"We'll just have to answer a bunch of questions. No problemo," Jenny said proudly.
"How many times have you had these hearings?" Saturn asked.
"I dunno," Jenny rubbed her chin, "couple times… nothing ever comes out of it. I just wish you guys weren't getting dragged into it with me."
"Maybe by then, it'll dawn on me that I've survived a zombie apocalypse," Plural said, shivering.
"I wonder if they'll treat us like criminals," Circus said, nervously fidgeting with the gamepad on her lap.
"Hmph," Saturn grunted, "they should roll out a red carpet for us if you ask me."
"I'm just happy you're all okay," Jenny happily said, wiggling her hips in between her friends.
The five of them were on the couch in Plural's living room. There was a loading screen on the TV, and everyone had a gamepad.
"We are. Thanks to a certain someone," Plural said while giving Tatters next to her a flirty look.
In turn, Tatters looked away, ignoring the comment until the topic went away. Plural took the hint and switched her focus to the TV. The loading screen had disappeared, and the game's title "Blunt Runner" showed in big letters. Plural navigated through the main menu and entered local multiplayer mode.
"Pick your guys!" Plural said as she picked one of the male characters and the blue color.
Tatters and Circus followed in Plural's footsteps and picked their guys, yellow and maroon respectively. Jenny didn't understand why they didn't pick the female characters, so she copied them and did the same thing, silver color. Saturn smiled and rolled his eyes as he picked the female character with the red color.
As everyone finished selecting their character and readying up, the game commenced. Plural had selected some racetrack, and the five players appeared at the start line along with some NPC runners. When the game counted down, everybody except Circus pressed the correct button exactly when the game said "Go".
"What?" Circus exclaimed as her character smoked his blunt slower than the others.
"Tough," Saturn noted as his character took off along with the others.
Tatters' character was the first to fall, getting run over by a van, mugged, and then stabbed to death.
"Huh!?" she uttered, confused enough to miss the quick-time event that would've allowed her to recover.
"Ouch! Gotta parry that!" Plural said.
"This is unfair. You've played this already," Circus said as her character finished his blunt and followed the others.
Tatters dropped her gamepad as she was now out of the game. She crossed her right arm over her left arm, which was in a sling, to make her displeasure known. She only had her right hand free to use the gamepad, so she was holding it weird and couldn't have reached the parry button anyway.
"It's okay Tats, we'll play something else after this," Plural said.
"No, I want another go," Tatters responded while pouting.
She'd been staying at Plural's house ever since she came here, and a visit to the hospital was one of the first things they had her do. Since then, she didn't do much except recover.
The others didn't have to do much yet. The game's only inputs were steering, parrying and pressing whatever button was displayed on the screen for the QTE's. The characters ran on their own, all at the same speed.
The next obstacle came for Plural, a drunk driver who drove through the track's barriers. Unsurprisingly, she parried it perfectly.
Everybody's characters started swaying now, and they had to put more effort into steering them straight. Saturn's character ran into Plural's character, and they started mashing a button on their gamepads. The characters slapped each other, but Saturn's character had long hair and lost the struggle when Plural's character pulled it and dropped her to the ground, putting Saturn in last place when Circus overtook him.
"Seriously?" he exclaimed.
"Rookie mistake. Don't pick girls," Plural replied.
Tatters looked at her own braids in frustration.
Saturn got closer to Jenny and whispered something in her ear, giving her a nervous look on her face.
"What're you doing?" Plural asked interrogatively.
"You're not telling us everything, so you don't need to know everything either," he answered.
Jenny tried to sway her character against Plural's character like Saturn did, but the controls were just getting harder, and even the screen was getting wobbly. Worse, it was Jenny's turn to parry. A military helicopter appeared on the screen and started firing automatic rounds at Jenny's character.
Jenny's finger tapped the bumper on the gamepad to match each shot at speeds that didn't seem possible for a normal human. As a reward for parrying every bullet, which didn't seem like something the game expected her to succeed at, Jenny's character gained a massive lead over the others.
"I've never seen anyone do that…" Plural said.
"Sorry, I can't do what you asked anymore," Jenny said to Saturn with a guilty look on her face.
"That's o—"
Saturn went silent when that same helicopter crashed down on his character, having missed the parry due to the attention Jenny was giving him.
"How does this even qualify as a game?" Tatters asked.
"Can I even win anymore?" Circus asked.
Circus' character was getting closer to the guard rail. If she touched it, it was game over. The controls were getting wobbly enough to make it hard to keep them from staying on the track. Additionally, the characters were losing their balance and had to be stabilized with the same joystick used for steering. It was too much for her, and her character fell to the ground when she overcorrected from one side to another.
"Just you and me, Jen," Plural said.
She was tense and focused. In comparison, Jenny looked relaxed, like she wasn't having a very difficult time. And indeed, her character remained perfectly stable and centered the whole time. Jenny turned her hair blue and floated into the air, flipping her body upside down and landing on her back. Her legs were against the couch's backrest and her head hung down, looking at the TV upside down.
"HUH!?" Plural panicked.
"Good one. You should do the same, Plu," Saturn said.
"Ughhh," Plural mumbled, struggling to flip herself like Jenny did. When she got into position, it was already too late. She watched as her character ran into the side of the track, making Jenny the winner.
"Yay," Jenny exclaimed.
"I thought you'd at least be bad at games or something," Plural said, looking at Jenny, also still upside down.
"Jenny's good at everything!" Circus exclaimed.
Jenny rubbed her cheek and blushed at all the praise.
"Hey, why'd you choose such a boring job anyway?" Circus asked Jenny, flipping herself upside down like the other two. "Y'know, if you're qualified for anything…"
"To meet you guys," Jenny said, looking left and right at all her friends.
"Awww!" Circus gave Jenny an upside-down hug.
"I guess all this stuff happened because we took you camping, huh?" Saturn said, still upright like Tatters.
Plural raised her head and made eye contact with Tatters.
"That's when we unleashed the creature that took us to you."
Tatters gave her typical frown.
"And you," Plural turned to Circus.
"Guess you were right to become a…" Saturn hesitated, "uh…"
All eyes went to him, and his went to Jenny.
"What's your job title, anyway?"
"I forgot," Jenny gave him a wink.
♦
The next day saw Jenny head back to work with Plural and Saturn. She received weird looks from her colleagues—especially barf drinker, although that was normal to a certain extent. This time, though, she was told she wasn't needed. It seems the lady had some extra resentment towards her since last time.
This upset Jenny. Perhaps getting her name cleared simply wasn't enough to restore her reputation for some people. Jenny didn't want to cause any trouble, so she kept her mouth shut and stormed off.
When she reached the central hall of her floor, she stopped and wondered what she was even going to do for the rest of the day. People were still giving her weird looks like they'd been doing all morning.
She continued in the direction of Saturn's workplace, hoping he was there.
Luckily, she caught him as he was leaving.
"Yo! How's your morning?" he asked her.
Jenny didn't answer and looked at the ground. Her hands were behind her back, and she was wiggling her foot around.
"That bad?"
Jenny nodded.
Saturn looked around, as if he was going to say something he wasn't allowed to say.
"Well, if you wanna be anywhere else," he said as he slowly walked around Jenny. "I'm heading out on a run… and I'll probably forget to check for stowaways…"
Jenny rotated with him as he walked around her towards the staircase. He was walking backwards now, facing her. He winked at her again in a slow and obvious way.
♦
He looked at her like one would look at a cat on the hood of their car. But when she gave him a playful smile, he remembered who he was dealing with and hopped into the driver's seat. This was a warm day, and they'd been driving with the windows open. He could see people giving them strange looks as he drove by with the girl on his roof, and he admired her for ignoring the stares and doing whatever she wanted.
When he stopped at a red light, he heard movement on the roof, then Jenny popped her head down outside his window. She was lying on her stomach now, with her eyes at about the same height as his, head upside down. Her hair fell down and some of it landed on the window trim. He couldn't suppress a grin. Any other person would probably be too scared to do this, for a variety of reasons. Things like this were what made her cool.
"Hey!" she said cheerfully.
"Oh!" he responded, pretending he didn't see her. "I forgot I put you there…"
Jenny happily wiggled her head left and right.
When he drove off again, they got on a road with opposing traffic on the lane to their left. An oncoming truck honked its horn at them, and Jenny teleported to the passenger seat with a quiet flash. Like a good citizen, she reached for the seatbelt and clicked it into the bucket, then wiggled her feet and looked out the window.
♦
Their next stop was a location Jenny knew well, and seeing it killed her good mood a little bit. When Saturn got out to grab the packages, Jenny followed him instead of staying in the van. He raised his eyebrow at her when he retrieved all the packages from the back of the van, and Jenny realized she was doing her nervous hopping again.
"I-I'll keep you safe this time!" she said as she marched on, leading the way inside.
When she entered through the same door as last time, she stopped and looked around the building's interior to find it hadn't changed a bit. Still not very bright and kind of creepy. Saturn had his eyes on the office section up ahead, where Jenny and Plural found him next to the corpse that day. He looked tense and kind of scared.
She wanted to take his hand, but they were both occupied carrying luggage. Instead, she put her hand on his shoulder to get his attention, then winked at him. He looked away embarrassed, but she could see him smile a little.
"C'mon," he said, still looking away.
They walked side by side, and Jenny looked at all the aisles of second-hand items around her, having never properly checked the place out before.
When they arrived at the office, it looked like nothing happened there at all. Jenny didn't see anybody inside, and Saturn put the boxes down in front. He looked over his shoulder, to his left. Jenny followed his gaze and saw an aisle containing clothes. He walked over and Jenny followed.
When she got closer, she saw they weren't normal clothes, but costumes, like for theater. She realized what the significance of this section was.
"Still here," he said as he walked over and grabbed a black dress. She walked over to see another one just like it hanging on the same rack and took it in her hands.
"I'm sorry," Saturn said with a guilty tone. "Maybe you don't wanna see this at all…"
"That's not true," Jenny said as she held the dress in front of her torso to see if it'd fit her.
Not that she'd ever actually wear it.
After a second, she looked back up at Saturn to find him staring at her like he'd seen a ghost.
"Sorry…"
She lowered the dress when she realized Dark Jenny probably did the exact same thing back then. It made her feel oddly naked, like Dark Jenny was at the time.
Jenny handed the dress back to Saturn, and he hung it back on the rack. When he returned to meet her eyes, Jenny looked him deep in the eyes and contemplated bringing up the topic.
"What?" he asked her with an awkward smile.
"N-Nothing…" Jenny broke eye contact and awkwardly fiddled with her hands.
Luckily, something caught Saturn's attention at the office, and he raised his hand to wave at someone.
"Oh! Saturn!"
An old lady came out to greet them.
"And you brought Jenny!"
Saturn put his hand on Jenny's back and leaned over to whisper in her ear.
"She's the wife of the guy who uh… you know…"
Jenny looked nervous to hear it.
"Nonna! I did! The one and only Sparkle Princess," he walked to her while gesturing at Jenny like she was some sort of celebrity.
Jenny followed behind him.
When they got to her, the old lady took Saturn in for a hug. Jenny looked like she didn't know how to act.
"How are you holding up?" he asked her.
"Oh, I'm fine! I'm fine!" she said, letting go and taking her eyes to Jenny instead.
"I-I'm sorry for what happened…" Jenny said, as if she was the one who murdered her husband.
"Oh!" Nonna said, then took Jenny in for a hug, surprising her. "You are an angel, you know that?"
Saturn watched with satisfaction, like he was proud to introduce the two. Jenny made eye contact with him while the old lady hugged her, curving the ends of her lips upward into a smile.
The old lady let go of Jenny and looked her in the eyes.
"I saw what you did to it. On the moon. Everyone did," she said with a serious face. "I cried!" she softly poked Jenny's chest. "Of happiness!"
Then, she turned around and walked back to the office.
"Don't ever say sorry for that."
Saturn put his hands on Jenny's shoulder, and the two followed the old lady to the office.
"He talks about you all the time, you know?" the old lady pointed vaguely in Saturn's direction.
Jenny looked at him, but he shook his face implying she was exaggerating.
"Really?" Jenny excitedly asked and hopped over to the old lady, "what does he say!?"
♦
The day was coming to an end, and they drove back to the office. Jenny didn't feel like goofing off anymore and just sat in the passenger seat, looking out the window and zoning out.
"You're quiet," Saturn said.
Jenny looked over at him.
"Compared to before, anyway," he added.
Jenny stared at him with a blank look in her eyes. She had a burning question for him ever since she unnecessarily apologized to that old lady.
"What?" he asked with an awkward smile, not looking away from the road.
Jenny tensed up and put her hands on her lap, looking down at her feet. She noticed she'd been wiggling them this whole time.
"Aren't you ever… scared of me?"
"What?" he responded with a kind of chuckle that already sort of answered her question on its own. "'Course not. Literally never."
Jenny looked at him with a worried face and didn't say anything.
"Why?" he asked.
"I don't know, just… I've been wondered that since the day we met," Jenny turned to the window and looked outside. "All the things Dark Jenny did using my body. My eyes… I know people are scared of my eyes. They've said so."
She turned back to face Saturn.
"You've never been intimidated by me? Even a little?"
Saturn sighed.
"Have you ever even killed a fly?" he asked her.
Jenny looked up at the sun visor and tried to recall.
"I don't think so."
"Exactly!" Saturn responded without hesitation. "And I didn't even know that about you! That's just the way you are. You might be the only adult in the world who's never killed a fly."
Jenny wasn't satisfied. He just responded with facts, but that wasn't the point of the question. She gave him a skeptic look.
"And…" he continued, "I feel safe with you."
"Really?"
"Do you have any idea how scared I was when you were out cold?"
Jenny was intrigued now and turned in her seat.
"You guys never really talked about that."
"I watched you fall out of the sky, thought I'd heard you say your last words over the mic," he explained. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again after that."
Jenny looked at him with great attention.
"Anyway…" he continued, "when we brought you back on that rooftop and you looked into my eyes, I knew we were gonna be okay."
Jenny noticed she was wiggling her feet again.
"And… if that's not convincing enough…"
He looked over at her and petted her head.
"Exhibit B: I wouldn't dare do this to a bear."
His hand felt gentle on her head. Jenny placed her hands in between her legs, closed her eyes and moved her head around to guide his hand across her hair as if to pet herself against his hand.
When the van stopped at a red light, Jenny opened her eyes, leaned over and took her turn to rub Saturn's hair instead. His cheeks turned red and his eyes opened wide like he couldn't believe what was happening.
The two stared at each other in the eyes and started giggling. Eventually, the car behind honked at them to get going, and Saturn moved his hand out the window and raised his middle finger, then drove off.
Jenny, nervous and blushing, moved over to her own window and did the same.
« Part 1 - END »