Jack stepped out through the gates of Midtown High and into the restless current of New York.
The festival noise faded behind him almost immediately, swallowed by the city's constant rhythm. Cars crept through traffic with impatient horns while pedestrians hurried along the sidewalks with coffee cups and briefcases. Somewhere beneath the street a subway rumbled through its tunnel. New York never really slowed down. Not even in the late afternoon.
Jack adjusted the strap of his guitar case and walked along the sidewalk. After the noise and energy of the competition, the ordinary movement of the city felt almost surreal. The cheering crowd, Flash's reluctant apology, Gwen's kiss on his cheek — all of it already felt strangely distant, like scenes from a movie he had just walked out of.
He had planned to wander for a while. Just explore. Get a better feel for the streets of Queens now that he actually lived here properly. The new house still felt unfamiliar, and walking helped him think.
Then the sirens started.
A sharp wail tore through the steady rhythm of traffic. Jack turned immediately as a fire engine blasted through the intersection ahead, red lights strobing violently against the glass faces of nearby buildings. A second engine followed close behind, horn blaring. Then a third, approaching from a different direction entirely.
Jack looked toward the distance. Several blocks away, a thick column of dark smoke twisted upward into the pale evening sky, catching the last of the sunlight and turning it a deep, ugly orange.
Fire. Big one.
His expression sharpened. The guitar case suddenly felt heavy on his shoulder.
Without hesitation he stepped away from the crowded sidewalk and slipped into a narrow alley between two apartment buildings. The noise of the street faded behind him. Brick walls on both sides, a pair of overflowing trash cans, a rusted fire escape bolted to the wall above. No people.
Perfect.
Jack set the guitar case down against the wall. He glanced once toward the alley entrance to confirm no one was watching, then looked down at the Omnitrix. The dial rose smoothly beneath his fingers.
A brief flash of green light lit the alley walls for less than a second.
Where Jack had been standing, a sleek blue alien crouched low against the pavement. Streamlined body, long tail coiled behind it, claws resting lightly on the ground.
XLR8.
The world slowed instantly. The distant wail of sirens stretched into long, low echoes. Pedestrians at the alley entrance moved like figures in a dream, mid-step, barely shifting. A pigeon crossing overhead hung almost motionless against the sky.
Then he moved.
The alley vanished behind him as he shot forward like a streak of blue lightning. He cut between crawling cars and blurred past storefronts, the wind of his passing rattling shop signs and scattering loose newspaper from the sidewalks. Pedestrians barely had time to flinch before he was already three blocks gone.
Within seconds he reached the source of the smoke.
An apartment building burned.
Flames crawled hungrily up the old brick facade, licking at wooden window frames and sending showers of orange sparks spiraling into the darkening sky. The fire had already consumed most of the upper floors on one side of the structure. Smoke poured from shattered windows in thick rolling waves. The heat hit XLR8 like a wall from half a block away — a deep, radiating pressure that pushed against his face and chest.
Fire trucks surrounded the building from three sides. Firefighters moved fast, dragging hoses toward the entrance while others worked the aerial ladder toward the upper floors. Police barriers had been pushed into place along the street, officers directing the growing crowd backward.
"Move back! Everyone stay behind the line!"
But panic had already spread through the onlookers. People pressed forward against the barriers, shouting and pointing toward the upper windows. Phones lifted everywhere, recording. A child cried somewhere in the crowd.
Then a woman's voice cut through all of it.
"My daughter is still inside! She's on the fourth floor — please, someone has to go up there!"
She fought against a police officer trying to hold her back, her face streaked with tears and ash. Two firefighters near the entrance exchanged a look. The ladder truck was still positioning. The front stairwell was already compromised.
XLR8 didn't slow down.
He sprinted straight toward the side wall of the building and ran up the brick surface, claws finding brief grip with each stride, momentum carrying him upward faster than gravity could object. Third floor window — broken, frame blackened. He hit it at full speed.
CRASH.
Glass exploded inward as he burst through and landed hard in a crouch on the hallway floor. Smoke flooded the corridor immediately, thick and low, pressing down from the ceiling like a living thing. The heat inside was far worse than outside. Somewhere above him, the fire groaned through the structure.
Jack straightened up and moved fast, staying low beneath the worst of the smoke. His enhanced vision cut through the haze. Doors lined both sides of the hallway — most hanging open, rooms already abandoned.
He took the stairwell upward.
The fourth floor was worse. A section of ceiling near the far end had partially collapsed, burning debris scattered across the hallway floor. The fire roared somewhere behind the walls, the sound of it filling the entire corridor.
Then — through all of it — a sound.
Small. Frightened.
Coughing.
Jack moved toward it without hesitation, stepping over debris and ducking under a sagging section of ceiling. The coughing grew louder. He reached the door at the end of the hall and pushed it open.
A girl. Maybe seven years old. Curled beneath a bed with a wet cloth pressed against her face, eyes wide with terror above it.
She looked at the alien crouching in her doorway and froze completely.
Jack kept his voice as calm as he could manage. "Your mom is outside waiting for you."
The girl stared at him for a long moment. Then she reached out her arms.
Jack crossed the room in two steps, gathered her carefully against his chest, and turned back toward the window.
The building groaned loudly above them. Something cracked deep in the structure — the sound of a floor giving way somewhere higher up.
No time for the stairs.
Jack tightened his grip, backed up two steps, and launched himself through the window.
The night air hit him instantly — cool and sharp after the suffocating heat of the building. For a brief moment they were falling, the street four floors below, the crowd a blur of upturned faces and flashing phone screens.
Then his claws found the brick.
He ran down the side of the building the same way he had gone up, one hand gripping the wall while the other held the girl firmly against his chest. At XLR8's speed the descent lasted less than a second — fast enough that most of the crowd below simply saw a blue streak flash down the side of the building and disappear behind the police barrier.
His feet hit the pavement. He absorbed the impact cleanly, straightened, and moved to the edge of the barrier in one continuous motion.
The girl hadn't made a sound the entire way down. She had buried her face against his chest and held on.
Jack set her down gently just inside the barrier line, crouching to her level for a brief moment. Up close she looked even smaller than she had in the room — seven years old at most, her hair singed at the edges and her eyes red from smoke.
She blinked at him. Still too stunned to speak.
"Your mom is right there," Jack said quietly.
He nodded toward the barrier. The woman had already seen her daughter — she was already moving, pushing past the officer trying to hold the crowd back, closing the distance in seconds. She pulled the girl into her arms and dropped to her knees on the pavement, shaking.
For a moment she looked up.
XLR8 was still crouching a few feet away, close enough that she could see his face clearly — the large green eyes, the sleek alien frame, the Omnitrix symbol glowing faintly on his chest.
She stared at him. Tears still running. Hands gripping her daughter tightly.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Jack dipped his head once. Then he straightened and stepped back.
One of the firefighters near the barrier had seen the landing. He stood frozen with a hose in his hands, staring openly at the alien crouching beside the woman. A second firefighter beside him had turned at the sound of Jack's feet hitting the pavement and caught just enough of a glimpse to blink in confusion.
A police officer started moving toward the gap in the barrier. "Hey — what is—"
The blur vanished.
To everyone else in the crowd, nothing had happened. One moment the barrier area was clear. The next, a woman was on her knees on the pavement holding her daughter and sobbing with relief. A few people near the front pressed forward trying to see what had caused the commotion. Others hadn't noticed anything at all, their attention still on the burning building above.
Only four people had seen XLR8 up close.
A seven-year-old girl who would probably spend years wondering if she had dreamed it.
Her mother, who would spend the rest of her life certain she hadn't.
And two firefighters who would argue about what they saw for the entire ride back to the station.
Jack slowed three blocks away, dropping his speed gradually until he was moving at something a passing cyclist might clock on a radar gun. He turned into a side street, then another, putting distance between himself and the fire without leaving a visible trail.
He stopped in the shadow of a parking garage and stood quietly for a moment.
The Omnitrix timer blinked in the corner of his vision.
[ Transformation Time Remaining: 01:17 ]
He had cut it close.
Jack looked back in the direction of the fire. The glow of it was still visible above the rooftops, orange light painting the underside of a low cloud of smoke. Sirens continued their chorus as more emergency vehicles converged on the block.
Not a bad night. The girl was with her mother. The building was surrounded. The rest was someone else's job.
[ Transformation Ending ]
Green light wrapped around him quietly in the shadow of the garage. The alien form dissolved and a sixteen-year-old in a school jacket stood alone in a side street with a guitar case leaning against the wall where he had left it.
Jack picked it up and slung it over his shoulder.
He started walking. The city moved around him exactly as it always did — indifferent, relentless, alive. Cabs honked at a red light, music leaked from a restaurant door, a group of teenagers crossed the street without looking up from their phones.
New York had no idea anything unusual had happened three blocks away. Most of the crowd near the fire would go home tonight with nothing more than a story about a blue blur they half-saw from behind a police barrier. Forum posts would go up. Someone would swear they caught something on video. The footage would be blurry and inconclusive, the way it always was.
That was fine.
Jack adjusted his guitar strap and turned toward home. He had training to do tomorrow, a new alien to test properly, and somewhere across this city a crime boss had just lost another shipment and was starting to ask questions about the Blur.
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