#ben 23

unlike main AU, 32's AU is closer to No-Watch Ben's AU, the summer trip he had with Gwen was a boring one that they both remember as awful, but still often talk about because that was the last year they saw Grandpa alive, after that life has been tough for Tennyson. he lost most passions in his life, no longer collecting sumo slammers, playing a lot of video games, that reach a point of conflict with his otherwise understanding parents, he then dropped out of school, passed his ged, and started working in a local Gyro place, developing an extreme love/hate relationship with them, he gave part of the money to his parents as an understandable rent. (100$/mo) and would often hang out with a guy he sort of knew from school that worked in a garage near his place - Kevin E. Levin, until one day, he decided to fix up the old rust bucket that despite being in disuse didn't deteriorate that much. Kevin, who still became an illegal alien tech dealer in this life through his own means, gets really suspicious fixing the rust bucket and demands to know who grandpa max really was. Despite this Kevin still helps out thinking that he can just scam Tennyson and steal a big stash of alien tech from him, eventually the rustbucket is back on the road, and Ben takes all his savings, asks to leave his job and says goodbye to his parents and picks up Gwen from her university for a summer trip p.2, kevin also asked to come along as the 2nd driver and because he felt the 2 have grown close, on this adventure, when they revisit the places that saw as kids, ben takes a walk while kevin and gwen are bonding, sensing that it wasn't his place to be there, and also to remember his first night, that night was the best night in ben's mind, after leaving grandpa and gwen after a tantrum he'd been caught up by grandpa and given an important speech, a speech he uses when he just doesn't want to do anything to get a sense of strength to do anything. This night he sees a shooting star, and wishes on it to hear grandpa's voice one more time, but it turns out the shooting star is the omnitrix and ben gets it, unlike his young self he doesn't experiment with it wildly, instead running to camp, telling that some thing jumped on his wrist and he can't get it off, then out of nowhere he heard grandpa's voice from the rust bucket, and quickly ran in, not letting kevin or gwen touch the watch. there is grandpa's holo in there and it tells ben what's up and how he died. turns out some aliens killed him and that ben now posses the strongest weapon in the world - the omnitrix, and that he seriously didn't want to have to teach Ben to use it, he ends it by saying at least i assume it's gonna be Ben, because that's the DNA override he asked azmuth to perform at the end of that summer vacation. Ben swears vengeance and stuff happens. eventually with ben ending up on tetrax's ship, villgax killing him and ben assuming control of tetrax's ship.

And I do mean it when I say "Gwen 23 just never had a Ben in this au" like he just straight up doesn't exist for one reason or another and Gwen never met him. Never had to share a birthday, never got into fights over nothing so bad that their families had to stop visiting each other when they were 8, none of the stuff having a Ben puts her through.