[35] Tinkering with Time

Chapter 35: Tinkering with Time

—

The Omnitrix beeped its familiar warning, red light pulsing as my crystalline form dissolved. The transformation always felt like stepping out of armor, leaving me vulnerable, exposed, especially with the X-Men limping toward us like wounded predators who hadn't quite given up the hunt.

Scott Summers looked like he'd gone ten rounds with a meat grinder and lost. His precious visor sat crooked on his face, one lens spider-webbed with cracks. Blood trickled from a split lip, and he held his ribs like they were the only things keeping his organs in place. But his jaw was set with that special brand of righteous fury that only the truly self-important could manage.

"You," he spat, pointing a shaking finger at me. "This is your fault."

I raised an eyebrow, crossing my arms. "My fault? Did I throw you through a building? Because from where I'm standing, that was all Rogue."

"You could have helped!" His voice cracked with pain and anger. "The moment she appeared, you should have—"

"What? Jumped in to save your ass?" I let out a harsh laugh. "After you told your girlfriend to mind-rape me? After you threatened my cousin? After you asked us to step away? Nah, watching you get your teeth kicked in was way more satisfying."

“We’re not dating,” Jean quickly clarified.

Her words somehow offended Scott more than mine did, although he turned to me to hide that fact. His face went red, impressive considering how much blood he'd already lost. "You arrogant little—"

"Weak." The word cut through his tirade like a knife. "That's what you are. All that training, all that self-righteousness, and you got bodied by one woman. Pathetic."

"Ben," Grandpa warned, but I was on a roll.

"You walk around acting like you're God's gift to mutantkind, but the second someone with real power shows up, you fold like wet paper. And you wonder why people don't trust the X-Men?"

Scott lunged forward, or tried to. His injuries turned it into more of an aggressive stumble. "You don't know anything about—"

"Scott, stop."

Jean Grey's voice was quiet but carried the weight of exhaustion and pain. She'd managed to stand, though she swayed like a drunk sailor. Blood had dried under her nose, painting her upper lip rust-red. But her green eyes were clear, focused, and filled with something I hadn't expected.

Regret.

"He's right," she continued, placing a restraining hand on Scott's arm. "We were wrong."

The street went silent except for the distant sound of fleeing insects and far-off sirens. Even Kitty, who'd been helping the cocooned councilwoman, stopped to stare.

"Jean, you can't be serious," Scott protested.

"I am." She turned to face me fully, and I saw what it cost her. Pride was a hell of a thing to swallow, especially when you'd been trained to believe you were always on the right side. "Ben, right? I’m Jean Grey. I apologize. For trying to enter your mind without permission. For treating you like a threat instead of a person. That was... that was wrong of us."

I was a little caught off guard. In all my memories of the X-Men, both from comics and movies, genuine apologies were rarer than peaceful solutions. They usually just punched their way through misunderstandings.

Grandpa stepped forward, and his weathered face held approval. "Takes guts to admit when you're wrong, young lady. Not many folks your age have learned that lesson." His expression hardened as he looked at Scott. "If you hadn't apologized, I was planning to have some very pointed words with this Charles Xavier of yours. About boundaries. About consent. About what happens when his students threaten my grandchildren."

Scott scoffed, the sound wet with blood. "You think you could—"

"Boy," Grandpa's voice dropped to sub-arctic temperatures, "The world is bigger than you can see through those red-tinted glasses. I'm Maxwell Tennyson, former Magister of the Plumbers, and I’ve dedicated decades of my life to dealing with threats to this planet since before you were born. Don't test me."

Although they hadn’t recognized Grandpa’s face before, his name made all three of them flinch. The councilwoman passed out on the side. Jean was sweating now, and Scott’s lips trembled in shock. Every superhero group worth a dime knew about the Plumbers.

Jean squeezed Scott's arm harder, and he subsided with visible reluctance. She nodded at Grandpa, accepting the rebuke with more grace than I'd have managed.

"We’re extremely sorry, truly, Sir. We weren’t aware of your identity…You're right to be angry," she said. "We violated your trust. The Professor taught us better, but we... I let fear override ethics. There's no excuse for that."

“Yes,” Grandpa nodded. Both Gwen and I were watching him with glittering eyes. He was so cool!

"But this is still going to cause problems," she continued, gesturing vaguely toward where Rogue had vanished. "That mutant—Clancy—he'll be joining Magneto now. The Brotherhood will grow stronger."

"And whose fault is that?" Gwen spoke up for the first time, stepping out from behind Grandpa. "If you'd approached him like a person instead of a problem to be solved, maybe he'd have listened."

Kitty Pryde approached our group, her young face a mixture of disappointment and resignation. She looked at me for a long moment, those brown eyes searching for something. Understanding, maybe. Or just trying to figure out how someone her age could be so cynical.

Finally, she sighed. "We really screwed this up, didn't we?" She said, definitely recalling how she was yelling at me for help. However, I couldn’t blame her for that, given that she was seeing her two teachers getting beaten.

"Yeah," I agreed simply. "You did."

She flinched but nodded. "Anna is not in the right frame of mind right now. For what it's worth... thanks for not letting her hurt us worse. You could have, but you didn't."

I shrugged. "I'm not a monster. Just someone who believes in consequences."

The X-Men gathered themselves slowly, painfully. Scott needed Jean's support to walk, and Kitty helped the councilwoman they'd freed from Clancy's cocoon. They looked less like Earth's Mightiest Heroes and more like kids who'd bitten off more than they could chew.

As they limped away, Jean looked back one more time. "We'll do better," she said quietly. "I promise you."

I watched them go, feeling satisfied and yet oddly hollow. Victory tasted like ash when it came at the cost of idealism. But that was growing up, learning that the good guys weren't always good, and the bad guys weren't always wrong.

"Come on," Grandpa said, his hand warm on my shoulder. "Let's get out of here before the authorities show up with questions we don't want to answer."

We walked back to the Rust Bucket in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. The crisis was over, but I had a feeling the ripples would spread far wider than any of us could predict.

****

The concoction in my hands looked like someone had liquefied a swamp and added chunks of... something. The smell alone made my eyes water, and that was through my still-congested sinuses. Grandpa watched expectantly as I raised the mug to my lips.

"Bottoms up, kiddo! This batch has extra tiger balm for potency!"

The first sip hit like a freight train of awful. Seaweed, motor oil, and what I desperately hoped wasn't actual tiger. My throat tried to close in self-defense, but I forced it down, gulp by agonizing gulp.

“Baghh!”

"There we go!" Grandpa beamed like he'd just won a Nobel Prize. "You'll be right as rain in no time!"

"Already feeling better after that fight, actually," I wheezed, setting down the empty mug with shaking hands. "The cold's almost gone."

"See? The remedy's already working!"

I didn't have the heart to tell him correlation wasn't causation. Besides, my mind was already elsewhere, replaying the fight, the near-disaster, the ten-minute countdown that had almost gotten us killed.

Gwen and Grandpa started talking, her voice still shaky from earlier. He was doing that thing where he pretended to organize supplies while actually keeping her talking, drawing out her fears so she could face them. Good old Grandpa, always knowing what people needed.

But I tuned them out, lost in my own spiraling thoughts.

What if it hadn't been the X-Men who'd found us? What if it had been real villains, Doctor Doom, the Masters of Evil, any number of cosmic threats who wouldn't have stopped at a little mind-reading? When that timer ran out and I'd turned back from Wildmutt, we'd been sitting ducks. Gwen's magic was growing stronger, but she wasn't ready for that level of threat. And Grandpa, for all his hidden badassery, was still human.

This wasn’t a PG-13 cartoon. The time limit was going to get us killed someday.

I'd avoided messing with the Omnitrix so far. Every episode where Ben tried to hack it ended in disaster. Kevin 11, the SDM malfunction, that whole mess with the Omnitrix going into self-destruct. Azmuth had built in those safeguards for a reason.

But Azmuth had also designed it for Max Tennyson, not a kid like me. What I had above Grandpa was that I was someone who knew what was coming.

I had an idea what could solve this problem. Grey Matter.

The Galvan form could interface with the watch properly. He had the intellect, the instinctive understanding of Galvan tech. If I wanted to tweak the Omnitrix, he was the best choice.

But Azmuth, clever bastard that he was, had put the Omnitrix symbol on Grey Matter's back specifically to prevent self-modification.

And the popular fan theory about using Upgrade? I'd tried that already. Turns out you can't merge with something that's already merged with you. The Omnitrix just gave me an error beep that sounded suspiciously like laughter.

So Grey Matter it was. But I'd need tools. Specifically, tools that could reach where my tiny alien hands couldn't.

"Grandpa," I called out, interrupting his gentle counseling session. "Can I get some of your Plumber gadgets?"

He looked up, surprised. "Hmm? Why?"

"I'll disassemble them. Just... trust me on this."

Our eyes met, and I saw him weighing the request. The old Max would have asked twenty questions, demanded explanations. But I'd proven myself against the Hulk, against Rogue. I'd made the hard calls and come out ahead.

"Alright," he said finally. "But be careful, Ben. Some of that tech has safeguards that—"

"I know. I'll be careful."

He disappeared into his secret compartment, returning with an armload of alien tech that would make Area 51 weep with envy. Blasters, scanners, some kind of dimensional stabilizer that hummed with barely-contained energy.

All obsolete by Plumber standards, but centuries ahead of Earth tech.

Perfect.

****

Three days later, I sat hunched over the RV's dinette table in Grey Matter form, surrounded by the cannibalized remains of Grandpa's gadgets. My massive brain processed information at superhuman speeds, tiny hands moving with surgical precision as I assembled my creation.

Four mechanical arms, each no bigger than a pencil, lay before me. Unlike Doc Ock's massive tentacles, these were built for finesse, not combat. Micro-servos from a Tetramand strength enhancer provided the motion. Optical fibers from a Petrosapien scanner gave them sight. The neural interface came from a Galvan teaching helmet, modified to work wirelessly.

No spinal attachment needed. No invasive surgery. Just a simple helmet that would translate thought into action, connected via quantum-entangled particles that made Bluetooth look like smoke signals.

"Fascinating," I muttered in Grey Matter's high-pitched voice, surprised by my own work, making final adjustments to the control helmet. "The quantum entanglement should maintain a connection even through dimensional barriers. Theoretical range of twelve parsecs, though power consumption increases exponentially past local space."

"You're such a nerd," Gwen commented from her spot on the couch, but there was fondness in it. She'd been watching my work with poorly hidden fascination, the Archamada Book forgotten in her lap.

"Says the girl who's been reading the same page for an hour because she's too busy watching me work."

She flushed. "I'm making sure you don't blow us up!"

"Please. I'm a super-genius in this form. The probability of explosive failure is only twelve-point-three percent."

"Only?!"

I ignored her, activating the neural crown. The mechanical arms twitched to life, responding to my thoughts with beautiful precision. They moved like extensions of my will, each one capable of manipulations too delicate for even Grey Matter's tiny fingers.

"Perfect," I breathed, then louder, "Initiating primary objective."

The Omnitrix symbol on my back seemed to pulse with warmth, like it knew what was coming. I directed the arms to reach around, their cameras giving me a perfect view of the device that had changed my life. Alien script flowed across its surface, morphing between languages I somehow understood instinctively.

"Ben," Gwen's voice was tight with worry. "Are you sure about this? What if you break it? What if it self-destructs? What if—"

"What if I die because I can only fight for ten minutes at a time?" I countered, not looking away from my work. "What if the next villain doesn't conveniently wait for me to recharge? This limit will get us killed, Gwen."

She fell silent. We both knew I was right.

The arms moved with perfect precision, accessing panels that my physical form could never reach. The Omnitrix's code flowed past my enhanced vision—beautiful, elegant, impossibly complex. But patterns emerged. Safeguards, limitations, training wheels for a young user.

Time seemed to slow as I worked.

Sweat beaded on my tiny grey forehead despite the RV's air conditioning. One wrong move, one misplaced command, and I could lock the watch forever. Or worse. Activate self-destruction.

But I understood it now. The timeout wasn't a power limitation—it was a safety feature. The Omnitrix could run indefinitely, but Azmuth had limited it to prevent genetic damage to young users. Their DNA needed time to resettle between transformations.

Except I wasn't that young. And more importantly, I knew the workaround.

My mechanical fingers danced across hidden keypads, inputting codes that existed in my brain like inherited memory. The Omnitrix beeped, questioned, and protested. I answered each challenge with the certainty of someone who'd seen the future.

Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably minutes, I found it. The timeout subroutine. A few careful adjustments, a bypass here, a reroute there…

Then it happened.

– Pssstcheww…

"Done," I whispered.

The Omnitrix pulsed once, acknowledging the change. No alarms. No self-destruct. Just acceptance.

I waited, hardly daring to breathe. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen.

Grey Matter's form held steady. No red warning lights. No forced transformation.

"Holy shit," I laughed, the sound weird in Grey Matter's voice. "It worked!"

Twenty minutes. Thirty. I could feel the transformation holding steady without any strain or degradation. I manually triggered the change back to human, landing on my feet with a grin that probably looked manic.

"It worked!" I repeated, staring at the Omnitrix with something approaching awe. "No more time limits!"

Gwen was at my side instantly, smoothie forgotten as she grabbed my wrist to examine the watch. "You actually did it?! You hacked alien technology!? T-this doesn’t make any sense!"

"Fortune favors the bold," I quoted, adrenaline making me giddy. "Stop being jealous. Want to see something cool?"

Before she could protest, I selected a new form. The transformation washed over me, and suddenly I stood before her as Wildmutt. But this time, there was no congestion, no confusion. My enhanced senses painted the world in impossible detail; I felt Gwen's accelerated heartbeat, the faint ozone smell from my equipment, even the vibrations of insects walking outside the RV.

I held the form for a full twenty minutes, just because I could. When I finally changed back, Gwen was looking at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"This is cheating. You’re a dumbass, but this watch makes you a genius? Ugh, all my years of study…" she said finally, looking defeated.

"Don’t be so dejected, I’ll give you the rest of the Charms since you’ve been such a cute cousin so far.”

“R-really?!”

“Sure,” I grinned, but inside, my mind was already racing ahead.

No more time limits meant no more running from fights. No more strategic retreats because the watch timed out. I could really be the hero this universe needed, not just for ten-minute intervals, but for as long as it took.

The Omnitrix pulsed on my wrist, warm and reassuring. Time to see what this upgrade could really do.

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