Author's Note: I own nothing.

4 A Sacrifice, A Decision

The castle was dark inside, silent. Jay frowned.

"There's a secret door. Not sure exactly where." She stated and turned to a glass case filled with medieval jewelry. With a flick of her finger the top of the case slid open silently. Jen tilted her head at the contents picking up several artifacts and slipping them into her pockets. Cooper raised an eyebrow at her.

"You need a cart for all that?" Jen flipped him off placing a silver tiara on her head, it sat slightly crocked, the amethyst in the metal glinting in the low light.

"This is chump change compared to what they skipped out on for that weapons deal." She slipped a necklace in a pouch on her belt. "Besides they have no idea half of what they've got here, some of these are enchanted. Call it reclaiming dangerous shit." Cooper shook his head as Glen and Kevin looked around. Kevin jumped as he rounded a corner and ran smack into a suit of armor. The armor came crashing to the ground and they all turned to him. Jay rolled her eyes.

"You guys are bad at this." She commented. Kevin shook his head.

"No, I'm just…" He trailed off looking at something behind them. "Rusty." His voice had gone just a bit higher and Jay whirled to see what Kevin was looking at. A large dragon was rising from the floor. She swore throwing up a shield, deflecting the blast from the dragon's mouth. Cooper and Glen ducked racing away from the dragon. Kevin spun the dial on the Omnitrix and several small white creatures dove at the Dragon. But that wasn't their only problem Knights had flooded out of a door behind a tapestry.

The fight was madness. Cooper had his hands full disassembling guns as they were aimed at him. Jay was forcing the blast from the dragon's mouth back down its throat. Kevin saw blasting sound at the dragon as seams began to become clear, this wasn't a living thing. It was a machine.

"Blondie! Trade me places!" Cooper glanced at Jay and then at the dragon which was starting to spark and nodded as she whirled on the knights. She slapped a hand to the ground and a wave of energy blasted through the stones sending the knights flying. She didn't spot the one behind her.

"Tennyson!" She ducked but as it turned out she didn't have to. Magister Labrid had shot the gun out of the Knights hands, it was sparking with red lightning as the knight pulled himself to his feet. Jay had been pulled into combat with another knight. Magister Labrid confronted the dazed knight who scooped up the damaged gun.

"Don't it's busted!" He called out but the knight aimed the lance anyway. He pulled the trigger and a wave of power blasted out from the gun. "Get down!" Magister Labrid tackled Jen away from the blast wincing as a piece of shrapnel raked his side.

Jen rolled as they landed. She wound up on top, leaping off quickly and glancing back over at where the knight had been. Only a crater remained.

"That's why you can't sell level five tech on a level two planet. Human's aren't ready for it." He pointed out as he pulled himself to his feet.

"I owe you." Jay stated. Magister Labrid nodded.

"Yeah, you do." They dove back into the fight. It didn't take long for the Knights to scatter and between Cooper and Kevin the dragon went down easily. The guns were even easier to destroy. But as Kevin turned back into himself high fiving Cooper that Jay noticed something wrong.

"Are you ok there's water leaking out of your suit." Magister Labrid's knees gave way.

"That's not water kid." She caught him before he could fall all the way to the floor and the teens crowded around him.

"I have a first aid kit in my car!" Labrid shook his head.

"Too late for that." He grabbed hold of Kevin's arm. His grip was strong but wavering. "If you kids wanna help, finish the job. Find out where the tech is coming from." Kevin nodded. "That's just the tip of the iceberg kid. Your dad, he was on the trail of a conspiracy with Earth stuck in the middle. He went undercover. Crack the case and you find your dad, maybe even save your planet."

"I don't know how." Labrid's fingers tightened on Kevin's arm.

"Yes, you do. You're Kevin Eleven, figure it out." Labrid gasped in pain and steam filled his suit, occluding the visor. When it cleared, he was gone. Jay turned away from the empty armor. There was a clatter as the Plumbers badge that had been on Labrid's belt fell to the floor. Kevin scooped it up as Jay stood, Glen had buried himself in Cooper's chest, the slightly taller gangly boy rubbing his back. Kevin almost missed it as Jay brushed tears off her face, trying to hide that they had ever been there at all. He took a steadying breath.

"He was right. I'm gonna see this through to the end. I can't ask any of you to come with me, but I could use the help." He stated to the room. Glen nodded.

"I've got your back, you know that." Glen said and Cooper nodded in agreement. Kevin turned to Jay.

"I know there's nothing in it for you." She cut him off.

"You don't know shit, but you're gonna need my help. You and my cousin. I'm in." Glen looked over at Jay as they exited the castle she didn't get into the car immediately though. Instead she circled to the trunk and popped it open and pulled something out. She opened the driver door and slid into the seat dropping a laser lance into Kevin's lap. He blinked.

"Thought we destroyed all of these?" He asked Jay smirked at him.

"Part of my payment from the alien side of this. The knights were supposed to bring me cash, brokers get paid by both sides, its why its such a lucrative market." She turned to the backseat which held Glen and Cooper. "What about your bike?" Cooper shrugged.

"Self driving, it'll make it home. Why do you need the gun?"

"Because it's how we're gonna find the aliens." She turned to Glen. "I'm gonna teach you how to do this one of these days but for now watch and learn." She took the gun back from Kevin after she buckled her belt. She set her gun in her lap and held out her hand to her cousin. Glen hesitated. Jay beckoned with her hand. "Come on garden witch, live a little." Glen glared and took her hand. Her eyes glowed deep pink and Glen blinked as his vision shifted. Colors bloomed and he glanced around the car. Everyone in the car was glowing, like a second bright shadow.

Kevin's was pink shot through with silver like the Omnitrix. Cooper was pink, close to the same shade as Kevin's but blue interlaced his colors, the same color as his powers. Looking at Jay Glen saw that close to her skin her aura was bright shiny pink but as it defused around her it grew darker until it was the near purple pink of her powers. His own aura was closer to the pink of Jay's at the point of contact with her skin but at the edges a green tint took over weaving into the pink like vines up a trellis.

"What you're seeing is called an aura. Every living thing has one and all of them are different. What we're doing is tracking a specific aura, the one left behind on this laser lance." Jay lifted a hand and the lance glowed with her power. It was like there were finger prints on the gun. Some of them were Jay's but some of them were a cracked grey, like slimy smudges. Those glowed with Jay's power and Glen spotted something out the windshield. It was like there was a beacon of the grey light from the aura on the horizon. Glen pulled his hand back and the spell broke, the lights vanished. Jay started the car and headed towards the beacon.

"Does the world always look like that for you?" Glen asked as Jay drove. She shrugged.

"It did when I was a kid. Not always, but after Grandpa Max died something shifted. I still don't know why but when we moved away, I started seeing that all the time." Jay wasn't lying. It had started subtly but gotten progressively worse until she'd snapped at her parents for not knowing what was wrong with her. That argument had ended with every piece of glass in the house broken and Jay fleeing, never to return. "I learned to control it eventually." Glen frowned sitting back in his seat.

It made a certain sort of sense that Jay had little to no control when they'd run across her in New York.

Five Years Ago

Kevin had ditched his father and Glen after getting into a fight with them over using the Omnitrix for personal gain. He'd found an arcade near the hotel they were staying at and planned to wait out the fight there. That was when he'd run into the girl with the bright pink eyes. He hadn't seen Jay since she was five so it sort of made sense that he didn't recognize her, plus when he'd last seen her she'd had green eyes, not pink. She'd helped him with a group of bullies and XLR8 had returned the favor so she'd showed him where she'd been living, in an abandoned subway depot. It hadn't ended up going well.

After a whirlwind tour of New York, and several acts of petty theft on Jay's part they'd run into the gang members from the arcade. She'd overused her own powers for her own means, resulting in her face cracking, energy leaking out of the break. That was when she'd fled, blaming Kevin for the excessive use of her powers. It wasn't until after that they had figured out who she really was. They'd tried to reason with her the next time they met but it had never gone well and each time they met she'd lost a little more of the girl Glen had known as his cousin. Kevin wasn't sure he wanted to know what she had gone through to get even a portion of that girl back.