[A/N: Quick guide to avoid confusion! Dexter = Main Character. Little Dexter = His younger self from another timeline. Teenage Dexter = Number 12. Old Man Dexter = His elderly self. Action Dexter = His middle-aged self.]
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Dexter stood in silence as the vision continued, his eyes fixed on the life unfolding before him. It was strange, watching it like this.
Not as memories of his own past, but as the story of another version of himself. A parallel existence, a different outcome.
"That's… little me," he murmured under his breath, immediately distinguishing him from the others. "So this is where it starts."
Before him, another version of himself lived an entire life.
He watched as Little Dexter grew through years of chaotic brilliance, filled with endless inventions, experiments, and disasters mostly caused by Dee Dee's unstoppable curiosity. Mandark was there too, as always, a rival who hovered between annoyance and threat.
For a long time, it looked like the same story Dexter knew, a cycle of competition, sabotage, and one-upmanship.
But then the shift came.
Dexter's gaze sharpened the moment Little Dexter created the Neurotomic Protocore, a device so powerful that it could revolutionize the world forever.
When properly harnessed with good intentions and set to a positive energy emission, it could grant immense intelligence through its centralized neurotomic information distribution to whoever wielded it. Its teletronic matter manipulation allowed the user to materialize objects out of thin air.
The energy waves it emitted could enrich the environment to a near-utopian state, even granting others the same knowledge and teletronic abilities with the aid of specialized equipment. However, if used with evil intentions and set to a negative energy emission, it twisted the user's mind, granting near-infinite intellect while draining the intelligence of others and the life of the surrounding environment.
Even as a spectator, Dexter could feel the weight of it.
He watched Mandark change. What had once been rivalry twisted into obsession the moment he realized what the Protocore could do. The hunger in his eyes was no longer about winning. It was about domination.
Time accelerated, but Dexter could still follow every moment. He saw the repeated attempts to steal the core, each one failing during their childhood, until something entirely unexpected happened.
Robots from the future appeared.
They attacked Little Dexter, declaring him "the one who saved the future."
Dexter frowned at that.
He watched Little Dexter destroy the robots and make a decision that felt very familiar.
Time travel.
Years passed in moments.
Now he saw his teenage self, placed within a massive corporate structure simply known as The Corporation.
Teenage Dexter thrived at first, ideas flowing endlessly. But Mandark, unable to keep up, resorted to theft. Slowly and methodically, he climbed higher, stealing credit and gaining influence until he overthrew the very system they worked under.
Executive Mandark was born.
Dexter's expression darkened as he watched the world change under that rule.
Names disappeared, people became numbers, and identity was stripped away as if it meant nothing.
Then he saw him.
Teenage Dexter, now reduced to a designation.
Number 12.
Dexter's gaze lingered as he watched the humiliation, the control, and the slow erosion of confidence until nothing remained but a shadow of who he once was.
Then Little Dexter arrived in that future.
Full of expectation, full of pride. Only to be met with disappointment.
Dexter watched as Little Dexter reminded his teenage self who he was. He was Dexter, the Boy Genius. That identity sparked something, a small flame reigniting within Number 12.
Together, they escaped. However, as they left to travel further in time, they accidentally left the Protocore's blueprints behind, which Mandark immediately stole.
Time shifted again.
They arrived in the far future.
They where in a place called Dextopia.
A perfect world stretched before him, clean, advanced, and harmonious. Technology and humanity coexisted without conflict.
Old Man Dexter appeared, frail yet accomplished, a man who had already reached the peak yet could not remember how he had gotten there.
Upon meeting each other, Little Dexter and Number 12 asked how he had saved the future. However, Old Man Dexter could not recall, so the trio traveled back in time once more to find their middle-aged self and finally uncover the truth.
The vision shifted again, and everything fell apart.
When they arrived at that future, their lab was run down and nearly destroyed. Worse still, the world itself had become a vast red wasteland, filled with ruin and despair. They eventually found a village of dimwitted survivors, and Little Dexter tried to help them by creating fire, but it was quickly destroyed by a legion of robots known as the Overlord's Machine Men, which began tearing the village apart.
Then, a figure appeared.
A mighty warrior on a motorcycle.
He fought with precision and strength, destroying the robots and restoring fire to the villagers.
The Dexters soon realized the truth.
This was their middle-aged self.
Action Dexter.
He told them what had happened. When he had once been Number 12, Mandark had stolen the Neurotomic Protocore after it had been left behind. Mandark attempted to harness its power but set it to negative flow, twisting his already corrupt mind and transforming him into a being of pure, power-hungry evil.
The Protocore's energy spread across the world, draining intelligence and life itself.
Humanity became dimwitted, allowing Mandark to seize complete control over society, technology, and knowledge. He became Overlord Mandark, the absolute ruler of a broken world.
Unable to face what his creation had caused, Number 12 fled underground, spending years digging and surviving. When he returned, he had changed. Stronger. Hardened. No longer the same person he became Action Dexter.
The world he saw was broken and stupid.
Dexter watched as the four versions of himself united, each shaped by different outcomes but driven by the same goal.
Stopping Mandark.
They built a powerful machine and launched an assault on his fortress. The battle was chaotic but precise, each version of Dexter compensating for the others' weaknesses.
The Mandarks fought back, summoning their own counterparts from across time.
But the tide turned.
The Dexters pushed forward.
Victory came within reach.
Little Dexter moved toward the Protocore, determination clear in every step as he reached for the button that would end everything.
But before he could press it, Little Dee Dee appeared.
She walked through the battlefield as if it were nothing, completely unfazed by the chaos around her, and pressed the button without hesitation.
The Protocore shifted to positive and just like that, everything changed.
The world healed. Intelligence returned. Life flourished. The destruction vanished as if it had never existed.
Mandark was defeated and peace was restored.
The world shifted once more, returning to the perfected state of Dextopia.
Old Man Dexter sat once again, as if nothing had ever happened.