Tony's figure vanished at the garage entrance, the faint scent of gunpowder still lingering in the air.
Paul stood his ground, his gaze sweeping over the server that faithfully recorded everything.
"The Vault"...
A name that practically screamed "nothing to see here."
He withdrew his gaze, the all-knowing smile at the corner of his mouth fading. It seemed his old man had already sensed the watchful eyes hidden in the shadows.
This was good. A constantly vigilant Tony Stark was a Tony Stark who would live longer.
As for himself…
Paul turned and walked toward his half of the workshop.
Since his father had already initiated the "Iron Man Project," it was time for his "Transformers Project" to officially get underway.
"Baymax, come here," Paul called softly.
With a gentle whir of hydraulics, the familiar white marshmallow-like robot glided to his side.
"Hello, Paul. I have detected a slight increase in your heart rate and elevated adrenaline levels. Would you like a hug?"
Baymax tilted his round head, his voice still soft and comforting.
"Not right now," Paul smiled, patting Baymax's soft "skin." "But I do need your help. We're going to give you an unprecedented, massive upgrade."
As soon as he finished speaking, he began typing rapidly on the holographic console before him.
Holographic blueprints, so complex they could make one's scalp tingle, unfolded, rotated, and overlapped in the air.
"This is..." Baymax's optical sensors flickered, as if rapidly processing the information before him.
"This is our new creation, and your new body."
Paul pointed to one of the core designs, his eyes shining with a light called "dream."
It was a silver-gray sports car, exuding a sense of power and streamlined beauty. Its low-slung body and exaggerated spoiler screamed speed and passion in every detail.
"This is Sideswipe's vehicle mode."
Then, with a swipe of his finger, the image instantly shifted.
The handsome sports car, through countless precise mechanical changes, rapidly disassembled, reassembled, and extended... finally, a silver robot, agile and holding twin blades, stood proudly in mid-air!
"And this is its robot mode."
A trace of irrepressible excitement laced Paul's voice.
This was his answer, his ambition. To bring the Transformers from his childhood fantasies into reality in this world!
"My computational core indicates the project's difficulty of implementation is 98.7%. The required resources and energy will be astronomical," Baymax stated, his voice devoid of emotion. Yet his head tilted down slightly, as if expressing a feeling called "confusion."
"That's why it's a massive upgrade," Paul said with a snap of his fingers. "From now on, you're not just a healthcare companion. You will be the central AI for the 'Transformers Project,' the 'brain' of Sideswipe, and my... first knight."
For the next few days, Paul practically locked himself in his workspace.
The once soft, friendly marshmallow robot was mercilessly "gutted" by him.
The soft vinyl skin was replaced with a new type of memory composite material, increasing its strength tenfold while maintaining flexibility. Its internal skeleton was infused with liquid metal, allowing it to freely reshape itself in different forms.
The most critical part was the chip that housed his healthcare protocols.
Paul worked tirelessly, forgetting to eat or sleep, pushing his programming knowledge from his past life and the robotic genius of Tadashi Hamada to their absolute limits to rewrite Baymax's fundamental logic code.
Not only did he integrate some of J.A.R.V.I.S.'s auxiliary functions, but more importantly, he wrote an entirely new emotional simulation system for Baymax based on fuzzy logic.
When the upgrade was complete and the new Baymax stepped out of the stasis pod, Paul knew he had succeeded.
Its silhouette was still round, but the lines were sharper, filled with a sense of science fiction. The composite material of its surface reflected a warm, pearlescent glow under the lights. The most amazing part was its eyes. No longer simple black dots, they were now two soft blue rings of light that would subtly change in brightness and focus in response to Paul's emotions and words.
"How do you feel, buddy?" Paul asked, his voice full of anticipation.
Baymax didn't answer immediately.
He raised his hand, looked at his new palm, then slowly walked over to Paul. He reached out and gently touched the dark circles under Paul's eyes.
"Paul, you have been working continuously for 72 hours with less than 8 hours of deep sleep. According to my new emotion module, your current emotional state is... excitement, mixed with fatigue, and a hint of... anticipation."
His voice seemed to have a new warmth to it.
"I suggest you get some sleep first. The project is important, but your health is more important."
Paul froze.
He had never imagined that the artificial intelligence he created would care for him in this way.
An unprecedented sense of security and trust instantly filled his heart.
He grinned and nodded firmly. "Alright, I'll listen to you. But after I wake up, we have to start tackling the first big problem."
Just as Baymax had said, the creation of Sideswipe faced an almost impossible contradiction from the very beginning.
Power and space.
As a top-tier supercar, it needed an engine with explosive performance. And as a combat mech, it needed a powerful energy core to sustain high-intensity combat.
Trying to cram both of these into a car body less than two meters wide, while also leaving room for the complex transformation structures, was simply impossible.
"Conventional graphene battery packs are too bulky. Even if I could double the energy density, it still wouldn't be enough to power both the vehicle mode's range and the mech mode's combat output," Paul muttered, propping his chin on his hand as he frowned at the conflicting data flashing red on the screen.
Unless...
His gaze drifted involuntarily to the other end of the garage. On Tony's workbench, a ring emitting a faint blue glow lay quietly.
The Arc Reactor.
He had to admit, in the field of energy, Tony Stark was an undeniable genius. This miniaturized cold fusion device was the perfect heart for a mech.
"Just take it and use it?"
The thought flashed through Paul's mind for only a second before he dismissed it.
No. His pride wouldn't allow it.
More importantly, he had a keen sense that Tony's Arc Reactor had some kind of flaw. The unstable palladium core and the massive energy radiation indicated the technology was far from mature.
His goal wasn't to copy, but to surpass.
"Baymax, pull up all public data on the Arc Reactor. Combine it with my graphene battery technology and run a new fusion model."
The fire of determination reignited in Paul's eyes.
"I'm going to create... our own 'AllSpark'!"
With a clear direction, the work that followed became much smoother.
Paul didn't follow Tony's cold fusion path. Instead, he forged a new one, designing a "micro-plasma battery" based on graphene superconducting materials.
It used ultra-high pressure to ionize inert gas into high-temperature plasma, which was then contained by a magnetic field for energy storage. In theory, its energy density and power output surpassed even Tony's palladium-core reactor, and it was far more stable and safe.
With the power issue solved, only the greatest challenge remained—the transformation mechanism.
This was the core, the most difficult part of the "Transformers Project."
How to make tens of thousands of parts move to their designated positions with perfect precision in a matter of seconds, completing the transformation from a sports car to a robot?
This wasn't just a problem of mechanical engineering, but a culmination of materials science, spatial geometry, and cybernetics.
Paul locked himself in the simulation room, running through various scenarios over and over again.
He tried gear linkages, but the structure was too complex and the failure rate was high.
He tried hydraulic drives, but the response time was too slow and they were prone to leaks.
He even considered using memory alloys, but the cost and controllability were unacceptable.
Days passed. On Tony's side, the "Iron Man" armor was already being prepped for flight tests, while his "Sideswipe" remained nothing more than a collection of blueprints on a computer.
An invisible pressure began to weigh on him.
He didn't want to lose the bet he'd made with his old man.
Late one night, Paul was still wrestling with a set of complex spatial transformation algorithms, his eyes bloodshot.
"No, the interference at this angle is unavoidable..."
He ran a hand through his hair in frustration and tossed the wrench in his hand onto the table.
*Clang!*
The wrench bounced on the tabletop and tumbled toward the floor.
Just as it was about to hit the ground, Paul's eyes suddenly narrowed!
A silver shadow shot out from the corner like lightning. With a *thwack*, it precisely caught the falling wrench with magnetic force, then swiftly retracted, placing the wrench securely on the edge of the table.
It was a small electromagnetic retrieval device Paul had casually built to make grabbing tools easier.
Electromagnetic... attraction...
A jolt of electricity shot up Paul's spine!
He stared intently at the small electromagnet, his pupils dilating to their maximum.
He had it!
He finally had it!
Who said transformation had to rely on traditional mechanical transmissions? Who said the parts needed a physical connection?
What if... what if every single component was an independently controllable electromagnetic unit with variable polarity?
By controlling the magnetic changes of tens of thousands of these units through a program—attracting, repelling, sliding, rotating... what kind of impossibly smooth, swift, and unbelievable transformation would that be!
That wasn't mechanical transformation at all!
It was...
Magneto-fluidic transformation!
"I'm a genius!"
Paul leaped from his chair, his face flushed with extreme excitement.
He didn't explain it to anyone, not even a word to Baymax.
He just rushed to the console, his hands a blur as he typed furiously on the holographic keyboard.
Lines of new code, gleaming with genius, poured down the screen like a waterfall.
At the other end of the garage, the roar of Tony's armor igniting its thrusters for the first time echoed.
And here, a far more insane, more revolutionary project was quietly being born at the hands of a fourteen-year-old boy.
The soul of the mech named "Sideswipe" was, at this very moment, truly being forged.
An arms race between father and son, it seemed, had unconsciously begun, with a technological gap that was already worlds apart.