Brendon had always been a loner by necessity. Morpher was a mask, a secret. And Brendon — CEO, inventor, alien vigilante — was a precarious balance he barely managed. But genius only took you so far. Even the brightest mind cracked under pressure if it carried the weight alone.
Tonight, he decided he couldn't carry it alone anymore.
The Confidante
Alicia Maren wasn't the obvious choice. She wasn't an engineer, a coder, or a scientist. She was a logistics officer at Brendon's company, sharp-eyed and reliable, someone who'd kept his fragile startup afloat in its earliest chaos. If Brendon was the firestarter, Alicia was the steady hand keeping the flames from burning the house down.
Greymatter, perched on the desk like a sardonic gargoyle, studied her file through MaskNet. Background clean. No signs of corporate ties or shady funding. Competent to a fault.
"She's boring," Greymatter muttered, tiny fingers flicking across the screen. "That's exactly what you need."
When Brendon finally sat her down, Alicia listened in silence. The glow of the Omnitrix cast faint green reflections in her eyes as he explained — not everything, but enough. The aliens. The double life. The growing threat of Justin Hammer.
When he finished, she leaned back in her chair, arms crossed.
"So," Alicia said dryly, "you're telling me my boss is Iron Man, but green, and can also turn into a tiny frog scientist."
"Galvan," Brendon corrected automatically, then winced. "Not a frog."
She smirked. "Uh-huh. And you waited this long to tell me because…?"
"I needed to know I could trust you."
"And now?"
Brendon hesitated, then exhaled. "Now I need someone who can remind me I'm not just a lab rat with a fancy watch."
Alicia's expression softened. For the first time in months, Brendon felt the tight knot in his chest loosen. She didn't freak out. She didn't run. She didn't even ask for proof beyond the flickering alien hologram on his wrist. She just nodded, steady as ever.
"Then I'm in," she said. "But Brendon, you do realize you don't have a life outside of this, right? No friends. No downtime. You're going to crack if you keep pretending this is sustainable."
Brendon opened his mouth to argue. Stopped. She wasn't wrong.
"I'll… think about it."
"Good," Alicia said, standing. "Because as much as the world needs Morpher, it also needs Brendon. And Brendon needs people."
The words stuck with him long after she left the lab.
The Spark of a Circle
That night, Brendon's thoughts spiraled. He had been isolating himself. Work, MaskNet, Morpher — rinse and repeat. Alicia's words gnawed at him until they twisted into an idea.
A network. Not soldiers, not allies. But a circle. Kids like him — smart, ambitious, different. A place to belong, to experiment, to sharpen each other.
He jotted names down. Not specifics, not yet. But archetypes: the coder. The biologist. The tinkerer. The strategist.
And somewhere down the line, maybe the scrappy photographer from Queens he'd heard of in passing, or the brilliant blonde who dissected equations like poetry. But not yet. Not before Hammer.
For now, it was just a seed.
The Alien Breakthrough
The Omnitrix hadn't given him new forms in weeks. Every spin of the dial showed the same gallery: XLR8, Diamondhead, Greymatter, Wildmutt, Heatblast, Four Arms, Stinkfly, Ripjaws, Ghostfreak. He thought he'd seen them all.
Until the dial flickered.
Green light split the air, and Brendon felt his body liquefy into flowing black and silver metal. Circuits rippled across his skin, red seams glowing faintly. His limbs stretched into shifting machinery.
Upgrade.
Brendon stood in awe, half-human half-machine, as the lab's computers fused with his form. He didn't just operate them — he was them. Files, code, schematics surged into his awareness like second thoughts. He touched the drone on his desk, and it melted into his arm, instantly reconfigured into a sleeker, optimized model.
"Holy—" His voice glitched through a filter of static. "This changes everything."
Hours vanished in a storm of innovation. His recon drones doubled their range, cut their weight in half. His disruptors — once clunky prototypes — became lean, modular devices capable of shorting out Hammer's EMP nets. He embedded cloaking nodes into his armor rig, giving Morpher a ghostlike silhouette.
Upgrade wasn't just an alien. He was efficiency incarnate.
And Brendon intended to squeeze every drop of it.
The Voice Inside
One problem remained: secrecy. Every second he wore the watch, every transformation, was another risk of exposure. The serums helped. Alicia's support steadied him. But he needed automation.
So he built a VI.
Not a full AI — that was reckless, unstable, and he wasn't Tony Stark. But a basic virtual intelligence, simple enough to run surveillance, monitor his vitals, and interact with the Omnitrix on a fundamental level.
It took days of coding as Greymatter and long nights as Upgrade, but finally, the voice crackled to life through his earpiece.
"Designation: AEGIS online."
The voice was neutral, mechanical, almost soothing.
"Primary directive?" it asked.
"Keep me alive. Keep me hidden," Brendon said.
And for the first time, he felt the Omnitrix wasn't just his burden. It was part of a system. A foundation.
Quiet Resolve
By the end of the week, Brendon was no longer the same man who had stumbled into this world months ago. His lab was cleaner, sharper, alive with new drones and equipment. His serums were locked and ready. His new VI whispered data into his ear at all hours.
And Alicia — Alicia had become his anchor. The only person who saw Brendon behind Morpher, who reminded him to breathe, to exist beyond the mission.
Hammer was coming. The storm was on the horizon.
But for the first time, Brendon wasn't just waiting for it. He was building the blade he'd wield when it arrived.