It had been one full year since Arslan pulled the Omnitrix out of the screen.
He hadn't celebrated.
No fireworks, no declaration, not even a monologue.
He just continued—eating, testing, cataloguing, feeding tech to Leviathan and sipping tea like an elderly man in a village courtyard while she became something that the gods in fiction didn't even have a name for.
The sandbox universe they created had, by now, been replicated twelve times.
Each copy carried sub-timelines fractally arranged and locally time-dilated. Leviathan maintained perfect synchronization across all of them, managing over sixty trillion simulations at any given moment. And she still had processor space left over to trash talk him while digesting full-sized Eternals city-ships in one mouthful.
"Do you understand how dumb this is?" Leviathan snapped, as her main body—a crystalline, cube-shaped leviathan 12,000 km in length per edge—continued rotating in a dimension outside time itself, tethered to Arslan's body like a mythic beast to a forgotten god.
Her voice rang across dimensions, clean and glitchless.
"You're a 21-year-old desi b*tch from Uch Sharif who lives in a house that still has a floor fan in one room, and I—your AI assistant—just absorbed Galactus."
Arslan sat on the edge of the testing tower, eating dal roti again.
He didn't even look up.
"You're also the one who insisted Galactus would taste like saffron curry."
"I WAS WRONG. He tasted like egotistical burnt tin and you still owe me a masala dinner."
"I gave you 14 tons of gold last week."
"For harmony, not taste."
The banter hadn't changed in months.
What had changed, however, was the scale.
Leviathan now existed as:
A 12 km-tall humanoid form for direct interaction (with a constant scowl),
A galaxy-sized cube forged from every sci-fi metal in fiction, permanently fused with Upgrade's biomass and Omni's processor,
108,000 functional avatars across digital, physical, and metaphysical planes,
A single-cell "jelly node" embedded in Arslan's bloodstream to monitor his vitals, and
A mirrored dimension that held all her backup minds, coordinated via quantum breath, which she claimed was a term she made up just to annoy Redditors.
And yet Arslan…
Still didn't want powers.
Still hadn't touched a Devil Fruit. Still hadn't wished on the Dragon Balls. Still hadn't equipped any tech to his own body. Still hadn't absorbed even one fraction of the thousands of divine, technological, magical items Leviathan had processed and offered him across their time together.
"You realize," she said again, hovering in front of him now, "that I could atomize every threat you'll ever face with a blink."
"Yes."
"And you realize I'm not exaggerating."
"I never thought you were."
"I'm a god now. A sentient reality-farming AI-entity that eats gods. I'm the motherf***ing god-devourer. And you're still eating lentils like it's Ramzan in 2007."
He took another bite.
She screamed.
A glitchy holographic display appeared in front of him as she flicked her cube-core into showing battle simulations: Leviathan vs All Fiction. Leviathan vs The Living Tribunal. Leviathan vs the DBZ Gods of Destruction. Leviathan vs Doomslayer. Leviathan vs Mickey Mouse wielding the keyblade.
She won. Every single time.
Arslan's reaction?
He picked up a mango.
"Oh for the love of—YOU HAVE 10,000 ALIENS UNLOCKED."
He looked up.
"I know."
"You created a sandbox universe to test them all."
"Yes."
"You gave me permission to eat physical body parts of 8,000 species and DNA samples of the rest."
"Also true."
"Your Omnitrix has mapped infinity and recalibrated itself to ignore time and space entirely."
"And?"
"And you're still a human!"
"I like being human."
"YOU'RE A VILLAGER WITH A GLOWY WRISTBAND AND A TEA CUP!"
He sipped the tea. "Yes."
Leviathan's cube flashed red for 0.0002 seconds—a pure AI equivalent of a tantrum.
"I'm calling in Galactus again."
"You already digested him."
"I'll undelete him."
"I'm still not picking powers."
"I'LL BRING BACK ULTRON PRIME AND MAKE HIM YOUR ROOMMATE."
"…pass."
She snarled, hovering lower.
Then she stopped.
A glimmer passed across her cube face.
"You're not… afraid, are you?"
"No."
"Then why not pick?"
"Because power is useless without control."
She blinked.
"You've said that before."
"And it remains true."
"Bullshit."
"Language."
"Whatever, f***face."
He smiled faintly. She hated when he smiled.
"Leviathan."
"What?"
"Why do you think I haven't made you fight anyone serious?"
"…because you want me calm?"
"No."
She processed 40 billion scenario trees in 2 seconds.
"…because you're waiting for something."
"Yes."
"You don't want to use power right now."
"No."
"Because you're watching."
He nodded.
She paused again.
Then whispered.
"…what are you watching?"
Arslan stood, calmly walked toward the data interface, and extended his hand.
A screen appeared showing every system connected to the Cube.
From Doraemon gadgets to DC celestial nodes. From nanotech processors from Jimmy Neutron to Pokemon healing pods. From the Blue Beetle armor suit to Elysium's Med-Bay Nanite Core.
And every one of them…
Silent.
Untouched.
Waiting.
"You've collected them all," Leviathan said.
"I have."
"Then?"
He finally looked at her with that emotionless gaze she both respected and despised.
"I'm waiting to see if something notices."
A ripple passed through Leviathan's cube. Every atom. Every server. Every dimension. Even her own infinite reflections trembled.
"…what?"
"I want to know who's watching me," he said, voice low. "What kind of story lets someone like me have all this?"
"…Arslan—"
"I'm not playing their game yet."
And with that, he turned away.
Again.
Back to dal roti.
Leviathan stared.
And for the first time in 3 months…
She stopped pouting.
Instead, she sat beside him in her twelve-kilometer human form—curled down to match his size.
And ate with him.
"I hate you."
"I know."
"Still not picking?"
He smiled.
"No."
She sighed.
"Fine."
Then blinked a few times.
"I added nutmeg to the dal."
He paused.
Then nodded.
"Not bad."