After the nightmare, Jack trained hard. Having a real goal — not just something to keep himself busy, but an actual direction — made the difference. He could feel it in the way he moved through each day: school, band practice, the dojo, and then the city at night. The routine had a shape to it now. A week slipped by before he noticed.
Then, during a gang fight, he picked up a tip about new activity at a dock — scheduled, specific, handed to him a little too cleanly.
He sat with it for a while after. Something felt off. Why does this feel like another trap?
Even so, he decided to go. Just more carefully this time.
He pressed the Omnitrix. No hesitation.
Kachak.
Diamondhead.
The dock looked normal.
Cargo moving, men working, the usual rhythm of an illegal operation that hadn't been disrupted yet. Jack stayed back and watched for longer than he would have before, scanning the rooftops, the containers, the blind spots between stacked crates.
Nothing.
He waited another few minutes. Still nothing.
Maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe that's exactly what they want me to think.
He moved in.
Diamondhead landed hard in the middle of the dock. A man turned, saw him, and bolted — but not fast enough. A crystal spike burst up at his feet and threw him off balance before he'd taken three steps. Another man came in from the right and pulled a gun when he saw what happened to the first. It didn't help. Jack pivoted with the movement, snapping a shard out from his forearm — sharp, controlled — and knocked the weapon clean out of his hand before the man could aim.
"Back up, back up!" someone shouted, and two more men hesitated at the edge of the operation, uncertain.
Jack saw the moment and didn't waste it. The ground shifted again, crystal spreading wide under their feet and forcing them apart before they could regroup.
He hit the operation hard and clean after that. The crystal form handled everything with a kind of ease that felt earned — he'd spent enough time training with this alien that the tactics came naturally now. Shields absorbing impacts, ground spikes cutting off escape routes, precise shards stripping weapons without putting anyone in the ground. When a big man rushed him from the left swinging a metal pipe, Jack reshaped his forearm into a blade and redirected the strike in one clean movement, sending the pipe skidding across the dock.
It was going well. Too well, maybe.
Then danger spiked through him — sharp and immediate.
He raised both arms and threw up a full crystal barrier in the same instant the first explosion hit.
BOOM.
The force shook the ground. Then another blast, and three more in rapid succession, each one powerful enough that the shockwaves rattled the barrier even from outside it. Jack held the shield and kept his mind working while the sequence played out.
These aren't Tombstone's people.
When the smoke thinned, he looked up.
On top of a nearby shipping container, several men were repositioning — each carrying heavy explosive equipment, moving with the kind of practiced coordination you didn't learn on the street. They hadn't been there before. They'd slipped in during the fight while Jack was occupied.
And at the front of them stood someone new.
Yellow suit. Heavy gauntlets. A visor across his face. The relaxed posture of someone who had done this before and didn't find it particularly difficult. He looked down at Diamondhead and laughed once — short, dismissive. "Tombstone and his whole crew couldn't figure out who you were or catch you." He shook his head slowly. "Bunch of amateurs. Wasted all that setup for nothing."
Jack studied the gauntlets and already knew what they did. "Who are you?"
The man dropped from the container, landing easy. "Shocker." He rolled one shoulder, gauntlets humming to life. "And you're the enemy I'm about to take apart."
He fired.
The vibro-shock blasts came fast — left, right, angled low — not the wild swings of someone untrained. Shocker knew how to fight. The blasts didn't penetrate the crystal skin directly, but the force behind them was something else, each impact transferring enough energy to stagger even Diamondhead's heavy frame and push him back.
Jack adjusted immediately, stopping trying to close the distance straight on and working angles instead — firing crystal shards to force repositioning, using ground spikes to cut off the open space Shocker needed to keep his range advantage. When Shocker jumped left, Jack already had a spike cluster going to that side. When the gauntlets charged for a heavy blast, he raised a thick shield, let it absorb the hit, and fired back through the smoke before the dust settled.
"You're tougher than I thought," Shocker admitted, breathing harder now. A burn marked one side of his costume where a shard had clipped him. He fired twice more, retreating as he did.
Jack pressed forward, one arm reshaped into a blade, the other into a launcher, keeping the pressure constant the way Colleen had drilled into him — make them react, don't give them space to reset. Shocker was good, but he was losing ground and they both knew it.
Then the sirens started.
Distant at first, then closing fast — multiple units, moving hard. Blue and red light began painting the edges of the dock in long sweeping arcs. Jack's attention shifted for half a second, tracking the direction of the sound.
That half-second was enough.
Shocker caught him with a full-charge blast at close range. The impact threw Diamondhead sideways into the wall of a container with enough force to dent the metal. By the time Jack pushed off and turned back, Shocker was already at the water's edge — beaten up, one arm hanging lower than the other, but moving with purpose. He glanced back once, then dropped into the dark water and was gone.
Jack stood at the edge and looked down. Nothing but black water and a fading ripple.
The sirens were close now.
He turned. Police vehicles were pouring through the dock entrance, officers fanning out with weapons raised, snipers already settling into positions on the elevated walkways above.
"Hands up! Don't move!"
Jack looked at the water, then at the ring of officers tightening around him. He crouched, pressed both palms flat to the dock surface, and let the crystal grow fast and wide beneath his feet — a smooth shard angled like a ramp. He stepped onto it, let gravity take over, and went sliding hard across the dock toward the far perimeter wall. By the time anyone had a clear angle, he was already over it and gone.
George Stacy stood at the dock entrance and watched the green crystal structure dissolve slowly into nothing where the figure had been. His officers were already sweeping the perimeter. He knew they wouldn't find anything.
He stood there a moment, looking at the empty space, not saying anything. Just watching.
"Sir, do we pursue?"
"No." He turned back toward the dock. "This was already outside our lane." He kept walking. "Secure the scene."
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