"Jenny's gonna love that," Plural said with a cackle.
The three were seated in Saturn's work van, which conveniently had three seats in the front. The young officer looked at her puzzled.
"I'm Plural and that's Saturn," she continued.
Saturn raised his hand to say hi. He stared out the windshield, deep in thought.
"Oh…" the new girl replied.
Her head jerked up again and she continued like she had the short-term memory of an ant: "So what's she like? Are you guys friends?"
"Hell yeah!" Plural answered with a smile. She was in a surprisingly good mood. Circus looked past her and at Saturn to ask him: "Are you and Jenny, y'know…"
He was caught off guard with that. Was it weird after all? The way he held Jenny before? He was afraid he'd crossed a line with that.
He took too long and she timed out; "Does she have… y'know… working bits?" she asked him with the same curious expression. When she talked so freely, she gave off the impression her IQ could show up on the clock twice a day. Plural put her arm around Circus' shoulder and said: "Yeah, tell us."
"I don't think you're old enough to know, kiddo," he replied, saving face.
She didn't really look much younger than they did. Plural gave off the most grown-up vibe of them all, but Circus must've been at least in her 20's. He started the van and drove it back to the office. Plural's ride back home was arrested, and Circus told her colleagues to go on without her.
Circus didn't correct Saturn and continued to the next topic.
"I immediately knew it wasn't the real Jenny in that photo," Circus continued.
"Last Saturday in the woods. The creature you guys encountered, did it ever touch Jenny?"
Saturn and Plural looked at each other, then nodded in response.
"You might wanna sit down for this…" Circus said, then cleared her throat.
Saturn and Plural raised their eyebrows at each other.
"…but false Jenny is the same creature!"
"We already know this, Sherlock…" Saturn said with one eyebrow raised.
"Oh…" Circus said, looking away from him.
"Jenny told us everything that happened. She saw it transform. It's got all her powers," Plural explained.
"What else?" Circus asked with great curiosity.
Once again, Saturn and Plural's eyes met.
"That's all we know…" Plural said.
Circus regained her excitement.
"Then let me show you..."
♦
They stepped into Circus' apartment. It was messy, exactly what you'd expect from her. A cat greeted them at the entrance hallway.
"Hi, Bulldozer!" she exclaimed while struggling to take off her shoes.
Saturn and Plural gave each other a pensive look as they stood in the doorway, not quite far enough in to be able to close the door.
"Hey, aren't you… you know… in the middle of a shift?" Saturn asked her.
Circus, ever unoffended, looked back at him with a confident smile.
"Yeah," she said as she picked up the cat and walked into the living room.
Plural leaned in and whispered into Saturn's ear: "So are we!"
Jenny's two friends were able to close the front door now, and took off their shoes.
"Everyone's on the new Jenny case today, after the photo. But they're not looking where they should."
All three made it into the living room. Messy, like it looked from the entrance hallway. She clearly didn't expect visitors today.
"But to answer your real question… I'm not really supposed to be doing this, no. But I won't let that stop me!"
She led the two into a room with a desk, a computer and a pinboard with stereotypically cut out newspaper articles and printed out webpages. She'd connected some items using colored string. She gestured to the desk chair as Plural sat on the edge of the desk itself. She smiled at Saturn without breaking her gesture, so he took the seat. He felt bad now that he might've been too rude to her in the van.
Circus pointed at one of the articles with a stick, depicting some kind of monster.
"Recognize him?" she proudly asked. It was clear she expected to blow their minds with this one.
"No," they said together.
"Oh…" she held the stick to her chest and disappointedly looked at the other articles like her whole presentation hinged on the success of this first bombshell.
Saturn could tell from her eyes; "We couldn't get a look at it at all, though…" he interjected. "Where'd you get it?"
She perked up again.
"Artist rendition! He claims to have seen it in 1930. Drew it from memory."
The other two exchanged looks.
"1930? Seriously?" Saturn remarked.
"We couldn't see it because it can't leave the darkness," Plural said.
"All we could see were two dots for eyes. Even when the fire went out, we could still see the eyes clearly."
"The fire went out? How did you survive?" Circus asked surprised.
"Jenny saved us. She teleported us to the light and I don't think it could keep up," Plural explained.
Circus was getting excited. "I'm so jealous!" she exclaimed.
Plural burst into laughter. Saturn couldn't suppress a smile and hunched over.
"How tall do you think it is? Standing up like that," he pointed to the drawing.
"Oh, three meters. Easy."
He sat back and gave Plural another acknowledging look.
"Go on…" he suggested.
"The earliest mention of anything like it was in 1910. Every sighting has been in the immediate area around this city. Police records show a number of unsolved missing person's cases, but it's not as many as I'd expect," she pointed at other items as she spoke.
"Here's the kicker. I think it's not from our world," she gave the other two a look as if she was expecting a reaction from that.
She continued; "I think it's from another dimension where the fabric of reality is made of the darkness that always surrounds it. It can't survive without it, and every time it opens a gateway to our world, its darkness fills up our darkness, until the light stops it. Kind of like how gas fills a vacuum until the walls stop it."
The item she was currently pointing at looked like a drawing she made herself. Outlining the mechanics of the creature's darkness. Neither Saturn nor Plural interrupted her anymore now, their faces looked beyond intrigued. Her story made perfect sense so far.
"Now, it's not the light that hurts it, the light just evaporates the reality it can exist in. That's why you can't see it. In its own world, light doesn't exist. The darkness is to the monster what water is to a fish."
Saturn raised his hand with the most engrossed look he's ever had. It was like his opinion of her had done a one-eighty during the last minute. Circus excitedly pointed the stick in his direction.
"Yes! Satty!"
He looked puzzled at that comment for a second.
"O-Okay," he didn't object.
"You're saying it can move between its own world and ours at will? Completely disappear from the radar?"
She answered: "I don't know if there are limitations, but it seems that way. There's evidence that there are periods of time where it simply doesn't exist in our world."
Saturn looked deep in thought. Everything she said here matched their observations.
She continued: "I also think it's the only one of its kind. In fact, I think it's an eldritch god."
She pointed to another item on the board.
"There are reliable sources that say it can create a new body for itself that allows it to walk on our world. This way, it can exist beyond the darkness. You could say it's a shapeshifter."
She looked ecstatic to finally have a truly interested audience that didn't doubt her.
"In order to create a suitable body for our climate, it needs to examine local organisms in great detail. It'll copy them exactly. With these," she pointed at the drawing again, depicting a tall, lean horror with eight appendages that each sprouted additional smaller appendages. Saturn remembered what little Jenny described about it. Once again, Circus' theory was on point.
"You're saying Jenny was subjected to-" he pointed and twisted his finger around. "-those things? And that was enough to copy her body, including all of her powers?"
"Yep!" she looked happy as ever.
"Well that's stupid," he frowned.
"Oh…" she looked at the board again like she was looking for things to improve.
"No, that's not…" he continued. "This is incredible, I'm blown away… I think you're spot on about everything," he looked at Plural again. Hadn't heard from her in a while. She was looking at the drawing, she looked spooked.
"You okay, Plu?" he asked.
"Yeah," she mumbled. "Before I met Jenny, I didn't really pay attention to these kinds of things happening in the world. I guess my world's been rocked upside down ever since she entered my life… Now I'm being told I just met an eldritch god the other day."
Plural shook her head and made a determined face.
"Does it have a weakness? How do we kill it?" she asked.
"Well… If it can become a perfect copy of Jenny, we're in trouble. For a being from another dimension, I don't think there's a difference between biological and mechanical life. I'm willing to bet it can do everything she can."
She scanned her own board again.
"Its original form should be easiest to kill by far. Maybe there's a way to force it to ditch its Jenny-body. See what happens if you expose it to the light…"
She turned to Plural and Saturn again.
"What have you tried?"
They exchanged looks again and shrugged.
"Jenny had some alone time with it. She didn't really tell us the details. Was being obtuse about it. We didn't get any downtime to talk about it since," Plural explained.
"We need to talk to Jenny, then," Circus spoke confidently.
♦
Circus resumed her duties at the police station, while Saturn and Plural showed up to officially visit Jenny. She'd arranged it so they could all talk to her together.
"Her name is Circus-Benz!" Plural excitedly told Jenny.
Jenny stared at the girl in question with positive wonder in her eyes. Circus gave her police ID an embarrassed glare.
Saturn watched Jenny's reaction and said: "Does that mean she's good to join the Sparkle Squad?"
Jenny nodded aggressively. Circus almost teared up at the honor. She performed a salute and spoke up: "I won't disappoint you, ma'am!"
Jenny held up her hands in front of her and replied: "Please don't call me that, we're all friends here. Call me Jenny, or Jen."
Friends… friends… friends…
…call me Jenny…
Jen… Jen…
The words echoed through Circus' head like she was scared she'd forget them. This time she did tear up a bit.
Plural leaned back in one of the chairs at the interrogation table and rested her feet on the table.
"We need the deets, Jen. The beans, spilled. Pants down," she said.
Jenny looked at her in confusion.
"P-"
Saturn got up from his chair and interrupted Jenny.
"We got two problems to solve. One is you're a homicide suspect. The other is your doppelganger still walking around freely. I think they have a similar solution. We need to prove that you and the faker are two different people. Preferably by killing it."
Jenny looked at him, starstruck.
"W-What?" he asked her.
Jenny looked at her hands on her lap, opened her mouth to say something, then changed her mind and closed it again.
"C'mon, spit it out…" he said with a frown.
"The way you phrased it… I just…"
Jenny looked flustered and wiggled in her seat.
"…never thought of this as a 'we' problem…"
"Cute…" Plural said with a grin, still sitting back in her chair.
"Well, you'd better start. Plu and I already told you, we're a part of this now," he said with his arms crossed and eyes closed.
He opened one eye to look at Circus, who had a sort of "pick me!" look in her eyes.
"And so is the new girl," he added, smiling at her.
Jenny didn't object. She wiggled in her seat some more, looking happy.
Plural took her feet off the table and sat on her chair normally, putting her arms on the table.
"Back to spilling beans… Why don't we give new girl the mic?" she said.
Circus took the cue to sit down and prepare her notepad and pencil, wasting no time.
"What happened when it transformed into you?" Circus asked.
Jenny put her finger on her chin.
"I hit it with the lights from the car," she said.
The others were surprised to hear it. Does that mean it didn't work?
"What happened to it?" Circus asked her as she slammed her hands on the table like she was really interrogating Jenny.
Jenny sprung back in her seat and cocked up her arms in defense. She looked like she accepted Circus' dominance and played along.
"I couldn't see, but it got squishier, until it changed into me," she said. "I guess I should've crushed it with my hands when I had the chance…"
"You were strangling it!?" Circus asked her in disbelief.
"Yeah…" Jenny answered confused.
"Jen, you were about to strangle an eldritch god to death!" Plural sat up straight.
"Haha, maybe… I guess so…" Jenny said like she'd just been praised into the heavens.
The rest didn't look so amused.
"So what do we do, then?" Saturn asked. He looked at Circus, like she was the creature expert.
She looked defeated: "I don't know…" she looked at Jenny and continued; "How do we… defeat you?"
Jenny's expression went serious. "I've thought about that."
"We have to make it run out of charge," she said with an uncomfortable look.
"How we dispose of it after that doesn't matter. We'll have all the time in the world to think of something."
Everyone else looked like they thought it was a good idea.
Jenny continued: "Anyway… I'd personally throw it into the sun."
Circus had some complaints about that idea, but she was momentarily stunned at this girl in front of her casually mentioning escaping the planet's orbit and flying to the sun.
"I don't love it. You wouldn't be able to see it die. With this thing, you can't be too sure," Saturn voiced one of her concerns instead.
"There's no other way…" Jenny frowned.
"Have you been before?" Circus interjected.
"No…" Jenny replied.
"Do you even have enough energy to do that? We want you back, you know!" Plural noted.
"I have something for that," Jenny continued. "An item that can bring me back to a full charge in an instant. I'll need it if I'm going to wear it down without running out of charge myself. I can't leave this place to show you right now, though," she pointed at one of the security cameras.
"What if it shows up again?" Circus asked. She looked around the room like she wasn't just asking Jenny.
Jenny held up her phone. "Give me a call and tell me where, I'll come right away."
Circus gave her a questioning look. "They let you keep that?"
"They tried to take it. Let's just say they didn't want it badly enough." Jenny replied with a sassy look.
Saturn was the first to get up. "I need to go home first, to my PC, so I can track its location."
The others looked at him surprised like they didn't know he had a tracker on the other Jenny.
"I told you guys…"
The others looked at each other and Plural got up too.
"Let's go then! This'll be over by the end of today. What do you want to do, Jen?" Plural said.
Jenny looked deep in thought at this new information.
"I need to get my hands on the item before I engage it…" she said.
Jenny turned to Saturn. "Let me know if you can find its location. First, we clear my name, so I don't have to stay here. I'll drag it in front of the cameras if I have to."
Saturn smiled at her confidence. "Yes ma'am."
"No!" Jenny put her fists on the table and pouted.