"Ma'am, after investigating the guy who escaped from the target we got some information. It seems the vigilante is going to attack Tombstone."
"And he seems more approachable than we thought."
Another agent nodded. "So can we use a soft approach first? If he's not killing people he might be willing to talk."
Natasha looked at the file for a moment. Then at the monitor.
"Mm." She crossed her arms. "It seems we can relax a little. But don't lower your guard."
The room settled back into quiet. Agents watching their screens. Radio confirmations coming in low from the perimeter team outside.
Then —
"Holy shit."
Every head turned.
A younger female agent was sitting at the far monitor, one hand half raised, staring at her screen. She looked up and realized the whole room was looking at her.
"Sorry — sorry, ma'am. But look at this."
She turned the monitor toward the room and pointed.
On the thermal feed a human-shaped outline was moving through the building. Clear. Normal. Two arms, two legs. Nothing unusual about it.
"What." One of the agents near the back frowned. "It's just a gang member inside the building."
A few of them exchanged looks. Why make a scene over a thermal reading of a person.
"No." The girl shook her head fast. "No no no. You don't understand. I was watching the crystal guy this whole time. I never looked away. And then he walked into that room on the third floor and —" she pulled up the recorded footage from two minutes ago and played it. "Watch."
They watched.
The thermal feed showed the crystal figure moving through the building. The shape was unmistakable — completely different from a human outline. The temperature reading was wrong for a human. The edges were sharp and irregular. It moved through two corridors and then entered a room on the third floor.
And then the outline changed.
In under a second. No flash. No transition. One moment it was the crystal shape and the next it was a clean normal human outline. Two arms. Two legs. Standard body temperature reading.
The room was quiet for a moment.
"It changed," one agent said quietly.
"Is that a new form?" another one said. "One that looks exactly human?"
"Is that a human who can transform into other forms — or something that changed into a human?"
That question made everyone go silent.
Then the feed changed again on the live monitor. The outline shifted. Bigger now. Much bigger. And where there should have been two arms there were four.
"It changed again."
"That's not the same form."
"It went from crystal to human to — what is that. Four arms?"
Nobody had an answer for that. The agents looked at each other around the room.
"Why would it change twice in that short a time?" Natasha said slowly. "It changed to a human form and then immediately changed to something completely different. There is something we are missing here." She paused. "And I think whatever that is might answer a lot of bigger questions."
Silence.
Then one of the senior agents spoke. "There are too many unknowns around this individual. Every answer just creates more questions." He looked at Natasha. "Capturing him is the only way we get real information."
"Monitor everything," she said. "Stay ready to move. It looks like he is heading toward the main target now."
"Yes ma'am."
The room went back to watching.
Inside the building the sixth floor corridor was long and badly lit. One bulb flickering at the far end. Doors on both sides, all closed.
Jack was walking through it in Four Arms form.
Four arms. Big. Heavy. Each step made a dull thud on the concrete floor. He had taken down three more gang members on the staircase and two more in the corridor on the way up. None of them had lasted more than a few seconds. Four Arms was a completely different level from the crystal form — raw strength, no technique needed, just force.
But his head was somewhere else.
This ten minute time limit is genuinely getting on my nerves, he thought. Every time I transform I have to find somewhere safe to switch and it frustrates me. Jack had tried everything he remembered Ben trying in the show but his Omnitrix was completely different and nothing changed.
He glanced at the green dial on his chest.
"Hey system," he said quietly. "Is there seriously no other way to manage the alien switching or increase the time limit?"
A small blue screen appeared at the edge of his vision.
[ No. Unlock 5 aliens first for more information on that. ]
Jack stared at it.
"That's it? That's your answer?"
[ Yes. ]
The screen disappeared.
He stood there for a second with four arms and an extremely annoyed expression.
"Stupid system."
He turned back to the corridor. The door at the end was different from the others — heavier, metal frame, a light coming from underneath it.
That was the room.
Jack walked up to it. Looked at it for a moment.
He kicked the door clean off its hinges.
It flew across the room and hit the far wall with a sound like a car crash.
Jack stepped through the frame and looked at the man on the other side of the room.
Tombstone looked up slowly from where he was standing. Big. White hair. The kind of person who didn't move when a door got kicked in because he had never needed to.
For a moment neither of them said anything.
Jack crossed two of his four arms.
"What — did you really think that after everything you pulled I wasn't going to show up? Today's your day, Stone."
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