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(Loth's P.O.V)
The first wave hit fast.
The constructs weren't mindless drones; they moved like soldiers, coordinated and precise. A pair flanked me from above while another two cut off my escape below, energy cannons lighting up.
I twisted my soul-form density, letting a blast pass through me. It seared my edges, burning away fragments of my essence like paper in flame. I felt a childhood memory fade.
"Motherf*cker!" I gritted my teeth and forced stability back into my outline. Every hit was permanent damage.
I countered, snapping a lash of pink-green aura from my palm. It struck one construct, unraveling it into motes of light, but three more replaced it immediately, surging from the branches of the Codon Stream.
"They're endless," I muttered.
Because of course they were. This was the Codon Stream—the library of all life in the universe. A system like this would have defenses on par with an immune system. I wasn't fighting machines. I was fighting antibodies, each built from the blueprint of the Omnitrix itself.
They adapted, too. When I phased to slip through, they recalibrated their attacks to vibrate at my frequency. When I flared my celestialsapien infused aura outward, they shifted to defensive shells. Every second, they learned.
The fight dragged on. I tore through dozens, then hundreds, but my form grew dimmer with each clash. My hybrid energy—Anodite spark mixed with alien X fragments—couldn't hold out forever.
One construct got through my barrier. A blade of searing light cut straight across my chest, scattering part of my soul into loose fragments. More memories lost.
I staggered, clutching at the wound that wasn't physical but still hurt in ways that made me want to scream.
Another hit me from behind. My outline rippled violently. Too many more of those, and I'd unravel completely.
I forced my aura to flare, blasting the swarm back in a wide radius. It bought me a moment, but only that. The Codon Stream trembled, and thousands more constructs stirred, rising like a tide.
Panic clawed at me. I couldn't kill them all. I couldn't outrun them. If this was Azmuth's defense system, then I was the virus—and viruses didn't survive immune systems like this.
One construct lunged, its weapon morphing mid-swing into something designed just to counter me, an energy siphoning crystal. I barely dodged. Another clipped my leg, half-severing it into glowing fragments. I flew back, every part of me screaming to hold together.
I was going to lose. Not in hours. In minutes. Maybe seconds.
My mind raced. There had to be another way. Azmuth wouldn't design the Codon Stream with only brute force in mind. There had to be a system of rules, protocols—something other than fighting endless waves.
As the swarm closed in, weapons raised, a thought struck me. A crazy, desperate idea.
Not to fight. Not to run.
To hack.
(General P.O.V)
It had been a week since the Alien X incident and Loth's disaappearance.
The Rustbucket rolled along the interstate, its engine humming tiredly until Grandpa Max pulled it into a lone gas station that sat between stretches of scrubland and endless highway. The stop was routine: fuel, supplies, and a chance to stretch. But the air inside the RV was anything but routine.
The moment the brakes hissed, Gwen all but leapt out of her seat. She groaned loudly, twisting her back until it popped.
"Finally," she groaned in relief. "If I didn't get out now, I was going to explode."
She hurried toward the gas station store, but stopped halfway across the lot, to glance back at the RV door where her cousin still sat.
"You coming, Ben?" she called, brushing loose hair out of her face.
Silence.
Gwen frowned. Her cousin hadn't said much of anything since that day. At first she thought it was guilt. Now it was starting to feel like he was slipping into a shell too thick for anyone to reach.
"Ben," she tried again, softer this time, "you can't just… hide. Sooner or later, you'll have to interact with the world like a normal person."
Still nothing.
Gwen sighed, gave a small shake of her head, and hurried inside the store, mumbling to herself about not wanting to literally pee her white pants.
Out by the pump, Max was already filling the Rustbucket's tank, humming under his breath like he always did when he was working. He raised his voice toward the RV.
"Ben! Go with Gwen. No sense hanging back."
A beat later, Ben's voice drifted out, flat and sharp.
"She can take care of herself grandpa."
Max frowned at that answer. He let the pump handle click into place, then wiped his hands on a rag before stepping closer.
"Come out here, Ben. At least stretch your legs. We won't be stopping again until the next town."
Another pause. Then, with an audible sigh, Ben finally stomped out of the RV. His shoulders were hunched, arms crossed tightly across his chest. He leaned against the Rustbucket like he wanted to disappear into it.
Max studied him quietly. The boy's face was pale, shadows under his eyes betraying nights of restless sleep. The Omnitrix sat heavy on his wrist, its dial dull, but Ben held his other hand over it like it might burn him.
Max lowered his voice.
"Ben… don't carry all this on your shoulders. What happened to Loth—it wasn't your fault. None of us could've known how dangerous Alien X really was."
Ben's eyes flicked up for a moment, then away. His voice came out hoarse, almost cracking.
"You did know. Loth knew. You both tried to warn me. But I didn't listen. I thought I was untouchable. And because of me… he's gone."
The words hung heavy in the warm summer air. Max's mouth opened like he might argue, but before he could, a shout split the moment.
The gas station's glass door slammed open. A man in a ski mask sprinted out clutching a handful of bills. Behind him, the store owner and Gwen rushed after, the owner yelling and Gwen shouting for help.
"Stop him!" Gwen screamed when she spotted Ben.
Reflex overrode hesitation. Ben pushed off the RV and charged straight at the thief. His hand hovered over the Omnitrix, palm ready to slam down on the dial—
—but he froze.
A touch of something dark crossed his face. Instead of activating the watch, Ben dove low, throwing his own body across the thief's path. His shoulder slammed into the man's legs, tripping him hard onto the asphalt.
The thief hit the ground with a yelp, cash scattering. Onlookers jumped in to pin him down while Gwen and the store owner grabbed the money and the gun.
But Ben didn't get up. Not immediately.
"Ben!" Max was already moving, Gwen close behind. They dropped to his side just as he curled in on himself, clutching his ribs in pain.
"What were you thinking?" Max demanded, checking him over. "You've got the most powerful tool in the galaxy strapped to your wrist, and you throw yourself at him like that? Why didn't you transform?"
Ben's lips trembled as his eyes watered. His voice came out low, broken.
"If you were me, Grandpa… would you?"
The question silenced them both.
Max stared at the boy—his grandson, his responsibility—realizing that what weighed on Ben wasn't just guilt over Loth. It was fear of himself, fear of the watch, fear that one mistake could cost another life.
And for once, Max didn't have an answer.
(Loth's P.O.V)
When the swarm had swallowed me, I thought that was the end.
I should've been purged— essence, soul, everything. But I wasn't. To save myself, I had to do something reckless, something desperate.
Using Aura Sense, I scanned the alien database in the codon stream. Without Master Control, only 11 aliens could be freely accessed.
Zero hesitation, I flew towards the codon stream's branches and merged with a pink, glowing alien template. The recently acquired Anodite DNA stored inside the Omnitrix. Not just DNA- Energy. The composition of myself the Watch had copied the moment I touched its dial during the fight with Alien X. That piece of myself, along with a large chunk of energy, had been split from my soul when I was pulled in, and by fusing with it I stabilized.
Now… I'm here.
Alive, undetectable, safe from Azmuth's drones, but trapped in the codon stream itself.
That same act, though, changed me.
I wasn't just another entry in the Codon Stream. I hadn't been. I was aware. Like Ghostfreak would soon become. Like Alien X. And I still didn't know if that made me lucky or cursed.
The Omnitrix had never been meant to hold minds—it was meant to hold patterns. I knew that. And if the AI ever noticed me, if it realized a foreign will was moving independently inside its veins, I would be erased. No trial. No voice. Just… gone.
So I clung to what scraps I had—Alien X's green aura, still dusting me like ash, still massive and alien enough to hide me. I wove it tight around my own presence like a shroud. To the Watch, I was nothing but leftover data. Residual. Forgotten.
For now.
I held my breath and reached out. My Aura Sense stretched—thin, careful, trembling like a spider's thread—through the Codon Stream. The database pressed against me like an ocean. Endless. Each signature a living, burning lattice of light and code. Each one a lifeform in miniature.
It should have been beautiful. It was a suffocating kind of beauty. Every brush of it whispered at me: this is your cell.
I learned anyway. I watched. I memorized.
Escape had been my obsession at first. Every Omnitrix process, every accessible dna, I mapped it like a prisoner maps guard rotations. Waiting for Ben to slam down the dial. Waiting for the gap to open. A transformation could be a crack wide enough to slip through.
But a week had passed. And not once had he used the Watch. Not once.
That unsettled me.
Ben had been reckless. Impulsive. The kind of boy who couldn't resist showing off a new toy. For him to stay human for an entire week, even with travel and danger, said something. Either guilt was chewing through him, or Alien X had scared him so deeply he couldn't touch the dial. Maybe both. I didn't know. But it made me restless.
With no exit, I turned to the only thing left to shape—myself.
I studied the Codon Stream as though it were a library of living runes. Every aura I brushed taught me something. Heatblast's flame signature burned with a brutal precision, whispering ways I could refine my own incendió spell.
Ghostfreak's intangibility hummed against my own anodite phasing, smoothing out the instability in my energy form.
Even Wildmutt's feral senses pulsed with patterns I could read—raw instinct woven directly into aura. It almost felt like Blitz was with me and not trapped in my mind space.
I wasn't copying them. Not fully. That would have been suicide. Too many alien auras forced into my essence and my Anodite energy would collapse into corruption.
I had already brushed the edge twice—once with Thalia's spark when I wielded Zeus' lightning, and again with Alien X's aura just to survive here. A third time might have snapped me apart for good.
So I walked a narrower path. Not mimicry. Understanding. Like a mage hunched over forbidden runes, I etched their shapes, their rhythms, their resonances into memory instead of soul. Knowledge was enough.
Knowledge sharpened my spells, stabilized my magic control. Slowly, piece by piece, I realigned. Stitched the tears left in my soul by the implosion and the Azmuth's drones.
It worked. But it was slow. Too slow.
And gods, it was so mind-numbingly boring.
I couldn't rot forever in this dark stream, cataloging aura patterns like some intergalactic archivist. I needed Ben to use the Watch. I needed the world outside. Every day he left it dormant, the Omnitrix felt less like a prison and more like a coffin closing around me.
So I waited. Restless. Growing stronger. Hoping he'd turn the dial.
And praying I'd still be whole when he did.