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Cooper called the next day. He was ready to test the gun. Jen's parents dropped her off at his house, she still had to pick up her bag and her hoverboard from him too. She hadn't told her parents that this was where she'd gone when she'd run off.

Gwen was taking some time to work on some of the schoolwork she'd been assigned by her teachers over the summer break. Jen had never been more grateful not to go to Gwen's fancy prep school. Kevin was working at Ed's today so Jen was on her own as she stepped into Cooper's house. Not that she minded, Cooper was less distractible when Gwen wasn't around and less nervous without Gwen's boyfriend's endless teasing. Mrs. Daniels smiled at her.

"Hello again! You didn't need to stay as long as I thought you would." Jen grinned.

"Yep! Got things worked out at home."

"I'm glad to hear it! You're still welcome over anytime dear, and you know Cooper could do with getting out a bit more." Jen nodded as she made her way to the back door and the shed that Cooper called his lab. "He's single you know dear!" Jen grimaced out of Mrs. Daniels view at that and waved over her shoulder. She entered the shed with a knock and Cooper nodded to her from in front of one of his computers.

"Your mom is trying to set us up. Just a head's up." Cooper spluttered into his Coke. Jen laughed, he joined her after a moment before nodding to a red gun sitting on the table. The circuits running through it were a pulsing glowing green but the plating on the gun was bright red.

"Fine tuned the coding last night. If we did it right it should work." Jen grimaced at that word, 'should'. She'd never liked that word. It left too much up to chance. But with this gun they could be sure of nothing, only that it was a chance of tipping the battle in their favor. She picked it up, it was much lighter than the last laser she'd handled, though that could be because the last time she'd used an actual gun she was ten and it was about the same length as her torso. This looked much more like the laser lances Kevin had been selling to the Forever Knights.

"You ready to test this?" Cooper looked apprehensive but nodded to her. The two of them went down to the containment room together. The two remaining DNAliens hissed at them but did nothing else. There were splatters of goo on the walls but both creatures were still bound with energy cuffs. Cooper flicked a switch on one of his computers and looked up into the web camera.

"DNA gun test 1. After working with the information provided by Jennifer Tennyson and the Omnitrix we now have a testable prototype." He turned to Jen who nodded at him. He was of course recording their experiment like any good scientist. They had talked about it and agreed between the two of them that Jen would test the gun. Kevin had offered to do it but it didn't seem right for him to have to take the fall if something went wrong. Jen stepped up to the wall and aimed at the closest DNAlien. She glanced back at Cooper.

"Ready?" He nodded hand hovering over a button. It was only shaking a little bit as Jen turned back to the DNAliens. "On three? One. Two. Three." Cooper hit the switch and a chunk of wall in front of Jen vanished. She fired at the first DNAlien, a bolt of green light sailing into the creature. It blackened for a moment while both humans held their breaths. Then the DNAlien skin fell away, leaving behind an unharmed human who blinked at them confusedly as the Xenocyte fell to the floor. It was blackened and dead. Jen cried out in triumph and re-aimed at the second DNAlien, firing without the countdown this time to the same effect. Cooper whooped with joy as Jen tossed him the gun and went for the keys to the energy cuffs so she could free the newly cured humans.

It took them some time to get the confused humans sorted out. Either the gun or the removal of the Xenocyte seemed to induce amnesia though it wasn't too severe. Jen wondered if Ken had escaped that because of his alien heritage or because the transformation hadn't been complete when she'd cured him. Mrs. Daniels hadn't remembered what she'd done as a DNAlien, just the events before and after.

Once Mrs. Daniels had loaded the still confused humans into her car, with a story of how she'd found them, and was on her way to the hospital the two teens sat down to talk.

"Well it worked!" Jen was all smiles as Cooper's fingers flew across the keyboard, going back over the results of their test.

"Better than we anticipated even! Aside from the memory loss from their time attached to the parasite there was no damage to the host according to my sensors." Jen nodded at him eyes narrowing slightly.

"It's probably better that they don't remember their time as DNAliens." Cooper flinched and nodded. Jen clapped him on the shoulder.

"Ok now we need to make more. How much material do you have left?" Cooper did a quick bought of mental math.

"Enough to make seven, maybe. The main problem is they take a lot of power. When you do it the Omnitrix is using your natural energy as a backup power reserve. I ran the math on it, you'd have to cure about six people, maybe seven it start feeling more negative effects than the two you cured back to back. You just got tired and hungry after that right?"

"Very hungry and tired." She nodded.

"You'd have to cure quite a few in a row to actually pass out but I'd be careful about it for a bit. But with the guns we need level five power sources, and planet Earth is only level two. It's hard to get my hands on the stuff to power. But I have enough for about seven, if we're lucky." Jen nodded at Cooper, knowing he'd likely gotten what he had from Kevin already.

"Between all of us that will have to be enough." Cooper frowned.

"We have seven people against an army?" Jen reached around Cooper and flicked off his recorder.

"I've gone up against a warlord and his army alone without the use of the Omnitrix. I've seen worse odds and seen the other side. Do what you can as fast as you can please. We need to make our move soon." Cooper nodded, his mouth set in hard line. Jen gripped his shoulder.

"We can do this Cooper. Right now we're a step ahead of them, let's keep it that way." Cooper grinned slightly, looking a bit more confident.

Jen wished she could be as confident as she sounded. Seven was being generous honestly, and counting a person she hadn't actually contacted yet. As of that moment they had Jen herself, Gwen, Kevin, Allen Albright, Julie and Cooper the last two of whom didn't really count as neither of them were fighters like the rest. Jen left Coopers house on her hoverboard, thankful for the drizzle and the resulting cloud cover.

She headed for the Rustbucket. It was a good place to think, sitting in the passenger seat curled up and watching the rain. At some point she lost track of time and got bored. She began digging through the paper's and notebooks Grandpa Max kept there, it was some of the only things that hadn't been disturbed when Argit got his hands on the Rustbucket. Little did he know some of the most valuable things in the whole rig were here not in the tech. Like little black book Jen now held in her hands. It was something that she'd only seen Grandpa Max use once or twice and it contained contact information for every Plumber on the planet, or at least the ones he knew of.

Several of the numbers were scribbled out, only a few replaced with new numbers. Some of them were numbers that couldn't be cell phones, either too long or far too short to be an earthly phone number. Towards the back of the book she found a name she recognized, though she hadn't see it in years. Viktor Valadis's name was scratched out in marker, and it made Jen frown. She could only tell it was his because Ethan's name was still mostly legible beneath it. Jen pulled out her phone and squinted at the number barely legible under the ink attempting to cover it.

She managed to type up the number and took a deep breath before hitting the call button. She waited as the line rang and rang.

"This is Ethan, leave a message after the beep. I'll get back to you when I can." The beep was loud and Jen flinched.

"Hey Ethan, it's Jen. Jen Tennyson. Look, I know your dad left the Plumbers but I need help. There's… Look I don't have time to explain it over a message. Call me back as soon as you get this, please." She clicked off the call and shook her head. It should not have been that hard. He was just another Plumber's kid. Except he wasn't, he hadn't been her first crush but they had a history. Ethan's father had been a Plumber, but a few years ago he'd quit out of the blue and left town, taking his son with him. Jen hadn't heard from either of them since then, which had been a bit of a blow. She and Ethan had been close. He'd stuck up for her when she'd tried out for the soccer team, which at the time had been all boys.

Add to that the fact that he had been her first kiss and him vanishing off the face of the earth stung. They had only been thirteen at the time, true. It had been awkward and they'd laughed about it after but they'd never gotten the chance to talk about it, as Ethan and his father had vanished a few days after. Shaking her head Jen went back to skimming through the names in the book. She was looking for ones she knew at least had heard of. She knew better than most that not all Plumber's could be trusted. Grandpa Max's old partner Phil was evidence of that. The first time they'd met he had been releasing aliens from the Null Void so people would pay him to take care of them.

The second time he'd been a giant bug monster alien thing that attacked them, turned back into Phil for only a moment before staring at them vacantly and vanishing. She paused as her finger ran down the names on a page. That was a name she knew.

Wes Green and his phone number was written in her Grandfather's neat handwriting. Underneath was the name of the old Plumber's granddaughter Kai, Jen's first real crush. Jen swore under her breath. It wasn't that there was bad blood there, it was that Kai hadn't wanted a girlfriend, she'd wanted a pet werewolf. It had been one of the first time's someone had outright told her they preferred her as someone else. If she was honest it still sort of messed with her head. She saw it much easier these days but it didn't make it easier.

She had typed in the number before she fully realized what she was doing. She was about to hit call when her phone began to ring and she jumped. She almost lost her grip on it and glanced at the caller ID. It was Kevin.

"Hey Kev."

"Jen we got a hit on the scans I've been running on local calls. Keeping an ear out for alien activity. Kid out in the desert somehow got an oscillator key away from the DNAliens, they've got him locked up at the highway patrol station not too far from here. We gotta go now. Where are you?"

"I'm at the Rustbucket!"

"I'll be there in two minutes." Jen nodded and hung up. She glanced down at her phone as she scrambled for her shoes. Kai's number was still displayed on the screen. She quickly hit save as she raced outside to meet Kevin. She had no idea if she would have time to contact the other girl anytime soon but it didn't hurt to have her number just in case right?