Several hours later, Ben collapsed onto his bed, staring at the ceiling with a mixture of trepidation and relief. Using Upgrade, he had delved into the internet, searching for information while ensuring every action was impossible to trace back to him.
What he found was both genuinely terrifying and strangely comforting. Comforting because, at least for now, it seemed he still had time.
[An Hour Earlier]
The year was 1980. From his research, the Wayne family was still intact, though he wasn't sure that was going to last much longer.
Tony Stark was currently eleven years old, still far from the day he would become Iron Man. Ben searched through every database he could access, looking for every character he could remember.
Barry Allen was only eight, yet to experience the tragedy that would shape the rest of his life. Clark Kent was nine, just on the verge of awakening his Kryptonian heritage.
He focused primarily on the DC and Marvel characters he knew, cross-checking names one after another to piece together the world's timeline.
At least, that was until he decided to search for one particular name. He typed in Mark Grayson, not expecting to find anything. Unfortunately, he did.
Mark had been born just ten months earlier.
The discovery sent a chill down Ben's spine. It meant Nolan was already on Earth, living among humanity while quietly evaluating the planet for a future Viltrumite takeover. The Viltrumite threat wasn't some distant possibility waiting decades in the future. It already existed.
What Ben didn't know was whether the changes to this merged universe had also altered the Viltrumite Empire itself. If there were more Viltrumites than he remembered, humanity's future could be even bleaker than he had imagined.
Also, mutants were real. Although they were not widely known to the public, they undeniably existed. A deeper search through the hidden corners of the internet had provided more than enough evidence to confirm it, uncovering scattered reports, classified discussions, and fragments of information that were far too consistent to dismiss as mere conspiracy theories.
[Back to the Present]
Lying on his large, soft king-sized bed, Ben couldn't help but sigh as he wondered whether choosing this chaotic, merged world had truly been the right decision.
There was no point in regretting it now. The choice had been made, and whether he liked it or not, he would have to live with the consequences.
There was little use in sulking or imagining the countless ways everything could go wrong. It was far better to take advantage of the head start he had been given and prepare accordingly before everything inevitably went to hell.
He pushed himself off the bed and reached for the watch, only to pause halfway. His thoughts drifted to the list of modifications he had requested, making him wonder just how deeply Rob had understood his intentions.
One of the reasons he had chosen the Omnitrix as his ability was because he wanted to transform at will, without relying on Master Control.
He also wanted to abandon the Omnitrix's timeout safety mechanism entirely, removing the transformation limit from the very beginning.
The hand he had raised to press the dial fell back to his side. Acting on nothing more than hope, he willed the dial to pop up instead.
To his surprise, it worked.
The dial chimed softly as it rose from the Omnitrix. Then, as though it had read his mind, it cycled through every alien currently available before stopping on Grey Matter.
A brilliant golden flash enveloped him, and moments later, Ben stood in the tiny green body of a Galvan.
The mental change hit just as quickly. His thoughts became sharper, faster. Memories he hadn't known he still possessed surfaced with perfect clarity, while ideas and connections formed almost effortlessly. It felt as though his brain had finally awakened.
The ideas racing through his mind filled him with so much confidence that the looming threat of the Viltrumites suddenly seemed almost laughable.
Ben shook his head, forcing those thoughts aside. He couldn't afford to let arrogance get the better of him. As promising as the plans forming in his mind were, they were still only plans, not results.
On paper, they made the Viltrumites seem pitifully insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but reality was an entirely different matter.
If the Viltrumites decided to invade Earth today, humanity would still be utterly doomed.
So instead of thinking about impossible goals like solving the Anti-Life Equation and collecting the Infinity Stones, it was better to start small. First, he needed to figure out his "timeline." Then he could work steadily toward it.
He lowered his gaze to the phone resting in his tiny hand. It was already late into the night, but sleep was the last thing on his mind. His thoughts refused to settle until he found a direction to focus on. One thing was certain: this night would be a long one.
---
Ben spent the entire night planning. By the time the first rays of sunlight filtered through his bedroom window, dozens of ideas had been discarded, refined, or replaced. What remained wasn't a perfect plan, but it was a start.
He couldn't help but yawn in utter exhaustion. His arms fell limply to his sides, and he no longer had the energy to do anything else. Remaining in alien form drained far more stamina than he had expected.
It didn't shorten his transformation time. In fact, there was none, but it did reduce his performance and overall efficiency. After one hour, his efficiency had already dropped by around twenty percent.
At the one-hour-and-thirty-minute mark, it had fallen to roughly fifty percent, and by the two-hour mark, he was barely functioning at all.
He had been forced to detransform several times throughout the night just to recover enough stamina to continue. Even so, spending the entire night repeatedly transforming had left him completely drained.
Using the last of his strength, Ben tossed what looked like a sleek, silver laptop into a drawer before making sure it was securely locked. The device, born from the combined ingenuity of Grey Matter, Upgrade, and XLR8, was nothing short of a masterpiece.
In reality, it wasn't just a laptop. It was a miniaturized supercomputer, its processing power eclipsing anything currently available on Earth by an almost incomprehensible margin.
To a Galvan mind, it would probably be considered an insult. But given the limited resources, primitive technology, and the single night he had to work with, it was more than acceptable for now.
His stomach suddenly growled in protest, but, too exhausted to care, he collapsed face-first onto the bed, too exhausted to even pull the blanket over himself. Within seconds, he was asleep.
When Ben finally woke, the sun was already high in the sky. A glance at the clock confirmed it was well past noon. He stretched lazily, feeling surprisingly refreshed after the exhausting night, though the sharp growl from his stomach quickly reminded him that he hadn't eaten in hours.
Project Hero could wait. Right now, food came first.
Throwing the covers aside, he climbed out of bed, washed up, and headed downstairs without another thought.
Before he forgot, Ben willed the Omnitrix to disappear once more. The watch dissolved into a shower of green light, leaving his wrist bare.
He let out a quiet sigh of relief. Explaining how a mysterious watch had appeared out of nowhere was not something he wanted to deal with.
Winston was nowhere to be seen, so Ben helped himself. He wandered into the kitchen, only to stop in his tracks as his eyes landed on the fully stocked refrigerator.
His mouth practically watered. Every shelf was packed with food, and somehow, almost everything was exactly to his liking.
The first thing Ben reached for was a thick slice of chocolate cake from the tray of pastries, deciding it was the quickest way to silence his growling stomach.
"Ah, ahem."
Winston's sudden cough froze him mid-reach.
Ben turned around stiffly, his cheeks stuffed with chocolate cake. He stared at Winston for a long, awkward moment before simply shrugging. Reaching into the fridge, he grabbed a carton of milk, took a long sip, then looked back at the butler.
"What?" he mumbled after swallowing. "I was hungry."
Winston regarded him with his usual calm, judgmental expression, saying nothing.
"You woke up unusually late today," Winston remarked, choosing to ignore the cake situation altogether.
"I take it the nightmare has returned?" Winston inquired, his brows raised ever so slightly.
Ben frowned slightly. "Nightmare?"
"Yes. The one where the world is overrun by monsters, demons, aliens, and giant world-eaters. Does that ring a bell?" Winston said.
A quick review of his memories confirmed Winston's words. Before his past life had fully awakened, fragments of those memories had seeped into his mind through horrifying dreams, nightmares, and vivid visions that often left the young boy unable to sleep.
Ben's silence was mistaken for confirmation. Winston let out a quiet sigh. There was, regrettably, little he could do to ease such burdens.
Choosing to steer the conversation elsewhere, he asked, "Have you any plans for the summer, Master Ben?"
Ben shook his head. "Plans? I don't have any at the moment."
The conversation drifted into more casual topics while Winston gathered the ingredients and began preparing lunch.
The old butler took genuine pride in his cooking, insisting that every meal Ben ate be prepared fresh.
Ben smiled as he watched the man cook with unwavering concentration. At the same time, his thoughts wandered back to the plans he had spent hours putting together.
Yes, the outline was there, but it still had a long way to go. The first thing he had taken into account was the timeline.
It was fragmented and scattered. The fusion of four different worlds was no trivial matter, and much of what he knew could very well be obsolete.
There was no point in playing it safe, constantly second-guessing every decision just to avoid creating a butterfly effect. The fusion of four universes had already created one on a scale beyond anything he could manage.
As far as Ben was concerned, the timeline could go to hell. It had been a complete mess from the very beginning.
Project Hero was, in essence, his attempt to shoulder the burden of saving the world. It probably wasn't the most brilliant plan a Galvan intellect could devise, but it was the one he found himself drawn to the most.
If he had the power to prevent countless deaths and tragedies, then standing by and doing nothing was never really an option.
This planet was his home now, and although there weren't many people he truly cared about yet, he knew that would change with time. In this life, he intended to live without regrets.
So, any creature or being that threatened Earth, whether Viltrumites, Kryptonians, aliens, gods, planet conquerors, world-eaters, cosmic beings, or even conceptual entities, it didn't matter how powerful or cunning they were. If they wanted this world, they would have to go through him first.
Across the kitchen, Winston's gaze happened to meet Ben's. He paused for the briefest of moments. In all his years of experience, he recognized that look immediately. It was the gaze of someone carrying immense ambition.
A flicker of perplexity crossed his mind. Why would such a look appear on the young master's face? It was an expression he would have expected from seasoned businessmen, military officers, or rulers burdened with great responsibility, not from a child barely six years old.