"Hey, Raphael, do you think someone's controlling me or leading me around? I mean, meeting two groups of main characters back to back? Getting dragged into this supernatural mess right after landing in the US?"
[It is a possibility. Based on observed narrative patterns, it is likely that higher-order multiversal entities have taken an interest in your arrival. They may already be nudging events around you.]
"Well, I guess that means I'll stay in the loop for any world-ending crap—and maybe even stop it too."
He'd already heard Sam and Dean calling Bobby. Not that hard to tap into phones when you had a god-tier AI whispering in your brain.
[...]
"You know," Nathan smirked as he crossed the street, "I can definitely imagine your 'praise me more' face."
[Negative. That is your imagination. I do not have a face.]
"And yet I can still see it," he chuckled. "Anyway—what's the plan for getting IDs?"
[Digital profiles are simple. I can fabricate one with a full backstory and social presence in under 0.3 seconds. The issue is with physical IDs. Those require an offline source—someone experienced with black-market documentation.]
Nathan paused. "The Winchesters... they probably know a guy, right? Someone who forges IDs like it's his day job?"
[Statistically speaking, yes. Their network includes hunters and fixers—high probability of ID access.]
"Good. Might be worth sticking around them after all."
He spent the rest of the day wandering the small town—sometimes just enjoying being out in the world, other times bantering with Raphael, planning. His goal was simple: get a clean ID, then use the Acquire Card to snag a small company. With money in hand, life could get a lot smoother—and he'd be better equipped for whatever hellish apocalypse was coming.
That's when the Shop pinged.
---
{The Shop
Everything can be bought here, as long as you can pay for it—and are lucky enough to see it on display.
Display reset in: 23:59:43
Apple of Doctors: Grants complete immunity to all known and unknown diseases—going forward. It won't cure existing conditions. You must consume the entire apple for it to work.
Price: 333 Human Souls
Book of Stories: A book of 123,456,789 ever-shifting fairy tales. Every time you close it, a new story replaces the last—unless you place a bookmark.
Price: 16 Baby Teeth
Coordinates to Gurdiana's Spear: The precise current location of Gurdiana's lost divine weapon.
Price: 9 Perfect Omniversal Authorities
The Ulysses: A medium-class deep-sea submarine built for exploration and combat. Holds 201 passengers, armed with torpedoes, sub-pods, and cannon turrets.
Price: $500,000,000
Order Dragon Breathing Style: A martial technique rooted in Order Dragons. Enhances draconic traits, raises defense, and grants resistance to Chaotic Corruption.
Price: An Encounter with Your Enemy
Hypno's Tear: Lets you sleep at will and enter the dreams of anyone you've seen within the past day. You control the dream's events (except the target's reactions). Dreams influence their waking thoughts.
To gain this power, you must place the tear inside your eye.
Price: One of Your Eyes (Regrowth possible)
}
---
"Well," Nathan muttered, reading the list. "I expected weird prices... but damn."
[Expected. The Shop adapts to your multiversal tier and context. It is intentionally surreal. However, Gurdiana's Spear seems to be contracting that.]
"I really want that breathing method," he admitted. "Could give me a serious edge when I'm not transformed with the H-Omnitrix."
[Agreed. The power would be beneficial. However, you currently lack a recognized 'enemy'—so the Shop may either delay the transaction or manufacture a conflict.]
"So… it might spawn a boss fight?"
[Possibly. Alternatively, it may reach into another world and bring one here. Either result would be... entertaining.]
Nathan narrowed his eyes. "That's worrying—but cool. What about the Hypno's Tear?"
[That is also viable. If you use a form with regenerative properties—such as Hulk, Deep Sea King, or Anti-Venom—you can regrow the eye you sacrifice.]
"I'd rather wait for Deep Sea King to come off cooldown. Hulk is risky—I don't know if I'd stay in control—and Anti-Venom... I still don't know if it acts like a suit or becomes me."
[A cautious approach. Acceptable. Another item: collecting sixteen baby teeth is statistically achievable. However, collecting them from random children while the Winchesters are nearby may attract unwanted attention.]
"Yeah, definitely not going baby tooth hunting while Sam and Dean are in town. Especially just for a book of fairytales."
He paused, rereading the Shop listing.
"But this Ulysses thing... a damn combat submarine? That's sick. Any way to game the price?"
[We could attempt to use funds acquired through illicit means—money that technically 'shouldn't exist' in legal records. It would be an interesting test to see if the Shop honors dirty currency.]
Nathan grinned. "Then let's do it."
[Acknowledged. Initiating illegal fund routing. Purchase attempt initiated.]
The confirmation pinged a moment later.
[Transaction successful. The funds vanished—erased as if they never existed.]
Nathan let out a low whistle. "Yeah... I'd expect nothing less from a Shop that can sell the damn Omnitrix."
[Notice: Upon entering this part of town, I'm detecting abnormal energy signatures. After analysis, I believe several individuals in the vicinity may not be human.]
"Well, I've got time. Let's go see what kind of weird this is," Nathan muttered.
He trailed a group of men toward the edge of town, where the heat of summer gradually gave way to an unnatural chill. The shift wasn't abrupt, but the deeper he walked, the more it felt like stepping into another season. Within a few hours, they reached a cluster of old warehouses—air cold and sharp, like Christmas night without the cheer.
"Ghosts? Wendigos? Something else from the supernatural aisle?" Nathan guessed aloud.
[Unlikely. This isn't spiritual cold—it's an environmental shift, most probably caused by advanced technology.]
Just outside the warehouses, something caught his eye: a smear of faintly glowing yellow goo streaked across the cracked pavement.
Nathan crouched to get a closer look. "Cold weather and glowing goo in a Ben 10 context… You thinking what I'm thinking, Raphael?"
[DNAliens. It would match both the environmental shift and biological residue.]
Nathan clicked his tongue. "Yeah, figures."
[There's a complication. The Winchesters are still tailing you. If anything overtly strange happens, they'll be on-site within ten to fifteen minutes.]
"Of course they are," Nathan sighed. "Never thought I'd be worried about two human guys crashing an alien op."
He moved closer to the warehouse district, eyes sharp, ears tuned to the ambient hum of machines—or maybe alien biotech. The goo trail led through a half-collapsed loading dock and into a hangar-sized warehouse that reeked of bio-gel, ozone, and the kind of sterile wrongness that didn't belong on Earth.
And then he heard it.
A roar—deep, bone-shaking, like a freight train made of pain and rage had just been unleashed.
Nathan stopped cold.
"...That wasn't a DNAlien."
[Correct. Signs suggest some kind of experiment.]
A second roar thundered out, followed by the unmistakable crunch of something large slamming through metal. Nathan sprinted to the edge of the building, ducked behind a shattered wall, and peeked in.
What he saw wasn't a clean experiment.
It was a massacre.
A hulking creature nearly ten feet tall, its body a twisted blend of hardened mutant muscle and alien bone-tech, rampaged through the warehouse like a living wrecking ball. One arm was a jagged flail, the other a blunt slab of living steel. Glowing blue cracks split its green-gray body like volcanic fault lines, and it moved like pain wasn't even a concept it recognized.
The DNAlien scientists—three of them—were already dead. A fourth tried to crawl away. The thing lifted him by the spine and crushed him mid-scream.
Nathan had no idea if something like scientists exists in DNAliens in the first place.
[After reading the records and scanning the files I've found some information: Subject is Marshall Evan Stone III, a.k.a. "Random." Former mutant mercenary. Now designated Null-Wrecker. Mutant-DNAlien hybrid. Highly unstable.]
"Guess they tried to make a new soldier," Nathan muttered. "Didn't read the fine print."
[Violence is localized. Civilians are not in current threat radius. I would Suggest observation unless threat expands.]
Nathan nodded, stepping back slightly. "You got that Raphael. I'm not jumping in unless this thing changes the script."
But the script did change.
Just a few blocks away, the rumble of an engine cut through the stillness. A black Chevy Impala came roaring down the road—classic, noisy, and unmistakable.
Sam and Dean Winchester.
The car skidded to a halt outside the warehouse. Dean jumped out first, shotgun ready. Sam followed, eyes narrowing as he caught sight of the monster looming inside.
"What the hell is that?" Dean barked.
"I don't know, but it's tearing through something that definitely isn't human," Sam replied, racking his own gun. "We going in?"
The Null-Wrecker paused mid-rampage, head slowly turning toward the sound of metal on metal. One black, lidless eye and one cloudy, human one locked on the brothers.
And then it roared again—louder, closer. Its body twitched, jerked, arms glitching mid-morph between cannon and hammer as it began lumbering toward them.
Dean swore. "That's not friendly!"
Nathan cursed under his breath. "Well, that's my cue."
He tapped the H-Omnitrix on his wrist, the interface glowing with deep sea-blue energy.
"Let's not make this a habit," Nathan muttered, slamming the core down.
In a flash of churning water and shimmering light, his body grew taller, more massive, his skin becoming scaled and armored, gills flaring open along his neck as rows of shark-like teeth curled into a grin.
Deep Sea King stepped forward, voice deep and resonant.
"I think it's time someone stopped the show."
The moment Nathan's massive feet slammed into the cracked warehouse pavement, Null-Wrecker roared and charged. The creature's mutated, lurching frame moved with disturbing speed, each footfall shattering the ground beneath it.
Nathan—now Deep Sea King—braced himself, claws flexed, gills flaring in the dry air. "Too bad this isn't underwater," he muttered, voice echoing like a pressure wave. "You'd already be down."
The mutant slammed into him like a truck made of steel and rage. Nathan staggered but held firm, his scaled arms locking with the creature's grotesque, shifting limbs. A cannon-arm hissed and morphed into a bladed flail mid-swing—only for Nathan to duck and slam his elbow into the monster's side, sending it crashing through a metal crate.
"Raphael," Nathan grunted, stepping forward through the dust cloud, "tell me he doesn't have an off-switch."
[No. But its limb transitions have a half-second buffer window. Strike when it's morphing.]
Null-Wrecker rose again, its bone-cannon now sparking with crude alien wiring jammed directly into its flesh. The glow intensified—he was rerouting DNAlien tech directly through his mutated nervous system.
"Ah. Tech-junkie brute. Got it."
The cannon fired.
A pulsing bolt of unstable green energy streaked toward Nathan. He dove to the side, the shot narrowly missing but melting straight through a forklift behind him.
From across the street, Sam and Dean skidded their Impala to a halt.
"What the hell—" Sam muttered, mouth slightly open as he watched the reptilian monster trade blows with something straight out of a sci-fi horror movie.
Dean let out a low whistle. "Okay… I don't know why he's helping us, but that's one hell of a throwdown."
He sprang up, using the momentum to leap into a spinning backhand. His arm connected with the creature's jaw, sending teeth—and something black and viscous—flying. But Null-Wrecker barely flinched. Instead, its form shifted again—hammerfist arm forming—and it slammed into Nathan's side, lifting him off the ground.
The impact echoed like a car crash. Nathan hit the ground hard, ribs aching.
[Recommendation: Stop grappling. Your opponent is too heavy. Use speed. You're stronger and faster.]
"Thanks for the tip, Coach," Nathan growled, rolling just in time to avoid another cannon blast. His claws sank into the concrete as he surged forward, grabbing the creature by its malformed face and driving him through a wall. Sparks flew as alien tech embedded in the beast's skin overloaded and burst.
The Null-Wrecker shrieked—a warbling, corrupted mix of human and alien noise—then headbutted Nathan hard enough to dent his skull plate. They traded blows like titans, claws and spikes and morphing limbs clashing in bursts of brute strength and unrefined technique. Neither one gaining more than a few seconds' edge.
[Left knee joint—damaged during the last slam. Target it.]
Nathan ducked low, then twisted with a sweeping tail-strike, catching the creature's weakened leg. Null-Wrecker stumbled—briefly—but recovered, slamming both fists down in a double-hammer blow that Nathan barely dodged.
And all the while, the ground around them trembled.
Back near the shattered entrance, Dean ducked under rubble and scanned the area. He kicked over the corpse of a DNAlien, grimacing. That's when he saw it—half-buried in sludge, still faintly glowing.
An alien rifle.
"Bingo," he said, snatching it up. "Let's see what this baby can do."
He sprinted into position, taking aim. Nathan and Null-Wrecker clashed once more, locked in a brutal deadlock just a few dozen feet away.
"Hey, ugly!" Dean shouted.
The monster's human eye twitched. It turned—just as Dean pulled the trigger.
The alien weapon whined and fired a compressed bolt of blue plasma. It struck Null-Wrecker directly in the neck, causing the embedded tech there to spark and short violently. The creature screamed, reeling back in disoriented pain.
[Impact confirmed. Systems disrupted. Finish it.]
Nathan didn't waste the moment.
"Thanks, Dean," he snarled—and drove his fist forward with a thunderous crunch. A perfect right hook connected cleanly with the creature's jaw, sending it flying back across the warehouse. It crashed through a support beam and landed in a twisted heap of metal and sparks.
The dust settled. The mutant groaned but didn't rise.
Nathan exhaled, steam curling from his mouth.
Sam blinked, still holding his shotgun limply. "So... fish-guy's the good guy?"
Dean nodded slowly. "Fish-guy just saved our asses."
[Combat complete. You took 61% damage, by the way. But you didn't die. So… good job.]
Nathan chuckled, coughing as he leaned on a cracked support beam. "Appreciate the encouragement, Raph."