@XLR8 Wow. Been a long time since I commented about that. Almost a year. Man time flies by.
I guess that would be correct. Granted, I'm veering more on Ben just being lucky with the Omnitrix. Ben fiddling with the Omnitrix was what led to him eventually unlocking the Master Control. In The Big Tick, Ben and Gwen were messing with the Omnitrix so that Ben could transform into XLR8 to go get some other food since that Max's strange taste was sparking up again. That led to Ben unlocking Cannonbolt. The same pretty much happened in Camp Fear as well when Ben was messing with the Omnitrix again trying to transform into an alien in order to escape captivity. He wasn't entirely in danger in that scene either. Both Ben and Max were just captured yet relatively in a..."safe" location but they did have to get out fast. Both times this happened, Ben activated the Omnitrix manually as well. The security measure in Ghostfreaked Out activated automatically. So thinking more about it now, I don't think Ben unlocking Cannonbolt and Wildvine was of the result of the security measure but really just Ben messing with the Omnitrix as usual and therefore getting lucky out of that. Much like, again, when Ben was lucky enough to activate the Master Control.
It's not like Grey Matter was really the best option to fight Zs'Skayr with anyways and Ben knew that too, which was why he ran away. Often enough, when the Omnitrix mis-transformed Ben, it did transform him into the wrong alien for certain situations. Ben 4 Good Buddy being one obvious example when the Omnitrix transformed Ben into Ripjaws...in the desert. An obviously bad choice to use to fight the Road Crew. The Omnitrix didn't pick the best alien to combat Zs'Skayr. It just randomly picked a alien to protect Ben. It was up to Ben at that point to use what he got to gain the upper hand or to at least survive. The Omnitrix didn't pick the right alien for Ben to use for him. As the Original Series established, the Omnitrix just randomly transforms Ben into any of the aliens when it malfunctions and when the security measure activates. Whether or not Ben gets the alien that he wants, it up to him to decide how to best use those very aliens to gain the upper hand in combat.