Chapter 2: New Kid

After he got done unpacking, Ben looked at the time and saw that it was only 1:37. 

'Damn. That's still 2 hours until combat training. Guess I can do a quick stream to update my fans,' Ben sat down at his desk and turned on his laptop before opening the twitch app and starting a stream. 

As soon as he got on, hundreds of fans began to flood his stream and spam his chat. 

[Boss Ben is actually on? Looks like Dr. Doom is gonna flood the Tri-State area.]

[Not only is he streaming but he is not doing it in the middle of the night? That is wild!]

[Big Boss Ben. Are we doing a True Crime Stream or Hero Fight Stream?]

Ben read over the messages and frowned when he saw how many people were making fun of him for streaming. 

"You bastards! So what if I don't have a good schedule. I at least stream semi-regularly," Ben complained to his fans. 

When they heard his words, a large number of L's spammed the chat. 

[Lies!]

[Last time you streamed was a month ago but I saw you post on TikTok that you were bored for 3 hours straight last week. You could have streamed then!]

[What schedule? Where can I find that?]

[He's joking, right? He can't be serious, right?]

Ben furrowed his brows when he saw how none of his chat believed him. 

'I don't stream that irregularly. Right?' he began to question himself after seeing so many messages. 

"Tsk. Anyway! The reason that I hopped on is that I just got transferred to a new school and have a roommate so I won't be able to stream as much," Ben explained why he started up the stream

[Oh no. How will we ever get our regular streams now?]

[Your parents finally got rid of you? Sent you to military school?]

[Can't be military school. They would have shaved his head and taken his computer.]

[Maybe it's an all boys school. Didn't he nearly get in a fight a few times for flirting with girls who had boyfriends.]

[Sorry to hear you got transferred. tryingtohidesmile.gif]

"Fuck all of you," Ben laughed at his chat, glad that he had cultivated such a community. "Anyway, I got an hour to kill. Let's do some Unban Requests."

And so Ben spent the next hour reading the various unban requests that had been piling up with his chat. Luckily, his mods left good notes so he was able to tell which ones were banned because he was malding and which ones were banned cause they were actually causing trouble in his chat. 

"Alright guys, that will be all for today. My roommate will probably be back soon and I gotta get ready for the meet-n-greet. Thanks for coming in and I'll talk to you guys later."

After that, he shut the stream off and looked at the clock that said 3. Ben wanted to wait for his roommate to arrive but seeing that he still wasn't there and hearing his stomach growl, the teen decided to make a break for the kitchen and grab himself some food. 

He walked through the halls and saw a bunch of teens and preteens wearing all types of clothes or being completely naked (the non-humanoid looking ones at least). One thing that Ben noticed as he walked past them was that many were looking back at him and whispering between each other. 

That wasn't new to Ben. He was the new guy but he was also a popular streamer. Both types of people get those stares. 

So instead of being bothered by it, he nodded toward the few who greeted him and made his way to the kitchen. 

Even though it was called a kitchen, it resembled a café at the mall where all the teens would hang out. Most of the room was filled with tables and chairs while one wall had holloware and flatware on shelves while the other part of that wall had several machines that looked like advanced soda dispenser machines. 

Been grabbed a plate and brought it over to the machines to try and see what they did but even when he pressed the buttons, nothing happened. 

"Having trouble?" a female voice said from behind

Ben turned around and noticed a blonde girl around his age. She was wearing all black and looked very goth with her black leather jacket and skirt as well as her silver jewelry. 

"How could you tell?" Ben asked with a smile

"Every new kid has issues. Illyana's the name," the girl smiled at him and stepped forward, pushing him aside with her hip. "What do you want...?"

"Ben," he answered with a smirk. "And I am fine with anything that can fill my stomach before training."

"Ah, then you'll want something light. Let's get some granola bars and then we can eat dinner together later," Illyana suggested while pressing some buttons. She put her plate on the platform and a beam of light shot out from it, creating 6 granola bars on the plate. 

"Whoa. That's pretty cool," Ben admitted, attempting to grab one of the bars off the plate but his hand was swatted by Illyana. He looked at her and saw the playfulness in her eyes. "Fine. What do you want?"

"An answer. Dinner later?" she asked with a small smirk, picking up one of the granola bars and placing it near her lips

"Only if we can get dessert too," Ben figured he may as well get along with the mystery girl before him. 

"Deal," Illyana agreed, passing the plate over to him after taking two more granola bars off. "I gotta run and meet my team. Meet here later."

And before he could say anything, Ben saw Illyana sliding straight down. When he looked, he saw a blue portal had appeared under her feet and she had sunk into it. In less than a second, she was gone and so was the portal. 

"Wow. This school is nuts," Ben said as she picked up on of the bars and took a bite out of it. 

After he grabbed some food, Ben made his way back upstairs to see if his team was back. They would have to lead him to wherever the training was located after all. 

When Ben got back to his room, he saw several guys inside of it, sitting on the other bed, at his roommate's desk, or standing in the corner. The one standing in the corner was a huge guy made out of rock that stood at about 7 and a half feet tall. 

"Hey, man," the Hispanic man stood up from the bed and held out his hand to Ben. The latter reached out himself and shook the other teen's hand. "Brian Cruz but my codename is Tag."

"Big guy is Santo Vaccarro or Rockslide. Dude at the desk is Julian Keller or Hellion as he named himself to kiss up to Ms. Frost."

"Nice to meet you guys. Ben Tennyson. Can call me 10 but spelled the Roman way," Ben joked, coming up with a codename on the spot. 

'X sounds pretty cool. Can make plenty of cool jokes and also gives me a mysterious vibe,' Ben thought, thinking over the different forms he could take on and how he already had different codenames for them but never came up with one for himself. 

"So just X then? Anyway, you're that TikTok guy, right?" Santo asked

"Yep. 15.7 million and counting," Ben recalled the number of subscribers from what he had seen earlier. 

"Cool, we got a celeb on the team," Julian spun around in his chair. "You ready for combat training?"

"Yep. Just got me some granola bars and I am good to go," Ben pointed at the last granola bar in his other hand. He wasn't able to finish it before he arrived at the dorms. 

The group walked out of the room and met 5 girls who were coming out the other side. 3 of the teens looked exactly the same, all having the same blonde hair and blue eyes as well as stoic facial expressions.

"Let me introduce you, Ben. The three girls with such wonderful smiles are 3-In-1 or the triplets. Celeste, Phoebe, and Mindee Cuckoo. They are all Ms. Frost's daughters," Julian introduced the trio to Ben.

'Triplets? Nice,' Ben thought as his eyes passed from one to another, trying to make out the smallest difference. "Nice to meet you ladies."

But in return, he only got a small nod from the trio. 

"Don't mind them. They take some time to warm up to others," a girl with the metal skin and red hair spoke up and extended her hand toward Ben.

The latter shook it and felt how smooth her skin was, surprised that a living person could feel so metallic as she did. 

"The pretty lady with the metal skin is and red hair is Cessily. Her codename is Mercury and I'll give you 3 guesses why," Julian introduced her. "She's also vice-captain of the squad so if you need anything, just go and bother her."

"Lazy bum," Cessily shot back with a smile, not paying Julian any more attention. "Welcome to the best team. We've ranked number 1 since the school started splitting us into teams."

"Great. Guess you guys must be glad that I joined, otherwise you would lose your position," Ben quipped, sure that he could knock any other team out of the top position if they were there. 

"Confident, bordering on cocky. You'll fit right in," Cessily laughed when she thought about how Emma had managed to gather so many individuals that were so similar. 

Ben then turned to the last member who he could barely see because of her clothes. Unlike the others who were wearing matching red and white uniforms, this girl was wearing an abaya and with a niqab veil for her face. The only part of the girl that Ben could see were her eyes and the little skin around them. 

"Sooraya Qadir is the last girl on our team, codename is Dust. She is the best behaved out of this bunch," Cessily took over the introduction from Julian and introduced the girl wearing the black outfit. 

"At least I'm matching with someone," Ben joked with her, wearing a black and white outfit himself. 

Sooraya let out a light giggle when she heard him and felt relieved. Many were put off by her outfit at first or questioned it. Ben and the other Hellions were the only ones who didn't seem to care. 

"Glad that I can have someone that I match with as well," Sooraya stuck out her hand and shook Ben's in greeting 

"Glad you all are getting along," Julian clapped his hands to gather everyone's attention. "And since you all were introduced, let me introduce you to him. TikTok Star, prankster, shape-shifter, and newest member of the Hellions. This is Benjamin Tennyson and he shall henceforth be known as... X!"

Ben gave a small bow to which they all (except for 3-In-1) laughed at, not taking him too serious. And with their introductions out of the way and only about 20 minutes before combat training started, the trio began heading down toward the Danger Room for Ms. Frost's training session.