Author's Note: A "~~~~~~~" mark signifies either a small time skip, or the internal thoughts switching between characters,like before. I'm rather tired today so, I apologize in advance if this chapter isn't out on the usual Sunday or is of the same quality that most of the chapters before it were. Like always, reviews are appreciated. And in case anyone was wondering or wasn't aware, the cover image for the story is what Lightspeed looks like without his armor on. I intend on combining the look of Nora's house in the main show and what it looked like in the pilot for this one btw, simply because I preferred aspects of both and wanted the looks of both without losing the other. For anyone that didn't read the previous chapter Lightspeed = John.

Chapter 6-The Wakeman Residence
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The walk to the residence where the mechanical girl's "mother" lived wasn't very eventful, not a word was said, nor did Lightspeed exchange any form of eye contact with the mechanical girl.

Much to Lightspeed's surprise, the Wakeman Residence was literally right next door to where Brad lived, the two teens were already at the front door within 20 seconds of them taking their leave from the Carbunkle house.

Unlike the Carbunkle residence, which was a simple and pleasant "ranch style" type of suburban house, the Wakeman residence was a hybrid of the aforementioned "ranch style" of house with every unpleasant element of postmodern architecture crammed into it, namely… an unpleasant amount of glass….everywhere.

Despite being the type of person that preferred functionality over looks any day of the week, Lightspeed was always a bit of a silent snob when it came to eyesores in the form of buildings.

The wooden siding was dark, the lawn somewhat unkempt and the absolutely disgustingly high amount of glass panels on the building were all tinted to the point of it being nearly impossible to see inwards.

The tinted windows made it very obvious that whoever Jenny's "mother" was, she desired privacy and secrecy from the prying eyes of random passerby.

"You wanna go in first or should I?" john asked.

The mechanical girl's face slightly scrunches up in response, as if thinking about John's question.

As the milliseconds raced on, John found his patience with Jenny wearing increasingly thin, normally he'd have all the time in the world to wait for her to decide on who should go in first given the… for lack of a better term, "delicate" situation the two were about to get into:

A teenage girl bringing a teenage boy to her home, regardless of intent, was always a delicate situation, John understood that perfectly, but he also knew that neither of them were here for any "funny" business, this was STRICTLY professional.

John very quickly found his patience at its limit, this wasn't a date, and this sure as hell wasn't some hook up.

Before John could wrap the knuckles of his right hand against the large oak door in front of him and "knock '', he found the mechanical girl's 4 fingered hand wrapped around his armored wrist, which stopped his hand dead in it's tracks.

Before John could even turn to face the hand's owner, she said the following:

"I think it might be best if I go in first given that she doesn't know you, give me about…two minutes before you come in." jenny calmly stated.
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John nodded in response as Jenny released her grip on the armored teen's right wrist before she disappeared through the front door and into her house, closing the door behind her; he didn't even give a "yes" or an "ok", just a cold nod.

Jenny couldn't tell if that was just the way John was or if he still harbored some animosity towards her despite her best attempts to patch things up between them, she hoped it was only the former, she'd rather have a cold and distant friend, or at least an acquaintance than nothing at all….beggars couldn't be choosers.

Jenny's mother was quick to snap her out of her thoughts involving the peculiar armored teen as she rounded the corner and entered the kitchen:

"I appreciate the fast return time, but I do not appreciate being cut off whilst relaying important information." mrs. Wakeman said whilst tapping her foot against the floor tiles.

Jenny frowns in response to her mother's "compliment", receiving praise from her without a "but" at the end was sadly an impossibility.

What annoyed Jenny even more about this particular critique more than others was that, at the end of the day, Mom was in the right on this.

Mom once again snapped Jenny out of her thoughts by saying the following:

"At around 0400 today, something pierced into our reality from another plane of existence, creating some massive and unseen energy pulse of apocalyptic proportions whose point of origin was approximately Latitude 39.958200 and Longitude -77.233610." nora stated, before adding:

"Has…" nora stated before being interrupted mid sentence by Jenny:

"That's right outside of Temerton." jenny blurted out.

Mom's retaliatory scowl to Jenny's interruption was all it took for her to know that she needed to keep quiet, that scowl was one she knew all too well, it was her signature "you're on thin ice, young lady" look.

A few awkward seconds of silence pass before Nora begins again with:

"Has.. for lack of a better term, fried Skyway Patrol's global monitoring systems." nora said, before adding:

"Essentially taking the crisis control center offline, and by extension...your remote emergency warning system with it." nora said whilst nervously biting her upper lip and briefly glancing up at her daughter's still twitching "pigtails".

"I don't know what the anomaly is, all I know is that it's on the move and it must be found, and contained if necessary, who knows what it could do to our plane of existence if left unchecked." nora nervously said.

This was indeed very serious, Jenny knew all too well that if the crisis control center was offline, she was essentially operating "blind", without it, she went from being a "global" response unit to a "Tremerton" response unit, word spread fast of disasters internationally without the crisis control center, but nowhere near fast enough for her to respond to them in time before it was too late.

"How long do you think it'll be until it's back up?" jenny asked.

"I have no idea, it could be weeks, months even." nora said rather flatly whilst shrugging.

Weeks… possibly even MONTHS, this was an absolute disaster, hundreds, if not thousands of people could potentially lose their lives in that amount of time without Jenny's help.

"What should we do about the crisis control center?" jenny asked whilst silently hoping that mom had the answer.

"Forget about the crisis control center, we have much bigger fish to fry." nora replied rather callously.

Did Jenny's auditory sensors deceive her, she couldn't practically believe what she was hearing, how could mom of all people be so dismissive about something as important as the crisis control center being down?

"Finding and containing the anomaly takes priority over everything else for the both of us." nora said.

"How do you expect me to find it, if it's moving it could be anywhere, can't you just create something for me to track it with?" jenny asked with a tone of mounting irritation in her voice.

Nora lets out a sigh and shakes her head in response to Jenny's question before responding with:

"XJ-9, the field of science involving alternative planes of existence and the things that reside within them, was, until today, an entirely theoretical one, what you're asking me to do is the equivalent of asking John Dalton to make a fission reactor the same day he proved the atom existed." nora said with an exasperated tone to her voice.

The analogy flew over Jenny's head, but she was fairly certain that she got the idea, it was rare times like this where she wished she paid more attention in class.

"So what do we do?" jenny asked rather flatly.

"You happen to be in luck, I whipped something up that may work in finding the anomaly's general location." nora said as she pulled a rather small looking crudely built hand held device from her pocket.

The tv remote shaped device was rather crudely fashioned from sheet metal that was sloppily spray painted black, and was entirely unremarkable in it's construction aside from a single large but inactive vacuum tube and red button that dominated it's surface.

"Provided that the anomaly itself wasn't the source of the energy pulse and the event of it entering into our reality is what actually caused it, and there are residual bits of the energy pulse imbedded within the anomaly itself, this device should pick up on it if the anomaly is near, think of it like a….Geiger counter in a sense, but it's not picking up on radiation." nora said whilst pressing the single red button on the device's surface.

The vacuum tube next to the button immediately glows with the intensity of a solar flare, causing Nora to go wide eyed in horror.

"What's wrong, mom, you look like you've just seen a ghost?" jenny asked.

"Well… you see….the vacuum tube on the device is theoretically supposed to glow with greater intensity in direct correlation to how close the anomaly is to its exact location, assuming it's working correctly and as intended, the anomaly is VERY near." nora stated with a noticeable shakiness to her voice.

"I'm assuming it didn't glow the last time you turned it on." jenny said.

"Correct, it was as dark as a tomb." nora replied before turning to face Jenny and asking:

"You didn't see, or run into anything or anyone that looked….out of the ordinary…" nora said before pausing mid-sentence and adding:

"...did you?" nora added.

Jenny wasn't one to scare easily, but the look of sheer dread-infused anticipation that her mother gave her set off a domino effect of anxiety in her positronic brain unlike anything that she had ever experienced before.

Jenny had seen and run into someone that was out of the ordinary, and most importantly led him to her own home, surely there had to be some kind of mistake and it wasn't John, it couldn't be, it just couldn't.

Without warning, the unmistakable sound of a heavy set of foot-steps getting closer and closer with every step snaps Jenny out of her internal thoughts.

Much to Nora's look of horror, the vacuum tube on the device gets brighter and brighter in direct correlation to each footstep as they continue to get closer and closer.

"Jenny…. Mrs. Wakeman, where are you?" john's disembodied voice asked from somewhere down the hall.

One look from Mom was all it took for Jenny to realize that she may have made a HUGE mistake, she was as good as disassembled and grounded for the next year…. assuming this whole ordeal ended well for the both of them that is, and provided her poor mother didn't have a heart attack.

"Mom, don't panic, he means no harm… I may...have led him here, I didn't know, honestly, I didn't." jenny said.

"Xj-9, it doesn't matter if he means no harm, he could be causing harm to both of us just by being…." nora said before cutting herself off mid sentence in response to John's armored form coming into view.
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The vacuum tube on the device glows with blinding intensity the second the anomaly came into view, seconds later it quite literally "popped", exploding like an overloaded incandescent light-bulb.

Aside from pressing the button to turn off the now destroyed vacuum tube, Nora stood there, completely motionless, tuning out whatever her robotic daughter had to say, for the first time in her life, she was completely at a loss for what to do.

An unfamiliar caustic mixture of insatiable scientific curiosity and absolute terror was roiling within Nora's mind, one that she had never felt in her 55 years of life.

All Nora could do was stare at the humanoid anomaly, and it….no, he… was staring back… she was looking into the void, and the void was looking back.

It took Nora a few seconds of fighting back against the panic that was filling her mind, but she was slowly formulating a plan, one that involved a trap to contain him long enough for her to determine the threat he posed to their plane of existence, and vice versa.

Lord knows what would happen if Nora had her daughter deal with this problem, it could result in the demise of both parties involved.

There was a class 3 nanite assembled super-humanoid containment cell within her laboratory that might be the perfect fit for the problem in front of her, but there was just one problem….every trap needed bait.

The obvious choice was her daughter, the anomaly would most likely respond to provocation and given the rather militaristic look of his armor, retaliate to it in kind…but at the same time, it might spell her daughter's end.

The only remaining choice was…Nora herself, she knew that she would have to put herself on the line, she had lived a long life, and if this heroic endeavor was to be her end, so be it.

The odds were most likely in Nora's favor, it was only a 10 second sprint to, and down the stairs and around the corner to her lab, and more importantly, her stasis ray.

All Nora had to do was steel her nerves enough to remove her old Skyway Patrol standard issue stun pistol from her coat pocket and…. provoke it….
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John knew something was off, for every millisecond the old white haired woman wearing red lab goggles a black turtleneck and a yellow button up lab coat stared at him in terror, the more certain he was that he had been found out.

John silently cursed himself for being so stupid, he should've known that the mechanical girl's creator would be a "scientist type" that'd be able to metaphorically sniff him out from a mile away.

Now that the metaphorical bloodhound had his scent and was ready to possibly pounce at any second, what would John do?

Once again, a feeling of panic followed by the unmistakable feeling of an adrenaline rush spread throughout Lightspeed's body like the water of a tsunami giving him a much needed third wind, making the pain in his chest practically nonexistent.

Regardless of Mrs. Wakeman's intent, it was fight or flight time.

The sight of Mrs. Wakeman pulling what looked like a pistol of some kind from the right pocket of her lab coat was enough to catch Lightspeed's attention, but not enough of his attention for him to react in time before it's energy based projectile slammed into his face with enough force to knock his ass to the floor.

With the unmistakable warm and wet feeling of blood running from his nose, and the nearly unbearable amount of pain that immediately followed, John could feel the blood he wasn't losing rapidly start to boil.

What little cognitive thought Lightspeed had left was quickly being snuffed out by the metaphorical roaring inferno that was his nasty tempter rapidly consuming him, and try as he might to stay calm, he was losing ground to it rapidly.

John could hear the mechanical girl saying things along the lines of "John, are you alright, I am so sorry.", and "Mom, have you lost your mind?", but it went in one ear and out the other with him, what the manipulative automaton had to say didn't matter to him.

With a bit of struggle, Lightspeed gets off the floor and gives chase to Nora, who was already sprinting down the stairs.

Much to Lightspeed's shock, Mrs. Wakeman seemed to have quite a bit of haste to her step for someone who was 30 years past her prime, it took him a solid 5 seconds to catch up to her. (Not that John could run full speed without momentum carrying him past Mrs. Wakeman, through the wall of the house and 6 blocks down the road.)

John could hear the unmistakable "clunking" of metallic footsteps behind him, the mechanical girl was without a doubt behind him and giving chase in an attempt to protect her creator.

Just as Lightspeed felt a metallic hand grip onto his right shoulder, Mrs. Wakeman yelled the following as she ran:

"Emergency override code 2-348975."mrs. Wakeman yelled.

Lightspeed felt the grip on his right armored shoulder immediately loosen to the point of nonexistence, and the foot-steps behind him cease completely, followed by a loud metallic "thud", as if the mechanical girl had fallen to the ground, completely lifeless.

The two round the bend and enter a darkened room that immediately illuminates itself once Nora steps past the doorway.

Mrs. Wakeman snatches something unseen off the shelf to Lightspeed's right before losing her footing and falling to the ground in the center of the room.

Lightspeed closes the distance between himself and the now fallen Nora.

As John stood there, towering over Mrs. Wakeman with his temper rapidly cooling, he quickly realized that he didn't have it in him to return the favor for what she did to his nose, he wouldn't… no he COULDN'T, the best course of action in this situation would be to just walk away….

Lightspeed barely had enough time to turn around and start walking away before he found himself being consumed by a purple energy field, completely unable to move, and before he knew it, a clear glass chamber was forming around him, as if appearing out of thin air.

The purple forcefield wore off a second after John's new prison had completed itself, trapping him.