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(General P.O.V)
The days that followed the Limax attack settled into something close to a rhythm—strange, yes, but still a rhythm.
It took a week for the Tennysons to put that retirement town behind them. Gwen had complained non-stop about slime stains that refused to come out of her clothes. Grandpa Max kept the Rustbucket rolling eastward, saying that the world wasn't short of weird, and they'd probably run into more of it before summer ended. Ben said little. He spent most of his days staring at the Omnitrix, lost in thought.
Inside that green dial, Loth had adapted to his new existence.
He couldn't feel sunlight or wind. He couldn't sleep or eat. What he could do, however, was teach.
At first, Ben had been wary of hearing Loth's voice again—he still carried guilt from the Alien X disaster—but over time, that fear dulled. Now, every night before the others went to bed, Ben would sit by the fire, waiting for Loth to reach out through the connection they shared.
When everyone else was asleep, Loth would activate what he half-jokingly called "night class." Using his Aura Sense, blended with the mental arts he had once learned from the wizarding world, Loth could partially enter Ben's subconscious—a space that looked like an endless starfield filled with glowing alien silhouettes.
That was their training ground.
"Alright," Loth's voice echoed across the dreamscape one night, "let's review. Vilgax's drone attack 2 weeks ago—you handled the fight decently, but you relied too much on strength. You need to think before transforming."
Ben rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Pick the right alien for the job."
"Then why'd you go Four Arms against a flying drone?"
"Because Four Arms looks cool!"
Loth sighed. "And you got blown through a billboard."
"Details," Ben muttered, crossing his arms.
The exchange was typical. Loth lectured. Ben argued. Yet, every night, the kid improved. Loth taught him focus—how to visualize energy flow between transformations, how to shorten the mental lag between activating the Omnitrix and channeling an alien's instincts. He even made Ben run scenario drills in his dreams, forcing him to react to simulated enemies.
Within a few weeks, Ben's transformations were smoother. He could switch from Heatblast to XLR8 without losing balance. He was learning to think strategically instead of charging in blind.
From within the Omnitrix, Loth was quietly proud.
Still, the work wasn't without strain. Maintaining that mental link each night cost energy. Every session left him weaker, his Anodite essence dimming slightly. And there was the constant frustration—the reminder that he was still trapped.
He had mapped nearly every system of the Omnitrix by now: the Codon Stream's flow channels, the transformation queue, even the AI's defensive routines. Yet the one thing he couldn't do was leave.
The problem was simple but cruel. Loth wasn't human. Not anymore. What existed inside the watch was a soul made of pure Anodite energy, anchored to the DNA sample stored within. To exit the Omnitrix, he would need to transfer that energy into a physical vessel—a new body capable of containing him.
He'd tried experiments in secret, projecting a fraction of his essence through the Omnitrix interface when Ben used certain forms. The results were the same each time. The watch's failsafes pulled him back in before he could stabilize.
For now, he had to be content living through Ben's transformations, watching from behind his student's eyes as the boy learned, stumbled, and grew stronger.
And despite the oddity of it all, a new pattern took shape.
Ben fought monsters and madmen by day, slept by night, and trained in dreams under Loth's supervision. Gwen handled logistics—mapping routes, organizing supplies, trying to make sense of her cousin's sudden bursts of improvement. Max, ever the calm soldier, watched it all with quiet curiosity, though sometimes his gaze lingered a little too long on the Omnitrix when Ben wasn't looking.
Loth noticed.
There were moments when Max would rest his hand on Ben's wrist as if trying to listen to the device. Maybe the old man sensed something. Maybe he'd seen enough in his time with the Plumbers to know that no alien tech ever stayed simple for long.
If he suspected Loth's presence, though, he said nothing.
Each night, as Ben's mind drifted into that starfield again, Loth pushed him further—new exercises, sharper instincts, controlled bursts of alien abilities. Sometimes he made Ben relive his past mistakes, forcing him to analyze what went wrong until the boy could find a solution.
By the end of the third week, Ben's confidence had returned. The guilt was still there, buried deep, but he was laughing again, joking with Gwen, teasing Grandpa Max.
Loth was glad. But the silence that followed their sessions grew heavier with every night.
Because each time he withdrew from Ben's mind and returned to the cold hum of the Codon Stream, he remembered: he was still just a ghost in a machine.
And ghosts, no matter how useful, were never meant to linger forever.
The weeks rolled by in a blur of dust, alien attacks, and roadside repairs. Wherever the Tennysons went, trouble seemed to find them—mutant animals in the forests of Kentucky, rogue drones tearing through Arizona skies, and most recently, a swarm of self-replicating beetle-bots that had turned an abandoned factory into a steel hive.
Every encounter taught Ben something new, though it wasn't only through experience. Loth was always there, whispering through the Omnitrix, his voice cutting through chaos like a calm instructor in the middle of a storm.
"Left flank, Ben. It's blind on that side."
"Too much force—ease the pressure, let the recoil work for you."
"Don't rely on strength. Think. Predict their next move."
At first, Ben found it annoying. Having a second voice in his head during fights was distracting, even if that voice happened to belong to a magical being trapped in alien tech. But Loth's advice worked.
During the fight with Dr. Animo, for instance, the old madman had unleashed a massive frog mutant the size of a house. Ben, as Diamondhead, had gone in swinging. The monster's tongue coiled around him, slamming him into a wall before he could react.
"Focus," Loth had said through the static hum of the watch. "His mutations are chemical-based. Use the diamond shards to reflect sunlight, amplify the heat—glass him."
Ben followed the instruction. A dozen mirrored shards flashed outward, catching the sun, and moments later, the creature froze mid-leap as the sudden heat spike overloaded its unstable biology. It collapsed in a hiss of vapor and putrid flesh.
Even Grandpa Max had noticed the shift in Ben's fighting style.
"Ben's getting sharper," he'd said one night over campfire beans. "Used to just charge in. Now he's planning ahead."
Gwen had smirked. "Or maybe he's just listening for once."
Ben had rolled his eyes, though his hand had unconsciously brushed over the Omnitrix.
Inside the watch, Loth was watching too.
For every fight won, every plan executed, his pride in the kid grew—but so did his frustration. He was still stuck.
He'd spent countless hours analyzing the Codon Stream from within, tracing the pulse of energy that linked his Anodite core to the Omnitrix's molecular library. No matter how deep he reached, the result was the same: he couldn't untether his essence. The watch's AI kept him locked in, treating his existence as a subroutine rather than a sentient being.
He wasn't angry—just tired.
Being an energy lifeform came with advantages. He didn't need food, air, or rest. But it also meant he couldn't feel anything real. No wind, no ground, no stars above him—only endless circuits and the rhythmic hum of alien DNA pulsing like a heartbeat that wasn't his.
To escape, he needed a conduit. A living vessel strong enough to anchor his energy. But that came with risk: too fragile a body, and he'd burn it out instantly. Too powerful, and he'd be trapped again.
The paradox gnawed at him.
Ben never noticed the subtle experiments Loth ran. He just thought the watch was glitching.
During a quiet night parked near a canyon in Utah, Loth drifted through the Omnitrix's inner channels, as usual mapping the alien data streams like rivers of light. He could hear faint echoes of Ben's dreams outside—soft muttering, laughter, the rhythm of a boy who'd begun to heal.
Loth almost envied him.
He knew that, by all rights, he should have been content. He was helping. He was making a difference. Through Ben, he was saving lives. But deep inside, the thought kept circling back like a dark tide—he didn't belong here.
He wasn't part of this world, or this watch. He was a soul out of place, a fragment of magic and memory trapped inside technology that didn't understand either.
Sometimes, when Ben was asleep, Loth would extend his Aura Sense through the watch's dial, brushing against the world beyond. It felt like standing behind glass, watching reality move without him. He could sense Gwen's faint Anodite energy lying dormant in her. He could feel Max's steady, grounded presence.
But he couldn't reach them. Not really.
Every day made that truth harder to ignore.
Still, he kept teaching. Kept guiding Ben through skirmishes with mutated beasts, alien mercenaries, and malfunctioning tech. Each victory was a small reminder that he was still useful—that maybe his confinement wasn't meaningless.
Yet the longer it went on, the clearer the other truth became.
He was fading. Slowly, imperceptibly, but undeniably. Each use of his Aura Sense, each projection into Ben's mind, drained the energy that held him together. It wasn't immediate—weeks could pass before he felt the difference—but the spark that once defined him was dimming.
If he didn't find a way out soon, he'd vanish completely.
That night, as Ben slept under the stars and the Rustbucket's lights flickered off, Loth drifted through the circuits once more, tracing the energy flows in silence.
He paused before the Anodite matrix—the glowing pattern that tied his soul to the watch—and whispered to himself:
"There has to be another way."
But the Omnitrix gave no answer.
Somewhere beyond its walls, in another dimension, two names haunted him still—Percy and Annabeth. He saw flashes of them in his memories: lost, falling through portals, calling out for help that never came.
And as he watched Ben's peaceful face in sleep, he made a quiet promise.
He wouldn't fade here.
Not while there were still people out there counting on him.