#bentober

[oddrustyy]

Bentober 2: GHOST! Ft. Napstablook

I wanted to draw Ben wearing a silly sheet ghost costume but then I thought why not draw a ghost who DOES look like one^^

[dragonoidberserker]

Ben 10 RWBY Volume 1: Dimension Twist by SinraiPaleodemon1 on DeviantArt

Ben 10 RWBY Volume 1: Dimension Twist by SinraiPaleodemon1

[buggerup-busters]

Bentober Day 24 - rain

It's an illustration for my fic while the rhythm of the rain kept time (except i forgot Ben gives Mal a coat not a blanket haha oops)

[heylir]

(Prompt) Birds

Somewhat weird text with weird concept. The last part appeared already in the process as the comic page with library came up.

Cold gusts of autumn wind tore leaves from the trees, with sad cries of flying away birds accompanied its sobs. Sitting on a bench Ben looked up at a dark V of birds passing slowly across the sky.

"What is it?" he asked Verity.

She glanced briefly, "Wild geese. They fly southward."

"What for?"

"Escaping from Christmas," she chuckled.

Ben wrinkled his nose as he usually did when Vee said funny things. "But seriously?"

"There're warm countries in the South. They'll winter there and come back. Most birds do this." She looked up to the sky. "Would you like to fly, Benji? Like them, to Africa and back?"

He shrugged, "I think so... but how? Grandad Victor didn't want to finish his flying ship?"

"Nope," Vee kicked a little stone with the toe of his shoe. "Says, an outdated construction. He wants something faster. Works on sudden jumps, to make them longer, safe and more precise. Wouldn't it be great, wherever you want to be, you just go there?"

"Would be nice," agreed Ben. "Not so interesting. What use will be there in expeditions? If you can just appear at that place." Ben paused for thought. "Though... it won't work with the Third Anchor still? Too much of magic disturbances around it."

"Would you like to sail to the Third Anchor?" Vee asked, teasing him slightly.

"I'd like to read about it in books, every bit of everything. But for that, someone must sail to it and write about that." Ben looked up. "I wonder if any birds fly over the Anchor. Could they tell about it..."

Ben hated medicals. He can tell it was the thing he hated the most in his life as a student. It's why he went at it in the morning of its first day. In addition, he hoped for the fewer people would be there at that time, and it was so.

The procedure took no more than half an hour and went as expected. At the final stage, as usual, a wizard medic told Ben to roll up his sleeve and put a magic-circled disk to Ben's arm. His skin got tingled, there was a flink, then the disk beeped. The medic removed it and looked at the readings.

"Category C," he snorted. "Now what do these people even do there?"

Ben could stop his facial muscles from betraying his feelings. He knew that his face expressed nothing. It had always been his way of self-defence, an sure one, the only one — till Verity taught him some different ones. But they couldn't be used all the time, not in cases like this.

"Thackerey is one of the most studious students," the lecturer in the magic history said drily, from behind the medic's back. The rules demanded someone of the college staff present at the medicals.

"No doubt," the medic smiled sneeringly. "What else could this kind do?"

"We are quite satisfied with our student contingent," the lecturer remarked stiffly.

"Every man thinks his own geese swans," the medic wrote down Ben's readings into his card. "Of course, it isn't the Widdershins university, you must be content with what there is."

Ben saw that the lecturer's face became expressionless, too, and he couldn't be silent anymore.

"Geese can be useful, too," he stated. "It is said they saved Rome from the barbarian invaders... sir."

Unperturbed, the medic just looked through Ben and dismissed him. But Ben could see the lecturer smiling a bit and a student, who waited her turn, giving him the thumbs-up.

The part of Ben's job in the library he loved the least was the service to readers. It wasn't about freshmen who looked at catalogue boxes like they were differential equations (is it even possible to finish school without visiting some library?). Not about professors who had fathomed mysteries of magic and wasn't able to understand elementary things: that it is impossible to get a rare volume from "deeps" funds in a minute or even five minutes, and this fact can't be changed by the most extreme urgency or all of the academic distinctions or the magic spell "I just need to look at it". Not about readers of any age and ranks who filled in halves of order forms stubbornly in different ways, never mind instructions on forms, written up examples and his verbal warnings.

No, it was small routine things. The problem was...

Ben looked at a student girl who stood hesitant nearby the serving stand. It was a bad sign because ones who didn't know what to do but knew what they wanted would rush to librarians directly. Those who knew nothing at all usually hung around the doorway.

“Can I help you?” Ben asked politely, still hoping for the better.

“I just want to ask... are you Benjamin Thackerey?”

“I am,” Ben admitted, with a resigned inner sigh, because it was more concise and proper answer than, “My badge says so.”

“The very one? Who saved the University on All Sins’ Day?”

“I wasn’t alone,” Ben replied a bit stiffly.

“I know! Sidney Malik was here, too, we used to be in the same year!.. But it is you, yes?”

Ben simply nodded and started to turn the list of possible scenarios and his responses over in his mind.

Some people began to thank or praise him, making Ben wish to hide under the stand. Fortunately, he realised soon that “It was nothing” would be tactless. So he said just “I had good teachers.” and “I was in a good team.” Before students, he went into talking about the importance of good education and teamwork. No one was able to stand it longer than a minute.

Some people, with an interest Ben surely could understand, asked about other Deadlies. What worked there was “It’s a long story, and I’m paid not for talkings.”

And some people asked how Ben was able to win over Pride, and he said simply, “I don’t wish to discuss that.”

At that time the girl worked up the nerve and blurted out, “ Can I have your autograph?”

The fourth option, then. Ben took a sheet of paper from a pile and picked up a writing feather.

The senior librarian James Greene returned from his lunch at last to take Ben’s place.

“Too many fans?” he asked with sympathy. Ben made a vague gesture. “It’s not so bad,” he tried to cheer up Ben. “I think a few people would like to be in your place.”

“No,” Ben said earnestly. “No one wishes to be in someone else’s place, really. People just think that they want this. I did that, too,” he added in a low tone.

The librarian smiled, “Are you going to your lunch?”

“If you don’t mind, sir, I’d rather work in the section of manuscripts and engravings. Miss Stevens says, they made no dedusting this year and the last inventory-revision was five years ago. Permission to deal with it in my free time?”

“No permission,” frowned Greene. “You’re supposed to work in your work time. To have lunch in your lunch break, and get rest in your free time. So you must eat at first, and then you may go to Ms Stevens, but don’t let her keep you till the end of your working day.”

“Yes, sir!”

Ben went vigorously on his usual way, now and then returned greetings from passing people. He felt nothing beyond a weak hunger and wishing to resume his work as soon as he has his lunch. The University stopped being the place that only fortunate ones, like Blake and Bryony, could belong to. There was no more envy or feeling of inferiority inside him, just eager anticipation of working with manuscripts. And the Main Hall was recalled without shame or pride, as an unpleasant, but a well-done job.

Ben didn’t feel like a goose between swans anymore.

[enchantress-emily]

Bentober day 19 - Lust

I’m doing this prompt a couple of days late so I can combine it with Asexual Awareness Week!

Ben had been thinking over the little O'Malley had told them about his battle with Luxuria, and his academic curiosity was aroused. The next time he had a chance to speak with O'Malley in comparative privacy (they were sitting on a bench in East Anchor Park while Wolfe busked; the money was needed to tide them over while they hunted for new jobs, and there had been a tacit understanding that Captain Barber would look the other way on the matter of a license), he brought the subject up.

"Wolfe seemed very sure that you wouldn't have any trouble with, er, the seventh of our recent enemies," he said, keeping his voice low enough to be covered by the music.  "He said you weren't interested in what it had to offer."

O'Malley gave a short laugh.  "S'what I thought too.  Th' last part's right enough, though."

"In that case..."  Ben hesitated.  It felt rude to ask for details about someone's intimate feelings like this, but the more he understood about the events of that day, the better prepared he would be if anything like it ever happened again.  "You said it had a hold on you through Wolfe and me.  If you don't... feel that particular emotion, then how...?"

"Pffh.  Kissin' an' goin' t'bed together in't all there is, even if everybody acts like it. An' y'don't have t'be all soppy in love with a person fer them t'mean somethin' t'ye, neither." O'Malley's eyes went to Wolfe, who stood a few paces away, absorbed in his playing.  Ben wondered if he knew how much his usual guarded expression softened when he looked at his friend.

He thought he understood what O'Malley was saying; although Wolfe and his Mal weren't a couple in the commonly understood sense of the word, it was very clear that they had a deep and lasting bond.  Evidently Luxuria could exploit emotional attachment as easily as it could sexual desire.

Ben opened his mouth to say All right, that explains Wolfe, but why was I part of it?; then he shut it again.  He remembered that in the struggle to find other lodgings after the loss of their house, none of them had suggested or even hinted that they might go their separate ways.  The idea hadn't so much as crossed his mind until now, and he rather suspected that it hadn't crossed Wolfe's or O'Malley's mind either.  

He tried to imagine himself facing Luxuria with O'Malley and Wolfe held hostage; irritating as O'Malley could be at times, Ben knew that a threat to either of them would have made him yield just as a threat to Vee would have.  Somehow, over the past year, they had become a peculiar sort of family.

"Didn't think it'd catch me th' way it did," O'Malley said suddenly, interrupting Ben's musings.  He was looking down, picking at a frayed strand of yarn at the cuff of his left glove.  "Thought not feelin' all that'd be some use f'r once, 'stead of jus' makin' me different from everyone else."

Ben wasn't sure what to say to that.  "Does it bother you, being different in that way?" he ventured.

O'Malley shrugged.  "A bit?  Mostly not. S'a hell of a lot less trouble than seein' spirits.  Jus'... some people don't understand.  They think I'm weird fer not wantin' to kiss anybody an' fer not gettin' th' jokes about it."

Ben could sympathize with that; at university he had always been the last one to realize when a classmate was making a rude joke, and he never found the joke particularly funny when it was explained to him.

"Well, for what it's worth, I think a lot of people are too preoccupied with that subject anyway," he said after a moment. "If they think you're weird, that's their problem, not anything wrong with you.  And even if Luxuria tricked you at first, you did save us from it in the end."

O'Malley nodded.  "Thanks," he said quietly, sending Ben a crooked sidelong smile.

[oddrustyy]

Bentober 5: Watching from the Stars

The headcanon that Ben watches his siblings on a TV in the afterlife is EVERYTHING TO ME, I bet he reacts just like us whenever he watches them. Plus I think he would also just be as confused and angry at the events of s4 ngl AHAHAHA

[oddrustyy]

Bentober 4: Colors (by Halsey)

I was listening to a Ben Hargreeves playlist on Spotify and this was in it and I went "holy shit.... that's him ... fr..."

[oddrustyy]

#bentober 7: Comfort activity

Heavy on the fact that Ben would love reading books, I think it's a soft of comfort for him after tough missions. Plus I think he reads with Five and Viktor when they were younger^^