Jenny looked to her left and right to check if her friends were still holding on. She got a thumbs up from both in response. The three were tethered to each other through an old hang glider frame. They were 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. They were flying at ludicrous speeds, but Plural felt like they might as well be stationary. 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 relative to their planet, their legs hung down like they weren’t even flying at all.

  Plural couldn’t tell how fast they were really going, but the speed at which the land zipped by suggested it was many times faster than any airplane they’d ever been on. As a result, the flight was not long. She knew they were heading to a colder climate, and she could tell from the changing backdrop.

  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. She could see 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 picked the tallest building in the city and touched down on the roof, turning her hair back to normal. The three undid the harnesses that attached them to the glider frame and Plural wasted no time running to the edge of the rooftop so she could look down at the city. She started laughing and seemed happy.

  “I can’t believe we just… went here,” Plural said, “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 and spare headsets, and she was wearing the same clothing as always, meaning she looked 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 felt guilty. He gave her an embarrassed smile.

  “It’s okay, I get airsick. I just need to…” he felt 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 said as she stared.

  She turned to Saturn again with an inquiring look. He understood and took the phone out of his pocket, unlocked it and passed it to Jenny. She checked the location again and walked over to another side of the building.

  “You ever been this far?” Plural asked Saturn.

  “Nope. Never left the country before,” he answered her.

  Plural looked at Jenny, who looked like she was trying to spot Dark Jenny based on the location in the app. Plural looked at Saturn and saw that he was looking at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You look like you’re having fun,” he said.

  “I know we’re here on a mission… but I’ve never seen snow before in my life. I don’t think I’d ever see this place without Jenny,” she said as she looked over at Jenny again.

  “We need to take her out to do something fun. Gotta be stuff to do here,” she added.

  “When all this is over,” she said as she turned to Saturn again.

  Saturn gave her a difficult look back. She knew why. That last line was somewhat red flag-ish, and none of Dark Jenny’s behavior so far suggested this was going to be easy.

  Jenny returned and draped 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. Since when did they wink 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 headsets.

  “I know we just got here, but I’ve got to check out the location,” Jenny pointed in the direction she was looking before.

  “It hasn’t moved at all, 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.

  “No objections?” she asked as she looked at the two.

  “The plan’s still solid. Just tell us when,” Plural responded.

  Saturn took the emerald out and showed 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,” 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.

  “We shouldn’t be spotted together. People probably know who I am,” she said as she grabbed their hands.

  The next instant, they were in a cramped alleyway Jenny probably scouted from the rooftop. She let go of their hands and took a step back.

  “Guess this is it, then…” Jenny said nervously. She was clutching her arm to her side and looking over her shoulder.

  Saturn moved his finger up to his ear again and they heard his voice over the radio: “We’re not going anywhere, you know?”

  Jenny jumped on the two for a group hug. She held on tight and gave off the impression she wanted it to last forever.

  “Yeah, we’ll check in if we don’t hear from you for too long,” Plural added.

  “Okay…” Jenny said.

  She teleported away before even letting go. Plural and Saturn gave each other an awkward look as they were left half-hugging each other and some empty space.

  ?

  “Still here?” Saturn said over the radio.

  “Still here, guys,” Jenny responded.

  Five seconds passed.

  “Still here, Jen?” Plural said over the radio.

  “Guys…” Jenny responded.

  “Sorry, maternal instincts…” radio-Plural replied.

  Jenny teleported from rooftop to rooftop, trying not to draw unwanted attention. She wasn’t normally this stealthy, but she had a target location where she believed Dark Jenny could really be. Didn’t want to give herself away before then. When she was scouting from above, she concluded the signal came from what looked like an old town center. A busy area. That was unexpected. Was it blending in? The people looked like they were minding their own business.

  She reached the final rooftop overlooking the old town center. Nothing out of the ordinary. She moved her finger to her push-to-talk button on the headset.

  “Any change in location?” she asked.

  The response came five seconds later.

  “Don’t think so, middle of the town square,” radio-Saturn replied.

  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. When she looked back at the exact location in greater detail, she spotted what she was afraid she’d find.

  She teleported to the object, appearing in the exact center of the old town square. Almost everybody there reacted to her and some people jumped at the sound of her sparkling arrival. She didn’t need to stay hidden anymore, the signal was of no use. Jenny 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 area 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 using her body and felt it slacken and fall to the ground. She stepped out of the noose and turned around to see a figure falling to the ground. A 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.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “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 weapons on her, including that wire from before, which was attached to her belt. She was pulling it back in by holding a button.

  “Not by the target, though. I don’t know who this is…” she continued.

  At the very least, Jenny wasn’t very worried about this encounter.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked the stranger.

  “So you talk now?” the stranger responded.

  She unsheathed two daggers from her belt. The daggers started glowing cyan, transitioning into a pink hue at the hilts, where she was holding them. Her cape was glowing in the same pink color. When Jenny examined her more closely, she could tell 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 cyan 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 blades into Jenny’s face. Jenny wasn’t used to taking threats very seriously and had a habit of letting attacks just hit her. Something deep inside of her was screaming to dodge this instead. This girl wasn’t moving that fast by Jenny’s standards, so it wasn’t very difficult to do so. Her attacks were sudden and quick, 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, but looked even angrier instead, like Jenny was taunting her. Jenny didn’t have to fight people like this often, but when she did, she had a habit of goofing off and making them look like fools.

  For this occasion, she challenged herself to try to get behind her opponent without using her teleportation. Every time she succeeded, she poked the back of her opponent’s head and made a silly remark.

  “Boop!”

  “Dead!”

  “Too slow!”

  “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 waving her arms around. The stranger threw her second dagger, and Jenny hopped off the bench to get out of its way. To her surprise, the dagger the girl had tossed first 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 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 looked at Jenny like she was working out her next strategy. Jenny looked over at the other dagger that was still in the ground and saw that only the pink hilt was above ground, pointing straight up. The cyan blade itself was completely buried. She could make a guess about how it worked.

  The stranger changed her posture like she’d decided what her next trick would be. Jenny responded by teleporting in her face, grabbing her dagger by the hilt, and yanking it out of her hand with enough force to make her stumble in that direction. Jenny kicked the girl’s 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 had gotten up again 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. When Jenny noticed that the wire had the same pink glow to it, she grabbed it, tugging the stranger towards herself in the process. She tried pulling the wire and the hilt apart but failed to do so.

  She looked back at the girl, who had been helplessly watching while Jenny tried to break her toy. She had an angry but also terrified look on her face. Jenny felt bad. Was she being mean?

  “Listen, I get it! I’m not the one you want. You’re looking for someone who looks like me, wearing a black dress and tiara!” Jenny tried to de-escalate.

  “Why would I believe anything you say?” the girl responded.

  Jenny tried a different approach: “The one with the black dress, what did it do to make you wanna kill me?”

  “Destroyed the gas and electricity. Cut us off from the rest of the world,” the girl decided to not be difficult and to just answer the question.

  Jenny had a guilty look on her face. She felt bad about it. This thing existed because of her, and it came here from far away. The people here had nothing to do with it.

  “Kidnapped innocent children!” the girl continued.

  “Killed my friend! Cut her head right off!”

  Jenny could see the hatred in her eyes. That last one explained a lot.

  The other dagger that was buried in the ground had made its way back to the girl’s possession now. She undid the effects of her power on the one Jenny was holding and cut the line. Jenny felt too guilty to even break the thing, so she tossed it into the snow.

  “I’m sorry…” Jenny said.

  The stranger hesitated.

  “What…?” she asked. It sounded more like she was thinking out loud.

  “I’m here to help! I know it’s hard to believe me, but I’m here to kill it!” Jenny continued.

  “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 restrain herself here but didn’t move to protect her friends. She could see the girl had good intentions, and she didn’t want to raise the tension again.

  “Hey! Jenny’s our friend!” Plural said to the stranger. She 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 girl looked back at Jenny upon hearing that name for the third time. Jenny looked at her friends with a worried expression. The girl studied Jenny’s face with an angry expression.

  “It’s what we’re h-” Saturn tried to finish his sentence while walking towards Jenny, but he was blocked by the stranger holding out her arm. He looked at her annoyed, like he ran out of patience.

  “Okay…” Jenny looked sad. She teleported out of the old town center, throwing up some snow in the aftermath.

  ?

  “What’s going on with your cape?” the male civilian asked her.

  She looked back at him and took her arm back down. She put the dagger she was holding in her other hand back in its holster, then walked away to pick up the other one this “Jenny” had tossed into the snow. The young man looked at her puzzled when she walked back over to him.

  She stepped towards him and moved her face uncomfortably close to his.

  “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 to a nearby alleyway.

  “Uh, hey! Rude!” he yelled, trying to break free. She stopped to look at the female civilian.

  “You too,” she said with an angry look.

  In the alleyway, she pushed the man against the wall, and she was surprised he wasn’t resisting.

  “Relax, Evanescence! Wouldn’t wanna break your nails…” he said, holding his hands up.

  She looked at him even angrier.

  “Fine, let’s talk. Who are you? Some sort of discount vigilante?” he asked her.

  “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!” he pointed to his own face. She probably still had some visible ice on her.

  “You’re just making her angry!” his companion told him.

  “That thing’s really called Jenny?” the girl asked her in turn.

  “She’s not a thing! She’s a good person! If you actually looked her in the eyes, you would know!” his friend said.

  This one hit her hard. She was never able to tell anything from people by looking them in the eyes, so she always had to work off evidence. The girl felt conflicted. The name “Jenny”, the fact the thing apparently had friends… That was more than she could say about herself. The demonic entity from the night before looked the same but acted way differently. Were they really telling the truth?

  “She has the power to wipe us all out! I've seen it in person...” the girl argued.

  “So you’ve run into Dark Jenny, right? Where? Help us out!” the man asked.

  “Again with that…” the girl sighed.

  The female civilian stepped closer. She didn’t look intimidated.

  “We’re on your side! I’m Plural, and this is Saturn!” she said with her hands half in the air.

  She looked at the man… Saturn? He gave her a sarcastic wave. She violently let go of him and walked away, shoving Plural’s shoulder aside.

  “Hey, wait! We need your help!” Plural shouted as the girl stopped moving. Her back still turned to the two. She stared into the distance with an angry look on her face.

  “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…” Plural said.

  “Sorry…” Saturn said.

  Plural looked down the alleyway with a worried expression.

  “Jenny… You there?” Saturn spoke into his headset.

  “Yeah…” radio-Jenny said.

  “We just had a talk with uh…” Saturn started. “…the girl with the black cape…” he refrained from calling her any more nicknames.

  “…how’d it go?” radio-Jenny asked.

  “We got nothing,” he replied.

  “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. No gas or electricity. Killed her friend. Kidnapped people…” radio-Jenny explained.

  Plural and Saturn glanced at each other.

  “Kidnapped? Like Circus?” Plural said.

  “Yeah. I’m trying to find them, but this place is huge,” radio-Jenny said.

  “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,” radio-Jenny said.

  Saturn and Plural didn’t say anything else.

  “She was able to cut my hair,” radio-Jenny added, after some hesitation.

  “What? She hurt you?” Plural replied.

  “No...” radio-Jenny said and didn't elaborate further.

  “You think she can kill Dark Jenny?” Saturn asked.

  Jenny pressed her button but didn't speak. They could hear wind noise through the radio.

  “I wanna stick with our plan,” she finally said.

  Saturn could tell Jenny didn't like the topic. He spoke to Plural without radio.

  “Anyway, we'd have to convince her to help us first,” he said.

  ?

  The girl walked the streets like a lost child. She was out of ideas, and the fatigue was setting in again, now that the adrenaline had dissipated. She thought about the events from last night, which were 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. Hearing it today made her kind of jealous.

  Ever since she last woke up, she’d been taking one defeat after another. First the ambush behind the restaurant, the events at the frozen lake, her powerlessness at the hands of the rampaging killer robot, and then a humiliating defeat in front of a big crowd at the hands of presumably the same robot. Except now, people were trying to tell her the events of last night didn’t even happen, and “Jenny” was actually a good person. This was starting to become the worst day of her life. And the longest. Couldn't even remember how many hours she'd been awake. The mandate of her powers demanded she keep going, though, because nobody else in the city could do what she did. There was no time for rest.

  Freshly printed newspapers caught her attention, and she grabbed one to see if there was anything more about the killer robot from 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 she felt an incredible loneliness overcome her. 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. How could anyone even know this was her place? She looked around in shock. Nobody there.

  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. She looked at it as a tear rolled across her cheek. She never owed the world a thing, and the world's message to her was clear. She decided that tonight she was going to do the only thing in her life that actually mattered. Kill Jenny, and then herself.