Kairos stood at the heart of a calm that wasn't peace. The battlefield had closed, the anomaly sealed, and Algorithmia's fractured essence was now stabilized somewhere in the Archive's deepest vault. But the silence that followed wasn't relief—it was the hush of things holding their breath.
In the Archive Citadel, where all multiversal events were now being mapped and re-analyzed, Julius and Madara stood beside an enormous screen formed of layered timelines. Goku and Superman remained nearby, still watching Kairos as though trying to decide if he was now asset or threat.
Julius adjusted his grimoire, letting time curl backward just enough to replay the final seconds of the Algorithmia breach. He froze the footage mid-glitch, pointing to a single moment most had missed.
A whisper. Not audio. Not language.
A presence.
"Something else pushed Algorithmia through the breach," Julius said. "It didn't act on its own. It was summoned. Forced into conflict."
Madara didn't blink. "By what?"
Before Julius could answer, the central Archive interface lit up. Not by alert—but by invitation.
[INCOMING MESSAGE: ORIGIN UNKNOWN]
[CHANNEL: DEEP ENCRYPT - LAYER ZERO]
[TRANSLATING…]
The screen turned black. Then white. Then fragments of text began to appear.
We are the Exiled.
We are what remains of abandoned arcs, unfinished legends, and overwritten truths.
You call us anomalies.
We call ourselves The Forgotten Plot.
Superman clenched his fists. "A group? They're organized?"
Kairos tilted his head. "No. They're characters. Left behind."
The message continued:
You defend canon like it's holy.
You forget the power of what almost was.
Your anchors have stabilized too much.
The multiverse is stale. Predictable.
So we will return to break it.
And with us comes the next breach.
Codename: The Rewrite War.
Then it ended.
No threat. No request. Just truth.
Kairos felt something deep in his core shift. He wasn't afraid. He wasn't even confused. He just… understood.
These weren't villains. Not exactly.
They were characters like him.
Ones who never got their chance.
Elsewhere—in a realm with no shape, no laws, and no light—a circle of figures met.
They were the Forgotten Plot.
Each cloaked in styles no longer recognized by the active multiverse.
One had an early 2000s shonen look, spiky hair and half-finished powers.
Another, a gritty anti-hero whose arc had been cancelled mid-season.
A third had once been a female lead—but never got more than five lines of dialogue.
And at the center stood their leader:
Spectra.
Neither man nor woman. Not hero, not villain. Just... rewritten too many times to be either.
Spectra's voice was soft static. "Algorithmia failed. That was expected."
The others shifted but did not interrupt.
"We move to the second gate," Spectra said. "The Broken Champion."
A murmuring rose among them.
"The AI-built clone of All Might?"
"No, that one's still under moderation."
"Then… who?"
Spectra turned toward the edge of the void and pointed.
A wall of code lit up—showing a scene from a timeline long erased.
A battlefield.
A bloodied warrior. Not quite a Saiyan. Not quite a Quincy. Not quite anything coherent.
But powerful.
And broken.
Asher.
A fusion character built by fanfiction and algorithm errors. Carried the powers of three universes but no personality of his own.
He'd been sealed.
But Spectra had found the key.
Back in the Archive, Kairos trained with Madara—though "training" was a generous term.
Madara attacked. Kairos dodged. Time bent.
Madara struck again. This time, he missed on purpose, testing Kairos's reflexes rather than his power.
"You don't fight like anyone I've ever met," Madara muttered.
Kairos blinked. "I'm not anyone. Yet."
Julius watched from the side, noting how Kairos adapted without transforming. He wasn't locked into any ability or power-up. Instead, his strength came from freedom—of concept, not form.
But then he stiffened.
His grimoire flared open without being touched. Pages flipped to the last entry.
Words appeared.
Not his.
BREACH DETECTED
DESIGNATION: ASHER
ORIGIN: FORGOTTEN PLOT
LOCATION: EARTH-404
"Earth-404?" Superman said aloud. "That's a ghost timeline. A collapsed dimension."
Goku clenched his fists. "Then we better hope whoever's inside it is still alive."
Kairos looked at them all.
"No," he said. "I have to go."
Everyone turned.
"Kairos," Julius began, "you're not ready—"
"I'm not me until I choose what I become. If I'm going to be a wildcard, then this is the path."
Madara narrowed his eyes. "He's right."
Superman shook his head. "It could be a trap."
"Good," Kairos replied. "That means it's real."
Without waiting for debate, he turned and opened a temporal gate. Not through a system. Not through code.
He felt where Earth-404 should be. And made it so.
A crack of multiversal light. Then gone.
Julius watched the space he left behind, jaw tight.
"He's learning faster than we predicted," Goku murmured.
Madara folded his arms. "Let's just hope he doesn't learn too much."
Earth-404 was not dead.
It was trapped in pause.
Every building frozen. Every tree halted mid-sway. Every person locked mid-expression, like mannequins in a paused video game.
Kairos arrived at its core.
And in that hollowed-out city center, standing amid stopped time, was Asher.
Eyes closed.
Breathing.
Unchanged since the day he was sealed.
Kairos approached.
"You feel like... me," he said softly.
Asher opened his eyes.
There were too many in them. Too many stories, too many versions.
"I'm what happens when people try to make everything in one," Asher said.
His voice echoed with Naruto's cadence, Ichigo's grit, Luffy's defiance.
"I was created to win every fight. Please every fan. Solve every arc."
Kairos nodded. "And?"
"I broke."
Then Asher looked directly at Kairos.
"Don't let them use you to fix me."
And he attacked.
Not with energy.
With contradiction.
Kairos barely dodged as reality twisted around Asher's attacks—each strike layered with broken logic, fused power-sets, and genre dissonance.
This wasn't a fight of strength.
It was a fight of coherence.
Kairos answered in kind—not by matching, but by choosing.
He anchored his attacks. Limited his scope. Gave his movements purpose.
And as they clashed, two truths collided.
One born of too much.
One forged by just enough.
Back in the Archive, alarms lit up again.
Julius read the incoming logs.
"No... He's not fighting Asher," he said. "He's redefining him."
Madara's eyes gleamed.
"Then this isn't just a test."
Superman nodded grimly.
"It's the first real Rewrite."