On Earth, a boy was growing into the role he and his cousins had been fated to play since birth—across almost every universe and timeline.
But billions of light-years away, on a different world, an object was being forged—one of many seeded throughout the Omniverse.
Past swaths of vacuum where silence had weight, through pockets of space so hungry that even light bowed and gravity forgot itself, beyond starfields without number—
—there lay a planet.
Its skin was plated in high-grade technology, centuries—no, millennia—beyond anything humanity could touch. Lush green spread across most of its surface, except for one scar: a creator's cradle of bare machinery. No trees there. No moss. Only stacked architectures of intent. Only tech breeding more tech.
That is not today's story.
However, to understand today's story, you'll need to open your eyes—look anywhere but space—and focus on the planet with star-worth energy and circuitry so advanced it's practically living, breathing science fiction. So what are we waiting for? Shall we zoom in?
…
"Albeda, grab me some Mechomorphian wire—along with a Chromo crystal," Azmuth said—possibly the smartest being in the universe, or at least among them—calling over his shoulder as I watched him fuse metal to living flesh. He was chasing his magnum opus, as he called it—something he'd been preparing ever since the trouble with his last creation: the sword of heroes and destroyers, Ascalon.
He never spoke about it. I only heard rumors—stories about its power and the trouble that followed the moment the universe learned it existed. The destruction. The wars. Millions of alien dead over a weapon he forged not to conquer but to keep the peace.
That was long ago. Since hiding it, he'd poured everything into a new device—something meant to bridge the gaps between peoples, maybe even preserve them all if extinction ever came knocking.
All of that was true. Another thing was just as true: Azmuth was a brilliant scientist and inventor—a Galvan of staggering intellect and stubborn hope, a man who wanted peace to take root across the galaxy and beyond the universe's rim. He'd done much to repair his name after the Ascalon incident and to help the species harmed by it.
But there's one more reason I know him so well.
He's also a pervert. A quiet one. But a pervert nonetheless.
And both fortunately and unfortunately, he was my mentor. Which also meant—
"Since you took so long watching me," he said, "why not put on the maid outfit I had tailored for you? It'll offer more protection in this environment."
I clenched my teeth—and nodded. He was the most brilliant mind in the galaxy—if I'm putting it mildly. I was smart, but I wasn't the brightest Galvan; the quiet, still-prevalent bias against women in our species didn't help. Finding a mentor at all had been hard. Finding one as intelligent and renowned as Azmuth? Almost impossible. So: sacrifices had to be made.
"Yes, Azmuth," was all I said, and I turned away. The door to his chambers slid open as I approached and hissed shut behind me.
Behind me, I heard a soft chuckle. "Heh. At least this should make the day a little more entertaining. Maybe it'll loosen Albeda up. How else is she supposed to find a mate someday?" Azmuth murmured, already welding and fitting pieces of alien tech together as easily as breathing.
That was none of his business, I thought, ignoring the heat blooming across my face. Perverted bastard.
I took a deep breath and started my circuit of his home-laboratory. The place was an organized war with chaos—everything technically in its place, yet so oddly disordered you'd think he was a galactic forager. A hoarder, even. Which only intensified the atmosphere this living lab gave off: hums layered over hisses, light bleeding through cables like veins. A space only a genius like him could own.
Again: a closeted, perverted, old genius.
The maid outfit—fine, the "Mark-M lattice"—itched at the wrists where the shielding weave ended. Supposedly it redirected micro-debris and damped EM spikes. Supposedly. I tapped the cuff and watched the status glyphs blink from amber to steady blue. Good enough.
I found the Mechomorphian wire where it always lived: coiled in a transparent pod labeled in the tidy script he only used for dangerous things. The wire moved when I touched it, liquid-curious, tasting the air through microscopic feelers. It had a personality when it thought no one was watching—like Azmuth, I suppose.
"Wire secured," I called, because he pretended not to hear unless I narrated.
"Crystal?" he asked without turning. Sparks feathered from his torch, white-hot at the center, cooling to red dust before they kissed the floor.
"On it," I said.
The Chromo crystal was trickier. The safe held a dozen, each nested in its own inert field like an egg in a stasis nest. I keyed in my code, then his. The door sighed open. Each crystal sang at a pitch just below hearing, a pressure against the bones. I picked the least temperamental—cyan heart, purple edges—and the pressure eased, as if approving.
"Don't drop it," he said.
"I'm not a child."
"You are to the crystal."
I didn't give him the satisfaction of a reply. I cradled the Chromo in its carrier and crossed the floor, stepping over a tangle of sensory tongues that tasted vibration, light, thought. The lab always felt fractionally alive, like a forest that tolerated you.
He had cleared a bay—meaning he'd shoved ten projects into adjacent bays and pretended that counted. At its center, bolted into a cradle, stood the frame of his new device. He hadn't named it yet; he said names were a social contract and we weren't ready to sign. To me it looked like a ring built from interleaved ribs, each rib a different language: hardlight, bonegrown carbon, spun-glass logic, and a patient metal that remembered the weight of the star it had cooled inside.
"Slot for the wire," he said, pointing with the torch. "Three turns, counter-helix. Let it want where it wants, but don't let it argue."
"You're asking me to negotiate with living cable."
"That's mentoring."
I fed the wire into the rib channels. It shivered, then settled, finding its own geometry with little satisfied clicks. I could feel its attention—like being watched by a friendly animal that might bite. When I reached the third turn, the lattice on my wrists tingled. The glyphs flickered. A warning murmured up my arms.
"Field's rising," I said.
"Good," he said. "Means the frame recognizes you."
"Or that it hates me."
"Hate is a kind of recognition."
I didn't roll my eyes. Much.
He took the crystal from me with unusual care. The torch went silent. He set the Chromo into a socket grown for it—grown, not machined; the socket had a damp, organic patience that made my skin crawl. The crystal's song pitched higher. The ring woke.
Panels around the bay unfolded, revealing banks of translators I'd helped tune: pheromone to phoneme, colorfield to clause, pressure-pattern to prayer. The idea was simple and impossible—to let species talk without carving each other into metaphors. He called it a bridge. I called it an apology.
"Albeda," he said softly. "Seal the bay."
I palmed the control. Doors slid, locks thunked. The air thinned, then steadied as the scrubbers changed modes. The ring shed a skin of pale light.
"If this works," he said, not to me, "no one will ever need a sword again."
"Ascalon wasn't the problem," I said before I could stop myself. "We were."
He flinched, barely. Then he nodded. "Hold the field on my mark."
Glyphs on my cuffs stuttered. The lattice prickled up my forearms, protective instincts waking like an animal in a narrow den. I planted my feet and set the field bands to his frequency.
"Mark."
The crystal bloomed.
Light poured through the ribs, broke into letters I didn't know and colors I could smell. The translators whirred, unsure whether to render a chorus or a map. The wire tightened, eager. Something vast leaned close—like the lab, like a forest, like the space between two strangers in a crowd when both decide to speak.
Then the frame bucked.
"Azmuth—" I began.
"I see it," he said, already moving, hands a blur on dampers and clamps.
Something hit the field—softly at first, then with intent. The lattice screamed up my arms and I held, teeth bared, every glyph white-hot.
"Hold," he said. "Five seconds."
"Make it three," I said.
"Three, then," he said, and for once his voice had no joke in it at all.
"If we don't make it," Azmuth said—eyes nowhere near the readouts—"you should know, my student: for a couple-century-old Galvan in her early twenties, you've got an fat, excellent—"
"Finish that sentence and I drop the field," I snarled, arms burning as the lattice screamed.
He smirked. "Impeccable posture."
"Focus on the reactor, not my uniform."
The ring bucked. White ate the edges of my vision.
"I'm at limit," I said.
"Two more seconds—"
"Take one," I said, and let go.
"Albeda—!"
"Perverted old man, focus!"
Light hit like a hammer.
Boom.
Just when we both thought we were done, a force field snapped into place around us and the device. We watched it explode—safely—behind the shimmer.
Cough!
We turned to see two Uxorites standing where the control pad was. I shot Azmuth a look. "You're nearly seventeen hundred years old—a genius celebrated across the galaxy, renowned in one way or another throughout the universe—and you forgot you had safety protocols?"
He pretended to sift through the wreckage. I ignored him and faced our rescuers.
The taller one wore a fitted gray vac-suit over bluish-green skin. Three violet eyes watched me from a calm, symmetrical face, and two head-tendrils curved like laurels above her crown. She looked—composed. Wonderful, even.
Beside her stood a younger Uxorite, her daughter, in a matching suit. Her complexion ran paler, almost human-white over that subtle slug-sheen, with three head-tendrils instead of two. She, too, had three eyes: two light green, the third a purple gem at her forehead.
"Holy Xeno," the elder said, hands on her hips. "I leave you two alone for a couple of light-years and you almost get yourselves killed." Xylene's daughter stood just behind her—tall, straight, a touch shy.
"And Azmuth," Xylene added, leveling a look past me, "what did I tell you about making your assistant wear such provocative attire?"
For a second I remembered exactly why I liked her so much.
Azmuth ignored her—carefully. He sifted through the debris until he lifted a glowing, light-green gem veined with circuitry, alien glyphs flickering across its facets. "Yes," he breathed. "This portion is complete. Soon my perfect creation will be finished."
Pride kindled in his eyes—pride, and something desperate, as if the weight of the universe rested on those old Galvan shoulders. And—because he's still him—a fleeting, inappropriate gleam threaded through the look before he shuttered it.
We watched him sprint past the wreckage—past us, past the sliding door that hissed open just in time. We looked at each other, sighed, and followed.
We cut through a maze of gates and rooms crammed with tools, scrap, and half-tamed inventions from across the centuries—until we stopped at a chamber that was, impressively, spotless. In the center, suspended in a soft field, floated a black-and-pink band: a belt or watch if you scaled it up for a larger species. Its faceplate was missing—unfinished—yet Azimuth stared at it like it was his child. He raced to the wall panel, tapped a sequence, and the field irised open just enough for him to slip inside. He drifted up beside the device and seated the crystal where the faceplate should be.
"Azmuth, what is this?" Xylene asked. Her daughter and I studied it, equally curious.
He turned, a fanatic, exhausted gleam in his eye—equal parts brilliant and sad, with that familiar, inappropriate flicker he tried to hide. "This, my dear, is the Omnitrix. When it's complete, it will choose a bearer and bond permanently. It will let the wearer walk—truly walk—in every species' shoes. A bridge. A diplomatic instrument. Once the samples are gathered, it will hold the DNA of every race we can reach. And I assure you, I intend to reach them all. Each form, a press away. A device capable of great peace."
Pride etched every word. We traded a look. Peril hung there too; he never seemed to notice the size of the fire he played with. Still, we could see what he wanted—something to rewrite the damage Ascalon left behind.
Then he laughed—low, pleased, indecently Azmuth. Of course there was more.
"What else can it do?" I asked, already bracing.
He cleared his throat. "In addition to diplomacy and catastrophe response, the Omnitrix has… intimate contingencies. The bearer can assume any sex across any logged species—not merely viable, but ideal. Strongest. Most capable. And, where appropriate…" His mouth twitched. "The most devastatingly attractive variant that physiology allows."
"Say the quiet part," I said.
"For extinction bottlenecks," he rushed on, "if a lone survivor remains—any sex—the bearer can match form and, ah, repopulate. Low-birth-rate cultures may petition for assistance—one-to-one or, under treaty, in curated cohorts and groups, even an entire species at once if wanted--or you know, all species at the same time." A nervous sheen brightened his brow, as he said the last part quietly. "To ease first contact—and all contact thereof and only with explicit permission—the device can broadcast calibrated pheromonal and hormonal fields and suggestive affect cues, opt-in and non-revocable. It also imparts… experiential fluency. Techniques. Preferences. Across species. Across kinks."
He spread his hands, very pleased with himself. "It's a diplomatic tool and, frankly, a species-saver. And yes, it doubles as the most advanced pleasure device in galactic history. Outside any crisis, consenting adults can enable recreational mode: stamina amplification, sensation sculpting, refractory suppression, timed peaks, delayed release. Every hole, every inch of skin, every organ, inside and out, has increased pleasure points, Vibration emitters--everywhere, growth hormone to any body part to increase and decrease size, synchronized rhythms—solo, paired, or… ensemble." His smile went innocent. "Safe-word integration, of course."
Xylene's eyebrow climbed. Her daughter listened on, equally horrified as I, as much as too curious to stop listening.
Azmuth pressed on. "Profiles can select idealized morphs—strength where it counts, softness where it matters, aesthetics tuned to the beholder. The perfect alien partner. The perfect breeding aid when requested. And, for those who simply want a night—or a century—of exquisite distraction, a… connoisseur's mode."
I stared at him. "So: peace engine, ark, powerful battle device--technically, and a galaxy-class sex toy... toy box."
"Multifunctional," he said primly.
"Uh-huh." I glanced at the humming band. "Lock the recreational suites and connoisseur's mode behind triple consent, enough safety protocols to protect the entire galaxy and independent oversight."
"Already… strongly recommended," he hedged.
"Not recommended," I said. "Required."
He swallowed. "Required."
I patted the casing. "Good. Because if this thing catcalls me from across the room, I'm scrapping it."
Azmuth exhaled, relieved and disappointed at once. "Duly noted. Even if it's very unlikely."
Xylene stood beside her daughter, looking at Azmuth the same way I did—equal parts shocked, impressed, and horrified—though even she had to admit some of his… additions had merit. "For the sake of my daughter—and my own sanity—I'm going to forget you said any of that," she said, voice slipping into professional cool. "What do you need from me?"
Azmuth glanced at her, then at the girl, a faint blush touching his cheeks, a flicker of shame threading his eyes. "I need your help collecting samples—alongside my drones and other contractors. And when it's finished, I'd ask that you help keep the Omnitrix out of the wrong hands."
She nodded. "Consider it done. Come along, Zeva." With that, she and her daughter turned and left—leaving me alone with a perverted madman and his watch. Again.
Azmuth rubbed his hands like a villain in a cheap holo. "Back to work."
I sighed, stepped to the console, and brought the diagnostics up to full. "Try keeping the pheromone suite off this time."
A beat. "It's off," he said.
I toggled a lock anyway. "Now it is."
...
What we didn't know was that there was a robot hiding among the circuitry of his lab, transmitting everything that was said, to probably one of the most power hungry individuals we know of.
What we should have known was he would have never listened. Once the prototype was finished, all the safety protocols, legal contingencies, and protected layers, were practically null and void. It was too a point that aside from diplomacy and emergency response, every sexual facet he added, might as well have been one and the same. There was no line between the modes and its uses, no lines between diplomacy, emergency copulation and... fun. It was all in one. I pray for the unfortunate being that gets chosen by that thing.
As I would find out much later, it ended up being much worse than I thought. An experience I would be fortunately, and unfortunately, be experiencing for myself...
Fuck, Azmuth!