The time ship set down along the shore just outside Silver Hills. Jen shut down the engines, and without a word to the others, headed to the exit.
Camille took a step forward, wanting to say something, but it was Tommy who put his hand on her shoulder, tacitly telling her to let Jen go. He hadn't known Jennifer very long, but he knew that when she set her mind to something, there wasn't anyone or anything that could stop her.
"You two stay here, Jen and I will handle this one. Just have the ship ready in one hour. If we're not back, leave without us and get back to the portal," Tommy instructed.
"But that would mean you and Jen would……" Katie was cut short.
"Get back to the portal in one hour, with or without us," he said in a firm tone, then raced after Jen.
By the time he caught up with her, she was already on the shore of the beach, walking with determination in her stride.
"You didn't have to come Thomas," she said, not once looking back.
"Are we being formal now Jennifer?" he asked, walking alongside her.
"This doesn't concern you, what happened to this reality is my fault. I have to fix it," she told him.
"What do you plan to do? Walk up to your other self and say 'hey, I know you love Wes, but you have to go back to the future. I know because I was just there,'? I understand why you feel this way, but……." He was cut short as Jen stopped dead in her tracks.
"No, you don't understand how I feel. My feelings for Wes destroyed the future, I made a decision that ruined the lives of millions of people. This is why you should never let your personal feelings effect your work. Never get involved with the people you work with, it only leads to trouble," she told him.
"I know what this is about Jen," he stood in front of her. "You blame yourself for ruining Alex' life when you went to the 21st century the first time. You probably thought that your lives together would have happy if you had never taken that mission, but instead, you hurt him and hurt yourself in the process. To make it worse, you feel in love with one of his descendants, and you think that your feelings may have ruined someone else's life. You need to stop beating yourself up about the decisions you've made. With any decision comes a consequence, and its how you deal with those consequences that really matter," he explained to her.
She paused, looking into his eyes. It amazed her how someone who'd only known her for a few weeks would be able to read her like a book. "You don't know anything about me Tommy. Now stay out of my way, I have work to do," Jen said as she walked away.
(*)
Jen stood outside of Bio-Lab, almost getting the feeling that she'd been there only a few short days ago. 'That's the hard part about time travel, it's hard to keep your days straight,' she thought to herself.
She knew that walking up to Wes and trying to explain the situation would be more than either of them could handle, so she decided to talk to Wes' bestfriend. 'If anyone can talk some sense into Wes, it's Eric,' she thought.
As luck would have it, Eric walked out the building with a monotone look on his face, which, under normal circumstances, wasn't unusual for Eric, but there was something different about him. Eric hurried around to the back of the building, where the Silver Guardians did most of their training. Behind Bio-Lab where several hanger bays, which they used to store the Guardians vehicles and worked on prototypes. Jen quietly followed Eric behind the building, where he ducked into one of the hanger bays.
She rushed over to the window and peeked in, where she was amazed at what she saw. "A time ship," she mumbled.
She watched as the hatch on the time ship opened, and she stepped out. She looked on in utter confusion as Jen stepped out the ship, running into Eric's arms. Things seemed to get any more bizarre when Jen – the other Jen - wrapped her arms around Eric and kissed him.
Her first reaction was to rush in and kill them both. 'How could I betray Wes like that? With his best friend no less?! What a slut,' she thought.
Before she could make a move, she felt the barrel of a gun pressed into her back. "Stay where you are and put your hands up," she heard a voice say.
'No doubt one of the Silver Guardians out on patrol,' she thought to herself. Without saying a word, she fell to her knees, kicking back, kicking him between the legs. She did a flip, kicking him in the mouth, and then landed on her feet, grabbing the gun as it fell. Before he could make a move, she had the gun pointed at him.
"Don't even think about it soldier boy," she said.
"Jen? I didn't know it was you. I'm sorry ma'am," he said, standing up.
"Cadet, what's going on here?" a voice asked. Jen knew who it was before she even turned around, but when she did, Eric, who was standing next to the other Jen, looked at her with confusion in his eyes. "Jenny? But how……"
"It's a long story," she sighed.
Eric pulled out his gun. "You've got 30 seconds, gimme the short version," he insisted.
Jen couldn't help but glance over at her other self, who looked completely different. Her hair was shorter, and looked as if she'd dyed it a deep red-ish blonde. 'Not exactly my color, but it works,' she thought. She quickly turned her attention back to Eric.
"I'm from the future, and I'm here to warn you," she said.
"How can you be from the future? I'm from the future?" the other Jen asked.
"Listen, both of you; I know that you came back here to be with Wes, but if you stay here, it will……" Eric interrupted her.
"What do you mean 'be with Wes'? She came here to be with me," he pointed out.
"What?"
"I resigned from Time Force and I came here to be with Eric and make my own destiny," she said.
Jen was at a lose for words. She thought back as far as she could, trying to determine when and where she could have fallen for Eric instead of Wes. 'That incident at the health club with the elixirs that turned people into robots,' she thought. 'I flirted with Eric to make Wes jealous, and somehow, it went from there,'
"I'm here to tell you that Alex is on his way here to bring you back to the year 3000. If you don't, time will be altered and mutants will take over the entire city. After so long, all the humans in the future will be killed. You have to go back, to save the future, to save Alex," she told them.
"If all the humans are killed, how did you come back to warn us?" Eric asked.
"It's a much longer story than I care to explain, and time is running out. Jen, you have to go back," Jen told her.
"She's right," they heard a voice say.
Alex walked over to them in his Time Force uniform and his deeply tinted sunglasses, as always with an expressionless look on his face. "Alex?" both the Jens' mumbled in unison.
"I'm under orders to bring you back to the future by any means necessary Jen," he said.
Eric turned the gun away from Jen and towards Alex. "I'm not letting you take her from me. We love each other," he said.
"I'm sure you do, but would you weigh that love against the lives of countless billions? The future will be destroyed if you stay here Jen, this isn't how things were meant to be," Alex said.
"I make my own destiny," Jen said.
"Then I have no choice but to place you under arrest for violation of Time Force law 3741-9: willfully obstructing the time line for personal gain," he said, pulling out a pair of handcuffs.
"Don't make me shoot you," Eric snapped.
Jen walked over to Eric, putting her hand on the gun. "This isn't how you want it to go, is it Eric? I know that deep down, you love her…. Um, me…. Um, Jen, but this isn't how it's suppose to be," she said.
"I'm not going back," the other Jen said.
"Sounds to me like Jenny has her mind made up. She stays," Eric said.
Jen walked over to her other self. "I've learned the hard way that business and pleasure doesn't mix, but I know what you feel for Eric is real. When you decided to come here, you were sure the only person it would affect was you, but now you know that billions of peoples lives are at stake. Do you really want to destroy the future for your own personal benefit? You have to go back Jen, you don't belong here," she explained.
The other Jen took a deep breath. "I'm sorry Eric," she sighed.
"Jenny? No! Stay here, with me,"
"We both know I can't," she said.
"But what about us? About our baby?" he asked.
"I'll do my best to raise him by myself, I promise," she said with a tear in her eye.
"I wish I could live another 1000 years so we could be together again," Eric cried.
'Where have I heard that before?' Jen thought to herself.
The other Jen kissed Eric warmly on the cheek, and then walked over to Alex, extending her arms to him. Without a word, Alex put the handcuffs on her, escorting her away. Both Eric and Jen watched on as Alex took her away, both of them with a sense of confusion.
"So," he turned to Jen. "You're from the future, how does all this work out?" he asked her.
"Lets just say that everything is as it should be," Jen said as she reached for her morpher, then disappeared into a stream of pink light.
(*)
"If we don't leave in the next three minutes, we'll all be stuck here," Camille mentioned as she looked at the clock in the time ship.
"Jen knew the risks. Start the engines, it's time for us to go," Tommy said.
"We can't just leave her here," Katie mentioned.
"We can't just stay here either, we have to go," he insisted.
"Hes right," she said, starting the engines.
At that moment, Jen appeared in a stream of pink light. "Whoa, that was interesting," she said.
"You made it."
"How did it go?" Tommy asked.
"Everything should be back on track now. I'm…. I mean, the other me, is on her way back to the year 3000," she said.
"Good,"
"Now lets get going before we're all stuck here," Camille said as she started the take off procedures.
(*)
As soon as the hatch opened and the four of them stepped out, they were confronted by Alex and Captain Logan, who had a group of armed Time Force officers with them.
"Just who in the hell are you?" the Captain asked.
"Like I told Alex, it's a long story," Jen said.
"I hate to break this up, but we don't have time for the long version. We have to get to the science lab before the portal opens," Camille pointed out.
"How much time do we have?"
"About four minutes," she said.
"All of you get to the science lab, I'll meet you there," Jen told them.
Ignoring the guards altogether, Tommy, Camille and Katie headed for the science lab.
"Where is Jen now?" she asked.
"She's in custody in containment room three. She'll be there until her trail," Alex said.
"May I see her?"
"I don't approve of this," Captain Logan said.
"If it wasn't for this Jen, I wouldn't have been able to get Jen to come back with me," he turned to Jen. "You have two minutes," he said.
(*)
Jen rushed to the containment room, where the other Jen was sitting in a small cell. When she saw her other self, she stood up, walking over to the bars.
"It's you,"
"I had to come see you before I went back to my time," she said.
"The future?"
"In a manner of speaking,"
"Whats going to happen to me now?"
"I can't tell you. What I will say is that the future is safe now, and history will play out the way it was meant to,"
"Still, it was hard to leave Eric behind," she sighed.
"Where I'm from, I never would have given Eric the time of day. He isn't my type,"
"How could he not be? He's strong, willful, handsome, and the most kindhearted person I know," she said.
"Sounds like Wes to me,"
"You mean you love Wes? Now that I can't see,"
Jen chuckled. "Good luck Jennifer," she said.
"Same to you Jennifer."
Jen watched on as her other self disappeared into a stream of pink light.
(*)
"About time you showed up," Katie said as Jen transported into the science lab.
Camille stepped into the blue swirling vortex, disappearing. Katie was next to go through, leaving Tommy and Jen.
"Did you see her?" he asked.
"Yeah. It's funny how we're the same person, but yet so different at the same time," she sighed.
"You'd be surprised how decisions affect your life Jenny," Tommy said with a smile as he stepped through the portal.
'Jenny. I kinda like that,' she thought to herself, stepping through the portal as it shrank, until finally, it disappeared.
