Later that day during lunch, Jenny kept staring at Grace with a very curious and slightly bewildered expression on her face. She examined Grace's movements very carefully for a total of eight minutes.
"It's strange. She's gotta be the weakest girl in this school, but she was able to knock me down with one punch. Seriously, she can barely do simple tasks correctly without seeming as though she's dragging her entire existence around with her," Jenny thought to herself.
Unknown to her, Jason was walking towards Jenny. As soon as she finally did notice, she was about object to him coming so close to her, but Jason quickly placed a small folded up piece of paper on the table in front of her. Without saying a word, he kept walking as if he had never acknowledged the fact that she was sitting there.
"I somehow doubt this is a love note, but if it is, he should know by now that he's the last person I'd ever go out with," Jenny thought to herself.
Jenny noticed at that moment that Jason somehow managed to give her the note without anyone else noticing. She didn't notice that until after she noticed the fact that nobody made any kind of comment on what just happened.
"Fine, I'll read it. It's not like I have anything else better to do at the moment," Jenny thought to herself.
She quickly unfolded the note and began reading it.
In Jason's hand writing, it read "No, this is not a love letter. This is a little more serious than that. In fact, what you're about to read may be one of the most interesting things you've read in a while. This is about Grace Harnell. Yes, I saw you staring directly at her for what seemed like ten minutes. I know what you were thinking about too. You want to know why she was able to knock you to the ground when no one else in this school could if they tried, well, besides maybe a football tackle from one of the players on the team. That's beside the point though. I've been wandering why myself for a while too now. Don't ask her, because she won't tell you. She doesn't like people asking about her past, and she'll definitely let you know. I researched the Harnell family and I found something interesting. In fact, the interesting thing is what I didn't find. If you look up the name, the last entry in any public record of the name Harnell stopped being recorded over 60 years ago. Then, all of a sudden, her dad's name, Robert Harnell, showed up again 20 years after he was born. I think there's more to her than we originally thought. You can look into this if you want. If you don't, I don't really care either way. If you want to talk about it, just use my e-mail address to contact me through a messenger program. I'm sure you still have it in your hard drive from last year.
P.S. Yes, I can write pretty fast. I know this is a lot in only ten minutes. One more thing. Please don't tell her I told you any of this."
Jenny folded the sheet of paper and put it in her book bag.
"Now that I think about it, I should have deleted it a few months ago. But I have to admit though, that information that he found is pretty interesting. There must be more to you than I ever realized if you know how to search for information that thoroughly. I'll have to turn you in if I find out you've been doing any illegal hacking Jason. I doubt you are a hacker because I'm not convinced that you're careless enough to invite me into your life in any way knowing that I'm supposed to turn people in for that kind of thing. But yes, I agree with you on the fact that this is definitely something worth looking into," Jenny thought to herself.
Jenny focused her attention on Jason. He was already waiting for her to look his way. They both stared at each other for a brief moment with a somewhat serious expression their faces. Jenny then nodded, and then started staring at Grace again. She didn't realize that Jason was also staring at her. She also didn't know that he was also grinning slightly. A moment later, he stopped grinning, and resumed eating his lunch.
Upon entering the book store, both Tuck and Brad were amazed at just how good of a job was done in repairing the place. After the robot attack, the store was a complete wreck. Luckily, it only suffered impact damage, so there was no fire, and no destroyed books. Some of the books were damaged badly, but none were utterly destroyed.
The first place Tuck ran to was a shelf near the rear end of the store. Brad ran after him knowing that even though the store was that large, Tuck would often find a way to end up lost in the most unexpected places.
"Whoa, hold on Tuck. Why the hurry?" Brad asked.
"No, no, nope, yes! They finally made volume two," Tuck said holding up the book he just found after sorting through several.
"Oh yeah, that Forgotten Myths and Legends book. You did say they were supposed to be making more volumes. Twenty five dollars is kind of expensive for a book these days, but you do have enough for it," Brad said.
"I've been waiting for this. I wanted to see what else they had to say about that demon story for a while now," Tuck said.
"Wait. Now I remember, the one that supposedly burned down that town by himself. I almost forgot about that," Brad said.
Tuck flipped through the pages as quickly as he could until he found what he was looking for.
"So what does it say?" Brad asked.
"It's a whole lot to read out loud. It would be better if I read it first, then summarize it for you like I did last time. Let's invite Jenny to come with us to the park like before. We can spend a little time together, and I believe I will have read it all by then so I can explain it to you," Tuck suggested.
"I guess that sounds like a good idea. Just remember, don't put too much chili on your hot dogs like you did the last time," Brad said while pulling his cell phone out of his pocket.
"You remember the fact that I put a lot of chili on my hot dogs, but you could barely remember a story about a ruthless fire demon. I think fire demons are a lot more important that chili," Tuck responded.
"Whatever!" Brad said annoyed.
Unfortunately for them, their trip to the park had to wait. Jenny got her first global threat warning in months. She figured it be best to deal with the problem as quickly as possible since Earth was still in pretty bad condition. The people could not really afford any more damage.
"Okay, this is the spot, but where are the aliens. That's right, they probably haven't quite gotten here yet," Jenny said before heading straight upwards.
"Outer space; it's been over a year since I've been out there," Jenny thought to herself.
As she watched the bright blue sky fade into black, she remembered her suicide attempt. If she had killed herself that day, her color would've gone from blue to black.
"Kinda creepy how I can actually relate the two," Jenny thought to herself.
Jenny found a spot to sit and wait. She activated her sensors to full power and waited for them to pick up anything unusual.
As she floated in one spot, she thought to herself "It's so quite out here. I used to think it was creepy, but now…I think it's kind of peaceful. Complete silence."
Her peaceful meditation was unfortunately brief. After only two and a half minutes, her sensors picked up an enormous space ship heading towards Earth.
"All right, they may not actually be a threat, but that's what the warning is for. We can't take any chances. First, I need to try to contact them," Jenny thought to herself as she tried to find the right frequency of the ship's radio receiver, if it has one.
It only took her one minute to find it. Immediately, she sent a signal indicating that she was trying to contact them.
The captain of the ship, along with several other crew members, were currently in the ship's bridge. All of them were robots from who knows where.
"Is that an incoming transmission?" The ship's second in command asked.
"Yes ma'am. You want me to answer the call?" another crew member sitting at a computer console asked.
"No, I'll answer the call," the captain said as he pushed a button.
A second later, a large window appeared showing a strange looking blue and white robot girl with a serious expression on her face.
"Would ye happen to be from Earth lass?" The Captain asked.
"Yes, but what's with the pirate accent and outfit," Jenny asked.
"I didn't expect ye to ask that question so quickly. If ye must know, we receive signals from Earth's television satellites. So far, I have yet to be impressed with real pirates these days, but the pirates from Earth from long ago, now they be the one's I admire. I decided to revive a good thing and take on their likeness. Enough o' that, why did you call us?" The captain asked.
"They just keep getting weirder and weirder," Jenny thought herself.
"Well, I may or may not look like it you, but I'm this planet's main defender. I responded to a possible global threat alert, and your ship is what triggered that alert. If you don't come in peace, then I'll have to fight you," Jenny explained.
All of the robots started laughing hysterically. Jenny's patience was beginning to wear thin.
"Do you come in peace or not? I don't have all day," Jenny yelled.
"Look at me, I be a pirate. Do I look like I come in peace to ye? I come to do what pirates do, you know, the whole pillage and plunder thing, rob ye of yer booty. I'm sure ye know how it all works. If ye don't, ye prob'ly been livin' under a rock. And since we all be robot's here, and most 'o us men, I may let one of me crew members have yer booty lass," The Captain said followed by another hysterical laugh from himself and the rest of the crew.
"Nice one cap'n," One of the other crew members said.
"Your just asking for a beating. I don't plan on letting you have mine or anyone else's booty, be it money, goods, or…I'm not even going to say it. If you want this planet, you'll have to go through me first," Jenny said.
"A challenge then, is it? Then it's a challenge you shall have. Just know that when you've been reduced to garbage, that I, Cap'n Black Phoenix, was the victor. Wait, hold on a second, I remember yer face. Ah yes, now I remember. Hey everyone, that be that XJ9 girl we saw on the news two years ago," Phoenix said.
"Hey, you're right captain. I remember her now. I thought she seemed familiar," The ship's second said.
"Yes, you were the one givin' Vexus all the trouble we been hearin' about. Oh, but I do have one question for ye. What happened to yer satellites? We suddenly stopped receivin' signals three weeks ago. By our calculations, ye stopped sendin' signals four months ago, so by the time we noticed the gap, it had to have been over three months since ye stopped," Phoenix said.
"The only answer I plan on telling you as that we've been having major technical difficulties. If you want to know more, you'll have to find out yourself. As I said before, you'll have to get through me first. I'm giving you ten seconds to turn around and leave before I attack. XJ9 out," Jenny said before she terminated the transmission.
"Well captain, she definitely seems quite serious. What do you think our next course of action should be?" the ship's second asked.
Phoenix grinned and said "I've always wanted to see Earth with me own eyes. If she really wants a fight, let's fight her on her own turf."
Jenny already had her lasers cannons ready as she saw the ship closing in fast. Instead of readying their weapons like she thought they would, they veered away from Jenny's direction by a few degrees and headed straight for Earth instead.
"So they're not running. I was afraid of this," Jenny thought to herself as she charged her lasers.