The air at Friedkin University tasted of anticipation, cheap coffee, and the faint psychic residue of a thousand teenage anxieties. To Phanes Demiurgos, it was a complex symphony. He stood just inside the main gate, a silent observer amidst the river of new students and proud parents. His posture was relaxed, but his senses were expanded to a whisper.
Through the The Green, he felt the deep, slow thoughts of the ancient oaks lining the driveway, their roots weaving through the soil like subterranean nerves. The The Grey connected him to the vast, silent fungal network beneath the campus, a biological internet processing decay and life in equal measure. The The Red was a cacophony of squirrels, birds, and insects, their simple, urgent drives for food and shelter a stark contrast to the complex emotions of the humans around him.
This was his version of "blending in." By listening to the world on a fundamental level, he could appear completely ordinary.
His gaze, those crimson eyes that saw more than light, swept across the crowd. And then, they stopped.
A rusty sedan had pulled up. A large, kind-faced man with a military bearing—Max Tennyson—was unloading bags. And then, they emerged.
Ben Tennyson. He looked older than the child-hero from Phanes' memories, lanky and slouching, a cap pulled low over his eyes. But even from here, Phanes could feel the latent, chaotic energy of the Omnitrix on his wrist—a signature of condensed DNA and primordial code that buzzed against Phanes' senses, a unique note in the symphony.
Then, Gwen.
She was arguing with Ben about something, her hands gesturing emphatically. Her auburn hair caught the sunlight, and her expression was a mix of exasperation and excitement. But Phanes wasn't looking at her expression. He was looking at her.
To his normal vision, she was a bright, intelligent girl. But to his Anodite senses, she was a supernova waiting to happen. A core of pure, pink mana burned within her, vast and untamed. It was like looking at a star through a thick layer of clouds—the light was diffused, the power latent, but the potential was staggering. She had no formal training; her power was a wild, instinctual thing.
As if feeling the weight of his analytical gaze, Gwen's head turned. Her eyes, a brilliant green, met his crimson ones across the bustling courtyard.
Connection.
It was not a sound, but a vibration. The untamed ocean of Gwen's mana resonated with the ordered, cosmic symphony of his own. It was a single, pure chord struck on the fabric of reality. For Gwen, it was a dizzying, inexplicable sensation—a feeling of profound familiarity, like hearing a song she'd forgotten she knew. It was unsettling and magnetic all at once. Her breath hitched, her argument with Ben forgotten. She felt… seen. Not in a superficial way, but down to the very core of her being.
Ben nudged her. "Hey, earth to Gwen. You're staring. See a cute guy or something?"
Gwen blinked, shaking her head as if to clear water from her ears. "What? No, I just…" She looked back, but the boy with the intense eyes was already turning away, a small, unreadable smile on his lips. For a fraction of a second, she could have sworn she saw a dark, shimmering crimson light around him, like heat haze but the color of wine and shadows. "I felt… something."
"Probably indigestion from Grandpa's cooking," Ben quipped, hefting his bag.
Max followed her gaze, his experienced Plumber instincts tingling. He saw a well-built young man with an unusually composed demeanor. He filed it away. The universe had a way of throwing interesting people in their path.
---
Phanes walked calmly towards the science building, the ghost of a smile on his face. The meeting had been more potent than he'd anticipated.
So that's her, he thought, his mind a whirlwind of analysis. The mana signature is purer than my models predicted. High volatility, zero lattice structure. She's channeling raw power with no finesse. Remarkable she hasn't accidentally dimensional shifted.
He could feel the echo of the resonance in his own core. His Anodite heritage, usually just one tool among many, was humming with a strange affinity. His Hybrid Synergy was already at work, cross-referencing the data. His Osmosian nature analyzed the "flavor" of her mana; his To'kustar side gauged its potential energy output; his Parliament senses felt it as a new, vibrant strain in the The Red's tapestry of life.
He was so engrossed in his internal analysis that he almost missed the commotion near the dormitory entrance.
"Hey, watch it, man!"
Phanes looked up. A large student, all puffed-up bravado, had shoved a smaller, skinnier kid, sending his books and a complex-looking graphing calculator skittering across the pavement.
"Maybe you should watch where you're walking, nerd," the bully sneered, stepping deliberately on the calculator with a sickening crunch of plastic.
The smaller kid looked on the verge of tears. "That was a prototype! My dad's company—"
"Should've built it tougher," the bully laughed, turning to leave.
It was a trivial, human-scale problem. Beneath his notice, some would say. But the reincarnated part of him, the part that remembered being powerless, twinged. And the researcher in him saw an opportunity for a field test.
"Hey," Phanes said, his voice calm but cutting through the air like a knife.
The bully turned. "What? You want some too?"
Phanes ignored him, walking over to the shattered calculator. He knelt down, his back to the bully. He could feel Gwen, Ben, and Max watching from a distance, having been drawn by the noise.
"You break it," Phanes said, not looking up. "You fix it."
"Or what?" the bully scoffed, stepping forward to loom over him.
Phanes placed a single finger on the shattered plastic. He didn't channel cosmic energy or mana. That would be overkill. Instead, he reached for the The Melt, the Parliament of Metal and Technology.
It wasn't technopathy. It was deeper. He spoke to the idea of the machine, to the memory of its wholeness held in the very atoms of its components. He felt the fractured pathways in the microchips, the snapped connections. With a gentle nudge of will, he encouraged them to remember.
Under his finger, the plastic casing flowed like liquid mercury, reforming without a seam. The screen flickered, then lit up, displaying a complex equation as if nothing had happened. The entire process took three seconds, silent and effortless.
The bully's jaw dropped. The small kid stared in disbelief.
Phanes stood up, picking up the perfectly restored calculator and handing it to its owner. He then turned his crimson gaze to the bully. He didn't glare. He didn't threaten. He just looked at him, and in that look, the bully saw something ancient and utterly unimpressed. The boy paled, muttered an apology, and scrambled away.
It was then that Phanes turned and found himself face-to-face with a stunned Ben, a deeply curious Gwen, and a cautiously impressed Max Tennyson.
"Whoa," Ben said, breaking the silence. "How did you do that? Some kind of nano-tech?"
Gwen, however, was looking not at the calculator, but at Phanes' hand. She had felt it. Not a blast of power, but a subtle, profound shift in the nature of the object itself. It wasn't magic as she knew it. It was something else entirely.
"That wasn't tech," Gwen said, her voice soft but sure. Her eyes met his again, and the resonance hummed between them, softer now, but persistent. "What was that?"
Phanes offered that same small, knowing smile from the gate. "A simple application of applied materials science," he said, his voice even. It wasn't a lie, just a very limited version of the truth. "The name's Phanes. Phanes Demiurgos."
Max extended a hand, his Plumber instincts on high alert. This was no ordinary student. "Max Tennyson. These are my grandchildren, Ben and Gwen. That was quite a trick."
As Phanes shook Max's hand, he allowed a fraction of his awareness to expand. He felt the solid, dependable strength of the former Plumber. He felt the chaotic potential of the Omnitrix on Ben's wrist. And he felt the swirling, untamed ocean of mana within Gwen, reaching out to his own, a question without words.
The meeting was over. The first piece had been placed on the board. And as Phanes Demiurgos walked away, he knew one thing for certain: life at Friedkin University was going to be far from normal.