The first wave came down fast.
Dark figures dropped from the sky beneath the portal, riding flying machines and pouring toward the streets below like the start of a flood. The moment Adam saw them descending together, his body reacted before his brain finished the thought.
He threw one hand up.
"Alien time!"
Then he paused.
"Actually, I don't know if that's the command."
The Chitauri were already coming lower, and Adam still had no idea how this version of the Omnitrix actually worked. He knew the watch. He knew the franchise. He did not know the controls.
'So much for being prepared.' Adam thought.
Still, standing around to complain was useless. He slammed his palm down on the Omnitrix dial.
A green hologram burst up above the faceplate.
Adam blinked.
For a moment, the alien image spinning above the watch looked so familiar that his brain froze anyway.
Then his confusion doubled.
"Wait," he muttered. "Is that actually the one I got?"
The hologram was green and fully visible, clear enough to tell that one alien was unlocked. Adam quickly twisted the dial, hoping maybe more options would appear in a cleaner format.
The hologram changed.
But the second one was not really an alien image.
It was a dark shape.
An oval silhouette, almost like a black egg with no details inside it.
Adam frowned and twisted again.
Another dark oval appeared, then another after it.
Every locked slot looked the same, just a black egg-shaped silhouette with no clue what was inside.
Adam stared at the spinning options in disbelief.
"What is this? A mystery box premium subscription?"
He kept turning the dial faster. One visible green alien, then black ovals, then more black ovals, then more all the way through the set.
Adam's face tightened.
'Come on, just give me Alien X,' Adam thought. 'Give me one miracle here and I will stop complaining for at least a week.'
Nothing changed.
There was still no Alien X, no labels, and no help.
Adam clicked his tongue and tried the obvious move.
"System, alien list, status, strategy guide, beginner tutorial, anything?"
Nothing answered.
No new screen appeared.
Even the status window refused to show up.
That made Adam narrow his eyes at the Omnitrix.
So that was how BOB wanted to play it.
The old fraud had appeared, dropped him into Marvel, handed him an Omnitrix, and vanished like a minimalist scam god.
'Incredible,' Adam thought. 'Truly inspiring customer support.'
A scream from the street snapped his attention up.
The Chitauri were low now.
One craft shot overhead so fast that the air kicked dust across the sidewalk. Civilians were finally breaking fully. People were running in all directions now. Some were shouting for family. Others were frozen until somebody slammed into them and forced them to move.
Adam looked back at the glowing watch.
He could complain later. Right now he needed to stay alive.
He twisted the dial back to the only actual unlocked alien and pressed down.
A pulse of green light burst out.
The shock ran through his whole body at once.
Adam clenched his teeth and nearly stumbled. He felt the Omnitrix merge tighter against his wrist while a strange force moved through his muscles and bones. It did not feel like his body was being replaced. It felt like something powerful was being pushed into the shape he already had.
His shoulders broadened.
His chest became heavier.
His frame stretched just enough to make the world around him feel slightly smaller.
Adam looked down at himself quickly.
He still looked human.
There was no giant crystal body and no fully transformed alien face, just Adam, except taller, bulkier, and filled with a hard pressure he had not felt before.
Then another sensation hit him.
He could feel the world differently. The sharpness hidden in the dust, the tiny crystal traces in the concrete, the brittle lines in the stone around him. It was like the city had revealed another layer and his body understood it instinctively.
Adam raised both hands and stared.
His hands were still his own, with five fingers, a human shape, and the same skin tone as before.
But the skin was not really the same anymore. Tiny diamond-like patterns had formed across it, so fine that from a normal glance no one would notice. Under the light, the texture caught a faint gleam, as if microscopic crystal plates had been set beneath the surface.
Adam flexed his fingers.
The strength inside them felt dense and sharp.
'Okay,' Adam thought. 'This is not full Diamondhead. This is human-plus-Diamondhead. That's weird, and I hate that I understand the setting already.'
Then the first Chitauri on the ground saw him.
Three of them broke away from the chaos and rushed in his direction with snarling focus, their armor glinting under the blue light. One raised its weapon. Another leapt over a wrecked section of pavement.
People nearby screamed and scattered even harder. A man in a business suit nearly fell while trying to run. A woman grabbed a child and dragged him behind a parked car. Someone farther back shouted, "What is that on his arm?" but Adam barely heard it.
He was too busy focusing on the alien memory now pressing inside his body.
Diamondhead.
That was the unlocked alien.
At least now he knew.
The problem was that knowing and using were not the same thing.
Adam lifted one hand toward the charging Chitauri.
"Right," he muttered. "I know what you are. I just don't know how your powers work in this body. Small issue."
The leading Chitauri shrieked and aimed.
Adam reacted on pure instinct.
He thrust his arm forward.
For one terrible half-second, nothing happened.
Adam's eyes widened.
'If this fails, I am going to die in the dumbest way possible.' Adam thought.
Then the street answered.
A violent crystal surge exploded from the ground in front of him.
It tore upward.
A massive diamond spike burst through the pavement like a drill punching out of the earth, jagged, bright, and brutally fast. Concrete shattered around its base. Dust and broken stone flew outward. The spike drove straight through the path of the charging Chitauri and ripped their formation apart.
One was thrown backward.
One was skewered clean through the torso.
The third twisted away too late and got smashed aside by flying debris and crystal shards.
Adam stared at the towering spike, his own hand still extended toward it.
Then a wild grin pulled at his face despite the chaos around him.
"Okay," he said, breathing hard as more shadows dropped from the sky above. "That is definitely Diamondhead."