My Life as a Teenaged Von Neumann Device

by Solomon-Grundy

Jenny explores her developing sexuality, which leads to romantic entanglements with Brad, Sheldon, and the other leading men in XJ9's life.

23. Chapter 23

My Life as a Teenaged Von Neumann Device

by Toonspew

Chapter 23

There was once a great evil that threatened Earth. Very few knew the threat existed, but it was there. In time, it would spread to corrupt and rule the entire planet and perhaps, beyond. But thankfully, there was still hope. One special little teenage girl, in a small town named Tremorton in the heart of the United States, had drawn the attention of the menace. She alone had a chance to end it now, before it became unstoppable. She could no longer rely on her friends and allies to aid her. This had to be her fight, and her fight alone.

Her name was Brittany Crust, and she was mankind's only hope.

But she was not completely helpless in her quest. In Earth's hour of need, an angel from the stars had fallen. Mortally wounded, the angel who was called "Vexus" bequeathed her strength to young Brittany, and her never ending resolution to see the threat destroyed. Together, nothing could stop them. This Brittany knew, because an evil as great as XJ-9's could only ever have been countered by a soul as virtuous as her own. Brittany accepted this holy quest, and swore that when the time came nothing could stay her hand from its righteous vengeance.

Including, as was now the case, the heavy metal door that now barred Brit's way.

"Little pig, little pig, let me in…" Brit muttered aloud, scanning the defensive barrier for any exploitable weakness. The house was a veritable fortress, which Brit was now thinking meant she would have to rule out the option of a surprise attack.

Too bad she couldn't lure Jenny out here onto the lawn to fight, Brit mused, it was a perfectly sunny day and it would be nice to disembowel her enemy out where everyone could see it.

Out of the corner of her eye Brit spotted a camera lens recording her, transmitting her actions back to Jenny and whoever else might be inside the house. Well, that was okay. Perhaps a little demonstration of power was in order. Brit liked the idea of Jenny crapping herself out of fear prior to their meeting.

"Kiaahhh!" Brit yelled, sinking both claws into the reinforced door and tearing it apart, flinging the ruined pieces onto the lawn behind her. Stepping into the darkness within, Brit tauntingly called out "Or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll…"

"You'll leave our sister alone is what you'll do!" answered an angry female voice from within.

Her eyes adjusting to the interior lighting, Brit found herself quickly surrounded. All around her stood (and hovered, and wobbled) robots of various shapes and sizes and colors ready to pounce on her.

Jenny had sisters? Well, this might be a decent warm up after all!

Extending her wings and metallic mane to their full length and taking a defensive stance, Brit grinned with anticipation of the fight.

---

"She's through the outer wall!" Tiff alerted everyone else present in the lab, having just watched her cousin cleave through the front door on one of the basement lab's many monitors. Despite the numerous defenses still remaining in between herself and Brit, the display still unnerved Tiff; Brit had cut through the metal blast door with such contemptuous ease, as though it were made from Styrofoam.

Nearby, Nora nodded her acknowledgment as she bustled about, frantically trying to secure everything she would need to assist with Jenny's labor. "We'll just have to depend on the distractions that Mog and I have prepared for her then." She stated, lugging a heavy case full of tools over to her moaning daughter lain out on an examination table.

"Phinease Mog? What's he doing here?" asked the newly recovered Sheldon, standing dutifully next to his girlfriend and fiancée, Jenny. He was feeling uncomfortable with just standing around while both his robotic strength and his mechanical talents would have been better able to help elsewhere, but Jenny insisted that he remain next to her to hold her hand and wouldn't hear otherwise. So, there he stood, offering what comfort he could to a very stressed-out Jenny.

"He stopped by to give us this," Nora answered, as she took a small bladed mechanical device from her lab coat and set it down on the tray of tools. "It contains a killswitch program that may give us a hope of stopping Brit. We just need someone strong and fast enough to use it without getting killed during the approach. Which is why we need to get Jenny back up and running as soon as we can. With Vexus' abilities, amplified by the Pip crystal, Jenny is really the only one who stands any kind of chance of getting close enough."

"Right now Mog is upstairs, overseeing the house's defenses, which means just about every spare piece of machinery that I don't need for this labor." Nora stated, picking through the tools and locating a scanning device of some sort.

Affixing several electrodes to the skin of Jenny's distended belly, Nora connected her daughter to some of the nearby monitoring apparatus set into the wall. Several diagnostic displays appeared on the various screens, pouring out a wealth of information about Jenny's vitals and the status of the infant insider her.

Jenny laid back passively allowing her mother to work, her head and shoulders resting against a mound of cushions and pillows that Tiff had fetched from upstairs.

"What are you doing now mom?" Jenny asked, her shaky voice betraying her worry. It was all Jenny could do to keep herself together at this point. She had gone into labor premature, her abdomen was still fused shut, trapping the baby inside, and to top it all off she now had a time limit.

And the pain was terrible.

She had never faced a challenge like this before. If she didn't give birth quickly enough, her resurrected nemesis would be storming in here to kill her and her family. Just as she had said she would, the night Jenny had killed her. Now Vexus was back, seeking her revenge from beyond the grave!

Returning from the bank of computer readouts, Nora explained "I'm performing an ultrasound scan of your uterus, to make sure power levels are-" catching sight of her daughter's rattled expression, Nora asked "Jenny are you quite alright?"

"She's coming to kill my baby! I need to get it out but I can't, and she's going to kill my baby! I can't do it, I can't stop her! Ahh, ahuh, ahuhn…" Jenny was on the brink of bursting out in tears, and her mother rushed to her side to reassure her.

"Jenny, listen to me! You need to breathe. Big, deep breaths, or you'll overheat your core."

Jenny's panic magnified, shrieking "But I'm a robot! I don't breathe! AHHHH!"

Sheldon intervened, seizing Jenny by the shoulders to get her attention. "Just do like I do. Watch me. Suck with your mouth like you're taking a drink. Push the air down through your chassis. Inhale." Pantomiming the action, Sheldon saw Jenny watch him and slowly attempt to copy his actions. "Good. Now exhale; push the air from your chest, slow and steady. That's it."

The panicked look started to drain from Jenny's face as she began a steady rhythm of breathing, pulling air in and pushing it out in measured breaths. Sheldon reflected on how unusual it was to teach someone something so fundamental. In retrospect, this was perhaps a glimpse into what Jenny had felt when she first helped Sheldon get used to his new robotic body.

When she seemed comfortable with the process, Sheldon rewarded with Jenny a quick hug.

"S…sorry mom. What were you saying?" Jenny asked, a measure of her resolve restored.

Nora cleared her throat, her own apprehension now settling down. "I was saying that your baby appears largely complete, which is lucky. It should be fine, so long as we can get it out of you."

"And how do we do that?" asked Jenny, wincing as her insides clutched up again, internal components grinding and scratching each other as her body attempted to reconfigure itself.

Nora sighed regretfully.

"I'm afraid at this point we have no choice. You're going to have to expel the baby vaginally."

---

The first one to come at her was a scrawny-looking four-armed robot standing on a single wobbly leg. "And just look at that mess you made!" the pinkish robot exclaimed, meaning the ruined front door,

"You're despicable!"

The attack of the multi-armed robot was easy enough for Brit to bat aside, sending it crashing to the ground around Brit's feet.

The larger, hulking robot took more effort to avoid. Brit ducked low under the brutish sister's punch, retaliating with a hard strike into its solar plexus.

Before Brit was even finished dispatching her current opponent, the others were upon her. Arms punched, grabbed, and beat at Brit. Legs kicked her, lasers seared her, blades and saws attempted to cut away at her armor. Once, a small mouth even bit at Brit's leg. Brit struggled and wrestled with the mass of robots attacking her, their combined weight and effort taxing even Brit's enhanced strength.

The only one not directly attacking Brit was a small green robot in the shape of a floating, disembodied head. Unable to restrain Brit with arms of its own, the green robot instead peppered Brit with blasts from a weak energy weapon projecting from the bottom of its "neck", and cheered encouragements to her sisters.

"Go girls, go! Jenny's depending on us! If we work together, we can do it!" the floating android shouted, endlessly optimistic.

It really grated on Brit's nerves.

"We can't let this creep interrupt Jenny's labor!"

Oh ho, what was that? Brit's attention was instantly perked. Taking her time with Jenny's cast-off "sisters" no longer held any appeal. Brit needed to locate Jenny while she was vulnerable. And oh, how vulnerable she would be!

Brit could kill everything around her while Jenny watched, even snatch up the newborn infant and taunt Jenny with it held delicately in Brit's merciless claws.

"Alright," Brit grunted, flexing her arms and shaking a couple of the clinging robots off of her, "I've grown bored of this. I'm going to kill you all now."

She started with the annoying hovering-head-robot, reaching out with her left arm and catching it in her open hand, gripping hold of its face. It still struggled in her hand, but the broken glass and metal where its eyes and face were told Brit that it had probably been rendered blind and helpless.

And thankfully mute, as well.

Using the ruined head as a blunt weapon, Brit smashed it into the face of the large, dark purple sister that had her right arm pinned. As expected, the attack surprised the large robot enough to release Brit's remaining arm. Brit pried herself loose of each robot in turn, the last being a small toddler-sized robot clinging to Brit's leg that was smashed to pieces when she kicked it against a nearby wall.

Nearby, Phineas Mog crouched at the top of the flight of stairs leading up to the second floor, trying to remain hidden while observing the fight below him. For a moment there, it almost seemed that Jenny's "sisters", the earlier stages of the XJ robot series, would manage to hold off Brit on their own. But that hope was in vain.

Mog had personally installed the advanced alien machinery into the Crust girl, and he knew the XJ's couldn't stand up to her. He had, ages ago, been there to assist Nora when she first laid out the specs for each stage of the robot's development. In his head, he mentally counted them off as Brit Crust attacked them.

XJ-5 had been the first to crumble, the floating head reduced to an improvised blunt weapon. Which was not surprising, given its near total lack of combat abilities: the XJ-5 was the "social" robot after all, the stage where Jenny's personality had first learned how to converse and successfully socialize with others.

The next down was XJ-7, the morose robot barely offering resistance against Brit's savage attack. The XJ-7 represented the point at which Jenny was programmed with predictive computational functions, the ability to determine the most likely outcome from any given situation and make decisions accordingly. Which perhaps explained its constantly pessimistic attitude, considering the dangerous situations the XJ model was designed to handle. Mog guessed that XJ-7 had probably already accepted its imminent destruction before Brit had even entered the house.

This thought did not overly comfort the elderly scientist as he watched Brit rend the XJ-7 apart, tearing open its chest cavity and pulling out large handfuls of wiring and hydraulic tubing.

The XJ-8 renewed her attack at this point, as Mog had expected. XJ-8 was, after all, the combat testing stage. Built like a walking tank, XJ-8 easily outmatched the combined strength of all the previous stages, and was even (in theory) as strong a combatant as XJ9 herself. The only real advantage that Jenny had over XJ-8 was experience, being that the XJ-9 stage represented a "debugging" step, essentially a scaled-down but completed final product that incorporated all the learned experiences of the previous eight stages.

So when XJ-8 landed a shoulder check into Brit's side, Mog was certain that the psychotic young girl felt it. He could see it, too, as the attack sent Brit hurtling through the air and impacting against one of the house's load-bearing walls. Silently, Mog cheered on the "daughters" that he had played some small role in creating.

Before Brit had gotten up again XJ-6 was already upon her, pinning her down with her three spidery legs and beating at the fallen girl with her single arm. "You think you're better then me? You think you're sooo tough don't you?" XJ-6 sneered, displaying her jealous streak as she rained down attacks on the fallen villain.

A peculiar development, that… XJ-6 was represented the stage at which Jenny had been able to conceptualize her own capacity for self improvement, and it manifested in her personality as the XJ-6's hyper-envious nature. As he watched the fight, Mog reflected on what that might suggest about the human condition. At least, he did until Brit managed to fight back.

Ignoring XJ-6's punches, Brit grabbed hold of two of the three legs pinning her to the ground and violently ripped them from their sockets. XJ-6 toppled to the ground, feebly attempting to right herself with her remaining arm and leg. Brit offered a merciless sneer right back, brandishing the dismembered legs like spears.

Without a trace of humor she answered "Yes, actually, I am that much tougher then you." Which she demonstrated immediately after by skewering the helpless XJ-6 through her head and torso, like a bug pinned for display.

With a buzz of her membranous wings Brit took to the air and launched herself towards XJ-8, easily identifying the "eldest" sister as being the largest threat. Although she had the firepower of an artillery cannon and the hull of a battleship, XJ-8 was not terribly quick where reflexes were concerned, and Brit was able to wind up a double-fisted axe-chop that she delivered right into XJ-8's midsection.

Her knees buckling under the force of the blow, XJ-8 fell to the floor with a deep grunt of pain. Brit landed lightly on XJ-8's broad back, grabbed hold of the back of her opponent's head and prepared to deliver a killing blow.

It never came however, and for the moment XJ-8 remained alive. Instead, Brit took a heavy blast of laser-fire and was knocked off her perch, allowing XJ-8 a chance to scramble to her feet.

Mog was astounded at the ingenuity of the remaining sisters; he could see that they had combined their forms and functions into a sophisticated, and potent, tripod mounted cannon of some sort. XJ-2 served as the main barrel and firing mechanism, which made sense given that her original function was the calibration of Jenny's senses and targeting faculties. The legs and body of the tripod were composed of XJ-4 and her multiple arms, and even Jenny's little XJ-1 body was attached to the rear, acting as an auxiliary power source.

Brit was scowling, clearly displeased by this turn of events. She didn't have the luxury of immediately dealing with them however, as XJ-8 was still a much more pressing threat. Every punch the mammoth robot threw could have flattened a family car, so Brit was careful to dodge and weave past them, waiting for an opening to present itself.

Slipping inside XJ-8's reach, Brit grabbed hold of the robot's top and hoisted her into the air. While XJ-8 struggled to release herself from Brit's grip, Brit flexed her Cluster-enhanced legs and sent the two of them crashing into the cannon amalgamation of the remaining sisters.

When the dust settled, only XJ-8 and Brit stood up again… XJ-1, XJ-2, XJ-4 and a few stray pieces of XJ-3 had all been crushed like aluminum cans under the weight of their older, bulkier sister.

The damage was extensive, past the point of any hope that the younger robots might someday be repaired. Which wasn't very surprising really. XJ-1 was simply a housing for Jenny's infant artificial intelligence, and was almost as fragile as the egg that it was shaped like. XJ-4 wasn't any better off, being designed to teach Jenny simple organizational skills. Mog wondered if there might be some hope for little XJ-3 however; being that the XJ-3 model was actually designed to fall apart, in order to test its self-repair circuits.

XJ-8 may have been wondering the same thing. In a rare emotional outburst, XJ-8's eyes narrowed and burned with anger. "You will pay for the destruction of my siblings" declared XJ-8 in her flat, aggressive voice.

Mog wished that were true.

The truth was that XJ-8 and the other younger "sisters" were already lost before the fight even began, sacrificed for the well being of XJ-9.

Mog had been present with Nora when she had readied them as the first line of defense, knowing that a stalling tactic was the best they could hope for. Still, Mrs. Wakeman had given them her best pep talk, telling them that they were Jenny's only chance, and Mog had gone along with the lie.

Because in truth, Jenny did need every second she could get.

If Brit managed to make it to the basement lab before Jenny had finished giving birth, well, Mog didn't want to think about the massacre that would be. So the two scientists had lied, and here were the results of their plan bearing fruit: all the XJ's were in shredded or crushed pieces except for XJ-8, who was fighting her heart out in an ultimately doomed struggle.

And worse yet, Mog's part to play came next.

As he watched, XJ-8's thundering punches and devastating weapons were deflected almost effortlessly by Brit's alien armor, though each strike served to further enrage the battered girl. Finally, annoyed beyond her limit, Brit shouted "Enough!"

Seizing XJ-8 by her midsection, Brit's claws sliced through the outer armor of the robot's sides and sunk in deep, until Brit had hooked them around the rib-like internal structures that made up a portion of XJ-8's skeleton.

"I. Have. Had. Enough…" Growled Brit, her arms and servos flexing with effort and her face trained in concentration. With an awful groan of twisting metal, Brit gave one last mighty heave.

"…Of You!" she finished, as XJ-8's body was torn asunder, her body cracking and splitting down the middle as Brit ripped her in half like a phone book.

A flash of light and a shower of sparks sprayed the room, followed by oil-coated metal chunks that had made up XJ-8's insides. There had been something else, too: just a moment before Brit had mercilessly torn her victim apart, Mog had caught sight of a pulse of light. Some unearthly glow that seemed to come from the area of Brit's chest, leaking out around the edges of the Cluster chest plate she wore. Mog was quite familiar with the cybernetics he had implanted into Brit, and knew there wasn't anything that should have produced a flash of light like that.

Could that be the Pip crystal then, he wondered? Perhaps the luminescence was an indication that she had tapped into its energies in order to boost her strength…

"Don't think I don't see you up there, old man." Brit snapped coldly, instantly derailing Mog's train of thought. Scrambling to his feet, Mog rushed down the hallway as fast as his short legs could carry him.

As Brit casually mounted the staircase, still keeping pace, she added, "I never did get a chance to thank you properly for my lovely new body."

Dashing into XJ9's bedroom and slamming the door shut behind him, Mog stopped to wonder at the relaxed, almost bored way that Brit had pursued him. She could have easily used her wings or even a strong jump to catch and gut him before Mog made it to shelter.

But she had allowed him to run…

...so she could follow him, he suddenly realized.

A crash landed on the opposite side of the reinforced bedroom door, making Mog jump and dash to the furthest corner of the bedroom, keeping Jenny's bed in between him and Brit's imminent intrusion. Glancing down to the feminine form concealed under the sheets of the bed, Mog breathed "I hope you're ready for this, dear."

As if on cue, the bedroom door came crashing in. Pausing a moment at the wrecked threshold, Brit confidently cracked her knuckles just to demonstrate how easily she had gotten through the house's defenses.

Stepping inside, Brit instantly recognized the bulging midsection and feminine frame of her arch-enemy Jenny, even obscured as she was by the blankets draped over her. Licking her lips in anticipation, Brit hissed "I'll deal with you some other time, Mog. At the moment I've got bigger fish to fry." Flexing her claws, Brit carefully reached out for the sheets and sharply pulled them away…

What stared back at Brit was a grotesque mockery of the human form. Like a scarecrow it drew its shape from the pile of wadded up laundry and knickknacks it was stretched out on top of. It wore a simple blue dress, and if it had been in better condition, the rosy cheeks and yarn-like red hair in pigtails would have reminded Brit of Raggedy Anne.

"What is this?!" Brit demanded, furious, but was only answered by the effigy's ragged grin and hollow, staring eyes. Turning her attention to the cowering Phineas Mog, Brit affixed him with a cold glare and stomped slowly forward. "You will tell me where she is, right now."

A small pinprick of pain struck Brit's elbow, making her pause. Inspecting her arm, she could see a tiny black electrode affixed to her skin, trailing a long black wire back to the bed. Back to the Raggedy-Anne scarecrow. The scarecrow that was now swaying, snakelike, several feet over the bed as it coiled to strike. A half dozen more of the tendril-like black wires flew out from the hideous thing on the bed and struck Brit like irritating bee stings, keeping her disoriented and rooted in place.

As Mog watched a few feet away, the coiled length of "Raggedy-Anne" struck forward and completely engulfed Brit Crust.

---

Jenny howled in pain.

"Ahhhng!" she wailed, her eyes screwed shut. "I feel like a balloon that's about to pop! Is there no way I could turn off my pain sensors? Or even just disconnect my head from my body until it's over? Please?!"

Shaking her head, Nora fussed about at the foot of Jenny's examination table, calibrating various metalworking tools that she would soon need. The robotics lab had quickly taken on the look of an operating room. Mrs. Wakeman was decked out in surgical scrubs, complete with a face mask, while Jenny was naked from the waist down and had her legs spread by stirrups holding her feet apart.

"I wish that you could Jenny, but if we're going to deliver this baby I'm going to need your body to do at least as much work as I am." Jenny's mother explained, adding "now I want you to give me a readout of the embryonic containment vessel's surface tension levels."

Jenny laid her head down, sighing anxiously. Her boyfriend Sheldon loomed over her, sympathetically wiping a dampened cloth over Jenny's forehead. A small hiss of steam testified of the stress Jenny was dealing with.

"Ok mom… checking… tension levels are at 94. Is that good?" Jenny answered, reading back the info from her internal sensors.

"It's enough." Nora replied, picking up a tool that looked like nothing more then a long, slender spike. "I'm going to start by piercing the protective fluid vessel surrounding the XJ1. That will give us a little room to work with."

As Nora motioned for Tiff to assist her, Jenny shut her eyes and groaned, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Though Tiff and Jenny had recently buried some of the ill will between them, neither was on the other's list of favorite people. And now, having her privates on display in front of one of the Crust cousins was an indignity, to say the least.

"'Taint no picnic for me neither." Tiff grumbled, echoing Jenny's sentiment.

Ignoring Tiff's comment, Nora handed her a pair of elongated needle-nose pliers. "Tiff, I'll need you to pry apart Jenny's cervical iris while I insert this needle to cause her water to break. The iris isn't designed to open once the pregnancy begins, so you'll need to put some muscle into it."

Doing as she was instructed, Tiff pushed the jaws of the pliers up Jenny's vagina and fitted them against the tightly clenched cervix at the opposite end.

"This is so weird." Tiff grunted, flexing her arms and forcing the pliers to part.

"Ouch!" Jenny yelped, feeling the pinch inside her nether regions. Lifting her head in an effort to peer over her enormous midsection, Jenny snapped "Be careful in there! Ow!"

"Just… try ta relax, or sumthin'." Tiff offered lamely, struggling with the pliers to lever open the portal to Jenny's womb another half inch. Nora approached with the elongated spike, edging Tiff off to one side.

"Alright, that should be enough." she mumbled, carefully guiding the probe through Jenny's tunnel and through the small opening of her cervix. Knowing she would need the precision of a surgeon if she wished to avoid harming the infant, Mrs. Wakeman leaned in for a better view, her face only inches from her daughter's sex. Testing the resistance of the amniotic sack, Nora gently applied greater and greater pressure. "Just… a little… more…" she breathed.

A Pop! and a rush of fluid followed the bursting of Jenny's dam, releasing the pressure on Jenny's womb.

Confused, Jenny tried to get a better look at what was going on. "What was that? Did… did I wet myself?" she asked, concerned.

"Nope," Tiff answered for Nora as the older woman sputtered, removing her surgical mask and reaching for a handkerchief to mop up her drenched face.

With a sigh, Nora wryly commented "This whole process was a lot less messy as a blueprint."

Regaining her composure, Nora instructed Jenny. "Now that the water has broken, the reproductive organs will hopefully reset to their pre-pregnancy alignment. Jenny, go into your systems control menu and access the reproduction subroutines. I want you to select the settings for "cervix" and set them to a dilation of 100."

Jenny did as she was asked, and moments later Tiff and Nora watched the formerly clenched cervix now yawn open to become as wide as the rest of the vagina. Nora allowed herself a brief smile at the small victory.

"Good. Now, pull up the "contractions" tab and set the interval for every five minutes."

Watching the proceedings in front of him with great interest and concern, Sheldon casually remarked "This sounds a lot like someone's idea of tech-support."

The scene was interrupted by a worried shout issuing from one of the many computer screens, this one displaying a live feed from just outside the lab's heavy vault door.

"Let me in while there's still time!" demanded a harried looking Mog from outside the door. Hastening to get the door open, Sheldon ushered the diminutive scientist inside before resealing the doorway behind him. Wiping his brow with a pocket handkerchief, a much relieved Mog settled down on a convenient chair next to Sheldon's seat beside Jenny and began recounting the latest news.

"The plan worked, such as it was, and Brit is incapacitated. The last I saw, she was still wrestling with Jenny's old exo-skin and shouting like a maniac. I didn't want to stick around to find out who was going to win."

"How long do you think that buys us?" Jenny asked, trying to ignore the uncomfortable sensation of her mother's tools jury-rigging her reproductive system.

Phineas Mog shrugged, frowning. "If it were simply a physical contest, the exo-skin would have been shredded in seconds. But the exo-skin is programmed to make contact with the mind of its host. It all depends on the strength of Brit's mental state."

---

Brit thrashed, she howled, she kicked and spat. Like a madwoman Brit frothed at the mouth as she swore and clawed at the hot, smothering expanse of cybernetics attempting to mold itself over her entire body. The texture of it was like burlap where it brushed across her skin, while any portions of her mechanical armor that became covered were soon pierced by minuscule wires that felt like rose thorns digging their way into Brit's flesh.

Tearing handfuls of the creature away from her face, desperate to keep her airways open, Brit screamed out "What are you!?"

The answer came much more promptly then Brit had guessed.

I'm your new best friend. spoke a whisper in her head, a female voice that rasped like the burlap texture against her skin.

Don't struggle. I'm only trying to help you.

"I don't want your help" growled Brit, dropping to her knees and struggling to move her arms. "All I want it XJ-9's head in my hands."

You can't lie to me came the hoarse whisper, I'm inside your thoughts now. I know what you really want. What I can give you. I can make you normal again. I can make you… make us… popular again.

Brit's struggles paused. She didn't want to, but she couldn't help but considered this.

Be normal again? Return to the life to social dominance and privilege?

That's right, the skin offered as it oozed over Brit's body, gradually draping her from head to toe, you can be beautiful again. Start fresh. That's what I do… I help troubled teenage girls become beauty queens overnight.

The skin had completely encased Brit's body now, leaving only her head exposed. And even that was rapidly disappearing as the skin crept over Brit's scalp and inched up her chin.

Just relax the seductive voice soothed, I'll be finished soon. We'll be closer then sisters, you and I. Like two halves of a perfect whole.

Somehow that sounded very appropriate to Brit. Closer then sisters… she had had that, once. Brit felt an unexpected wave of sadness emerge from her core. Moisture collected around her lower eyelids, and coalesced into a single tear that ran down her left cheek moments before being swallowed up by the cocoon-like living skin.

She already has a better half, interloper. came a new voice, an alien voice that burned like fire inside of Brit's brain.

The first voice seemed to pause, hesitant.

You cannot offer her anything. You are not wanted here. Came the second voice again, regal, confident and very, very angry.

Brit opened her eyes, seeing only the darknessinside the mask of artificial skin she wore. She reached an arm out, desperate to find something to grab hold of and felt herself falling, toppling over.

She wants this, argued the first voice in Brit's mind, I can give her what she wants most of all. We will merge and I will remake Brit as the perfect, all-American, normal teenage girl. I'm offering her happiness. You can't stop me.

You're wrong. I offer her more.

I offer her power.

I offer her hate.

I offer her REVENGE.

Brit thrashed blindly on the floor, muffled sobs mixing with gasps for air. Her arms and legs felt as though they were bound in a straightjacket made of tar. Hot air from her nostrils blew across her face, making her sweat, and was inhaled again as a stale oxygen-poor breath. The lack of air was causing vertigo to set in, making Brit's world spin around her. She wanted to vomit, but couldn't. She couldn't remember where she was.

…Tiff… Tiff where are you… You were always my little ace in the hole… You were supposed to watch my back… where are you Tiff, I need help…

Let me fulfill my program. I can end your suffering! Insisted the suffocating skin clinging to Brit.

Needle-like microfilaments wormed their way through Brit's skull, seeking any receptive neurons to form a connection with.

Just let me take control. Then everything will be okay. All you have to do is want it.

The microscopic wires squirmed through the chaotic mass of Brit's cerebellum. All that needed to be located were enough strong neural pathways, behavior or thought patterns repeated over and over to build a stable connection point for the voice to take hold of. Brit was weeping inside, her sadness overcoming her ability to think straight. She knew that wallowing in her misery would be the door that allows this invader into her mind, but she was unable to stop it from happening. She felt her limbs going numb as she lost motor control of her body.

Jenny. XJ9. Jennifer Wakeman.

The names blazed into Brit's mind like a sudden ray of light cutting through the consuming darkness. They sparked an ember of anger amidst the sea of Brit's sorrow.

Jenny is about to have a baby. She's going to be surrounded by friends and family and will be showered with praise and love.

The anger grew, was stoked into a flame of resentment and a fire of hatred.

She is singularly responsible for every insult and indignity you have ever suffered. She doesn't feel sorry and cannot be made to apologize.

Brit's mind burned. A blaze of fury, a towering inferno of pure rage. The feeling in her arms and legs returned, finding new strength.

What are you doing? This isn't possible! Came a desperate and tiny voice from somewhere in the back of Brit's mind.

The tips of Brit's claws pierced the surface of her bindings, pushing cleanly and effortlessly through as she extended her arms.

And now she's laughing at you.

The emotions kept locked in Brit's mind, if unleashed into the universe, could have cracked planets.

The Exo-skin stood little chance.

Even before Brit had torn it apart like tissue paper, every resistor and circuit contained within it had been melted to slag. Brit peeled back her "cocoon", allowing it to drop to the floor in limp strips. A tentative step and a few quick flicks of her wings shook the last little drops of liquid metal from her body.

That was a dirty, dirty trick. Using Brit's own pain as a weapon against her. She had never expected something so underhanded from her opponent.

But she would make her pay.

Pay in spades.

"HehehehahahahahaHAHAHAHA!"

---

Jenny frowned suspiciously. Something had been eating at her ever since her mother informed her about the killswitch device. Now, hearing Mog describe in detail how Brit's mind may be susceptible to the exo-skin's attack had fed her suspicion.

"Just how do you know so much about Brit's new powers, anyway?" Jenny grilled Mog, pointing an accusatory finger with her free hand.

Understandably apprehensive, Mog shifted in his seat. "Did Noreen not mention that part? I, ah, I was the one who… reluctantly, mistakenly, under duress… implanted the Cluster components into the Crust girl."

"What?!" Jenny erupted, her temper flaring. "Mom, why is he even allowed in here? He's the whole reason all this is happening!"

Looking up from her work, Mrs. Wakeman did what she could to calm Jenny down. "I understand Jenny, believe me, I had the same thoughts when I first found out. But I really believe that there is no way he would intentionally try to hurt you…"

Unbelieving, Jenny demanded "What? How do you know that?"

"Because, in a way, Phineas Mog had a hand in your creation. Really, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him, so… you might even say that… he's your father."

Feeling faint, Jenny laid her head back against the table and groaned.

"Could this day possibly get any weirder?!" she asked aloud.

A sudden thought crossing her mind made Jenny cringe, and prompted Sheldon to ask why she had made a grossed-out face.

"I just realized," Jenny answered, "that if Mog is my 'father', then that makes Kenny my brother. And YK9 was the first boy I ever open-mouth kissed."

"You frenched yo' brother? Dat's sick, girl." Commented Tiff, barely pausing from the task she was helping Mrs. Wakeman with. Thinking back to her own inadvertent witnessing of Nora and Mog's sexual interlude earlier that day, Tiff added "…and this' comin' from someone who's recently had their definition of 'sick' brought to new levels."

Nora piped up, "I keep telling you, that the sibling relationship doesn't have the same connotations for robots as it does for—

"AHHG!" Jenny suddenly exclaimed, lurching forward to clutch her belly and following it with a long drawn out groan of pain.

Nora jumped up from her seat "Oh, her contractions are starting! Places everyone!" prompting everyone in the room to scramble to their appointed tasks.

"Now Jenny, remember to breathe." Sheldon coached, holding Jenny's left hand in his own.

Mrs. Wakeman, sitting on a stool between Jenny's widespread legs, added "Forget the breathing, I need you to concentrate on pushing soon. Your body is going to naturally try to push the baby up out through your midsection, but since that's not an option anymore we're going to try to realign your internal servos. How's that coming Phineas?"

Rolled underneath the examination table like a mechanic working on a car, a somewhat oil-stained Phineas Mog held a two-handed socket driver into an open panel in Jenny's lower back. "I'm ready to adjust the ratchets, just tell me when she's about to push!" he called out in answer.

Counting down with a pocket watch, Jenny's mother warned "Get ready Jenny, when the next wave of contractions come you'll need to push down with every bit of hydraulic pressure you can muster. 5… 4… 3…"

"Nyyaahhh!" Jenny screamed, her entire body clenching in effort. Mog jabbed her with his power tools, relieving a small portion of the pain, but the magnitude of the contractions were still taxing the limits of Jenny's strength.

When the pain finally subsided and Jenny's body relaxed a little, only then did she realize how tightly she'd been gripping Sheldon's hand in her own. Since she was typically capable of reducing bricks into powder with little trouble, it wasn't surprising that Sheldon's hand looked a little worse for wear, like it had been through a garbage disposal.

"Oh, sorry hun…" she apologized and blushed, as Sheldon gingerly lifted his hand up for inspection.

Wiggling his fingers cautiously, Sheldon weakly offered "heh heh… well, nothing broken at least… Owwww."

"The servos are all properly aligned." Mog reported, slipping out from under the table and wiping his hands off on an oil-rag. "Jenny should be able to put her full strength into pushing the baby out now."

Nora nodded, stroking her chin nervously as her mind wrestling with the many variables involved. "If we're going to make any more progress, we'll need to widen the vaginal canal. I've been calculating and it's simply too tight to pass the baby's head."

Jenny tried to catch her mother's attention. "Mom, I seem to be having some power surges associated with the contractions. I nearly crushed Sheldon's hand! Do you think you could fix it?"

"Sorry dear, but we don't have time right now. We need to loosen you up before the next contractions hit." Nora pulled Tiff aside with her and went rummaging through the piles of mechanical equipment scattered about the lab.

Jenny shot Sheldon a puzzled look, "Loosen me up? What does that mean?"

"I just hope they'll be able to put you back after, whatever it is." Sheldon said.

Nora's exclamation of triumph signaled that she had found what she had been looking for. As Tiff helped her carry the heavy piece of machinery back to the examination table, Nora explained "The 'Jaws of Life': every scientist's secret weapon!"

Arranging the fearsome looking tool at the entrance to Jenny's womanhood, Jenny began to get very nervous. Tiff whistled, equally in awe at the size of the instrument about to flex its strength on Jenny's vagina, mentioning "I sure am glad I ain't you right now!"

Wincing, Jenny prepared herself for the invasive procedure. It didn't come however, as Nora was interrupted, her attention seized by the blaring of a nearby alarm system and the flashing of red warning lights.

"Brit's loose!" She declared, observing the tattered remains of what was once the Exo-skin trap they had prepared. "Given how quickly she was able to force her way through the front door, I doubt we have more then three or four minutes before she gets through the remaining bulkheads."

Everyone fells silent for a moment, exchanging worried looks, until Jenny cried out.

"That doesn't mean my contractions are stopping!" She barked, her body once more wracked with pain as every ounce of her strength attempted to expel her unborn child. Tiff hurried to employ the 'Jaws of Life', the huge levers prying Jenny's vaginal walls far enough apart to ease the passage of the baby.

"Ahhhh!" Jenny screamed, convulsing as a few minor circuits sizzled and popped with excess electrical energy. Grimacing in pain, Jenny suddenly shouted "Shit piss dog lick motherfucker!"

Even given their dire situation, that made everyone pause for a half second out of sheer astonishment. "Daaamn!" exclaimed Tiff, to which Nora agreed "Damn indeed!"

"Oops, was that me?" Jenny apologized, her body settling down again. She blushed, explaining "I'm sorry, it's the darn power surges. Some random systems are activating against my control."

"It's only going to get worse I'm afraid" said Nora, grabbing a jackhammer like tool from her workbench and approaching Jenny. "We're running out of time, so we're going to need to cut some corners. Jenny, open up the 'contractions' menu and set the time interval to the minimum one minute apart."

Another warning light flashed, bathing the lab in a red glow. "Another defensive wall has been breached!" called out Mog from the computer console, looking for anything that might buy them more time. "We're at estimated T-minus two minutes and counting!"

Ignoring him, Nora clambered up onto the examination table next to Jenny and leveled the jackhammer-instrument against Jenny's pregnant belly. "I'm going to help you push dear. This will probably hurt quite a lot."

The next wave of contractions came, and as soon as Jenny screamed Nora activated the hammer, keeping it trained on her daughter's armored belly, hoping that some of the force from the hammer's vibrations was making it past Jenny's impact-resistant design.

"Fucker cunt shit asshole puke cock!" Jenny blathered, her face turning red from a combination of her cursing and the extreme pain she was forced to endure.

"Push Jenny! PUSH!" Nora yelled to be heard over the din of Jenny's stream of profanity.

"It's workin'! I can see the head!" called Tiff, just as Jenny's contraction ended and Nora ceased her hammering.

Jenny felt nearly delirious, laughing and crying at the same time. It was almost over.

Almost.

"You're doing great Jenny, just keep bearing down with everything you've got when the next contractions come and—

"We've got less then a minute!" Mog called, "There's only one wall left between Brit and the lab door" he informed, indicating the heavy metal seal on the opposite side of the room, less then twenty yards from Jenny.

Nora threw up her hands in frustration, "We need more time! We're not ready yet!"

Jenny was surprised by a peck on her cheek from Sheldon. "I'm sorry" he stated flatly, and sprung to his feet.

Dashing to the lab door, everyone instantly understanding what he intended to do, and Jenny was the only one who made any move to stop him. Reaching out with an arm she wailed "NO! Sheldon, don't do it!"

"Please!" she pleaded, her last chance before Sheldon had sealed the door shut behind him, a silent "I love you" on the lips of his face the last sight Jenny caught of him.

Jenny's cries were interrupted by the next series of contractions in her belly, her body tearing itself apart in order to push her infant free. Nora's began shouting instructions at twice the pace she had been, and Tiff braced herself against the table in order to exert as much strength as she could offer.

They all knew the sacrifice Sheldon was making, and would see that the time he would buy them would be used well. Even Mog rushed over to Jenny's side to try to fill the gap that Sheldon had left, coaching and consoling Jenny as best he was able to. Besides, he had no real desire to watch the video screens displaying what was about to happen just outside the lab's sealed door.

---

Waiting in silence, the only illumination being cast by a series of sterile fluorescent panels in the ceiling, Sheldon counted down the seconds. He wanted to be in the lab, with his fiancée and mother to his child. He wanted to cut its umbilical cord, to bundle it in blankets and place it gently in Jenny's arms.

But he was needed here.

A shriek of metal on metal announced Brit's arrival. The far wall ruptured, was peeled away, and crumbled to admit Brit into the room. Spotting Sheldon, Brit smirked.

"Well well well. Am I to understand that you are the last line of defense? Pfeh."

"You're not getting through this door, Brit." Sheldon declared resolutely, his face a cold scowl.

"…Over your dead body, don't you mean?" Brit joked, "…and then I would reply 'That's the idea'. Or 'If you insist', or something like that. You're not very good at heroic banter, you know."

Sheldon said nothing, his expression as unchanged as a statue. Brit took a small step forward, careful to move slowly enough that the gesture would not be mistaken as a threat.

"But then, you're not good at much of anything heroic, are you? You're not a real super-hero like your girlfriend. You're just a nerd who cobbled together some junk in his garage.

"My, there's no question who is wearing the pants in that relationship, is there?" Brit sauntered forward, leaning into her carefully measured steps. "I'm not even going to try to offer you a deal here. I know you wouldn't be smart enough to take it, and frankly I am going to really enjoy killing you anyway. But I do want you realize that later, when they collect most of your pieces? That's what I'll have engraved on your forehead. 'Here lies Sheldon Lee: A devoted stalker, servile sidekick, and all around pathetic loser.'

The attack came with the speed of a flash of lightning, Brit's claws reaching forward to rake across Sheldon's chest plate. He had allowed her to get too close, distracted by her words. He swung with his heavy fists, pushing Brit a step away as she moved to avoid his massive arms.

It bought him a second to move, turning a lethal strike to his neck into a merely disfiguring cut to the side of his face. Brit was like liquid fire, always moving, flowing in unpredictable undulations that made it impossible to tell where the next attack would come from. Sheldon did what he could to make things difficult for her, forcing her to dodge past his titanic punches in order to get to him.

Still, Sheldon hated to admit it, but Brit was right. He was just a technically-minded high school student, not a superhero, and certainly not an alien warlord with unparalleled combat experience.

How many planets had Vexus conquered in her time? How many enemy generals and champions had she dispatched with her own two hands?

All that training and battle-honed skill was alive in Brit now.

A claw whipped past Sheldon's fist, turning and slipping under his defenses and stabbing into a point in his side where the seams of his armor met. It withdrew just as quickly, too quickly for Sheldon to land a retaliatory punch, but it tore up a visible chunk of Sheldon's chassis on its way out.

A few more like that and the "Silver Shell" wouldn't have his shell to protect him anymore.

But he didn't have to survive, Sheldon reminded himself, he just needed to buy Jenny more time.

Switching tactics, Sheldon released a burst of harmless pyrotechnics in front of Brit's face, slowing and agitating her. Those had been invented by Sheldon as one of several showy attempts to impress Jenny, back before she had learned Silver Shell's secret.

Brit dashed to one side, circling around to flank her enemy. Another swipe of Brit's claws slashed down the length of Sheldon's back, tearing out a chunk of his armor and a few bits of machinery with it. The power for Silver Shell's optic lasers went offline before he'd ever had a chance to use them.

Sheldon pitched himself forward to escape her attacks, needing to put some distance between them again. Thinking quickly he jettisoned the fuel tanks for his flight systems, and fired a shot from his pellet/rail-gun as the fuel cells rolled across the floor, piercing the tanks and igniting a surprise fireball in the middle of the room.

The room was now filled with fire, though thankfully there weren't a lot of flammable materials to keep it burning. In the blaze Sheldon lost track of Brit however. Was it too much to hope that she had been incinerated?

Bursting through the flames Brit proved herself to still be very much alive, if slightly singed.

"That hurt!" she snapped, throwing a vicious kick into Sheldon's solar plexus.

Sheldon threw up his arms to block additional attacks, but Brit's agile hands weaved right past them and grabbed Sheldon by the chin. With a single heave Brit turned and flung Sheldon over her shoulder, slamming him flat on his back against the ground. The floor tiles under the Silver Shell's massive body shattered, sending up a cloud of dust and a rush of air that put out many of the smaller fires.

Turning, Brit stepped up to the lab's thick vault door and gripped the heavy wheel handle, straining against the lock. Magnetically sealed, the door would normally only open from inside, or with the correct access code punched in to a small panel on the front.

Brit didn't have either of those, so she would have to force it open. Trying to spin the wheel-handle of the door was like trying to twist the top off of a fire hydrant with your bare hands, surely well beyond what any normal person was capable of. But Brit was not a normal person.

"Time to claim my prize" she grinned, determined to force the vault door open. Even putting the full force of her prodigious strength into twisting the handle, the sturdy computer controlled lock did not immediately spring open. Try as she may, only the handle creaked and groaned, the metal starting to twist from Brit's efforts. It was only a matter of time.

"We're not finished yet" sounded Sheldon's voice from behind Brit, his huge robotic hand seizing her around the middle. He pulled her away from the door, but Brit refused to release her grip, eventually pulling the handle clean off the door.

Brit growled and flexed her hands on the cast-iron wheel she held, frustrated by being presented with yet another delay.

Twisting her body about unnaturally Brit swung the wheel as a weapon, slapping it across Sheldon's face and forcing him to drop her to the ground. Brit sprung back as soon as her heels touched the floor, launching herself at the stunned Sheldon and pummeling him with additional attacks. Punches to the face kept Sheldon disoriented, body blows to his abdominal cavity pressed him back against the wall, and kicks of surgical precision to his legs sent him toppling over into a heap.

The ruined metal door handle had made a decent weapon before, and Brit decided to make use of it again. Straddling the dented chest of the fallen Sheldon, Brit raised the warped lump of metal and brought it down on Sheldon's cranium.

"You're really that disconnected from reality, aren't you?" Brit queried rhetorically. "I'm going to beat you to death now, costing me valuable seconds, because you're too stupid to get it."

The weapon landed again, shattering Sheldon's left eye and leaving him half blind.

"Let me spell it out for you:" Brit lowered her voice and hissed, "You're not a super-hero, genius!"

"This isn't a comic book. The safety of the world isn't depending on you. There isn't going to be a 'next time', a 'too be continued', or even a quaint "once again the day is saved…"

Blows rained down with each swing of Brit's arms, Sheldon's face and head starting to look like the hood of a car in a demolition derby. Through the blur of pain, Sheldon pushed back with both arms, shoving Brit back enough to give him the room to turn over onto his front and try to crawl away.

Try to get his bearings, get to his feet, figure out a strategy. Anything that might—

"Oof!" Sheldon wheezed, Brit landing heavily on his back and knocking his knees out from under him.

Seizing the back of his head in one hand, Brit shoved Sheldon's face against the floor.

It can't end like this. Not this fast.

Jenny needed more time, Sheldon repeated in his head, his death was supposed to buy her more time!

Brit raised her crude club high into the air once more, and brought it down on the back of Sheldon's skull. The metallic sound of each strike echoed through the cavernous room, each hit driving Sheldon's face deeper into the ruined floor.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

It sounded like railroad spikes being hammered into the ground. Sheldon struggled to find purchase, to draw more energy to his limbs to give them the strength they needed to get himself upright again.

Rerouting systems and making emergency circuit bypasses in his head would have been hard enough on a normal day, and now every time he made progress his thoughts were scattered by another—

Clang!

How could he let Jenny down like this? All he wanted was to protect her. To save the girl who was always saving everybody else. But Brit was right: he was no super hero.

Clang! Clang!

A few more should do it, and his skull would cave in, his delicate computer brain smashed to pieces.

Then Brit would be free to storm into the lab and terrorize Jenny and their newly born baby. Sheldon couldn't bear the thought of the baby, its life stolen away before it had even begun. He had failed to protect it, the one task it had counted its father for.

Clang!

The warning buzzers were blaring inside Sheldon's head now, warning of the imminent structural collapse. The next blow would finish him.

The world may not have been counting on him, but his child was. And Jenny, the brave girl in the next room who was moving Heaven and Earth to bring a new life into the world. A life he was responsible for. He was no hero.

But he was a Dad.

The world could burn for all he cared, but he wouldn't fail Jenny and their baby. He refused.

Sheldon's left arm shot out and behind him, wrenching from its own shoulder socket and breaking the elbow joint backwards. Pain shot through his entire left side like red-hot lightning, and he knew that the arm would be useless from that point on.

It didn't matter, he didn't need to actually lift with the arm.

He just needed to hold Brit in place.

And now he had her face held tightly in his hand. Her muffled shriek of indignity was the sweetest sound Sheldon had ever heard.

Straightening his legs, Sheldon kept his head tucked low and braced himself with his right arm like a linebacker readying to charge. His left arm was a vice, keeping Brit pinned to his broad, flat back.

With everything he had Sheldon moved, slamming himself into the concrete wall a few feet in front of him.

Brit was helplessly caught between Sheldon's armor plate and the unyielding wall, crushed like a bug. Backing up a half foot Sheldon pushed forward again and again, carving a gash in the concrete where Brit was repeatedly being ground against it. He only stopped when his ruined left arm finally tore loose of his body, falling to the floor still holding onto Brit's unconscious body.

Unconscious body. It didn't seem possible. He'd won?

He'd won!

"HA!" he barked involuntarily, stumbling a few steps away from the defeated Crust girl. Falling to his knees, Sheldon's ruined mouth attempted to mold itself into a smile as he laughed uncontrollably.

Winning Olympic gold after running a marathon wouldn't have felt this good.

He was alive!

One arm and one eye were gone, and his face probably looked like a piece of modern art, but he was still alive.

For a full minute he simply rested, basking in the high that came with winning. Then the thought occurred to him that the baby was probably moments away from being born, and that if he remained here he would miss the momentous occasion. Sheldon hated to think that the first memory his new son or daughter would have of him would be looking like he did, but he couldn't wait to see them anyway.

His body ached to move, but he would bear it. He could bear anything.

Stumbling drunkenly over to the lab's door, Sheldon leaned his weight against it and gingerly tapped in the access code. It seemed like forever ago that had been down here being taught the entry code, Dr. Wakeman's new young assistant, his dream job. Life had a weird way of coming full circle.

The computer registered the code and unlocked the door, and with his one good arm Sheldon swung the vault door wide open. Inside the lab it was chaos, everyone rushing this way and that in an effort to assist Jenny with her labor. But even with the impending childbirth to deal with, everyone paused and took a breath when Sheldon opened the door.

"I did it!" he announced to everyone inside, "I beat Brittany Crust!"

Yours is the strength of Queens whispered a voice within Brit's unconscious brain. You will rise, resurrected, and take what is yours.

"Sorry, but not in this lifetime" came Brit's curt reply from behind him. Spinning to face her, Sheldon had just enough time to gasp.

Recovered, she stood bathed in a bright inner glow, her eyes and breastplate radiating especially brightly.

"You thought you'd beaten me?" she laughed, "I can control reality!"

A flick of her wrist and a sharp gesture with her skeletal claws, accompanied by a brief flash from inside Brit's chest. That was all the warning Sheldon received before being neatly severed at the waist.

Falling to the floor in two distinct pieces, Sheldon caught a brief glance of his own legs falling in the opposite direction as he toppled onto his side. A mess of tangled wires and tubing fell out of the bottom of Sheldon's chest cavity, which Brit didn't mind casually stepping on as she approached.

"You took me by surprise, I'll grant you that" Brit offered rather contemptuously. She pointed her right arm at Sheldon's head, waiting a second to savor the moment. Ending Sheldon's life in full view of Jenny made this twice as satisfying.

Sheldon's consciousness slipped, reality starting to black out. But he grinned up at Brit. He had seen who was standing behind her.

A shot rang out and a piece of Brit's back exploded, sending her crashing to the floor. A few feet behind her stood Brad Carbunkle wielding the rail gun taken from Sheldon's severed left arm, the barrel smoking from the discharge he had just fired. Brad was barefoot, dressed in scrub pants and a hospital gown worn reversed as a sort of jacket. Gauze bandages completely covered his chest like some living mummy, and more were tied around his head like a bandana.

All of this did nothing to lessen the fierce look in his eye. Cocking the gun that had been concealed in Sheldon's dismembered arm, Brad called out "Ready for round two, bitch?!"

Pulling herself to her feet, Brit's soft chuckle slowly grew in intensity.

"Oh Bradley, you look ridiculous. Such a shame that you're going to die without a shred of style or dignity. I'd have been happy to give you a makeover, but sadly I'm rather pressed for time right now."

Brit raised her right hand in Brad's direction, calling forth the soft glow from the Pip crystal tucked safely under her armor. Her fingertips twitched, hesitating on exactly what form her hatred for Brad would manifest itself in the physical world.

"I'm afraid I have no choice but to dispatch you quickly, so I think I'll just boil your blood and be done with it."

Brad flinched, attempting to dodge the beam of light that struck out from Brit's palm. But as sharp as his reflexes were, he had no hope of outrunning an attack made at the speed of thought.

The Pip crystal's destructive energies hit Brad squarely in the chest, tearing a scream of pain from his throat and dropping him to his knees. Smoke sizzled off Brad's body, filling the basement with a sterile ammonia smell, making Brit grin with sadistic delight. Brad's screams mixed with those coming from Jenny inside the lab, and Brit wondered if this could possibly get any better.

But he didn't die.

His heart should have exploded, but it hadn't. Frustrated, Brit brought her left arm to bear on Brad as well, doubling the output of energy. She concentrated, calling to mind how much Brad meant to Jenny, how much Brad meant to Tiff.

How very much she would like to see him die.

She imagined his head detonating like a grenade, or his skin peeling off in strips like drying paint. Blood, pain and death was all she wished him. And her weapon, the crystal, would make her wishes into reality.

Brad's yell of agony subsided as he gritted his teeth, mastering the pain.

The stream of violent energy continued to pour forth from Brit's hands, the tremendous forces it contained blowing Brad's hair about as though he were caught in a fierce wind. The bandages protecting Brad's chest split and waved about like streamers in the storm, still vainly attempting to cling to Brad's body for as long as they could.

Beads of sweat coated Brad's face, but still he refused to die.

Brit couldn't understand why Brad hadn't melted or exploded or vaporized, and then she saw the answer. Underneath the bandages, something in Brad's chest glowed.

It was the scar she had given him. The four jagged slashes down his front were taking in all the energy she was using to assault Brad with, the scars were feeding on the energies of the Pip crystal.

Brit gasped, cutting off the flow of energy. It was all the opportunity Brad needed. Leveling the gun at Brit, Brad pulled the trigger and fired it point blank into her chest.

The force of the shot lifted Brit clear off the ground and smashed her against the opposite basement wall. She lay sprawled out on the ground, a small dent in the wall testifying to where her head had impacted.

But more importantly, Brad could see that the shot had taken a chunk out of the armor on Brit's chest. Not a huge piece, in fact it looked more like the plunging neckline of some fashionable top Brit might have worn to go clubbing. But it revealed something much more crucial; nestled in the cleavage between Brit's breasts was the softly glowing Pip crystal, its surface now flawed by a single oblong crack down its center.

Brad approached cautiously, his gun still trained firmly on Brit. Reaching forward with his left hand Brad plucked the crystal from Brit's bosom, then immediately took two steps back, knowing that even without the Crystal Vexus' abilities made Brit terribly dangerous to be close to.

Brit coughed loudly, recovering her senses. She glared evilly at Brad, or more precisely the crystal held tightly in Brad's hand.

"Just stay right there." Brad warned, his gun still aimed directly at Brit's heart.

Slowly, cautiously, Brit got up from the uncomfortable position she had landed in, making no sudden moves.

Brad waved the gun, shouting "I said stay put!"

Brit raised her arms in a gesture of surrender. Her right hand trembled slightly, and when she conspicuously leaned forward a small electronic device tumbled out of her armor, clattering noisily to the floor.

Taking no chances, Brad asked "What's that? Another secret weapon?"

"You might say that. I believe in being prepared." Brit purred, being evasive.

Brad gestured with the crystal, instructing "Kick it over to me. Keep your hands in the air."

Brit cautiously did as she was told, reaching a slender leg out to the mysterious little gizmo. The point of her toe prodded the device, and stepped on a large red power button, turning on a small screen as she kicked it over to Brad.

Never taking his eyes off of Brit, Brad stooped to pick up the device in his left hand, holding it between thumb and forefinger. On the video display was Brad's little brother Tuck in what Brad recognized as Tuck's bedroom, bound and gagged! Worse, Tuck was attached to a crude device that looked something like a bear trap with some wires trailing from it, the metal jaws ready to snap shut on Tuck's neck at any moment. And if the number in the lower corner of the screen, displaying 28… 27… 26… was correct, that moment was soon!

Looking back from the video display, Brad noticed Brit was grinning at his distress.

"That's a real-time feed, so I'd get moving if I were you. I do hope you're a good sprinter."

The decision was made before the question had time to form in Brad's head. Dropping the video device and the heavy rail gun Brad dashed to the exit, bounding up the flight of stairs and deftly maneuvering past every piece of debris or other hurdle.

Brit allowed him to get out of sight and then walked over to the lab's entrance. Picking up the disembodied lower half of the Silver Shell, Brit crammed them into the doorjamb to prevent it from being closed any time in the near future.

Casting a glance into the lab where Jenny, Tiff and the others waited, Brit sneered. "I'll be back to deal with you… soon." She warned, and then turned around. Extending her wings Brit took to the air, zipping off in pursuit of Brad and her lost crystal.

Inside the lab proper, Brit's departure did very little to defuse the tension in the air. Throughout the entire battle Jenny had continued to struggle in her labor, gradually pushing the baby further and further down her birth canal.

Sheldon, and now Brad, had bought her some extra time, but she still had work to do and Brit would be back soon enough. Jenny only had a short breather before the next contractions began, so with the time she had she asked Mog to go check on Sheldon.

"He appears to be okay," Mog informed her after checking the robot boy's vitals. "His brain has temporarily shut down to conserve power. His legs and one arm are gone, but that can be repaired later. As long as he doesn't take any more damage, he should be fine."

Jenny sighed, relieved.

"Are you ready dear? We're almost done now." Jenny's mother assured her. "Give it everything you've got and we may be able to deliver the baby right now."

Jenny nodded resolutely and readied herself for more of the painful contractions. Her mother and Phineas Mog were on either side of her, manning a cornucopia of tools and equipment that would help Jenny to push. Between her legs was Tiff, wielding a set of tongs that were inserted into Jenny's body cavity, preparing to grasp and pull the baby in time with Jenny's next push.

Everyone was ready, waiting on Jenny.

"Here it comes!" Jenny stated, gripping the table with both hands. Everything inside Jenny's body below her heart began pushing downward, trying to force the XJ-1 out through her narrow passage. Tiff pulled as hard as she could, Mog worked some sort of sonic device that was thrumming against Jenny's belly, and Nora rushed about making minor adjustments to everything in an effort to keep Jenny's body from tearing itself open in the process.

Jenny's fingers gouged handfuls out of the table, and an unending stream of curse words were muttered under her breath and mixed with her soft crying.

"More Jenny… Push!" Her mother encouraged, as if Jenny wasn't already giving it everything she had.

Her control slipped, and Jenny released a pained wailing "Yaaaahhhh!"

Then, finally, release.

"It's out!" came Tiff's joyous exclamation, followed by happy shouts from the two elderly scientists.

Jenny heard the sound of the baby crying, and her heart soared. She would never have believed it before right now, but it was all worth it.

Nora rushed to take the baby from Tiff, swaddling it in blankets and fussing about with the umbilical cord or something. Jenny couldn't see what, but she could hear the baby crying and knew it was alright.

Jenny wiped the tears from her cheeks and watched her mother approach, a bundle of blankets in her arms.

"Someone would like to say hello." Nora smiled, placing the baby in Jenny's waiting arms.

"Hello," Jenny said softly, gazing at the delicate new person before her.

The baby's face was instantly recognizable as an amalgam of features from Jenny and Sheldon. A tiny white face was topped by a small region of "hair" the same shade of steel gray as the Silver Shell's armor, and a small pair of stubby antennae reminded Jenny of both the Silver Shell's crest as well as her own pigtails. Quite surprisingly a single slightly crooked tooth poked out of the XJ-1's mouth, looking just like the buck teeth Sheldon's human self had once possessed.

Jenny's smile was radiant, utterly captivated by her own creation. Most of all by the eyes that were exactly like hers, returning her gaze with curiosity of its own.

"It's a girl." Jenny breathed, knowing instinctively.

A tiny hand reached up and touched Jenny on her cheek. "Gg." The baby gurgled.

"Mom?" Jenny asked, "Does she want something?"

The baby's arms waved about and her tiny mouth yawned open. Looking up to her mother for guidance, Jenny asked "Do you think she's hungry?"

"Don't look at me." Nora stated with a chuckle, throwing her hands up defensively. "It's your baby."

Undoing her top, Jenny pulled out one heavy breast, being extra careful not to jostle the little XJ-1 as she moved. With a touch of her finger the nipple stood at attention, exposing the connection points that the baby would need to feed and download data from. Touching the nipple against the baby's mouth, Jenny cooed happily when the she suddenly latched on and began suckling. Soon enough the baby's arms ceased their flailing, its eyes closed and with a sigh, fell asleep.

Jenny felt her mother's hand on her shoulder and looked up to see her smiling down approvingly.

Tiff and Mog stood a short distance away, looking on as three generations of Wakeman ladies embraced, a scene of perfect serenity. Despite their dire situation, neither spectator had the heart to interrupt Jenny and her daughter. The way that the new mother beamed with pride and glowed with satisfaction had a way of distilling silence throughout the lab, muting the distant sounds of fighting and conflict that continued outside. So much pure, unconditional love was being focused on the quietly feeding newborn that it had become a tangible force, drawing more of the same emotions out from Tiff and Nora and Mog and anyone else that may've looked on.

If only it could have lasted forever.

Sadly, Jenny knew her work was not yet done.

"Jenny," her mother spoke reluctantly, but Jenny cut her off.

"I know mom. I still need to stop Brit."

Nora nodded, sorry to separate her daughter and her granddaughter so soon.

"I'm afraid we'll have to assume the worst. Bradley's intervention gave us the time we needed, but he can't stand up to Brit on his own. And in your condition, I don't think you can either."

Jenny tried to stretch her legs, and stopped herself as aches and pains instantly manifested in her entire lower half.

"You're right. At least not before I can recharge and let my self-repair circuits do some work. But what other option do we have?"

"Well, there is one idea that I'd been considering. I really hesitate to use it, as it would really be putting all our eggs in one basket, but…" Nora frowned. "I guess we really don't have a choice anymore. Brit probably knows about the killswitch because of Mog's first attempt to use it when she first went berserk in his lab. Since you're still our strongest fighter, she'll certainly expect you to be equipped with it, so our only hope is to give you as much firepower as possible to improve your odds. I'll need yourself and Mog to accompany me to the storage area. We can perform the upgrade there."

"Upgrade?" Jenny asked, surprised. Not because she didn't know what her mother was referring to. With that much emphasis put on it, there was really only one upgrade she could be referring to. But despite everything else that had happened, today and over the past three months, Jenny still wasn't sure if she was ready. She was unsure, but excited also. Glancing down at the bundle of joy she held, Jenny wished that she wouldn't have to leave her daughter so soon.

But then again, perhaps… a sneaky thought occurred to Jenny, "Mom, I may have an idea about that…"

Interrupting herself, Jenny turned and motioned Tiff over to her with a gesture.

"Tiff, I really want to thank you for everything you did to help me today. I know you and I haven't always been on great terms, and then there was the whole thing with Brad and—"

Tiff put up a hand to silence Jenny, clearly uncomfortable with Jenny's gratitude. "R'lax. It's cool. Y' don't gotta make a big deal outta it."

Jenny smiled. "I'm happy for you and Brad. And, when all this is over with, I'd like it if you and I could be friends too."

Tiff gave a short nod, unsure exactly how to respond to the situation. "Che. Sure." She replied gruffly.

Jenny smiled, knowing that was about as positive a response as she could've hoped for. "Could I ask you one other little favor?"

"Hold my daughter for me?" Jenny asked, gently handing the newborn to Tiff before Tiff could refuse.

For her part, Tiff just about froze, too scared of mishandling the baby to try any sort of movement. The baby quickly sensed the change in its surrounding and woke up. Soon enough Tiff was fighting to keep the squirming infant in place without upsetting it.

"Thanks Tiff, I owe you again!" said Jenny as Nora and Mog helped her off of the delivery table.

"Wait, whatta I do wit' dis thing?" Tiff complained, as the baby reached for one of her earrings and tugged roughly on it.

"Ow… owwww!" Tiff whined, fighting to free herself from the little robot girl's grasp. Looking down, Tiff noticed that the XJ-1 had somehow grabbed Mog's killswitch device off the nearby equipment tray, and had immediately shoved it in its tiny mouth to suckle and chew on like a pacifier. Tiff wasted no time in snatching the gizmo away from the baby, and shoved it in her back pocket before anyone had noticed her lack of babysitting skills.

The baby began to wail, wanting its toy back.

"Y'know, you're a lot like yr' mom. You've only been here five freakin' minutes an already yer a pain in mah butt!" Tiff complained once Jenny and the others were out of sight and earshot.

Lacking any better solutions, Tiff offered her index finger to the XJ-1 as a replacement pacifier. The baby eagerly accepted the fingertip and settled down. Tiff felt it start to suckle, instinctively searching for a port to download data from.

After witnessing Jenny's labor Tiff had been just about ready to go and have her tubes tied at the first opportunity. But now, standing here with the baby in her arms, she was having second thoughts about that.

This wasn't half bad.

"Yeowch!" Tiff yelped when the baby unexpectedly bit down with its lone tooth. "Oh, y'r teethin' already hunh? Mebbe that explains why you're such a handful."

Withdrawing her finger, Tiff could see the baby was ready to start crying again, so she switched tactics. Clearing her throat, she began.

"Hush little baby,

Don't say a word.

This song is a bit absurd.

But if you don't wanna hear me sing,

Momma's gonna give you an ASCII string.

And if that ASCII string gets hacked,

Momma's gonna get you a software crack.

And if that software crack has bugs,

Momma's gonna give you lots of hugs."

Tiff glanced down and noticed that Jenny's baby had drifted off to sleep again so she ceased her improved lullaby. Hunh, that was easier then she thought. Maybe one day… waaaay in the future, mind you… she could get Brad to give her one of these of her own.

Worried, Tiff prayed that Brad was ok.

---

Lungs burning, bare feet blistering, and muscles straining, Brad dashed at full speed up the stairs of his house. In his head he counted down the remaining seconds.

6… 5… 4… Brad flung open the door to Tuck's bedroom, spotting his brother tied to a chair in the middle of the room, the deadly booby trap about to go off.

3… 2… Brad dashed forward, seizing the jaws of the trap with his bare hands.

1…

Brad flung the thing into the air, saving Tuck from a messy decapitation and just barely avoiding losing some fingers himself. With a Snap! the trap went off, biting down on empty air and clattering to the ground. Not wasting time thinking about the close call, Brad instead focused on untying Tuck's bonds.

Once freed, Brad yanked the piece of duct tape from Tuck mouth and picked his brother up in a hug.

"Brad, you saved me!" Tuck exclaimed, touching his stinging lips and adding "…and 'ow', by the way."

Before they could celebrate further, Tuck ended the hug and exclaimed "Brad, look out!"

Standing in the doorway was Brit, the slightly cracked Pip crystal in hand.

"Drop something?" she asked rhetorically, before replacing the gem in her visible cleavage.

Brad pushed Tuck behind him, trying to shield his brother. "Why are you doing this Brit? Just leave us alone!" he demanded, though he lacked a weapon or any sort of bargaining chip at all.

"Oh no, you nearly cost me my victory back there. That was very resourceful by the way, I'm beginning to understand what Tiff sees in you" said Brit, approaching menacingly.

"But the fact of the matter is that I also HATE you, so you have to die. Your little brother I might leave alive, if he fills out when he's older he might make a nice cabana boy."

"I have no idea how you became immune to the crystal's abilities" stated Brit, reaching forward and seizing Brad by his collar. She was easily able to hoist Brad off the ground, his struggles meaningless to her. Grinning evilly, she looked Brad over and drifted into a monologue. "Obviously it has something to do with that scar I gave you. But otherwise you seem to still be just a normal teenager, so I have no trouble finishing you off the old fashioned way."

Kicking and thrashing for all he was worth, there didn't seem to be much Brad could do to stop her. Over his shoulder, Brad spotted Tuck sneaking to his bed, pull out something from under his pillow…

Raising a weird pink jar over his head, Tuck yelled, "Go genie go!" and smashed it on the floor, releasing a burst of thick pink and purple vapor.

Brit paused and turned, "Genie?" she asked incredulously.

The rose colored mist swirled in the air in front of them in a whirling chaotic twister. "For my first wish… get 'er!" commanded Tuck pointing a finger at Brit, who was still to unbelieving to move.

The cloud coalesced, starting with a slim feminine foot and moving up the leg and body until every trace of the gas had been absorbed into the now solidified form of Misty.

"I've been waiting a long time for this." Misty growled, and snapped a kick into Brit's face.

Brad fell to the ground, Brit's grip loosened by Misty's attack. More followed the first, a barrage of kicks and punches and hand chops and nerve strikes, faster then either of the Carbunkle boys could see with the naked eye.

In a sarcastic, fraudulently polite tone of voice, Misty said "To answer your earlier question, Brit; as it turns out, no, my gas form doesn't need to eat or breathe."

Her expression shifted to one of impressive rage, and Misty smashed another trio of rapid punches into Brit's face.

"...But I do still occasionally need to pee!"

A momentary transformation into vapor assisted Misty in performing a leaping double-kick, slamming both legs into Brit's belly and sending the villain hurtling out the door of the bedroom and out into the hall. Turning to Brad and Tuck, she instructed "You two look for an opening to get out of here. I'll take care of Ms. Crust" and then took to the air to follow her opponent.

"Misty, wait!" Brad cried and reached a hand out to stop her, to warn her about Brit's reality-warping Pip crystal. But it was too late, Misty had already gone off to continue the battle against Brit. Before he too could rush out into the hallway and back into the fray, Brad felt Tuck's hand at his pant leg trying to get his attention.

Glancing down, Brad asked "What is it little buddy?"

"Thank you for saving me Brad" said Tuck, before Brad received the biggest hug that he could remember getting from his little brother.

"And there's something else I need to tell you too." Tuck continued, his voice dropping to a sad whisper, "Something about mom and dad…"

---

Misty pressed forward, throwing kicks and punches in such rapid succession that Brit had no time to retaliate. Though her cybernetic armor protected her from the worst of it, Misty's martial arts training and powers gave her the edge.

Misty's speed allowed her to remain on the offensive, and given time, she would break through Brit's defenses. The indignity of having been bottled up and left to die provided Misty with an abundance of anger-fueled stamina, and she knew that so long as she didn't make the same mistake of trying to read Brit's cracked mind, her victory was only a matter of time. Already she had forced the fight out of the Carbunkle house and out into the chill December air on the front lawn. But the really infuriating thing was how Brit's amused smile never faded.

No matter how many kicks to the neck or punches to the face Brit took, that cold, skeletal grin never left her features.

And try as she might, Misty just couldn't get Brit to fall.

"You know, I don't want you to think that I'd forgotten about you Misty." Brit finally spoke, exploiting a momentary break in Misty's attacks to stab forward with a single claw. Misty was unharmed of course, easily shifting to mist form to avoid the strike and reforming as soon as the razor sharp talons had been withdrawn. Undaunted, Brit fielded a few of Misty's retaliatory strikes and continued talking.

"I never really intended to let you rot away inside that jar in the snow. It was only a temporary situation." Brit's blocks and deft weaving past Misty's attacks sped up, now defending herself from all the incoming attacks before they could hit her in the face or body. An inkling of doubt crept into Misty. She was unsettled by the way that Brit was blocking only the attacks that would interrupt her talking, as if the fact that these strikes were designed to incapacitate and injure was of no real concern to her.

"It's too late to pretend you're sorry for it now." Misty stated, frowning at her inability to get a successfully land punch.

Brit gave a short laugh.

"No no no, you misunderstand. I've never been sorry for a thing in my life. What I meant was I had intended to come back and finish you off myself. You see, it took a while but I've developed some theories on how I might be able to kill a living cloud."

Brit's metal-laced claw flashed out, grabbing Misty by the throat. Brit had just proved herself to be at least as fast as Misty was when Misty was on the top of her game. Right now though, Misty's reflexes were slowed by having just launched some hundred-odd martial arts attacks at her opponent. Misty still had her last defense open to her though, and instinctively started dissolving into her gaseous form.

Grinning, Brit tsk-tsk'ed and sent a pulse of electricity coursing into Misty's half-corporeal body.

The pain of the shock interrupted Misty's transformation, re-solidifying her within Brit's baleful clutches. The electricity didn't stop however, but continued to flow through Misty's humanoid form and ground itself into the earth. If anything, the current and the pain that accompanied it only seemed to increase, dropping Misty to her knees.

A soft glow emanated from a gem positioned carefully against Brit's chest, and as Misty watched a single flaw in the Gem's surface lengthened and split into a shape like a fork of lightning. Through it all that eternal grin was still stretched across Brit's face, laughing at Misty's agony, eager to watch her expire.

A thunderclap from the sky above them ended Misty's torture. Blinking her eyes to clear her double vision, Misty was surprised to find Brit gone; instead, she had been replaced with a smoking crater in the soil at least five yards across.

"Misty!" came a womanly voice from above.

Shaking off the last of her daze, Misty turned and saw Jenny just as the robot heroine touched down next to her and helped Misty to her feet.

"Jenny? Is that you?" Misty asked, unsure.

Surely Brit hadn't hit her that hard. But still, she didn't quite recognize her best friend. Jenny was noticeably taller now, and her hips, chest and other curves had filled out to much more adult contours. By contrast, Jenny's arms and legs looked trimmed down, especially notable that her big clunky boots were replaced with more form-fitting knee-boots with a raised heel.

Misty quickly started to notice subtler differences as well; Jenny's shade of baby-blue hair and clothing was slightly darker now, and her twin pigtails were folded back behind her to give the appearance of a single mass of "hair" extending to her mid-back. More then the size difference and minor cosmetic changes, Misty noticed one thing above all; this robot veritably hummed with power. Every metal surface gleamed, every movement of her limbs held the precision of a surgeon and the grace of a dancer. And perhaps only noticeable to Misty's finely honed senses, but the air around her seemed to shimmer from the energy barely contained somewhere in the robot's inner core.

Misty's eyes squinted, now doubting if this really was her high school friend or not. Questioning, she asked again "XJ-9?"

"Actually, it's XJ-10 now." Jenny smiled down at Misty. "But my friends can call me 'Jen' for short."

Misty gave her a wry grin, recognizing her friend's sense of humor, and Jenny chuckled.

"What? 'Jenny' just sounded a little to juvenile for me now."

Sharing Jen's laugh, Misty responded "Whatever. I love the new look. Just so long as it's still my friend on the inside, then it's all good with me" and offered Jenny a quick hug of solidarity.

Jen hugged back, assuring Misty "I'll always be the same girl on the inside. And we'll always be friends. Partners in crime, remember?"

"Right!" Misty grinned, holding up a fist and striking a battle pose. "Let's show this bitch what the dynamic duo can really do!"

"Oh yes, please do" came a curt retort from Brit, hovering with her wings a short distance away and looking none too pleased with this development.

Whatever XJ10 had blasted her with had done no permanent damage, and now the crystal was burning with continuous use, light pouring from Brit's eyes and mouth as she spoke. The shimmer of energy that Jen held was dwarfed by the corona of malevolent power that surrounded Brittany Crust. The ground under her blistered and pooled into puddles of black glass, the air around her rippled in distorted waves, the sky itself seemed to darken overhead.

Fearless, the pair of Misty and Jen plunged forward, determined to repay Brit for every bit of pain she had inflicted on them and their loved ones.

XJ10 performed an expert tackle, penetrating a minor force field Brit had erected without losing any momentum and colliding with the insane teenager herself. Two long trenches appeared in the soil where Brit's feet sought purchase, the force of Jen's attack pushing them both a good thirty yards before coming to a stop.

Brit fought and clawed at Jen's grip around her middle, and for the first time Brit's claws encountered significant resistance, finding that she was unable to slice her opponent's arms off as she had intended to do. Clearly, Brit had underestimated the raw power of Jenny's upgraded body.

Well, a more basic approach then. Elbowing Jen in the face gave Brit a little room to maneuver, and a follow up punch with both hands folded together finally shook Brit free of Jen's grip.

Her hands pointed out towards Jen and her palms burned with an overabundance of energy. Brit glowered and said "New body or not, I still have many new sources of pain for you to enjoy Jennifer. Shall we begin with transmuting your internal coolant supply into hydrochloric acid?"

Brit smirked and willed it to be so.

Just as quickly, Brit was interrupted by an expertly performed pointed-toe kick to the side of her neck.

"Grarhk!" Brit snarled, clutching her neck in momentary pain. A few feet from Jenny a patch of lawn suddenly dissolved into a puddle of volatile acids, making Jenny glad she hadn't been on the receiving end of that particular attack.

Misty was a blur of motion, dancing an acrobatic circle around Brit, peppering her with minor cuts and nerve strikes that almost penetrated Vexus' armor. Damn, the little ninja girl's attacks weren't terribly harmful, but they were distracting. And she seemed to be able to sense the spots where Vexus' metallic skin was thinnest, a talent that could prove very annoying in the future. Brit shielded herself as best she could from the alien's punches, deciding that she would need to focus on getting rid of—

"Jen, now!" cried Misty, catching Brit by surprise by suddenly dropping to the ground.

A brief moment passed. Brit had just enough time to look back at XJ10 and observe the artillery-like cannon she had transformed into before the first shot was fired. An instinctive summoning of the crystal's defensive properties was all that saved Brit from being blown to smithereens, but the impact of such high ordinance still sent the deranged teen sailing through the air and crashing through the front wall of Jenny's house. The dust swirled through the air and gradually started to settle on Brit's prone form.

Get up! There's still work to do!

Shaking her head, Brit pulled herself out of a momentary blackout and back into consciousness. Rather then finding the Robot and Ninja waiting to continue the fight, standing before her was her cousin Tiff. Brit scuttled about in the debris her landing had created, pulling herself to her feet in a defensive posture.

"Brit, settle down! Jus' stop, ok?" Tiff was adamant, but Brit could still smell her fear lurking just below the surface. A small quiver in her voice was what gave it away. Doubtless Tiff had been sent in to dissuade her from continuing the fight, she was the "good cop" to Jenny's "bad cop".

A familiar face amidst a world of hostility that they hoped might convince Brit to spare them.

"Why should I stop?" Brit demanded, "I'm doing exactly what I've always wanted to do. I'm destroying Jenny. If only you could understand how good it is. I feel like I could eat lighting and crap thunder."

Tiff held out her hands in a pleading gesture, frowning with pity. "But you ain't gonna win Brit! I've seen Jenny's new body in action, it's like a walkin' war machine!"

Brit stepped closer, giving her cousin an appraising look. Sweat beaded on Tiff's brow, her face was slightly flush. Clearly anxious, Tiff stuck her hands in her pockets, an old nervous tick that Brit recognized.

She was trying to hide it, but… Tiff was lying. Brit was far too good at telling lies to not be able to recognize when she was being fed one herself. Brit smirked, raising one eyebrow with contemptuous humor.

"Oh really? If you're so confident, then why are you so afraid? You're practically shaking in your boots. Haha! How the mighty have fallen. If only the nerds you bully at school could see you now."

"I'ma scared fr' you, Brit!" Tiff blurted, "Even after everythin' else, yur still mah cousin! Jus' give up, take yur medicine and go ta jail."

Tiff was desperate in her tone, needing to make Brit understand. If she could get through all the madness, the blood lust and hunger for power, and give her cousin one message it was this.

"Jus' stop now, before this gets outta hand. I'm tellin' ya: If you threaten her baby … they'll kill ya Brit."

Brit's features softened.

She frowned, and hesitated, her face betraying a confused jumble of emotions.

Tiff saw her cousin's defensive posture relax slightly into a more neutral pose, though she remained cautious. Taking a slow step forward, Tiff extended her right hand towards Brit in a friendly gesture, her left still in the back pocket of her shorts.

"Jus take mah hand, and we can go tell 'em that yur gonna surrender." Tiff offered, trying to make her voice sound reassuring to her troubled cousin. Inside her pocket Tiff's left hand nervously clutched the hilt of the killswitch device, every muscle in her arm and shoulder tensed.

Just a few steps closer now.

"And then… then everything will be like before, right?" said Brit meekly, her eyes growing moist and her lower lip trembling.

Tiff nodded, keeping her voice as calm and soothing as possible. She needed to comfort Brit, keep her passive until the killswitch subdued her. The fingers on Tiff's left hand twitched around it, readying to make her move.

Offering a warm smile, Tiff softly cooed "Yeh', tha's right. Jus' like before. That's essactly right."

"WRONG!" snarled Brit, lunging forward and seizing Tiff by the neck. In an instant everything about Brit had changed from passive to monstrous.

"Fool me once…" Brit singsonged as she pivoted, and flung Tiff bodily through the Wakemans' living room window.

The force of the throw was such that crashing through one plate of glass did little to diminish Tiff Crust's velocity. To the contrary, after smashing the first window Tiff sailed through the air and was lucky enough to careen through the kitchen window of the adjacent Carbunkle home, landing on the kitchen floor in a mess of broken glass and wood and blood.

Dazed from the impact and the rapid drop in blood pressure, Tiff nevertheless scrambled about, searching for the killswitch device. She had to find it, it had been entrusted to her by Jenny, and their plan had failed.

Glass sliced Tiff's fingers as she crawled over the kitchen floor, searching. She had to find it!

Brit had been right, Tiff had been lying about XJ-10. Really, she had no idea how strong Jenny's new body might be, but the way Jenny's mother had talked it sounded like the fight would be a close one. The killswitch was their ace in the hole, in case XJ-10 couldn't out-fight Brit.

If only Tiff could find it!

"Gotta find it gotta find it gotta find it…" Tiff muttered, blindly groping handfuls of broken glass in her search. It was only when the ringing in her ears started to die down that she realized she wasn't alone. It was also just then that Tiff realized why she was making such little progress; the painful landing had her seeing spots, and it was impossible for her to locate the killswitch, or even have any idea where she was right now.

A hand on her back, between her shoulder blades, made Tiff's heart jump into her throat. Was Brit here to finish her off?

"Tiff!" spoke Brad, concerned.

Tiff exhaled, immensely relieved to hear her boyfriend's voice again. Brad picked Tiff up off the ground and rushed her to the living room, laying her gently on a couch and began tending to her wounds.

"Looks like you took a bad head wound, probably a concussion" stated Brad, looking her over. Checking her eyes, he saw the pupils randomly contracting and dilating, confirming his suspicions.

"Thank God I took all those years of scouting." Brad muttered.

Tiff, still unable to see more then momentary flashes of his face, threw up her arms to stop him. "No time fr' that now, jus find th' killswitch!"

"You mean this thing?" queried Tuck, holding the odd dagger shaped electronic gizmo. Brad took the weapon from Tuck, and Tiff nodded vigorously.

Her speech was slurred, she struggled to explain before she lost consciousness. "Th' knife thang. Issa invent'n. Jenny's dad. Gotta… gotta stab Br't. It'll kill 'er. Take 'er powahrs. Kill'er Brad, yah gotta. Gotta stop… bef'r… be'fore she… pohwerzzz… ehhnnn…"

Tiff lost the last of her strength and passed out.

Brad waited by her side, checking to make sure Tiff's breathing was steady and her pulse regular before standing up, killswitch in hand.

"Tuck, take care of Tiff here. I've got to go finish something."

---

Outside on the lawn, Misty and Jen waited.

Using enhanced optical sensors, Jen watched the proceedings between Tiff and Brit from a distance, hoping that her plan would succeed and Brit could be taken down without further violence. If not, then the only thing left would be to hit Brit as hard and as fast as possible, and pray that she had enough raw power to overcome her. It was a kind twist of fate that Jen now had Misty fighting by her side, and made her feel slightly more secure.

In the meantime, the two made small talk.

"So how was the wedding?" asked Jen, not taking her eyes off the distant Crust cousins.

"I never made it actually" responded Misty, stretching and practicing some rhythmic breathing. "Queen nutjob over there ambushed me just as I was about to leave Earth."

Jen smiled at Misty's casual insulting of Brit. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Misty smiling as well, and was glad that they were at least raising each other's spirits.

"Too bad. You know, it turns out I'm actually related to the groom? Siblings, sort of like a separated-at-birth kinda thing."

"No way." Misty intoned pleasantly, and asked "So does that mean you get a royal title too?"

Jen shrugged.

"I don't know. Maybe. I guess I might end up a Cluster princess after all."

The two friends laughed a little, careful not to lose their focus but grateful to relieve what tension they could.

Still watching their mutual enemy, Jen spoke "Misty, I really want to thank you for helping me out with this. You're a true friend."

"Not at all," Misty returned, "I owe this skank some serious payback. Or have you forgotten the tar and feather incident at school? I always said the Crust cunts had this coming."

Giggling a little at Misty's casual use of profanity, Jen insisted "Well then, I at least owe you a coke", which made Misty wince.

In a pained tone, Misty said "Pleeease don't mention liquids right now."

"Oh damn, Tiff is down!" Jenny interrupted, having just watched Brit seize her cousin and hurl her through two windows. Alerting her ally, Jen warned "We've got incoming!"

Brit came at them like a living fireball, rocketing from the demolished front of Jenny's house and barreling through the air straight at the two teen heroes. Alighting on the ground a dozen yards from them caused a circle of grass ten feet wide to wilt and burn where Brit landed.

"That's the second time you've tried to strike at me through my emotions today. I must say I am impressed. I never would have thought you could be so underhanded Jenny. Bravo. You've truly sunken to my level."

"I'm nothing like you Brit" spat Jen with an undisguised tone of disgust, "I've just learned from our past encounters, and my mistakes…" gesturing to her taller, adult body she added "I've grown up."

Then, cocking her head to one side and gesturing at the remains of Vexus' dead body adorning Brit's form, she said "While you… you're still clinging to the past."

Frowning intensely, Brit glared venomously at XJ-10. "Enough pleasantries. It's time for you to die."

The corona of energy surrounding Brit flared in intensity, sending a deadly wave of destructive force speeding towards Jen. Only the superhuman celerity of the XJ-10 model gave her a chance at avoiding it, and even then it was a close call.

By tucking her legs against her body as she dived to the side, Jen just barely managed to keep her lower half from being disintegrated. Hitting the ground she rolled once then sprang back to her feet, already unfurling two rows of rocket-propelled grenades from within each shoulder. The advanced targeting computer in XJ-10's body gave her a target lock as soon as she had thought about it, and a dozen of the grenades streaked off through the air to meet their enemy.

With a contemptuous snort Brit's eyes flashed with light and the grenades detonated in midair, releasing bursts of festive streamers and confetti instead of the explosives that Jen had intended.

A second round followed, which Brit defused just as easily, but Jen had noticed something. With each use of her powers, each editing of reality, the Pip crystal flashed as its energies were released and the cracks and flaws in it grew.

Jen cycled through her arsenal, unleashing everything in rapid succession. And every attack was knocked aside just as simply as the first; her laser cannon was converted into a harmless laser pointer, her heat ray morphed into a hair dryer and her cold ray into a snow cone dispenser. Jen's ultrasonic weapon had its frequency changed to an annoying cellular ring-tone. Rubber bullets were simply ignored, bouncing harmlessly off Brit's armor.

It was annoying to be so easily rebuffed, but Jen watched, and surely enough each time Brit's crystal became a little less stable.

Sick of being on the defensive, Brit decided to change her approach. XJ-9, or now XJ-10 she supposed, was a living armory who was at her best when she had some distance from her opponent. Brit needed to change that.

Focusing the energies of the crystal into her own speed, strength and invulnerability, Brit crouched and prepared to dash towards her opponent. That would take away Jen's ability to use much of her weaponry, and put Brit into her element: viscous, dirty, ruthless close combat.

Then, unexpectedly, Brit thought better of it.

An uninvited thought entered her head, reminding her that she needed to account for the fast and nimble Misty, who had caused problems for her before. Brit didn't bother to wonder where this alien intrusion into her mind had come from.

The task was easy enough for Brit, as simple as deflecting Jenny's attacks had been. She licked her lips, and purred a single word.

"Burn."

Instantly an immense wall of sickly green flame erupted from the ground, encircling XJ-10 and isolating her from her ally. Plunging headlong through the flames she had created, Brit crashed into Jen with enough force to make the Robotic Response Unit stagger back several steps.

"That's much better, don't you think?" Brit grinned, smacking a few more punches into either side of Jen's new face. An uppercut to Jen's chin sent her reeling until she was almost standing in the unnatural fire. Dozens of suitable ways to finish her off occurred to Brit in the span of a second. Picking one she liked, Brit reached out to grab Jen by the collar and end this contest of strength.

"If you thought this was going to be easy, you've got another thing coming" stated Jen coldly, grabbing Brit by her wrists.

Pulling her forward into a trip, Brit tumbled into the ground and got a face full of dirt, followed by Jen landing roughly on top of her elbow first. Jenny's opponent squeaked in pain and surprise, but not submission.

A quick buzz of her wings shook Jen loose, and a sweep kick knocked Jen onto her side. Another flash of Brit's crystal created a pair of burly animated rock-hewn arms out of the substance of the ground to restrain XJ-10.

Brit stood over her, gloating.

"You may be more powerful then you were before, but it's clear you don't have much idea on how to use it. Me, on the other hand? I'm a very creative young woman. You'll be be—ek. Ehhckkk. (Kaff kaff) Hhhrrkk!"

Momentary confusion washed over Brit, causing the wall of flames to die out and allowing Jen a chance to struggle free of her bonds. While Jen was dispatching the arms protruding from the ground, Brit quickly realized what had stolen her air. Misty was here, attempting to cut off her oxygen by filling Brit's lungs with… herself.

Clever.

Instinct drove Brit to clutch at her throat, her face starting to turn purple from oxygen deprivation. But Brit wasn't finished yet. Summoning the power of the crystal once more, Brit focused on a very specific form of pain and forced herself to exhale. The Pip crystal's fragmentation increased with a faint sound like cracking ice and a frosty cloud of gas poured out of Brit's mouth.

As she had predicted, the cloud Brit expelled quickly collected and solidified in front of her. Misty appeared before her, curled into a fetal position and shivering badly. Gone was the defiance from Misty's features. Her lovely lavender skin was turned a light shade of blue with frostbite, and much of her body was coated in a fine sheen of frozen water.

A moment was spared to observe the way small particles of Misty's body were slowly sublimating back into vapor as she desperately attempted to return to her mist form, and then Brit struck.

Her kick blasted right through Misty's vulnerable form, sending up a cloud of blue and lavender snow that gently drifted through the air, to eventually settle around a frozen pair of haphazardly dismembered arms and legs.

"Heh. Too bad that worked, I had two or three other ideas I wanted to test out as well." Brit smirked, turning back to deal with Jen. Seeing the crumbled remains of the arms that Brit had created, she looked around and asked aloud, "Now where have you gotten to?"

XJ-10 plummeted from the sky, hitting Brit like a living meteorite.

Jen had hoped to catch Brit by surprise and it had mostly worked. Vexus' armor did what it could to protect her, but only a last minute, reflexive use of the Pip crystal allowed Brit to survive at all.

As it was, she was still thrown by the force of the impact in a large arc, through the row of bushes at the edge of the Wakeman property and onto street pavement. Brit came to a stop within a trench dug by her impact, severely shaken. A few pieces of armor had come loose, exposing her left thigh, her right ear.

Before she could even stand up again XJ-10 was attacking, smashing her into the ground with a hammer so large it seemed comical. She might have even laughed if not for the punishment she was taking. The blows rained down again and again, and once more Brit blacked out.

Keep fighting. There are no stops on the road to GLORY!

Jen wanted to scream her rage and frustration with each fall of the hammer, but words failed her.

Anything she might have come up with would've just been used as more fuel for Brit to taunt her with anyway. Instead she focused on doing as much damage as possible before Brit recovered.

Which was sooner then expected, as Jen's "atomic hammer" (as Nora had dubbed it) detached itself from Jen's arm and fell to the ground with a mental shrug from Brit. Pulling herself from the crater slowed Brit down, but didn't stop her.

Brittany Crust slammed into Jen, a shoulder check to Jen's middle taking them both to the ground.

Brit crouched on Jen's hips, pinning the larger woman's arms to the ground with her own. At this range Jen had no means of dodging, of avoiding any Pip crystal reality edits that Brit directed at her.

"Stay still" hissed Brit, and with a surge of light from Brit's chest Jen felt her motor seize up and stall.

The color drained from Jen's face, the servos in her chest began to convulse. All the strength drained from her limbs, her weapons systems going off line. At this range Jen could see just how close the Pip crystal was to rupturing. Every use of its energies further destabilized its crystalline matrix, breaking it apart, and eventually resulting in a violent explosion.

Brit didn't seem to realize it either.

But that was only useful if Brit kept relying on it, and now she didn't need to. XJ-10 was at Brit's mercy, suffering the robotic equivalent of a heart attack.

Jen ceased her struggles, her head and limbs becoming limp. Brit grinned, knowing she had won.

"Finally. Finally I can take my revenge. Slowly, with such precision and minute attention to detail the likes of which you've never seen."

And that's all Jen could do, was watch. Her internal sensors told her that her self-repair circuits were at work busily attempting to re-spark her engine, but the eager look on Brit's face told her that she wouldn't last that long. With the power to edit reality at her whim, Brit doubtless was merely trying to decide which innovative torture to use first.

But at least then the next attack would finish them both off.

The Pip crystal would crumble and detonate, and Jenny's newborn XJ-1 would survive.

Sheldon, Nora, the rest of them would survive.

Jen only wished she had the energy to close her eyes, so she wouldn't have to look at Brit's satisfied face.

A strange whirrrr sound drifted in on the breeze. Something small flashed reflected sunlight and struck Brit in the side of her head, then embedded itself in the ground next to Jen.

A ninja throwing star?

Brit's expression was priceless. Shock, anger, fear… Brit tentatively reached a hand up to touch her exposed ear, and shrieked when three quarters of it dropped to the ground, sliced cleanly off.

"EEAAHHH!!" Brit screamed, clutching the bloody stump that had been her right ear.

Standing, Brit whirled and quickly spotted Misty lying on her side on the blasted lawn. Misty looked like death warmed over, still mostly frozen and having yet to reform two thirds of her body. But she had an eye to aim with and an arm to throw with, and her friend needed her.

Brit stalked over to where Misty was laying, murder occupying her thoughts.

"So, freezing isn't lethal to you, hmmm?" Brit taunted, though there was no trace of the former humor in her voice.

"Then we'll just have to go down the list. How about an acid bath? Or an industrial compressor? Something's got to work, and it'll sure be fun finding out what."

No, not like this. Brit was supposed to use the last of the crystal's energies on her.

Not Misty.

Not her friend.

Jen didn't want to watch, but couldn't look away. Her engine was restarting, and she would have her strength back soon, but not soon enough to prevent this.

Brit closed in on her prey, stooped down to grasp Misty in her claws. Why wasn't she using the Pip crystal? Had she figured it out? Perhaps she could sense the remaining energy within the crystal somehow.

It seemed believable, now.

Turning Misty's head to one side Brit leaned in close, like she was going to kiss her. Jenny was confused, unable to see exactly what was happening. Then, Misty's cry of pain and a quick glimpse of Misty's ear between Brit's fangs told her the story, and made her sick. Constantly checking the time left until she was functional again, Jen almost didn't notice when someone new stepped into her field of vision.

Stealthily his feet glided over the remains of the lawn, his movements making only the barest of sounds. The dagger like killswitch was held tightly in his right hand, still wet with Tiff's blood.

Brad knew he would only get one shot at this.

One snowball's chance in hell.

Brit was preoccupied with Misty, engrossed in the administration of horrendous amounts of pain. Misty's cries of anguish drowned out the sounds of his approach. Would his blade make her feel even a fraction of the suffering she was responsible for?

Brad approached as close as he dared, and crouched low.

His legs tensed, sprung like coils of steel, launching him off the ground and towards his foe, the killswitch splitting the air in front of him and drawing inevitably closer to its target.

Brit caught Brad's fist in her claw, the blade stopping inches from her face.

She had seen him.

Or heard him, or sensed him somehow.

She had feigned ignorance and allowed him to approach, then at the last second snapped around and grabbed him, one claw on his throat and the other encircling his fist that in turn held his weapon.

"Hello, Bradley." Brit said in pleasant English tones, her smile displaying Misty's blood staining her teeth and running down her chin. Brad didn't get a chance to respond, he only screamed as his right hand was brutally crushed around the killswitch he held, destroying the device and grinding its jagged fragments into the flesh of Brad's palm.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, was that your plan B?" said Brit, feigning regret over the destruction of Mog's killswitch. She didn't even seem to notice the fact that she'd broken half the bones in Brad's hand.

With a twist of her arm, she added the bones in Brad's wrist to that list as well.

"Pathetic fool!" Brit hissed, speaking over the sounds of Brad's pain.

"Insignificant speck!" she screamed now, right in Brad's face. "I am unbridled power! How can you hope to do anything? The only thing you've ever done is waste my time!"

"Exactly." Jen declared.

Brit's heartfelt desire was to carve Brad Carbunkle up like a turkey, but she saw she had other matters to attend to. Her face was a mask of the inhuman loathing she felt for Jenny. Tossing Brad onto the ground next to Misty, she turned her full attention to the newly recovered XJ-10.

The XJ-10 who was now brandishing a spinning buzz saw from each arm.

Jen glowered, gesturing threateningly with the saws. "Brit, when I get through with you—"

"No, we're not playing that game anymore." Brit declared coldly, cutting Jen off.

Brit streaked through the air, gliding on her wings and dodging the swinging blades. A kick to the exact center of the left blade shattered it, rendering it useless.

"That's the old game. Snappy-banter-Brit isn't here anymore."

With both hands Brit seized Jen's right arm at the wrist, using every bit of Cluster-born strength she had to turn it back on its owner. The saw hovered at XJ-10's neck.

"That all changed when you took my fucking EAR!"

Shoving hard, Brit forced the buzz saw down, tearing into Jen's neck and decapitating the robot hero.

"Jenny…" Brad whimpered, his formerly fiery spirit gone. He cradled the comatose Misty in his arms, thankful she didn't have to witness what he just had.

Heavy, fat snowflakes fell from the sky, adding to the sudden silence that had fallen over the battlefield when the buzzsaw choked and died. Thick black oil pumped from the stump of Jen's neck into a growing pool on the ground. Brit's heavy breathing escaped as clouds of vapor in the cold air, gradually quieting as her frantically beating heart gradually calmed.

The pumping fluids slowed and dried up altogether as Jenny's motor stalled from the loss of pressure and finally quit.

She had expected to feel… elation.

Bliss.

Where was the joy Brit had expected? There was a certain calm, true, but… under that, in the core of her being, Brit only felt the familiar anger that had been building for years.

Where was her happiness?

Didn't she deserve to finally be happy, after all she had sacrificed?

Picking XJ-10's lifeless head up off the ground, Brit held it before her.

"You… you cheated me of it yet again!"

The familiar feelings of hatred returned to her, fitting into place like an old, favorite piece of clothing. Brit stared into the glassy eyes of Jen's disembodied head, berating it.

"I'm the most powerful being on the planet. Every life of every man, woman and child is my plaything to dispose of as I wish. But all I can think about is you. WHY!?"

"You're a horrid, unnatural metal freak. But everything you do is right. Everyone loves you. That's why you had to be destroyed. Just look;" Brit turned the lifeless head as if to show it the devastation all around them, the gravely injured Brad and Misty, the wrecked front of the house, the corpses of Jenny's younger siblings. In all directions, the once happy suburbs of Tremorton were replaced with smoldering craters and ruined buildings.

"You see? You wrecked everything. I was supposed to have their love. I was the popular one, you understand. So I had to get rid of you, it only made sense.

"But now… it's all gone. There's no empire left for me to rule.

"How did you do it?

"How did you make them love you, and hate me?"

"..."

"Well?" Brit shook the head angrily.

"Say something!" she screamed.

Brit raged, gripping the head so hard that her claws pierced its metal skin. Again and again she smashed the head against the ground, giving in to the familiar, comforting rage. The only thing that ever made her feel even the slightest bit better.

"You have to tell me! I must know!"

XJ-10's head came down once more, and cracked against a small rock. Brit stopped shaking it, her attention grabbed by the dark crack down the center of Jen's face. With a minor exertion of strength Brit pulled the crack wider, prying apart the two halves of the head.

Inside was not the cybernetic brain Brit had expected.

Inside was the spidery metal component that Brit recognized as the remote control module taken out of the Silver Shell.

"Where is she!? WHERE IS XJ9?!"

---

In the relative calm and quiet of Mrs. Wakeman's damaged, jury-rigged basement lab, Jenny took stock of her situation.

The house's defenses were decimated.

The killswitch had been destroyed.

Brad, Misty, and Tiff needed hospital attention.

Sheldon was worse. The XJ-10, even more so.

"Hey… wake up sleepyhead" Jenny spoke softly, attempting to rouse her sleeping daughter. She was amazed that her new baby could sleep so soundly, undisturbed by the sounds of battle filtering in from above. She remained perfectly serene, cuddled in her mother's arms as she nursed from Jenny's breast, feeding and downloading packets of useful data.

Jenny still hadn't settled on a name for the new arrival, but she had been considering shortening "Jay-One" into "Jane" or maybe more phonetically, "June". Removing her nipple from the baby's mouth, Jenny replaced her top as 'June' yawned and blinked her eyes sleepily. Jenny looked down into her daughter's bright, curious eyes.

"Sorry to wake you up again, but mommy has to go for a little bit. There's one more little chore mommy has to take care of."

She unplugged herself from the remote control system that Mog and Nora had cobbled together, no longer needing it. Doubtless, it would take her mother quite a while to rebuild Jenny's adult form, possibly trapping Jenny in her teenage XJ-9 body for years longer then she was intended to be.

But that was ok.

Jenny didn't mind being a teenager. She'd gotten quite good at it.

The remote control had transmitted the full extent of the damage to Jenny, so she knew that the head had been smashed open and the remote control device had been found. It was reasonable to assume that Brit would deduce where she was hiding, and would seek her out here.

Her one edge still in play was that the Pip crystal had reached the limit of what it could do. And that made Brit vulnerable. She wouldn't be able to draw power from it to warp reality anymore, unless she was unaware of the crystal's unstable nature, or she was suicidal.

And as crazy as Brit now was, she hadn't displayed any suicidal tendencies yet. Homicidal, possibly genocidal, but not suicidal.

Getting up off the examination table that had also served as a recovery bed, Jenny stretched her legs to work some of the kinks out. While Brit had been fighting XJ-10, XJ-9 had been recharging and recovering from the ordeal of childbirth. She was still tired and sore and she doubted her hips would ever be quite the same again, but at least she could walk.

She could fight.

It was nice to have her old stomach back too, the swollen belly having been removed now that it was no longer needed. Her "pregnancy boobs" were still here, but those she could work around.

Jenny's mind returned again to her concern for her friends. They had all sacrificed so much for her, and for what? Their progress so far was a few chunks of armor and three quarters of an ear.

This struggle was between just her and Brittany Crust now. She couldn't expect anymore help from her friends and family. Jenny had also sent Mog and her mother away for the time being, sent to provide what medical attention they could for poor Tiff. Jenny now understood just how fragile her family could be, and didn't want a repeat of what happened to…

"Sheldon." Jenny said sadly.

His unconscious body had been too heavy for any of the others to move to a safer location, and now Jenny didn't have the time too. The ruins of the basement and lab would be safe enough, though, since Jenny didn't intend to let Brit get past her.

Jenny crouched down until her face was level with her fiancée, their child in her arms.

"Sheldon, I know I've asked a lot from you in the past. I need to ask you for one more favor."

Placing the mewling XJ-1 in Sheldon's remaining arm, Jenny kissed her child and tucked her in securely against Sheldon's dented chest. Jenny leaned forward to give Sheldon a peck on his lips, hoping that he could hear her in his dreams. "Take good care of her." She whispered, and stood.

Without further hesitation Jenny ascended the stairs to the ground floor, seeing the wreckage of her home and her sisters spread all about. It was getting later in the day now, and through the gaping hole in the front wall where a door should be, Jenny could see the sun was starting to set.

Waiting for her was Brit Crust, disheveled and missing one ear but still standing proudly on the lawn. Proud, perhaps, of all that she had accomplished today. Brit was not smiling or grinning as she was wont to do, nor was she madly ranting as she had last been. She stood there with a neutral frown, staring back at Jenny as intensely as she was being regarded herself.

As if to break the silence, Brit snidely started mimicking the sound of church bells, going "Bonngggg… Bonngggg…"

"What the hell is that?" asked Jenny, in no mood for Brit's deranged antics. She had lost so much today, her friends had been so gravely hurt. And all Brit had paid for it was a measly ear. Jenny couldn't wait to wipe the smirk of Brit's face.

"It's your death knell" explained Brit, falling into a loose fighting stance. "You tricked me. That's why your death held no satisfaction for me. But this time I'll be sure you're really dead, even if it means I have to scoop out your electric brain and eat it piece by piece. That will be a truly glorious kill."

Jenny followed suit, raising her fists and making sure all her battle systems were at the ready. She only had to beat a roughed-up Vexus now, or wait until Brit's impatience got her to use the Pip crystal again.

"You know what the definition of insanity is Brit? Doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result."

"Oh, no no no, this will be different. This won't be any hollow death like last time. I'm going to start slow, carve you up and pull out each cog and circuit board one by one. I'll tease it out over days and build it to the final climax of your death."

Jenny gritted her teeth, her knuckles flexing. "Brit, I just gave birth. Compared to that, anything you're capable of inflicting on me will feel like a pleasant daydream." Calculating out the most efficient route to Brit possible, Jenny prepared herself to hold nothing back.

"Do your worst."

And with that, the battle was joined.

Jenny and Brit each sprung forward, colliding in the air and trading blows in a flurry of motion. Brit's claws slashed at Jenny's face and shoulders, leaving long welts on her cheeks and down her arms. Jenny impacted against Brit's ribs, her forward momentum knocking Brit out of the air and sending them both crashing to the ground.

Six flashing swords came stabbing down at Brit, intent on turning her into a human pincushion. Brit turned aside at the last possible moment and sprung to her feet, leaving Jenny's swords to be impaled into the soft earth. A swift kick from Brit's Cluster-enhanced legs snapped the swords in two, and Jenny abandoned the now useless weapons.

With a gesture Jenny extended her laser blaster from her forearm, and nearly managed to tag Brit with it before Brit took to the skies on her buzzing wings. Firing more shots from the ground was useless, as Brit's speed in the air was too much for XJ-9's targeting systems to handle. Firing her pigtail-jets put Jenny in the air, closing the distance between them.

Once in the air Jenny continued to pepper bursts of laser fire at Brit, occasionally managing to hit her with glancing blasts. With each hit a little puff of black smoke told of the scorching that Brit's armor was receiving.

Jenny drew closer and closer, her accuracy increasing. One good head shot would—

Brit's momentum abruptly changed, now spiraling back towards Jenny and quickly colliding with her in mid air. Raising her arms defensively, Jenny felt her laser gun wrenched from her arm and caught sight of it falling towards the ground out of the corner of her eye. Brit's claws were going to work on her again, and Jenny knew her protective skin would soon be pierced and her inner machinery exposed if she didn't do something quick.

A punch to the gut slowed Brit down, and another across her jaw told her she would need to change her approach. Without augmentation from the crystal, it seemed Jenny was still slightly stronger then Brit. Though Brit was faster, it now appeared that extremely close combat was no longer Brit's best tactic.

Brit growled, expressing her displeasure. With both hands she reached for Jenny's head, and in their struggle caught hold of one of her pigtails instead. Taking what she could get, Brit ripped at Jenny's hair, tearing the one pigtail loose and leaving the other broken, and Jenny suddenly plummeting to the ground.

A last minute catch allowed Jenny to snag a hold of one of Brit's ankles, making Brit's flight droop with the added weight and left her wings beating like mad to maintain altitude.

"Woah!" shouted Jenny as she hung on for all she was worth, Brit desperately trying to shake her loose.

"Let go of me, parasite!" Brit roared, kicking her heel on Jenny's fingers.

They were gradually sinking towards the ground, but Jenny knew that if Brit got away from her now she could circle in the skies and strike at Jenny at her leisure. Something had to be done, and Jenny no longer cared about pulling her punches.

Swapping out her free arm into a monstrously sized pneumatic clamp, Jenny seized Brit's insect-like wings by the root. Without the buzzing wings to keep them aloft, both combatants were now dropping like stones. With only seconds before they crashed on the hard ground below, Jenny exerted all the strength her weakened body could muster.

Her arms flexed… harder… the sickening sound of tearing flesh cut through the air rushing past her audio sensors. Brit's pained and horrified scream.

Snapping bone.

Impact.

Their trajectory had landed them on the front steps of Jenny's home, churning up the debris and leaving Jenny cushioned by a small pile of her dead siblings. Brit had landed on her front a short distance away, and was bawling her eyes out.

Now that they were on the ground, Jenny could see the extent of the damage she had done. Drawing on every reserve of strength Jenny had managed to tear Brit's wings off, but not as she had intended. The armor on Brit's back now had two gaping, bloody holes where the wings had formerly been attached.

Peering closely at Brit's violently heaving back, Jenny could discern torn skin and muscle tissue, and loose fragments of Brit's broken and severed shoulder blades. Did she also see snapped ribs? Vertebrae?

"How could you?" screamed Brit through the tears, her blood pouring in twin rivulets down her back. Stumbling to her feet, Brit grabbed a chunk of XJ-8 and made her way to Jenny.

"My wings! I was like an angel! A beautiful, perfect angel!"

Brit slammed the hunk of Jenny's younger sister down on her, beating her with it until the fragment of XJ-8 started to fall apart.

"How dare you defile such perfection?! You're a monster!"

"You're not making sense… this doesn't make sense!" Jenny squeaked, unable to understand how Brit was even moving her arms without any shoulder blades. Jenny kicked at Brit, pushing her away and making her drop her crude weapon. Brit's interpretation of reality was just… it left Jenny at a loss for words.

The loathing that motivated this girl to attack Jenny through pain that should have left her crippled…

Part of Jenny wondered what she herself might look like as seen through Brit's eyes. Part of her was scared to find out.

Brit's sobbing subsided, and transformed.

She was quietly laughing now, holding it back but unable to keep a torrent of giggles from escaping her lips. Jenny got up as fast as she could, wary of Brit being allowed any time to come up with a new tactic. As soon as she stood, she saw the source of Brit's happiness.

From the bloody stumps that Jenny had torn out of Brit's back had grown new wings. They were still the membranous dragonfly wings of Vexus, but they were no longer merely implants, they were a part of her. The metal frame of the wings merged seamlessly with Brit's healed flesh. Jenny knew that if she managed to injure these wings, they would bleed as any other part of the human body would.

From under Brit's chest, Jenny spotted the familiar glow that had made this… she hesitated to call it a miracle except in a purely statistical sense… possible.

Standing up and facing her, Brit looked Jenny dead on and smiled, her laughter finally dying off. The Pip crystal in her hand vibrated and spat crackles of energy, sizzling against Brit's palm like fat in a frying pan.

Jenny took a cautious step backwards knowing what was coming. Should she stall with more insults? Try to get Brit to gloat? Vanity was still clearly one of Brit's flaws, somehow surviving Brit's descent into insanity virtually unchanged.

The Pip crystal would detonate any moment now, and Brit would be consumed in its subatomic fires.

Jenny extended her flight wings to give her a quick boost of momentum and readied the huge clamp she had plucked Brit's wings with. She would need to time this just right, to fling Brit and the crystal into the air to keep the explosion from demolishing the house or hurting anyone she cared about.

"Oh please, as if I'm that stupid" snorted Brit.

The crystal shook violently, building to a critical mass.

"But I want you to feel really dumb about what happens next."

Without even looking, Brit casually tossed the crystal across the foyer and towards the stairs leading to the basement. Jenny lunged, firing what was left of her flight systems and shifting all her power into getting as much acceleration as possible.

Her baby was down there.

She needed to catch this.

The world around her blurred from the speeds she moved at. She needed to grab it and stuff it down Brit's smirking mouth. The crystal spun through the air, flipping end over end towards its target.

Jenny's fingertips clinked against the glasslike surface.

Jenny felt a tug on her ankle. Brit's fingers.

Her momentum lost, Jenny dropped to the ground.

The crystal fell from her grasp, tumbled through the air and fell down, down into the cellar where the remains of the lab were. Where Sheldon and the baby were. A musical series of clinks sounded each step on the crystal's descent to the bottom of the staircase. It seemed to last forever, and Jenny couldn't do a thing to stop it.

A soundless flash of light overloaded Jenny's optical sensors, and the heat burned her face.

Then all of a sudden, the house was collapsing. Pushed so far the structural integrity had finally been eroded past the point of no return, and it fell in large chunks all around Jenny. The last thing she could think to do was to pitch herself forward with both arms, flinging herself down the stairs into the ruins of the basement.

Long minutes were filled with the roar of the house's death throws and Jenny had only darkness to comfort her, her eyes needing time to recalibrate themselves.

A simple pilot light in her fingertip provided Jenny with ample illumination in the cavity that had formed. A pocket of air remained trapped under the tons of rubble above. In time, Jenny could dig herself out without any difficulty.

But that was not her concern right now.

A limp arm was her first sign of them. Sheldon's forearm, his right hand, protruded from the wall of rubble.

Jenny scratched and clawed at the dirt, the broken brick and mortar and bits of science equipment. Little by little she uncovered more of the arm, and then was frustrated as fresh debris fell from above to fill in the progress she'd make. Her vision was blurry from the explosion and the tears that streamed freely from her eyes.

She made it past Sheldon's elbow, she could see his twisted bicep now, the armor plating nowhere to be seen.

Now to his shoulder, the blackened remains of the outer armor crumbling under her touch.

She almost didn't notice the cold hand on her shoulder.

"They're dead, you nitwit" insisted Brit.

Jenny ignored her, continuing to dig. The debris fell in again, pushing her progress back to Sheldon's elbow. Jenny didn't care. She dug, to the shoulder, to the chest plate that had been warped by intense heat and largely melted into an unrecognizable shape.

Brit hissed at her, "Give it up already! You have more pressing matters to attend to. You, I, and Death have an appointment to keep."

Jenny remained focused on her task, even though she couldn't see what she was doing through her tears and sobs. She could feel most of Sheldon's torso now. Annoyed with the dark thing raking at her shoulder, Jenny snapped "Believe it or not Brit, you are not what I am concerned with right now."

"Don't pretend," Brit chided, "I'm going to leave you buried down here when you're dead. So it's not like anyone can see you trying to act all selfless and brave."

Jenny ignored her, digging.

Frustrated, Brit seized Jenny by the shoulders and spun her around, pinning her to the ground. "You can't just ignore me!" Brit said angrily, savaging Jenny with her claws. "You want to give up and die? Fine by me. It's about time you accepted the inevitability of your demise."

"I'm not giving up. I'll never give up." Jenny sobbed, lifting her arms and seizing Brit around the neck.

Brit returned the gesture, throttling Jenny as well. She grinned in the darkness.

"Ah, so you're driven by revenge then. How very fitting. So be it, we shall destroy each other here in this pit, consumed by our mutual hatred."

Jenny gritted her teeth. It pained her to waste words on Brit.

"It's not revenge, or hatred. You've become an abomination Brit. Can't you see yourself? You need to be destroyed, for the good of the goddamn universe."

Brit's smile faded, replaced with confusion.

"you're doing this… out of altruism?"

Revenge she understood. Brit understood the survival instinct, the concept that Jenny might be willing to kill her to preserve her own life or that of her offspring. If that had been how this ended, Brit vanquished by a stronger opponent, then that was a suitable ending for her.

But this… this couldn't be.

"You… your family is dead! Your baby is dead! YOU'LL BE DEAD!" Brit raged, trying to communicate the concept to Jenny.

There was no hope.

No point or meaning to it.

Jenny's life would end tragically and the universe would not care. The galaxies would keep spinning without stopping to shed a tear. Jenny's last moment would be an experience of the cosmic rejection that had become Brit's entire life. She had to understand that.

Before Brit killed her, she had to make sure Jenny understood that was why she was dying. That the universe was a cold one and none of the heroic deeds that Jenny had filled her life with had changed that fact in the slightest.

Even as Brit's claws burrowed into Jenny's neck, the tears she shed were for her loved ones, not herself. Though her vocal instruments were damaged by the intruding claws, Jenny gasped. "That doesn't mean I'm going to quit!"

Brit gaped. Her eyes bugged out, her breath stolen away.

This was Jenny at her core, stripped bare of any possible pretense, and reason to lie or put on a show for the benefit of witnesses. Brit was looking at Jenny's soul laid out before her. And clearly, Jenny the Teenage Robot had a soul. It was noble and good and caring and everything that Brit lacked. Everything that Brit loathed.

Even when faced with certain annihilation, Jenny's spirit did not waver from its nature, it remained true to the highest ideals of humanity.

Jenny was a better human being then Brit could ever be, no matter how long she might live.

And what was worse, infinitely worse… that meant that Brit had been wrong.

Wrong all along.

If Brit had a soul it was long dead now, and it was her own fault. She had taken the pain and rejection in her life and fostered it, done everything she could to enhance the pain, because it could be her weapon against that which she envied. Jenny was right, and she was wrong. That's why happiness escaped her. Jenny was not to blame, Brit was. She had killed her own chance at a happy ending a long time ago.

Wrong wrong wrong.

It felt like acid in her brain.

Her Ego was consumed by her Id which was burned on the pyre of her idealized Self.

Like a frayed piece of cloth, the last vestiges of the person called Brittany Crust came unraveled and dissolved in the churning waters of her insanity.

This left only the burning pit of hatred that had survived the death of the alien tyrant Vexus. Released of Brit's control, that undying fragment of Vexus snapped all bonds of reason and restraint and roamed free.

Brit's strength surged, her claw tearing at Jenny's shoulders and shaking the badly damaged robot. The two of them thrashed against each other, Brit gibbering and foaming at the mouth. Brit was dead, it was only the ghost of Vexus that kept the body alive now. It was very clear to Jenny when she looked in Brit's bloodshot eyes that this was no longer a person, it was only a mad dog that needed to be put down.

Sadly, Jenny was not in a position to do anything about it. Her strength had already waned, while Brit's body was still strong and vital. Unable to keep Brit back, her enemy came down on Jenny and clamped her teeth on Jenny's neck.

This is how they would find her someday, her throat ripped out by a rabid beast.

Though she could not see past the frenzied creature bearing down on top of her, Jenny detected a faint clatter coming from off to the side of the chamber they occupied. Fighting to turn her head, Jenny pushed past Brit and what she saw made her gasp.

Her newborn daughter was there, squirming out into the open from within a tiny pocket of shelter created by Sheldon's chest plate.

How was this possible? Had "June" been shielded by Sheldon's carapace when the crystal detonated? Perhaps if he had rolled aside to shield her at just the right moment…

Jenny's heart leaped. It didn't matter, she didn't care. Her baby was unharmed, aside from a few minor scorch marks. Unharmed, and rapidly crawling her way over to Jenny and Brit.

"N-no, stay back baby! It's not safe for you over here." Jenny commanded.

Not safe was an understatement, considering the feral state that Brit had descended into. She would have sooner placed her baby in the den of a family of wolverines. But her baby continued on, heedless of the danger of her mother's warnings. In no time at all June was next to her, trying to crawl up onto Jenny's chest if it wasn't for Brit being in her way.

Brit was howling now, rocking her weight on top of Jenny while biting and clawing continuously.

Annoyed, June yawned her mouth open as wide as she could manage and bit Brit on the arm with her single crooked tooth.

Bit's thrashing ceased, replaced with a sharp yelp of pain. Freed from Brit's attack, Jenny quickly snatched her daughter away (before Brit forcibly shook her loose) and held her offspring close to her chest.

In front of them Brit underwent a startling range of motions; first she convulsed in a violent seizure, flailing her arms about wildly. This died down into a heavy shaking, like she was in shock or suffering from hypothermia, forcing Brit to fall to the ground.

Jenny looked on, amazed.

Brit retched, she choked and spasmodically buzzed her newly re-grown wings. Brit's torso heaved, and for a moment Jenny feared Brit's heart might burst right out of her chest. Finally, Brit rolled into a fetal position, her long thin limbs drawing in towards her body like an old, dried up insect carcass.

"Good girl… good girl…" Jenny gasped, as much to steady her own nerves as to calm her child. June waved her arms, trying to reach out for her mother's bosom, and started crying when she failed to be fed.

Jenny rocked back and forth, soothing her baby. "Shhh… shhh… mommy's got you now" she cooed, keeping her eyes locked on Brit's immobile form, watching for any sign of movement, even breathing.

"Mommy's got you. Everything is going to be alright."