Back in their hometown, Jenny and the gang went back to their old life surprisingly quickly. The police didn't entirely leave them alone, but none of them were fugitives anymore. Admiral Mouseville had kept his word, and the footage captured was made public. The police still took the gang in for questioning, but their names were officially cleared. At least, as far as Dark Jenny's crimes were concerned. There were going to be hearings later involving Jenny, Tatters, Saturn, Plural and Circus; the only five survivors of what was essentially a massacre.
"We'll just have to answer a bunch of questions. No problemo," Jenny said proudly.
"Not your first rodeo?" Saturn asked.
Jenny shook her head.
"I've been called in before to explain myself. Nothing ever comes out of it," she elaborated.
"I just wish you guys weren't getting dragged into it."
"Maybe by then, it'll dawn on me that I've survived a zombie apocalypse," Plural said, shivering.
"It still feels weird that we just… left… Right after it all ended," Saturn said.
"Are you sure they won't give us shit for that?" he asked Jenny.
"Are you kidding me? You're all heroes! You risked your lives! They should roll out a red carpet for you!" Circus barged in.
"You mean 'we'?" Plural poked her head out and corrected her.
"Ahem. Just doing my job," Circus proudly responded.
"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. 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 asked 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 reach the parry button.
"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 that 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. Even the screen was getting wobbly now. 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 spoke but stopped when the same helicopter crashed down on his character. He missed the parry because Jenny was looking at him and he wasn't paying attention.
"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 said 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 said.
"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 happily absorbed all the praise.
"Hey. Why'd you choose such a boring job anyway? If you're qualified for anything?" Circus asked Jenny, flipping herself upside down like the other two.
Saturn stayed where he was to keep Tatters company.
"To meet you guys," Jenny said, looking left and right at all her friends.
"Awww!" Circus gave Jenny a hug.
"I guess all this stuff happened because we took you camping" Saturn said, looking down at Jenny.
"That was the first time I'd ever seen you in person," Circus said.
"At the campsite, the next day, remember?"
Jenny looked Circus in the eyes and smiled.
Plural looked up at Tatters.
"And that's when we unleashed the creature that took us to you," she said.
Tatters gave her typical frown.
Plural already told her all about the true nature of the creature, and about the events that led to it taking Jenny's form. It was one of the first things she asked her when they had some time together.
"And none of that would've happened if you'd decided to become a rocket scientist," Saturn said.
Jenny looked back at Saturn and 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. Things were apparently going smooth enough even in her absence. It seems the lady had some extra resentment towards her.
This upset Jenny. Barf had no idea what she went through, or that Jenny might've saved the world. She didn't know what to say. If there was something she wasn't good at, it was this. Jenny kept her mouth shut and stormed off.
She reached the central hall of her floor when she stopped and wondered what she was even going to do for the rest of the day. People were still giving her weird looks, they'd been doing that 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?" he said with a smile.
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 turned with him as he walked around her towards the staircase. He was walking backwards now, facing her. He winked at her again, but in a slow and obvious way this time.
♦
He looked at her like one would look when they found 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. There was no way Jenny wasn't aware of them. 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 to a road with opposing traffic on the lane to their left. Saturn saw an oncoming truck honking its horn at them. Understandable, if you imagined what it looked like from their perspective. Jenny noticed too and teleported to the passenger seat. The sudden jump didn't scare him this time. The light and sound she made was calmer than it'd ever been before.
♦
Their next stop was a location Jenny knew well. Seeing it killed her good mood a little bit. When Saturn got out to grab the packages, Jenny followed him instead of staying put. He gave her a questioning look when he retrieved all the packages from the back of the van, then looked at the building. Jenny realized she was doing her nervous hopping again and contained herself.
"I'll keep you safe this time!" she said as she marched, 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 stopped next to her to do the same thing. Jenny looked at him, and could see how scared he was, looking at the office section where she found him next to the corpse that day. She wanted to take his hand, but both were 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.
"Let's go," he said, still looking away.
They walked together, and Jenny looked at all the aisles of second-hand items around her. She never really checked the place out last time. 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 it was 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. Jenny knew it had to be the same one. She walked over to see another one hanging on the same rack and took it.
"Maybe you don't wanna see this at all," he said, looking guilty.
"That's not true," Jenny said as she held the dress in front of her torso to see if it'd fit her.
She'd never actually want to wear it, but she was still curious.
"You're doing the exact same thing now," he said, hand behind his neck.
She could tell he was referring to the way she was holding the dress against her body.
"Sorry…"
She felt oddly naked taking the dress down. She knew Dark Jenny wasn't wearing anything at the time and felt weird about it ever since. She was lucky that it even decided to put something on at all after taking her form.
Jenny handed the dress back to Saturn and he hung it back on the rack. When he returned to meet her eyes, she wondered what he thought about the topic. Neither of them ever brought it up before.
"What?" he asked her with an awkward smile.
Maybe there was nothing to talk about and she was just overthinking it. There wasn't actually a conversation possible in her head that she liked and wanted to have in the first place.
He looked at the office again and 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," he said.
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?" she said.
Saturn watched with satisfaction. He liked these two, and they were getting along when he brought them together. In a way. It was something to be oddly proud of.
The old lady looked Jenny in the eyes next.
"I saw what you did to it. On the moon. Everyone did," she said with a serious face.
"I cried!" she said, softly poking Jenny's chest. "Of happiness!"
"Don't ever say sorry for that," she said as she turned around to walk back to the office.
"He talks about you all the time, you know?" she said she walked away, vaguely pointing in Saturn's direction. Jenny looked at him, but he shook his face implying that it was an overstatement.
"Really?" Jenny excitedly asked and followed the old lady. Saturn could tell that comment made her happy. That was… good. What else was this old lady gonna say?
♦
The day was coming to an end when they drove back to the office. Jenny didn't feel like goofing off anymore and just sat in the passenger seat. She didn't really say anything after they left.
"You're quiet," Saturn said.
Jenny looked up at him. She probably was. Been staring out the window ever since they started moving.
"Compared to before, anyway," he added.
Jenny kept looking at him, and she knew he'd noticed. 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?" she asked.
"What?" he said again, this time with a kind of laugh that already answered her question.
"'Course not. Literally never," he added.
Jenny looked at him with a worried face and didn't say anything.
"Why?" he asked.
"I don't know, just… I've wondered that since the first day we met," she said, looking back out of the window.
"All the things Dark Jenny did using my body. My eyes… I know people are scared of my eyes. They've said so," she added when he didn't respond.
"You've never been intimidated by me? Even a little?" she asked.
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," she said.
"Exactly!" Saturn responded without hesitation.
"And I didn't even know that about you, that's just the way you are," he said.
"So why would I be scared? You might be the only adult in the world who's never killed a fly," he continued.
Jenny wasn't satisfied. He just responded with facts. That wasn't the point of the question. She gave him a suitable look.
"And…" he continued.
"…I feel safe with you," he said, like he was reading her mind.
"Really?" she replied.
"Do you have any idea how scared I was when you were out cold?" he said.
Jenny was intrigued now.
"You guys never really talked about that," she replied.
"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… When we brought you back on that rooftop and you looked into my eyes, I felt safe again."
Jenny noticed she was wiggling her feet again.
"And if that's not convincing enough…" he said.
He looked over at her and petted her head.
"Exhibit B: I wouldn't dare do this to a bear," he said.
His hand felt gentle on her head, and she liked it. It made her feel silly for bringing up the subject at all.
« Part 1 - END »