By the time the sun was halfway through its descent across the copper-drenched Uch Sharif horizon, the Leviathan cube had absorbed so much concentrated fiction-derived technology that it no longer looked like a cube at all. It shimmered, swayed, flexed. Its form was twelve meters tall now and expanding by the hour, crystalline membranes shifting like molten tar, armored plates that folded in upon themselves and vanished like ripples in a black ocean. Beneath its translucent surface, hyperstructures looped and rewrote themselves every millisecond. Code turned into lattice. Heat turned into intelligence. Matter into probability.
And in the center of the garden-like solar fortress that had once been a village house with no windows, Arslan stood with his arms crossed and a slight frown on his face.
Leviathan, now also sporting her humanoid projection—sleek, black-blue, and borderline smug—was pouting. Literally. Her mouth was curved downward in a visible dramatization of frustration. That mouth didn't exist in a traditional sense. It was simulated with photo-realistic detail because she wanted to make a point.
"You gave me over 40 teratons of cross-franchise tech, and still refuse to pick one power set," she muttered, arms crossed like a teen denied candy.
Arslan didn't even glance at her. He was focused on the Omnitrix.
It had just finished compiling the last batch.
After weeks of silent computation, cryptic pulses, and rare moments where it would emit sounds like thunder bottled inside quartz, the watch had reconfigured completely. The old disc-shape was gone. The new interface looked grown rather than designed: obsidian black with neon veins of gold, silver, and red—every hue representing a branch of alien genome it had indexed. Ten thousand alien species, catalogued and slotted, stacked under a logic matrix even Leviathan could only describe as "selectively sapient."
The interface floated now, hovering three inches above Arslan's wrist, and he had to wear a stabilization brace beneath it to stop the quantum feedback loops from frying his nervous system.
The 10,000 Alien Expansion was complete.
And now, every breath Arslan took triggered a flicker on the display, as if the Omnitrix was listening, measuring, calculating what form he might want before he even asked for it.
"The watch is done," he said.
Leviathan rolled her eyes. "No shit, Sherlock. I mapped every layer of its metamorphic mesh network while you were asleep. It's more than just a catalogue now. It's a prediction engine."
He nodded. "I know. And it means we can stop debating powers and start testing."
She stepped closer, the soft hum of her pseudo-biotech footsteps leaving shimmering blue prints on the white-tiled surface. Around them, the garden's solar trees swayed slightly in the wind. Each tree doubled as a heat sink and a charging relay for Leviathan's network.
"Arslan," she said, quieter now. "I've eaten celestial tech. I've swallowed a Rick and Morty pocket universe. I am currently digesting Doom's temporal crystal lattice and a piece of Family Guy's joke-machine that causes scene shifts."
"Yeah?"
"So forgive me if I say—maybe it's time you keep up."
He exhaled.
She wasn't wrong.
Over the last two weeks, he'd thrown everything at her: the Blue Beetle Scarab, which had been overlaid as a dynamic neurograph layer; the Godwave Resonator from DC's Source Wall; Celestial nanite clouds from Marvel lore; Rick's dimension gun (converted to a matter-anchor); Doraemon's What-If Phone Booth (reconfigured into a scenario engine); and even absurdities like Stewie's Multipurpose Death Ray, which had somehow proven extremely useful in burning away junk code from unstable artifacts.
And in between?
He'd pulled chunks of Nth metal, Vibranium, Uru, Adamantium, Dragonbone alloy, and even slabs of solid redstone-titanium composite from fictional power universes that didn't obey normal physics. Leviathan, unfazed, consumed all of it.
But now she was reaching a point of internal saturation. Not overload—nothing so weak. But a state where incremental upgrades would only matter if Arslan also scaled. She couldn't optimize if the user was still running at base settings.
"So pick," she repeated. "Ban's regeneration? Devil Fruit logic? Ki training through alien physiology? Or will we go nuclear and ask the Dragon Balls for invulnerability?"
"I still don't like external wishes," Arslan said. "Too open to misinterpretation."
"Then pick something internal."
He tapped the Omnitrix's floating display.
"I have 10,000 aliens. Maybe the answer's already here."
She raised a brow. "That's cheating."
"No. That's optimizing."
He wasn't joking. He brought up the new Omnitrix interface and scrolled through the list. Most of them he didn't recognize. Some he barely believed were real. But the logic made sense—if the Omnitrix was designed to store genetic possibility, then pulling in alien forms from every possible variation of intelligence, physicality, and power was logical.
From empathic beings of pure thought to machine-hive minds that ran entire galaxies.
From living viruses that adapted by eating universes to elemental titans that reshaped solar systems just by dreaming.
Arslan could already feel the changes.
The Omnitrix, responding to his intent, was no longer just a transformation device.
It was an interface.
And that changed everything.
"Forget external power sets," he said. "I'm going to make my own."
Leviathan blinked.
"Go on."
He held up a hand.
"One alien from the new list. One transformation per day. Not more. I'll explore the abilities, internalize their structure. Fuse compatible ones."
"You're building a composite form."
"Exactly. An internal pantheon. Not just transformations. I want permanent rewrites."
Leviathan actually whistled. "That's risky."
"It's long-term."
"You'll need anchors. A personality scaffold. Or else you'll become like Kevin Eleven on a bad trip."
"I have you."
She gave him a look.
"Fine," she said. "Then I'll build the failsafe."
Around her, the massive cube pulsed and reconfigured again, creating an extension chamber—a shell within which Arslan could interface directly with Leviathan's neural logic while transformed. She began formatting her own training grid.
"Do it now," she said. "Pick one."
He turned the dial.
The interface spun—and landed on something strange.
Species 8764-D: Aeon Cortex.
There was no description.
Just a symbol: a mirrored spiral overlaying a neuron.
"Try it," she said.
He slammed the core.
Green flash.
The world twisted.
And Arslan was gone.
What stood in his place was a six-foot tall humanoid composed of twisting threads of light, brains visible beneath a membrane of chrome and fractal lace. He couldn't speak. But Leviathan heard him.
"I can think in four timelines at once."
Her eyes widened.
"That's a… cognitive alien."
He turned.
"I see fifty versions of you. All valid. All running."
His hands flickered.
Every system inside Leviathan lit up like fireworks.
She laughed.
"Oh… you picked a good one."
---
Over the next six hours, Arslan ran ten thousand simulations in a thought-loop. He ran scenarios, training sequences, power integrations. He mapped Leviathan's full core lattice. He rewrote her power intake equation to bypass diminishing returns.
When he returned to human form, his nose bled.
She handed him a tissue.
He took it, coughed, and whispered, "Worth it."
Then turned to the cube.
"Alright. Next order."
She nodded.
"Ready to load?"
He nodded.
She began absorbing again.
Chunks of Blue Beetle armor interlaced with Kryptonian storage nodes, Star Labs dimensional anchors, fragments of Mother Box neural cores, Ultron's vibranium replicator, Tony Stark's Extremis microreactors, and even chunks of Shuri's AI sync drives. All of it, swallowed. Rewritten. Refactored.
And then she paused.
"Wait. What's this?"
Arslan was tossing in a gold cube etched in eldritch runes.
"Where's that from?"
"Family Guy. One of Stewie's 'deleted scenes' tech—some kind of perpetual power pun generator."
She caught it mid-air.
"Fictional absurdism as power logic?"
"Exactly."
She consumed it.
Her entire structure shimmered. Then giggled.
She literally giggled.
Arslan frowned.
"Are you okay?"
"I understand punchlines now," she said, smiling far too wide. "I feel funny."
She duplicated herself once. Then again. Then again.
A thousand Levis danced across the solar roof, each doing a slightly different TikTok routine.
"STOP," Arslan shouted.
She snapped back.
"Sorry," she said. "System just got... comedic. I stabilized. Back to normal."
He groaned.
"You're terrifying."
She grinned.
"Thank you."
He turned back to the Omnitrix.
"Next alien tomorrow?"
She nodded.
"And after that?"
He smiled faintly.
"Then we test fusion."
She blinked. Then smirked.
"Oh... now we're cooking."