust and debris hitting the floor. Cracks then in the ground form, starting out the door and leading right up to the bikers. As if the Earth itself was parched, one hole each opened up in the ground, perfectly catching and trapping them.
Thus, the heavy machinery noises stop. The bikers begin to get up, but as they turn around, they find a hulking yellow metal humanoid with armadillo-esque features, from the ears to the full-body scaly scutes. The buck stops there, with his arms purely metal, the tops of jackhammers affixed to either elbow, and balls with sharp fingers for hands. He smashes down on each gun, breaking them.
The teenager, in the meantime, swaps their own gun for their phone, left on the counter. Again, they record. The hero turns to the teenager, a badge on their chest gleaming at this moment. The symbol at their heart, and the focus of the teenager, is a black circle with an hourglass-esque white cutout.
After they’re both out, he picks up Gwen and her grandfather.
He leaps out the front door with the two.
In a moment, the teen races out to see him again, finding no one around – even though the RV is still present. The bikers however are rocked, stuck on the ground. The police soon arrive, taking them in, but as they are taking the teen’s statement on the events, they hear a strange ticking sound.
The “Jackhammer” is still there – on the roof of the building. As soon as they make eye contact, he drops out of sight to behind the building. The teen, noticing this, races, with the police in tow.
Behind the building, the creature’s central badge flashes red before finally exuding a burst of energy. Within the burst, the body of it contorts, the muscles retracting and shrinking, eyes gaining sclera, ears shifting in shape and size, until a pint-sized ten year old boy is left. To this, the police and the teen cashier arrive, bewildered.
Stepping around the corner is Gwen’s – and the boy’s – grandfather.
The boy grins, waving coyly to the police.
The teenager gulps. The officers eye them.
They begin scratching the back of their head.
The officer throws his hands up as he rounds the corner. The other cop looks to the grandfather.
The second officer raises a cheek, scoffing as they round the corner.
Pan to a security camera just above the back of the building, that no doubt caught the entire affair. It crackles and sparks, pointing to the ground and recording nothing.
[The RV takes off minutes later. As it does, the defunct camera suddenly comes alive again, pointing back up at the back of the building and donning again a red “recording” light. Inside the RV, Max sits at the driver’s seat, Gwen at the passenger’s, and Ben on his phone at a table just by the exit.]
Ben blows a raspberry.
Ben and Gwen simultaneously scoff.
Max begins to swerve, pulling the sun visor down in front of him. A bright light continues to beam through the windshield at the passengers. Ben himself attempts to go for a seat belt, but finds himself unable to see.
Max slams the brakes. Ben, for a brief moment able to see, spots a singular man jaywalking across the middle-of-nowhere open road, cloaked in all black with some silver accessories. Not fastened into his seat, the boy is thrust out of the windshield by the stop.
In the air, Ben panics. As he hurtles towards the windshield, he brings up his wrist. A gauntlet of a watch, with the same insignia as his “Jackhammer” transformation, is here, with a red tone to the center. It suddenly dings and switches green. He twists the watch dial the badge sits on, popping up a tower, and revealing to him a slim silhouette. He smacks down swiftly as he smashes through the glass.
Rolling through the air, wounded, his arms thin out and his head widens. His body is encased in a white jumpsuit with a line straight down the middle. His mouth stretches wide, almost ear-to-ear, on his head with headphones seemingly built into his form. Before you know it, though, this silicone body is mirrored.
A copy spawns in front of him, hurtling towards the road with double the momentum. It lands first, and repositions to catch his other body, sliding back in the process. The bodies combine back into each other, as he eyes Max’s face of pure confusion over the disappearance of the man. The feeling is mutual.
An empty road, with nowhere to hide in the grass on either side, and yet, like he came, he was gone.
Max pulls over and steps out with Gwen, who all examine the area.
Ben’s transformation drops to a knee, clutching his upper back. A lengthy piece of the windshield has impaled him.
Gwen matter-of-factly points to the scene around them.
Max delicately pulls the shard out of Ben’s transformation’s back, sending a sharp shock down his spine. Ben covers his mouth as he screams into his hand, but this lets out a sonic scream that pushes him back a few feet, knocking Max over as well. Right after, Ben reverts to his normal, human, kid form.
Ben lets out a small scream, but as Max and Gwen pan around, they see he’s nowhere to be found.
All the while, a muffled scream lets out.
Max follows her finger to the very figure that crossed the road earlier. Like Ben before, though, he is not alone. There are two of him, walking in opposite directions from one side of the road to the other. But as he reaches the ends, each disappears, before spawning in again to repeat the cycle.
Max rubs his eyes.
Max returns from the vehicle with a cell phone.
He pockets the phone.
A faint sound takes Gwen’s attention, her head upright and eyes gaping.
Gwen rolls her eyes.
Max rushes to the car. At the door, he faces Gwen.
Max heads in. A moment later, the engine hum dissipates, leaving in its place a distant, muffled screaming – Ben’s. Max’s eyes pop wide open.
Max cups his mouth with both hands to project his voice.
[From Ben’s perspective, he sees Max and Gwen from just ten feet away. He’s being held fully against his will by the lanky, cloaked figure – his screams muffled by the adult’s hand over his mouth. He is able to freely wave at them, but he watches as they look in every direction but at him.]
Ben’s screaming stops as a more immediate fear of that pain sets in. He continues to kick and punch.
Sirens begin to sound in the distance. The figure turns and looks in the direction the Rustbucket came from, finding the very cops from earlier on the way.
Ben takes advantage of this momentary distraction, heel-kicking the figure in the shin. The figure releases him accidentally. He runs towards his family.
But before long, the world before him falls away, oozing away. What remains is a plane of infinite darkness, home only to him and the lanky figure. Ben turns back around, the lanky figure gesturing for him to come back with one hand while another is extended, maintaining the darkness.
[Outside the dark plane: The police arrive, the biker goons from earlier strapped in and cuffed in the backseat.]
The officer looks in every direction around the area before turning back to Max.
She holds back a chuckle as her partner simply lets loose a haughty guffaw.
The first officer, Mary, who was inches away from Gwen in their confrontation, flips around. The officer Paul is staring into the empty back seat of the patrol car.
Mary plants her face against the window.
Everyone darts around, except Gwen, who hears perfectly that the scream is mere feet ahead of her. She stares straight ahead.
Click. Clunk. Mary opens the back door and is swiftly knocked onto the floor. The two criminal bikers suddenly appear, with Gwen watching their appearance.
The gun slotted into her holster unbuckles and hovers out of it.
[Inside the dark plane: The lanky figure snatches Ben, holding his arm laterally across the boy’s torso so he can’t move freely, with his other hand on Ben’s mouth.]
He throws him onto the ground viciously. Ben struggles to get up, the figure putting a foot on his back to keep him down.
The boy tries to slap his watch, but it merely hums lowly, out of power.
He begins dragging Ben along. The hurt boy stays nearly mum, only groaning. As he is dragged along, he feels the brush of grass along his stomach, as though he was still in the field on the side of the road. He looks up, spotting in the distance a rusty-looking muscle bar. Ben’s kidnapper waves a finger, transforming it into a proper SUV.
The man pulls Ben up by his arm and tosses him against the vehicle.
The figure opens the backseat and out from it grabs a knife. Ben’s heart races, continuing to frantically look to his depowered super watch. But the man quickly tosses it into the field.
He then rips out a hacksaw, whose blade shines against the midday sun.
He clears his throat.
He pulls his saw hand into the air and slams down.
Ben sloppily pulls his hand away.
He pushes Ben's arm back against the vehicle and prepares his saw for the perfect chop.
Thunk.
Ben's free fist clashes with the metal of the kidnapper’s mouthless mask. The boy quickly recoils in pain.
The man captures Ben’s other hand, pressing it against the door. He struggles and shakes.
The watch chimes, welcoming a green hourglass symbol in place of the powerless red.
The kidnapper panics, expecting a transformation, and misses his next swing, sticking the saw into the car.
Ben slides his foot into the kidnapper’s legs, breaking his stance and loosening his grip. He does it again with the other foot, allowing him the free hand to twist his watch and slap back down.
Swiftly, his body is overcome with yellow scales and his chest puffs outward. A tail pops out of his back and his elbows grow handles, his hands becoming silver metallic balls.
His stature exceeds the tall kidnapper’s as his transformation finalizes as the Jackhammer once more.
He covers his face with an elbow, disappearing. The infinite darkness collapses away, revealing Ben’s Jackhammer form to be alone in a field about 100 paces from the nearby Rustbucket.
[At the Rustbucket, with the kidnapper’s disappearance by Ben, the cloaked criminals suddenly take form once more. One – Dale – holds the gun directed at Mary. The sound of another being cocked in their direction is heard, from Paul. Max makes an effort to block Gwen with his entire body.]
Paul points to the unnamed biker.
The ground beings to tremble again.
Cracks in the ground trail from the neighboring field towards Dale.
Click.
Click. Click. Click.
Dale drops the gun and starts to run. Paul lowers his gun as the other biker follows. But the cracks are faster. They turn back and notice in the distance, blackened out by the blinding sun behind him, Jackhammer just standing there.
The crunching of the ground takes over. A hole pops open right where they stand, capturing them yet again.
Ben’s hulking transformation trudges over slowly to the team, Max cheering.
Max processes that the officers are still present and unaware he’s behind the alien.
Gwen slaps her palm to her face as the officers regain their composure.
Jackhammer arrives.
Jackhammer’s ears perk up. The officers spot this and ready their weapons.
Before Mary confronts her again, Jackhammer plants his hands firmly into the ground.
The ground shakes violently in the immediate vicinity.
Cracks follow the ground from the Jackhammer’s feet to an uncertain destination in the fields.
The cracks stop suddenly, opening a new hole in the distance.
The drilling stops.
The Jackhammer nods.
The officers nod and race over to the middle of the field, where they point their guns to the seemingly empty hole. Within a moment, the kidnapper manifests. They pull him out and walk him over to the patrol car.
Max approaches him and eyes him directly. The kidnapper’s eyes gape. Max slides the mask off, revealing the withered old brown face.
Max nods.
The kidnapper – Arthur – turns his head.
Arthur falls mum.
They shove him fully into the backseat and shut the door. They see him disappear inside.
He scoffs as he reappears.
Mary looks eerily to Jackhammer then back to Gwen.
Mary and Paul board their patrol car.
Max points to the windshield. Mary rolls her eyes.
[Back at the heavily tattered convenience store: A black, unlabeled van pulls up. In the backseat, a 6-foot blond man in an all-black military garb stands. “Steel,” reads his glued-on name tag. He leans his head over the shoulder of a technician, who taps away at a keyboard before a dozen screens.]
The technician nods and points as footage begins from an outdoor security camera on the store, showing the Rustbucket’s earlier arrival. They brush past minutes of destruction, including the camera shaking erratically. Then, for a time, the footage completely cuts out. Static goes on, resuming footage finally with the Rustbucket having pulled off, well down the road.
Steel slams a gloved fist on the desk.
He pauses on the very frame after the static ends and looks closely at the Rustbucket, squinting and waving his finger at it, waiting for a memory to recall.
Synopsis[]
Ben's recent rise to stardom has raised eyebrows - and one set belongs to a maker of illusions.
Major Events[]
- Ben meets Dr. Arthur Light.
- Ben learns from Light from that his watch turns him into aliens rather than monsters.
- The central trio are introduced.
Characters[]
Ben 10[]
- Ben Tennyson
- Gwen Tennyson
- Max Tennyson
- Steel (Endgame only)
- Biker 1A
DC[]
- Dr. Arthur Light
Other characters[]
- Officer Mary
- Officer Paul
- Delilah "Dale"
Aliens Used (by Ben)[]
- Jackhammer (x2)
- Echo Echo (unnamed, brief)
| Created by COLOR | |||
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| Alien Universe (BTAU - BiA - SiC) - Clad in Darkness - Benjection - DC's Hero of Heroes | |||