Plural received a look from Jenny like she wanted to know if she was still okay, and Plural gave her a thumbs up in response. The three were tethered to each other through an old hang glider frame, protected from the elements by what looked like a blue force field pointing the way they were heading, fading out as it curved around them.
The speed at which the land zipped by suggested they were flying many times faster than any airplane they'd ever been on, but it felt like they might as well be stationary. When they took off, Jenny took care not to accelerate too hard, or they would pass out from the excessive g-forces. Now that they were cruising at a constant speed, their legs hung down like they weren't even flying at all.
Due to their high cruising speed, the flight was not long, and they could see the world below growing colder and more foreign by the minute.
When their destination came into view, Jenny gradually reduced their speed, and Plural could feel her dangling legs reacting to the deceleration. Ahead was a city located in the middle of nowhere, in a mountainous area. It was surrounded by snowy peaks on one side and a frozen lake and sprawling woods on the other. There was a single road leading out of the city, away from the woods. A gas pipeline and electricity pylons connected to the city on the other side. There was visible damage to both.
Jenny approached the tallest building in the city and touched down on the roof, making sure her friends' feet hit the ground safely. The three undid the harnesses that attached them to the glider frame and Plural wasted no time running to the edge of the rooftop to look down at the city.
"I can't believe we just… went here," she started laughing and seemed happy, "if you'd told me last week I'd be doing this right now, I wouldn't have believed you."
The other two joined her at the edge of the building, and Jenny looked at the smile on her face. Plural and Saturn wore thick winter coats and stuffed backpacks containing whatever they managed to scramble together at the last minute. Jenny's backpack contained only the charger, three headsets and a spare panic wristband. She was wearing the same clothing as always, making her look underdressed for the climate.
"If you told me I'd throw up on the locals in the next minute, I might believe you," Saturn said.
He was draped over the edge of the building and looked sick. Jenny rubbed her hand on his back and looked guilty. He gave her an bashful smile telling her he was fine.
"It's okay, I get airsick. I just need to…" he wiped his hands across the outer wall of the edge he was draped over and didn't finish his sentence.
Jenny looked back at the city.
"It's somewhere down there…"
She turned to Saturn again with an inquiring look. He understood and took the phone out of his pocket, unlocked it and handed it to her. She checked the location again and walked over to the opposite side of the roof.
"You ever been this far?" Plural asked Saturn.
"Nope. Never even left the country before."
Plural looked at Jenny, who looked like she was trying to spot Dark Jenny based on the location in the app. Plural turned back to Saturn and saw that he was looking at her funny.
"What?"
"You look like you're having fun."
"I…" she blinked and considered his words. "I know we're here on a mission, but I've never seen snow before in my life," she explained, then looked over her shoulder at their pilot. "I don't think I'd ever see this place without Jenny."
She glanced at Saturn, then back at Jenny.
"We need to take her out to do something fun. Gotta be stuff to do here," she continued. "When all this is over."
Saturn gave her a difficult look back.
"Don't be saying it like that…"
Then, Jenny returned and draped herself over the edge next to Saturn.
"Any better?" she asked him.
"Yeah," he answered and gave her a wink.
She returned a wink and backed off the edge of the rooftop.
Plural frowned at the two, wondering when they started winking at each other like that. Did she miss something?
Jenny took off her backpack and took out three headsets. She put one on and handed the other two over. Everyone tuned their headset to the correct frequency.
"Mic check, mic check…" Jenny said through the mic.
"Give it to us, cap," Plural was second.
"How'd you guys turn this on?" Saturn was the final voice they could hear though their speakers.
"I know we just got here, but we have no time to waste," Jenny pointed in the direction she was looking before. "It hasn't moved in a while, so I wanna go now. I'll take you guys down to a safe place first," she said as she handed Saturn's phone back.
Jenny gave the two a serious look.
"No objections?"
"The plan's still solid," Plural responded. "Just tell us when."
Saturn took the emerald out and showed that he had it at the ready.
Jenny nodded and walked up to them, taking her small backpack off her shoulders.
"Sorry... it might break if I keep it on me," she said as she handed it to Saturn, probably referring to the increasingly valuable charger.
"Hey, I'm being useful," he said as he took it and hung it over his shoulder, next to his other backpack.
"We shouldn't be spotted together," Jenny said and grabbed their hands. "People probably know who I am."
The next instant, they were in a cramped alleyway Jenny probably scouted from the rooftop, surrounded by blue sparkles. Jenny let go of their hands and took a step back.
"Guess this is it, then…" she said nervously, clutching her arm to her side and looking over her shoulder.
Saturn moved his finger up to his ear, and they heard his voice over the radio.
"We're not going anywhere, you know?"
Jenny looked at him like she found his words touching, then jumped on them and pulled them in for a hug. She held on tight and gave off the impression that she wanted it to last forever.
"Yeah, we'll check in if we don't hear from you for too long," Plural added and rubbed Jenny's back.
"Okay…" Jenny said.
She teleported away before even letting go, and Plural and Saturn gave each other an awkward look as they were left half-hugging each other and some empty space.
♦
"Still here?" Saturn asked over the radio.
"Still here, guys," Jenny responded.
Five seconds passed.
"Still here, Jen?" Plural asked over the radio.
"Guys…" Jenny responded.
"Sorry, maternal instincts…" radio-Plural replied.
Jenny teleported from rooftop to rooftop, trying not to draw unwanted attention from the locals. She wasn't normally this stealthy, but her target was close, and she didn't want to give herself away. When she was scouting from up on that rooftop, she concluded that the tracker signal came from what looked like an old town center. A busy area, yet the people were minding their own business like nothing was wrong. Was it blending in?
When she reached the final rooftop overlooking the old town center, Jenny saw nothing out of the ordinary. She moved her finger to her push-to-talk button on the headset.
"Any change in location?"
The response came five seconds later.
"Don't think so," radio-Saturn replied, "middle of the town square."
No Dark Jenny to be found there. Jenny scanned all the people she saw and even looked through the surrounding store walls to see if it might've been inside. She looked up at the sky but spotted no objects within the planet's atmosphere at that location.
But when she looked back at the exact location with greater zoom, she spotted what she was afraid she'd find.
Jenny teleported to a small object in the exact center of the old town square, almost completely covered in snow. Her sudden appearance did not go unnoticed, and some people jumped at the sound of her sparkling arrival. But Jenny didn't need to stay hidden anymore, and the signal was of no use. She picked up the white tracker from the snow and spoke onto her radio again.
"How long has it been here exactly?"
"Little over an hour. Why?" radio-Saturn replied.
"I found the tracker in the s—"
A steel wire suddenly coiled around her neck but caught on the arm she was pressing her radio button with. It tightened but couldn't overcome the rigidity of Jenny's limbs. Someone was pulling it. A stranger's voice came from behind her.
"If I see any movement, I'll cut you in h—"
Jenny gave the wire a good tug and felt it slacken and ease off her shoulders, then fall down to the ground. She stepped out of the noose and turned around to see a figure falling from a building. A blond girl with a tattered cape. Jenny looked at her curiously. The people around them backed away to the storefronts and formed an audience around them.
"You okay, Jen? You got cut off," radio-Saturn asked her.
"I just got attacked, I think…" Jenny replied via radio.
On closer inspection, the girl looked like some sort of amateur superhero, but without a face mask. She had a utility belt to which that wire from before was attached. The girl was holding a button on it and pulling it back.
"Not by the target, though," Jenny continued on the radio. "I don't know who this is…"
At least this adversary wasn't as dangerous as Dark Jenny.
"Why did you do that?"
"You talk now?" the stranger responded.
She unsheathed two daggers from her belt, which started to glow, starting pink at the hilts and transitioning into blue at the blades. Her cape was glowing in that same pink color. When Jenny examined her more closely, she saw that her pupils were glowing in the same way Jenny's pupils would glow when she used her laser eyes. Except in the stranger's case, her right pupil had the blue color, and her left had the pink color.
Jenny tensed up. There was something going on with her glowing equipment, but Jenny didn't know what it was. The stranger dashed towards her and moved to jam one of her daggers into Jenny's face.
Jenny wasn't used to taking threats very seriously and had a habit of letting attacks just hit her, but something deep inside of her was screaming to dodge this one. The stranger wasn't moving that fast by Jenny's standards, so it wasn't very difficult for her. The stranger's attacks were violent and lightning-fast, but Jenny moved out of the way even faster and danced across the snow with her opponent.
"Why—are—you—attacking—me?" she tried to make conversation while dodging.
The stranger didn't answer her and looked even angrier instead, like Jenny was taunting her. Jenny didn't fight normal people often, but when she did, she had a habit of goofing off and making them look like fools.
"Boop!"
Jenny had made her way behind her opponent and poked the back of her head. The stranger turned around in anger, but Jenny was even quicker and did it again.
"Dead!"
"Why you little—"
"Too slow!"
Jenny hadn't used her teleportation even once during this fight. To her, it was an exercise.
"Dead again!"
The stranger jumped back to create some distance and threw one of her daggers straight at Jenny, who jumped out of the way by somersaulting backwards and landing on the backrest of a park bench. She couldn't resist putting on a bit of a clown act by pretending to lose her balance and flailing her arms around. When the stranger threw her second dagger, Jenny hopped off the bench to get out of its way. To her surprise, the first dagger had already started its return trip via a razor-thin wire that Jenny could only spot at the last second. She moved her head away from the wire and saw the blue-glowing dagger zip past her head.
Jenny landed on her feet, and to her horror, saw two of her hairs falling to the ground. She was right about the daggers, there was something special about them. Nothing on Jenny's body had ever been damaged before, by anything. She couldn't even cut her own hair with her laser eyes. If she hadn't noticed the nigh invisible wire, this could've ended far worse for her.
The stranger held the dagger in her hand again and studied Jenny like she was working out her next strategy. Jenny, in turn, studied the girl's other dagger that was still stuck in the ground. The blade had completely penetrated the stone like butter, and the hilt was still glowing pink, as was the wire that connected it to the girl's belt.
The stranger changed her posture like she'd decided what her next trick would be. But before she could act, Jenny teleported in her face, grabbed her dagger by the hilt and yanked it out of her hand with enough force to make her stumble. Then, Jenny gently kicked her leg, causing her to fall over and eat a mouthful of snow.
The blade was still glowing, and Jenny examined it instead of giving her opponent any attention. The stranger got up and backed away from Jenny, then pressed another button on her belt, causing the wire on the blade to pull on it. But Jenny's grip on the dagger did not budge, and the stranger was not allowed to have her weapon back no matter how hard she pulled.
Next, Jenny grabbed the pink glowing wire, tugging the stranger towards herself in the process, and tried pulling it off the pink glowing hilt. To her surprise, it wouldn't come off, even though she was strong enough to bend steel.
A perplexed Jenny looked back at the girl, who'd been helplessly watching Jenny trying to break her equipment while she dangled at the end of it. She had an angry but also terrified look on her face. Jenny was starting to feel bad and wondered if she wasn't being too mean, so she dropped the dagger on the ground and allowed her to have it back.
"L-Listen!" Jenny tried to de-escalate, "I'm not the one you want. You're looking for someone who looks like me, wearing a black dress and tiara!"
The girl twitched her eyes, then clenched her teeth in anger.
"Why would I believe anything you say?"
"W-What did it do?" Jenny continued. "The one with the black dress…"
The girl looked conflicted, like she was considering her next move carefully. In the meantime, she pressed that button on her belt again, but instead of the one Jenny was just holding, it reined in the other dagger from before.
"Destroyed the pipeline. Cut us off from the rest of the world."
The girl's words made Jenny feel guilty, and she was running out of words.
"Kidnapped innocent children!" the girl continued with increasing anger. "Killed my friend! Cut her head right off!"
Jenny could see that the girl hated her, and she looked down at the ground in shame. The second dagger was still glowing, and the blade was penetrating the ground with the hilt facing up.
Instead of accepting Jenny's gesture and taking the second dagger back, the girl undid the glow effect and cut the wire using the first dagger.
"I'm sorry…" Jenny said, rubbing her arm and looking at the ground.
The stranger hesitated.
"… What?"
"I'm here to help!" Jenny pleaded. "I know it's hard to believe me, but I'm here to kill it!"
"Jenny!" Plural and Saturn called out to her as they came running to the scene, alarming the stranger.
"Don't go near her!" the stranger yelled and started running at Saturn and Plural to protect them from Jenny. Jenny had to resist the urge to move and protect her friends from the stranger instead, seeing that the girl had good intentions, and she didn't want to raise the tension again.
"Hey!" Plural yelled at the stranger. "Jenny's our friend!"
The stranger looked back at Plural in total confusion.
"It's okay, guys. It's understandable," Jenny said.
"You're in cahoots with it?" the stranger asked the two, accusatory.
"Oh great, here we go…" Saturn sighed.
"Go, Jen. We'll take care of this," Plural said.
The stranger looked back at Jenny upon hearing that name for the third time, studying her face with an angry and curious look in her eyes. Jenny didn't make eye contact and instead looked at her friends with a worried expression.
Saturn stepped in Jenny's direction. "It's what we're here f—"
But the stranger held out her arm and blocked his way. He gave her an annoyed glare in response.
"Okay…" Jenny submitted and teleported out of the old town center, throwing up some snow in the aftermath.
♦
"What's going on with your cape?" Saturn asked the strange blonde.
She looked back at him and took her arm back down but didn't answer his question. Instead, she looked down at her own cape like she was just told her fly was open, then made it stop glowing somehow.
Then, like he wasn't even there, she stowed her dagger in her holster and walked over to another one that was lying in the snow. When she returned to them, her pupil was no longer glowing, just like her cape, and Saturn gave her a confused stare.
But the girl stepped towards him and moved her face uncomfortably close.
"You're not from here, are you?" she asked him, studying his face.
He tried to back away, but she grabbed his collar and started dragging him away.
"Uh, hey! Rude!" he yelled, trying in vain to break free.
The girl stopped and turned to Plural.
"You too!"
Eventually, Saturn stopped resisting, and the girl took them into an alleyway, where she pushed him against the wall.
"Relax, Evanescence! Wouldn't wanna break your nails…" he said, holding his hands up.
She looked at him even angrier.
"Fine, let's talk," he continued. "Who are you? Some sort of discount vigilante?"
"You first!" she tightened her grip on him.
"We—are—friends—with—Jen—ny," he said exaggeratingly slowly, like he was talking to an infant. "You know, the girl who just used your face as a snowplow!"
"You're just making her angry!" Plural said.
"That thing's really called Jenny?" the girl turned to Plural.
"She's not a thing!" Plural said. "She's a good person! If you actually looked her in the eyes, you would know!"
The girl froze and looked surprised, like Plural's words struck her more than Saturn's stupid comments did. She remained silent for a second before regaining her anger and moving on.
"She has the power to wipe us all out! I've seen it in person."
"So, you've run into Dark Jenny, right? Where? Help us out!" Saturn asked while still pinned against the wall.
"Again with that…" the girl sighed.
Plural stepped closer without a lick of intimidation.
"We're on your side! I'm Plural, and this is Saturn!" she said, pointing at herself and Saturn with her hands half in the air.
The girl turned to Saturn like she wanted to get a new impression of him now that she'd learned his name. He gave her a little wave in return.
After a moment, she violently let go of him and walked away, shoving Plural's shoulder aside.
"Hey, wait! We need your help!" Plural shouted, making the girl stop with her back turned to them.
"And I don't need yours," she responded as she started walking away again.
"At least tell us your name…" Plural said.
The girl stayed silent and disappeared around the corner.
"I don't think she likes us, Plu," Saturn said as he adjusted his winter coat.
"I wish we could redo that…"
"Sorry…"
Plural looked down the alleyway with a worried expression while Saturn took his finger up to his headset.
"Jenny… You there?"
"Yeah…" radio-Jenny said.
"We just had a talk with, uh," Saturn hesitated, "the girl with the cape…"
"… How'd it go?"
"We got nothing."
"I think Dark Jenny did something to her. She really doesn't like you," Plural joined in.
"Yeah, she said it cut the city off from the outside world by destroying the pipeline. Killed her friend. Kidnapped people…"
Plural and Saturn glanced at each other.
"Kidnapped? Like Circus?" Plural asked.
"Yeah. I'm trying to find them, but this place is huge."
"How'd it go between you two anyway? What's with the glowing cape?" Saturn asked Jenny.
"I think she can make her weapons cut through everything, not sure about the cape."
Saturn and Plural didn't say anything else.
"She was able to cut my hair," radio-Jenny continued after some hesitation.
"What?" Plural asked. "She hurt you?"
"No..." radio-Jenny said and didn't elaborate further.
"You think she can kill Dark Jenny?" Saturn asked.
Then, they heard wind noise through the radio, like Jenny was holding her button but hesitating to answer.
"I wanna stick with our plan."
Saturn could tell Jenny wouldn't budge on the topic, so he dropped his arm back down and spoke to Plural in person.
"We gotta convince the girl with the cape to help us."
♦
The girl with the cape wandered the streets like a lost child, out of ideas and full of doubt. Now that the adrenaline had dissipated, the fatigue was setting in again.
Last night was starting to feel like a dream, and she developed doubts about whether she remembered everything correctly. The robot called Jenny, dancing on the park bench and running laps around her, not hurting anybody. She didn't know what to think anymore.
"Jenny..." she mumbled to herself. "Jen..."
She remembered the last time somebody gave her a nickname, back when she was a child. It was making her jealous.
Ever since she last woke up, she'd been taking one defeat after another.
The ambush behind the restaurant, the events at the frozen lake, then her powerlessness at the hands of the rampaging killer robot, followed by a humiliating defeat in front of a big crowd at the hands of presumably the same robot.
And to top it all off, those two foreigners had the nerve to tell her that it was all her fault, and "Jenny" was actually a good person. This was starting to become the worst day of her life, and the longest.
The girl couldn't even remember how many hours she'd been awake, but the mandate of her powers demanded she keep going, because nobody else in the city could do what she did. There was no time for rest while the demon still walked among her people.
Freshly printed newspapers caught her attention, and she grabbed one to see if there was new information about the killer robot like there was on the radio. It was a local paper, so it unsurprisingly featured a front-page piece about the events from last night. Murders and kidnappings, but nothing about the silver-haired figure. Instead, a not-so-charming portrait of herself.
BLACK CAPE A.K.A. TATTERS: THE LAST STRAW?
She was being blamed for it all, including the infrastructure damage. She knew the cartel ran the papers, but that didn't make the headline hurt any less. She felt incredibly lonely knowing everyone would read it and most would believe it. The events of last night left an immense impression on her, and the world pretended it didn't happen.
Tatters was biting her nail as she read. If anyone bothered to look, they'd see a rare, nervous expression on her face. She looked at the people around her, but it's not like they reacted to her, not while wearing the hood of her cape over her head. She put the paper back and started running to her home, forgetting about her fatigue again.
When she got close enough to her home to see it, she found it covered in graffiti. The entrance had a particular message sprayed across in big letters.
NOT WELCOME HERE
Her home was located at an inconspicuous place on the outskirts of the city, and she'd always taken care not to give it away. Did someone follow her here? She looked around in shock but found nobody.
Except in the corner of her eye was that object again, flying in the sky without a care in the world. In her head, it was laughing at her, turning her people against her. She looked at it while a tear rolled across her cheek, clenching her fist and turning her sorrow into rage.
She never owed the world a thing, and the world's message to her was clear. In that moment, Tatters decided that tonight she'd do the only thing in her life that truly mattered. Kill Jenny, and then herself.