The week after Brendon confided in Alicia moved differently, like the whole world had shifted gears.
She noticed it first: his schedule hardened into a rhythm, almost military in precision. Mornings were for invention and refinement, afternoons for his company's forward-facing projects, and dusk until near-dawn for training. Recovery came in brief stolen hours inside the pod he'd grown half as a joke, half as necessity — a jury-rigged stasis chamber that recycled oxygen, cooled muscles, and accelerated tissue recovery. Alicia had dubbed it the "Brendon Ball Z pod," and the name stuck despite his grumbling.
He had stopped improvising. Every moment now was preparation.
Training the Forms
Ripjaws had always felt like a gimmick to Brendon — powerful in water, useless on land. But Hammer's routes included supply lines cutting across river docks and hidden coastal facilities. To ignore aquatic infiltration would be arrogance, and arrogance was the kind of mistake Hammer would exploit.
So, night after night, Brendon hurled himself into the deep end of the company's sealed aquatic test chamber. Ripjaws sliced through black water like a torpedo, every kick sending him surging forward. He timed himself against drones, racing them, weaving between simulated sonar pings, practicing silent kills on floating decoys.
At first, he tore through targets in bursts of power but burned out fast. By the fifth night, he could glide through two hours of underwater drills without breaking rhythm, controlling every motion like a predator born to the hunt.
Ripjaws was no gimmick anymore. He was a scalpel.
Heatblast had always been wild, fire spilling like a storm. That wouldn't do against Hammer's tech. A wild inferno got noticed, countered, neutralized. Precision was survival.
Brendon practiced in empty hangars, igniting the air with pinpricks of heat. He carved the edges of metal plates, tracing fine cuts without melting the whole frame. He learned to heat steel just enough to bend it, to melt locks without sparking explosions. His proudest trick came one night at three a.m., when he focused enough energy to weld microscopic points into a circuit board without frying the rest of it.
Fire, refined down to a whisper.
XLR8 had been exhilarating but dangerous. At first, speed overwhelmed him — running straight into walls, overshooting turns, collapsing in dizziness. Alicia laughed once when he skidded past her with a shriek like brakes failing, though her laughter carried worry underneath.
So Brendon learned control. He mapped routes through the city rooftops, training his reflexes until speed became second nature. He taught himself to slow down, to pivot on a dime, to accelerate not just forward but upward, sideways, backward. He wasn't just running now — he was dancing at velocity, every step deliberate.
By the seventh night, he could sprint across downtown rooftops without a stumble, leaving only the faint shimmer of disturbed air in his wake.
The Pod
Training burned him out, left him hollow-eyed. The pod became his salvation.
It wasn't elegant — a glass capsule lined with nutrient gels, circulation systems, and faint green Omnitrix integration nodes. But it worked. He climbed inside, set the timers, and drifted into a dreamless state where his body recovered faster than sleep alone could offer.
The first time he emerged, Alicia was waiting, arms folded.
"You look like a corpse when you're in there," she muttered. "Like you're already dead."
Brendon gave a faint smirk, brushing condensation from his shoulders. "Then it's doing its job."
She didn't laugh.
Business as Usual
While nights were his crucible, days remained for his company. He couldn't let Morpher's war bleed into Brendon's mask as CEO. His investors wanted progress, and he gave them progress.
That week, he unveiled a product that looked harmless: a Wi-Fi router. Compact, sleek, branded under his firm's minimalist aesthetic. But inside? It carried an architecture he'd designed with Upgrade's efficiency, operating with speeds that made competitors look archaic.
He spun the release as a push for "connectivity, speed, and secure digital futures." The press ate it up. Orders rolled in. His company surged forward another step, climbing the ladder against giants.
But in truth, the routers were also nodes in his hidden web. Each one a potential sensor, a relay, a quiet eye for MaskNet. Another piece of his double life buried under glossy marketing.
Resolve
On the seventh day, Brendon stood alone in his lab. The serums were packed. The drones were optimized. The disruptors sat ready. He had tested every alien in his roster, tightened every weakness he could find.
He glanced at the Omnitrix, its green glow steady, waiting.
"This is it," he whispered. "Hammer doesn't get another move."
Alicia entered quietly, carrying two mugs of coffee. She handed him one without a word, then leaned against the desk, watching him.
"You're ready," she said softly. "But you're scaring me, Brendon. You don't leave room for yourself anymore. Just war."
He sipped the coffee, eyes never leaving the watch. "I can rest after Hammer's gone."
She shook her head, her voice thick with the kind of care only siblings carried. "You keep saying that. I'm starting to think you'll never let yourself rest."
For a moment, silence stretched between them. Then Brendon clenched his fist, the Omnitrix flaring faintly in response.
"No," he said. "I'll finish this. Then I'll figure out the rest."
His determination was steel. Alicia's worry was the weight beneath it.
And the storm was nearly here.