At that very moment, Gwen and Blake were charting a direct course toward Ben’s location.
Initially, Gwen had planned a stealthy approach – sneaking into the back of an active ambulance to catch a free ride to the blast zone.
Blake, however, flatly vetoed the idea.
He rapidly adjusted the faceplate of his watch, lecturing the device under his breath.
“Alright, Omnitrix, listen to me very carefully this time.”
“No overheating, and absolutely no rogue light shows.”
With a firm, decisive strike, he slammed the dial down.
A brilliant flash of blue light consumed him, and he transformed into XLR8.
Without missing a beat, he scooped Gwen up in a bridal carry and bolted into the streets, blasting toward the coordinates.
As he ran, he couldn’t resist a bit of snark at his own wrist: “Don’t think playing nice now makes up for earlier, either.”
The Omnitrix signature hummed faintly, almost as if replying: (Have you no manners?)
Meanwhile, across the district, Ben was locked in a brutal, high-speed skirmish with Rojo.
Having already transformed into XLR8 herself, Ben’s blinding velocity completely neutralized the cybernetic mercenary’s heavy plasma weaponry, leaving the two in a stalemate where neither could land a decisive blow.
Just as the battle entering a repetitive loop of near-misses, a secondary blue blur tore into the clearing, skidding to a halt as Blake and Gwen arrived.
“Hey!
Why didn’t you invite me to the party?” Blake’s amplified Kineceleran voice echoed across the pavement.
Hearing the familiar voice, Ben’s head snapped toward them on instinct.
Spotting Gwen right beside him, her protective alarms blared.
She blurred forward, grabbed her cousin, and dragged her into the relative safety of a narrow alleyway.
“What are you doing here?!” Ben demanded, dropping her speed.
Gwen crossed her arms, perfectly mimicking Ben’s usual defensive stance.
“I thought it would be better this way.”
“Does that sound at all familiar to you?”
Before Ben could offer a snarky retort, a sudden, rapid electronic chime cut through the air.
“The beeping sounds even more familiar,” Gwen added dryly.
A split second later, a flash of green light illuminated the alley, and Ben reverted back to her human form.
She looked down at her hands, letting out a defeated groan.
“Ugh…
talk about awful timing.”
Before they could plan their next move, a deafening explosion rocked the street behind them.
Shrapnel and debris rained down, forcing the two girls to scramble through the back doors of a nearby commercial gym to take cover.
Outside, Rojo scanned the smoke, tracking their heat signatures.
Sensing her approach, Blake’s XLR8 intercepted her path, sliding to a halt with his arms crossed.
“You looking for a fight, heavy metal?
Step right up.”
He rapidly reached up and spun the badge on his chest, slamming it down to trigger a mid-form transformation.
In a fluid ripple of black and green galvanic code, he morphed into Upgrade.
“You are absolutely going to love this.”
With a liquid splash, Upgrade dissolved into a sentient puddle of techno-organic circuitry, pouring himself directly onto Rojo’s armor and seeping into her cybernetic framework.
The intrusion worked perfectly.
The forced override sent a massive neural shockwave straight into Rojo’s brain, making her clutch her head as she shrieked in agony.
As Upgrade forced his way deeper into her neural link, Blake’s consciousness suddenly bypassed her human mind, projecting him directly into an absolute, digital subspace.
Floating in the center of the void was a massive, holographic projection of Vilgax.
“Incredible,” the warlord’s booming voice echoed through the matrix.
“To think there truly is a second Omnitrix in existence.”
“A variable I did not account for.”
Upgrade floated in the digital space, looking completely unimpressed as he crossed his liquid arms.
“Hey, squid-face.
There’s a whole lot of things in this universe you don’t know about.”
Vilgax ignored the insult, a cold, mechanical chuckle vibrating through the uplink.
“Savor your arrogance, child.
Tremble while you can, for I shall inevitably—”
Before the galactic conqueror could finish his grand monologue, Upgrade casually raised his hand and extended a very human, universally recognized middle finger right at the hologram.
“I’m trembling so hard, honestly.
If you’re so tough, why don’t you bring your ugly face down here and fight me yourself instead of using a proxy?”
Vilgax had spent centuries conquering star systems; no one had ever dared to insult him to his face with such casual disrespect.
His composure fractured instantly.
“How dare you!
Step up to the cosmos and face me!”
Upgrade rolled his single, circular optic.
“Oh, please.
If you’ve got the spine, you come down here!”
“You step up!”
“You come down!”
“Step up!”
The two entities spent a solid, uninterrupted minute furiously bickering like children in a sandbox, until Vilgax completely lost his remaining patience.
“Enough!”
“The moment my cybernetic enhancements have fully regenerated, I personally will tear both you and your pathetic planet to absolute molecules!”
With a furious roar, Vilgax severed the digital connection from his flagship.
The sudden feedback loop violently ejected Upgrade from Rojo’s armor, forcing Blake back into the physical world.
As Rojo staggered back, her systems rebooting, Blake wasn’t quite as fortunate.
The intense neural backlash from Vilgax’s disconnection sent a vicious jolt through his nervous system, exacerbating his existing concussion.
He reverted back to his human form, his vision spinning violently as intense nausea washed over him.
Seeing Blake leaning heavily against the brick wall, visibly disoriented, Rojo seized the tactical advantage.
She leveled her plasma cannon directly at his chest and pulled the trigger.
Just as the searing bolt was about to vaporize him, a grey-and-black liquid mass intercepted the shot.
Having slipped out of the gym, Ben had transformed into Upgrade, throwing her liquid form over Rojo’s upper torso to trigger a secondary neural migraine.
This time, Vilgax didn’t bother arguing; he immediately severed the link to protect his dreadnought’s servers.
The abrupt disconnection caused a violent system failure in Rojo’s cybernetics, forcefully separating the human mercenary from the alien technology.
She collapsed onto the asphalt, completely unconscious.
With the threat neutralized, Ben reverted to her human form and rushed over to Blake, her face etched with concern.
“Blake!
Are you okay?”
“I’m alive…” Blake groaned, pressing a hand to his temple.
“…just really feel like puking.”
Before they could relax, Rojo’s human form began to stir.
Spotting the two teenagers with their backs turned, she quietly reached out, her fingers wrapping around the handle of a discarded plasma rifle.
But before she could lift the barrel, Gwen lunged out from the shadows of the alleyway, delivering a fierce, full-extension kick straight to Rojo’s jaw, knocking the mercenary flat on her back and out cold.
“Got your back,” Gwen said, dusting off her hands.
Just as the trio let out a collective sigh of relief, a deep, ominous groan echoed from the structural pillars of the gym behind them.
The building’s foundation had taken too much collateral damage from the plasma fire; the concrete walls were cracking, threatening a total collapse.
Ignoring his splitting headache, Blake pushed himself upright and rapidly spun the dial on his chest.
In a flash of crimson light, he transformed into XLR8.
Acting on pure adrenaline, he scooped up both Ben and Gwen in his arms simultaneously.
But the moment he lifted them, a frantic, rapid *beep-beep-beep* began to echo from his chest badge.
Knowing he had only seconds before his time expired, Blake didn’t dare hesitate.
He dug his claws into the asphalt and bolted out of the perimeter just as the entire commercial gym collapsed into a mountainous pile of rubble and twisted rebar.
The moment they cleared the dust cloud, the watch timed out completely.
Blake reverted to human form mid-stride, his legs giving out as all three of them went flying across the pavement in a tangled heap.
“Ouch…
my head,” Ben and Gwen groaned in perfect unison, rubbing their temples.
Pinned flat beneath the weight of both girls, Blake let out a muffled, agonized wheeze from the asphalt.
“I’m pretty sure I’m the one who’s actually dying down here!”
Ben sat up, dusting off her shorts.
She pointed a finger toward the edge of the debris, where the unconscious female thief lay tangled in a mess of wires, having been dragged along the pavement the entire distance by XLR8’s tail.
“Uh…
actually, I think *she* might be hurting a little more than you.”
With the skirmish officially concluded, the trio handed the unconscious mercenary over to the local federal authorities and began a slow, exhausted trek back toward the hospital.
The girls walked on either side of Blake, letting him lean against their shoulders to accommodate his fractured leg.
As they walked, Ben glanced at him, trying to break the silence.
“So…
how did you guys even know where to find me anyway?”
Gwen and Blake glanced at each other, replying in a flat, synchronized deadpan: “The evening news.”
They shared a small laugh, continuing down the quiet sidewalk.
But after a few paces, Blake suddenly froze, a look of profound realization washing over his face.
Ben stopped, tilting her head in confusion.
“What is it?”
Ignoring her question, Blake frantically patted down his pockets until his fingers brushed against a small, crinkly plastic wrapper.
He carefully pulled out a small, generic fruit jelly cup from a convenience store, his expression completely deadpan.
“I searched everywhere near the hospital before we left, but I couldn’t find any actual XiZhiLang brand jelly cups.
I had to settle for this one.”
He offered a genuinely apologetic look as he gently pressed the small jelly cup into Ben’s palm.
Ben stared at the piece of candy in her hand, utterly bewildered.
She looked from the jelly to Blake’s incredibly serious face, her brow furrowing.
“Thanks…
I guess?
But…
why on earth are you giving me a random jelly cup right now?”
Blake looked equally perplexed.
“Didn’t you explicitly write in your letter that you wanted to eat XiZhiLang??”
Hearing his explanation, Ben’s brain short-circuited for a second.
She tilted her head, her memory racing back to the hospital room.
(When did I ever say…)
Suddenly, a mental image of the black ink blotch over the character for *like* flashed in her mind.
Her face flushed an intense, crimson red as the realization hit her like a physical blow.
“Wait a minute,” Blake continued, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
“I distinctly remember seeing the character for ‘like’ right before..”
Before he could utter another syllable, Ben violently shoved the plastic jelly cup directly into Blake’s open mouth, her entire face burning with a mix of sheer embarrassment and fury.
“You can just eat it yourself!
Hmph!”
She spun on her heel and marched down the sidewalk, her strides furious and rigid.
She left behind a completely stunned Gwen and a profoundly confused Blake, who was currently sucking on a generic fruit jelly.
Blake scratched his head, completely at a loss as he turned to Gwen.
“What the hell is her problem?
Why is she so mad?”
Gwen stared at him, her expression a mix of absolute pity and secondary embarrassment.
She had no intention of explaining it to him; she was genuinely afraid that whatever form of terminal airhead disease he possessed might be contagious.
She patted his shoulder twice, offering a single sentence before sprinting after her cousin.
“You figure it out yourself, you absolute titanium airhead.”
Blake walked alone in the back, his brows knit tightly as his brain worked at maximum capacity to solve the mystery.
After a few minutes of intense deduction, he clapped his hands together, his face illuminating with absolute triumph.
“Oh!
I get it now!”
Up ahead, Ben and Gwen paused, snapping their heads back with wide, expectant eyes.
Their expressions practically screamed: *Is he finally opening his eyes?!
Is he actually catching on?!*
Blake pointed a confident finger in their direction, shouting proudly, “She’s totally furious because I didn’t buy the exact brand she asked for!
It wasn’t authentic XiZhiLang!”
“…”
“…”
Gwen’s jaw dropped so low it nearly hit the pavement.
“Are you serious right now?!”
Ben’s emotional fuse blew completely.
She stormed back across the pavement, raised a fist, and delivered a solid, furious punch straight to Blake’s arm, screaming at the top of her lungs, “You don’t understand anything at all, you idiot!”
To this day, Blake still has absolutely no idea what he did wrong.
(Seriously, what did I even do?
QAQ)
He truly felt like the most misunderstood guy in the universe.