Saturday morning. Eight days since the Omnitrix. Silas sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal he wasn't eating and his notebook open to a fresh page and the specific restless energy of someone who had been inside for too long.
His mother was on a double shift. The apartment was quiet in the way it got when the person who made it feel occupied wasn't there. Outside, Metropolis was doing its Saturday thing, foot traffic building on the avenue, the distant bass of someone's sound system, a news drone making its slow arc over the neighborhood.
Silas looked at the notebook. He'd written one line at the top of the page.
'Position six. Four arms. Haven't tested it yet.'
He'd used Infernoid twice and XLR8 once. Seven remaining forms he'd never been in. He knew their silhouettes from the dial but knowing what something looked like from outside wasn't the same as knowing what it felt like from inside. XLR8 had taught him that. Speed as context, not sensation. You didn't get it until you were in it.
He rotated the dial to position six. The silhouette was broad and tall, four arms at its sides, head low between massive shoulders.
'Freight yard. Saturday, nobody around. One transformation, controlled, document the physical profile, test strength carefully. Don't break anything structural.'
He closed the notebook and put on his hoodie.
....
The fence panel swung in as before. Silas ducked through, crossed to the center of the yard, and stood for a moment looking at the empty concrete stretching to the loading bays.
He hit the dial.
The four-armed form filled the freight yard.
The first thing Silas noticed, from inside a body that now had four arms, was how natural it felt to have four arms. That was the unsettling part. Not the two extra limbs, not the width of the shoulders or the height, maybe eight feet, or the weight he could feel in how the cracked concrete gave slightly underfoot. The unsettling part was how four arms felt like the right number. Like two had always been a compromise.
'Okay. That's a weird thought. File it and move on.'
He looked down at himself. Four hands, each roughly the size of a dinner plate, dark red skin, thick fingers. He closed all four fists slowly. Opened them. The coordination was instinctive, the same way walking was instinctive. His brain had simply added two more items to its motor inventory without complaint.
He pressed one hand against the nearest loading bay wall at moderate pressure. The concrete indented. He pulled back quickly.
'That's the low end. Do not find the high end in here.'
He tested the jump next, a short hop, and came down hard enough that a crack ran eighteen inches along the concrete surface.
'No jumping.'
He spent the next eight minutes doing careful methodical strength tests against progressively more durable surfaces, making mental notes. The fourth arm on the left ran slightly stronger than the others, which he filed as interesting. The clap, two hands brought together with force, he did not test in the freight yard because he valued the freight yard. He'd save that for somewhere with more structural redundancy.
The timer pulsed a warning. Four minutes left.
He stood at the north end of the yard, four arms loose at his sides, running through the mental profile he was building, when he heard the shouting.
....
Half a block east. In the alley between the yard perimeter and the row of warehouses backing onto it. Multiple voices.
'Three voices. One of them is younger.'
He checked the timer. Three minutes, forty seconds. He looked at the fence. Back at the timer.
'Three teenagers and a younger kid. That's what it sounds like. You don't need the watch for three teenagers.'
He let the transformation run down. Stood in the yard and waited, which was harder than it sounded because the shouting continued and something in him wanted to move immediately. He breathed. Counted. At two minutes fifty the timer hit zero and the green light came and Silas was standing in the freight yard in his hoodie, recharge lock cycling red, completely human.
He went through the fence gap and into the alley.
Three older teenagers, maybe seventeen or eighteen, had backed a younger kid against the warehouse wall. The kid was maybe thirteen, backpack still on, trying to look unbothered and not quite managing it. One of the three had a phone up like he was filming.
Silas walked into the alley and stopped about ten feet away and looked at them.
He didn't say anything. He just stood there, hands in his hoodie pocket, looking.
The one doing the talking glanced at him. Looked away. Looked back. There was a beat where the situation could have gone either way, and then the one with the phone lowered it, and then all three of them did the thing people did when the audience changed and the situation stopped feeling worth it. They left. Not running, just leaving, quickly, in the other direction.
Silas watched them go. Then he looked at the younger kid.
"You good?" Silas asked.
The kid straightened up, adjusting his backpack with the dignity of someone reclaiming their posture.
"Yeah," the kid said.
"Yeah, I'm good."
"Go straight home," Silas said.
"I know," the kid said, already moving.
Silas watched him go. Then he stood in the empty alley for a moment thinking about the three minutes and forty seconds he'd spent waiting in the freight yard for the timer to run out when he could have just come through the fence immediately.
'You didn't need four arms for that. You needed to show up. Those are not the same thing.'
He filed that. It felt important.
....
He was two blocks from home when Devon fell into step beside him.
Not from behind or in front, just suddenly there, matching his stride, hands in his jacket pockets, like he'd been walking the same route all along. Which meant he'd been waiting.
"Hey," Devon said.
"Hey," Silas said, and kept walking.
"Where've you been?" Devon asked.
"Walk," Silas said.
"You take walks at nine-thirty on Saturday mornings now," Devon said.
"Since when do you know where I am at nine-thirty on Saturdays?" Silas asked.
"Since you started being weird," Devon said.
Silas kept walking. Devon kept pace without effort.
"I'm not being weird," Silas said.
"Bro. Come on," Devon said.
"I'm fine, Dev," Silas said.
"You've been pulling your left sleeve down every thirty seconds for a week. You fake-sick left Okafor's class Thursday and came back looking like you'd seen something. You don't walk anywhere, you bus like a normal person. And you keep going really still and staring at nothing for like ten seconds and then snapping back," Devon said.
Silas said nothing. Devon looked at him sideways.
"I'm not gonna tell anyone. I'm not gonna make it into a whole thing. I just want to know you're okay," Devon said.
'A week. He's been clocking all of it for a week.'
Silas stopped walking. Devon stopped beside him. They stood on the pavement outside the dry cleaner's on Shuster Avenue while a Saturday morning crowd moved around them.
"I'm okay," Silas said.
"You swear?" Devon asked.
"Yeah. I swear," Silas said.
"But something's going on," Devon said.
"Something's going on," Silas said.
"I just I can't explain it yet. When I can I will, I swear that too," Silas said.
Devon looked at him for a long moment. Running the calculation Silas recognized, the one Devon had been running since they were four, weighing what he knew against what he was being told and finding the gap.
"Is it dangerous?" Devon asked.
A beat.
"Could be," Silas said.
"You handling it?" Devon asked.
"Trying to," Silas said.
"Your mom know?" Devon asked.
"Yeah," Silas said.
Devon absorbed this. Nodded, slow, the nod of someone who got less than they wanted and was figuring out if it was enough.
"Okay," Devon said.
"Okay?" Silas said.
"Your mom knows. Your mom handles everything. So okay," Devon said. He started walking again.
"But Silas."
"Yeah," Silas said.
"When you can. Tell me," Devon said.
"I will," Silas said.
They walked the rest of the way back together without talking. The comfortable silence of two people who had known each other long enough that not talking wasn't the same as not communicating.
'He'll wait. He's always been patient with me. But the folder's getting thicker, Dev. I know it is.'
....
That evening Silas sat at his desk and opened the notebook to a fresh page. He wrote the position six profile first. Physical dimensions. Strength parameters, low end only. The four-arm coordination. The concrete indentation test. The jump impact radius. The clap he hadn't tested yet.
He was precise and thorough and it took twelve minutes.
Then he sat back and thought about what to call it.
Infernoid had named itself in the first second. XLR8 he'd kept because it was already right. Position six was different. He'd spent thirteen minutes in it, tested it carefully, and the word that kept coming back wasn't about what it looked like or where it came from. It was about what it felt like to be in it.
'Like being built for a fight. Not aggressive. Just ready. Every part of the body existing to absorb or deliver force and nothing wasted.'
He wrote at the top of the page in larger letters than the profile notes: BRAWLER.
He looked at it. Felt right.
He also wrote, underneath the profile, one more note. Smaller than the rest.
'Did not use it in the alley today. Didn't need to. The showing up was the thing, not the form. Remember that.'
He sat back. Eight days. Three alien forms tested. Devon aware something was going on, choosing to wait. Hamilton coming back Friday. His mother on a double shift trusting him to handle the day.
'Getting better at this. Not good yet. But better.'
He looked at the Omnitrix. Rotated the dial slowly. Paused on Jetray, the sleek wide silhouette built for the air. Thought about Metropolis from above.
'Next time. That one next.'
He kept rotating. Paused longer than the others on position eight. The thin, trailing silhouette. The door he wasn't ready to open.
'Not yet.'
His phone buzzed. His mother.
"Heading home in an hour. How was today?" the message read.
He typed back: "Good. Tested position six. Helped a kid, didn't use the watch. Named position six Brawler."
Three dots. Then: "Tell me everything when I'm home."
Then after a pause: "Proud of you."
Silas looked at that for a moment. Put the phone down. Turned back to his notebook and wrote at the bottom of the page in smaller letters than everything else:
'Day 8. Still here. Still me.'
(Image)