"So, you want to start or shall I?" 

Shi Jian narrowed his eyes and frowned at Ben as he popped open his sprite can and took a sip. "Star with what? A plan? We haven't really got enough information to go with here."

"Not that." Ben said. "Like learn about each other. I don't know if you know, but I'm trying to make an alliance of sorts.. and I hope after this is over we can maybe um.. not kill each other?"

Shi Jian sighed. "That much was obvious the more information I gathered on you. The Killer, The Vampire, The Fairy, all of them hanging around in the same house as you and acting so buddy buddy having breakfast like its nothing.. and to top it off the two best girls there seem to be infatuated with you. Tsk, despicable."

"Uh- sorry?" Ben grumbled.

"Getting to hang around with so many first class women!! D-dumbass!" gasped Shi Jian before shaking his head and biting furiously into his cheeseburger. 

The two of them were inside what appeared to be the local knockoff brand fast food restaurant MgRonalds.. "

"Hello I'm Maou-san would you like to try our local special-."

"N-not now." Ben stammered, waving at the waiter and bowing. "Uh, sorry about this."

"If you need anything else just call." The waiter left as Ben took his own burger and began unwrapping it.  

"So." Ben bit into his meal. "Come on.. mmf.. can't be that hard now considering we're at least in a truce right now."

"Fine." said Shi Jian. "You go first then."

"Ben Tennyson." said Ben. "I'm still regathering the memories I've lost, but so far I remember that I was 10 years old when I got a device called the Omnitrix which fell out of the sky in a blaze of fire. It stuck to my wrist giving me the superpowers of 10 aliens, so I called myself Ben 10 and became a super hero. I did a bunch of stuff, saved the universe several times, and even became famous. You?"

"Ben 10? Really? Cheesy name. Well I can't say I'm exactly a super hero in the same traditional sense as you, but I'm so good at my job I'm highly regarded by my peers." said Shi Jian. "I'm a member of the TPD, Time Police Department."

"Really? A time cop?" Ben muttered. "You're wearing a lab coat."

"It's a military Trench coat you dumbass." Shijian grunted, pointing at the stripes on his shoulder and the badge fitted to his white cop-hat.  "Did they not fit you with eyes when you were born? Most are dark black or blue, but white is to indicate a decorated officer whose skills and deeds have exceeded the norm."

"So what? do you travel back in time and stop crazy people from turning things into planet of the apes?" Ben asked.

"Firstly, I don't time travel between past and future, I time travel between alternating presents." said Shijian. "My world is one that exists in multiple timelines at once."

"What do you mean?" Ben asked. 

"There's a Multiverse, meaning different Earths existing in the same space at once in different dimensions, but then there's also the Time-Verse, which is the SAME Earth but different timeline branches of it." said Shijian. 

"Crosstime." Ben said. "You're saying Crosstime and Multiverse Theory aren't the same?"

"Precisely." said Shijian. "I'm amazed you know Crosstime theory however."

"I know a guy." Ben said. "So I'm guessing there are multiple timeline versions of the Multiverse itself then."

"Precisely.." said Shijian. "Sometimes it can be a bit confusing, which is understandable. Because both Crosstime and Multiverse have similarities. Number one, they are both near infinite, possibly completely infinite.  Secondly, each Universe and each Crosstime  can have alternate versions of things from another world or alternate timeline. Crosstime has it because it literally is just an alternate version of the world should things have turned out differently, and Multiverse has it because it's so infinite and vast its inevitable that there's a world out there with at least a 99 percent resemblance.

"And that means the Multiverse probably has multiple alternate versions of itself because of cross time." Ben muttered.

"Precisely, but we don't have time to delve into this stuff, especially since we don't know when we'll get looped and I'll have run all the way back to your house all over again.  To summarize, my universe's ruler developed the ability to cross multiple different alternate timelines. He therefore conquered all the alternate versions of my world in multiple different cross times in multiple different alternative presents to the point that my civilization spreads across those multiple alternating versions of my own planet in time.  Heck he even defeated all his alternate present selves in those cross times." 

"Oof, like Kang The Conqueror in Loki all over again." Ben muttered.

"Huh, you watched it? Have to admit their perception of time physics was interesting, but bore some major flaws- ugh we're leaping off the point here." Shi Jian shook his head. "The point being that because of how my world is ruled, there's a lot of time bending technology and shenanigans to the point that the police in my world have had to utilize Time manipulation in our ability to capture criminals."

"Like when that belt made you go super fast." Ben said.

"Yes, that, I slowed time around me." said Shi Jian. 

"And that bullet which kept reversing Swampfire's regeneration." said Ben. 

"Yes a Phenomena Distortion Bullet." said Shi Jian.

"And the bullet that automatically appeared in me?" Ben asked. 

"It phased through another timeline, an alternate version of the world we're in, and phased out once it was in the exact spot you were." said Shi Jian. "Simple. Granted you can still dodge it.. its trajectory doesn't change. You just need to know where it's going to end up. It's more for dealing with armored enemies than anything. That's the most common bullet type my Temporal Pistol can fire."

"Don't you run out?" Ben asked. "if they're special bullets-."

"My gun has unlimited ammo. The bullets aren't exactly made of metal." said Shi Jian. "Of course there are certain bullets that need to be recharged after a limited use. My Phenomena Cancel Bullet for instance, rewrites an entire incident that occurred wherever it hits by 2 minutes. Effectively, I can shoot myself to reverse being fatally wounded. After that, a Time Seal occurs, meaning whatever happened to whatever I shot, cannot happen ever again without being instantly rewritten once more. Meaning if I get fatally wounded in the same way I was before I rewrote it, I would instantly restart without firing the phenomena  cancel. "

"Whoa.. that's.. AMAZING! That would turn the tide for ANY sort of fight, especially if the enemy only has one way to win." said Ben. 

"Indeed, but those bullets can only be fired 3 times a day, heavy recharge time, and not something you can just spam or use carelessly." said Shi Jian. "That's how my gun works."

"Your powers are amazing." Ben murmured. 

"I don't have powers, I just have this gear." said Shi Jian. "Granted I'm good at using it compared to my colleagues, but I'm not a brawler like The Demon or The Vampire. Sometimes I wonder why the gods brought me into this war. Not like I can fight deitic heroes."

"What's your Radiance?" Ben asked. 

Shi Jian smirked. "Well that would give me access to my Restricted Gear, the type that my division usually doesn't hand out to me unless its an emergency, but who wants to talk about that?"

Ben frowned. "Have you ever found that after you got out of your radiance, some of the stuff you had there remains?"

Shi Jian scratched his chin. "No? Why you ask?"

"My Radiance allows me to access ALL the forms I unlocked before the War, not just the 10 that I've been nerfed into using." Ben said. "I used a particular form against Ophelia some time ago. And that form stayed as an option in my play list after I got out of Radiance."

Shi Jian looked shocked for a second. "I.. can't imagine why that'd be. Either that thing on your wrist is more powerful than we give it credit for, or you've got some sort of outside ally."

"Outside ally?" Ben asked. 

"Somebody who isn't affected by the gods, who finds ways to remain out of the influence of their power."

Ben frowned as he remembered a familiar detective. His phone still lay in his pocket. Could that guy-? No it couldn't be him. He might've been clever but he didn't know how to work the Omnitrix. 

"Staying out of Shub Niggurath's influence is one power that's already quite impressive enough." Ben muttered. "Whoever they are, I hope they're a friend."

"Mmm, perhaps." said Shi Jian.  "In any case, introductions are out of the way. We're on full Mystery Solving mode now. Luckily for you, I'm a cop whose good at this."

"Really? The same cop who thought that nurse's outfit was a decent disguise and then started acting crazy when we started looping." Ben muttered. 

"D-don't give such a 'press X to doubt' look!" squealed Shi Jian furiously. "I'm telling you I'm a high ranking cop!!"

"Whatever you say man. Got any time tools to analyze the time stream or something?" Ben asked. 

"Like I said, it's not like that." said Shi Jian. "I'm a Time Manipulator, not Doctor Who. I utilize time mainly in combat and traveling to crime scenes in alternate time lines. "

"Well then that's easy." said Ben. "Why don't you travel us over to an alternate version of this timeline where we solved the loop and ask the us there?"

"While that is a thought I considered, there are two problems with that." said Shi Jian as he finished his burger and began snaking his fingers into his fries.  "First of all, we don't exist in the alternate timelines of this world because we don't belong to this world. Of course you could look for alternate timelines where  we get sent to this world just like we do here, but there are too few of those and finding them in an infinite stream of possibilities would be far too hard, and we'll be liable to age a hundred years."

"N-no we won't, we're looping." said Ben. 

"But our minds aren't. Our minds continue to age as our bodies don't as we retain the same existence over and over again for millions of years!" Shijian growled. "Do you WANT that to happen?"

"N-no." said Ben. 

"Precisely.  Plus there's the second issue." said Shi Jian. "For this issue, I'd have to show you."

"Er.. yeah?" Ben asked. 

Shi Jian placed a hand on his belt, and turned the dial. 

Instantly the room disappeared and instead Ben and Shi Jian were sitting in a decimated version of the restaurant. It was covered in grime and death, the entire place was dark and black mold seemed to creep over the ceramic floors. 

Ben looked outside the window to see a thundering dark sky with purple lightning arching across the clouds.. 

And hidden behind the clouds, lightning flashes illuminating its shape for mere moments was something utterly terrifying..

A mass of writhing tendrils.. a silhouette of multiple tentacles, limbs.. claws.. goat's hooves.. a massive churning mass of writhing horrid hell, hidden behind the clouds so huge, so massive that the moon itself was dwarfed in comparison. 

"That's enough sight seeing, we don't want the clouds to part and show us what she really looks like or that'll be bad." said Shi Jian as he turned his dial once more. 

Once again, he and Ben were sitting in the brightly lit fast food joint. 

"What was that!?" Ben asked. 

"Shub Niggurath, her true form." said Shi Jian. "She can stretch her existence through timelines, so she watches everyone in every alternate timeline all at once. And the scary thing is, I've been through over 9000 different versions of this World, the world I call Radiant War World, and besides this one, every other timeline's got the exact same scenery with her hanging in the sky in all her eldritch glory."

"So this timeline, the one we're standing in now, is the only one that's not like that!?" Ben stammered. "Jeez, what happened!?"

"From what I can gather, Shub Niggurath probably conquered this world eons ago in many timelines, but her multidimensional presence wanted to start the Radiant Wars, so she left one timeline unscathed to serve as the battlefield she wanted."

"You seem to know quite a bit about Shub." Ben muttered. "It took me and Ophelia really working at it to figure out her identity from Clint. "

"I simply gathered her identity from my investigation of your movements and actions." said Shi Jian. "I put two and two together from there. If anything, knowing that she's the one behind this should logically make you all give up at this alliance thing and just resume killing each other. Nobody's beating Shub."

"You don't know till you try." said Ben. " She shouldn't have her way."

"There's a difference between can and should." said Shi Jian. "Look I agree that Shub Niggurath shouldn't do this, but she really can, and that means you can't whether or not you should or shouldn't.  If anything the best thing to do is to have somebody finally win this Radiant War before the time penalty occurs  and finally, maybe after rewarding the winner, she'll stop doing it all. "

"You're really not much of a hero type are you?" Ben muttered. 

"Look, it's like I said, I'm a government employee. I do what I do to pay the bills and cover my grandmother's surgery in Timeline 51." said Shi Jian.  "For fuck's sake, the police work for the oppressive Multi-Temporal Tyrant who rules the Crosstimeverse of my world. You know who he used to be before he conquered timelines? The president of China! That's right I am employed to communism and labor camps for oppressed minorities."

"You say to you it's just a job, but I feel like there's more to you than that. Or you wouldn't so easily say how bad it is out there. You don't like it at all do you?" Ben asked. 

Shi  Jian's eyes dimmed. "Tsk, you remind me of my boss. She's always spouting that "You can be more" nonsense. She's obviously part of the underground resistance."

"Who knows? Maybe you'll join her after we're done with this Radiant War business." Said Ben cheerily. 

"If that happens, that means you're dead." said Shi Jian. 

"We'll see about that." said Ben with a grin. 

"Tsk, that overconfidence is gonna get you more dead than Covid." grunted Shi Jian. 

"If that happens, you can dig up my grave and say 'I told you so' to my face." said Ben. "But for now I ain't budging."

"Oh god I need to buy a shovel to get ready for that momentous day." said Shi Jian with a roll of his eyes. 

"Excuse me?" said a nearby waitress. "Can we interest you in our amazing new Chrono-special in celebration of the upcoming Maltruant Day?"

"Not now." Ben grunted as he continued to chew his food. "Sorry.  Anyways, what's your take on this? How do we begin investigating a time mystery?"

"Simple." said Shi Jian. "We simply need to relive this loop, but this time analyze whatever is unusual about the loop each time we loop through."

"What do you mean?" Ben asked. 

"A Time mishap as big as this one isn't exactly something that's not happened before in my world." said Shi Jian. "Though this is a rare type of incident, one I've never investigated before, it does match a Class 15 Felony  filed by our predecessors over a hundred years ago. The tactics for investigating a Looping Phenomenon still exist to this day.. "

"So there are steps to this." said Ben. 

"Indeed." said Shi Jian. "The first step is merely that we let the loop continue for a bit and try and note if there are differences between each loop, or if there is something in each loop that is out of place."

Ben frowned. "There is ONE thing that's out of place. My Backer has taken the place of my teacher and to top it off nobody is remembering that she is my backer or that backers are even a thing."

"Hmmm? Strange, I remember backers, mine has also disappeared." muttered Shi Jian, though I don't find that strange, my backer hides from me a lot."

"Is she female?" Ben muttered. "And hot?"

"Yes! How'd you guess!?"

"No reason."

"Though.." Ben muttered. "It's weird, cause in the first loop, Erice mentioned Deca putting my clothes for the day out.. and yet-.."

"They didn't remember by the second loop." said Shi Jian. "Interesting. Well I do know one thing that might make you quite a bit more interested. Our backers were creations of Clint's."

"What?" said Ben. "Oh right, I do think Erice mentioned that once or twice"

"Clint is Deca's father in a way, the father of our backers, a master of creating Divinely Powered Homunculi." said Shi Jian.  "I don't know if it's relevant to our current predicament, but considering what I hear happened to Clint, you ever think about how that might affect her?"

"To be honest, I was so focused on saving Ophelia it was a bit hard to think that far in." Ben muttered, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. "Is she pissed with me and playing a prank? Does she have memory wiping abilities?"

"No. Not unless your transformations have those powers." said Shi Jian. "Backers have combat abilities, yes, but they're pseudo versions of our own powers. Think of it as a match to our themes.  My Backer carries around a water gun that distorts time , slowing enemies.  The Fairy's Backer  has quite good hydrokinesis."

"And what? My backer can turn into aliens too?" Ben asked.

"Maybe? or maybe she has some other way of calling on their abilities instead of transforming." said Shi Jian. "So any aliens you have that wipe memory?"

"Not that I remember." said Ben. "Even in Radiance I don't think any of my over 80 forms have the power to do that.. though.. except one, but he's exceptional."

"Exceptional? How?"

"I don't know, for some reason that last transformation, my best one.." Ben muttered. "that's the one memory that won't come back no matter how I try. I keep thinking and thinking, but all I see is a blur in my mind, and a letter."

"Letter?"

"Yeah, X weird huh?" Ben said. 

"Very." said Shi Jian. "It's almost as if there's a power that Shub doesn't want you using even if in Radiance.. but why though? Would it be less entertaining for her?" 

"Either way, I think I know an alien that might be able to help us if the whole waiting and watching the loop doesn't work out." Ben muttered.  "One that's locked behind my Radiance, but if I can go into Radiant mode and use it..

"Really?" said Shi Jian.

"A Time Traveling Alien." said Ben. "One that actually can go forward and backwards in time. Clockwork."

"That's risky. Of course we could always try and go forward past the loop and see if it forcibly takes us out of it."  said Shi Jian. "But that's rife with variables I don't even want to consider. There's no telling what kind of horror we'll cause. We could easily grind the loop against our forced time travel and create a Cross Time Gateway between this world and all its other Crosstimes.. crosstimes which are filled with Shub Niggurath's children and servants, which trust me you don't want to meet."

"So I guess for now we wait then." Ben muttered.

"Indeed." said Shi Jian. "For now, we wait."

There was a pause..

"Waiting's boring, when is this loop starting up again?" Ben muttered.

"Well if you want entertainment-.." Shijian muttered.

2 Hours Later-.


"TAAAAKE MEEEEE OOOONNNN!!!" Shi Jian stood atop the table in the Karaoke room, the mic held up to his mouth.  "TAKE ON ME!! Come on Ben sing it! WHOOOO!!"

Ben and Shi Jian fell on the sofa of the room, yelling badly sung lyrics into their mics as the music blazed from the machine.. It would be another hour before time was once more reversed, and Ben found himself waking up back in his futon like nothing happened.