Author's Note: I own nothing.

6 The Real Issue

It wasn't long before the aliens were backed up by a much larger alien. It quickly became clear that they were in well over their heads, even after Kevin turned into a massive dinosaur like alien. He was fighting the large alien, the one who called itself a Highbreed, while the others took on the hoard of smaller aliens. Kevin flinched as he landed hard on the other side of Jay's shield.

"Can you get the others out of here?" Jay glanced at him and nodded.

"Yeah, you?"

"I'll figure it out. Get Glen and Cooper out of here." Jay nodded slamming her shield into the oncoming alien. She snagged Glen by the arm and Cooper by the back of his shirt and chanted. In a swirl of power they were gone.

Glen swore as his feet met an uneven surface and gave out. The thud beside him told him Cooper had suffered the same fate. He blinked. They were outside, bright moonlight shining down. He glanced behind him. Jay had landed on her feet but her knees were trembling and there was blood dripping from her nose.

"Are you ok?" She shrugged wiping the blood off her face with her arm.

"I've had worse." Her voice was slightly shaky too. Glen found his feet, pulling Cooper to his before stepping over to his cousin. He pulled another handkerchief from his pocket and held it out to her. She raised an eyebrow but he raised his right back. She snatched the cloth and held it to her sluggishly bleeding nose.

"You know you aren't getting this back right?" Glen nodded. Cooper looked around.

"What about Kevin?" He asked brushing his blonde hair out of his face.

"He told me to get you two out." Jay shrugged. "After everything I've seen tonight I can't help but question if he had a plan or not, but." She trailed off as a loud crash and rumble echoed from behind them. The mine was collapsing and the ship emerging from its depths. "Get in the car!" They didn't question it getting in and buckling up as Jay speed away from the collapsing mine as fast as her car would go. Cooper craned around in his seat and spotted Kevin's transformation dangling from the side of the ship, tearing into the metal there.

"Kevin!" Jay glanced in her rear view mirror and swore jerking the wheel to follow the ship. She pulled to a stop well away from the cliffside it crashed into. But at least they were sure that Kevin hadn't been attached to it when it blew thanks to the long gorge that he'd left behind. Jay pulled up to the edge of the crater and glanced at Glen.

"I'm tapped, can you get us down there?" Glen nodded getting out of the car. He pulled a few seeds from his pocket and tossed them down the side of the crater. Vines sprouted into a makeshift ladder and the three of them made their way down to where Kevin lay. He was just pulling himself to his feet as they reached him.

"Dude! That was insane!" Cooper called out steadying his friend.

"Did it work?" Kevin asked a bit dazed. Jay nodded.

"Yep, no more space ship." She stated and he nodded but he had a look in his eyes that Glen had seen before.

"That's not gonna be the end of it is it?" Glen asked. Kevin shook his head.

"No, probably not. I think this might have just been the tip of the iceberg guys. We need to find my dad, and to do that we need to crack the case he was working on. You in?" Cooper and Glen nodded at him and he turned to Jay. "I can't offer what Magister Labrid offered. I'm not a Plumber." Jay rolled her eyes.

"I made a promise. I'm in this till the end. We have a deal remember." She tapped the place over her heart and Glen frowned.

"You had a deal with Magister Labrid, that ended when he died." He pointed out and Kevin frowned lightly at Jay.

"Why do you want to help us?" Jay let out a breath, caught in her lie.

"Because Magister Labrid was the first person to give me a chance in a really long time. I'd like to honor that. But once we find your dad I'm out. I'm no hero." She said it and turned away from the group, heading back up the vine ladder. Glen and Kevin shared a look, both were wondering what could really be in this for her. But as Jay drove them back into town Kevin couldn't help but look her over a bit more carefully. She was pale, and looked tired, dark circles building quickly under her eyes as Glen directed her to his prep school.

The tattoos on her arms were intricate, if he looked long enough he was certain he would be able to find thousands of designs. By the time they reached Glen's school he'd found a set of butterfly wings in a chalice, a sun and moon nestling into each other, runes circling the circumference of her arm, swirling into patterns of their own and on her shoulder sat the solar system, he'd guess it was this one if the placement of the planets told him anything. She glanced at him and he quickly looked away, blushing slightly as he realized that they had arrived at Glen's school. He turned back to her.

"Thank you, for helping us." She shrugged as they got out of her car. But as they made their way to the bike stand her window rolled down.

"Glen." He looked back at his cousin. "If you tell your parents or mine that I'm on planet I will hex you into next year." Her window rolled back up and the car rolled out of the parking lot. Cooper turned to Glen pecking him on the cheek.

"I love you but your cousin scares the shit out of me."

"Yeah." Glen said with a slight laugh as he watched the car disappear. "That's probably for the best." The group split. Cooper summoning his motorcycle and taking Glen home as Kevin biked to his house. It was still empty, his mom would be gone for a few days yet. He reheated some pizza and sat down alone in his room with some homework. He frowned as he pulled a sketchpad out of his backpack. He'd been working on something for his art class for a while but he had yet to get it the way he wanted.

Picking up a pencil he flipped to a new page and began to sketch a basic outline.

Across town the garage door of a warehouse slid up and a dusty purple sports car pulled into the empty space. Jay sighed leaning back in her chair for a moment. She'd overdone it a bit tonight. She probably shouldn't have driven home with her sight going foggy at the edges. But she'd made it. She shook her head as she stumbled out of her car and through the door into the main portion of the warehouse. Half of it was given over to a kind of workshop and most of the rest was staked with crates and boxes, most of the contents of which were questionably legal at best. A tiny corner though had a mattress stuffed into it covered in pillows and cushions and draped in blankets. Jay unclipped her belt and fell directly onto the mattress. She curled up for a moment then grumbled to herself and pulled a cellphone out of her boot. The line rang for a minute.

"Well, well the Sorceress comes calling. How can I help?" The voice on the other end was male and made Jay roll her eyes.

"Cut the shit. I need some info Frisk." There was a tut over the line.

"I do live to serve. What do you have to offer in return?" Jay flipped over, looking up at the ceiling and frowned as the tiara she'd forgotten she was wearing tangled in her hair.

"Two level five laser lances and a bottle of Tetramand Rum." Frisk whistled.

"You can have whatever you want for that price." Jay smiled lightly.

"Couple new species of aliens have been on Earth recently. I only know the name of one of them, the Highbreed. The other ones are ugly motherfuckers, seem to mostly be doing grunt work, one eye, bit of exposed brain and they spit goo." She sat up gingerly detangling the tiara from her hair as Frisk hummed.

"Sounds like some tough customers. Why do you wanna know?" Jay thought for a split second and nodded to herself.

"Between them and some big shot Plumber a deal went sideways tonight. Knights skipped out on my pay in the aftermath."

"Shit, that blows, wanna blacklist them?"

"No, not yet. But you catch wind of Plumber tech I'd love to get into that. Cosmic payback and all that." Frisk laughed.

"I'll keep that in mind. I'll have a file for you tomorrow at noon, usual place." Jay nodded.

"I'll bring your product." She hung up, tossing the tiara onto a side table and let out a long breath. Frisk was in the information business, if he couldn't find info about it, it probably didn't exist. With him keeping an ear out for Plumbers they might get a lead on Devin Levin sooner rather than later, or at least any tech he left behind. With that taken care of her exhausted mind turned to the other problem in her life right now. Glen Tennyson.

Her cousin had magical abilities too. He claimed that he had developed them due to exposure to the elemental charm of Bezel but that didn't fit with what Jay knew to be true. Only someone with magical talents could even use the charms, any of them. And he hadn't been wearing it. She pulled a pillow over her face and screamed into it. This meant that magic ran in her bloodline through her fathers side of the family, the only way she was related to Glen by blood. She was exhausted and rolled over, pulling one of her blankets over herself as she did. She needed some sleep before she decided what she was going to do about her cousin.