2 Chapter 2 (1/2)

December 19th, 2013

”Raaagh!” I swung the sledgehammer with all my strength. The metal head smashed into brick, cracking it. My shoulders burning, I felt a grin on my face.

”Kid, you know how creepy it is when you smile like that?” I turned to look behind me, raising a hand to nudge the hard hat on my head back a bit.

”You know one of the signs of old age is repeating crap to people?” I replied.

The older black man behind me grinned. He was a big guy, with massive biceps and a belly that spoke of good eating. His hair was well groomed, though a large mustache bounced with every word he spoke.

He chuckled, his belly bouncing under the blue cotton shirt he was wearing. He was sitting on a cheap folding chair, sipping at a cup of water. ”It's more of an insanity thing. But yeah, try not to look like you enjoy hitting things so much.”

”Yeah, yeah,” I looked over at the city outside.

The building we were standing in was one of many in New York that had been destroyed during an event that was being called, 'The Incident' by people of the city, though it was known worldwide as 'The Battle of New York'. A moment where aliens dropped from a portal in the sky and came down to attack Earth with the help of Loki. Until the Avengers stopped them.

Although finding out about the portal light in the sky made me feel a bit bemused. I'd seen a lot of movies over the years with a portal in the sky, a lot of those superhero movies, from Fan4stic to Suicide Squad. I suppose real life was imitating art in the end.

All of which I could not understand. I couldn't remember any of these events in the comics, and some of the actors looked like actors I recognized. Captain America and Black Widow had even been in the same movies a bunch of times. Well, their actors. Well, the actors that looked like them.

Whatever the case, it happened. I was standing in a building in the middle of Hell's Kitchen, one with a giant hole in it from what apparently been some sort of giant snake monster thing that had flown through the former apartment building.

As part of my attempt to make a living in this weird version of Marvel Comics I didn't know about, I took a job as a construction worker with a company that didn't ask a lot of questions. With all the damage from the battle, and the funding from StarkTech, Rand International, and various others pouring cash into New York to help rebuild it, construction companies had flooded into New York City, fixing buildings and streets that could be repaired, tearing down buildings that were lost causes so they could be built anew.

Perfect way for an immigrant to make some quick cash with some grunt work from guys who don't care a lot about legality. And, seeing as I was the ultimate immigrant, I managed to get work with a guy in charge of finding muscle for one of the companies in charge of the reconstruction of Hell's Kitchen. Some business called Union Allied Construction.

”It's simple work,” I admitted. ”Just gotta swing a stick and break stuff. It's fun, Sammy.”

”Ha!” The man sitting with me replied boisterously. ”Well, enjoy it while it lasts. In my experience, guys like you and Eddie over there,” he nodded over to the side. In a room that had once been a kitchen, a Hispanic man just a bit shorter than me. He was a skinny guy, but he was taking apart the sink with a wrench, removing the pipes with ease. ”Well, paperwork matters to some folk.”

I sighed at that thought. Eddie and me both had no legal citizenship in America. For Eddie, it was because he crossed into America illegally to help support his mother in Puerto Rico. For me, it was because an asshole had dropped me into the middle of the city, leaving my paperwork in another universe.

”Well... I'll figure that out later,” I reared back and swung my hammer. ”Shouldn't you be working, Sammy?”

As brick crumbled and Eddie gently removed the sink in the kitchen, Sammy chuckled. ”Nah, you young bucks have it handled. Just let my old ass rest for a bit.”

”I have it on good authority that Captain America is older than you, and that guy would probably be right next to me.”

Sammy scoffed. ”Please youngblood, what do you know about Captain America?” He rose up and moved to pick up his own hammer. He reared back and decimated the brick wall in front of him with a single smooth movement. I coughed a bit as dust rose, and looked over at him as he smiled smugly.

”You're strong, kid,” Sammy chuckled. ”But it's important to know where to hit, and how fast too.”

I blinked at this advice. I raised my own sledgehammer and tried to swing it the way Sammy had. The hammer bounced off the wall with no effect.

Sammy chuckled, leaving me to give him a chagrined look.

”Hey!” We turned around. A man stood there, wearing a polo shirt, khaki shorts, a blue hard hat, and carrying a clipboard. He glared at us, eyes hard, face pinched. Fredric, our boss. ”Enough talk. We need the floor cleared by the end of the day.”

Sammy and I shared a look before turning and going back to our work.

Later that day, we were done. Well, the guys on my shift. More would come in and do some work at night, but for now, my muscles burning from exertion, I was leaving for the day.

”Ahhh,” Sammy sighed happily as we exited the construction site, entering the sidewalk. New York is never really quiet, but there was a brief sense of peace as the sun went down in the distance. He stretched, letting his arms reach for the sky.

”Ugh,” I reeled back, playfully covering my nose while grabbing the arm nearest to me and pulling it down. ”Dude, come on, deodorant!”

”Hmm?” Sammy slapped at me, grinning just a bit. ”Little punk.”

I smiled back. ”Yeah yeah. See you tomorrow, old man.”

”Hey, Mackmoud?”

I stopped, turning to look at him. I was using my real name since there wasn't much point in a cover story, but Sammy always slurred it from Mahmoud to 'Mackmoud'.

”What's up?”

”You need a ride?” He waved towards the parking lot his truck was parked in. ”It ain't a big deal.”

”Nah, I'm good.” I smiled just a bit. ”I wanna walk for a bit. Thanks though.”

He shrugged, unbothered, and went off.

I, meanwhile, walked away. For a couple of blocks.

When I was sure I wasn't being followed, I turned towards the same section of neighborhoods I'd been hammering at the whole day. Technically, it was just buildings to be torn down. But in that section, there were a lot of places a guy could hide.

I left the sidewalk behind to go into an alleyway. From there, I hopped over a fence, then went through another alley. One more fence and I reached home.

A door with a steel lock pad blocked the way inside, with a clearly broken keypad next to it. I tapped on the 'broken' keypad, and the door let out a 'click', allowing me in.

Once inside, the motion sensors read my presence, and the lights turned on.

The place I'd been calling home for the past two months had once been an office building, for some tech company. It had been destroyed when some of the aliens, called the Chitauri, had blown up the upper floors with grenades then sent one of their reptile things through it. The building was up for reconstruction, but I could use it for now as a home. Rent free.

I'd taken the back room that had once been used for paperwork or something, and converted it into living space.

Yep. Mahmoud, the owner of a watch with infinite potential, living as a squatter.

I looked around. A big green thing the size of a closet rested in the corner. It had once been a broken refrigerator I'd found on the streets. It was still a fridge. Sometimes. Most days.

I opened the door and sighed in relief when I found my food cold. Rather than frozen, cooked, or just plain gone.

A steak was soon cooking on a machine that had once been a printer, and I moved to a beat up old couch to use my computer.

Like the fridge and stove, it was also made from parts of other devices. The phones I'd stolen from the neo-nazis two months before, a big TV monitor I'd found at one of the construction sites, some of the computers left behind by the tech company, a few more refrigerators, and three older generation video game consoles.

The computer worked. It worked damn well. Except on Wednesday, when it just put on videos of people laughing at Japanese game shows for hours, and when small children were eating lollipops nearby. Yesterday was a Wednesday. So, I could get some work done today.

The computer was really a supercomputer when it actually worked. I reached over for my keyboard and mouse and quickly switched it on. I got up and grabbed the steak, then went back.

”Okay. What are you up to, Stark?” I said to myself. My monitor glowed with a blue light, showing a sci-fi sort of look to it, with folders floating in a blue field. A wave of my hands would have let me move things around, but I reached for the mouse instead.

A quick click of the mouse opened a back channel I had into the Stark Industries employee memos. Nothing invasive, nothing about their secret projects, just the stuff any employee there would get sent. I read through them a bit but didn't find anything crazy. Another click sent me to the email of one Happy Hogan, Tony Stark's bodyguard. Some lovely messages wishing him well in his recovery. Another one from a company wishing to hire him from Stark Industries. And... oh. One sent from Happy to Pepper Potts letting her know how sorry he was about her break up with Tony Stark.

I leaned back in my seat, slicing into my overcooked steak with a sigh.

Damn. That sucked. I mean, in the comics, Happy and Pepper were married, but a lot of stuff back home depicted Tony and her in a relationship, and they seemed close in the news.

Feeling a bit more intrusive than usual, I switched the feed again. I pushed my steak aside and focused. Hacking into the employee stuff at Stark wasn't horrific in terms of danger. And Happy had a regular email as well as a more private one which was blocked by some insane firewalls, and I'd only hacked the regular one. Hacking into SHIELD was another game entirely.

Not to say it was impossible. Alien tech, even alien tech made from human parts, was incredibly powerful. With a bit of time, I could hack almost any computer on the planet. Well, I guessed I could.

But that didn't mean I shouldn't be careful.

I went through some of the messages sent to all SHIELD agents. High priority targets, warnings, some simple guidelines for new recruits.

Then I went deeper. The Daily Cadet, the newspaper for the science school that SHIELD ran, had run an article two days before about two of their Alumni, Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz, had saved a kid named Donnie Gill from being frozen. Good on them.

There wasn't much else, except for Project Insight. I tried to gently find my way in, trawling through employee files, hunting down shipments. I made sure not to go through the same channels I had before.

Apparently, Project Insight was going well. They were building three big ass helicarriers, all powered by Iron Man type tech. Which was cool as shit. I took another bite of steak and shifted in my chair. I went to my other research next, still thinking.

Reports of a skeletal figure on a bike in the south. Apparently, people were thinking it was an urban legend, an explanation for the dead criminals getting burned to death. Ghost Rider.

I switched to a school I'd hacked, looking into their records. Peter Parker was doing well. He had won some science award recently. Good on the kid. Weird, he was only twelve. I didn't look him up for long since hacking into a children's school files made me feel skeevy.

The Baxter Building was still being built, and I couldn't find anything on any Fantastic Four member beyond the point they'd disappeared years back. Some company had hired them, before the company and the four disappeared. No Reed Richards, no Ben Grimm, Sue Storm, or Johnny Storm. That worried me. From the minute I'd found out, I'd left a program chasing any info that could be found on them, anything new. Nothing yet.

I growled in annoyance at that, then flipped to something else. ”No mutants,” I said with a sigh, looking over my other research. Not a sign of them. I couldn't find Wolverine, Cyclops, Professor X... Wait, I think I found... Uh, I couldn't find... Mutants were... I had to-

I ignored my screen for a moment. Whatever was on it probably didn't matter. After a moment, I went back to it to focus on something more important.

Wakanda was still being listed as a third world nation. Which was probably bullshit. I found myself smiling at the thought of Wakanda. It was weird, I didn't know a lot about Black Panther, but I felt a deep warmth when I thought of that nation. T'Challa was in university, studying the sciences, but that was all.

Finally, I turned on the police radio I had as a program on my computer, sitting back to listen to it.

For about ten minutes, I continued eating my steak as I listened. Whenever a code would get announced, I would look over at the notebook I'd written as a reference to what each code meant. Nothing the cops couldn't handle so far. No robbery in progress or anything. I finished my steak and got up, turning my computer off. Then I walked out of my home, locking it behind me, and headed to the alleyway.

Once there, I looked at my Omnitrix. One of the most powerful objects in all of fiction. Funnily enough, it's creator had developed it with the idea of peace in mind. Azmuth, one of a member of a species of extremely intelligent beings known as the Galvan, had created it to make up for another object he'd made, a sword with the power to destroy planets. It was supposed to allow a person to act as the perfect ambassador. With the ability to transform into any race in the galaxy, a person could interact with the people of the entire galaxy, to understand them and aid them. The ultimate peacekeeping tool.

Instead, he'd made the ultimate weapon. A person who can turn into any alien of the Ben 10 universe is not just powerful, they're versatile. Elemental control, enhanced strength and speed, flight, nuclear power, even time manipulation and reality warping. If there was an alien in Benjamin Tennyson's universe who could do something, the Omnitrix could do the same.

That weapon had landed in the hands of a ten-year-old brat. And that brat had done wondrous things with it. Ben Tennyson was one of my heroes, a kid who rose to the occasion again and again. He'd matured through battle and became a hero worthy of any universe. Ben 10 was awesome.

And now I had his Omnitrix. Ten alien forms, each with their own powers, with some crossover between them in terms of ability. Only ten, out of over a million. But that was enough.

I twisted the face of my watch, and it lit up in a flash of green. An image appeared, floating. Swampfire. He was one of my favorite forms, able to blast out flames from methane gases, control plants, and regenerate from harm with ease. But he wasn't what I needed.

I twisted the face, going through the aliens before I found the form that was best for what I wanted. Then, carefully, I pushed down on the watch.

Immediately, the change came.

My body grew outwards. I was already pretty hefty, but I gained over one hundred pounds of muscle in second. My leg twisted backward, my arms stretched out. Fur grew over my entire body. My fingernails became claws, but feet became massive paws. My nose grew outward, my ears shifted on top of my head as they change shape. My mouth became a muzzle, and my teeth became lethal fangs. I held back the urge to howl my name. Instead, I whispered it, in a voice that was half a growl.

”Blitzwolfer...” I hummed, then lifted my nose, taking a deep whiff of the air. To my human nose, the smell of the city was only sometimes palatable. To Blitzwolfer, the smells of the city were a delight. It was like watching a thousand movies at once and somehow comprehending all of them.

”Time to go,” I ran for a nearby building and leaped up about twenty feet. My claws dug into the brick, and I climbed at high speed, going to the top of the six-story building in seconds. Once there, I ran.

There were few things that gave me as much joy as being transformed. Feeling so powerful, running at speeds so fast the world was a blur. My muscles pumped as I ran across the gravel rooftop, legs pushing forward. I was so fast!

I finally released a sound as I leaped to the next roof, a bark of joy. The noise exploded from my lungs, and I grinned at the feel of my simple bark resounding through the air like a bomb, echoing into the distance. More barks responded. It was sort of like listening to a foreign language. I couldn't understand the words, but the emotions carried through. Dogs sharing their own joy, their annoyance at my loudness, their challenges towards my dominance. I barked again, this time at the challengers, and laughed when they just barked the challenges once more.

I leaped to another rooftop, then climbed up to the next building, claws digging into the stone.