Ben was stunned.
A moment later, ecstasy lit up his face. "Really, Asher? Of course! I dream of becoming a superhero like you and fighting those alien monsters!"
The answer didn't surprise Asher. He'd been asking casually, warming up to the real question, the one that mattered.
"Ben, there's something I need to tell you first."
Asher's expression grew more serious than Ben had ever seen it. He spoke each word with careful deliberation. "You know what happens when you put on a battle suit and go fight those monsters? You won't necessarily fly through them like a hero. There's a real possibility you could die in their hands."
He emphasized the word "die" with brutal clarity. It was a cruel fact, but Ben needed to understand it.
In the cartoon, Asher could sit back and watch the protagonist fight aliens, secure in the knowledge that Ben would never truly die no matter what happened.
But this was reality.
Without the Omnitrix, relying instead on a battle suit, Ben Tennyson would risk death in every battle.
Asher had to make that perfectly clear.
"Die..."
Ben froze.
He'd thought about it before, but never deeply. He'd avoided the topic, pushed it away whenever it surfaced in his mind.
But Asher had just dragged it into the light.
He had to think about it now.
The silence stretched between them.
Finally, Ben lowered his head, wrestling with what "death" truly meant.
"Ben, I'm almost recovered," Asher said, pressing the fully charged Omnitrix and rising slowly to his feet. "I can't fight Kevin and the others head-on yet, but I can transform into XLR8 and harass them." He didn't push for an immediate answer.
But the question had clearly struck a nerve. Ben suddenly raised his head, his expression filled with a determination born from fierce internal struggle.
"Asher, give me that battle suit! I want to put it on and help you rescue Grandpa and Gwen!"
He couldn't bear that feeling of helplessness again. Not ever.
"...Alright."
Asher nodded slowly, accepting Ben's decision.
The two left the hotel room, took the elevator to the ground floor, and walked toward the Rust Bucket parked outside.
Fortunately, the RV was still there, waiting in the corner of the hotel parking lot, a small mercy in their current situation.
Asher managed to squeeze through the open window with Ben's help, then unlocked the door from the inside with the spare keys.
They'd come to the Rust Bucket for one purpose: to retrieve the wreckage of the extremely heavy Kraab from the storage compartment.
"Ben, let's move all the parts inside," Asher said. "Take your time. We're not in a rush."
They worked together, each grabbing components and laboriously carrying them one by one. The metal pieces were heavier than they looked, and sweat soon dampened their shirts despite the cool evening air.
By the time they delivered the last part to the Rust Bucket, both of them collapsed against the RV's exterior, panting too hard to move for several minutes.
Asher, with his superior physical conditioning, recovered first. A few minutes later, Ben followed.
"What do we do next? Just put it on?" Ben asked curiously, eyeing the pile of robotic parts.
"Hold on. I need to check the internet first, see if I can find video footage of Kevin and the others being interviewed." Asher pulled out Ben's laptop and connected to the network.
The video had spread like wildfire across the city's internet. Some dismissed it as an attack planned by lunatics. Others claimed it was post-production special effects. Only a handful of people knew the truth, that it had actually happened.
The footage had caused quite a panic.
Asher clicked on the video and slowed the playback speed to one-third normal. He searched repeatedly through the frames, finally finding clear shots of the tech-enhanced robbers flying through the air.
He paused the video.
The screen froze on that exact moment.
The image showed several tech-enhanced robbers soaring high above the city. Though slightly blurry, Asher could barely make out how the various parts connected together and interfaced with the reactor core.
"Alright. Let's begin."
Asher slowly turned the Omnitrix dial, twisting it without hesitation to Grey Matter's position.
'I can't understand this engineering myself. But Grey Matter will definitely understand it!'
SLAM!
He struck the Omnitrix's faceplate. Green light erupted as his body underwent its transformation.
"Ben, lift me up."
After transforming into the six-inch-tall Galvan, Grey Matter's voice had become high-pitched but maintained its characteristic calm authority, the tone of someone whose intellect commanded respect despite his diminutive size.
Ben stretched out his hands reflexively and placed Grey Matter in front of the laptop on the table.
Grey Matter's large eyes seemed to transform into data processors, absorbing the entire mechanical structure the instant he saw the frozen image of those tech-enhanced robbers.
How to transform the human body. How the reactor connected to those components. The precise engineering tolerances. The power distribution systems.
After a brief period of intense analysis, he directly calculated how the original Mechadroids had been assembled into combat units!
For Grey Matter, accessing these materials was equivalent to obtaining the fundamental inspiration for battle suit design.
"Vilgax, Kevin, the cleverness you two displayed is about to be used against you," Grey Matter murmured. "I will definitely help Ben create a battle suit that can defeat your garbage robots!"
Grey Matter pondered for a moment, then asked Ben to retrieve paper and a black pen.
He calculated rapidly on scratch paper, periodically glancing at the crab monster's wreckage, the reactor core, various armor plates and components. Everything except one damaged processing unit.
Based on the existing Mechadroid structure and the mechanical body of Kraab, Grey Matter worked with methodical precision.
He flipped over the scrap paper filled with his calculations, then began drawing an incredibly complex and sophisticated blueprint on the clean reverse side!
"What... what is this? I don't understand any of it." Ben stared at the design schematic on the paper, feeling his head spin. The complexity made his schoolwork look like kindergarten arithmetic by comparison.
This was infinitely more difficult than anything he'd encountered in class!
"This?" Grey Matter's tone remained perfectly flat. "Nothing complicated. I simply used Kraab's parts to assemble an improved version of the battle suit, an advanced iteration of the armor those tech-enhanced robbers wore. Once you transform with this, you'll become a completely different type of fighter!"
A few minutes.
That's all it had taken him to independently develop a complete human-wearable battle suit design. Yes, he'd used reference materials, but this design far exceeded the quality of those broken components!
And the materials? Superb!
"But Asher, I wanted to ask..." Ben brought up a question, his face showing confusion.
"You're wondering that even with a blueprint, the actual construction is still a problem, right?"
Grey Matter had already anticipated Ben's concern and answered before he could finish the question.
"Yes, exactly!" Ben nodded, somewhat speechless at having his thoughts read so easily.
"Don't worry. I have a method to assemble these parts into the battle suit from the blueprint." Grey Matter sat down cross-legged, closed his large eyes, and spoke with quiet confidence. "What I need to do now is thoroughly understand this blueprint and ensure that even when I transform into other alien forms, I can remember every detail!"
Grey Matter entered a state of deep meditation, his brilliant mind absorbing and memorizing every specification, every connection point, every structural detail of his own design.
The blueprint would remain perfect in his photographic memory, ready to be executed regardless of which transformation Asher took next.
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