The Space and Time FullBottles sat on Build's workbench, glowing with cosmic significance.
He had created them three weeks ago during the initial Build Infinity test—manifesting pure conceptual essences from nothing, proving that his ultimate form could generate entirely new bottles on demand. Since then, they had been sitting in his laboratory, waiting, pulsing with potential energy that made the nearby equipment malfunction in interesting ways.
The Space Bottle was a deep cosmic blue, its interior swirling with miniature nebulae and distant stars. When Build held it, he could feel the vastness of the universe pressing against his consciousness—the incomprehensible distances between galaxies, the cold vacuum of the void, the fundamental geometry that defined reality itself.
The Time Bottle was more subtle. Its color shifted constantly, cycling through every shade in a pattern that never quite repeated. Inside, Build could see moments—fragments of past and future and present, all existing simultaneously, all waiting to be accessed. Holding it made him feel like he was standing at the center of a river, watching the current flow around him in both directions.
Together, they represented something profound.
Space and Time. The fundamental dimensions of existence. The framework upon which all reality was built.
If he combined them...
"Recording experiment one-seventeen," Build announced to his laboratory's logging systems. "Attempting fusion of Space and Time essences into a unified SpaceTime Bottle. Theoretical outcome: a form capable of manipulating the fundamental structure of reality itself."
He paused, considering the implications.
"If this works, I will have created something that rivals the power of cosmic entities. A form that exists outside normal causality, that can affect events across any distance and any temporal reference frame."
Another pause.
"If it doesn't work, I might accidentally create a black hole or a time paradox or something equally catastrophic. So, you know. Standard Tuesday."
He placed both bottles in the resonance chamber and initiated the fusion sequence.
The fusion of Space and Time was not like any previous combination Build had attempted.
Previous fusions had been violent or peaceful or somewhere in between, but they had all followed recognizable patterns. Essences meeting, interacting, merging into new configurations. Energy exchanged, properties combined, new bottles formed.
This was different.
When the Space and Time essences met, they didn't merge. They recognized each other.
Build watched through the observation window as the two essences reached toward each other like reunited halves of a whole, their energies intertwining in patterns that defied three-dimensional visualization. The space inside the chamber seemed to expand and contract simultaneously. Moments flickered through existence—the chamber as it had been, as it was, as it would be—all overlapping in a visual cacophony that made Build's eyes water.
And then, with a sound like a clock striking thirteen, the fusion completed.
The resulting bottle was beautiful in a way that transcended aesthetics.
It existed. That was the only way Build could describe it. Previous bottles had been containers holding essences, objects that could be picked up and manipulated and used. The SpaceTime Bottle was not a container. It was a window—a lens through which the fundamental nature of existence could be perceived and, potentially, altered.
Its shape was impossible. Not in the sense that it violated physics—Build's entire powerset violated physics on a regular basis—but in the sense that it contained more dimensions than should have been visible from any single perspective. He could see it from every angle simultaneously, perceiving aspects that shouldn't have been accessible from his fixed position in space and time.
Its color was equally impossible. It wasn't shifting like the Time Bottle had been, or vast like the Space Bottle. It was both and neither, a hue that existed in the spaces between normal colors, that could only be perceived because Build's enhanced senses had evolved to handle conceptual manipulation.
He reached into the chamber and picked up the bottle.
The moment his fingers touched it, he felt the universe.
Not metaphorically. Not poetically. He felt the actual universe—every star and planet and void, every moment from the Big Bang to the heat death of existence, every possibility and every certainty. It was overwhelming. It was terrifying. It was the most incredible thing he had ever experienced.
"Okay," Build breathed, his voice shaking with awe. "Okay. This is... this is something else. This is beyond anything I've created before."
He needed to test it.
He needed to test it right now.
The Moon facility was starting to feel like a second home.
Build had used it so many times for high-power testing that the League had eventually just assigned him permanent access, along with a set of quarters carved into the lunar rock for extended experimental sessions. The training crater was currently being rebuilt after the Build Infinity test, but there was a secondary crater nearby that would serve well enough for initial SpaceTime testing.
He stood in the center of the backup crater, the SpaceTime Bottle in his hand, the Build Driver humming with anticipation on his waist.
"Recording experiment one-eighteen," he announced. "First transformation using SpaceTime Bottle. Predicted outcome: unknown. Power level: unknown. Potential for catastrophic timeline damage: also unknown but probably pretty high."
He inserted the bottle into the Driver.
SPACETIME!
The announcement was not a voice. It was a resonance—a vibration that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, from every moment past and future. The word "SpaceTime" echoed through Build's consciousness not as sound but as meaning, the pure concept of what he was about to become.
He grabbed the Vortex Lever.
"Are you ready?" he asked, not expecting an answer.
The universe answered anyway. A whisper of cosmic affirmation, stars aligning and atoms vibrating and causality itself bending toward the moment of transformation.
Build cranked the lever.
DIMENSIONAL TRANSCENDENCE! KING OF TIME AND SPACE! SPACETIME!
The transformation was unlike anything Build had experienced before.
Previous transformations had been processes—sequences of events, energy flows, matter configurations. This was not a process. This was an instantiation. One moment he was human, wearing the Driver, holding the bottle. The next moment he was something else entirely, and the transition had not involved any intermediate states.
The armor was magnificent.
It was silver and gold, colors that represented both the cold vastness of space and the warm flow of time. The design elements were simultaneously futuristic and ancient, incorporating motifs that evoked both advanced technology and timeless mythology. Clockwork gears were visible at the joints, but they moved in ways that defied conventional mechanics—sometimes forward, sometimes backward, sometimes in directions that didn't correspond to any normal temporal flow.
The chest plate featured a design that Build recognized immediately, even though he had never seen it before.
It was a stylized representation of spacetime itself—a grid of warped coordinates, bent and twisted around a central point that represented his position in the cosmos. As he watched, the grid shifted, updated, showed his relationship to the rest of the universe in real-time.
The helmet was the most striking element. Two large compound eyes dominated the face, but they weren't normal compound eyes. They were clock faces. Actual, functioning clock faces, with hands that moved independently, showing different times, different moments, different possibilities. The eyes saw not just what was, but what had been and what would be.
And between the eyes, mounted on the forehead like a crown, was a symbol.
A crown.
An actual crown, golden and regal, integrated into the helmet's design.
Build understood immediately what this meant.
In Kamen Rider Zi-O, the titular Rider had been the "King of Time"—a being destined to rule over all of history, to become the most powerful existence across every timeline. The crown had been his symbol, his mark of sovereignty over temporal reality.
Build had just created his own version.
Not Zi-O. Not a fusion with Zi-O. Something new—a form born from the Build system but embodying the same fundamental concept. Mastery over time and space. Sovereignty over dimensional reality.
"SpaceTime Form," Build said, testing his voice. It came out layered, echoing slightly across multiple temporal frequencies. "Or maybe... Kamen Rider Build: Time King."
He liked the sound of that.
The testing of SpaceTime Form was extraordinary.
Build discovered that he could move through time as easily as moving through space. A thought, a slight shift in his perception, and he was somewhere else—not just spatially but temporally. He visited the moment of the Moon's formation, watching the catastrophic impact that had created it. He observed the first lunar landing, standing invisibly beside Neil Armstrong as the astronaut took his historic step. He went forward to moments that hadn't happened yet, seeing potential futures that might or might not come to pass.
Space was equally malleable. He could fold distances, stepping from one location to another without traversing the intervening space. He could expand or compress spatial dimensions, making things larger or smaller by adjusting their relationship to the universe around them. He could perceive the geometry of reality itself, seeing the invisible architecture that defined where things could exist.
And when he combined the two abilities—when he manipulated space and time simultaneously—he could do things that shouldn't have been possible under any framework of physics or magic or cosmic law.
He could exist in multiple places at once.
He could experience multiple moments simultaneously.
He could create closed timelike curves that looped through their own causality.
He could, theoretically, do anything.
"This form is broken," Build announced to the empty Moon crater. "This form is absolutely, completely, fundamentally broken. I have become a temporal god and I'm not even sure what the limitations are."
He considered for a moment.
"Actually, that's probably worth testing. What are the limitations?"
He spent the next several hours trying to find things he couldn't do with the SpaceTime Form.
The results were concerning.
He couldn't violate causality in ways that would erase his own existence. The form had built-in protections against grandfather paradoxes and similar self-destructive temporal manipulations. This was reassuring—it meant he couldn't accidentally unmake himself by changing history.
He couldn't affect events that were protected by significant narrative weight. When he tried to observe certain historical moments—the creation of the universe, the end of time, various cosmic-level events—the form simply wouldn't let him. It was like running into a wall made of importance, moments that were too significant to be casually observed or altered.
He couldn't use the form indefinitely. Unlike Build Infinity, which had felt like it could be maintained forever, SpaceTime Form had a cost. Each temporal manipulation drew on something—some internal resource that regenerated over time but could be depleted through excessive use. After about four hours of continuous testing, Build felt the need to detransform and rest.
But within those limitations, the power was essentially absolute.
He could appear anywhere, at any time, with any degree of knowledge about what was happening. He could try different approaches to problems, observe the outcomes, then rewind and try again with the benefit of that knowledge. He could dodge attacks by stepping backward in time to before they were launched. He could end threats by preventing them from ever beginning.
"I need to be very careful with this form," Build said to himself, detransforming and feeling the weight of normal temporal existence settle back onto his shoulders. "It's powerful enough to solve almost any problem, but it's also powerful enough to create problems that might not be solvable."
He made a mental note to limit SpaceTime Form usage to absolute emergencies.
Then he immediately started planning how to use it to mess with people he didn't like.
Damian Wayne was training in the Watchtower's gym when Build found him.
The brat was going through a kata, his movements precise and lethal, his expression the usual mask of arrogant concentration that made Build want to punch him in his smug little face. He was using real weapons—actual katanas, because of course he was—and the training dummies were being systematically dismembered with each pass.
Build stood in the doorway, watching, a plan forming in his mind.
It had been several weeks since their last confrontation, during Build's initial Justice League evaluation. Damian had been avoiding him since then, which was both satisfying and disappointing—satisfying because it meant the humbling had worked, disappointing because Build had been looking forward to further humbling.
Time to fix that.
Build activated the SpaceTime Form without announcing his presence.
DIMENSIONAL TRANSCENDENCE! KING OF TIME AND SPACE! SPACETIME!
The transformation happened instantaneously, which meant Damian didn't notice it. The boy was too focused on his kata, too absorbed in the perfect execution of lethal movements to register the cosmic event occurring behind him.
Build stepped forward in time.
Not very far—just a few seconds, enough to see what Damian was about to do. The boy was going to execute a spinning strike that would decapitate the next training dummy in line. It was a technically perfect movement, one that Damian had clearly practiced thousands of times.
Build stepped back to the present.
Then he stepped through space, appearing directly in front of the training dummy that Damian was about to attack.
The boy's kata continued, his body committed to the strike, his katana arcing toward where the dummy's neck should have been. But Build was there now, and the blade met his armored forearm with a clang that echoed through the gym.
Damian's expression shifted from concentration to shock in approximately zero-point-three seconds.
"WHAT—"
Build caught the katana between his fingers, plucking it from Damian's grip with the casual ease of taking candy from a particularly homicidal baby.
"Hi," Build said cheerfully. "Miss me?"
Damian's other hand was already going for his backup weapon—a knife hidden in his belt, because Damian always had backup weapons—but Build stepped backward in time by half a second, which meant he knew exactly where the attack was coming from. He caught the knife mid-thrust, adding it to his collection.
"Nope. Try again."
Damian threw a punch. Build saw it coming before it was thrown, sidestepping easily.
Damian tried a sweep kick. Build was standing somewhere else before the kick started.
Damian attempted an acrobatic flip that was supposed to position him for a grappling attack, but Build was already behind him when he landed, one armored finger poking him in the back of the head.
"Tag. You're it."
"HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS?" Damian screamed, whirling around with fists raised.
Build showed him the SpaceTime Form, gesturing at the clockwork armor and the crown on his helmet.
"I can see the future," he explained. "And the past. And every possible present. I know what you're going to do before you decide to do it, because I've already watched you do it and rewound to the moment before."
Damian's expression was priceless. A mixture of disbelief, rage, and the slowly-dawning horror of someone who had just realized they were absolutely, completely, fundamentally outmatched.
"That's... that's cheating," the boy managed.
"That's science," Build corrected. "Well, science-adjacent. The physics are a little fuzzy. But the point is that I have temporal precognition, spatial manipulation, and approximately zero respect for your 'League of Assassins' training."
He tossed the katana and knife onto a nearby bench, well out of Damian's reach.
"Let me explain something to you, Robin. You've spent your entire life being told you're special. Told you're destined for greatness. Told that your bloodline and your training make you superior to everyone around you."
Build leaned down, bringing his helmet close to Damian's face.
"But here's the thing about destiny. It's just a prediction. And predictions can be wrong. You're not special because of who your parents are. You're not great because of what you've been trained to do. You're just a kid with too much confidence and not enough humility, and every time you walk into a room assuming you're the most dangerous person in it, you're wrong."
Damian's fists were clenched, his jaw tight, his entire body vibrating with suppressed fury.
"Because I'm in the room now," Build continued. "And I will always be more dangerous than you. Not because I'm stronger or faster or better trained—although I am all of those things—but because I understand something you don't."
"And what's that?" Damian spat.
Build stood back up, spreading his arms wide.
"That power isn't about winning fights. It's about protecting people. And you can't protect people if you're too busy proving how great you are to notice when they need help."
He detransformed, the SpaceTime armor dissolving to reveal his human form.
"Think about that the next time you're tempted to show off. And maybe try being nice to people once in a while. You might find they actually like you when you're not being an insufferable little gremlin."
Build walked toward the door, leaving Damian standing in the middle of the gym surrounded by dismembered training dummies and wounded pride.
"Oh, and one more thing."
He looked back over his shoulder.
"Your father agrees with me. I asked him."
Damian's expression crumpled into something that looked almost like genuine emotion.
Build left before the boy could respond.
Lex Luthor was having a productive day.
He had completed three hostile takeover proposals, approved funding for a dozen ethically-questionable research projects, and personally fired four executives who had failed to meet his impossible standards. His assistant had brought him coffee prepared exactly to his specifications—three-quarters Ethiopian blend, one-quarter Colombian, heated to precisely one hundred and seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit—and the stock market was responding positively to LexCorp's quarterly earnings report.
Everything was going according to plan.
Then his office door opened without his assistant announcing anyone, which was impossible because his assistant was extremely competent and also because the door was locked with a biometric system that only responded to Lex's personal authorization.
A man in a white lab coat walked in.
Lex's hand went to the emergency button under his desk—a trigger that would summon an army of security personnel and activate the various anti-Superman countermeasures he had installed throughout the building—but before his fingers could reach it, the man was somehow sitting in the chair across from his desk, feet up, completely relaxed.
"Don't bother," the intruder said. "I've already pressed it three times in alternate timelines, and it's really boring watching your security guys get confused when they can't find any threat. Let's just skip that part."
Lex Luthor was not a man who was easily intimidated. He had faced Superman. He had challenged gods. He had built an empire through sheer force of will and genius-level intellect.
But something about this stranger made his survival instincts flare.
"Who are you?" Lex demanded, keeping his voice level.
"Kamen Rider Build. Justice League member, provisional but increasingly permanent. Genius—actual genius, not the self-declared kind that people use when they're really just smart and egotistical. You might have seen me on the news. I'm the one who beat Doomsday a few weeks ago."
Lex had seen the news. He had been watching very carefully, in fact, because a new metahuman capable of defeating Doomsday was exactly the kind of threat that required detailed analysis and contingency planning.
"What do you want?" Lex asked.
"Oh, nothing much. Just wanted to introduce myself. Professional courtesy, you know? You're the most prominent villain in Metropolis who isn't currently in prison, which means we'll probably end up fighting at some point. Figured I'd give you a chance to surrender in advance."
Lex's eyes narrowed. "I'm a legitimate businessman. I don't know what you're implying, but—"
"Lex. Buddy. Come on."
Build leaned forward, his expression shifting from casual amusement to something sharper.
"I know about Project Cadmus. I know about the Kryptonite you've been stockpiling. I know about the cloning experiments and the cybernetic weapons development and the seventeen shell companies you're using to fund Intergang without leaving a paper trail. I know about the bribes and the blackmail and the three senators who are currently in your pocket. I know about Superboy."
Each revelation landed like a hammer blow, and Lex watched his carefully constructed facade of legitimate enterprise crumble with every word.
"How—" he started.
"I can see through time," Build explained casually. "I've watched you make every decision, plan every scheme, execute every betrayal. I've seen the future where you finally push too far and Superman stops holding back. It's not pretty. You don't come back from that one."
Lex's face was carefully neutral, but his mind was racing. A metahuman with temporal abilities. Someone who could see past and future, who could know everything he had done and everything he was planning to do. This was a threat on an entirely different level than the usual spandex-wearing do-gooders he dealt with.
"So what happens now?" Lex asked. "You expose me? Turn your evidence over to the authorities? Try to destroy everything I've built?"
Build laughed.
"God, no. That would be boring. And predictable. And honestly, it probably wouldn't even work—you've got enough lawyers and enough leverage to wriggle out of any legal consequences, and we both know it."
He stood up, walking toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a panoramic view of Metropolis.
"No, Lex, I'm not going to expose you. I'm going to do something much worse."
"And what's that?"
Build turned back, grinning.
"I'm going to help you."
The confusion on Lex Luthor's face was deeply satisfying.
"Every scheme you plan, I'll know about it. Every move you make, I'll see coming. And every time you try to do something villainous, I'll be there to redirect your efforts toward something constructive. That weapons research? I'll give you technical suggestions that make it only useful for defensive applications. That cloning program? I'll introduce errors that result in medical breakthroughs instead of supersoldier production. Those senators? I'll manipulate their votes toward legislation that benefits the public."
Build's grin widened.
"You're going to spend the rest of your life trying to be evil, and I'm going to turn every single plan into a net positive for humanity. You'll still think you're winning—you'll still make money, still accumulate power, still feel like you're in control. But everything you build will end up helping people instead of hurting them."
He walked toward the door, pausing with his hand on the handle.
"That's your punishment, Lex. You're going to become a hero against your will. And the beautiful thing is, you'll never be able to prove I'm doing it. From your perspective, it'll just look like incredibly bad luck."
He opened the door.
"Have a great day. I know I will. I've already seen how this turns out."
He left.
Lex Luthor sat alone in his office, staring at the closed door, his coffee cooling untouched on his desk.
For the first time in a very, very long time, he had no idea what to do.
The alert came three days later.
Build was in his laboratory, working on theoretical fusion protocols, when the Watchtower's emergency systems activated with the urgency that indicated a serious threat. He dropped his equipment and sprinted toward the nearest monitor, already transforming into RabbitTank as he moved—the basic form would be sufficient for initial response until he knew what he was dealing with.
The monitor showed chaos.
Themyscira—the hidden island of the Amazons, home of Wonder Woman—was under attack. The magical barriers that protected it from the outside world had been breached. Hostile forces were pouring through the gap, and the Amazonian warriors were fighting desperately to hold them back.
But the attackers weren't ordinary soldiers.
They were mythological.
Build recognized them from his extensive comic book knowledge: Beastiamorph creatures—humans transformed into animal hybrids through dark magic. Chimeras and harpies and things that defied easy classification. Leading them, visible even through the long-range surveillance feed, was a figure with purple skin and dark hair, wearing flowing robes and radiating magical power.
Circe.
The immortal sorceress. One of Wonder Woman's most dangerous enemies. A goddess-level threat with powers that could reshape reality itself.
This was going to be interesting.
"Justice League, this is Build," he announced into the communication system. "I'm responding to the Themyscira alert. What's our status?"
"Diana is already en route," Batman's voice came back, clipped and professional. "She was in the Watchtower when the breach was detected. Superman and I are following, but we're twelve minutes out."
"And Circe?"
"Magical power readings are off the scale. She's brought an army and she appears to be performing some kind of ritual. If she completes it..."
"Bad things happen. Got it."
Build didn't wait for further information. He activated the Zeta Tube system, inputting coordinates for Themyscira. The magical barriers that normally prevented such transportation had been breached along with everything else, which meant he could get a lock on the island's location.
The world dissolved into energy, reformed, and Build found himself standing on a beach that looked like it belonged in a Greek epic.
White sand stretched toward crystal-blue water. Ancient architecture rose in the distance—temples and palaces and structures that had been built centuries before modern civilization existed. The sky was a perfect Mediterranean blue, marred only by the smoke rising from multiple locations across the island.
And everywhere, there was fighting.
Amazonian warriors—women in classical armor, wielding swords and spears and bows with the skill of beings who had spent millennia training for combat—were engaged with Circe's monstrous forces. The battle was fierce, desperate, beautiful in the way that only combat between legendary warriors could be.
But they were losing.
There were simply too many enemies, too much magical power, too many fronts to defend simultaneously. For every beast-creature an Amazon struck down, two more seemed to take its place. And at the center of the island, visible even from this distance, Circe's ritual was nearing completion—a swirl of purple energy rising toward the sky, building toward some catastrophic conclusion.
Build needed to do something dramatic.
He pulled out the SpaceTime Bottle.
DIMENSIONAL TRANSCENDENCE! KING OF TIME AND SPACE! SPACETIME!
The transformation was instantaneous. One moment he was RabbitTank, basic and balanced. The next he was SpaceTime, crowned and cosmic, the clocks in his eyes showing different moments across the timeline of this battle.
He saw the past—Circe breaching the barriers, her army pouring through, the Amazons scrambling to respond to an attack they hadn't anticipated.
He saw the present—the desperate fighting, the overwhelming odds, the ritual approaching completion.
He saw the future—two possible outcomes branching from this moment. In one, Circe completed her ritual and something terrible happened to Themyscira. In the other...
In the other, Build intervened.
He made his choice.
Moving through time and space simultaneously was disorienting, but Build had practiced enough to manage. He appeared in multiple locations across the island at what was essentially the same moment, his consciousness distributed across dozens of temporal instances of himself.
Each instance engaged a different group of enemies.
On the eastern beach, a Build from three seconds ago punched through a chimera's magical defenses with Tank-enhanced strength.
In the central plaza, a Build from seven seconds ago protected a group of wounded Amazons by creating a spatial barrier that redirected incoming attacks into a pocket dimension.
At the main temple, a Build from twelve seconds ago intercepted a Beastiamorph that had been about to ambush Queen Hippolyta herself.
To the Amazons, it looked like there were dozens of him—dozens of armored warriors appearing out of nowhere, fighting with impossible skill, protecting their sisters from every threat. They didn't understand how it was possible. They didn't need to understand. They just needed to keep fighting while Build cleaned up the overwhelming numerical advantage that had been threatening to destroy them.
But the real Build—the primary instance, the one experiencing events in their natural temporal order—was heading straight for Circe.
The sorceress had noticed him, of course. It was impossible not to notice someone cutting through her army like a hot knife through mythological butter. Her attention turned from the ritual to the approaching threat, and Build felt the weight of her magical perception pressing against his armor.
"What manner of creature are you?" Circe demanded, her voice carrying across the battlefield despite the distance between them. "I sense no magic in you, yet you manipulate time and space as though they were clay."
"I'm Build," he answered, continuing his approach. "Kamen Rider Build. And I'm here to shut down your ritual before you do something you'll regret."
Circe laughed—a rich, contemptuous sound that echoed with centuries of amused superiority.
"Regret? I am Circe, goddess of magic, daughter of Helios, master of transformation! I have lived since the age of heroes, seen empires rise and fall, watched gods themselves bow before my power! What could a mortal in strange armor possibly threaten me with?"
Build stopped, standing approximately fifty meters from the ritual circle where Circe held court. The swirl of purple energy was almost complete now, building toward whatever catastrophic conclusion the sorceress had planned.
"Let me show you," he said.
He moved.
Not through space, this time. Through time.
He stepped backward, to a moment before Circe had begun her ritual. Before her army had breached the barriers. Before any of this had happened.
And in that moment, he reached out with the spatial manipulation of his form and sealed the breach before it could form.
The timeline shifted.
Build experienced a moment of disorientation as causality rearranged itself around him. The battle he had been fighting no longer existed—had never existed—because its cause had been prevented. The army had never invaded. The Amazons had never been threatened. Circe had never—
Wait.
Something was wrong.
Build found himself back in the present—the same present he had just left, with Circe still standing in her ritual circle and her army still fighting across the island. The timeline hadn't changed. His intervention hadn't worked.
"Did you really think it would be that easy?"
Circe's voice was amused now, confident in a way that suggested she knew something Build didn't.
"I am a goddess, mortal. My magic operates on the level of destiny, of fate, of fundamental narrative. You cannot simply undo my actions by changing the past, because my actions are protected by forces greater than mere causality."
Build felt a chill run down his spine.
She was right. When he had tried to observe certain protected moments with the SpaceTime Form, he had encountered resistance—events too significant to be casually altered. Circe's invasion was apparently one of those moments. It was protected by the same narrative weight that guarded cosmic-level occurrences.
He couldn't prevent it.
He could only respond to it.
"Fine," Build said, adjusting his strategy. "We'll do this the hard way."
He charged.
Fighting a goddess was different from fighting Doomsday.
Doomsday had been pure physical power—strength and durability and adaptive biology, overwhelming in its simplicity. Build had been able to match that power with his own, eventually surpassing it through the application of conceptual manipulation.
Circe was more subtle. More dangerous.
Her magic responded to Build's attacks in ways that physical defenses could not. When he tried to strike her, she transformed the air between them into solid stone, creating barriers that he had to punch through. When he tried to manipulate space to appear behind her, she twisted the geometry of reality so that "behind" no longer existed as a coherent concept. When he tried to use temporal precognition to predict her attacks, she generated magical interference that made the future blur and shift.
She was fighting him on his own level—not physically, but conceptually.
"You are clever," Circe admitted, parrying a punch that would have shattered mountains with a casual wave of her hand. "Your power is strange, unlike anything I have encountered. But you are still mortal, still limited by the framework of your transformation. My magic has no such limitations."
She gestured, and Build felt something shift in the fundamental structure of his armor.
The SpaceTime Form flickered.
Pain lanced through his body as the transformation began to destabilize, Circe's magic attacking not his physical form but the conceptual structure that defined his powers. She was trying to unmake him—to transform him into something else, to remove the very essence that gave him his abilities.
"I could turn you into a pig," she mused, her hand still extended, her power pressing against his defenses. "It is my specialty, after all. So many heroes reduced to swine, their power and pride stripped away in an instant. Shall I add you to my collection?"
Build gritted his teeth against the pain, fighting to maintain the transformation.
She was right. She was a goddess. Her magic operated on levels that his science couldn't fully counter. The SpaceTime Form was powerful, but it was still a technological construct—still bound by the rules and limitations of its creation.
But Build had other options.
He reached for the Build Infinity Bottle.
The transformation shifted.
COMPLETE FUSION! INFINITE POSSIBILITIES! BUILD INFINITY!
The change was dramatic. The SpaceTime armor dissolved, replaced by the perfect, impossible form of Build Infinity. The pressure of Circe's magic—which had been overwhelming moments ago—suddenly felt manageable. The transformation destabilization stopped.
"What—" Circe's eyes widened.
"Build Infinity," Build explained, his voice carrying the layered resonance of his ultimate form. "A form that adapts to any threat, that evolves to meet any challenge, that contains infinite potential for infinite situations."
He raised his hand, and where Circe's magic had been trying to transform him, he now generated his own conceptual power.
"You want to turn me into a pig? Let me show you what happens when you try to transform someone who exists as pure concept."
Energy flowed from his palm—not attacking Circe, but reshaping the space between them. The goddess's transformation magic hit his conceptual field and bounced, redirected, turned back on itself. Her power, which had been trying to unmake him, suddenly had no valid target.
"That's impossible," Circe breathed.
"Improbable," Build corrected. "There's a difference. I've learned to take improbable things and make them inevitable. It's kind of my specialty."
He pressed his advantage, moving forward while Circe was still off-balance. His fists connected with her magical barriers, and this time, they shattered. The goddess stumbled backward, her confidence finally cracking.
"This is not—you cannot—I am CIRCE—"
"You're a goddess," Build agreed. "But I'm something else."
He grabbed her wrist, his armored fingers closing around flesh that had never been touched by a mortal without her permission.
"I'm the guy who decides what's possible."
He threw her.
Circe flew backward, crashing through the ritual circle and disrupting the carefully-prepared magical formations. The purple energy that had been building toward catastrophe dissipated, the ritual failing as its caster was forcibly removed from its center.
Across the island, the beast-creatures that had been fighting the Amazons suddenly collapsed—their animating magic severed by the disruption of the ritual that had summoned them. The battle ended in an instant, Circe's army reduced to unconscious bodies and fading enchantments.
Build walked toward the goddess, who was struggling to rise from the crater her impact had created.
"Here's what's going to happen," he said. "You're going to leave Themyscira. You're going to stop attacking the Amazons. And you're going to find something constructive to do with your immortal existence, because if you try this again, I'm going to show you what Build Infinity can really do."
Circe looked up at him, her expression a mixture of rage and something that might have been fear.
"This isn't over," she hissed.
"It really is," Build replied. "But feel free to try again sometime. I could use the practice."
The goddess vanished in a swirl of purple light, teleporting away to whatever dark corner of the world she called home.
Build detransformed, the Build Infinity armor dissolving to reveal his human form.
Around him, the Amazons were emerging from the aftermath of the battle, their expressions a mixture of relief and confusion. They had never seen anything like what had just happened. A mortal man in strange armor, fighting a goddess to a standstill, winning through methods that made no sense to their classical worldview.
And approaching from the direction of the main temple was Wonder Woman.
Diana was radiant.
There was no other word for it. She had clearly been fighting—her armor was scuffed, her hair disheveled, traces of ichor from mythological creatures staining her silver bracers—but she moved with the grace and power of someone who had emerged victorious. Her eyes were fixed on Build with an intensity that made his heart rate spike unexpectedly.
"You came," she said.
"Of course I came. Themyscira was under attack. The Justice League responds to attacks."
"You defeated Circe."
"I... inconvenienced her. She'll be back eventually. But the ritual is disrupted and the immediate threat is over."
Diana stopped in front of him, close enough that he could see the gold flecks in her blue eyes, close enough that he could smell the scent of battle and flowers that seemed to follow her everywhere.
"You protected my home," she said softly. "You protected my sisters. You faced a goddess to defend a people who have never shown kindness to the world of men."
"I'm a hero," Build said, suddenly finding it difficult to form coherent sentences. "It's what heroes do."
Diana smiled—a warm, genuine expression that transformed her already-beautiful face into something that made Build's brain stop functioning entirely.
"You are more than a hero," she said. "You are a warrior. A true warrior, who fights not for glory or power but for the protection of others."
She reached out and placed her hand on his chest, right where his heart was pounding approximately three times faster than it should have been.
"The Amazons honor warriors who prove themselves in defense of our people. There are... traditional ways of showing that honor."
Her eyes were doing something. Something that Build's previous life's experience with romance—which was essentially zero—was having difficulty interpreting.
But even he wasn't dense enough to miss the implication.
"Are you..." he started.
"I am expressing interest," Diana said, her smile widening. "You are intelligent, powerful, brave, and you possess a sense of humor that I find unexpectedly charming. These are qualities I value."
"I'm from another universe. I'm literally a guy who got hit by a truck and woke up with superpowers. I have no idea what I'm doing most of the time."
"None of those things are disqualifying."
Build's mouth opened and closed several times without producing any sound.
Wonder Woman—actual Wonder Woman, the Amazonian princess, the demigod daughter of Zeus, one of the most powerful and beautiful women in any universe—was apparently interested in him.
His brain finally managed to produce a response.
"I would be honored," he said, his voice coming out surprisingly steady despite his internal screaming. "To pursue whatever form of relationship you're proposing. At whatever pace you're comfortable with. Because I'm very aware that you could break me in half and I don't want to presume anything."
Diana laughed—a genuine, delighted sound that made Build's heart do complicated things.
"I appreciate your caution," she said. "But you need not worry. I am interested in partnership, not domination."
She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear as she whispered:
"Although, if you defeat any more goddesses on my behalf, we may need to discuss the latter."
Build's brain completely shut down.
Gotham City was experiencing a peculiar phenomenon.
Over the past several weeks, the crime rate had been dropping. Not dramatically—this was still Gotham, after all, and there were limits to how much any city could improve—but noticeably. The drug trade was encountering unusual difficulties. Organized crime was making uncharacteristic mistakes. And the costumed villains who usually terrorized the city's population were finding their schemes disrupted with increasing regularity.
No one knew why.
Batman suspected Build was involved, but he couldn't prove anything. The temporal manipulation made it impossible to track, and Build was smart enough to keep his interventions subtle. A word here, a nudge there, the occasional invisible rearrangement of circumstances—nothing that left evidence, nothing that could be traced back to its source.
Poison Ivy was one of the few criminals who remained unaffected by this mysterious improvement.
Pamela Isley had isolated herself from the usual criminal networks years ago, preferring to operate alone or with occasional allies who shared her environmental philosophy. Her goals were different from the profit-motivated schemes of most Gotham villains. She didn't want money or power or revenge. She wanted to save the planet.
By killing humanity.
Or at least, that had been her plan before a man in a white lab coat showed up in her greenhouse hideout without triggering any of her plant-based security systems.
"Hello, Dr. Isley."
Ivy spun toward the voice, her plants responding to her alarm by reaching toward the intruder with thorny intent. But the man was already holding a FullBottle—she could see him shaking it, the contents glowing with some kind of energy—and when he slotted it into a device on his belt, the plants simply... stopped.
"What did you do?" she demanded.
"NatureRobot," Build explained, gesturing at the green-and-silver armor that had just formed around his body. "A hybrid form combining plant essence with mechanical control. Your vines can't distinguish me from a natural organism, so they're ignoring the attack commands."
Ivy's eyes narrowed. "You're the new hero. The one who defeated Doomsday."
"Guilty. And you're Poison Ivy. Eco-terrorist. Human-hater. Proponent of the 'kill everyone and let the plants inherit the Earth' school of environmental activism."
"I prefer 'environmental revolutionary.'"
"I'm sure you do."
Build walked deeper into the greenhouse, examining the various exotic plants with what appeared to be genuine interest. Ivy watched him carefully, trying to figure out his angle. Heroes usually attacked first and talked later. This one seemed to want a conversation.
"Why are you here?" she asked finally.
"To talk. I've been meaning to have this conversation for a while, but I kept getting distracted by invasions and goddesses and the Justice League. You know how it is."
"I really don't."
Build stopped in front of a particularly impressive specimen—a Venus flytrap that had been modified to be approximately the size of a car—and examined it with scientific appreciation.
"Your work is incredible," he said. "The genetic modifications, the cross-species grafting, the integration of animal and plant biological systems. If you had gone into legitimate botanical research, you'd be winning Nobel Prizes."
"Legitimate research doesn't save the planet. It just produces more papers that corporations ignore while they burn down the rainforests."
"And terrorism does save the planet?"
Ivy's jaw tightened. "Humanity is a plague. We destroy everything we touch. The only way to save the Earth is to remove the infection."
"Okay, let's talk about that."
Build turned to face her, his NatureRobot armor gleaming under the greenhouse lights.
"Your philosophy is based on the premise that humanity is inherently destructive and incapable of sustainable coexistence with the natural world. Yes?"
"Obviously."
"And your proposed solution is to eliminate humanity—or at least reduce it to a small, manageable population that can be controlled by you and your plants. Yes?"
"You're oversimplifying, but yes."
"Here's my problem with that." Build held up one armored finger. "First: you're human. Or you were. Your transformation was the result of human scientific processes—specifically, a serum developed through human biochemistry research. Every ability you have, every power you possess, exists because of human knowledge and human innovation."
He held up a second finger.
"Second: plants are not inherently superior to animals. They're different, yes—they produce oxygen, they sequester carbon, they form the foundation of most terrestrial ecosystems. But they're also destructive in their own ways. Invasive species. Toxic secretions. The oxygen catastrophe that killed most anaerobic life billions of years ago. Plants are not morally better than humans. They're just following different evolutionary pressures."
A third finger.
"Third: your premise that humanity is incapable of sustainability is empirically false. There are numerous examples throughout history of human societies that maintained sustainable relationships with their environments for centuries or millennia. The problem isn't humanity itself—it's specific social, economic, and political systems that prioritize short-term exploitation over long-term stability."
Fourth finger.
"Fourth: your solution wouldn't actually work. Even if you killed every human on Earth, the environmental damage we've already caused would continue for centuries. Climate change is driven by carbon already in the atmosphere. Plastic pollution is in every ocean and most organisms. The extinction events we've triggered are already cascading through ecosystems. Killing humanity now wouldn't undo any of that—it would just remove the only species capable of actively reversing the damage."
He lowered his hand.
"Your philosophy is not only morally wrong, it's practically stupid. You're proposing to destroy the very tool you'd need to actually save the planet—human intelligence, innovation, and capacity for organized action—in pursuit of a goal that destruction can't achieve."
Ivy was staring at him with an expression that combined outrage with something that might have been the beginning of uncertainty.
"You don't understand," she said, her voice less confident than before. "I've seen what humans do. The corporations. The politicians. The ordinary people who don't care about anything beyond their own convenience. They won't change. They never change."
"Some of them won't," Build agreed. "Some humans are terrible, destructive, and incapable of thinking beyond their immediate self-interest. But that's true of every species—every population has individuals that harm the whole. The question is what you do about it."
He stepped closer to her.
"You could kill the worst offenders. Target the specific individuals and institutions that are causing the most damage. But that's not what you've been doing—you've been targeting humanity generally, including people who are actively trying to help the environment. You've attacked researchers, activists, ordinary citizens who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Collateral damage—"
"Is not acceptable when you claim to care about life!" Build's voice sharpened. "You can't say you're fighting for the planet while casually dismissing human deaths as 'collateral damage.' That's not environmentalism. That's misanthropy with a green veneer."
Ivy flinched.
"Here's what I think," Build continued, his voice softening slightly. "I think you've been hurt. I think the world has shown you its worst aspects, over and over again, until you started to believe that the worst was all there was. I think your hatred of humanity is a defense mechanism—a way to protect yourself from the pain of caring about people who might disappoint you."
"You don't know me."
"I know your story. I know what Woodrue did to you. I know about the experiments, the transformation, the way you were treated as a subject rather than a person. I know why you started hating humanity—it's because humanity hurt you first."
Ivy's eyes were shimmering now, tears threatening to fall despite her attempts to suppress them.
"But here's the thing, Pamela." Build's voice was gentle, almost kind. "You're still human. Despite everything that was done to you, despite everything you've become, there's still a woman inside that green skin who remembers what it felt like to care about people. To want to help rather than hurt. To be part of the world instead of at war with it."
He reached out and took her hand—a gesture that should have triggered an immediate plant-based counterattack but didn't, because her defenses had faltered along with her conviction.
"You could be helping. Your powers—the ability to communicate with plants, to accelerate their growth, to guide ecological restoration on a scale no one else can match—you could be the greatest force for environmental good in human history. Instead, you're wasting your potential on terrorism that doesn't work and philosophy that doesn't hold up to scrutiny."
Ivy looked down at their joined hands, her expression lost and confused.
"I don't know how to be anything else," she whispered. "I've been fighting for so long. If I stop..."
"You won't stop fighting. You'll just fight for something real instead of something imaginary. The planet needs defenders, Pamela. Actual defenders, not destroyers who claim to be acting in its interest."
He released her hand and stepped back.
"Think about it. Talk to Diana—Wonder Woman—if you want to explore what a different path might look like. She's been fighting for the Earth since before this country existed, and she's never lost faith in humanity's potential to be better."
He detransformed, the NatureRobot armor dissolving to reveal his human form.
"Or keep doing what you've been doing. Keep attacking random humans and pretending it's environmentalism. Keep telling yourself that genocide is the only solution to a problem that requires completely different approaches. But if you do, I'll stop you. Every time. Because protecting people is what I do, even when those people have made mistakes."
He walked toward the greenhouse exit, leaving Ivy standing alone among her plants.
"The choice is yours. That's the beauty of free will—even when your philosophy denies its value, you still get to exercise it."
He left.
Poison Ivy stood in her greenhouse for a long time afterward, surrounded by the plants she had devoted her life to, thinking about everything she had heard.
And somewhere, deep in the part of her that was still Pamela Isley, something began to change.
Build returned to the Watchtower feeling accomplished.
He had created the SpaceTime Form—a power that rivaled Zi-O himself. He had humbled Damian Wayne, again, because the brat deserved it. He had trolled Lex Luthor in a way that would pay dividends for years. He had fought a goddess and won, sort of. He had apparently started a relationship with Wonder Woman, somehow. And he had potentially started Poison Ivy on a path toward redemption.
All in all, a productive few days.
But as he walked through the corridors toward his quarters, his mind was already racing with new possibilities.
The SpaceTime Form had been created from bottles he generated in Build Infinity. That meant Build Infinity could create any essence he could conceptualize. Any power he could imagine.
What other bottles could he create?
Speed Force essence? Emotional spectrum essences? Divine essences from the various pantheons that existed in this universe?
What about conceptual essences that didn't correspond to any existing power source?
Justice. Evil. Hope. Despair. Abstract concepts that might translate into forms with abilities that defied categorization.
The possibilities were endless.
And Build was just getting started.
He reached his quarters, sat down at his workbench, and started sketching designs for new bottles.
Because he was Kamen Rider Build.
And the laws of victory had been decided.
To Be Continued...