Author's Note: I own nothing!
29 Bubbles
Jen rolled her eyes as Kevin came out of her father's room, his finger caught in the bow tie. She set down the nearly empty pickle jar and tugged Kevin down by the lapels. He was quite a bit taller than her after all. She quickly untied the tie and retied it properly, explaining how to do it. Kevin nodded and frowned as Jen hissed in pain, catching one of the blisters on her hand on the tie. Kevin shook his head.
"Seriously did you go after something last night? You should have called." Jen shook her head picking her pickle jar back up and munched on the last one.
"My phone's dead. I don't know what I did last night." She paused to chug the pickle juice from the jar and Kevin looked at her with slight horror in his eyes.
"Umm… You really seem to like pickles." Jen shrugged.
"It's a recent development. But like I was saying, Julie and I…" Jen dropped the pickle jar which bounced once before shattering at her feet. "Shit where's Julie?" Kevin stared as Jen burst into tears. He blinked as she began to gather up the broken shards of the pickle jar.
"Are you sure you're ok?" Jen shook her head.
"No! I have to find Julie!" From the other room Jen's phone began to ring. She dumped the glass into a flower vase and practically sprinted into the living room. Kevin picked up the last few pieces of glass and tossed them into the vase as he heard Jen speaking into her phone from the living room.
"Yeah. I'm so sorry Julie! I know. Ok meet me in ten minutes!" Kevin rounded the corner into the living room as Jen hung up her phone.
"Everything ok?" Jen nodded.
"Yep! Everything's fine." Her eye twitched again. "I'm meeting up with Julie in a little bit. You need to get some things. Gwen likes yellow roses. Get her a bouquet. And a corsage. The kind that goes around her wrist." Jen paused and slipped back into her room as Kevin began to splutter questions. She came back in a moment with a small roll of bills.
"It occurs to me that you probably have more alien money than earth money so here. You can pay me back later! Just have fun with her tonight. And don't stress that she goes to that fancy prep school. She wants to go to the dance with you, no one else. No stress. Just have fun." Kevin blinked as Jen straightened his tie and pressed the bills into his hand.
"Ok…" He wasn't sure what else to say as she practically skipped past him and came back in moments with the handle of a hairbrush between her teeth in a new shirt and jeans. She finished pulling on a zip up hoddie Kevin hadn't seen before, sage green with black trim and a black number ten on the upper right chest and spat out the hairbrush. She ran it through her short hair and Kevin shook his head.
"Lock up when you leave!" Jen called over her shoulder and left. Just like that, leaving Kevin alone in a tux in the middle of her living room.
"I don't even know what a corsage is."
Julie wholeheartedly agreed with Jen's decision to not use the Omnitrix for the rest of the day. It seemed to be the catalyst for the blackouts at least. They spent the day hanging out together. Jen napped while Julie practiced on the tennis court, Ship asleep on Jen's torso. Julie kept an eye on her friend through the whole day. It looked like they were going to get away with it. Maybe the problem had gone away on its own. But Julie was still worried. Worried enough to mention it to Gwen that night when they met up for a moment before the dance so Julie could return a book she'd borrowed.
Jen frowned as Julie made her way back over to her.
"Everything ok?" Julie frowned deeply at her friend.
"You haven't told your team that something's wrong with the Omnitrix." Julie didn't need Jen to flinch to know that she hadn't.
"They need tonight! I can't keep living with the sexual tension Julie! They keep making goo goo eyes at each other across battlefields. It's distracting!" Julie laughed. "Besides I have you! It's not like I'm alo…" Jen went silent. Julie raised an eyebrow.
"Jen." The brunette didn't move. But Julie spotted something odd. A bright green streamer like the lines of a circuit board traveled from the Omnitrix up Jen's arm. It disappeared under her shirt and jacket but reappeared moments later traveling up her face to her eye, as if following a vein but they were definitely lines from a circuit board. Julie watched, astonished and a little frightened as Jen's eye shifted momentarily. The pupal split and spread until it was a black hourglass sitting sidewise in Jen's eye. Then the brunette moved. Julie jumped as Jen twirled the dial to Big Chill and slapped it back down again. The tell tale flash of green light left the tall thin blue mothlike alien standing in front of Julie. Julie swore as she followed Jen with Ship boosting the power on her Vespa enough to keep up with the alien.
But then she drank molten metal at the foundry and attacked a few officers before giving Julie the slip again. She didn't want to ruin Gwen and Kevin's first date but she could not handle this herself. She picked up her phone.
Gwen had been on edge since Julie had mentioned a problem with Jen earlier that evening. But Jen herself hadn't said anything. But thinking about it, with the circumstances she wasn't likely to. Gwen smiled at the flowers in her hands.
"Yellow roses. How did you know?" Learning that Jen had been behind both the corsage and the roses confused Gwen but she began to be seriously concerned when Kevin talked about the mystery wounds on Jen's hands and the fact that she didn't remember the night before. Gwen was disappointed that they didn't get the chance to go to the dance but her concern for her cousin overrode that as they sped off to the outskirts of Bellwood.
"I don't want any help!" Big Chill snarled and charged at Julie but Gwen was faster, trapping Jen in a bubble of energy. Julie raced around the bubble and Big Chill snarled as she approached the nest made of metal.
"Stay away from there!" She forced her way out of the bubble and flew at Julie but Gwen smacked her out of the sky, knowing that any bruises her cousin might keep would be worth keeping her from hurting her friends.
"You hurt her!" Julie cried out making to rush to Jen. Kevin shook his head.
"I've seen her take worse." Big Chill groaned and Gwen raced over to the small group.
"Whatever's wrong with her it's got something to do with that thing!" She looked quite angry as she glared over at the metal structure.
"Then let's take it down!" Kevin scaled the metal, absorbing as he went before smashing metal fists into the top of the structure.
"No!" The cry wasn't angry it was almost heartbroken. Julie turned to Big Chill who was struggling back to her feet as green goo sprayed out of the hole Kevin had made in the structure.
"Ah! Goo all over my suit!" The green goop bubbled and Kevin's face grew more disturbed as he spoke again. "Oh! Maggot goo on my suit, nasty." Blue bubbles rose out of the green goop and floated for a moment before resolving themselves into tiny versions of Big Chill each with different wing markings. They all had the same big green eyes though. Thirteen of them rose in quick succession before flittering over to Jen where she was still making her way to her feet, still transformed as Big Chill. Julie was too stunned to move but glanced down as the goo bubbled one more time and a tiny bubble rose from the nest. This one resolved into a tiny version of Big Chill, barely half the size of the others. It fluttered over to Jen as the others began to fly away, directly upwards as if they were headed out into space. Green lights flashed and Jen stood there as the tiny baby fluttered around her with some difficulty. She held out her hands, catching the small mothlike alien as its wings stuttered.
"It's ok little guy." The baby chittered at her and she nodded smiling. "Go ahead, I know you can do it." The baby breathed out, just like Big Chill did and took off from her hands as frost glossed the palms. It melted in seconds but Jen smiled softly as the smallest of the babies caught up with its siblings.
"What just happened?" Gwen asked. Jen blinked at them.
"When did you guys get here?" Julie shook her head and sat down on the edge of the metal structure as she began to laugh. Ten minutes later Kevin had pulled up a scientific article from something called the Xternet.
"Apparently Necrofriggian's, that's Big Chill's race, reproduce asexually once every eighty or so years. They'll live in space where it's cold enough for them and feed on solar plasma. Entirely independent from birth but the eggs are extremely vulnerable. They're usually protected by a flock of adult Necrofriggians." Jen nodded.
"Which is why Big Chill took over. The instinct to protect the eggs was too strong to fight, especially since there aren't any other Necrofriggians around." Kevin nodded.
"Yeah, makes sense. You probably won't see them again, highly independent species after all. So how does it feel, mommy?" Kevin laughed as Jen scowled at him. She picked up a spare bit of pipe that Big Chill had deemed unworthy for the nest and chucked it at Kevin. Julie laughed as it beamed the still laughing boy in the shoulder. Gwen shook her head.
"Come on Jen, I'm betting you could use something to eat and a shower." Jen nodded, looking over her shoulder at where her Necrofriggian children had vanished through the atmosphere.
"Yeah that sounds good. No pickles though. I think I've had enough of those for a lifetime." Julie and Kevin laughed. Gwen shook her head as the two girls drove off on Julie's vespa.
"Well this is not what I expected out of today. I'm an auntie and my nieces and nephews are moth aliens." Gwen laughed and frowned as she spotted the time on Kevin's watch. "We did miss the dance though." Kevin reached into his car and cranked up the radio. He held out a hand and Gwen smiled at him.
"Can I have this dance?" Gwen took his hand and the two danced in the moonlight, the shimmer of Big Chill's nest sending off occasional green bubbles that popped and sparkled in the air.