"Get back!" Circus shouted and aimed the shotgun at the emerald.
Saturn—having placed it on Jenny's chest—jumped back and fell to the ground by Circus' feet. He and Plural looked away and covered their ears as Circus pulled the trigger and unleashed her last round from just a meter away.
The emerald shattered, releasing a dust-like substance which immediately gravitated towards Jenny's body and disappeared. Jenny's body was absorbing it, just like she said would happen. Once all the dust had been absorbed, her hair emitted a bright flash and turned beautifully gold, and Jenny's eyes shot open wide.
"Gah!" she gagged and flinched like she was choking on something, rubbing her hands across her ruined clothes and spilling the shrapnel from Circus' round on the ground.
When she realized she was fine, Jenny darted her eyes across her surroundings before focusing on her three friends' astonished faces. They were hunching over her wide-eyed, looking at her in disbelief, like they didn't think their plan would actually work.
"Huh!?" Jenny gasped, "whaddappened? Where are we?"
The others were too entranced by Jenny's appearance to answer, and Jenny eventually inferred on her own what was going on, and that her hair had turned gold.
"The emerald," she looked up at her friends again, "you guys…"
Then, their momentary peace was interrupted by the shrieking of monsters exiting the stairwell behind them and running onto the rooftop. The creatures sprinted recklessly and crashed straight into the railing at the edge. And the more joined in, the bigger the pile, until they started spilling over the edge and fell over. Eventually, some of them escaped the pile and set their eyes on the four survivors to the side.
Plural yelped and stepped back.
"J-Jen! They're—"
Jenny was staring at the dark sky until Plural caught her attention to the zombies that were coming for them. Jenny gasped and flew straight up without a second thought, then spun herself around in the air like a figure skater, unleashing her laser eyes and cutting every single thread under the green clouds at once.
At that moment, the zombies on the rooftop went limp and fell to the ground as the black threads coming out of their heads slowly faded away. After all that trouble, Jenny ended the scourge in just a single sweep.
When her midair spinning came to a halt, she locked her eyes on a target in the distance, in the direction of Dark Jenny and Tatters.
"Go!" Circus shouted. "Hurry!"
Jenny looked back at her friends to confirm their safety, then blasted off.
"…"
The three were now alone on the roof, and the fate of the world was out of their hands. Saturn was the first to drop to the floor in exhaustion, and the others soon followed. They sat in silence for a while until it dawned on them that their plan had succeeded, and they'd all survived. They all made eye contact and eventually started giggling.
They spent the next minute laughing uncontrollably, sharing in each other's emotions and enjoying the finish line they'd worked so hard to cross.
"We did it!" Plural cried tears of joy and crawled towards her two friends to take them into a group hug.
"Not bad, new girl," Saturn said as the two surrounded Circus and sandwiched her in between.
Circus couldn't form words and instead enjoyed the body warmth of her new friends until they were presented with a cosmic light show in the sky. Like fireworks, they watched in admiration how a golden laser beam went from one end of the nearest moon to the other and pierced straight through, making no sound at all.
♦
When she slammed down on the moon's surface, it was with Dark Jenny's head underneath her shoe. Jenny pressed her opponent down into the rock with its wound facing her way, and she grabbed the black substance covering it and tore it straight off, revealing another look at her replica's insides.
Dark Jenny tried a last-ditch effort to attack with its remaining tendrils, but Jenny grabbed hold of them instead and pulled them like she was pulling its hair, exposing the wound through which it could be killed.
Dark Jenny's facial expression never changed. In its last moments, it stared at her from the corners of its eyes. Neither scared nor resentful, an expression Jenny could never begin to understand.
A gold flash appeared in Jenny's eyes, growing brighter and brighter as she charged up the power of her laser, until she unleashed the widest beam she'd ever created and released all the emerald's energy to blast her nemesis into nothingness.
When her energy levels dropped below twenty percent, she stopped. Her hair had reverted to its normal blue color, and before her was a ten-meter-wide hole going all the way through the center of the moon.
Jenny floated backwards to the edge of the hole and released the last bit of dark limb from her clutches, allowing it to float in the vacuum and fade out of existence. Dark Jenny's signature had completely disappeared, and she felt a sense of relief like never before.
Slowly, she closed her eyes and reached out with her hand, as if Dark Jenny was still there and would touch it back. If it wasn't for the terrible atrocities it'd committed, she'd almost feel strangely attached to the creature, and to the way it always looked at her with its animalistic smile. Like a greater being that knew no restraint.
Jenny opened her eyes back up and clenched her fist shut, then sat down on the rocky surface to look at the blue glow of her world's atmosphere. A single piece of shrapnel floated away from her, and Jenny looked down at her sweater, ruined when her friends broke the emerald on top of her.
Jenny leaned backwards and wiggled her legs left and right across the rock. Surrounded by the silent vacuum of space, she started giggling.
That's right. She was alive because her friends decided to come with her on this adventure. Maybe losing every now and then wasn't so bad if she had friends to save her.
Speaking of friends…
Jenny stood up again. Peaceful as it was up here, it was time to head back and check on the blonde.
She squinted her eyes and followed the trail of gold that marked the path she took to get here. The clouds at the origin point were still parted from when she blasted through them, making it easy to see where to go.
Jenny blasted off the moon in the direction of the parted clouds, following the path of gold until she escaped the moon's gravity, then surrendered to the pull of her home world.
♦
When the three finally reached the ground floor and walked out of the building, Jenny had already returned to the surface and awaited them in the parking lot next to Tatters' unconscious body in the snow. When she saw her friends exit the building, Jenny smiled and gave them an excited wave.
One by one, they threw themselves on top of Jenny to finally hug her. She squeaked for each one, then giggled as she hugged them back.
"Hey guys ~" she said happily.
"You did it! We saw everything!" Circus said.
"I think the whole world saw that," Saturn said.
"You went into space! And you were gold!" Plural said.
Jenny squeaked, a little embarrassed at the attention.
"Is…" Saturn turned his head and looked at the damaged moon in the sky, "is that gonna be okay?"
"I don't know ~" Jenny responded happily and dismissively, enjoying the heartbeats of her friends.
After that, nobody said anything else for a while as they lay there on top of her.
…
"I think… I owe you guys my life," Jenny said, breaking the silence. "I don't know how to repay you…"
The others exchanged skeptic looks.
"You don't have to repay us," Circus said.
"Yeah, you save the world all the time and we don't repay you!" Plural said and gave Jenny another squeeze. "Besides, that's what friends do!"
"We'll save you as many times as you need," Saturn said with a grin.
Jenny made eye contact with him and blushed.
Meanwhile, Plural's attention went to Tatters, lying unconscious at the side.
"Is she okay?"
"I think she's asleep," Jenny explained. "I tried to wake her, but she keeps moaning and slapping my hand away."
Plural let go of Jenny and crawled next to Tatters, then tried shaking her shoulders but got the same reaction Jenny had already described. She was clearly asleep, and not in a coma.
"She's cold," Plural said while running her hand across her forehead.
Circus moved from her position on top of Jenny to Plural's side.
"What are we gonna do now?" she asked, then looked at the wasteland around her. "Is… everybody really dead?"
"I'm not getting any signs of life besides you guys," Jenny scanned the area with a gloomy look on her face. "It was like this last time, too…" she said, looking at the night sky, which was starting to clear up.
"Oh!" Circus retrieved the idol from her pocket and handed it to Jenny. "I think Dark Jenny dropped it on the roof. Can you seal him again?"
Jenny gave the idol a good look.
"This guy's not very strong," she said with a bitter smile, knowing full well how much damage the scourge had just caused.
Jenny held the idol in front of her and examined it as her eyes changed, displaying some strange patterns.
"He's already back in here."
She lowered the idol and looked up at the others' surprised faces.
"He always goes into the next best suitable host," she explained. "Any corpse will do, except for the ones he's already possessed before."
"That thing is a corpse?" Circus asked with her eyes on the idol.
"More or less," Jenny answered. "Someone designed this thing to act like one and trap him."
Her friends looked confused. Jenny put the idol on the ground and leaned back to make herself comfortable.
"I first fought this guy five years ago, but he kept coming back no matter how many times I cut the threads. That's when a demonologist approached me."
"Oh yeah, I heard about that…" Saturn commented.
"He said he knew all about the scourge and designed this idol himself, then asked me to use it," Jenny continued and turned to Circus. "When I sealed it, I gave it back to him, and he entrusted it to the museum where Dark Jenny took you."
Circus looked at the idol with sparkles in her eyes.
"Didn't you say it couldn't go back into the same corpse twice?" Saturn asked.
In response, Jenny grabbed the idol and shook it like a cocktail shaker. Her audience watched in amazement as nothing happened, until Plural took their attention to their sleeping beauty.
"Guys, she's freezing. Can we go find a car first? Talk then?"
"Right…" Circus said and got to her feet. "Wait, are we driving all the way home?"
Saturn got up with her, as did Jenny.
"I might be running a bit low after all that," Jenny admitted with a guilty look on her face. "I don't think I can fly home with a car on my back."
"Road trip it is, then," Saturn said and walked off while Circus and Jenny followed.
"Stay?" Plural tugged on Jenny's sweater.
Jenny looked back at Plural, then back at Saturn and Circus.
"We won't be long," Saturn said while waving his hand in the air.
"Get a roomy one!" Plural yelled.
♦
Jenny looked at Plural in disbelief.
"You guys went to a hot spring?"
Plural looked like she only just realized what kind of impression that left on Jenny.
"No!" she blurted out. "Well, we did… but not for fun! Circus and Tatters were already hearing voices!"
Jenny looked away and pouted.
"It's okay, I understand…"
Plural looked skeptical, and rightly so. Jenny wasn't comforted.
"So," Jenny continued, still looking away, "did you guys go… naked?"
"Yeah," Plural answered with a resigned tone.
"That's okay," Jenny swiftly replied.
After Saturn and Circus left, Plural started telling her about everything that happened after Jenny lost consciousness, but she didn't get very far before mentioning the hot springs.
By now, Jenny was drawing circles in the snow with her finger, and her jealousy was written all over her face in bold.
At the end of the day, it was her own advice to find a source of heat to counteract the effects of the scourge, it just didn't cross her mind that they'd be bathing together naked. It seemed like a special kind of experience that her friends had shared with each other, like they'd all increased their bonds with each other, but not with her.
"You wanna know what we talked about when we were in there?" Plural asked with a teasing look.
Jenny looked her in the eyes. She could vividly imagine them in there together, leveling up their bonds and unlocking new perks. Maybe Plural could fly now.
"W-What?" she hesitantly asked.
"How we'd all die for you," Plural said, poking Jenny's arm.
Jenny looked back at her in surprise.
"Even her!" Plural added, pointing at Tatters on the ground.
Jenny looked at Tatters, the girl who kept her friends safe while she was gone, and the reason they were all alive right now.
"She said that?"
"We all agreed we'd save you or die trying!" Plural said proudly.
Jenny felt bad for freaking out about the hot springs now.
"I'm s—"
But Plural pulled Jenny towards herself and rubbed her head.
"And now that we have, we can take you to the hot springs later!"
Jenny jolted a little at the suggestion. She did want to be included, but the idea of actually going scared her.
"Wasn't it embarrassing?" Jenny asked, herself embarrassed for asking.
"Maybe for some," Plural smirked and pointed behind Jenny.
When Jenny looked, she saw a van coming their way. Roomy, like Plural asked. It had to be Saturn and Circus. She didn't want to discuss the topic anymore now that the others were back.
"A-Anyway!" she turned back to Plural and stuttered. "What happened after that?"
Plural frowned and studied Jenny's unconvincing expression.
"What uh… what did you—" Jenny interrupted herself and looked behind her again when the van door opened. Saturn stepped out, holding the door open with one foot inside the car and one on the ground outside. He proudly pointed his thumb at the van to show them what they found.
Then, he noted Jenny's facial expression.
"What did you say to her?"
Jenny nervously looked back at Plural, hands clutched together on her chest. She gave Plural her best puppy dog eyes. Plural seemed to catch the hint and looked like she was thinking about what to say.
"Something I'm not supposed to know?" Saturn asked when Plural didn't respond on time.
"You know I don't hide anything!" Plural replied.
"Literally!" Circus said with her head poking out above the other opened van door.
Jenny jolted like Circus' suggestive comment gave her an electric shock.
"If you must know…" Plural said, arms crossed and eyes closed, "I told her about how we all declared our love for her! In the hot springs!"
Jenny looked at the other two for a reaction. They both smiled at Jenny. Circus gave her a thumbs up and Saturn gave her a wink. When he did, Jenny imagined it emitted a small heart that floated through the air in her direction. She crawled backwards slightly as the imaginary object approached her, until it made contact with her face and popped, causing her to let out a cute squeak.
When Jenny opened her eyes, everyone was looking at her funny.
"L-Let's get her inside!" she exclaimed.
Saturn walked over to help Jenny carry their sleeping knight in black while Circus opened the sliding door. Saturn and Jenny carefully placed Tatters on the bench seat on the left-hand side without waking her up. Not that they could if they tried.
"Are we really kidnapping her?" Jenny nervously asked.
"Don't worry!" Plural comforted her. "You can tell her it was my idea!"
"That's a yes, Jen," Saturn whispered into her ear from the other side, making her gasp.
Meanwhile, Circus laid her eyes on the surrounding ghost town one last time and seemed uneasy.
"Are we really leaving his place behind? Just like that?"
"There's nothing left here. What's there to do?" Plural weighed in.
"I don't know…" Circus replied anxiously. "What about the paperwork? Isn't this a crime scene?"
Saturn chuckled, shook his head and walked around the van.
"What, you wanna wait until the cops show up?"
Then, as if answering his question, there was a massive rumbling sound coming from the night sky, like it was cracking open. Everybody looked over to see a dark cloud forming on the horizon, with lightning crackling inside of it. Out came the bow of a massive warship, facing down like it was going to crash into the planet's surface head-on. But as it emerged from the dark cloud, it adjusted its course, pitching up and leveling itself out. It honked its ear-shattering horn three times, as if to warn other aircraft of its arrival.
Eventually, it slowed down and the dark cloud disappeared until the craft sat still in the sky.
As they watched in awe, Saturn was the first to break the silence.
"Is that…"
"The Accuser…" Circus interjected. "I've never seen it in person…"
Jenny clenched her fist and looked at the vessel in anger. She was picking up comms, informing the crew that lockdown had been lifted. Her eyes went to Saturn when he put his hand on her shoulder with a concerned look.
"What's wrong? They're here to help, right?"
Jenny looked at him and pressed her lips together, then returned her gaze to the warship.
"You guys get going. I'll catch up," she said as she turned her hair blue and floated into the sky. But when she felt a small resistance, she stopped and looked back. Saturn was tugging on the sleeve of her pants.
"Hold on! What're you gonna do?"
"I'm just gonna talk to him."
Jenny's eyes told Saturn she was being serious, and she wasn't about to be compelled to let the matter go. Saturn reluctantly let go of her and backed off, watching her fly away.
As Jenny approached the carrier, she scanned its technical details and saw the signature of its otherwise invisible shield. Before she crashed into it, she teleported and appeared on the ship's bridge, warping in with maximum violence to make a statement. When she stood up straight, she looked a woman in the eyes who'd fallen to the ground in front of her, coffee spilled all over her uniform. The woman looked at Jenny like she was seeing a ghost, as did most of the other staff on the bridge.
Jenny gave the woman a dismissive look and walked to the front, where an older man stood, looking at her with his hands behind his back. The tension in the room was razor sharp. It was so quiet, it was as if everybody was holding their breath. Just like how her friends had never seen a carrier jump with their own eyes before, the people on the bridge had never seen the Sparkle Princess with their own eyes before, either. All except one.
"Jenny! Excellent display! We had front-row seats!" said the older man.
"Admiral," Jenny said as she walked up the stairs and crossed her arms.
She tried her best to give him an intimidating look, but at the end of the day, Jenny was a small and friendly-looking girl. The man opened his mouth, but before words could come out, Jenny cut him off.
"You're late!"
The man tried to laugh the matter off.
"Well, we can't all be as fast as you. Moving this hunk o' junk takes—"
Jenny responded by turning her hair gold again, prompting some gasps from some of the staff on the bridge. It was a bluff. Jenny didn't have enough energy left to justify overcharging her powers, and she certainly wasn't going to hurt anyone.
"Everybody down there is dead! My friends risked their lives to bring me back! While you watched!"
The admiral dropped his smile.
"You wanted me to throw away the lives of my staff? Billions of taxpayer money?"
"You should've cut the threads! Stopped people from turning! You were there five years ago. We both know how easy that would've been."
"You've just demonstrated how easily you waltz right in here. Can you imagine what would've happened that thing did the same?"
Jenny broke eye contact and looked at the surrounding staff, who'd distanced themselves from the two, gathering on the opposite side of the bridge to watch the conversation unfold.
"For the record," the admiral continued, "I did lose good men trying to kill it on its way here. That told me everything I needed to know."
Jenny had nothing to say back. Not in front of all these people.
"I appreciate working with you, Jenny. But my loyalty lies with my soldiers."
Jenny listened with a distrusting face.
"Not with you, and not with your friends. I expect you'd say the same thing about us."
"They'll blame me for this," Jenny snarked with her last remaining bit of anger.
"Big deal. Welcome to the club," he dismissively replied.
He couldn't quite hide the fact that between the two of them, he'd shove the blame towards Jenny, too.
"It is a big deal… to me…" a frustrated Jenny said.
The admiral put his hand on Jenny's shoulder, not even slightly intimidated by her golden hair.
"I'll get your name cleared. We have plenty of footage."
For the first time, Jenny wondered if this guy was really on her side, or if he was just a professional talker. In person, he seemed reliable. But in the media, he never hesitated to throw her under the bus if it benefited him.
When she didn't respond, the man tapped Jenny's shoulder again and concluded the conversation.
"Go back to your friends. We'll take care of things down there."
The man had made it perfectly clear that there was nothing left to discuss. Jenny gave him one last resentful gaze, then disappeared with a bang.
♦
Tatters woke up to find her head resting on someone's shoulder. She was in a car with a roomy interior. She didn't need to look up to know it was Plural's shoulder she was sleeping on, because of her smell. She did anyway, and she found Plural returning a playful wave.
Tatters raised her head to sit upright in her seat and found that she was covered by a blanket. Next to Plural was Saturn, looking asleep. The three were in the middle bench seats. There were two small seats behind them that nobody was using, and the front seats were empty. The car was parked somewhere, and even though it was dark outside, Tatters could tell she wasn't even close to home anymore.
"Welcome back," Plural said. "You were out for a whole day."
A whole day since she passed out in the snow. It was all coming back to her now. She remembered how much she wanted to see them again, but she fell asleep immediately after Jenny saved her.
She tried moving her left arm a little to find it was as broken as she remembered. The same thing with her ribs and ankle.
"Where are we going?" she asked Plural.
"Back home. Our home, anyway…"
Tatters had a humble look on her face when she realized they did exactly what she wanted them to do, even without her asking.
"Before you say anything," Plural spoke up with her hands raised like she was at gunpoint. "We couldn't just leave you behind! And we couldn't get you to wake up, either!"
Plural left a bit of a pause to see if Tatters had anything to say, but she didn't.
"So…" Plural cleared her throat and continued. "I decided to kidnap you!" she said, sounding oddly proud.
Tatters still said nothing. She just looked at Plural wide-eyed and with her mouth slightly open, like she'd been wanting to say something the whole time but couldn't.
"You can be my familiar!" Plural announced confidently.
"Okay," Tatters replied, smiling a little.
Although she wasn't sure what Plural even meant by that, she was happy to be with her. For the first time in a long while, she'd found people who were good to her without asking for anything unreasonable in return.
"You're… not mad?" Plural asked her with a guilty look.
Tatters shook her head. She couldn't bring herself to say out loud that this was the happiest she'd ever been.
"Tell her what happened to your last familiar," Saturn said, not so asleep after all.
Plural glanced back his way and looked flustered.
"He, uh…" she stuttered, then put her arm around Tatters and pulled her closer, hurting her broken ribs. "He was weak! Unlike you!"
Tatters groaned a little from the pain in her chest.
Then, the two occupants of the front seats returned to the car with some supplies. Circus opened the door and handed a bag to Saturn, who took it and put it on his lap.
"Welcome back!" she greeted Tatters excitedly while getting herself seated in the driver's seat. Tatters looked out the window and gave a nervous wave back, feeling like she was becoming the center of attention.
This wasn't helped by the fact that Jenny, who'd returned with Circus, was nervously staring at her from the passenger seat. She was sitting on her knees, with her back facing the windshield, trying and failing to hide herself behind the headrest. Tatters looked at Jenny, and they made nervous eye contact. Jenny didn't say anything, but her body language revealed she didn't harbor any animosity towards Tatters at all. It was like she had a thousand questions to ask but was too afraid to say anything.
"I think she can see you, Jen," Circus told her when she was done adjusting the seat and mirrors.
"I'm sorry!" Jenny blurted out and pressed her forehead against the headrest.
"You have nothing to be sorry for," Tatters replied, looking guilty.
"For being mean to you," Jenny followed up from behind the headrest.
That's what she was sorry for? Whatever Jenny did and said to her, she deserved it ten times over, and Tatters didn't know what to say back without repeating herself.
Instead, she looked out the window when she felt everyone's eyes on her, hoping the topic would go away.
"It's okay, Jen, I think that means she forgives you," Plural said.
Tatters watched the outside world start moving as Circus drove off, and she enjoyed the feeling of Plural's arm around her shoulder.
♦
"~ Plural Added you"
"[~ Plural]Sleepy!"
"[~ Circus]@You Welcome!"
"[~ Circus]How did you add her if she's still asleep?"
"[~ Plural]Hacked her phone"
"[~ Saturn]👮?"
"[~ Saturn]@Circus illegal?"
"[~ Plural]I try to do smth good"
"[~ Plural]I can delete"
"[~ Circus]😒"
"[~ Circus]@Plural don't delete her! 🔫"
"[~ Plural]Hehe"
"[~ Plural]Oki"
"[~ Saturn]@You When you read this, welcome!"
"[~ Saturn]Try to take care of yourself around her."
"[~ Saturn]Her last familiar, Mr. Nibbles, was flattened by a truck."
"[~ Circus]@Saturn didn't you almost flatten her once yourself?"
"[~ Saturn]Karma"
"[~ Saturn]Also how do you know that?"
"[~ Plural]😢"
"~ Plural Removed ~Jenny"
"~ Plural Added ~Jenny"
"[~ Jenny]@You Welcome😣"