I opened my fist. The dial lit back up.
That line was still there, floating at the top of the display like a headline:
[Original Trajectory — Ben Parker dies, catalyzing the birth of a hero.]
I read it one more time. Let it sit.
A hero.
Right. Because that's how it works in this universe. Your uncle bleeds out in an alley and that's supposed to teach you a lesson about responsibility. Every damn origin story in Marvel runs on dead relatives. Can't become a hero unless someone you love dies first. Like heroism is a flower that only grows in graveyards.
You know what? Dad's alive. Peter can still be Spider-Man without a funeral to kick him into gear. And I can still beat every two-bit villain in this city into the pavement. Maybe better — because this time, Peter won't be fighting with a hole in his chest where his uncle used to be.
I stared at the glowing text until the words burned into my retinas.
"Keep your fatalism."
I pushed back at the interface — not with my hands, with my will, with that part of me that had been screaming at this stupid watch for sixteen years.
"Give me the rewards. You called me 'little butterfly' — fine. I'll give you a hurricane. Hand them over."
The [Plot Points Earned: 2/10] display glitched. The numbers scrambled, flickered to static, and the whole interface collapsed like a crashed program. A loading bar I'd never seen before popped up, filled instantly, and the Omnitrix dial on my wrist spun itself three full rotations without me touching it.
Then my vision cut to black like someone yanked the power cord on reality.
Where am I?
Pitch black. Not dark-room dark — nothing dark. No edges, no depth, no distance. Just absence.
And quiet. Dead quiet. No rain. No breathing. Nothing.
Am I dead?
I tried to move. Tried to look down at my hands. There was nothing to look down with. No hands. No arms. No legs. No body. Just my thoughts — still running, still aware — floating in a whole lot of black.
Okay. Not dead. Probably. Hard to tell without a body.
Three objects floated in front of me. Cards. Each one about the size of a dinner plate, hovering in a slow rotation. Black surfaces — real black, the kind that swallowed light — with gold patterns etched across the faces. Geometric, precise, shifting every time the cards turned.
No snarky text this time. No commentary. Just three cards floating in front of me, waiting.
I didn't waste time. Three cards floating in front of me. Two of them were pitch black — just hovering there, dead, no glow, no reaction. Locked. The third one was lit up, pulsing with a faint red light, the only one that looked like it actually wanted to be touched.
Not much of a choice. I pressed my finger against it.
CRACK.
The void shuddered. The card's face split open and red light blasted out of the crack — not the gold-and-crimson of Heatblast, but darker. Deeper. The color of beaten iron pulled from a forge.
Then the sound hit.
Not a roar. An impact. Something enormously heavy slamming into the ground hard enough to send shockwaves through the dark. I felt it travel up through whatever passed for my legs in this place.
The light faded.
And there it was.
Twelve feet tall. Four arms — two upper, two lower, each one thicker than my entire torso. Crimson skin stretched over muscle that looked less like biology and more like geology — granite on granite, every fiber compressed and dense and built for one single purpose: breaking things. Its jaw was a battering ram. Four eyes — small, burning, set deep under a heavy brow — stared out at nothing with a look that said try me.
Black and white gladiator gear — shorts, wrist guards, a chest strap — all of it straining against the mass underneath. The Omnitrix symbol sat on the broad left shoulder, glowing green.
[Tetramand — Four Arms]
Gold data cascaded beside the projection:
[Species: Tetramand] [Homeworld: Khoros] [Classification: Close-Quarters Destruction] [Abilities: Enhanced strength, sonic clap, seismic slam, super jump] [Threat Profile: Can benchpress a building. Skin rated against conventional explosives. Four arms allow simultaneous multi-vector grappling.]
[Personal Note: The universe's finest demolition specialist. If it needs breaking, bending, flattening, crumpling, or tearing in half — this is your guy.]
[Usage Tip: You have four hands. Don't waste them writing homework. Go break something.]
Yes.
Four Arms. The brick wall of the Ben 10 roster. If Heatblast was a nuke on a timer, this was the opposite — a tank that could eat a missile to the face and throw the launcher into orbit. Skin that shrugged off bullets. Strength to flip an armored truck one-handed. Four arms meant you could grab a guy's weapon with one pair while the other pair folded him like a lawn chair.
Next time some lowlife pulls a knife on my family, I won't even need to go nuclear. I'll just pick him up and—
Yeah. This was the one.
"This one."
The projection flickered twice and collapsed — folding in on itself like a hologram losing power until there was nothing left but the dark.
Then I frowned.
"Wait. I had two points. I picked one card. Where's the other one?" I squinted into the void. "You skimming off the top? Is this a scam?"
The darkness rippled. Text appeared — bigger than before, glowing with a faint golden light that practically preened.
[Who said unlocking a card costs only one point?]
A pause. The cursor blinked. I could almost hear it being smug.
[But since I am the most generous and merciful of all higher beings...]
The text shifted. Stiffer now. Almost ceremonial. Dripping with fake gravitas.
[...the great and benevolent Creator has taken the liberty of converting your remaining point into a gift: Perfect Biological Strengthening Fluid.]
[No need to thank me. Consider it a nutrition supplement.]
I opened my mouth to tell the Creator exactly where it could put its nutrition supplement.
Didn't get the chance.
SNAP.
A crisp sound — fingers snapping — echoed through the void, and I was yanked backward like a fish on a line. The black space, the cards, the golden text — all of it collapsed, folded into nothing, and reality slammed back into me like a truck.
Pain.
Not the sharp kind. The deep kind — structural, happening in places I didn't have names for.
My bones were creaking. I could hear them — grinding and compressing with a sound like wood flexing under too much weight. My back arched off the mattress. My fingers clawed into the sheets.
Then my muscles started tearing themselves apart. I could feel individual fibers ripping, separating, and reconnecting in new configurations — denser, tighter. My jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth would crack.
What the hell is this — what's happening to me—
My heartbeat changed. The fast, panicked rhythm smoothed out into something else — slow, steady, powerful. Each beat pushing blood through my body like a hydraulic pump. I could feel the oxygen hitting my cells. I could feel the difference — between what I was ten seconds ago and what I was becoming.
The fatigue from the Heatblast transformation — the bone-deep exhaustion I'd been carrying since I woke up — burned off. Gone. Like fog in direct sunlight.
Then it stopped.
The pain cut off. The grinding stopped. Everything went quiet.
I lay on my back, breathing hard, staring at the ceiling. My body felt... different. I ran my hands down my arms — same frame. Lean. Same narrow shoulders. Same sixteen-year-old proportions.
But underneath, something had changed. My joints moved smoother — precise, like a machine rebuilt with better parts. My muscles felt coiled. Not stiff — ready. Compressed energy waiting to go.
I flexed my right hand. Closed it into a fist.
The air between my fingers let out a soft pop.
I hadn't even squeezed hard.
Okay. That's new.
Then the drowsiness hit. Heavy. Warm. My eyelids dropped and I couldn't haul them back up.
Not now — I need to—
My thoughts started sliding sideways. Losing their edges. Blurring together.
Fine. Just... five minutes.
I stopped fighting it.
A second before I went under, I heard something. Not text. Not data. A voice — real, spoken, close enough to feel the breath of it.
"Sleep, little lion."
Then nothing.
Plz throw power stones.