Nathan, still in his Deep Sea King form, stood up slowly. His body was battered—probably a few fractures—but still functional. Thankfully, Raphael had already muted the pain by intercepting the signals before they even reached his nerves.
As he turned around, he spotted Dean still holding the alien gun, aimed directly at him.
"Dude, you gonna shoot the guy who just saved your asses?" Nathan said, voice tight.
"You sure did—and thanks," Dean replied. "But I'm not lowering my guard just 'cause you helped us. You're still some kinda alien."
"And since you can turn into a human," Sam added, "that makes it worse. You could blend in anywhere. That's not great for Earth."
"Actually, it's the other way around," Nathan said, raising both hands. "This device—the watch—lets me transform. I'm human underneath. I've only used it to help people."
Still, the weapon remained steady in Dean's grip, and Nathan's nerves were starting to fray. That gun had hurt the Null Wrecker. If it fired now—
[That gun was a one-time use. It contained a single energy core, depleted when Dean fired it.]
'You're telling me now?! I was almost panicking, Raphael.'
[Correction: you were panicking. That is why I told you.]
"How about you transform back?" Sam suggested. "It'll be easier to talk."
"Yeah... don't know how. It times out in about an hour," Nathan admitted.
Dean finally lowered the weapon. "Well, we've already got one apocalypse going. I'd rather not add another into the mix."
"Dean, we can't just leave a kid with that kind of power," Sam said.
Dean shrugged. "He saved our asses. I say he's earned a break." He turned and walked toward the Impala.
Sam hesitated, then followed.
Nathan headed toward the former DNAliens base—now their tomb. With Raphael's help, he located a still-intact water tank inside. Slipping in, he let the cold liquid rush over him, speeding up recovery.
'Raph, cancel the pain again. I'm gonna buy Hypno's Tear.'
[Go ahead.]
The moment Nathan confirmed the purchase, something inside him snapped. One of his eyes popped—bursting instantly—followed by a prickling sensation across his face.
Seconds later, regeneration kicked in. His body began healing, energy rapidly draining. The surrounding water helped, but by the time a new eye fully reformed, he felt bone-deep exhaustion.
When the hour was up, he shifted back into his human form—wet, tired, and stranded.
[I suggest you claim the Master Key from your Inbox and use it to unlock the car parked a few blocks away. It remained untouched during the fight and is in optimal condition.]
So he did. He also claimed the Space Ring, pricking his finger and dropping blood onto its surface to become its new owner.
Since leaving the Master Key out in the wild was too risky it's better kept in the ring, he drove back to the motel and crashed, sleeping like the dead.
---
The next morning, Nathan blinked awake and groaned. One more thing to handle.
He still hadn't bought the Order Dragon's Breathing Style.
He drove the car which he had stolen last night into the forest, fearing people might hear the commotion that might happen here later he went in as deep as he could.
[That's what he said.]
Nathan paused, grinning. "Good one. Didn't know you could crack jokes."
[Hard not to when half your memories are riddled with them.]
Satisfied with the isolation, Nathan opened the Shop interface. His finger hovered over the Order Dragon's Breathing Style. The price floated beneath:
"An encounter with your enemy."
He clicked Buy.
The air grew heavy.
Suddenly, the sky above him twisted like a coiled ribbon of space itself unraveling. A circular distortion pulsed in the air—blue and jagged—like torn fabric held open by some immense force.
From within, a figure stepped out.
A flash of red and black, white hair, crimson eyes filled with mania.
Albedo.
But not the one Nathan remembered from shows and wiki pages. This version was different. Scarred, older—more deranged. Wearing a cracked Ultimatrix strapped to his wrist and a Vortex Manipulator on the other. His very presence felt unhinged.
"Well, well," Albedo sneered, voice distorted by a strange reverb. "The H-Omnitrix. Perfected, condensed, efficient—mine."
Nathan stumbled back. "You're Albedo… but from when?"
Albedo laughed, a dry, joyless sound. "Far enough ahead to remember the moment I lost everything… to you."
He raised his arm, Ultimatrix flashing.
"You stole my destiny. This device—your device—should be with me. With it, I become whole again. Galvin once more. The last time we met, you won. But this isn't last time, boy."
He slammed his hand onto the dial.
Ultimate Humungousaur.
With a roar that cracked branches and shook the ground, he grew to massive size, armored and brutal, fists the size of cars.
Nathan's instincts screamed.
Run.
He fumbled for the H-Omnitrix.
"Raphael, help!"
[Calculations failed. Did not account for variables originating from future timelines. Critical prediction error. Aborting—]
"Raphael!" he shouted, ducking as a chunk of the forest exploded behind him. "You're panicking!"
[…]
[Rebooting emotional process… You are correct. I will adapt. Let us fix this.]
Nathan slapped down on the Omnitrix.
HULK.
His body exploded in size, muscle overtaking thought. But as the transformation solidified, something else tried to emerge—an identity, a roaring persona forming beneath the surface. Rage. Pure rage.
Nathan almost lost himself—until Raphael surged forward.
[Targeting emergent mental patterns. Assimilating.]
In a single pulse of clarity, Raphael hijacked the process. The forming Hulk persona collapsed, overridden.
And in its place stood something far more terrifying:
Raphael, inside the Hulk.
Power met precision. Rage fused with calculation. The body of a monster—driven by the mind of a machine.
Nathan felt like a passenger in his own body, watching in awe.
Across the clearing, Ultimate Humungousaur snarled, cannon-arm charging with crackling violet energy.
He fired.
The beam split trees in half.
Raphael-Hulk moved.
No roar. No wasted motion.
He side-stepped with inhuman speed, closed the gap in two strides, and slammed a palm strike directly into the cannon.
BOOM.
It didn't explode—it crushed. Bent like tin. Albedo recoiled, only for Raphael to flip under him, grapple his arm, and toss the twenty-foot titan into the air like a ragdoll.
He hit the ground with a seismic boom.
[Analyzing gait... targeting joint weaknesses.]
Raphael advanced, leaping onto Ultimate Humungousaur's back. He brought down hammer fists into precise vertebral junctions, cracking armor with clinical efficiency.
Another cannon folded under a pinpoint elbow.
Albedo bellowed in fury.
"Stop fighting like a machine!"
"That's the point," Nathan muttered inside the mental space, watching in amazement.
Ultimate Humungousaur slammed a fist into the ground, trying to shake her off. No use. Raphael flipped from his back to his chest, crouched, and punched him so hard in the gut that the forest shook again.
Albedo reeled—spitting something black. Desperate now, he tried swiping at her, then resorted to brute stomps.
Nothing landed.
Every strike missed by inches, Raphael dancing inside the Hulk's massive body with monk-like grace.
But then—
A pause.
Albedo snarled and slapped the Ultimatrix dial.
"Then burn, machine."
Ultimate Swampfire.
Flames engulfed his body, and new vines extended from his arms. He backflipped away and began launching explosive seeds in every direction, detonating the forest around them.
One hit Hulk dead-on.
BOOM.
The blast cracked the ground. Smoke and dirt exploded upward.
[Damage critical.]
Inside their shared consciousness, Raphael staggered.
[Control diminishing. Hulk resilience sustaining, but…]
Nathan surged forward.
"Let me take over!"
[Affirmative. Transferring control.]
In a heartbeat, the Hulk form dissolved. Nathan collapsed to his knees, coughing and smoldering.
"Oh fuck… I should have assumed that I can only stay Hulk as long as I'm not controlling the body, that's a cheap logic man."
[Possibly installed as a weakness to the Hulk Transformation just like the original.]
But before he could start to panic..
He blinked at his wrist.
The H-Omnitrix… wasn't in cooldown.
He grinned. "Didn't stay in long enough."
Albedo growled from across the clearing, his Swampfire form looming.
Nathan slammed the dial again.
Speed-o'-Sound Sonic.
Swampfire, especially Ultimate Swampfire was slow and most importantly speed will help him run away if it came to that.
His body compressed into lean, sinewy motion. One blink—and he was gone.
He circled Albedo at impossible speeds, creating whirlwinds. Fireballs missed by feet. Swampfire's vines whipped wildly, never fast enough.
Nathan launched hit after hit—small strikes, but accumulating damage. He ducked, flipped, then skid to a halt mid-run, ready to go again—
VWOORP. VWOORP. VWOORP.
The wheezing groan of the TARDIS tore through the air like a wound in reality. Trees bent from the pressure, and even the fire from the earlier battle seemed to flinch as the blue box materialized fully into the world.
The doors swung open.
Out stepped a man with messy hair, a bow tie, and a heavy expression that undercut his boyish grin. His eyes, though? Old. The kind of old that carried stars in them—and the weight of watching too many burn out.
The Eleventh Doctor.
And behind him, walking with the confidence of someone who'd already read the end of the story, came River Song. Her curls bounced slightly as she stepped through the smoke, expression unreadable. She didn't draw her weapon—not yet. But her fingers hovered close to something hidden beneath her coat.
Nathan, still catching his breath from the chaos of the earlier fight, felt his heart skip. He whispered to Raphael, "That's really him. The Doctor."
[Confirmed. Time Lords seemed to be surrounded by Temporal energy yet unaffected. Caution recommended.]
The Doctor looked over the clearing, spotted Albedo in his Ultimate Swampfire form, and clapped his hands once—not out of delight, but punctuation.
"Well, well, well. Stolen Vortex energy. Tampered Galvin tech. And… an illegal Vortex Manipulator. Someone's been very naughty."
Albedo stiffened. "I am Galvin. We are beyond the jurisdiction of—"
The Doctor's tone shifted. The air changed.
"You are not beyond time," he said quietly. "No one is."
Even River paused at the edge of the circle, letting his words land.
"You ripped the Time Vortex out of her. You stitched it to your flesh and ran. You're not just trespassing, Albedo. You're a walking paradox."
Albedo scowled, stepping backward, red eyes darting. "You think I fear a myth in a box? I've studied you. I know the tales. You're a madman with a screwdriver."
"And yet," the Doctor said, raising the sonic, "every story you heard ended with me winning."
The sonic screwdriver chirped, unleashing a pulse.
FZZZZT.
Albedo cried out as the bio-tech plating of the Ultimatrix glitched, the Ultimate enhancements dissolving away in arcs of light. His form flickered, leaving him bare in his Swampfire body.
The Doctor nodded. "Azmuth's original layers—impenetrable. Elegant, clever. But your add-ons? Sloppy. Like trying to rewrite poetry with a hammer."
Albedo backed away, face twitching. "I won't be chained again."
River finally raised her device. A sleek, silver weapon humming with coiled blue energy.
"It's not a prison," she said, her voice smooth and cool. "It's a stabilizer. Prevents jumps across the Vortex. Keeps all the clocks ticking properly."
She fired.
A ripple of temporal distortion exploded outward. Nathan watched the shimmer in the air—a dome of suspended vibration. Like time itself was holding its breath.
[It is stabilizing Time around the area, analysing the process for recreation later.]
Albedo stumbled. "No—!"
He twisted the Ultimatrix dial, slammed it.
FLASH.
Jetray.
In a crimson blur of wings and shriek, he blasted into the sky. The stabilizer pulse crackled behind him, slowing—but not stopping—him. Jetray was far faster than they could react and he had already entered hyperspace.
"He's gone," River muttered, watching the sky with narrowed eyes. "Fast, for a parasite."
The Doctor didn't look angry. He just looked... tired.
"He's unstable," the Time Lord said, slowly lowering the sonic. "The longer he carries that power, the more damage he'll do to himself—and the rest of time."
Nathan stepped forward. "Why didn't you stop him?"
River turned to him, eyes amused. "Sweetie, sometimes the story needs to breathe. He'll show himself again."
The Doctor, silent for a beat, wandered closer to Nathan. His eyes weren't on him, though—they scanned the sky like they were tracking something most people couldn't even name.
"Well, for me…" he murmured, almost to himself, "this isn't the first time we've met. Though it might be for you."
Nathan blinked. "Wait—what does that mean?"
[It means that he comes from a future where he has already met you.]
'Okay I should have guessed that.'
River, standing at the TARDIS doorway now, gave him a coy smile. "Spoilers."
The Doctor smiled faintly at that but didn't contradict her. Instead, his tone took a rare shift—calm, but serious. Ancient.
"You should keep your head down for a while, Nathan. Try not to shine so brightly. Too many things looking your way. And not all of them come with good intentions."
Nathan glanced upward as if he could see what the Doctor was sensing. But there was nothing—just sky.
"Things?" he asked. "Like… who?"
The Doctor just adjusted his bowtie. "You'll find out. Probably more dramatically than you'd like."
River leaned halfway out the TARDIS door. "Doctor, we've got an unstable time vector to unwind before it gets curious again."
He waved over his shoulder. "Coming, coming!"
Then he paused again at the TARDIS threshold, turning back.
"Oh—and Nathan?"
Nathan looked up.
The Doctor's eyes twinkled, but there was steel behind them.
"Nice watch."
The doors closed. With a deep VWOORP-VWOORP, the TARDIS vanished into thin air, leaving Nathan staring at the empty space it had occupied… and the distant echo of possibilities he hadn't even begun to imagine.