Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Benjamin

In a deserted suburb, two boys who were hugging each other rolled out with a dazzling ball of light and choked on a mouthful of sand.

"Cough cough cough...Pah!" Li Hua got up from the ground. After making sure that the brother who risked his life to save others was not dead or disabled and had spit out the sand, he ran to the side and spat out the sand in his mouth with relief.

"First of all, I want to express my gratitude for your selfless and disregarding danger. Secondly—damn, you're really reckless, bro! You dared to rush forward after seeing that? Don't you know how to spell death?"

"D--I--E--DIE! I was actually paying attention in class, man." The boy stood up, dusted off the dust on his body, and smiled as he extended his right palm to shake Li Hua's hand. "My name is Benjamin Kirby Tennyson, just call me Ben."

Li Hua also extended his hand, and the two shook hands in a friendly manner: "My name is Li Hua, just call me Li Hua."

Benjamin: "That's too unfamiliar. I want to call you Hua."

Li Hua: "No, just call me Li Hua."

Benjamin's green eyes were filled with accusation. "Why? I thought we were close enough after what we just experienced. I even asked you to call me Ben."

Li Hua: "Where I come from, it's not customary to call people by their names."

Benjamin didn't believe it: "How could that be? You are Chinese, right? My neighbor is also Chinese, and she calls us by our names."

Li Hua: "Her name is two words, right?"

Benjamin: “How did you know?”

Li Hua: "Because we don't call people by their single names, it sounds weird. Like... your middle name, people don't usually call you by that, right?"

"I see. That does sound strange." Ben quickly accepted the explanation. "Then I'll call you Huahua!"

Li Hua: "...It doesn't sound weird anymore, but it sounds very gay. Would you be happy if a grown man called you Kobe?"

Benjamin: "...You are right, Li Hua."

After the two cleaned the sand from their mouths, Benjamin asked again, "So why did you fight alien monsters in a skirt? Was it because of that strange noise?"

Li Hua was puzzled: "What's that strange sound?"

At that time, he heard nothing except the private conversation of No. 666 in his mind that ordinary people could not hear and the cry of the alien monster.

No. 666: [Excuse me, I think you are talking about me?]

"Yes, it's you!" Benjamin circled Li Hua a few times. "Strange, where did you hide the communicator?"

Li Hua felt a chill down his spine and subconsciously tightened his grip on his eagle-beak staff. "That sound went right into my head. How could you hear it?"

Number 666 explained: [Because he's Ben Tennyson, his soul wavelength is on the whitelist. Nice to meet you, Ben. I'm this newbie's personal AI assistant.]

Benjamin didn’t buy it at all: “You said this was our first meeting, so why am I on your whitelist?”

No. 666: [Because you will become our comrade in the future timeline, have you met Dr. Contradiction?]

Benjamin: "Oh, I see. You are time travelers like him, right?"

No. 666: [Based on the job description, it should actually be called a space-time stability maintainer.]

Benjamin shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

Li Hua: "No, I still don't understand. Can anyone explain it to me?"

This time it was No. 666's turn to be puzzled: "He's Benjamin Tennyson? That's strange. Judging from your resume, you should know him."

Li Hua: "But obviously I don't know him... But now that you mention it, bro, you do look a little familiar. Maybe it's just been too long and I've forgotten. How about you two give me some clues?"

Benjamin was helpless: "How can I give you a hint? I don't even know how you know me. Can I show you my student ID?"

Number 666 flipped through Li Hua's information: "Do you know about the Omnitrix? It's a green watch that can transform into an alien."

“…Are you Tian Xiaoban??!!!”

Now Li Hua understood, and he looked up and down at Benjamin in disbelief.

"Where's the watch on your left hand? Aren't you only ten?! What's with Benjamin? Did you change your name?"

"I don't know who the Tian Xiaoban you're talking about is, but I did get the Omnitrix during the summer vacation when I was ten years old."

Benjamin took out a green watch from his pocket. The style was different from what Li Hua remembered, but the dial pattern was the same.

"The battle was too intense just now, so I haven't had the chance to put it on. My Omnitrix has been having some issues lately, so for safety's sake I took it off. I'm thinking of finding a chance to contact Azmis to have it repaired later. As for my age...if the 'Tian Xiaoban' you're talking about is me, then I can't be ten years old forever. I'm already 15."

Reminder No. 666: [Tian Xiaoban is a localized name chosen after translation. His original English name is what he just introduced. The anime you watched depicted his summer vacation five years ago. You've grown up, so he must have grown up too. Not everyone is Edogawa Conan, the same character for 30 years.]

Benjamin: "Wow, so in your world I'm an animated character? Cool! Want an autograph?"

Li Hua: "...Let's wait until we find a place to stay. At least let me change out of this dress."

Then wash it and put it away. A dirty skirt does not meet the standard of being "cute" and cannot add a BUFF.

Benjamin looked at the city in the distance, mentally estimating the distance and walking time. He noticed that Li Hua's clothes had no sleeves and were short skirts. "It's still a while before we get to the nearest city. Are you cold? If you're cold, I can lend you my jacket. Judging from the surrounding conditions, we're definitely not near Bellwood City. We won't be able to reach our destination anytime soon. It would be terrible if you caught a cold."

Li Hua declined the offer: "No, this dress of mine gives me buffs, including cold resistance. Otherwise, I wouldn't fight the enemy in a skirt."

Benjamin: “…Then why does it have to be a skirt?”

No. 666: [Because his buff bonus rule is "the cuter the outfit, the higher the buff." And the judging criteria are the designer's six-year-old daughter, or more accurately, "what the designer thinks her six-year-old daughter likes." This little girl loves all kinds of cute little dresses.]

Benjamin patted Li Hua's shoulder sympathetically.

Brother, thank you for your hard work.

Li Hua smiled bitterly.

Brother, I am not working hard, my life is hard.

......

The journey to the nearest city was long, and Benjamin, a man who couldn't stand loneliness, kept looking for topics to talk about along the way. Coincidentally, Li Hua also loved chatting, and the two were of similar age, so they had a lot of fun chatting along the way.

At this point, 666 delivered another piece of grim news: "Bad news: According to the latest cosmic frequency scans, we are no longer in the BEN universe, and communication with headquarters has been severed. Good news: Dr. Contradiction is fully responsible for monitoring and handling the BEN universe. He will undoubtedly discover that Ben is missing from one world and come to send you all back. It's only a matter of time."

Li Hua: "I was just about to ask, who is Dr. Mao Dun?"

No. 666: [A time traveler who has cracked the mysteries of time and space, permanently residing in the BEN universe and maintaining time and space there. You can think of him as your senior.]

Benjamin recalled how Dr. Contradiction had easily reversed time and traveled through space and time in front of him. "It's not that I don't trust his abilities, it's mainly that I don't trust his sense of time. I won't be an old man by the time he gets here, will I?"

No. 666: [No, the BEN universe losing Ben is a big deal. Dr. Paradox won't wait that long to let you die of old age. Even if you're already very old by then, he'll restore you to your current state after sending you back, and he'll send you back to a timeline close to the time you left, so you don't have to worry about your family and friends.]

Benjamin: "What about Li Hua?"

Li Hua: "I don't need to worry about that. I'm already dead in my original world, so I don't have any family or friends waiting for me to return. I don't think I'll get old now, so there's nothing to worry about."

This was obviously not a good topic. Even a talkative person like Benjamin was stunned for a moment: "...I'm sorry."

Li Hua himself didn't care at all. He had figured it out a long time ago: "It's okay. In fact, I'm quite satisfied with the current situation where only I'm dead and the rest of my family is fine. When I was alive, I was always in the hospital for health problems, which not only caused a lot of trouble to those around me, but also prevented me from seeing places and making friends. But now I can run, jump, and fight alien monsters. I've seen so many sights and met so many people. In the future, I'll make new friends like you and No. 666. I'm very grateful for everything I have now."

No. 666 suddenly changed the subject: [Rather than chatting, you should prepare for battle later. No one knows what will happen next.]

Li Hua: "I'll stand back for a while. Don't use your faulty watch unless absolutely necessary... By the way, what's wrong with your watch this time? Is it going to explode again? Is the dial off again?"

The Omnitrix doesn't usually have problems, but when it does, it's a major issue. For example, there was that time when the Omnitrix activated self-destruct mode, and the explosion was powerful enough to destroy half the universe. Another time, Benjamin accidentally flipped the dial on the watch, causing DNA confusion. It was then picked up by a villain with exceptional biological expertise, nearly causing a biohazard crisis.

God knows how big the problem will be this time.

"It's not that serious. There's a problem with usage."

When mentioning this matter, Ben's face became solemn.

"I have a ghost-like alien hero who's been going haywire lately. To prevent a disaster like the ghostly escape incident when I was ten, I took down the Omnitrix. But I haven't figured out how to contact Azmis to fix it, so I ran here. 666, could you take a look?"

Number 666: [...First, thank you for your trust in me. Secondly, I hope you won't blindly trust me. I'm a system used by magic-side employees. My monitoring and detection are primarily based on magic-side modules. Furthermore, a technological product of the Omnitrix's level is not something you or I can manually repair.]

Benjamin and Li Hua sighed regretfully.

[…But I have a basic bio-scanning function that can infer the health and racial abilities of a creature based on the scan results. How about you bring out the alien in question and scan it for me? Maybe I can figure out what the problem is.]

Benjamin: "But if I conjure up an ice ghost, I might lose control."

No. 666: [But if you don't come out and scan it for me, I don't know what went wrong.]

Everyone: “…”

Well, it’s an endless loop.

Li Hua: "Why don't you check it for now? It won't be repaired anyway. It's safer to go back and ask the manufacturer to come back for repairs. Anyway, I'm here to support you. Just don't wear the watch unless it's absolutely necessary."

That's all we can do.

Benjamin put the watch into his pocket and stood behind others, feeling a little uncomfortable.

As the boys moved forward, the outline of the city became clearer and clearer. From the outside, it looked like a 21st-century city, and the sign at the distant intersection was clearly written in English letters.

"How lucky! I was worried about how I would communicate without the Omnitrix's language translation module if I went to an environment where I couldn't speak the language."

Benjamin was very grateful. He and Li Hua squinted their eyes and tried hard to recognize the letters on the sign in the distance, and read out the sentence with difficulty.

"...to...M——e——t——r...oplis?"

"Welcome to...Metropolis?"

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Friends who have guessed what's going on, please don't spoil it. This way, when the truth is revealed, you will have more fun reading other friends' comments! (cover your mouth for spoilers)

【Catch the bug twice】