From that day on, things felt quieter.
Not dramatically. It just settled in gradually over the following days — a cleaner head, a steadier focus, the kind of stillness that comes from actually dealing with something instead of just carrying it around. Colleen's words had stayed with me more than I expected. I went back to the dojo twice that week and worked harder than the first session. My body hurt in new places. That felt like progress.
Slowly I started my hero activities again. But this time differently.
Before going out I sat down and made proper preparations — patrol routes mapped against crime data, timing planned around the Omnitrix's recharge cycles, escape routes identified for every major area I intended to cover. I wrote things down, cross-referenced, thought about contingencies.
Even then, implementing it in the field was harder than it looked on paper.
"If I had a smart alien… it would be so much easier."
Something with actual intelligence and technical ability. A form like that could help me design a proper support system — something that worked in my human form too, not just during transformations. Better protection, better tools, better options when the Omnitrix timed out and left me standing there in sneakers.
I pulled up the system panel.
[ Hero Points: 90 ]
"Still need 110 more…" A slow breath. "Hey Omnitrix, give me a smart alien, okay?" The green core glowed quietly and said nothing. "Worth a try."
I finished suiting up. The custom bulletproof suit fit better than the first time — I'd made a few adjustments during the week off. The mask sat clean across my face. Nothing fancy, but functional. I checked the mirror once, decided it was good enough, and pressed the Omnitrix.
A flash of green light filled the room.
XLR8 crouched on the floor where I had been standing. The mask was still there, sitting over my face exactly as it had been. The transformation had worked around it completely.
"Then that's good."
There was something about XLR8 that always felt right — the speed, the way the world slowed around you, the sense that you were always a step ahead. I rolled my shoulders once and moved out.
New York at night had its own rhythm.
Moving quickly across the city — rooftops, streets, gaps between buildings — I scanned as I went. After a week off I had expected criminal activity to have picked back up. Operations reorganizing, shipments rescheduled, gangs feeling bolder without the Blur around to disrupt things.
But the streets were quieter than expected. A few thieves here and there, small stuff, nothing coordinated. I dealt with them quickly and kept moving. The bigger operations were either lying low or had been set back further than I realized.
"Not many dare to act…"
Good. The previous weeks had left a mark. I kept running.
One guy tried to snatch a bag from a woman near a closed shop. I was behind him before he took three steps. He hit the ground, looked up, and scrambled away so fast he left the bag behind.
I picked it up and left it by the shop door.
The dream came that night.
I was fighting Thanos.
One moment I wasn't anywhere — then I was, standing in the middle of something vast and dark with the weight of it pressing down from every direction. He was exactly the way I had always imagined he would be in reality. Not the screen version, not panels on a page. Something worse. Bigger. The kind of presence that changed the air just by existing in it.
All six Infinity Stones. I could see them — each one lit against the gauntlet like a different color of wrong.
I tried to fight him anyway. Of course I did. It didn't matter. He moved through everything I threw at him the way water moves around a stone — without effort, without acknowledgment, like I wasn't even worth being stopped.
Then he raised his hand. And snapped.
Everything ended. Not dramatically. Just — gone. The silence that followed was worse than any sound.
Gwen. Peter. George. Helen. Right in front of me. One moment there, then not — like someone had turned off a light.
"No—!"
Jack woke up hard, sitting upright in bed with his breathing loud in the quiet room.
He didn't move for a moment. His chest rose and fell. The room was dark and completely ordinary — same walls, same ceiling, same pale light from the street through the curtain gap.
Just a nightmare.
But his hands were still tense against the sheets, and the feeling hadn't left with the sleep.
He got up, walked to the sink, and ran the cold water. Both hands under it, held there, then a splash across his face. The cold helped a little. Not completely.
He looked at the time.
4:44 AM.
He stood there for a while. The dream kept replaying — not the fighting, not Thanos himself, but the faces. The moment after. The silence. That was the part that stayed.
He couldn't go back to sleep.
He pulled on a jacket and stepped outside.
The streets were quiet at this hour. Cold, still — a distant engine somewhere, the hum of streetlights, nothing else. He walked slowly without any particular direction, just moving, letting the air work.
"…I don't want that to happen."
The thought sat plainly in front of him. Not dramatic, just true. Waiting for the Avengers to handle it felt wrong. Expecting them to be enough felt like gambling with everyone he knew. But standing here at four in the morning telling himself he'd be the one to stop it —
"That's arrogance."
He looked down at the Omnitrix. The green core glowed faintly in the dark, steady and patient the way it always was.
He stood there for a long moment.
"…Still."
"I'll stop that snap." Quiet, to no one. "No matter what."
Just a decision. Made alone on a cold empty street, with no one around to hear it.
Far away, in the Himalayan mountains, a bald woman slowly opened her eyes.
She had been still for hours. The room around her was silent and cold, high stone walls holding the darkness carefully. One long, even breath.
Then she turned her gaze — not physically, but in the way she had learned to turn it — toward New York.
A moment of quiet.
Then a faint smile appeared on her face.
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