Author's Note: I own nothing. Yes she ran away.
38 Testing
As it turned out Jen had arrived at Cooper's house just the same time Argit did. And she was glad she had, it let her avoid answering questions about why she was here, and staying for the moment. Mrs. Cooper let her drop off her bag and handed her a sandwich as she headed out to Cooper's shed. The sandwich was quickly scarfed down, she had missed dinner at home after all. Her heart gave a twist as Argit grinned at her.
"Jenny!"
"Don't call me that."
"Sorry." Argit raised his hands in surrender. "I got what you paid for. I gotta know though where'd you get that much Taydenite?"
"None of your business. How many did you get?"
"For you sweetness, four!" Jen raised an eyebrow as Argit produced a slightly familiar looking cube from his pocket. "Kev was kind enough to provide some equipment for hauling them around. They should be asleep for a few more hours. Listen you ever need a job done you call me. Nobody in our circles trusts Kev anymore since he's running with you and has gone all official Plumber, like his pops. So you ever need anymore… shall we say questionably acquired materials you call me!"
"I'll keep that in mind Argit." He tossed her the cube and saluted before shoving his hands in his pockets and kicking the ground lightly.
"You wouldn't happen to be up to anything tomorrow night?" He asked it almost shyly.
"Argit, you're kinda cute but I have an invasion of Earth to put a stop to. I'm gonna be busy for a while." Argit blinked at her.
"Really! You think I'm cute!?" He bounced slightly. "So maybe after you do your save the world thing…?"
"I don't have Gwen's thing for bad boys. But if I need anything less than legal you'll be the first I'll call." Argit grinned at her.
"I can live with that! See you around, Jen!" He took off a wide grin on his face. Cooper looked over at Jen. He'd stayed quiet through their little conversation.
"You really think Argit is cute?"
"Meh. He's alright. Keep in mind I turn into a literal pile of goo. I don't really care what people look like. I wouldn't date Argit because he's a scumbag." Cooper nodded slightly and showed her the way into the basement he'd built. There was a containment chamber and a ton of equipment down there. Cooper eyed the cube in her hand.
"You know how to use that?" Jen shrugged.
"I've seen someone use it before." Once a very long time ago she'd seen Tetrax use one just like this to trap the two bounty hunters Vilgax had hired to bring him the Omnitrix. She opened the door to the containment room and tossed the cube in. It glowed and grew then shrank again leaving four DNAliens behind. Three of them were cuffed with energy cuffs, likely the ones Kevin had gotten from the Forever Knights when they dealt with the dragon. The fourth was tied with simple ropes. Jen nodded as she took off Kevin's hoodie and tossed it at Cooper who caught it.
"We'll start with the one most likely to break loose first." She tucked the containment cube into her pocket and dragged the DNAliens around the chamber. She set three of them against the wall, the one tied with the ropes she left in the middle of the chamber. She turned to Cooper.
"You need anything before we get started? This could take a while. Gwen says it took about five minutes the first time and she doesn't know when I started to give an accurate time for how long it took to cure your mom." Cooper nodded and tossed Kevin's hoodie onto a chair. He pulled a box from the drawer of the desk he'd moved down here. From the box he produced several electrodes. He raised an eyebrow to Jen who nodded. He placed one on the side of her forehead one next to the Omnitrix and handed her a third.
"This one goes over the heart." He blushed slightly as he turned away to the DNAlien to give it a similar treatment. Jen pulled down the collar of her shirt and placed the final electrode.
"These need to be wired to anything?" Cooper shook is head.
"Nope, I made them. Completely wireless. Took an old Bluetooth linkup I had and repurposed it. You ready?" Jen nodded at him and stepped back into the containment room as Cooper stepped out of it and closed the door behind him, sealing the chamber. There were vents for air, all rigged with knockout gas should anything go wrong. Cooper looked slightly nervous but Jen shot him the thumbs up and turned to the DNAlien on the floor. She took a deep breath and held out the Omnitrix over the DNAlien. This time it beeped before she could tell it what she wanted.
'Genetic anomaly detected. Attempt to repair?' Jen nodded.
"Yes." She laid her hand on the DNAlien and Cooper watched in amazement as circuit lines like those on a motherboard appeared on Jen's skin. He glanced down at his screen and his eyes went wide.
"Jen! Get off that thing now!" No response. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. The Electrode on the side of her forehead was reading her brain activity and it had spiked like nothing he'd ever seen before, well beyond normal safe ranges for a human being but then he glanced at her other vitals, terrified that he was going to see them bottom out. But they held steady. Almost too steady, as if she was in stasis. No change in her breathing or her heartrate, nothing but the massive spike in brain activity. Whatever she was doing it wasn't hurting her.
The DNAlien on the other hand was spiking all over the charts. Something was happening on the atomic level there. His computers were picking it up though, the DNA was unraveling, and the remnants of the human DNA were being pieced back together. It was sort of beautiful. In moments the green retreated and Jen caught the sleeping human in one arm, the lifeless Xenocyte in her other hand.
Gwen was not happy. Jen had run away from home, to Kevin, because he was the only one she could think of to go to. Kevin had told her all about this when he'd picked her up from her house to check out to Waterfront. She could not believe how stupid her cousin was being. She liked it even less when they arrived back at her house after the skirmish on the waterfront. They'd almost been overwhelmed by DNAliens but Gwen had managed a teleportation spell she'd been practicing and gotten them out to the car before they could be completely overwhelmed but she was exhausted. She was not looking to get into another fight but that seemed to be what she walked into as she stepped into her house and found her Aunt Sandra and Uncle Carl on the couch. Sandra was in tears and Carl was staring into his coffee like he was looking for all the answers in the universe. Her mother was trying to comfort Sandra and her father was standing next to Carl but turned when he heard the door close behind her.
"Gwen, come sit down." Her father used a tone that brooked no arguments. He was using his Lawyer voice. Jen was a dead woman when Gwen got her hands on her. But she did as she was told. She sat in the armchair, nearest Uncle Carl. They were all silent for a moment. Carl spoke first.
"Jen ran away." Gwen did her best to look shocked.
"Why?" Her father gave her a look, somewhere between accusatory and searching.
"Her parents found out about her extracurricular activities. Gwen did you know your cousin was off fighting eight foot tall aliens, and saving the world." Gwen wanted desperately to strangle her cousin for leaving her to take care of this. She was silent. She didn't want to lie to her parents. She slumped in her chair.
"Yes. I knew. I've been helping her." Carl frowned at her, finally looking up from his coffee.
"How?" Gwen raised her eyebrow at her father who looked to the side slightly guiltily.
"You didn't tell Uncle Carl?" Frank shook his head. Gwen sighed and raised her hand letting it glow. "I inherited Grandma Verdona's spark. Well that's what she called it anyway." Carl seemed to sink deeper into the couch in despair.
"So mom knew the whole time?" Frank nodded at his brother. Gwen shook her head.
"Only for a few months. I mean about me. It's possible that she knew about the Omnitrix. A lot of aliens do. Jen's sort of famous." Sandra and Carl both looked at her incredulously. Gwen raised her hands in her defense. "I'm serious. The Omnitrix is a one of a kind piece of technology." And she set out on the long explanation of what Kevin termed the 'acid trip' summer. It took her a long time to tell them everything she knew, and she knew she didn't know all of it. Jen had been on her own several times, Gwen had been unable to help for the first bit of the summer having only awakened her spark with the assistance of the Charms of Bezel. When she reached the day the Vilgax had kidnapped Jen and attempted to forcibly remove the Omnitrix Carl went pale.
It hadn't been a good day. Gwen and Grandpa Max had crashed the Rustbucket into Vilgax's ship but had nearly been too late, it was just Grandpa Max's forethought that had saved Jen's life. He'd taken the gun from Mount Rushmore and given Gwen a vial of experimental medical nanobots, and the job to make sure that Jen got out alive while he dealt with Vilgax. If it hadn't been for those nanobots Jen wouldn't have survived what Vilgax had already done, she still carried the scar along her torso and the one on her arm from where Vilgax had been about to sever her arm when he realized he was beaten and his ship destroyed. If the Omnitrix hadn't malfunctioned at that moment and turned her into Diamondhead Jen would have lost both the Omnitrix and her hand. Carl set down his mug and buried his head in his hands. Sandra had collected herself somewhat.
"No wonder she ran away." Carl whispered it but they all heard him.
"What do you mean?" Gwen asked, a little concerned. Her cousin was tough as nails but she had been through a lot in fifteen short years and, though she didn't often show it, it had effected her quite a bit.
"I tried to take the Omnitrix off of her." Carl sounded utterly defeated. Gwen stared at him, disbelief in her eyes.
"You can't!" Carl nodded.
"I noticed that, it broke most of my tools, didn't leave a scratch on the watch." Gwen shook her head hard.
"No that's not what I mean!" The adults all stared at the teen and she took a deep breath. "She and the Watch are a part of each other." The adults gave her a blank look. Gwen pursed her lips and nodded to herself. She raised a hand and let the pink glow spread through the room. It touched each person in turn and they glowed, each a slightly different shade of pink. "What you're seeing is called an aura. Every living being has one. And everyone's is slightly different but all normal life energy is pink in some shade or another, Grandma Verdona and I talked about this. Jen's is green." Sandra frowned.
"Does that mean something bad? Is my little girl going to be ok?" Gwen shook her head.
"She's fine, the way Grandma explained it Jen is the only human with a green aura, the Watch did that. It's alive but not in the way we think of life and it fused with her on a level so deep that even I wouldn't be able to pick out one from the other. I don't think she can ever take off the Watch, not without it hurting her or worse." Gwen flinched as her Uncle Carl's shoulder began to shake. Sandra had fresh tears in her eyes.
"I never meant… We never…" Carl fell silent. Gwen nodded.
"I know that. Jen is going through a lot right now." Sandra's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Like?" Gwen sighed.
"Did you let her explain anything that happened?" Sandra nodded slightly.
"She told us what the Omnitrix does, at least in part, she didn't tell us it was alive." Gwen shrugged.
"I don't know if she knows. She might, she's more connected to it than anyone else in the universe. But did she tell you anything that's been happening?" Carl shook his head as Frank sat down next to his brother.
"No. We didn't really give her the chance. We asked about your Grandpa. We know he's involved somehow but…" He paused. "Your grandmother told us he's missing." Gwen flinched and was silent for a moment as her Uncle continued. "She shut down when we asked. That's about when I tried to take the Omnitrix from her." He looked down at his shoes, shame in his eyes. Frank wrapped an arm around his brother.
"Grandpa Max isn't missing. He… he's gone." Gwen said trying to keep her voice calm. She launched into the explanation of what had happened in Santa Mira before anyone could stop her. She got through the whole story before she broke down. Her mother hugged her close rocking slightly as Carl turned to Frank.
"Dad… He…" Neither man could find the words. They hugged each other and Sandra patted her husband on the back. They were all silent for a moment. Then Carl turned back to Gwen.
"Do you know where Jen is now? We just want to talk to her." Gwen shook her head. It was the one thing Kevin hadn't told her.
"No, but I have a number to call her at." Sandra nodded slightly.
"We just want to know that she's ok." Gwen nodded and pulled out her phone, pulling up the number Kevin had given her.
The buzzing was getting on Cooper's nerves. They had moved on to DNAlien number two, his mom was looking after the still sleeping human that had been the first one. Jen was back to the pure green eyed stasis mode the Omnitrix put her in while she cured the DNAliens. Cooper was copying the programming running through her as the buzzing kept going. He waved a hand at the hoodie Jen had been wearing and a phone floated out of the pocket and over to his ear answering the call as it did so.
"Jen Tennyson's phone who may I say is calling?" He almost lost concentration as Gwen's voice came over the other side of the line.
"Cooper?" He just managed to catch the gun he was programing with the data currently running through Jen's veins, even he wasn't sure how that worked.
"Hey Gwen! How's life?"
"I need you to put Jen on the phone." Cooper looked over at the containment unit. This time to transmit the data they'd had to go a bit more old school. Jen and the DNAlien were currently wired to the hardline Cooper had set up.
"Um… I would love to but I can't right now, she's busy."
"Busy as in?" The computer beeped rapidly. Cooper glanced at the readings. Jen was about to finish up, they needed to get this reading done now.
"Sorry Gwen, I have to go."
"Don't…" He hung up on her, flinching.
"Well there goes my shot there…" He muttered as his fingers flew across the keys of his computer. "This had better work."