Jenny's alarm woke her up at 8AM sharp. She was lying in bed, plugged in and fully charged, and her mind immediately went to the events in the dark woods as if continuing where it left off.
She remembered quite vividly how last night ended. How she was forced to take her two friends as payload and teleport them across a distance of over five kilometers to the nearest light, and how she shut off due to running out of charge.
Distance and payload. Two factors that increase energy consumption exponentially on their own, let alone combined. And if that wasn't bad enough, the resistance of the dark fog made it even harder to move around, which eventually forced her to tap into her reserves to make it through her final jump.
Jenny stood up and sat on the side of her bed, then removed the plug from the side of her head and stared at the connector. She recalled telling her friends about it and showing them the port above her ear.
Jenny turned her head to the bedroom door when she heard sounds from downstairs. Plural and Saturn, alive and well.
Hearing Saturn talk reminded her of how she clung to his arm like a scared little girl when he needed her the most, and how she probably gave them the worst possible first impression she could have.
She was hesitant to get up and go downstairs, because she would have to face them again. What if they hated her now? Their first time ever hanging out with the incredible Sparkle Princess, resulting in a near-death experience and having to carry the world's heaviest paperweight all the way home.
Did this mean she lost? Did she lose a fight for the first time in her life?
Had the distance been six kilometers instead of five, would her friends have died?
It took Jenny ten minutes to gather the courage to head downstairs and face them. Nervously, she walked down the steps, ready to apologize and ask for forgiveness.
When she set foot on the ground floor and walked into the living room, she saw Saturn lying down on the couch. Slowly, she approached him and peeked around the—
"Jen!"
She received a tight hug from Plural from the side.
"I wasn't sure I plugged you in right!" Plural continued.
That would make this the first time anyone ever hugged her. Plural was soft and warm, and there was no contempt in her gesture. Jenny got suitably red and responded.
"Y-You brought me home?"
"Of course we did, you saved us!"
She gave Plural a humbled look, surprised to hear the girl felt that way. Plural's arms were still around her as she looked to see Saturn raising his head and turning around.
"Hey, you plugged her in right!"
Jenny didn't respond and just stared at her two friends, surprised at how they didn't seem to hate her. Despite the apparent affection, she wasn't feeling much better. Saturn gave her a good look.
"You okay? She did plug you in right, right?" he gestured at the spot above his own ear.
"Ah! Yeah," Jenny finally managed to respond, "I-I hope I didn't h—"
"You can really teleport!" Plural excitedly interrupted her.
"Y-Yeah I—"
"And you have laser eyes!"
She hugged her even tighter. Jenny was blushing as badly as she could, and her gears were running wild with a mix of happy and confusing feelings.
♦
"I have to go back," Jenny muttered.
The morning was coming to an end while the three were sitting on a rooftop downtown. Wanting breakfast and concluding that Jenny's house stocked no food, the two wanted to go out and get something to eat, and Jenny joined them. At Plural's insistence, she even teleported them up to this roof.
"Yeah, we gotta get our stuff back," Plural replied with her mouth full.
Jenny gave her a difficult look.
"I meant me. It's too dangerous."
"Why? It's daytime and the sun's out!" Plural suggested.
Jenny looked at her with doubtful eyes.
"What's wrong?" Plural asked.
Jenny broke eye contact and looked the other way in shame.
"I..." She hesitated to find the words. "Last night… was…"
Plural blinked in anticipation while Saturn leaned over and frowned.
"I just… can't protect you… I think," Jenny continued and dropped her head down, staring at her street down below in embarrassment. "I thought I was strong enough for you to be safe as long as I'm around, but—"
"That was one time! Besides, you did protect us! You took us outta there and into the light!" Plural rebutted.
"We got lucky," Jenny retorted.
"Imagine if you weren't there!" Plural argued, "'cause we planned to go before we met you! If anything, we're alive right now because you were with us."
Jenny stayed quiet, unable to overcome her guilt and allow herself to be convinced. The others stayed quiet, too. Plural looked at Jenny with a serious expression, waiting for her to say something.
"I kind of want my car back, and you need your bike, assuming it's still in one piece," Saturn took over.
"But the creature's still out there, and we don't know what might happen," Jenny replied with a conflicted look on her face.
"Look," Saturn put his sandwich down and faced her, "Plu and I wanna help you. We already discussed this when we carried you back last night. I think it would be better if we did. Three heads are better than one."
"You carried me all the way back?" Jenny asked like she didn't hear the rest of his sentence.
"Don't worry about that," he replied.
"You're lighter than I thought!" Plural added.
Jenny looked away and considered his proposal, then replied.
"How would you even help me out? You're just… regular people," Jenny pressed her lips together and rubbed her chin awkwardly, "no offense."
"I don't know," Saturn replied after just having taken another bite, "investigate the area around the campsite for clues… see if we can find anything online… that kinda stuff."
"I agree," Plural said, "we're a part of this now, Jen."
Jenny looked deep in thought.
"If it makes you feel better, we can adorn ourselves with lights!" Plural playfully remarked.
Jenny put her finger to her lower lip and stared at the clouds.
"I guess if he's still there, we'll smell him," she said, swinging her head to the left, "and if he comes close enough, I can track him," she swung to the right and caused her limp hair-antenna to come drooping down.
Saturn and Plural looked pleased and gave her a thumbs up.
"But I don't knooow, it might be dangerouss!" Jenny rocked her head back and forth and pressed her eyes shut like an indecisive little girl.
"You want us to come, I can feel it," Saturn teased.
"Ugh!" Jenny rocked her head even harder.
♦
It was early noon when they returned to the location where Jenny lost consciousness the night before, where the street lights ended. They rode in Plural's car with the windows open but smelled nothing out of the ordinary during the ride there. There was, however, the sound of a helicopter in the distance.
"Ah shit, cops," Saturn flopped out.
"What do you mean? Isn't that a good thing?" Jenny asked.
Plural smirked and looked at Jenny in the back seat. "Didn't you know? This guy here is on the most wanted list," pointing her thumb at her passenger seat.
"What!?" Jenny looked genuinely surprised.
The other two looked surprised that she actually believed it.
Saturn stuttered: "That's—"
"Kidding! He's fine! We're all upstanding citizens!" Plural interrupted him.
Jenny still looked a little starstruck.
"Except Jen, who doesn't wear a helmet," Saturn quipped.
Jenny switched to a little giggle.
Plural turned the car onto the unpaved road and slowly followed it to the campsite.
When it came into view, they could see Saturn's car sitting in the same state they left it in. Jenny's bike was lying on its side about ten meters away from where she first put the kickstand down. It looked like it had some damage to the blinkers and mirrors, but it was in one piece, as if the creature simply yanked it into the darkness as a scare tactic.
Two police officers were also present, looking at them as they approached. An older man and a younger girl. The older one approached the driver's side window when Plural came to a stop.
"'Morning, officer!" she rested her arm on the door trim and spoke in a flirty tone as her two passengers exited the car.
"Know anything about this?" he asked her and pointed at the ruined campsite.
Before she could answer him, the second younger officer pointed at Jenny. "Hey, aren't you…"
Jenny looked at the ground, waiting for the other officer to call her by her stupid nickname again.
"This stuff is ours," Plural changed the subject.
The officer looked back at the camp. The tents and luggage were all still there and looked like the creature hadn't touched them. It would've looked perfectly normal if it wasn't for the beheaded bear covering the campfire.
"That was you?" he asked with a serious face.
Saturn jumped in between, catching the officer's attention with his finger.
"Crazy story! That…" he pointed at the bear, "we did not do that."
"What did that, then?" the officer turned to him and asked.
"A scary shadow monster!" Jenny blurted out.
The officer stared at her.
"Aren't you glitter girl?"
Jenny emitted a sound like she was punched in the gut.
"Sparkle Princess!" the younger officer corrected him. "It really is her! And if that's the case, she's telling the truth!"
The older officer looked skeptical despite the fact that he seemed familiar with Jenny, and by extension her involvement with the extraterrestrial and supernatural.
He exchanged looks with the younger officer, who gave him a thumbs up.
"Okay, glory girl," he continued.
Jenny made another gutted sound.
"… and you two, tell me more about this… shadow monster… that did that," he said with his finger pointed at the bear.
"This place isn't safe!" Jenny warned. "When the sun goes down, it comes out and covers the area in darkness. Our campfire kept it at bay, until…" her eyes went to Mr. Cuddles.
"It's still here? You didn't kill it?" the older officer asked.
A slightly ashamed Jenny shook her head. The two officers exchanged looks and nodded at each other.
Then, the younger officer, more excited than concerned, addressed the three upstanding citizens.
"A married couple went missing here last night. That's why we're here. Do you know anything about that?"
Jenny's eyes went wide, and the older officer rolled his eyes like he didn't approve of his junior sharing that information. Nobody responded for a while.
"It'll be back after sundown, then?" the older officer moved on to the next subject.
Jenny was looking at the ground, looking shocked. She didn't hear the officer's question.
"That's right," Saturn jumped in, "once it goes dark, you don't stand a chance. We came here to pick up our stuff while the sun's still out."
The older officer listened with a serious face, like he wasn't skeptical about the shadow monster anymore.
"Okay," the officer put his hands on his hips and scanned the woods, "don't linger too long, then."
His eyes went to Jenny, who hadn't said a word since the younger officer mentioned the missing couple, and had seated herself back where she was when she was still having a good time with her friends last night, staring at Mr. Cuddles' body.
"But I guess you've got nothing to worry about with her by your side."
Jenny glanced over her shoulder and looked heartbroken. When their eyes met, the officer tipped his hat and turned around. But before he left, he looked like he remembered something and turned back one more time.
"One more thing," he took a step forward, "what should we do if we run into it?"
Plural, who'd gotten out of the car at this point, joined Saturn and looked at Jenny for an answer.
"Run," a dejected Jenny said while fidgeting with the grass, "if you smell rotting corpses, it's him."
The younger officer widened her eyes and shivered.
"Okay," the older officer said with a stern look, and his eyes went to the ground. "Take care," he greeted them and turned around, taking his junior along.
Jenny didn't spare them another look and stared at the dirt in front of her instead. She had the same look in her eyes now that she did when the creature flung the head at her before. None of them even considered they weren't the only ones in danger that night.
"He already got to them," she mumbled.
"How do you know?" Saturn asked.
"Remember the screaming? The male and female voices?" she asked, still looking at the ground.
Saturn connected the dots.
"Oh, fuck…"
Nobody spoke much after that. They simply loaded their gear into the car and onto the bike, which still ran, then went home.
♦
It was early afternoon when the helicopter pilot finally spotted something strange on the horizon. A figure floating in midair. He called out to the other person on board who was scanning the woods, who turned their binoculars to the figure to get a better look. And to their relief, it was a familiar face.
It was the Sparkle Princess, staring at a specific spot in the woods. The robot girl gracefully floated at the same altitude of a couple hundred meters as the helicopter. Her hair was glowing blue like her sparkles and floated like it wasn't affected by gravity.
The pilot was confident enough to slowly approach her, and his heart skipped a beat when the girl eventually turned her head his way. Moments later, she approached the helicopter and entered through the opening on the side. The person holding the binoculars had their mouth agape at the sight of her. The girl dropped herself on the cabin floor, leaving her legs dangling off the edge, and her hair returned to its normal silver color. Then, she turned to the person with the binoculars and pointed at the spot she was staring at before.
"I found the bodies," she said with a depressed look.
♦
Late in the afternoon, Plural nervously paced back and forth across her driveway. When they left the campsite to take their stuff back home, Jenny wasn't in a talkative mood and rode faster than Saturn did. When they reached a hairpin turn, she even teleported across with her bike and soon disappeared completely.
Saturn stopped at Plural's house first, where they unloaded her stuff, but he stuck around when they didn't hear anything from Jenny anymore.
"Ahh! I can't take this!" Plural yelled.
She walked over to Saturn, who was lying on the hood and windshield of his car.
"Don't you wanna do something?" she prodded him.
He waved his phone around, indicating he was doing something useful on it. From what Plural could see, he was browsing sites about creature sightings.
She sighed and sat down with her back against the car. For the millionth time, she took out her phone and checked her message to Jenny, to which she hadn't gotten a reply.
This is the start of your conversation history with Jenkins.
"[You]Hey, Jen! How's it going?"
Two minutes later, she heard him locking and dropping his phone on his chest.
"Isn't Jenny just the cutest thing though?"
Plural perked up and looked surprised to hear it. Not at the idea that he felt that way, but that he'd so blatantly say it. They never really talked about what they thought of Jenny between each other before. When they invited her to go camping, it was on impulse, but it was clear they were both fond of the girl.
"I know, right!" Plural's mood immediately improved as she put her elbows on the car's hood and cupped her head in her hands. "Is that a crush I see?"
"Hmph, speak for yourself," he responded. "Can't even keep your hands off of her!"
"Not the same thing!" she stuck out her tongue.
Before he could respond, his eyes went to the clouds, and he squinted. Plural turned her head and spotted an object descending from the sky, accompanied by the sound one might associate with a flying saucer.
Jenny touched down onto the driveway with her hair glowing bright blue, which faded back to normal. She gave the two a nervous wave.
"Did you get him?" Saturn asked.
"No…" she responded, "he wasn't there."
"Oh."
Jenny awkwardly walked over and touched her index fingers together.
"I found the bodies of the missing couple. Police recovered them. They're sealing the area."
Her friends didn't respond. Jenny became nervous and continued.
"I-I'll go again tonight! He has to be out there… somewhere..."
She looked at her friends expecting them to say something.
"I hope you get him. I'm always rooting for you," Saturn winked at her.
Jenny blushed a little and excitedly hopped in place.
"Y-Yeah," Plural said, "keep us posted?" she asked while holding up her phone.
Jenny stopped hopping and looked at the phone with wide eyes, then took out her own phone. It was then that Plural's message to her got a read receipt, suggesting she hadn't looked at it at all. Perhaps Jenny wasn't used to getting messages from people.
Now focused on the phone, Jenny started typing, and Plural saw three dots appear at the bottom of the chat.
"[Jenkins]Good!"
Jenny looked up, then back at her screen again, and continued typing.
"[Jenkins]I'll keep you posted!"
Then, she stowed her phone, gave her two friends a salute and teleported out. Blue sparks flew across the driveway, and a mild shockwave followed in her wake.
"What was that all about?" Saturn asked.
Plural giggled.
♦
Click
"There we go."
Late in the evening, Jenny set her torque wrench back to its lightest setting and put it back in the case.
She was in her garage, having just finished installing ten light units on her mother's old car. Two on each side, including up. She checked the wiring one last time, then closed the hood and took place in the driver's seat. There was a piece of plastic trim missing below the steering wheel. It was the diagnostic port, which had a radio transmitter hooked up to it. When it showed a green light, Jenny stepped out of the car and closed her eyes.
Clunk
When she opened them, the ten light units were on, and the garage interior was so bright she could hardly see a thing.
Clunk, clunk, clunk
Jenny toggled the lights off and on and off again and saw that they worked perfectly. Now, with her lighthouse on four wheels ready to go, she turned to the garage door, closed her eyes and sent a signal for it to open.
It had gotten dark outside, and Jenny stepped onto her driveway with the driverless car creeping behind. She closed her eyes and exhaled deeply, feeling nervous about the nightly excursion that was to come. This time, however, she was unencumbered, and she came prepared.
♦
Plural lay awake in her bed, unable to sleep. She was never really afraid of the dark before now, but after this experience, she couldn't help but feel shivers being alone in her dark bedroom. Sometimes, she could swear she saw those two dots in the dark corners of her room, but when she looked closer, they weren't there. At least the thought that Jenny was probably flying around the night sky right now, maybe even passing over her house, made her feel better.
Plural looked at her phone on her nightstand. If Jenny had already defeated the creature, she would have sent a text like they agreed, but it hadn't beeped yet.
Plural closed her eyes and thought back to the night before, when Jenny dropped them at that street light and didn't move anymore. After calming down and getting their bearings, they called a taxi to take them straight to Jenny's house.
During the ride home, she looked out the window at the darkness beyond the street lights. Like in the dark corners of her bedroom, she would sometimes see those same two dots staring at the car from deep into the darkness. At the time, she didn't feel like she was hallucinating it at all, and it felt like they were being followed.
When they entered the safety of the city, she couldn't spot the two dots anywhere anymore, but she still felt like she was constantly being watched.
Even now, lying in bed, she wondered if the creature was watching her. If it had really followed them home at night, it would've followed them to Jenny's house. Surely not here.
The thought of it made her shiver, and Plural took her phone and clutched it to her chest, waiting for it to vibrate with a message from Jenny.
♦
It was 4AM when the wheels of Jenny's car left the dirt roads of the dark woods and rolled onto the asphalt.
Clunk
Jenny turned off the light units on the car, which blanketed the area around her with bright light and were sure to dazzle oncoming drivers on her way home.
Her windows were rolled all the way down, as they had been all night, yet she never smelled any rotting corpses. Five hours of aimless flying and driving across the woods yielded nothing, and she was starting to run low on energy, forcing her to call it a night.
On her way home, she opted to fly instead, sending a signal to the car to drive home on its own. She made one final pass over the city, including Saturn and Plural's houses, and checked with her x-ray vision to make sure they were safe and sound.
At home, she went straight to her bedroom and plugged herself in, slightly dialing up the charging speed to make up for shorter sleep. The car returned to the garage ten minutes after she did and parked itself. When she heard the garage door open and close, she slowly drifted into hibernation.
…
"…"
Something wasn't right. She wasn't hibernating. Or at least, not anymore. Not even an hour had passed, and she woke up to a pulsating red light at the top of her head. The charger was no longer plugged into her head, either.
When she got up to look around, she felt a massive resistance to any movement she made. Jenny was no fool, and she knew exactly what was happening. There was no feeling quite like that suffocating darkness pressing against one's body.
Not only that, but she could feel strange appendages touching her. It was like being groped by an octopus. But these things were no tentacles, they were tougher. And instead of suckers, she felt small, thin fingers feeling the contours of her body.
Having adjusted her eyes to the darkness, she saw them. The two red dots, hovering maybe two meters above her, probably too tall to fit in this room and hunching against the ceiling.
This was the first time a villain had ever attacked her in her own home, and Jenny panicked. On impulse, she lasered in between the eyes again, but the creature didn't stop what it was doing to her with its appendages.
If it was trying to somehow eat or crush her, it didn't seem to have enough strength to do it. Short of nuclear warheads, no weapon in the world could even cut a hair on Jenny's head. As far as interstellar visitors were concerned, they'd have to toss her into the sun to kill her.
And yet, it didn't stop, as if it was doing something else entirely, and Jenny had no idea.
In a panic, she teleported away from it and landed in the park behind her house. Or at least, that was the idea, but the world was still pitch black, even outside her home. Jenny moved around with her foot and confirmed that she was standing on grass. That's when the realization hit that the veil of darkness extended far beyond the confines of her home, and possibly even covered the entire city.
In the distance, the creature's indescribable footsteps came skittering her way, almost like the dark fog acted like a spider's web, letting the owner know the exact whereabouts of every little disturbance.
On the bright side, at least the creature was coming after her, and not her friends.
And after only a short time of relief, Jenny felt the creature's appendages covering her body again. This time, though, she remained calm and pinged her home computer to start the car and open the garage door. After all, just an hour earlier she was still actively looking for him. Nothing changed, and her lighthouse on wheels was right around the corner.
Only, her home computer never pinged her back to indicate the garage door had finished opening. As she moved her head, Jenny remembered that the darkness impeded anything that moved and concluded that the garage door likely didn't have enough power to overcome it. This meant the car wouldn't have enough power to ram through the door from a standstill, either.
Plan B, then. She decided to use her own hands to check the creature out, and do to it what it was doing to her.
Its creepy appendages were attached to a larger thing. It felt completely cold and didn't budge at all when she squeeze-tested it. After some more groping, Jenny got a pretty good idea of what she was holding to know that the appendages all came out of a single mass of flesh that was somehow powerful enough to resist her grip.
Next, she sent a signal to her car to turn on the light units. If it couldn't come to her, she would just take the creature to the car instead.
In one instant, Jenny's surroundings went from complete darkness to almost completely white, and the creature unleashed the worst shriek she'd ever heard. This time, it didn't sound human at all, but completely alien.
The light was clearly working, and the creature stopped trying to feel Jenny's body and instead struggled to break free from her grip. But it wasn't strong enough anymore, and Jenny held it tight. With each passing second in the light, its body shrunk in Jenny's violent embrace and lost its hardness. Where she was unable to hurt it before, she could now almost crush the thing.
Out of curiosity, Jenny tried opening her eyes to try and catch a glimpse of the creature's true form, but the light was so blinding that even from up close, she couldn't see a thing.
Then, something happened to its body, like it was changing form. Jenny couldn't tell what it was doing, but the creature's flesh was starting to resist her grip again, and she was no longer able to crush it. Its horrifying shriek transformed, too, sounding more human and eventually going completely silent.
Then, there was quiet, and the creature stopped resisting. Jenny was frozen in bewilderment, unsure if the creature had just died or not.
But her answer came in the form of two human hands, grabbing her arms tightly, way tighter than any normal human would be able to. In fact, they were so strong that Jenny was forced to let go. She could hardly believe what was happening, that something was able to match her power like this.
Clunk
Jenny turned the car's lights off and slowly opened her eyes to the horrific sight of…
Herself?
The thing looked at its own hand like it was impressed by what it just did to her. Jenny's mind raced through possible conclusions, and she recalled the appendages that groped her with their strange, finger-like textures. Did the creature transform into her? It wasn't wearing anything, and Jenny could tell that everything was a perfect match.
It gazed around the room with great curiosity, and Jenny could see a green glow in its eyes, suggesting it was using her night vision to look around the now dark garage interior.
Jenny swallowed and took a step back from the creature that had just become her exact copy, powers included. That was the safe assumption to make, anyway. And if that was indeed the case, and they fought here, it would endanger everybody in the city, including her friends.
Jenny froze, afraid to make the first move and provoke it.
The other Jenny now looked her straight in the eyes, raised its hand and waved at her with a friendly smile.
"..?"
A confused and frightened Jenny raised her own hand and hesitantly waved back. Other Jenny closed its eyes and tilted its head, maintaining its creepy smile, then disappeared with a bang, filling the garage with red sparkles.