Author's Note: I own nothing. Yes Gwen and Kevin think that Jen killed Reiny.
31 Mutual
The next night Jen insisted that they go back to the warehouse. She wanted to have another look around. Kevin wasn't sure what she was looking for. When he asked Gwen she just shrugged. A few hours later Jen was standing in front of the teleporter, frowning.
"Do you think you could get it to work again?" She asked never taking her eyes off the slightly glimmering Quartz ring that made up the body of the machine. Kevin shrugged.
"Maybe? Why?" Jen shrugged.
"Well we never know when we might need to teleport things." Kevin nodded, Gwen was a bit more suspicious.
"And if we end up with some kind of mutant fly monster?" Jen snorted. "It's not that far fetched considering the things we've dealt with. You remember the giant space tick and his cult right?" Jen laughed long and loud. Kevin raised an eyebrow.
"Giant space tick?" Jen gasped for breath as Gwen nodded.
"It wasn't that funny at the time, looking back it's a bit funny. It was the first time she unlocked Cannonbolt. And the cult switched to worshiping her for all of five seconds, until they remembered she's human." Jen shook her head as she finally managed to catch her breath.
"That whole summer sounds like it was a bad acid trip, just without the drugs." Kevin said shaking his head. Jen nodded.
"Well you're not wrong. But the teleporter?" Kevin nodded.
"Shouldn't be too hard, we just need to find a second relay, or have a repeat of what happened yesterday."
"I vote we find the relay." Gwen said side eyeing her cousin. Jen nodded, though her eyes kept wandering back to the original teleporter. But unfortunately it turned out things weren't that simple. Kevin had no luck repairing the spare relay they found in the basement. The teleporter just wouldn't function. After a few hours he raised his hands in surrender.
"Ok I give. I can't make it work." Gwen rolled her eyes from where she was sitting on the car reading a book. Jen was still fiddling with the Omnitrix. Kevin noticed she did that a lot. When she was nervous or thinking too hard about something. He could only guess what she was thinking about. Probably the Highbreed who had gone into the teleporter yesterday with her and hadn't come back out again.
"Well that was a waste of time." Gwen snapped her book shut and hopped off the car.
"Maybe not. I know a guy who can fix it." Jen raised an eyebrow.
"He lives on Earth and can fix alien tech?"
"Cooper can fix anything, guy's got a way with machines alien or human."
"Wait." Jen frowned as Gwen froze mid step. "Cooper? Not Cooper Daniels?"
"You know him?" Both girls nodded.
"Yeah; short kid, blonde, blue eyes, gigantic crush on Gwen. We hung out when we were kids, during that acid trip of a summer." Jen said hiding her laughter badly.
"Well he's not short anymore but yeah that's Cooper. I've worked with him a few times he owes me one. Should be able to convince him to help us out."
It could never be easy though could it. Cooper's mom was welcoming, offering them cookies and soda but Cooper's 'room' was empty. It wasn't really a room it was a quite large shed filled to the brim with tech, alien and regular. It looked like someone had set off a trash bomb in here, old pizza boxes and soda cans strewn around alongside what looked like blueprints. Jen let out a disgusted groan as she scraped old pizza cheese off her shoe with a piece of cardboard.
"This isn't right. Coop never leaves his warehouse. Look for signs of a struggle." Gwen poked at one of the more suspicious looking machines and frowned.
"Kevin this whole place looks like a struggle." Jen nodded and frowned as she spotted something on the floor. It looked sort of like a null void projector, like the one Grandpa Max had been using. Her heart gave a twist as she picked it up. But the moment she touched it something happened. Though she didn't even touch the trigger the thing went off, a bright flash of light sailing out of the end of the gun.
"Hit the deck!" Kevin and Gwen followed instructions beautifully both diving to the trash strewn floor as the light sailed over their heads and struck one of the monitors. The monitor flickered for a moment then blazed to life, along with every other monitor in the room. Jen leapt back to her feet and found herself staring into the face of someone familiar but also odd.
"Cooper?" He was taller now, with far more muscle than Jen remembered him having, it had been four years since she'd seen him though. He also looked slightly frantic.
"If anyone finds this recording…" He was cut off by a terrifyingly familiar screech. The screens played out his kidnapping as if they were viewing it in real time. It took four DNAliens to trap Cooper. Jen glared at the screen as it went dark.
"Smart kid. Left a message in a bottle to let someone know what happened to him." Jen's frown grew deeper.
"Why was his mom so nice? Her son is missing." Jen turned on her heel. "See if you can't find something to track him with Gwen. Kevin you stay with her. I'm having a thought." Kevin and Gwen glanced at each other but nodded as Jen went back to the main house.
As it turned out she was just in time to stop the DNAlien posing as Cooper's mom from calling for reinforcements. Jen frowned at the unconscious being on the kitchen floor. She'd managed to take it by surprise so she hadn't needed much force to take it out, just one whack with a pan from the stove, but this was an opportunity to test something she'd been wanting to try for a while. She'd broken the thing's ID mask and peeling it of didn't take much. She tossed it to the side and looked down at her wrist.
"Ok Omnitrix, don't fail me now." She whispered it and reached out to touch the DNAlien again. At first nothing happened. She growled in frustration. "Come on I wanna fix her like we did Ken. Can you do that or not?" A flash of green and she was in the Omnitrix again.
Tracking Cooper was easy, his energies were all over that room. Finding Jen in the kitchen of Cooper's house kneeling over a DNAlien her eyes flooded green, the lines of circuitry back on her skin, spreading to the DNAlien just like they had when Jen had cured Ken was less easy. Neither of them dared touch her, neither of them understood what was happening. Jen had tried to describe it after she'd rescued Ken but she hadn't been able to find the words. It took her a few minutes but eventually she breathed out, the green retreating, a lifeless Xenocyte in her hand, Cooper's mother stirring on the floor. The blonde woman groaned and sat up clutching her head.
"Oh, what happened? Cooper!" Jen caught her as she tried to get up too fast and slipped slightly on the remains of the DNAlien skin.
"It's ok Mrs. Daniels we're gonna find Cooper."
"Jen? I haven't seen you in years. I remember, they came looking for my boy! They had these egg things with them! That's the last thing I remember." Jen nodded, shoving the lifeless Xenocyte at Gwen and Kevin to get it away from the clearly upset woman.
"We know where he is, we're gonna bring Cooper home ok?" Cooper's mother nodded as Jen helped her to her feet and into her living room. "Is there someone you can call who you trust? Someone who knows about Cooper's powers and isn't weirded out by all of this? I don't want to leave you alone but we have to go." The woman turned blue eyes on Jen.
"I'll be fine dear. You just bring my boy home safe!" Jen nodded and glanced over at Gwen and Kevin.
"Let's go do just that."
Nothing was ever easy. They had learned that lesson so many times over that being captured by the DNAliens after getting to Cooper really shouldn't have been a surprise. His cloaking device had been a genius idea but the execution hadn't been all that great. Even with all four of them fighting, though Cooper, while tall and well built wasn't that good at it, they still got captured. Cooper promised to cooperate if the others weren't harmed and the three of them were marched into a storage room. Los Soledad didn't really have a jail after all. But they made the mistake of not restraining them, well they cuffed Jen to a book case but Gwen managed to break the cuffs easily by redirecting the energy outwards. Jen frowned as she looked around rubbing her wrist around the Omnitrix.
"Thanks." She stood and paused. She stepped over to a large gold metal structure. "I don't remember what they called this stuff but I have an idea. Kevin, absorb this. Can you get full coverage from just this much?" Kevin looked the structure up and down and nodded.
"Yeah easily." To prove his point he touched the metal and in seconds was covered in it. Jen nodded.
"Gwen can you block the light from the window for a second?" The redhead nodded and did as she was asked. Jen flicked the dial on the Omnitrix and transformed into EchoEcho. She nodded and clambered up onto a shelf and hopped onto Kevin's shoulders.
"Ok." Her voice echoed slightly, Kevin could feel it thrum through the metal covering him. "I need you to get them to open the door Gwen, then get out of the way and hit Kevin with an energy blast." Kevin made a sound of protest but Jen tapped him on the head. "Trust me, this'll work!"
Once Jen and Kevin had joined forces into a makeshift sonic resonator, Jen using the reverberations through the metal covering Kevin's skin as a pitch guide when Gwen hit him, getting to Cooper became a deadly game of tag. Getting to the half built arch once they had Cooper was even more dangerous, but they had to take out the large cloaking device at least. Trashing it turned out to be easy after Cooper got over his vision. One more big blast of sound and a mad dash for Kevin's car found them speeding along the road away from Los Soledad breaking every speeding law on the way. Jen twisted around in her seat, eyes glues to the horizon.
"They aren't following us." Cooper sounded confused as he glanced back too.
"Why would they? No one will believe us if we tell them what's really happening there." Kevin said, glancing in the rear view mirror.
"Anyone who went to check it out would just find what looks like regular humans anyway." Gwen added running her hands through her hair.
"We don't even know what's really happening at Los Soledad, which means that soon we're gonna have to go back." She turned to Cooper. "Can we count on you to be with us?" Cooper looked at Gwen where she sat in the passenger seat.
"Any time!" Jen rolled her eyes but nodded and held out her hand for Cooper to shake. He even did after a moment. Then he looked her over again.
"You cut your hair!" Jen laughed.
"Yeah about four years ago Cooper. It's good to see you though." Cooper nodded then went pale.
"Oh god, they did something to my mom! She was…" Jen held up her hands.
"How do you think we knew you got snatched? We went looking for some tech help and found your message. Your mom's fine. We cured her. All's well." Cooper stared at the three of them.
"How did you cure her?"
"Don't look at us." Kevin said as he slowed the car to a much more legal speed. "That one's on Jen. She does this thing with the Omnitrix and fixes them." Jen's face grew contemplative.
"Yeah I had an idea about that but I'll need your help Cooper. And we'll need to catch a DNAlien or two." Cooper nodded as they pulled up to his house. The three of them had basically forgotten about the teleporter with everything that had happened but Jen's brain was working overtime and if she was right then maybe they had a shot at beating the DNAliens after all. All she would have to worry about would be the Highbreed, who were formidable with or without an army.