Examining the Gwen 10 AU and Anodite! Ben

Going off of what we’ve seen in the Peggy Sue what if and her skill in fighting in Omniverse, I’ve always been of the opinion of it being a neat idea that Ben is better than Prime! Gwen at Magic/Mana manipulation as Gwen 10 is at using the Omnitrix as Prime! Ben is.

Leaving aside the wtf bs luck he’d have if he has Prime Ben’s luck and adding the Charms of Bezel (which I don’t see him destroying but I’ll get to that later), I’ll expand on what Ben being the magic user of the group would mean.

We all know about his heroic drive, which causes P! Ben to Hero for weeks without a break and does multiple all nighters (with a stint of 24/7 monitoring of Earth as XLR8 to personally and singlehandedly stop crime as Ben 10K), it seems perfectly reasonable that Anodite! Ben would have that same hyper focus.

Let me paint a picture of what the OS would probably look like.

Gwen as we’ve seen in the OS is a find-the-right-power-to-deal-with-X-situation sort of girl, that is she thinks/plans before she acts and uses tactics far more blatantly than Ben (who thinks on his feet and is a master of improvisation). She also gets the finer point of her transformations faster than P! Ben as seen when she figured out how to spell her name in fireworks as Heatblast in a night when it took weeks by Ben’s own admission to do the same. Ah, and speaking of planning she isn’t at all adverse to using aliens like Upgrade to enhance her resources (where she permanently made her computer’s software better), so I fully expect her to Batman things out with Grey Matter for when she’s timed out and so Ben can have stuff to protect himself with prior to getting the charms.

As I discussed earlier, I don’t see him destroying them since as far as he knows that’s the only source of his powers. Until he gets body jacked by Hope and knows he can use magic. At which point he dives head first into magic/spell memorization/mana manipulation the same way he dove headfirst into heroics.

Flash forward to 13~ year old Ben who has been tirelessly mastering his magic and the charms (having far more time to do so without Gwen’s various extracurriculars/sports) where he accidentally sheds his skin ro unleash his Anodite self. He obviously freaks out until he quickly figures out how to reknit his meatsuit on himself. At which point he starts… experimenting. Which leads him to several awesome discoveries.

Everything about him is enhanced in his new form. His magic comes easier and is more powerful, his mana manipulation is more intricate and diverse. He doesn’t need to sleep/eat/drink and can’t grow tired when he sheds his skin. He can HERO 24/7 with no consequences.

Which he obviously jumps at the chance to. By the time AF rolls around I fully expect him to have been heroing to distant planets and the like, especially since he’s been practicing nonstop since he learned about his Anodite form and he’d still have all the Charms amping his powers. In fact I fully expect him to be at least as good as Omniverse! Gwen by the time it does, including stuff like her casual scanning of the universe and adjacent dimensions for Kevin’s car and trans dimensional teleportation.

He’d already be somewhat famous in cosmic society for his deeds too.

Ah, I should probably elaborate on how Ben as a Anodite would probably fight. Where Gwen is a shoot single spell than another after effect has happened… I basically see Ben using his Magic/Anodite powers like he would Master Control. That is he chains various spells/wards/potions together and manipulates his environment to suit his needs and solve whatever problem he’s facing, which his eidetic memory would really help him with. He can just read a spellbook cover to cover and have all that information in his head, just the same way as Marvel’s Doctor Strange does.

Which leads me to my final point, I fully expect him to reach the title of High Magus around the same time as his prime self got the title of Hero of Heroes… if not earlier.