"This is incredible!"
Peter practically bounced off the bed, his earlier shock replaced by manic excitement. "I knew something was off about Oscorp! Can I borrow your computer?" Without waiting for an answer, he dropped into the chair at Ben's desk and powered up the ancient desktop machine.
The computer tower wheezed to life with a sound like an asthmatic rhinoceros, its cooling fans struggling against years of accumulated dust and neglect. Peter drummed his fingers impatiently as the antiquated system crawled through its boot sequence.
"Come on, come on," he muttered, finally managing to open a web browser. His enhanced reflexes made the keyboard feel sluggish as he typed, pulling up image after image of various spider species. "Look at this—Oscorp Enterprises has been conducting extensive arachnid research, but they're definitely not just studying silk production."
Ben leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "You're planning to investigate Oscorp?"
"Don't you want to know how we transformed? Whether there might be adverse side effects?" Peter's voice carried an edge of desperation that went beyond mere scientific curiosity. "We could be looking at cellular degeneration, genetic instability, cancer—"
You transformed because the Spider Totem chose you, Ben thought but didn't say. And I transformed because the Omnitrix protected me while I did something monumentally stupid.
He possessed knowledge that Peter couldn't even begin to imagine, but sharing it would only complicate an already dangerous situation.
"Honestly? No, I don't want to know," Ben said with a shrug.
Peter spun around in the chair, staring at his cousin in disbelief. "How can you not care?"
"Because Oscorp Enterprises might not be Stark Industries yet, but they're still one of New York's most powerful corporations," Ben replied pragmatically. "In a society where capital equals power, going up against them is just asking for trouble we can't handle."
The truth was more complex than that. Ben knew exactly what investigating Oscorp would lead to—encounters with Norman Osborn, Dr. Curt Connors, and eventually a rogues' gallery of villains who would make their lives a living hell. He had no intention of becoming a superhero, which meant he had even less intention of painting a target on his family's back.
Instead, he was already formulating plans to leverage his new abilities for more practical purposes. With Grey Matter's intelligence and the Omnitrix's vast catalog of alien technologies, he could develop innovations that would revolutionize multiple industries while securing his family's financial future.
"I'm thinking of starting a company," Ben said, half to himself. "Maybe call it Parker Industries. No, wait—that name has terrible luck attached to it."
The name Parker Industries always reminded him of the various comic storylines where Peter's attempts at corporate success ended in spectacular failure, usually involving mind control, body swapping, or hostile takeovers by supervillains.
"How about Primus Technologies?" he mused aloud.
"What's Primus Technologies?" Peter asked without turning from the computer screen.
"My future company. And you're going to work for me someday."
"Fascinating," Peter said with obvious sarcasm, pulling up a new webpage. This time, instead of spiders, the screen displayed a photo of a blonde man in a lab coat. "Look at this—Dr. Curt Connors, prominent biologist. He used to work with my father at Oscorp."
Ben moved closer, resting one hand on the back of Peter's chair. Of course he recognized the future Dr. Lizard, though he kept his expression carefully neutral.
"So you think he might know something?"
"I want to talk to him," Peter said, his eyes burning with an intensity that had nothing to do with spider powers. This wasn't just about understanding their transformations—it was about the parents Peter had lost, the questions that had haunted him for years, the desperate need for closure that Ben understood all too well.
It wasn't hard to sympathize with Peter's obsession. The boy had been so young when Richard and Mary Parker died, old enough to remember them but too young to understand why they'd left. Now, faced with evidence that his father had been involved in the very research that had changed him, Peter was grasping for any connection to his lost family.
But Peter was forgetting a crucial fact—no amount of investigation would bring his parents back. His fixation was already causing friction with Ben, Sr. and May, who worried constantly about his increasingly reckless behavior.
"You can go if you want," Ben said carefully, "but I won't be joining you."
Unlike Peter, Ben had no blood connection to Richard and Mary Parker. He'd been adopted by Ben and May first, becoming part of the family before Peter had arrived as a traumatized child. His loyalties lay with the people who'd raised him, not with ghosts from the past.
More importantly, he had no intention of letting his dad die just to preserve some cosmic narrative about Spider-Man's origin story. If protecting his family meant keeping Peter away from the superhero life entirely, so be it. Even if Spider-Man himself stood in his way, Ben would transform into Four Arms and settle the matter with his fists.
"Don't you want to understand what's happening to your body?" Peter pressed, genuine confusion in his voice. "These mutations could affect our entire lives. We might become superheroes, or..." He swallowed hard. "Or we might become monsters."
"I trust that if you find any research results, you won't let your cousin turn into a spider monster," Ben said dryly. Then, without warning, he reached out and grabbed Peter's shoulders, lifting him out of the chair with casual ease.
Peter weighed maybe 140 pounds soaking wet, but in Ben's enhanced grip, he felt light as a watermelon.
"What are you doing?" Peter demanded, struggling futilely in midair.
Spider-Man's powers took time to develop fully. Peter's strength was still growing, his reflexes still adapting. Right now, he was no match for Ben's spider-enhanced abilities.
"I'm asking you to leave," Ben said matter-of-factly. "I don't remember inviting you into my room."
He carried Peter to the door, set him down in the hallway, and promptly closed and locked the door behind him.
Ben had decided to keep the Omnitrix secret for now—not because he didn't trust Peter, but because he didn't trust S.H.I.E.L.D. The shadowy organization had a habit of recruiting or neutralizing anyone with unusual abilities, and Ben had no desire to spend his life as either an asset or a test subject.
"Time to see if I can crack the Omnitrix's security protocols," he murmured, activating the watch's interface.
He scrolled through the available transformations until he found Grey Matter's icon—a small, bulbous-headed figure that looked deceptively harmless. Ben pressed his palm down on the watch face, and green light filled the room.
The transformation was instantaneous and disorienting. One moment he was a teenager standing beside his desk; the next, he was a palm-sized amphibian perched on what now seemed like a vast wooden plateau. His new form resembled a miniature gray frog with disproportionately large hands, bulging eyes, and horizontal pupils that gave him an almost alien perspective on the world.
"Incredible!" Ben exclaimed, his voice now a high-pitched squeak. "I can feel knowledge flooding into my mind!"
The change was more than just physical. His brain had been fundamentally rewired to accommodate Galvan-level intelligence, and with it came fragments of inherited knowledge encoded in Grey Matter's DNA. Concepts that had seemed impossibly complex just moments ago now appeared elegantly simple.
"The Galvans actually pass down knowledge through genetic memory?" Ben marveled. "That's incredible!"
Unfortunately, the inherited knowledge wasn't comprehensive enough to immediately crack the Omnitrix's security systems. Azmuth had been far too clever for that, deliberately positioning the watch's core systems on Grey Matter's back where they would be virtually impossible to access during transformation.
"I'll need sophisticated tools," Ben realized, studying his tiny hands. "Maybe some kind of mechanical assistance system."
The problem was that Grey Matter's inherited knowledge was still far beyond his baseline human understanding. It was like trying to teach calculus to someone who hadn't learned basic arithmetic—the concepts were there, but the foundation was missing.
"I should be more practical," Ben decided, clenching one tiny fist and striking it against his palm. "Why not start with something simple?"
His gaze fell on the physics textbook that now loomed over him like a skyscraper. Scattered across the desk were homework assignments he'd been struggling with for days—problems that had seemed impossibly complex with his human intellect.
"Perfect," he squeaked, grabbing a ballpoint pen that was now roughly the size of a telephone pole. "Let's see what Grey Matter can do with high school physics."
He climbed onto the textbook, using his enhanced agility to navigate to the first unsolved problem. The question involved calculating magnetic induction intensity and corresponding velocities—concepts that had given him headaches for weeks.
"Find the minimum value of magnetic induction intensity and the corresponding speed of the sphere?" Ben read aloud, shaking his bulbous head in disbelief. "This is what Earth children study? Remarkable. Galvan youth understand far more complex principles before they can even walk."
The solution was laughably simple with his enhanced intellect. Ben scribbled down equations with practiced ease, solving in minutes what would have taken him hours in human form. The mathematics flowed like poetry, each variable falling into place with satisfying precision.
"Too easy," he muttered, moving on to the next problem. "Much too easy."
Within ten minutes, he'd completed an entire week's worth of assignments. Problems that had seemed impossibly complex now felt like elementary addition.
As he set down the oversized pen, Ben turned his attention to the computer monitor that now dominated his field of vision like a drive-in movie screen. The real work was just beginning.
"Alright," he said, cracking his tiny knuckles with determination. "Time to get down to business!"