Brendon had learned early that the Omnitrix gave him power.
But power without precision was a torch in the dark — it burned bright, it drew eyes, it left trails.
Now, as he dismantled Justin Hammer piece by piece, he wasn't just wielding aliens. He was wielding discipline.
The Labs
The first facility had been hidden beneath a warehouse in Jersey, supposedly untouchable. Hammer had laced it with private guards, encrypted locks, and automated turrets.
Greymatter cracked it in less than an hour.
Perched on a ventilation grate, barely the size of a rat, Brendon slipped through the corridors unseen. The Omnitrix fed him schematics he drew up in seconds, mapping pathways in glowing green holograms only he could read.
When he reached the central power core, he didn't obliterate it. He reversed it. Every machine, every turret, every experimental rig folded in on itself — melted wires, scrambled AI, storage drives corrupted beyond recovery. By the time the guards realized something was wrong, the entire facility was just steel husks and smoke.
The second lab went faster. Heatblast reduced the outer defenses to slag, and XLR8 stripped the vault clean in under three minutes. He didn't keep the tech; he dissolved it with an acid compound Greymatter had brewed for exactly this purpose. Hammer couldn't rebuild what no longer existed.
By the time Hammer received the reports, Brendon was already gone — the night wind at his back, the Omnitrix dim against his wrist.
Interference
Hammer's attempts to recruit mercenaries and criminals were almost laughable to Brendon.
Greymatter intercepted the messages before they ever left Hammer's servers. His VI, piggybacking on stolen networks, would reroute Hammer's encrypted offers directly into Brendon's private terminal. It was child's play now — like pulling secrets from a diary written in pencil.
Most contracts, Brendon simply shredded digitally, leaving the recipient with nothing. Others he let through, but with modifications — payout halved, risk doubled, promises vague. Enough to sour the deal before it even began.
A few he intercepted personally. As Upgrade, he hijacked delivery drones mid-route, redirecting equipment to "random failures" in shipping. As XLR8, he appeared in front of one desperate would-be villain, ripped the phone from his hands, and whispered only one word before vanishing:
"Don't."
The man never returned to the game.
Evolution of Thought
After the third strike, Brendon sat alone in his workshop, the VI humming softly through the speakers. Alicia had gone home for the night, and silence filled the space — the kind of silence that let thoughts seep in.
Hammer wasn't an idiot. Paranoid, desperate, reckless — but not an idiot.
Brendon's lips pressed thin as the thought crystallized. He might connect me to Morpher.
The old Brendon — the one from just weeks ago — would have panicked at that. But Greymatter's intellect lingered now even in human form. His thoughts clicked sharper, cleaner, almost mathematical.
He didn't panic. He built contingencies.
A master switch — one signal, one press, and every trace of Morpher's identity scrubbed itself clean. Databases wiped. Cloud backups fried. Even his own devices preprogrammed to hard-reset to blank.
If Hammer dug too close, all he'd find was ash.
Finalizing the Strike
By the week's end, Brendon convened with Alicia and the VI — whom he half-jokingly started calling AEGIS.
Alicia leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, her eyes sharp in the glow of the monitors. "You're pushing Hammer into a corner. A dangerous animal gets nastier the tighter the cage."
"That's the point," Brendon replied, scanning through stock reports on his tablet. "Cornered, he'll make mistakes. And when he does, we'll take more than his labs. We'll take everything."
The VI pulsed a green waveform across the screen. "Projection: Hammer Industries stock value falling in response to operational shutdowns. Anticipated decline: 12% within two weeks if current sabotage continues. Optimal window for acquisition: five days after major disruption."
Brendon nodded. "Then we disrupt harder."
Alicia raised an eyebrow. "You're not just playing vigilante anymore."
He smirked faintly, tired but resolute. "No. I'm playing to win."
She sighed, but a smile tugged at her lips. "You're insane. But… you've got me. All in."
Together, with AEGIS quietly humming like a third partner, they finalized the plans — not just to bring down Justin Hammer's empire in the shadows, but to buy the pieces when it crumbled.
Hammer thought he was facing a ghost in the night.
He had no idea he was already bleeding out in daylight.