Dexter woke with a sharp gasp, his body jerking upright as if something had dragged him back from a place far too deep. Air rushed into his lungs in uneven pulls, his chest rising and falling as he tried to steady himself. For a moment, everything felt wrong, like reality hadn't fully settled around him yet.
His hands tightened against the sheets beneath him, grounding himself as the remnants of those visions clung stubbornly to his mind.
When his breathing finally slowed, he forced himself to look around.
White walls, sterile smell, machines humming softly in the background.
He's in a hospital.
The realization hit him all at once, and before he could fully process it, a familiar voice cut through his thoughts.
"Hey, you're awake."
Dexter turned his head and saw Phineas sitting up on a bed across from him, one hand raised in a casual wave as if they weren't just involved in something completely insane. That same easygoing expression sat on his face, like waking up in a hospital was just another Tuesday.
Dexter's eyes moved quickly, scanning the room. Douglas was in the bed beside him, still asleep, his breathing slow and steady. On the other side, Ferb lay quietly, his leg strapped and suspended, clearly injured but conscious.
All of them were here.
Alive.
"What happened?" Dexter asked, his voice still rough from disuse as he looked back at Phineas.
Phineas leaned back slightly, scratching his cheek. "Honestly? Not much we remember. After that living statue blocked the way and started throwing fire at us, everything kind of went blank. Next thing we knew, we were waking up in an ambulance."
His gaze shifted, curious now. "Do you remember anything?"
Dexter held his stare for a fraction of a second before shaking his head. "No. I must've lost consciousness too."
The lie came out smoothly, but inside, his thoughts were anything but calm.
Phineas nodded, accepting the answer without suspicion. "Yeah, same here. It's weird though," he added with a small grin. "The police questioned us, and when we told them about the shrine and everything, they just looked at us like we made it all up. They said there's no tunnel behind the waterfall at all."
Dexter's eyes narrowed slightly.
Phineas continued, "Witnesses only saw us boating near the waterfall, then disappearing behind it. Same with those guys who said they were FBI. After that, there was supposedly a small earthquake, and next thing anyone saw, we were just floating on the water."
He let out a short laugh. "Strange, right?"
"Yeah…" Dexter murmured, though his mind was already racing far ahead of the conversation.
He shifted slightly. "What about those FBI guys?"
"They're in police custody," Douglas answered groggily, having just woken up. His voice was still thick with sleep. "Turns out they're wanted criminals back in the States."
Dexter nodded, leaning back against the pillow as if relaxing, but the moment his body settled, something felt off.
His hands.
They were clenched around something. Slowly, he lifted them into view.
Two talismans.
The dragon… and the rat.
For a second, everything went quiet in his head.
Then it all connected.
Xolotzin's words echoed faintly in his mind, threading together with what he had seen.
Memory fgragments of worlds that no longer existed are tied to the talismans.
Dexter's gaze lowered, his thoughts turning sharper, more focused as he began piecing everything together.
Both memories he had witnessed felt familiar, almost disturbingly so. In his past life, they had existed as simple stories, movies meant for entertainment. In those versions, the heroes had won. Phineas and Ferb saved the world. Dexter secured a perfect future.
But what he saw was different.
The first memory had ended in suffocation, a world consumed by something that twisted life into destruction. The second had gone further than any story ever showed, revealing what came after the victory… and how even a perfect world could still fall.
His fingers curled slightly.
A pattern began to form in his mind. There were Chosen Ones, not just one, but many across different timelines with vastly different outcomes. While some succeeded, most had failed, and every single defeat was not forgotten, they were preserved and passed down through time.
That might explain why this world has so many protagonists from various series; each one was destined to be a hero in a different timeline.
He exhaled slowly, his eyes hardening as the weight of that realization settled in.
"And now… it's my turn."
His gaze shifted slightly toward the window, though he wasn't really looking at anything in particular.
"This world… it hasn't reached that point yet," he continued thinking. "None of those events have happened… but at some point they will."
And that meant one thing.
Preparation.
Because somewhere out there, beyond what he could currently see or measure, something else was already moving.
The mere thought of Professor Time sent a quiet tension coursing through him. This was a conqueror of timelines, a being so vast and unpredictable that no system could ever fully calculate his moves.
Just as he was about to sink deeper into planning, a sudden voice pulled his attention away.
"…breaking reports from Metro City—"
Dexter's head turned toward the television mounted on the wall.
"…a new superpowered individual has appeared in Metro City," the reporter said. "Witnesses claim he possesses abilities nearly identical to the legendary Metro Man."
Dexter's eyes narrowed slightly as the screen shifted to display footage. It showed a man with ginger hair, clad in a red and white suit adorned with flame-like patterns across his chest and wearing a simple eye mask. He was floating in the air, saving people.
"Tighten…" the reporter continued. "That's what citizens have begun calling him."
The report continued, "The Global Defense Network has issued a statement declaring that this individual must be detained immediately, as all unauthorized hero activity remains illegal under current law."
The screen shifted to footage of civilians gathering, voices overlapping in protest.
The public's voice was loud and clear.
"If the government cannot even keep the peace and protect us," the citizens questioned, "then what right do they have to ban the ones who can?"