Time is a river. Most are content to sail its current.
But I've seen the banks. I've touched the source. I know where it ends.
And I refuse to drown in someone else's ending.
— Ben Tennyson, Log Entry 9
---
Night had fallen over the desert. Stars glittered like silver nails hammered into black velvet, and the Rustbucket sat parked quietly among boulders, as if trying not to disturb the sky.
Inside, the Omnitrix was glowing again.
But this time… not green.
Not entirely.
A soft pulse of gold and violet blinked behind the usual emerald hue, flickering in alien sequences that neither Gwen nor Max could read.
But Ben could.
Because Ben had changed the Omnitrix's language.
---
Earlier That Day
Ben sat cross-legged in the center of a glowing diagram — etched meticulously into the ground with quartz dust and a conductive fluid made from alien scrap tech. It wasn't magic.
It was circuitry. A ritual of logic.
At the center: the Omnitrix, projecting a solid-light interface only Ben could control.
A translucent sphere hovered before him — a visual model of Omnitrix Prime Code: the original Galvan operating system. Thousands of nodes. Billions of connections. A living neural lattice.
He had no right to understand it.
But he did.
He remembered everything — from Earth's physics to Galvan programming theory, to the way timelines branch when decisions diverge.
Ben wasn't following the flow.
He was rewriting the rules.
> "Access Prime Root. Recompile modular identity protocol," he instructed calmly.
The Omnitrix hissed in response.
> Authorization Override Detected.
Warning: This action is not intended for bearer-level control.
Proceed anyway?
Ben didn't hesitate.
> "Proceed."
---
Gwen's Perspective
Gwen paced in circles outside the Rustbucket.
Max was asleep — or pretending to be — but Gwen had seen the glow coming from Ben's tent. Not the usual "playing with alien forms again" kind of light. Something deeper.
Stranger.
Her fingers clenched.
> "What are you doing in there, Ben?" she muttered.
She'd been collecting notes in secret. Matching inconsistencies in Ben's behavior. A slip of advanced knowledge here. A phrase that didn't belong to a 10-year-old there.
He was getting faster, stronger, smarter — too fast.
And now… his energy signature was changing.
She didn't want to think it, but the question had already rooted in her mind:
> Is this even our Ben anymore?
---
Back Inside – Ben's Command Center
The sphere shifted. Nodes rearranged.
Ben grinned slightly, eyes reflecting lines of alien code as he scrolled through new unlocked files:
> Species Fusion Templates
Partial Sync Layer Protocols
Time-Adaptive Feedback Loops
But one folder pulsed brighter than the rest:
> Temporal Fork Control – LOCKED
[ACCESS DENIED – CELESTIAL AUTHORITY REQUIRED]
> "Of course you'd lock that one, Azmuth…" Ben whispered.
"But I'll find a way around that, too."
Still, what he had now was enough.
He tapped a new tab: Custom Transformation Parameters.
A list of alien forms appeared — but not like before. This time, Ben wasn't just selecting names. He was editing conditions.
Variables.
Fusion rules.
Even personalities.
> "Grey Matter… increase cognitive cap to 212%. Suppress paranoia fragment."
"Heatburst… reroute core venting to forearms. Add resistance to vacuum."
"Accelerate-X… phase lock friction matrix. Enable vertical traction override."
Ben didn't just use aliens anymore.
He was engineering them.
> "I'm not a wielder," Ben muttered. "I'm the architect now."
He stood slowly, the Omnitrix reassembling its outer shell with a hiss of steam and light.
The interface faded.
The gold-violet glow dimmed — but didn't vanish.
Ben's Omnitrix… was no longer just Galvan tech.
It was his.
---
Later That Night
Gwen finally entered the tent, unable to wait any longer.
"Ben," she said sharply, "We need to talk."
He was already sitting, waiting for her — eyes calm, hands folded.
The glow of the modified Omnitrix pulsed like a heartbeat between them.
"You've changed it," she said, not asking.
Ben nodded. "I had to."
"Why?"
His eyes searched hers.
"Because the version of me in this timeline isn't supposed to win."
Gwen froze.
"…What?"
Ben exhaled. For a moment, the façade cracked — and a flicker of truth bled through.
"I remember dying," he said softly. "A different me. Another world. Another war."
She sat down, heart racing. "Are you… from the future?"
Ben shook his head. "Not quite. More like… a discarded timeline. A branch that ended. But I didn't stay dead. I got another chance."
He held up the Omnitrix.
"I'm not wasting it."
---
Across the Galaxy
In the shadow of a collapsed Plumber base, two mysterious figures — cloaked in time-static — examined a blackened console. One of them touched the air and revealed a ripple in space.
> "He's unlocked Recompile Mode."
"It's too early. He's ahead of projection by seven cycles."
The second figure nodded.
> "This Ben is diverging hard. Destiny's rewriting itself."
A long pause.
Then:
> "Should we intervene?"
A mechanical hum echoed through the ruins as the first replied:
> "No. Let him run."
> "Let him think he can reprogram fate."
> "It will make his fall… that much more poetic."
---
Back with Ben and Gwen
"I don't know if I believe you," Gwen whispered. "But something tells me you're telling the truth."
Ben met her gaze.
"I'm not asking you to trust me blindly, Gwen. I'm asking you to watch. I'll show you — with actions. With results."
She looked down at the Omnitrix.
At the boy who wasn't quite a boy anymore.
And finally nodded.
> "Okay. But if you go too far…"
"I'll stop you myself."
Ben smirked faintly.
> "I wouldn't expect anything less."