Brendon woke up with dirt in his mouth. Not the dry dust of Bangalore streets he half-expected, but red Arizona sand. His head pounded. His phone was gone, his bag was gone—hell, even the jeans he'd been wearing weren't the same.
Instead, strapped tight around his left wrist, was a device. Black and green, bulky but sleek, like something out of a cartoon.
He knew it instantly. The Omnitrix.
Brendon sat up fast, staring at it. His laugh came out hoarse, almost hysterical.
"This… this isn't real."
The watch face blinked, a green glow pulsing once like a heartbeat.
Okay. Breathe.
He pushed himself up and staggered down the hill. In the distance, a billboard stood crooked on the highway. A Stark Industries logo, bright and bold.
Brendon's stomach dropped.
"…shit. MCU."
First Contact
It took him a whole day to stop panicking. He stole a hoodie from a roadside gas station, pocketed some granola bars, and kept moving. Nobody paid him much attention—a kid in his early twenties, unshaven, clearly drifting.
That night, in the cover of an abandoned lot, he finally dared to touch the watch.
He rotated the dial. The faceplate popped up with a click. Silhouettes swirled in the hologram—alien outlines he'd seen as a kid. Four Arms. Heatblast. XLR8.
His fingers trembled as he slammed the core down.
Green light exploded.
The world tilted. His body stretched, reshaped, redefined. Where Brendon had stood, a ten-foot wall of red muscle loomed. Four fists clenched, each one thick enough to punch through steel.
"Holy… hell." His voice boomed like rolling thunder.
He stumbled a step back, staring at his reflection in a shattered window. A giant, crimson titan. Veins thrummed with raw strength. For the first time since waking up here, he felt safe.
Then the Omnitrix beeped. A red flash. And in another blink, he was human again, panting, drenched in sweat.
Engineer's Instinct
Brendon didn't sleep. He tested.
Heatblast lit up junk piles.
XLR8 blurred across empty streets, speed tearing the wind from his lungs.
Grey Matter—the strangest—shrunk him down into a frog-eyed tinkerer with a brain like lightning.
And that's when his instincts kicked in. He was an engineer before this—automation, robotics, coding. But as Grey Matter, it was like his thoughts had been stripped of friction. Circuits sang. Equations clicked.
He pulled apart a broken payphone in minutes, rebuilding its transmitter into something sleeker, more efficient. He jotted diagrams on ripped notebook pages he scavenged, mapping potential devices he could cobble together once he had proper tools.
For the first time since waking here, fear started giving way to opportunity.
The Omnitrix wasn't just a weapon. It was a lab, a toolkit, a startup factory strapped to his wrist.
The First Choice
By the end of the week, Brendon had cash—small-time hustles: fixing electronics for quick money, swiping from people who wouldn't notice. He hated it, but survival didn't wait for morals.
The bigger problem was… power drew attention. He was careful not to transform in public, but even small slip-ups left marks. Burned asphalt from Heatblast. Cracked concrete from Four Arms.
And in the MCU, attention was a death sentence.
Still, one thought kept circling in his head: I can build something here. A company. A front. A place to channel all this tech without becoming S.H.I.E.L.D.'s lab rat.
But another voice whispered: And at night, you can be more than a CEO.
Brendon stood on a rooftop overlooking Phoenix, hoodie fluttering in the desert wind. Below, two thugs cornered a store clerk in the alley.
He glanced at the Omnitrix.
"…screw it."
The dial turned. The core slammed down.
Green light roared.
XLR8 bolted into the night.