Sirens were blaring across the city, and a police blockade formed a barrier between most of the city and a giant frog. Tatters stood on a building where she was able to get a better view, and if someone was able to see her face, they would see an expression of awe. A giant frog, allegedly from outer space, was sitting there. Like an actual frog, it did nothing except just sit there. This was the kind of threat Jenny would typically defeat in a matter of seconds, but Jenny wasn't available, and Tatters was the next best superhero to take on the responsibility.
What was she supposed to do? Her powers could pierce anything, but that frog was so big it would take forever to mortally wound it. Not to mention it would be a cruel, painful death. Jenny would probably be able to do it in a single punch, and she'd probably be there before the creature even showed up, preventing all this damage.
Tatters' phone rang. Circus.
"You seeing this?" Circus asked.
"Yeah…" Tatters replied.
"Really? Where are you?"
"Doesn't matter. I-"
"Hey! There you are! I see you!"
Tatters looked down at the blockade, annoyed. Circus was easy to make out. She was looking up at her, waving.
"Do the police have any plans for this thing?"
"Nope! That's why I called."
The frog finally moved its eyes when a helicopter approached it and started circling it. At first, the frog did nothing with its body. Then, after half a circle of the helicopter, it hopped into the air to turn its body, creating a massive shockwave across the city and throwing Tatters off the building when it came back down.
During her fall, she managed to use her grappling hook and slow down her fall until she was hanging on the side of the building. Her phone, however, was gone. Probably shattered on the ground below. At this point, she was hanging about halfway down the building, so she released her grappling hook to resume her fall, then shot it into the building again three-fourths of the way down, resulting in a smooth touchdown.
While she made her way to the blockade, the frog used its tongue to attack the helicopter, smashing it and throwing it into the distance. Circus, who'd watched her fall, came running to her and met her halfway.
"I have to get to where the brain is!" Tatters said.
She cursed herself for not getting a new crossbow. It would've been perfect in this situation. Instead, she rebuilt her spinning umbrella, but that meant she'd have to get to the frog's head in order to kill it gracefully.
"Where's that? Is it where I think it is?" Circus asked, looking at the giant frog.
"I don't know… My phone's gone…" Tatters said.
"Tough! I'll look it up!" Circus said as she took out her own phone to find out where exactly a frog's brain is located.
Meanwhile, the frog performed another jump to rotate its body, creating another shockwave. Almost every single person at the blockade, including Tatters and Circus, fell to the ground again. This time, the frog was facing them.
"It's in between the eyes! Makes sense!" Circus yelled on the ground.
"Now how do we get there?" Tatters asked herself out loud as she got back up.
"Some frogs have webbed feet that help them swim!" Circus yelled, still prone.
"So?" Tatters asked.
The frog looked like it was staring at her, but it was hard to tell.
"Oh no! Frogs are dying at an alarming rate due to pollution, habitat destruction, invasive species and other factors!" Circus yelled with her eyes on her phone.
"Is that why you're attacking us!?" Tatters yelled at the frog.
The frog responded to her question by opening its mouth and launching its tongue towards her. Almost instant when normal-sized frogs do it, this bigger one did everything so much slower to the point it made even this attack predictable. Tatters turned her cape pink and jumped on top of Circus to protect the two. The sticky tongue, as if it was aimed for Tatters' head directly, made impact with the ground just slightly behind them, then sprung back due to its elasticity, grabbing and taking the two along for the ride back.
In no time, they found themselves inside the frog, attached to the tongue and no longer moving. Tatters couldn't see a thing, but she could tell her hands and feet were stuck to the tongue. Circus had it worse, her whole body was attached to the tongue underneath Tatters.
"Are you okay!?" Tatters yelled.
"Mwy fwace ish shtuck!" Circus yelled back.
Tatters pulled her hand, and then Circus' face free from the tongue.
"Ow!"
"We've been swallowed! I think we're in the mouth! The brain is-"
Then, two enormous objects came from above and pushed them down. The two held on to each other to not get separated. Circus started to speak.
"According to the article, frogs use their-"
They came down a second time.
"-eyes to push prey down their throat!"
And a third time. The mechanism she was describing was probably better at processing larger prey.
"Isn't that cool?" Circus asked.
"So, the brain is right above us!?" Tatters responded.
Tatters took her grappling gun and shot, taking a gamble as to where exactly it would end up. Using her power, she made the hook at the end go through the frog completely and exit out the other side.
Apparently, that shot alone didn't penetrate the brain, because the two eyeballs came down a fourth time, and the two girls felt their bodies completely come off the tongue. Covered in slime and complete darkness, they slid down the frog's throat.
"Are we gonna die in here?" Circus asked, finally showing some stress.
"Hold on tight!" Tatters yelled.
During their slide down, the grappling hook, no longer under the effects of Tatters' power, came back down with them and settled somewhere on the frog's forehead. When it finally caught onto something up there, the girls stopped falling further down the frog's throat and hung from the wire.
"Eek!" Circus screamed as the sudden stop made her lose her grip on Tatters' waist and caused her arms to slide down to her hips.
At least Tatters' arms were now unobstructed, and so she grabbed her umbrella and opened it up above her head.
"Hold on! We're going back up!" she warned her sidekick.
She used her blue power on the umbrella's canopy and her pink power on the grappling hook's wire so the umbrella wouldn't cut it.
"I'll try to make it quick, big guy…" Tatters whispered her parting words to the frog and pressed the button on the grappling gun to pull them back up.
And up they went. Faster than she expected, even with the extra luggage. Tatters rapidly pressed the button on the side of her modified umbrella to make it spin, cutting through the frog's insides and allowing the grappling gun's retractor to pull up without any resistance.
It only took a few seconds before she felt the sunlight on her skin and a pleasant breeze of fresh air rustling her hair.
She opened her eyes and saw the sky and the city. From a great height. In fact, they'd overshot a little and were now floating in the air, having come away from the giant frog's snout underneath them.
Tatters frantically waved her arms around in an attempt to grab onto the frog's head, but found that the now-deceased frog was falling over and moving away from them.
"We're falling!" Circus screamed, still holding on tight.
Tatters, unable to do anything about it, braced herself for the inevitable impact.
And the impact came unexpectedly quickly when the frog decided to finish its fall and came to an abrupt halt, causing the two to bounce off its soft head, onto its soft snout and eventually onto the not-so-soft ground.
When they stopped rolling, Tatters opened her eyes and saw the late frog's head hunched over in front of her, confirming that she's really killed it with that last trick. She got to her feet and checked herself out to find that she was covered in slime and guts. Circus was too, but she didn't seem too bothered.
"Are you hurt?" Tatters asked.
But Circus laughed, lying with her back on the ground and her arms and legs spread wide.
"That was the coolest thing I've ever done!" she said.
Tatters didn't share her opinion and frowned. She felt weird about killing the frog in the way she did, even if it killed the people in that helicopter.
She turned to take another look at the giant animal and wondered if it had swallowed them with malicious intent, or if it was just a dumb animal acting on instinct.
If Jenny's next villain was going to show up again while she was still in a coma, she hoped it would be something less cute and closer to her own size.
♦
"That was incredible! Can I get a picture?" a young girl with colorful, dyed hair asked Tatters.
Tatters looked flustered, like that was her first time ever being asked that. She looked at Circus, who smiled and gave her a thumbs up, then back at the girl.
"Are you sure? I'm…" Tatters replied as she looked down at her body. They were talking to the officers at the blockade and hadn't gotten a chance yet to clean themselves up.
"Are you kidding me? Absolutely!" the colorful girl said excitedly.
Tatters reluctantly nodded.
She didn't know what to do next, how this kind of thing worked... Was this going to happen more often from now on? Did people want to take pictures with Jenny in the same way?
The girl hopped next to her and held out her phone with the front-facing camera active. She tapped the button for the three-second timer and held up her fingers in a peace sign as she shoved herself against Tatters. This whole thing was making Tatters uncomfortable. She looked down at the girl's shoulder and saw that some of the filth was on her too, now.
After the screen flashed white and the picture was taken, the girl stepped away and checked out the result, making sure Tatters could see. In the photo, Tatters looked adorably panicked as she clearly didn't know how to pose for a picture.
The girl looked away from her phone and down at the minor frog stains on her outfit.
"I'm never showering again!" she exclaimed as she cheerfully ran away.
"Thanks! Love you!" she yelled on her way out.
Tatters shuddered and tried to relax now that that was over.
Then, a male officer approached the two, looking at the girl in the distance like he'd seen the whole exchange.
"Weird fan. I hope she showers," he mumbled.
He looked at Tatters, then at Circus. Tatters didn't recognize him. He looked roughly their age, maybe a bit older than Plural.
"Debrief is in half an hour, see you there?" he asked Circus.
"Aye sir! Gotta change first, though!" Circus replied excitedly.
The officer nodded, then turned to leave. Before he did, he looked at Tatters again.
"You uh, have access to a shower too, I hope?" he asked her.
Did he think she was homeless?
"I'll be fine," Tatters replied with an angry look.
The officer nodded again and left.
Tatters looked at Circus, who grinned at her, then down at her outfit again. Besides the worn cape and the guts, she didn't look homeless at all in her own humble opinion. She was even wearing some of the new clothes she'd bought with Plural. And what kind of homeless person would carry all this equipment around their belt, anyway?
"What'd you think of him?" Circus asked, still grinning.
Tatters gave her a confused look.
"He's one of the nice ones!" Circus added.
Tatters looked at the man in the distance. He was talking to some other colleagues, all older than him, just like the ones she'd seen Circus work with up until now. Some of them were giving Tatters strange looks, but they were all surprisingly tolerant about her being here.
"I thought they'd give you shit for working with me," Tatters said.
"Oh… I thought so too when my supervisor wanted to talk the other day," Circus explained, "you know, after I ditched my shift to go with you…"
"Turns out, he wants me to keep you close. Keep you on a leash."
Tatters frowned back at Circus.
"His words, not mine…" Circus said, holding her hands up.
"It's fine. I don't wanna be on bad terms with them," Tatters said while looking away.
"I'll let you know what they say about you during the debriefing," Circus said as she took off her jacket.
She looked at her watch.
"I gotta go if I wanna shower before it starts, though. Talk to you later!" she said as she turned around.
♦
Elsewhere, the girl with the colorful hair walked without a worry in the world, looking at the photo she'd taken of herself with the black cape, humming a song. She stopped when she reached the belly of the giant frog.
"No sparkles! Can you believe it!?" she looked up and asked the snout.
A young man in casual clothes was sitting on the ground in front of her, resting his back against the belly of the frog and using it as shade. He sat with one knee up and rested his arm on it. Maybe he wasn't even a man yet, because he looked no day over eighteen. He looked up at the girl with a look of boredom.
"Did they hurt you?" the girl asked the frog, leaning closer to rub it with her hands.
"So, she ain't here after all… what a bummer," the young man said with little conviction.
He looked away and checked his nails.
"Guess we'll just have to call it off…"
The girl straightened her back and looked at him with her hands on her hips, subtly shaking them in a rhythm, like she had a song in her head.
"I thought you were dying to meet her! Why give up?"
The man rolled his eyes in response.
"This whole operation was your idea," he said.
The girl leaned forward and looked insulted.
"So cold! Have you no speck of affection for her at all?" she asked brattily.
"Not really…" he said, "I don't think she's got any recollection of me anyway…"
The girl studied the man's face as he uttered those words, still swinging her hips left and right to the song in her head.
"Mhm," she mumbled.
"What about the others?" the man asked on.
"The black cape?"
The girl took out her phone and showed the man the photo she took before. Upon seeing it, the man raised his eyebrow, suggesting he was positively surprised.
"Did you already do it? Just now?"
The girl pulled her phone back and looked at the picture herself, still continuing her little dance.
"No. Not yet."
The girl moved her arms around her own waist, closed her eyes and made a kissing gesture into the air.
"Too many people around."
The man smiled at the display. Despite the way he talked to her, he seemed fond of the girl.
"You're enjoying this too much," he said with a flirtatious grin, like he knew exactly what she was feeling, "do you wanna get caught?"
The girl opened one eye and dropped her act, then got down on her knees in front of him, putting her arms around his head, hands on the frog.
"What if I do?" she asked him seductively.
The young man gave her an annoyed look back but soon realized she was using her hands to do something to her giant frog. Gradually, he lost his backrest as the giant set piece disappeared behind him. The two of them were slowly dropping to the ground as the frog shrunk to the size of a regular frog, with the girl's fingertip touching it until the very end.
The young man found himself lying on his back with her on top and looked around to find some bystanders looking horrified. No cops, but the area did have surveillance cameras.
"You've put us on a clock," he told her with an irritated tone.
"Don't be such a worry-boo!" the girl replied as she made herself comfortable on top of him. She lifted the frog in her palm. It croaked and jumped off her hand.
"You need to live a little…" she said while watching the frog hop away into the bushes.
The girl, still mounted on the young man, hunched forward until their noses almost touched.
"Jenny won't be here tonight."
"Plenty of Sparkle friends to play with instead."
♦
When she returned to the precinct, Circus received all kinds of weird looks. Not everybody there had heard about what happened yet, about how she found herself inside the giant frog and piggybacked her way out through the top. Nevertheless, she walked through the halls proudly. These stains were like battle scars, the likes of which the people around her could never hope to match. Being the black cape's sidekick had its perks.
In the hallways, she ran into her boss. The one who arrested Jenny and tried to shoot Saturn with a blow dart. He was holding a mug, looking like he'd spent all day at the office. She couldn't help herself and gave him an angry look. In a way, the scene of Jenny's arrest gave her the courage to finally approach Plural and Saturn. Indirectly, she owed her friendship with these guys to this man right here.
"Heard what happened," he spoke with his ever calm and uncaring tone.
Circus stared at him with that same angry look, while he returned his empty one.
"Good job. You've got balls," he spoke.
Then, he turned around and walked into another room, ending their short conversation. Circus felt strange to hear that. Compliments from this guy were rare, but meaningful. But he still didn't sound like he really meant it.
After a detour to grab a spare outfit, she entered the showers. Luckily, there was nobody else there. Circus had never used them before since she never used the adjacent gym. She didn't like company for these things, so she hurried inside one of the stalls in full gear and turned on the stream. After spending some time rubbing the worst spots out of her uniform, she took it off and moved on to the rest of herself.
After a minute, she smelled something funny and examined herself. She'd used soap, but that wasn't it. It was a pleasant smell, sort of like perfume, like someone wearing way too much of it had entered the room. Circus poked her head around the curtain and scanned the room, but it was exactly the way it was before. Nobody there.
She looked up at the windows. They were open, so maybe it was coming from outside. Circus nervously closed the curtain again and returned to the stream of water, feeling uneasy. Even though the smell was good, it felt like a presence had entered the room with her, and she couldn't see it. It didn't even take another minute until that sense of a presence became so powerful, she believed that if she turned around, there'd be someone standing behind her. Had she reached that point in the story arc again? Was it time to get kidnapped?
Circus clutched her arms around her waist and mentally prepared herself to turn around. She was unarmed and not particularly strong. Anyone sneaking up on her in the shower would surely hold an advantage over her. Circus clenched her teeth together as she slowly turned around. And indeed, there was someone there.
An otherwise not very intimidating-looking girl stood there in the stall with her, giving Circus a seductive look. She was naked, too. Having made herself equally vulnerable and showing that she wasn't armed. This didn't make things any less unsettling, though, because this was the same girl who took a picture with Tatters earlier that day.
"Y-You don't work here," is what a trembling Circus managed to utter.
In response, the colorful girl giggled and took a step forward. That powerful scent was definitely coming from her. What was up with that? She didn't smell strange at all when she took that picture. And how did she sneak in here so quietly? There was no way she was allowed to be here.
Circus retreated to the rear until her lower back hit the mixer, burning and freezing her at either side. She'd retreated far enough to step out of the stream, and the intruder took her place underneath.
"Uhm, help me out?" the intruder asked, seductively.
The girl had no threatening demeanor to her whatsoever. If anything, it was like she was putting on puppy eyes.
"With what?" Circus asked.
She was starting to feel a bit dizzy. The intruder put her hands on the wall, pinning Circus in between.
"You see, you're really driving me into a corner here…"
The intruder moved closer.
"I don't think I can get away with it tonight. You know?"
"I do?" a dizzy Circus asked.
"Not with all the heat," the intruder said, reaching behind Circus and turning the temperature up.
"No, I don't like them…"
The girl with the colorful hair giggled nervously, like she was confessing her feelings.
"But you…"
She giggled and stepped even closer.
"…and your friend…"
The girl moved in for a kiss. Circus was already losing her ability to understand the conversation, but when the intruder's lips touched hers, she felt something taking over. As if the intruder just put a bewitching spell on her. The witch stepped back and gave Circus a nervous, blushing smile.
"You'll help me, right? Don't let them catch me?" she asked.
"Of course," Circus said before even considering the request.
"Anything for you, darling," she said with hearts in her eyes.
And before she got the chance to consider the words that'd come out of her mouth against her own will, she blinked and found herself alone again.
"Huh?" she mumbled while blinking her eyes and looking around.
"Was I talking to someone?"
She looked down at the soaked clothes at her feet and remembered, then at the clock on her phone.
"Ah! The briefing! I'm gonna be late!"