Author's Note: I own nothing.
15 Newsworthy
The text came through not twenty minutes after the emergency signal sounded. Carl and Sandra looked at each other and frowned.
"What do we do?" Carl's voice was shaking slightly. Sandra shook her head.
"She knows more about this than we do. We should trust her." Carl nodded and they both hit the buttons on the necklaces and vanished from their house. When they rematerialized they looked around, frowning. Sandra had no idea what she'd been expecting, maybe the Bellwood base. But she had been there before and this was not that. This was a living room, quite comfortable. There was a large bookshelf full of identical leatherbound books. Only one of them was different, a spot of green in the brown shelves. There was a thud then another, both from the hallway. Natalie and Frank peeked around the door to the hallway and sighed at the sight of them. They embraced then were all set on edge when another thud sounded.
"Ow! I have to get better at landing." The voice was unfamiliar and they all reached for anything nearby that might serve as a weapon but before they could act on it a figure in Plumber gear stumbled out of the kitchen. He was blonde with blue eyes. He looked up and waved slightly, looking quite nervous. "Hi, I'm Agent Cooper Daniels of the Plumbers. I mean I'm not a field agent, I'm a lab rat. I mean the term is lab assistant. But… Sorry I babble sometimes. You must be the Tennysons." Sandra stepped up to him first.
"Yeah I'm Jen's mom Sandra, can you tell us what's happening?" Cooper took a deep breath.
"The Incursions have invaded the planet. The base has been infiltrated and I don't know what's happening with the squad we sent out to take on the flag ship." He ran his hands through his hair. Frank stepped forward, one arm around his wife's shoulders.
"What is this place?" Cooper perked up slightly.
"That I do know. Jen had me help her set it up a few months back. It's a safehouse, off Plumber records so no one knows where it is. Or even that it exists. Well I say house, it's a bit closer to a compound, there's a barn and a few horses. But the point is that this is probably the most protected property on the planet, she says she's got it warded magically too, but as far as I know Gwen doesn't know about this place. She set it up in case of emergency." Carl sat down on the sofa hard.
"Do we know what's happening to Jen?" He asked sounding a bit hollow. Cooper shook his head.
"As of right now no. I might be able to rig up a receiver to figure out what's happening outside but we won't be able to make contact with anyone. The whole area is a blackout zone for outside communication. But I think I can get the tv working to pick up the news. Just give me like ten minutes." He set to work as the adults gathered on the couch.
Gwen and Kevin got the news too late to join in the offensive. Despite Kevin running a small Plumber base near Gwen's college they were pretty much on their own with the exception of a few visiting Plumbers. Kevin couldn't help but wonder if Max was excluding them on purpose. The older Plumber wasn't good at letting his granddaughters face threats like this. He was worried about losing them, a feeling Kevin understood as he snagged a large gun. There was something crashing near their base in a few minutes. Since they were the only ones there he and Gwen headed out to check it out, keeping heads down as several Incursion ships searched the area for the Plumber base rumored to be there. They'd abandoned it with a few surprises if the Incursions found it. The thing crashed into a field just outside of town and Gwen and Kevin were surprised to find a familiar figure climbing out of it.
"Rook! Thank god, we haven't heard anything since Patelliday called to put us on hold hours ago." Kevin said pulling him out of the rubble left from the pod and frowning to find his hands bound in energy cuffs. "What happened?"
"Where's Jen?" Gwen asked but from the look on the Revonnahgander's face and the cuffs around his wrists she knew what the answer would be, and that she would not like it. But they unfortunately had bigger problems as a much louder thud sounded nearby them. They didn't have to search
"Got it!" Cooper called out as the tv came to life. The adults cheered as the blonde stepped out of the way of the tv but the news that came on was not the pleasant kind.
"This is Lord Emperor Milleous, Light of the Incursion Empire, destroyer of galaxies, all beings tremble…" The transmission fuzzed for a moment before coming back. "I am now the ruler of this little mudball you call Earth." Gasps filled the room. But of course nothing stopped Milleous. "The Plumbers have surrendered and as for your little hero Jen 10." He smiled standing slightly to the side as six Incursion Warriors dragged Jen bodily into view. Sandra screamed. Jen was quite banged up, there was a large bruise spreading across the right side of her face, a cut split in her forehead, though it wasn't bleeding luckily. But she was bound her hands kept shoulder width apart, the Omnitrix was covered. Her eyes still gleamed defiantly though. But Milleous had given some kind of signal and the camera moved off of her. The leader of the Incursions had a horrible smile on his face.
"Within the hour I'll be shooting her off my planet for good! And if anyone has any thoughts about stopping that you may want to take a look outside." A loud thud sounded nearby and Cooper ran to the window, yanking back the curtains. He swore so colorfully that Natalie reprimanded him on instinct.
"To'kustars! Mutated by the look of them. But the mutated ones are supposed to be completely uncontrollable." Comprehension lit in Cooper's eyes. "The mind control juice." Frank stood and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder.
"What are you talking about son?"
"Jen and Rook faced the princess of the Incursions a few days back. She was using some kind of mind control juice to control a whole planet. She got away with some of it, Attea did. This must be what she used it for." Cooper shook her head. "There's nothing we can do."
He was right. Within the hour they were watching as Jen was stuck into a pod, her arms still bound far enough apart that even if the Omnitrix had been uncovered she would have been unable to even touch it. The incursions gloated as the pod shot off the planet.
Jen's stomach dropped as the ignition for the pod ignited. She watched as she blasted off out of Bellwood, through the atmosphere, she sort of expected the pod to burn up but it held. That was a but of a relief, blown out like a candle in a hurricane. A part of her knew she wasn't making it out of this alive. It was why she'd gotten Rook out as fast as she could. She barely felt when the Omnitrix finally made the connection that she couldn't reach the Watch itself. This had happened once before, when her hand had been severed by a trasdimensional axe. She'd wound up in the Null Void for a few hours while her hand remained on Earth. After a while she had gained access to her transformations through what she was calling the Neural Interface. She was sure Azmuth had a more complicated name for it but she hadn't had the chance to ask him. She might not get that chance now. But as the Omnitrix connected to her mind, the feeling of her eye shifting to the symbol of the Omnitrix still a bit odd, she realized that she'd been crying. She hoped that hadn't been going on the whole time, she didn't want to have been crying on television. She shook her head, selecting Big Chill and phasing out of her cuffs. She rubbed her wrists, sore even in this form and made no move to leave the pod.
Her transformations only lasted about fifteen minutes or so, give or take. The pod was already passing Jupiter, she would never make it back to Earth. She really didn't want to suffocate minutes from the atmosphere. So of course that was when the alarms started going off. Big Chill frowned. The language in front of her wasn't one she recognized. But the fact that the lights in the pod dimmed and it started getting colder almost immediately was not a good plan. There was no way she was going to be rescued. The odds were astronomical against her. She laid her head on the glass and shook it slightly trying not to cry. She wasn't even sure that Necrofriggians could cry. Then her pod shook violently, if it had been big enough she would have been thrown to the floor. She couldn't see what ship was picking her up but there was no tell tale glow of a Plumber vessel. She wondered if the Incursions had just shot her off planet for show, so they could execute her away from prying eyes. Well she was going to go out fighting. Her pod entered the ship and she phased through it, hoping to take her new captors by surprise but she blinked at the sight that awaited her.
"No way!" She exclaimed as she landed and transformed back into herself.