Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Even if being chased by a twenty-foot tall red ectoplasmic monster from the terrifying depths of the Ghost Zone, Danny should have known better than to escape into a natural portal. Those things were less likely to provide any sort of cover and more likely to lead to an alternate version of reality complete with a monster twice as terrifying.

Nevertheless, Danny had found himself rather out of options. He boosted himself that bit more and jumped right in.

Immediately, he came out the other side just barely skidding along the dirt ground of what looked to be a jungle, rather menacingly lit in the last few rays of the evening sun. All around him were buzzing, chirping, squawking sounds of the wildlife.

Safe. Danny breathed a sigh of relief before standing up, breaking off a large branch and wedging that halfway between this side of the portal and his, so as to prevent it from closing. Then he straightened and looked around with an air of curiosity.

"Might as well look around." Danny decided out loud. "It's not every day one of these natural portals actually looks pretty cool."

First, Danny flew up and away, far above the tallest trees. He saw that the jungle he had landed in was little more than an island, surrounded on all sides by water that stretched beyond the horizon. One side - the side he had landed on - was ended in a cliff, the other in a beach. In the middle was what looked to be a walled off complex.

Interesting, Danny thought. It was worth a look, so he touched down inside the walls.

The evening had rapidly turned into a moonless night, so Danny lit a bright ectoplasmic fire in his right hand. It was instantly clear to him from the mossy, crumbling exterior that the place was abandoned. The remains of a double door were in front of him at the end of a concrete path, so with a growing apprehension he took a step forward.

A short, soft whirring noise from off to the left gave Danny pause. He cast a light into the bushes but what had been there had already left. Ignoring the hairs rising on his back, pleading with him to turn back to safety, Danny continued.

It was just noise. He could deal with whatever came his way. Didn't he want to see what was inside?

Danny reached the entrance, and slowly extended his hand into the pitch-blackness beyond. It illuminated the remains of what appeared on first glance to be a ruined toyshop; stained and torn pink wallpaper decorated the decaying walls, knocked-over train sets and smashed puppet were strewn across the floor. The strong, repugnant scent of oil was coupled with large black stains on the floor, and – the creepiest detail of all – what appeared to be black lines, in sets of four, scratched deeply into the walls.

"Whoa!" If Danny hadn't been feeling sketched out before, he sure as hell was now. After taking a moment to breathe, he ventured forth into the room.

He'd come this far. Why turn back now?

As Danny sneaked towards the centre of the room, carefully avoiding the puddles of oil, he thought he heard that whirring sound again, like a machine. Once again he quickly turned to face the sound of the noise, his ghostly heart skipping a beat, and once again there was nothing there.

As he stood still, silent for a few seconds after the imagined noise, Danny became aware of a very real, persistent beeping coming from a far corner of the room. He floated over to the location of the sound and looked down.

What he saw was first mistaken for a hunk of rusted scrap metal leaning against the wall. Upon closer inspection, however, it was clear that the metal had a strikingly human form; two legs, torso, two arms and a head were stretched out in a rather limp pose in the corner.

Danny's eyes widened; had he stumbled across some sort of terminator robot? Whatever it was, it must have been sitting here a long time to have rusted up so terribly. It was definitely the source of the incessant beeping, and when Danny leaned down and moved the robot to the side a flap swung open at the back.

The inside was not rusted at all, and appeared to be for a battery to plug in. Reading the small print, it was specifically an AA battery.

Danny had AA batteries at home!

Cautiously, Danny tried picking up the robot. It was quite heavy – certainly unmanageable in his human form – but not anything Danny Phantom couldn't carry. A childish excitement took him over; if he could get this thing to activate, what would happen? Would it speak his language? What happened in this toy shop?

Just as he was lifting the robot fireman-style over his shoulder, something crashed to the floor in a sudden cacophony. Danny whirled around in alarm and this time had the fright of his life.

This thing was very obviously a robot, all of its external wiring exposed. Pieces of grey flesh hung like cloth from parts of its body, and it wore a tattered red cape. One of its eyes and nose was still covered in skin, and the other eye was missing. Its feet scratched the floor as it limped awkwardly forwards, and its mouth, a mere opening without lips, opened. Whatever it was going to say, the voice box had been damaged so severely that nothing but a distorted banshee scream escaped it.

Danny couldn't help a scream of his own, though that was drowned out by the horrifying robot. He took a step towards the door and slipped on oil, landing on his face. Still holding the rusting robot he had found, Danny scrambled up and came face to face with another of these zombie-like automatons. He had just enough time to register this one as a little chubbier than the last before it screeched and made a grab for him.

Turning himself invisible, Danny watched his attacker tumble to the floor. He flew out of that toy shop as fast as he could and returned to the portal, where he set down the robot he had been carrying and gave himself a moment to recover his breath.

"Zombie... zombie robots." Danny wiped his brow, chucking a little to himself. " Of course zombie robots. That makes so much sense."

He looked back at the rusted robot he had taken with him. It didn't look like those ones that attacked him. It was completely metal whilst those other ones seemed to formerly have a human-like skin. With a little bit of luck – and Tucker's expertise – it wouldn't act like them either.

Danny straightened, and the Cluster watched him pick up the robot once more and dive through the portal. He forgot to remove the branch from both sides of the portal so that it could close.

Back in the Ghost Zone, whatever had been attacking Danny appeared to be long gone. Breathing a sigh of relief as he made his way home, he fished out his phone and pulled up Tucker's number.

Chapter Text

“Let me get this straight.” Jazz pinched the bridge of her nose as she stood next to the lab’s stairs. “You went into an alternate dimension, a dimension filled with these zombie robot things, using only one tree branch to keep the portal from trapping you forever, all to rescue this rusty thing?”
“Not specifically-“
“And you want me to hide it from Mom and Dad, when we’re sitting like ducks in their lab?”
Danny’s one hand scrubbing the rust off with a wire brush paused. “Sam and Tucker set up a radio station that broadcasts fake ghost reports all over town, and hacked into the RV. Trust me, our parents are not coming back any time tonight.”
“I’m not just talking about tonight, little bro. It’s pretty hard just keeping the ghost secret.”
“Well, if we tell them about the robot, then we’ll need to tell them where we got it.” Danny turned to face his sister. “But aren’t you excited about this?”
“Danny,” Jazz rolled her eyes, and walked a little closer to where she could see the robot’s face. Her brother had done a good job clearing up that part, revealing a rather feminine white-and-blue colour scheme underneath all the rust, with two pigtails for hair. “Futuristic robot from an alternate dimension? Sign me up, but we still do have to be practical about this.”
“What do you mean?” Danny was putting hard work into scouring the arms of rust.
“What if the robot has a low AI, for example?” Jazz pressed. “It could be no more advanced than our current technology. We can’t tell it to stay away from Mom and Dad. Or it might not start up at all, and that’s a lot of work wasted.”
“Should we try and fire it up now?” Danny suggested. “See what it does- I mean, if it starts?”
“Certainly worth a shot, if Tucker can’t come tonight.” Jazz fished out two batteries from the case they had collected.
Danny finished up on the arms and stepped back to admire his handiwork. Then he accepted the batteries, skipped over to the back of the robot and opened the panel. Jazz watched as he knelt down and began fiddling around with the power.
“You ready, Jazz?” Her little brother called from behind the robot. Jazz couldn’t help but grin.
“You did a really nice job with the rust. The top part looks brand new.”
“Ready?”
“Fire it up!” After years of living in the Fenton household, Jazz instinctively stepped back from the robot.
As soon as Danny inserted the batteries, the robot jolted, eyes flying wide open. Binary code flashed across the eyes at an unreadable speed, and in the centre of both a red number popped up.
0%.
Danny rushed over to Jazz’s side. “What do you think’s happening?”
10%. 20%.
“It’s working, little bro.” A smile crept across her face.
50%. 75%.
“What’d-ya think will happen when it reaches a hundred?”
90%. 97%
“I don’t know.”
100%.
The numbers flashing in the robot’s eyes switched into more eye-like black pupils. Her peaceful facial expression instantly switched into one of absolute horror. “Just go, Tuck! Just-“
She stopped mid-sentence, looking around the room with a sort of dumb confusion. “Wait a minute... where am I? What happened to my legs?”
Danny cleared his throat, and the robot instantly stuck one of her hands in his direction. Half of the arm partially detached and from the opening emerged a laser-like gun almost as tall as Danny himself.
The robot seemed unable to stand up, but she was perfectly capable of a burning glare from the floor. “I don’t know who you two are, but you’d better tell me where my friends are right now!”
“Your friends?” Danny squeaked. She was certainly operational.
“Brad, Tuck and Sheldon.” The robot growled. “If you’ve done anything to them, I’ll blow you and your silly little haircut into next week!”
“Hey!” Danny recovered from his initial shock. “This is not a silly-“
Before her little brother could exasperate the situation, Jazz stepped in between them and placed a slightly shaking hand on the top of the gun. “Can we all just calm down for a second? We don’t know who your friends are... miss...?”
“It’s Jenny.” The robot did not stop glaring daggers at the two of them, but she did retract her gun. “Jenny Wakeman.”
Jazz tried for a smile. “That’s cool. My name is Jazz, and this is my brother Danny.”
Danny waved at the robot, but after a few moments of unresponsiveness the gesture awkwardly trailed off.
Another silent second passed and he leaned back to whisper in Jazz’s ear. “Hey, do you think she’s okay?”
Jazz knelt down and tapped Jenny’s shoulder. The robot tilted and fell onto her side, and a certain annoying beeping started up again.
“She ran out of batteries.” Jazz rolled her eyes. “I feel like my dad designed this; who in their right mind would use such tiny power cells to power a six foot robot?”
“Good question.” Danny frowned. “Anyway, I’m not entirely sure I want to power it up again.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because it pointed a giant gun at my face?”
“I don’t know, little bro.” Jazz shrugged. “She looked pretty confused... It seems those batteries last ran out at a pretty crucial moment.”
Danny picked up the wire brush. “Still, I’m going to get the rest of the rust out before we do anything else.”
“Good idea.” Jazz began to head up the stairs. “If you don’t need any help from me, I’m going to get a drink of water.”
Her little brother seemed to have it pretty covered, so Jazz took fifteen or so minutes to go upstairs and get sorted in her head all the things to (and to not) mention to a confused robot with only a minute or so of battery life. As one can imagine, this was not exactly something this particular Fenton had learned in Psychology so the thought process took a little longer than usual.
When she returned, Danny was ready to power Jenny back up. Besides the unavoidably large amount of scratches in the blue paint, she looked like a new robot entirely.
A robot that seemed perfectly capable of thinking, feeling and pulling a gun on a human, even if it was thought to be in defence.
“Real AI,” Jazz murmured. “It seems the person who built her didn’t read Asimov.”
“Are you ready, Jazz?” Danny had the two batteries ready in his hand.
Jazz shrugged off the feeling; she hadn’t seen anything to really indicate they were in any sort of danger from turning the robot back on. “Ready!”
Danny replaced the batteries, and once again Jenny rebooted. She scratched her head, looking over at the two siblings.
“Whoa, I think I short circuited. What happened?”
Danny opened his mouth, but Jazz gently shoved him to the side. “What’s happening is that you’re running on really tiny batteries that only last for a minute. Do you have some sort of main power source?”
“Oh, that’s right!” Jenny snapped her mechanical fingers. “When we fell in the ocean, the salt water corroded my primary battery. I had my auxiliary power on but that must have exhausted.”
“That makes sense.” Jazz nodded.
“I could charge my auxiliary, but I’d need to find somebody who could repair my main one.” Jenny stood up, scrunching her hands and bending her knees. Though they had been cleared of rust they still created the most awful creaking sound. “Am I malfunctioning, or weren’t my legs covered in rust a second ago?”
Danny raised his hand a little. “Uh... that was me. Who got the rust off, I mean.”
“Wow, thanks!” Jenny’s face lifted up in a grin. “That must have taken you ages.”
“It’s... um, no problem.” The conversation, however, was cut short by the sound of a car pulling up to the house.
“Mom and Dad!” The two siblings stared at each other in horror, then at Jenny. She frowned.
“Wait, is this a pro-?” It was at that moment that she went limp and faceplanted her head into the middle of the lab floor.

Chapter Text

“You’re telling me, that you found XJ-9 - the XJ-9 - but you let her escape?!”
A rather scared, bug-like droid stepped back a few paces from Smytus’ wrath. “I’m deeply s-sorry, commander.”
“Sorry? Sorry?!” Smytus turned to face the bug. “You’d better have a very good excuse, or I’ll show you just what I think of your ‘sorry’!”
“I would have done something, but there was a boy with her!” The bug tried to explain.
“A human boy stopped you?”
“No, no!” The bug held out his four hands in a pacifying gesture. “You’re going to think I’m malfunctioning but... the boy was flying. And then he disappeared into a portal.”
Smytus’ eyebrows drooped. “You’re malfunctioning. Don’t waste my time.”
“Look at the footage yourself!”
With a sigh, the robot turned to a large screen and switched it on, where they could see a white-haired boy in a black jumpsuit flying high above an island, carrying the rusted frame of XJ-9 in his hands. The camera followed this boy to see him touch down next to what appeared to be a swirling green rip in space time continuum. After a moment, the boy jumped through but the portal remained open, half a branch skewered through the middle.
The robotic bug kept glancing worriedly at Smytus’ astonished expression. “As-as you can see, it looks crazy but my optical recorders don’t lie.”
The commander did not say a word.
“So, I’m free to leave?” The bug began backing away. “I’ll just report this to Empress Vexus and-“
Suddenly, Smytus reached out and grabbed the robotic bug by the top of his head. “I don’t think our little Empress need be troubled with such a small thing as this.”
Reaching under the wings, he located a knob and turned it to factory settings. Then he set the oblivious robot back down on the floor, where it looked at him expectantly.
“Fetch my scouting ship.” Smytus ordered, and the bug walked off to do his bidding. He turned back to the screen, grinning at the open portal. “The Ghost Zone, eh? It’s been a while.”

~Line Break~

Danny stared worriedly at the damage Jenny’s head caused when she smashed it into the floor. “Mom and Dad are going to kill me for that.”
“Oh yeah?” Jazz hissed. “I’m pretty sure our parents are going to be more worried about the strange robot sitting in their lab. Weren’t Sam and Tucker supposed to be distracting them?”
“Yeah, they were.” There was the sound of a door opening. “Now what?”
Shouts were heard from upstairs. “Danny-boy! Princess! We’re-”
“Shhhh, Jack! It’s the middle of the night.”
Jazz looked frantically around the room. “Um, put Jenny over there! Right by the side of the stairs.”
She watched as her brother tugged at the robot’s frame. “It’s-it’s no use. I’ll need to go ghost if I want to move her.”
Jazz saw the lab door swing open, so she acted quickly and popped two new batteries into the back panel. The beeping sound that she worried would give them away stopped.
Maddie was the first one down the stairs. Thankfully, she walked right past the three of them without noticing and began sorting through the various prototypes on a shelf. The two siblings simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief.
That was when Jenny sat up with the most awful creak. “Wha-“
Danny slapped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late. The two of them quickly stood in front of the robot as Maddie turned and saw them.
“Jazz? Danny?” Maddie frowned. “What are you doing down here? I know it’s the weekend, but it really is rather late.”
Danny’s smile grew painful as Jenny picked herself up to a standing position in a series of squeaks, creaks and groans. “Nothing. Just, uh...”
“Sitting in the lab!” Jazz offered. “I mean, we really like... sitting in the lab.”
Maddie blinked. “Okay, then. I mean, if you two want to sit in the lab then I guess I can’t stop you.”
“Actually, we’re just leaving.” Jazz and Danny began sidestepping up the stairs and towards the door, trying to shield a noisy robot from view.
“Goodnight, then?” Maddie’s poor mind didn’t entirely know what to make of what was happening. “Kids, what’s that squeaking-“
Slam. Danny, Jazz and Jenny were on the other side of the lab door, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Can you guys tell me why we’re hiding from your mom, again?” Jenny asked, understandably perplexed. “She seemed pretty nice.”
“It’s a long story.” Jazz sighed. The robot opened her mouth to demand further explanation but at that moment footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs and she quickly dived towards the living room. The siblings followed just in time to avoid having to explain themselves to their father.
“Jenny!” Jack boomed, and the three froze in astonishment. “Jenny, Jenny, won’t you come along with me!”
Danny frowned. “I think he’s singing.”
Jenny listened. “...My song recognition software doesn’t recognise the lyrics, but then again, it doesn’t register Mom’s singing either.”
“What was that?” Jack quit his rather loud rendition to look around the corner, but by that time Danny, Jazz and the robot had already gone.
“Phew, that was close.” Jenny spoke as they reached the top of the stairs. “Where to now?”
“My room-” Danny and Jazz started.
“I mean, we can go to your room if you want, little bro.”
“No, no! I don’t mind if she stays in your room.”
“Really, Danny. After you.”
“After you! Look, we’ll go to your room.”
“No, let’s go to your room!” Danny crossed his arms.
“Uh, guys?” Jenny started. She could see her power meter going down by the second.
“Danny, that’s ridiculous. I really don’t mind if we go to your room.”
“Why don’t you want to go to your room?”
“I’m okay with that. Just-“
Unfortunately, their very important and interesting argument was cut short by Jenny once again powering off and smashing into the floor. This floor, however, was considerably weaker than the one in the lab and immediately buckled from the force, causing Jenny to fall through and right onto the kitchen table.
Jazz facepalmed. Beside her, Danny switched into his ghost form.
Jack quickly ran over to the crash site, but he didn’t have much time to consider what had just happened. At that moment, Danny Phantom jumped down from the hole in the ceiling right in front of his face.
“Hey, Da- I mean, Jack!” Danny waved. “You should totally chase after me and yell ‘Ghost!’ as loud as you can!”
“What the heck?” Jack grabbed a Fenton Blaster from seemingly nowhere, and began to chase after Danny. “I’ll tear you apart molecule by molecule, you filthy ghost!”
Jazz waited until the noise had died away before she ran back down the stairs. After a moment of attempting to lift the 600-pound robot off the floor, she gave up and instead waited for Danny to arrive back at the house.

Chapter Text

It was the fourth time that day Jenny had restated, and needless to say she was not keeping up very well. She opened her eyes, her systems detecting a plug had been inserted into her back panel and had charged her auxiliary power up to full. She stared around at what appeared to be an entirely new location, light streaming from the window. It looked to be a bedroom, with a bed at one end and a desk with a teddy bear on top next to the door.
“Good morning!” The human with the long orange hair was sitting to the side of her.
“Oh! Good morning!” Jenny winced as the hand she was waving with creaked and complained with every movement; when was the last time she’d oiled her joints? “Jazz... right?”
Jazz nodded. “Yep, and this is my room... in case you were confused or something.”
“Cool! But, how did you get me up here?” Jenny ran a quick systems check on her memory files and found no correlations with this room. “Did you get your dad to move me or something?”
“Um, Danny helped?”
That kid with the stick arms? Jenny was impressed. “Wow. He’s stronger than he looks. Where is Danny, anyway?”
“Busy.” From the window behind Jazz came an awful crashing noise. “Busy... driving?”
“Oh, okay.” Jenny made a mental note not to get in the car with Danny. “Hey, do you know how far away it is to Tremorton?”
Jazz stared. “Tremorton? Where’s that?”
“It’s where I live. Big faultline just in front of the entrance, usually being invaded by aliens most days?”
Jenny’s facial expression software detected no emotion in her acquaintance’s face, so she decided on a no.
“Wow, you guys must live really far away, then.” She turned one of her pigtails into a satellite dish. “Let me just get the coordinates-“
“I don’t think you’ll find Tremorton on the maps.” Jazz’s face was still blank, but her slow and deliberate tone prompted Jenny to stop what she was doing.
“Why? There’s any number of satellites I can contact right now.”
There was another dull boom from outside. “Well... Danny found you in an alternate dimension when he was out, and... yeah.”
Jenny ran the definitions through in her database. An alternate dimension is ‘a universe hypothesised in some models to exist along with one’s own universe, possibly obeying different physical lays and having the potential for the transfer of information between universes’.
“Um.” Jenny’s eyes blinked with a quiet clanking sound and she retracted her satellite dish. “So, no Tremorton?”
“Not that I’ve heard of.”
“Then I’ve gotta get back!” Jenny stood up suddenly with a loud squeak, letting the charging wire unplug on its own. “I wonder what happened while I was out. Wait, how long was I out on that island?”
“Jenn-“
“That heavy rust, this creaking in my joints; it all makes sense now!” Jenny slapped a hand against her face, her figurative blood running cold. “I must have been out for years! What’s happened to Mom, Brad- Tuck! Oh god, Tuck!”
“Calm down!” Jazz jumped up, only to be grabbed by two short-circuiting metal hands.
“No, this is serious! Like, alien invasion serious!” Jenny didn’t register in her panic that she was lifting Jazz a good few inches off the floor. “You gotta get me back to Tremorton!”
Jazz struggled to free herself. “Put me down! It’s not as easy as that!”
“Why? Don’t you have some sort of machine you built?”
“No!” Jazz snapped. “Natural portals in the Ghost Zone lead to some weird places. Danny must have found one that led to your dimension, and if it’s closed then there’s no telling how long it’ll take for another one to appear!”
Jenny froze, these words registering in her audio systems. The first part with Ghost Zone and portals made little sense, but the message was clear in the second. “You mean... there’s no way back?”
Jazz spoke sharply. “If it’s closed, then no. Now, could you let go of me?”
“But-but-but... there has to be some way.” Jenny’s fingers released their grip on Jazz’s shoulders and her arms creaked to her sides. “I can’t be stuck here.”
Jazz was huffily brushing herself off, but upon seeing her companion’s dejected face she adopted a very different approach.
Jenny became aware of a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, don’t give up hope yet! Danny’s more of an expert than me on the Ghost Zone, and he was the one who went into your dimension. Maybe he didn’t close it, or-or if he did, he’ll know an alternate route!”
There was another smash from outside, the cause of which was either getting louder... or closer. “Well, what are we waiting for? Parallel parking can wait; we need to get me back now!”
Jazz scratched the side of her head, speaking in a voice that did not sit well with Jenny’s software. “Well, about that...”
“You’re not seriously going to make me wait for his crashing lesson to be over, are you?”
“It’s a very... special driving lesson!” Jazz was quickly reddening. She flinched when another not-so-distant boom reached her ears. “Dad’s, um, teaching him how to avoid suicidal pheasants?”
Jenny crossed her arms. “Okay, I admit my lie detection software is a little out of date, but this is just insulting. If he’s not driving, then what is he doing that’s so important?”
“Uh-“
“And, come to think of it, why are you hiding me from your parents?” Rising up to her full six-foot height, Jenny easily towered over Jazz.
Jazz opened her mouth, but before she could incriminate herself any further an awfully loud smashing sound came from right out the window, followed by an animalistic screech.
Jenny frowned, and walked past Jazz to look out the window. “That doesn’t sound like any sort of driving to me! What’s going-“
That was when her optical circuits picked up what looked to be a white-haired boy flying straight towards the window, closely followed by some white, squid-like animal. As soon as she saw this, she quickly jumped away.
Not a moment too soon. Jenny turned her head 180 degrees to watch a giant squid smash through the wall and flatten the boy against the ground. Its red eye spotted Jazz and one tentacle reached out to grab her.
Now, Jenny may have had no idea what was going on, but it would be a cold day in silicone hell before she stood by and watched somebody get hurt. Producing a large circular saw from her right arm, she stepped forwards and sheared the attacking tentacle right off. The squid made a horrible screeching sound before it turned its rear to face her.
“Not a smart idea, Squidward!” Jenny advanced on the squid with her circular saw, but before she could strike again she was squirted by a massive amount of an inky black substance. Jenny wiped off her visor just in time to see the thing escape through the hole it came from.
It got away! Jenny returned her body back to normal and was somewhat surprised when the mechanical movement wasn’t accompanied by the annoying creaking and screeching of her ungreased joints that she had gotten used to. Either that squid squirted oil instead of the expected ink, or that ink worked as a perfectly good lubricant.
It made no sense, yes, but who was a machine to complain?
“What was that?” Jenny frowned as Jazz picked her way over to a white-haired figure lying on the floor. “And why don’t you try telling the truth this time.”
“Alright, alright!” Jazz growled. “No need for the snark. You said that your town gets a lot of alien attacks?”
“Yeah.” Jenny cast an eye around the room; if she wasn’t so miffed about the lying, she might have offered to clean up. “And evil scientists. And petty crime. Once in a while I destroy some national monument or whatever, but that’s by accident.”
Beside Jazz, the boy with the white hair sat up. “Right. Well, you have alien attacks, we have ghost attacks.”
“Ghost attacks?” Jenny was sceptical. “You get attacked by giant ghostly squids?”
“Not just squids!” The white haired boy spoke up, surprising Jenny. “We get ghosts that want to take over the world. And the Box Ghost. Once in a while I blow something up, but that’s by accident.”
Running a facial recognition scan on the white-haired boy’s face, Jenny found a 90% correlation between his features and Danny’s. That would have answered her pending question perfectly if she didn’t distinctly remember that Danny had dark hair and blue eyes.
“Uh... who are you?”
“You don’t remember me from yesterday?” Two rings appeared around the white-haired ghost’s waist, transforming him from a mysterious glowing figure to the somewhat-familiar teenager from last night. “Remember? Danny?”
Jenny stared, the sudden change as unexpected as a 2 showing up in her binary code.
“Uhhh... hello?” Danny leaned towards his sister. “You didn’t tell her yet?”
“Was I supposed to?”
At this remark, Jenny found her voice. “You lied to me again?”
Before Jazz could offer a reply, Danny spoke up. “Whoa, whoa! We’ve got half an hour or so before Tucker gets here; why don’t we go into my room and start things over from the bottom?”
Danny hesitated, wrinkling his nose. “Because, you know. It smells of oil in here... I thought squids squirted ink?”

Chapter Text

Smytus decided to swing by Tremorton en route to the portal. Or, more accurately, the large nuclear plant situated right in between the widest part of the fault line. Tremorton itself had been obliterated in the Second Intergalactic War between the Earth and the forces of the Cluster.
Without XJ-9 to defend, it had been a quick victory.
“Any reports from the plant?” Smytus leaned back in his commander’s chair, speaking to nobody in particular. Soon enough, however, one of his bug minions answered him.
“Power generation at super optimal levels. Human labour continues to be extremely effective, sir.” The bug’s wire wings buzzed a little. “Shall I submit these results to the empress?”
The commander held up a hand, looking out from the front of the ship as they passed over a bare grassland. “Hold your signal. Tell the Empress... the nuclear plant is running at average levels.”
“Sir-“
Smytus turned his chair to face the bug, grinning deviously. “I suppose you may have forgotten that I, not Empress Vexus, am the head of the military?”
“Sir!” The bug pointed a trembling hand at the front of the ship. Smytus paid no heed.
“Why, you insubordinate little drone!” Rising to his full height, the commander stabbed a finger at the bug. “I will not tolerate this disobedience on such an important mission. You will-“
That was when alarms started blaring, and other soldiers began shouting in a confused daze. Smytus pushed past the bug he was ordering to check on the monitor.
“What is the meaning of this panic?!” One red dot was rapidly approaching from the right.
“Sir, our signals are detecting a rebel ship coming in to attack.” The bug explained hurriedly. “In our scout ship, we may be in serious danger; I recommend to fire up our superior engines and blast out of here before they jeopardise our mission!“
“Nonsense.” Smytus growled, placing his hands on his hips. “I refuse to run from a ragtag group of humans fighting a lost cause. Cut the engines.”
With a moment of hesitation, the mechanical bug pulled a lever down, and the ship began to slow. The tension was high as they turned to face... what appeared to be a piddly craft designed as a ladybug.
Smytus laughed out loud. “What were the humans planning to use this junk for, a picnic on the moon? Fire the blaster cannon!”
“Sir, we are detecting a boarding-“
“Has everybody forgotten who the commander is? Fire the blaster cannon, now!”
“Smytus,” A familiar female voice sounded from Smytus’ chair. “What a pleasant surprise. I certainly didn’t expect to see you here!”
“The great Norene Wakeman.” Smytus growled, seeing the yellow-coated scientist turn the chair to face him, a blaster in hand. “You’ve gotten older since I last saw you.”
“Since you and your Cluster minions destroyed my youth machine, I’m afraid I’ve had to make do!” Nora snapped. “Now, you know what we want.”
“If you’re looking for XJ-9, then I’m afraid you’re wiring up the wrong fuse!” Smytus grinned triumphantly, crossing his arms. “She isn’t on this ship, and you aren’t going anywhere. Guards, fire!”
Nora cast a crafty grin around the small circular room as the twenty Cluster bugs lined up to fire. With one strong push, she spun the metallic chair she was sitting on at an incredibly fast speed just as the blasters went off; this caused all of the shots coming towards her to ricochet off of the tall head rest and back at the Cluster soldiers. Smytus watched in outrage as his drones fell before him, and deflected a laser coming towards him with the back of his hand.
“Waaakeman!” The commander bellowed, stomping up to the chair as it began to slow. Nora, thoroughly dizzy from the stunt she had just pulled, could not defend herself as Smytus grabbed her by the front of her yellow coat.
“Surrender...” The old scientist puffed, out of breath. “Your Cluster drones... they’re all...”
“Oh, you silly human.” Smytus snarled. “You think that will stop me, the Destroyer of Worlds? While your efforts have caused a slight... setback, I assure you that you will pay for this much more than the Cluster will.”
Nora’s eyes narrowed from behind her red glasses. “You won’t be getting any information from me, Smytus!”
“Information?” At this, the commander laughed. “Don’t kid yourself, Wakeman. In the past you might have been of use to the Cluster, but you’re nothing but an old rebel now.”
“But-“ Nora’s eyes grew wide as Smytus approached a window. “But-but, you can’t be serious! This is clearly an intimidation tactic, and I can’t be fooled.”
The commander shrugged. “Whatever makes you feel better, human. Should’ve retired like a normal biological life form when you had the chance.”
Nora did not respond; with an unreadable expression on her face she instead ripped a key off a band around her neck, pulled her right sleeve a little up and inserted this key into a bracelet secured to her wrist. She turned the key, and immediately her body went limp, her head fell forwards and her glasses fell and smashed on the floor.
With little ceremony, Smytus lifted Nora up and smashed her through the window, soon losing sight of her as she fell far to the ground.
The ladybug ship tilted and chased after the scientist, much to the commander’s displeasure. With a sadistic grin, Smytus stalked over to the weapons control, shoved the debris from a fallen drone out of the way and aimed the scout ship’s rather limited weaponry at the rebels. The sole blaster cannon nevertheless managed to tear a large hole in the top of the ladybug, and with black smoke billowing out it corkscrewed down to the ground below and blew up in a most satisfying fashion.
Smytus crossed his arms, his middle-tooth-missing grin staring out over the wreckage. “Brilliant; with that Wakeman gone the rebels will finally stop cranking out weird inventions that allow them to keep slipping from the Cluster’s grasp. Now, will somebody tell the Empress that-“
Turning around, the commander saw what remained of his soldiers and quickly shut up. He looked around at the empty flight control, the vacant navigation panel, the unstaffed beaming crew station; even for a small scout ship, it was no solo ride. The only option that seemed available to Smytus was to steer the ship slowly home and hope for the best.
But that would be a waste of power, and the commander needed all of that he could get. It was a long way back to his Earth palace yet only a short trip across an ocean to his location.
Perhaps there was a way to make this work.

~Line Break~

“Wait a minute,” Jenny’s eyebrow raised with a mechanical whirr. “If that thing you just said is true, then how did the Box Ghost and the Lunch Lady make-“
“Hey, look, there’s Tucker!” Danny abruptly stood up, interrupting Jenny. “We’ll, uh, talk about the ghost bees later.”
Jenny shot a snide look at Jazz as she stood up to follow. “Finally, something honest.” Jazz crossed her arms and stayed put in her room, reminding herself she was above this petty misunderstanding whilst simultaneously fighting the urge to blow a raspberry at the back of her metal head.
Danny happily walked down the stairs and opened the door just as it began to ring. A very confused Tucker was standing on the other side.
“Dude, I appreciate the enthusiasm and all, but were you really just standing around and waiting for me to call?”
“I saw your car.” Danny quickly ushered his friend in and shut the door from any nosy neighbours. “Now, I’d like you to meet someone.”
“Oh, yeah?” Tucker walked forwards without looking where he was going. “I heard you found some robot thing. Sounds awesome! Can it move on its own? Can it solve simple math problems? Could it possibly-“
That was the point at which Tucker ran into something hard and metal, causing him to fall down on the ground. He looked up in amazement as a six-foot tall Jenny gave him a friendly wave.
“Hello! Tucker, is it? Nice to meet you! I know a little guy named Tuck; he’s my best friend!”
“-speak...” Tucker trailed off into stunned silence, prompting Danny to step forward.
“Tucker’s a robotics expert, aren’t you?” Danny nudged his friend. “He can help you with your power problem.”
Jenny checked her auxiliary levels. “And just in time. Unless I’m resting on a sunny beach all day, my backup power only lasts a few hours!”
“Haha, yeah, sure...” Tucker grabbed his friend’s hand. “Can I talk to you for a second, dude?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
Tucker lowered his voice. “When you told me you found a robot with a power problem, I assumed you meant, you know, a robot.”
Danny turned to glance at Jenny, who smiled obliviously. “And Jenny isn’t a robot because...”
“Yeah, she’s a robot.” Tucker agreed. “But when you say ‘robot’, dude, I think about those simple little circuit boards we make in robotics club, not Terminator over there!”
Jenny walked over, causing Tucker to shut up fast. “Hey, guys! Is there a problem?”
“Uh, there is a little bit of a problem.” Danny started to explain. “Tucker doesn’t think he can repair your main power.”
“He doesn’t?”
“No, sorry.” Tucker crossed his arms. “But what about you? Can you repair yourself?”
“Usually I can, but I’m always offline whenever my main power is being fixed.” Jenny blinked, her mechanical eyelids hitting each other with a light clang. “Surely there’s somebody around who could help?”
Before either of them could answer her question, Danny let out a sudden gasp and what looked to be some strange blueish smoke trailed out of his mouth.
“Wait, what was that?” Jenny’s optical lenses had never seen anything quite like it. “Are you sick or something?”
Danny’s worried frown turned into a deadly glare. “No, but somebody will be very quickly.”
With that unhelpful explanation, he transformed back into his weird white-haired form and phased through the roof.
“Wait a minute!” Forgetting her auxiliary power was way down, she ran to the front door, stepped outside and proceeded to chase after him, a small part of her code wondering if this intangibility power could be programmed.
Jenny touched down on the roof. “Danny?” She called. “Danny, where are you? What’s going-“
A shout sounded from behind her, and she turned just in time to see Danny soaring up in the sky, flailing his arms as he was flung far into the horizon. Lowering her eyes, Jenny quickly located the culprit.

It looked to be a robot, but at the same time like nothing she had ever seen before. A fiery green mohawk ran up the glowing figure’s thick neck to the top of his head, and one of their broad shoulders sported a large grey pad. A black tank-top, a belt filled with useful-looking gadgets and a skull necklace finished off the intimidating look.
But Jenny was never one to be easily intimidated. Her stomping footsteps causing slight cracks on the roof she walked on, she advanced on the glowing robot figure.

Chapter Text

“And who is this?” The glowing robot figure stroked a small fiery goatee. “You don’t look like a human, but I doubt you are a ghost.”
His question was soon answered as Jenny pulled out a large gun from one of her mechanical arms. “Look, buddy. I don’t know who you are, but you just punched my one chance at getting back to Tremorton!”
“A robot?” The glowing mechanical figure frowned. “Impressive. I had no idea AI had gotten so good in the past few years.”
“You’re a pretty good example of low AI yourself.” Jenny shot back, but then she spotted her power levels were at a grand total of ten percent. “Uhhh... anyway, you don’t want to fight me. Scram!”
“You think I’m a robot?” The glowing robot-like person laughed. “No. I am Skulker, the Ghost Zone’s greatest hunter. Usually the prizes I hunt are ghosts, but you have proven yourself-“
“Can it!” With one shot from her gun, Skulker was sent crashing into the neighbour’s chimney. Jenny hoped that she could just leave the fight there and recharge, but then the mechanical ghost sat up with a look of murder in his eyes.
Best make this quick.
Retracting her gun to make room for two nightmarishly large circular saws, Jenny pushed off the roof up into the air, and came bearing down on Skulker’s position like a mechanical angel of death. She impacted the roof with her eyes shut tight, causing a cracking crater underneath her stainless steel feet whilst simultaneously shearing through several layers of thick brick and mortar like soft butter with her saws.
“Quite an impressive display, robot girl.” Jenny’s eyes opened in surprise at the sound of Skulker’s voice, and she looked down to see him lying perfectly intact on what remained of the roof. Perhaps the only thing that had changed was a slight blueish tone to his form. “Technus could program you into quite the human fighter.”
“How did you-?” Jenny balled a fist and punched at her opponent’s face, but found it merely went right through him. She swung again and again, to no avail as Skulker sat up and somewhat leisurely helped himself onto his feet. “You can’t just turn intangible! That’s not a fair fight!”
“Good thing I don’t fight fair, then.” With that, the still intangible Skulker whipped out a pair of glowing green handcuffs and chained her wrists together. “Only ectoplasm can hurt a ghost, rookie.”
Jenny’s metallic eyebrows drooped as Skulker attempted to lead her away. So her hand would just go through him at this moment, but he could drag her anywhere he wanted? These ghost powers were like a cheater in a video game; no matter what weapons she brought out, the fight was over before it had even begun. If only she had some of this ectoplasm they spoke of!
But wait... her eyes couldn’t help but notice the handcuffs she was wearing. They glowed like a ghost, and had the same colour as Skulker’s hair and eyes. Was this ectoplasm?
She decided to take a chance, and suddenly ripped her hands away from Skulker’s grasp. As he turned around to face her, she looped the green chain in between the cuffs over his broad neck and pulled forwards, bringing the intangible ghost down to the floor before he could react.
So this was ectoplasm! With a smug grin, Jenny detached one of her hands and let the cuff slide off, swinging the manacles above her head like a numchuck.
Skulker jumped up. “How did you-“
He was interrupted by Jenny striking the side of his neck with the handcuffs. The normally harmless restraints were like a sledgehammer in her hands, and thus Skulker’s head cleanly separated from his body with not so much as a spark. The body powered down and fell forwards, and the head fell upside-down in front of her, two green legs comically wiggling up in the air.
“Huh?” Jenny reached down and picked the little guy out of the bottom of Skulker’s head. “Who are you?”
A very squeaky voice answered her. “I am Skulker, the greatest ghost hunter in the Ghost Zone! You will pay for the destruction of my suit!”
Jenny couldn’t help but grin. “Aww! If you were just a little more mechanical and said ‘surrender’ all the time, I’d almost say you were Killgore!”
“I will defeat you, suit or no!” Skulker waved his tiny fists in the air. “This sentence is false! This sentence is false!”
“Wait,” Jenny blinked. “If it’s true that that sentence is false, then how-“
They were interrupted, however, by Danny touching down on the rooftop, one of his hands holding a ball of ecto-energy.
“Don’t worry, Jenny! I’ll save-“ That was when he noticed Skulker’s rather mangled frame lying still on the rooftop, and Skulker himself in her hand. “-you?”
“Thanks, Danny! But I got it.” She positioned the tiny figure of Skulker closer to her face. “Now, what are we going to do with you?”
Skulker, however, merely grinned and adopted a blueish tinge to his green skin. A second too late, Jenny realised what was going on and tried to grab the tiny ghost, but he slipped out of her grasp.
“You win this time!” He squeaked. “But this won’t be the last you see of me! Next time, I’ll bring a techy friend of mine who I know is just dying to see you!”
“Aren’t ghosts already dead?”
Skulker was about to respond when Danny made a lunging grab for the tiny hunter. He quickly flew away, heading straight for the bottom of Fentonworks.
“He got away!” Danny banged his fist on the concrete once before standing back up.
Jenny activated the rockets in her pigtails. “Should we chase after- oohhh...“
“Are you okay?” Jenny wobbled a little where she stood.
“Yeah... just, two percent power.” She rolled her eyes with a mechanical whirr. “After one stinkin’ fight. I need to get Mom to fix it, but she’s in another dimension, of course.”
“Mom?“ Danny admittedly did not excel in biology, but even his limited skills were detecting a discrepancy here.
“Yeah, my Mom.”
“Oh, um... okay.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, we should probably get you charged back up. After that, find a way to get you back to Tremorton- say, if only we had some sort of ex-machia map that would magically take us to wherever we wanted to go.”
Jenny raised an eyebrow as the two of them rocketed down to the front door. “Not to break the fourth wall or anything, but you sound like you’re foreshadowing.”
“The Infi-map!” Danny snapped his fingers. “Come on, Jenny; I know how to get you back now!”
Back on the ruined roof, two young-ish children had propped a ladder up on the side of the building and climbed on top.
“Aww...” The smaller of the pair was saying. “We just missed Danny Phantom and his cool-looking robot.”
The other spoke up. “Don’t worry, Nat! We still have the pictures, which means we can expose them to the press and have them on the front cover of Amitee Occurrences by tomorrow!”
A crack appeared on the concrete below as the taller girl took a picture of the destruction.
“Piper, I don’t think it’s safe!” Nat took a step back. Piper, on the other hand, was unfazed.
“This thing held a robot. I’m pretty sure I’m not as heavy as-“
That was the moment when the entire roof caved in, just missing Nat.
“Piper!”
“I’m okay, Nat! And so’s the cam-“
A new voice from below the roof entered the conversation. “Hey, so you were the kids makin’ my bunions burn with yer tahm-foolery on the roof! Now get, ‘fore I call the cops!”

Chapter Text

“Robot on the loose?” Jenny had a sudden desire to use her eye lasers on this newspaper as she sat in the Spectre Speeder. “If you see this robot, call your local law enforcement branch for a SWAT team to be sent out immediately?”
Jazz spoke up. “Well, they do have a pretty good shot of you sawing off a roof.”
“Somehow they didn’t also take a picture of the ghost I was attacking.” Jenny suddenly brightened up. “Oh, cool! You guys still have the police instead of Skyway Patrol? We learned about what happened in 2016... just have a bunker ready and you should be fine!”
Danny and Jazz exchanged glances. “Heh, we’ll be sure to do that...” Danny cleared his throat. “Anyway, we’re here at the Far Frozen.”
Jenny looked out of the window to see an icy island suspended in the creepy void of the Ghost Zone. “So... what are we doing down there?”
Standing up from his seat, Danny went ghost. “Well, there’s a guy there called Frostbite, who has this map that can lead to anywhere from anywhere in the Ghost Zone. I can borrow it any time I like.”
“Oh, cool!”
“You guys stay here.” Danny ordered. “If Frostbite meets anybody new he tends to throw some giant festival and we’d be stuck here till school tomorrow.”
Jazz gave a little wave. “No worries, little bro. I’ll make sure Jenny doesn’t blow anything up.”
Jenny felt her robotic eyebrows crank into a frown. As soon as Danny left, she turned to the orange-haired teenager.
“Is that supposed to mean something, Jazz? Because I have my self destruct button well covered, thank you very much.”
“No. It was just a joke.”
“Hmph.”With a mechanical whirr, her head snapped back to a neutral position. If she had had an oil can with her at this point, she would almost certainly have crushed it with her hands.
Jazz crossed her arms. “Are you still angry with me or something? What’s the big deal?”
“You know what you did.”
“Do you mean when I lied to you?” She rolled her eyes. “What are you, five? I lie sometimes. It’s necessary.”
Probably not the best time for Jenny to mention that she was indeed built five years ago... as far as she could remember. “But you lied to my face a bunch of times about a bunch of stupid stuff! What did you think I was going to do with the whole ghost business, blow a fuse?”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?” Jenny demanded. Jazz pinched the bridge of her nose with two delicate fingers.
“Look, I know Danny was actually pretty cool about the whole Phantom thing with you,” She started. “But back in Amity Park only his friends and I know about it, and that’s how it should stay.”
Jenny raised a sceptical eyebrow, but said nothing. Her companion continued.
“You can probably tell that ghosts aren’t exactly the good guys. If the secret got out that Danny was one of them... well, our mom and dad are ghost hunters bent on destroying Danny Phantom, there’s this girl with this huge grudge trying to hunt him, and this government agency... it wouldn’t be good.”
The gravity of the situation was beginning to become apparent to Jenny. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t, which is why I don’t blame you.” Jazz extended a hand. “Should we just start over again?”
Jenny stared at the offered hand. She hesitated for a second before reaching out her own, and both robot and human shook on it.
“Hey, whad’ya know.” Jazz commented as she let go. “Peacebuilding strategies work on robots as well!”
“Wait...” Jenny’s frown returned to her face. “You were psyching me out?”
“That’s a harsh dysphemism, but- hey, what’s that ship over there?”
Jenny looked up and almost instantly her optical sensors locked onto a very familiar object. It was brown, shaped like a stereotypical UFO with four portholes looking out at the very top.
A Cluster scout! Without warning, Jenny grabbed the controls and gunned the accelerator.
“Whoa!” Jazz was thrown back into her seat. She immediately sat up and attempted to remove Jenny’s arms from the wheel but nothing short of Armegedroid could stop a robot this determined. “Stop! What are you doing!”
Jenny slowed as she neared the target. It appeared to have spotted her, because it had turned and was flying steadily towards her. “That’s no ordinary space ship. It’s the Cluster!”
“And this Cluster is important enough to ditch Danny and risk getting lost in the Ghost Zone because?”
“They’re from my world.” Jenny braced herself for the robotic ship to open fire, but a button on the panel in front of them began flashing. “What’s that?”
“Communications. I’m assuming it’s from this Cluster ship; should we take it?”
Jenny pressed the button, and instantly an all-too familiar voice drifted off from the speakers.
“XJ-9. The mystery is finally solved.”
“Smytus.” Jenny growled. “Listen, you overwelded pile of spare parts: you’re going to tell me how you got here before I turn your ship into scrap!”
Jazz scooted herself a little back in her seat.
“I have a better idea, XJ-9.” One could picture Smytus’ smug grin as he spoke. “You surrender to me, and I take you back peacefully to Emperor Vexus. There’s still a place for you on Cluster Prime.”
“Emperor Vexus?” Jenny snorted. “Ooh, scary. Forget it, Smytus; I’m not surrendering, so you’d better cough up how you got here before I make you.”
“I urge you to reconsider your decision.”
Jenny was about to let the commander of the Cluster know just how strong her stance on this decision was when Jazz pressed a silencer on the communications and spoke up.
“Perhaps you should surrender.”
“What?” Jenny’s Stupid-O-Meter jumped right out of the side of her head; she took a second to stuff it back in. “Don’t worry about this guy. Smytus is all talk. I can take whatever he’s throwing at me.”
“I’m sure you can, but if you let him take you he’d give you a ride right back to your dimension.”
“And what would happen to you? The Cluster enslaves humans.” Jenny shook her head, and with a shrug Jazz took her finger off the silencer.
“I’m waiting for my answer, miss XJ-9.”
Jenny pressed a scary-looking red button. “Consider this a no!”
Self destruct initiated. Self destruct will commence in T minus three hundred seconds.
“Uhhh...” Jenny’s cheeks turned an embarrassed blue as she looked at Jazz. “Whoops?”
Smytus, on the other hand, had not noticed their little predicament. “So be it. Firing the blaster cannon!”
A single long weapon emerged from the bottom of the space ship and fired right at the windshield. Both Jazz and Jenny braced for impact, but the deadly flash of light seemed to have dwindled into little more than a spark by the time it reached its mark.
“The single, small, short range blaster cannon, you mean?” Jenny smirked. A second later, Smytus’s communications cut and the ship appeared to be powering up. “We can’t let them get away!”
Self destruct will commence in T minus two hundred and forty seconds.
“I’ll handle that. Don’t press anything.” Jazz warned, before grabbing what appeared to be a joystick with a green button at the end of it. After moving it around a little she fired and hit the Cluster ship with an ectoplasmic laser right in the engines, causing a big plume of smoke and sparks. The white light that had been forming on the bottom as the ship powered up began to fade.
“Nice shot!” Jenny grinned.
“Thanks, Jenny. Perhaps we should go and investigate... before our ship blows up?”
“Good idea.” Before she opened the hatch, she paused. “Wait, can you breathe in the Ghost Zone?”
“If I couldn’t breathe, why would I suggest it?” Jazz retorted dryly, and so the two of them jumped out of the Spectre Speeder. Jenny took her companion’s hand and jetted over to the Cluster ship, where she proceeded to grab a segment of hull near the top and rip it clean off.
Jenny and Jazz jumped down into the hole, where a broad-shouldered green robot with a cape was cowering.
“Wait!” He spoke as the two advanced. “You don’t want to come any closer. I’m... armed! With, uh...”
Jenny stepped forwards and extended one of her hands forwards in a punch. She caught the commander in the face, damaging his central wiring system and causing him to black out. Then, she pulled out some blue rope from the centre of her palm and began tying him up to a spinning chair they saw in the middle of the room. When he was secure, she cut the rope and tied it up nicely to the back.
“There we go.” Jenny grinned. “We can bring him back and interrogate him back at your house.”
Jazz was about to say something, but that was the point when Danny Phantom phased through the ship, landing in front of the two of them.
“What were you guys doing?” He demanded. “Why did you suddenly drive off? Ad, uh, what’s this place?”
Jenny grimaced. “I’m sorry, Danny. But I saw this Cluster ship, and it was definitely worth a look! This Smytus guy here is going to tell me how to get back to Tremorton.”
“Danny,” Jazz asked worriedly. “Where’s the Infi-map?”
He stabbed a thumb behind him. “Oh, I just stashed it in the Spectre Speeder before I came over here.”
Jenny and Jazz stared at each other in a look of horror. “Wait, we gotta-“
BOOM! In a massive green lights show, the Spectre-Speeder self destructed and sent shock waves in all directions. The trio found themselves pushed away and thrown to the ground as they waited for the explosion to die down.
“The Infi-Map!” Danny’s hands went to his hair. “Shiverin’ spooks, I’ll never be able to show my face at Frostbite’s again!”
Jenny looked over to the sleeping Smytus. “Then I guess we only have one option left.”

Chapter Text

Smytus woke up to a splash of water on his face. He jolted awake, his vision blurry from droplets on his optical lenses. His left hand started twitching and sparking as a result of the water, but other than that he was relatively unharmed, tied up to a chair with blue rope.
“Where... where am I?” He looked around what looked to be a particularly messy human basement before focusing on three figures standing before him. “XJ-9! And... two humans.”
Jenny dropped an empty pail on the ground with a clatter. “Smytus. Had a nice nap?”
Using his formidable strength, the commander tried to break the blue rope but found the effort futile. The three watched as he collapsed back into a chair again, exhausted and humiliated.
“What... trickery is this?” He demanded. “How does this not break under my mighty strength?”
Jazz spoke up. “It’s that chair from the space ship of yours, remember?”
“Yeah!” Danny joined in. “And rope from Jenny’s... uh, insides.”
“Yes, yes.” Smytus bared his teeth. “But what is it that you want from me? I have much wealth, but Cluster currency means nothing to you Ghost Zone earthlings.”
“Oh, Smytus.” Jenny shook her head with a mechanical whirr. “We don’t want your money. We just want some directions.”
“Directions to what?” With Smytus’ left hand malfunctioning, he slowly reached his right behind him and found the knot tying him to the chair.
“Directions to that portal you came through to get here.” Danny crossed his arms, walking over to Smytus’ left side. “You know, the one with the island with the scary-“
Whether on accident or on purpose, Smytus’ left hand spasmed and caught the raven-haired teenager right in between the legs. With a hoarse gasp, he sank onto his knees and then fell onto his face, very much in pain. Jazz ran to help him up.
“Aha!” Smytus grinned triumphantly at his mechanical blue rival. “Even restrained, the Destroyer of Worlds can take out any puny human that stands in his way!”
From behind Jazz’s back, she unveiled a wrench. Jenny continued: “That doesn’t change the fact that you’re going to give me the directions. My friend here can access your memory storage remotely, but I don’t think you’d enjoy that, would you?”
Smytus tried unknotting the rope, but his large hand was not suited for the job. “Pah! You think that scares me? This human would not know where to start.”
“No, she doesn’t.” Jenny grinned. “But I do. Jazz, the panel you’re looking for is on the back of his head.”
Jazz was careful to walk around the right side to get to Smytus’ back side. The commander blinked in surprise as his bolts started to be unscrewed.
Smytus would have started sweating if he could. “What? You’re bluffing. You can’t know how to-“
With a clang, something fell behind the commander, most likely the back panel. The stress was too much for Smytus.
“Alright, alright!” He jerked his head forwards. “I cannot believe I am doing this, but it’s better than having that human fiddle with me like a plaything.”
From his mouth, the commander printed a small sheet of paper. Written clearly in the middle were XY coordinates.
“Alright!” Tucker picked up the piece of paper. Then his expression creased into a frown. “You use Comic Sans? Dude, no.”
Jenny took the paper, and inserted it into a thin slit on her belly. Her eyes flashed with binary code for a second as she processed it. Then she blinked and returned to reality with a smile.
“Alright, guys. I know where home is.”
“Wait, what are you doing?” Smytus demanded as Jenny lifted him up in the air. “You must let me go! I’ve given you what you want! Let me-“
Jenny stuck some tape across the commander’s speakers. “Don’t worry, Smytus. We’re taking you back to Tremorton with us.”
Smytus gave a muffled shout and shook his head, very obviously unhappy with the situation.
“Wait!” Jenny turned around to see Danny standing, somewhat recovered from the nut shot; his face was still a little pale. “Can you... I mean, can we visit Tremorton? It sounds like a cool place, and we’d come back-“
“Are you kidding?” Jenny grinned. “I was about to offer! After all the help you guys have given me, it’s the least I can do!”
“We don’t have the Spectre Speeder.” Jazz pointed out. “And what about the portal?”
Danny switched to his ghost form. “I can carry you, and I promise we’ll leave more than a branch to make sure the portal doesn’t close. Aren’t you excited?”
Jenny spoke up. “I’m sure she’s excited, Danny. They’re pretty important questions, and since they’re settled, are you guys ready?”
“Let’s go!”
“Mmmmph!” Smytus protested, but nobody paid him any heed.
“Just follow me!” Jenny called as she dived into the portal. She checked once to make sure the pair was following before speeding forwards into the ghostly abyss. Over gooey green rivers, under colossal floating chunks of earth, between suspended mountain peaks they flew freely, but it was not long until they neared their destination. In a dark corner the three slowed to a halt in front of a small natural portal with one half of a tree branch sticking through it. The only difference was that there was a small lining of what appeared to be stone around it; somebody had discovered this after Danny.
“Oh.” Danny had a sudden urge to rub the back of his neck. “Haha. So it was me that let Smytus through.”
Jazz frowned. “Now, are we sure this is the right-“
A low, rumbling growl seemed to echo from all around them, drowning out Jazz’s worries. She continued in a smaller voice.
“You know what; I think I’ll just take your word for it.” And with no further ado, the four entered the portal, into the small tropical island Danny remembered he had first discovered Jenny.
It was not a pleasant memory. Danny set his sister down.
“Oh, yeah. This place.”
Jenny’s eyes grew distant. “I remember here. This is Wizzly’s Historonics island, where these robotic inventions went wild. I would have beaten them, but we-“
“Mmmph! Mmmmph!” Smytus tried to speak, which earned him a smack from Jenny.
“Will you be quiet?”
“Wait.” Danny listened, and heard a bush rustling in the distance. “I think this general guy saw something.”
If the commander on the Cluster army could have spoken at that point, he would have told him that he was most certainly not a general. At the moment, he settled for a muffled shout.
Something rustled again, closer, and Jenny readied two lasers.
“Shouldn’t we run?” Jazz suggested timidly, and the rustling got that bit louder.
“No way. This is the perfect time for a rematch.” Her chest piece separated into two halves, and from the middle came a large blue megaphone. “Alright, whatever you are hiding in those bushes: you’d better come out now before I-“
That was when a head and shoulders popped up from the shadows. Dressed in faded and deflated Skyway Patrol uniform with a red stripe painted diagonally across the suit, the man had removed his visor and was staring incredulously at the four.
Brad. Jenny would have recognised that face anywhere, even if that face was accompanied with an unfamiliar style of black helmet hair.
“Jenny?” Brad jumped completely out of the bushes. “Is that really you?”
“Brad!” In one motion, she retracted her lasers and ran straight for her best friend.
“Jenny!” Brad opened his arms; immediately he was wrapped in a crushing hug with a robot who had temporarily forgotten her strength. “Ooof! Jenny-crushing-me...little-lighter-please?”
She immediately let go. “Oh! Are you alright?”
“I think so.” Brad felt his ribs. “But I can’t believe you’re alive! Ever since you disappeared, everybody’s been looking for you! When we got a signal from this island, it was the first lead we’ve had in ages but I almost gave up-“
“Wait, how long have you been searching?”
“Oh... five years?” Brad’s hand landed on his hair, and he instantly frowned. “Ugh, I bet you can barely recognise me without my red hair dye, can you- Jen? Jenny, are you malfunctioning?”
Jenny’s face was a picture of shock. “Five years?!”
“Give or take.” Brad suddenly noticed Danny and Jazz advancing silently behind, and he got into a fighting pose. “Watch out, Jen: ambushers! Hi-yah!”
Brad leaped forwards and kicked at Danny, hitting him right in the nether region. For the second time that day he collapsed to the ground in a world of pain.
Jenny quickly extended a hand to pull her friend out of the fight. “Hey, wait! Those are my friends!”
“They are? Oh, cool! Nice to meet you guys; I’m Brad!”
Danny met his extended hand with an uncomfortable glare.
“What? Oh, sorry about kicking you.” He brushed it off and ran over to Smytus, who had been rather ignored up to now. “And you guys captured Smytus! Jen, I knew you’d pull through for the rebellion!”
“Rebellion?” Jenny frowned.
“Well, Tremorton and the rest of the world did get captured by the Cluster and-“ Upon seeing Jenny’s stricken face, he changed the topic slightly. “Look, we’ll explain this all back at base. I have a ship ready in a clearing only just past this part of the jungle; an old Skyway one! How cool is that?”
“That’s cool.” Jenny tried for a smile. “Just... not at all what I imagined. Five years deactivated, and I’ve failed saving the world...”
“Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself!” Brad replaced his Skyway visor, hiding his helmet hair. “I’m just happy to have you back, Jen; everybody will be.”
“I’ll try; it’s just... a lot to take in.” Jenny looked over her shoulder at Jazz and Danny. “Are you guys coming, then.”
Jazz was helping her brother up. “Actually, Danny and I have school tomorrow. We don’t want to intrude.”
“Wait, what?” Danny frowned.
Jenny grinned at the orange-haired Fenton. “Oh, that’s too bad.”
“We’ll leave the portal open for now. Goodnight!” Jazz looked up at the sunny sky. “Or... morning. I don’t know.”
“I’ll wait for your call!” Jenny waved as the two disappeared back into the portal. Brad gave her a strange look.
“Wait, what’s with the portal?” He asked as she roped one hand around Smytus’ chair and began dragging him along.
“It’s a long story.” Jenny swung the other arm around her best friend’s shoulders. “I can’t wait to see everyone again back at base!”

Chapter Text

Jenny looked down through the windows, staring out at this new world she had entered. Much of it looked the same - grasslands and forests still marked the way to Tremorton – but every now and then there was a smoking crater or charred terrain that bore the fresh battle scars of war in the evening light.
“You okay, Jenny?” She saw a hand touch her shoulder from the corner of her eye. With a mechanical whirr, she turned around.
“I’m fine. I just hope everybody else is... how’s Tuck, or Mom? And Sheldon?”
Brad cast a nervous eye towards the back of the ship, where Smytus was being held. “Tuck and Sheldon are doing great. Sheldon’s an undercover agent, and my little brother is-“
“What about my Mom?” She pressed. “Come on, Brad. If she’s... you know, then you can tell me.”
“It was pretty recently.” Brad rubbed his nose. “Dr Wakeman got caught by Smytus on a mission a few days ago.”
“...Oh.”
That was when Brad flashed a giant smile, and pointed to the front of the ship. “Don’t worry! She’s all around us now.”
Jenny shot her friend a stinking glare. “Really? Are you going to get all spiritual about this right now?”
“No, seriously. She uploaded her human consciousness onto our computers before she died with some new invention of hers.” Brad walked over to the monitors, and turned them on. “Or at least, that’s how she explained it to us. You didn’t really think a brilliant scientist like Dr. Wakeman wouldn’t try to cheat death?”
Jenny walked over to the monitors just in time to see Nora’s face flash onto the screen. “Bradly!”
“Dr Wakeman! I-“
“You turned off my monitor again!” Nora interrupted, raising her voice. “Now I have to find our location all over again... I never thought I’d find a young man who acted so much like my daughter, but there you have it.”
“Speaking of-“
“What’s this weight in the back? It’s... Smytus?! You took on Smytus without me?”
Brad smacked his forehead. “Why did I turn you on, again?”
“And this other six hundred pound weight in the front? Bradly, this ship-“ She stopped midsentence as her eyes fell on her robotic daughter. Her jaw dropped a little as she spoke: “Is that... is that you, Jenny?”
“Hi, Mom.” Jenny gave a nervous wave, her moving parts clicking and whirring softly with the motion.
“Oh, XJ-9!” Her voice changed into something a little sterner. “Wait, where have you been all this time? What have you done to your paint job, young robot; it looks like somebody took a piece of sandpaper to your body! Oooh, as soon as we get back to base...”
“Which we’re doing right now!” Brad interjected. “How about you open the landing doors so we can get in?”
Jenny frowned as she looked down. “Whoa, this is a big crater.”
“Welcome to Tremorton.” Brad looked over to see his friend was – once again – completely shocked.
“This is what’s left of Tremorton?”
“Well, there’s also that nuclear power plant near the edge, but that’s Cluster territory.” He steered towards the rocky side of the crater. “I think it’s right here... right, Dr Wakeman?”
“The hologram is straight in front of you.” Nora spoke, and Brad fired up the jet engines. As they began speeding towards it, a small frown appeared on her forehead. “Wait, Brady, you’re not going straight! A little to the right, no, a little up, a little left-“
Jenny curled herself up into a shell as they sped towards what appeared to be solid rock, but the impact never came. She looked up to see Brad manoeuvring deftly down a narrow, windy tunnel before coming out the other end at what appeared to be a small docking station for airships. Small meaning just enough room for the modest ship Brad was flying and what appeared to be a small ladybug ship with a large hole in the top.
“Closer, a little closer...” On the ground, XJ-5 was directing their ship as far as it could to the back wall. “Alright, human, you’re all good!”
Nora sniffed. “I think your parking is a little crooked, but at least you didn’t damage anything.”
“That never gets old!” Brad jumped up from the controls. “Come on, Jen. I can’t wait to show you around!”
The bridge lowered on one side of the ship, and XJ-8’s hulking frame came into view.
“Mandatory search will be conducted.” She droned. “Please stay where you are as I look for stowaways.”
Brad pointed towards the rear. “There’s Smytus in the back. And-“
“Noted.” The robot’s face was impassive.
“-And look who’s here? I found Jenny!”
“Noted. Welcome back, sis.” And with that, she turned and began stomping towards the back.
“You ready, Jen?” Brad was already halfway down the bridge, unheeding XJ-8’s instruction.
“Sure... let’s go!” Jenny followed her friend as he quickly walked to the other end of the docking station, where a set of unmarked double doors were standing. They entered into a narrow corridor with grey tile flooring and three doorways leading off on each side. One seventh entryway was situated right at the end and above it was a plaque reading ‘HQ’. This door was unlike the others; it was made of a dark grey metal many inches thick and had a keypad right next to it.
Jenny watched as Brad walked up to the keypad and placed his whole hand over it for a couple of seconds. She frowned and was about to ask what this was about when a sharp beeping came from the keypad and the metal door in front of them swung open. Brad caught it and held it open for his robotic friend.
Walking through, Jenny suddenly found herself in what appeared to be a large conference room, complete with a long wooden table around which was seated a small number of familiar faces. One small screen with Nora’s head in it sat closest to the door, and directly opposite her was Vice Principle Razinsky, dressed in old Skyway uniform. A long line of empty chairs led up to one final figure kicking back in the end seat, a swielly black office chair with a high back.
“Tucker!” Brad immediately put his hands on his hips. “What did I tell you about feet on the table? XJ-4 is going to murder you!”
The figure at the back jumped up, his wide brown eyes staring right at Jenny. “It’s... it’s Jenny!”
Nora looked over. “Oh, yes. Razinsky, you do remember XJ-9?”
“Tuck!” Jenny kneeled down and spread her arms out wide as Tucker raced up to hug her. He now was taller than her when she was on her knees. “You’ve gotten so tall!”
“Well duh! I’m fifteen, you silly robot!” The two parted, and that was when Jenny noticed a thin white line just above his collarbone, stretching nearly the entire width of his neck.
With a concerned frown, Jenny reached out and touched the scar. “Tuck, what happened? Did that Vexus do this to you?”
“What, this?” Tucker shrugged off her concern. “Actually, it happened not long after you disappeared; I was buying candy, pulled out a fiver when the wind blew it into the air and – ghieeet – off I went to the hospital!”
Jenny raised a sceptical eyebrow at Brad.
“For once, Tiger here isn’t making it up.” Brad helped his younger brother back to his feet. “Heck, he’s the only one not fighting and still manages to be the worst injured!”
Nora’s digital image cleared her throat as Jenny stood up.
“Until recently.” He added with an apologetic smile. Behind them, XJ-4 burst into the room, dustpan and brush in hand.
Tucker crossed his arms. “Who wants do superhero-y stuff anyway? Besides, my skills are put to better use down here, where it’s nice and safe-“
“Tucker Corneilius Carbunkle!” There was a shriek from the other end of the long table, where XJ-4 could be seen waving a broom about wildly. “How many times have I told you, no shoes on the table!”
Tucker instinctively tensed up. “Uhhh... sorry!”
“Oooh, as soon as I get done with this table, and the dishes, and the floor, and the beds, and the clothes, and Razinsky’s collection of strange toys, and Mr. Carbunkle’s ship, young man, you’re going to get it!”
Jenny blinked. “So, uh, what do you do around here, Tuck?
“Oh,” Tucker brought out a nail file and began scouring his nails. “Only advising everyone on how to beat the Cluster! Remember that ambassador bug that mind controlled me a few years ago? Thanks to that, I now have insider knowledge of almost everything: their battle formations, their weaknesses, the type of gruel they serve to enslaved humans... anyway, with my information, I’m like the leader of the Rebels!”
Brad rolled his eyes. “Pfft. Yeah, right; if anybody’s the leader, it’s me! I’m the one who actually fights the Cluster.”
“And I tell you where to go!”
Razinsky stood up and waded into the fight. “Hey, you two! Listen up; neither of you are leaders of anything!”
“See, Tiger-“
Jenny slipped away from the arguing, towards her mother.
“Oh, hello dear!” Nora broke out into a huge grin. “I must say, XJ-9, it’s good to see you again. I missed my daughter, but you should know that with you here, we can finally launch a real attack against the Cluster!”
“Yeah... about that.” Jenny blinked as she checked her auxiliary levels and found they were running low. “Could you repair something?”
“If I can instruct one of your friends to do it, I’m sure we’ll have it as good as new in no time!”
“What about my main power?”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure-“ Nora stopped dead. “Wait, did you say main power?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Darling, you do realise that I can’t repair that?” Nora stroked her chin. “I used to reconstruct a completely new main power system every time your old one started to break, and they took months.”
“Oh...” Jenny’s shoulders drooped. “I guess I’m still no good at saving the world.”
“Not at the moment, but soon! I’ll make it my top priority!” Nora promised. “Oh, Bradly!”
“Dr Wakeman?” Brad stopped arguing as his robotic friend dragged her feet dejectedly towards a wall plug near the side of the door. “Hey, are you okay, Jen?”
“We’ve got a main power system to start on!” Nora declared. “If we get started now, these six months will fly by like nothing, and then we’ll be able to take on the Cluster!”
Brad’s eyes widened. “Six months?!”
“Don’t worry, Brad,” Tucker grinned mischievously. “That’s assuming nothing goes wrong.”
Nora rolled her eyes. “Oh, you young people are so pessimistic! Anyway, you need to come with me to the lab. XJ-9 can charge herself up for the night here, and everybody else to bed! We will discuss this later.”

Chapter Text

Something was poking Jenny’s metallic frame; she knew this because of the dinging sound that emitted from each small strike. So she slowly opened her eyes and sat up a little from her slumped position on the floor, and turned her head towards Tucker.
He was very pale, so much so that the white scar on his neck was almost invisible. “Jenny! Jenny! You-you have to come now!”
“What is it, Tuck?” She stood up and unplugged herself from the wall. Her auxiliary was fully charged. “Is everyone okay?”
“You have to come now!” He repeated, tugging on Jenny’s arm. She stood up and followed without hesitation.
Down the corridor, into the docking bay. It was there that the two could see a small group of people and robots standing around an empty space Brad’s ship had occupied. When they saw her approach, they stepped to the side. Jenny looked down and stopped, staring in helpless horror.
“Crikey!”
XJ-8 was lying on the ground, still as good as new if not for the explosion of frayed, sparking wires bent sharply to the left that marked where her head and neck used to be.
“My sister...” Jenny sank to her knees, and hesitatingly touched the robot’s shoulder. There was no response.
“XJ-8 is down.” Nora spoke solemnly from a small antennae box being held by Brad. “That’s the sixth one to go.”
“Can we fix her, Dr Wakeman?” Tucker asked with wide eyes.
Nora slowly shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. I used to always keep a spare head around, but those got lost when Tremorton was destroyed. Now, repairing her wouldn’t be so different to building an XJ-11.”
“Who would do this?” Razinsky narrowed his eyes as he looked at the back of Jenny’s shiny head. “I hope we don’t have any reprogrammed saboteurs in our mist, miss XJ-9.”
Jenny didn’t register the dig.
Brad frowned. “You were saying that about Jenny, weren’t you?”
“Now, Mr Carbunkle,” Razinsky crossed his arms. “I’m not trying to be a pessimist. I’m merely pointing out that the very day this XJ-9 comes back, our strongest robot goes down!” Quite the-“
“That’s rid-“
“If you’d let me finish, that’s quite the coincidence, isn’t it?”
Nora cleared her throat. “You two! Now isn’t the time for a petty argument. We have to-“
“Hold this, Tuck.” Brad shoved Nora’s display screen into his little brother’s hands, and rolled up his sleeves. “I think you’re getting defensive for a reason. I think I know who the real saboteur is!”
“How dare you?”
“How dare you! Jenny just lost her sister, and this is the best-“
“-merely looking after the good of the Rebels-“
“-do? I really wish we left you back-“
“-should respect that! I don’t-“
“-morton when it exploded! I’d prefer Brit and-“
Meanwhile, Tucker and Nora were glancing in stunned silence at the argument, down at Jenny, and back at each other. Finally, the old scientist spoke up.
“Psst. There’s a volume control on the back of this thing.”
Tucker looked on the back, and indeed there was a small dial. He began turning it.
“Make sure to cover your ears!” Nora’s voice boomed, and Tucker winced. “Whoops. Sorry!”
“Yeah, yeah.” He set down the wireless box on the floor and covered his ears.
“Everyone!” Nora shouted, causing Jenny, Brad and Razinsky to jump and stare. “If you three had been listening to me, you would have realised there was an easier way to figure out who did this without descending into an argument. XJ-8 so happens to have a black box attached to her upper belly button bolt.”
Jenny produced a wrench from her right wrist and unscrewed the aforementioned bolt. Sure enough, stuck at the very end was a neatly packed orange cylinder with a smaller white cylinder attached sideways to the back.
“Oh.” Brad blinked. “Wait, why do they call it a black box?”
“That’s a colloquial.” Nora remarked. “Now, I designed mine with a USB because the author has no clue how black boxes actually work. If you plug it in to this monitor, we’ll have a glimpse into exactly what happened to XJ-8.”
“Then we’ll find out whose butt I need to kick.” Jenny growled, and pressed a button on the cylinder. A USB end popped out and she inserted it into the monitor. Nora’s face disappeared, to be replaced with a view of Brad’s ship.
“Noted.” A voice was speaking in a monotonous tone. “Welcome back, sis.”
The apprehensive Rebels watched in first person as XJ-8 stomped into the back, shoved the door open, and came across Smytus struggling in the chair he was tied to, making muffled shouting noises. The robot stopped to scan him before proceeding to pick him up like nothing more than an unwieldy yoga ball and turned back towards the front of the ship.
XJ-8 stopped right in front of the controls, and stared right at where Jenny and Tuck were supposed to be. “Fatal system error encountered.” She droned. “Pilots did not remain in place for mandatory search. Resorting to standby for manual system reboot.”
Everyone turned to look at Brad, who grinned nervously and shrugged. “Oh, heh-heh... I thought Dr. Wakeman fixed that bug!”
Back to the recording, where XJ-8’s hands released Smytus and dropped him sideways on the floor with a crash. Her head (and therefore, the recording’s vision) bent forwards, giving one a perfect view of Smytus. He lay still for a second, possibly in confusion, but it was there that he saw an opportunity to escape and began to struggle as hard as he could.
The Rebels watched in horror as he got one arm free and tore off his gag. From there, he worked his other hand out of the binding rope and slipped out.
“Free at last!” Smytus’ face could not be seen as he stood up, but one could perceive him picking up the chair. “Finally, I have located the Rebel base; as soon as I get back to my army, I’ll be sure to pay it a visit again. As for this robot...”
After a second, the recording suddenly cut out into static. The group kept staring at the picture after it had gone away, their faces filled with dread and terror.
Except for one.
“So it was Smytus!” Jenny stood up to her full height and punched her fists together. “Oh boy, he’ll pay for what he did to my sister!”
“Not so fast, young robot.” Nora’s image reappeared on the monitor. “With you on your auxiliary power, and only the six of us against the power of the Cluster? We’ll have to relocate... perhaps ask Sheldon to hack- ah, but it might compromise-“
“Wait, what happened to XJ’s one through seven?” Jenny felt a sinking feeling deep in her circuitry as she looked around and only saw two of her sisters online.
“Oh, all our sisters?” XJ-5 spoke up. “Let’s see; XJ-1 and 2 got blown up with the house when the Cluster dropped their bomb. XJ-6 went down in battle, XJ-7 couldn’t take it anymore and, well, there was a number ten but Mother’s heart really wasn’t in on it, and she fell apart worse than XJ-3!”
“We only survived because we don’t do any of the fighting.” XJ-4 added. “Though fighting all this wretched dirt? That’s a battle on its own!”
“But, there has to be something we can do!” Jenny protested. “They’re just Cluster bugs, right?”
“Maybe to you they are.” Tucker shivered. “Even one is too scary for me.”
Nora sighed. “Unfortunately, your friend here is correct. With the amount of trouble we’ve managed to cause the Cluster over the years, plus you arriving here, XJ-9, I’m expecting an army in the millions. We simply can’t withstand such sheer numbers. The best thing we can do is to fix up our ladybug spaceship and hopefully find an obscure planet where we can begin operations anew.”
“But-“
“Maybe if we, I dunno, could go invisible or something, that might work.” Brad crossed his arms, oblivious to the lightbulb he had just set off in Jenny’s head. “But we can’t, so-“
Jenny grabbed both of her friend’s shoulders, squeezing perhaps a little too tight. “Brad, you’re a genius!”
“Ouch... Wait, what?”
“Oops, sorry.” Jenny gingerly released him before grinning wider than ever. “But I know how to defeat the Cluster, and we don’t have to go anywhere!”
“What, by going invisible?” Tucker raised a sceptical eyebrow.
“Yes. I mean, not us directly, but...” Realising that the talk of another dimension and ghosts might lose her friends’ interest, she powered up her lasers. “Look, guys, you won’t understand this but I’m going to go get a friend to help with this. Just... stay here, okay?”
“XJ-9, wait! We need you to-” Nora shouted, but by that time she had already taken off into the tunnel. “-repair the ladybug. Oh, this will not end well.”
Tucker stared out at the large circular shaft Jenny had disappeared in. “Well, I dunno about you guys, but I’m walking. Anybody, give me a boost up to the tunnel?”

Chapter Text

The absense of she/he pronouns in this piece of writing or any of my works in the future is not a mistake. I hope you enjoy :)

Cluster Message Intercepted

Attempting translation, Nora...

...

...

ASCII85,WmJD/aN,F)rI)AU&?=%13OO EmpressVexus =`8G'+E2 4F(K6!AKY].+ED%5F_,W9ARlolFF"\Ecbt;Bl

.]uA8,IoAScWE+BN+ Earth sBOQ'q+Dbt+ ?'k+ g6d UX'q;K$#_FD55- XJ-9 ;IsogDf0W-+B;nFF[X/NFq^DIal3BOr;aAR]4e+C\c#AM+E!%Rebel16$NH$"1M

7;[!aATM Smytus o8b6MuEr

Cluster Message End

Jenny had never flown so fast in their mechanical life as they sped through the Ghost Zone. That may have been in part because the atmosphere was a little thinner than on Earth, but they was also only too aware of their limited auxiliary power ticking down. At 90%, it would be more than enough for the journey but one little fight, one little delay, and Jenny might be thankful they hurried earlier on.

The mysterious beauty of the Ghost Zone that had been admired on the last trip was lost on Jenny now; it was but a greenish blur. They reached the portal that led to Danny's world, but with a sinking disappointment realised it was closed, a yellow-black striped wall blocking entry.

There were clear voices on the other side, but this was no time for niceties. Jenny twirled their pigtails into a rapidly spinning drill and rammed the tip into the centre of the barrier.

"What the heck?" There was a voice from behind the robotic girl as they reverted their pigtails back to normal. They sat up just in time to see what appeared to be a baseball bat with a green label on the side clang on their abdomen. "Take that, Technut! Nobody gets past the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick!"

Unimpressed, Jenny turned to face their attacker and caught the weapon the next time it was swung. "Get your hands off of my bat, spook!"

"Hey, I'm not a ghost!"

There was another loud metallic clash on the back of their head. "Don't worry, honey, I've got the spare!"

Auxiliary power at seventy five percent.

Jenny, now thoroughly annoyed, plucked the two bats out of their hands and crushed them in their grip.

In response, Jack and Maddie pulled out two hefty-sized blasters and aimed them right at her head.

"Wha- wait, I don't have time for this!" With that, Jenny lifted off the floor with their pigtail rockets and blasted through the roof. Jack and Maddie turned to each other.

Maddie pulled out a phone. "That was the robot from the newspaper! I'll call SWAT whilst you-"

"I'll chase after her with my trusty Fenton Blaster!" Jack cocked their trusty weapon and began running up the stairs. "Great idea, Maddie!"

"Make sure... Jazz is okay. Okay, I'll do that myself." Maddie dashed up the stairs, holding a phone to their ear. "Hello, 911? Yes, we saw the rogue robot... my husband is tracking it..."

Meanwhile, Jenny had blasted far above the city and was now looking down on it like a map. "Now, if I was a school, where would I be?"

The robot's eyes drifted towards the dumpster. Just to the right was a building that read clearly, 'Casper High'

Bingo! Jenny grinned as they flew down into the grass on the field and ran up to one of the windows, where she immediately caught sight of Danny. Danny was leaning heavily on their hands, eyes closed, seemingly asleep as they listen to a balding teacher giving a lecture.

Jenny could pick part of this lecture up, thanks to their superior auditory sensors:

"...suppose some of you have heard in the news about this robot going on a rampage. Well, I don't believe this to be true."

Cool – Jenny liked this teacher already!

"I believe that the ultimate takeover by Earth by robots will happen much more slowly!" The teacher declared, and Danny sat up suddenly. "If we aren't careful, our robot slaves will overcome us with their AI and before you kids know it, we'll be making toast for our toasters!"

"That's an awful stereotype!" Jenny spoke loud enough through the window to attract the entire class' attention. "We robots aren't looking to take you humans over. We're just trying to live in peace, and abolish hydraulic joints!"

The teacher pointed a shaking finger at Jenny. "Nick Valentine smutty fanfiction, it's the rogue robot! Run!"

The class knew this drill well; when a ghost or some other monster came knocking, one was supposed knock over the desk and push and shove as hard as possible to get out of the narrow door, all whilst screaming at the top of one's lungs. At least, nobody had told them any different.

They were very good at doing this, so by the time Jenny had managed to get the window open, the class had cleared out and left nothing but a painful ringing in Danny's ear.

"Jenny?" Danny hissed under their breath. "What are you doing here?!"

"Nice to see you too."

The teenager quickly transformed into Danny Phantom. "Seriously! Did you not just see everybody running out of the room? That news story about you went viral, and all these crazy robot hunters are looking for you!"

"Psssh." Jenny rolled their eyes with a mechanical click. "I battle supervillains on a daily basis. What are they, a great dane in a mystery machine?"

"Rogue robot, please exit the school grounds with your hands up RIGHT NOW!"

"What?" Jenny looked around, and set eyes on what appeared to be an army of men in black combat gear, pointing their guns at the classroom they were located in. Helicopters buzzed overhead, training laser lights on the centre of Jenny's metallic forehead.

The two of them ducked down immediately.

"Feeling so cocky now?" Danny remarked. "It's a bit of a costly hello."

"Alright, alright!" Jenny retorted. "I may have slightly underestimated this. Do you have any sort of plan?"

The ghost boy moved a little closer to the window to dodge a spotlight from one of the helicopters. Their eyes narrowed. "I think... I have a plan."

Chapter Text

As the man on the megaphone continued to demand surrender without a single reply, the army of armed men grew tense and trigger-twitchy. In the pauses between the words, the only sounds that could be heard were the adjusting of rifle positions and shifting of body weight inside bulletproof vests.
“This is your last warning to vacate the building!” The man on the megaphone shouted. “We order your surrender right now!”
The words echoed through the air, startling a raven that happened to have been sitting on top of Caspar High. The bird let out a startling squawk and flapped a little into the air. However, it got no further before being shot full of so many holes by so many powerful guns that there was little left of the unfortunate target besides a few dark feathers and bloody bones.
Various clicking sounds could be heard as the men reloaded. The megaphone man waited until they were ready again until continuing his tirade.
“We order you once more to surrender!” The man ushered a small, heavily armed team of three towards the front doors. “If you do not surrender, we will storm the building!”
That was when something blue and white burst out of the ceiling, waving two stubby arms around wildly. The army wasted no time in firing but what appeared to be the rogue robot suddenly started flying through the air, shaking a little as it was hit multiple times. It fell from the sky a while away in the distance, and the army of men ran after it, shouting and screaming.
Meanwhile, the front doors of the school opened just a crack. Jenny and Danny poked their head out.
“I can’t believe that worked.” Jenny laughed nervously, igniting their rockets. The two of them flew back to the Fenton’s without incident, and there they hovered above the building.
Danny frowned as they looked over the roof. “Hey, where’d that hole come from? We just got Jazz’s room repaired; I’ll rekill the ghost that did this!”
“Sorry! I mean...” The robot blushed blue. “Gee... I-I wonder what ghost did this?”
“I’ll deal with them later.” The two of them wasted no time in flying down the numerous holes that had been torn through the floors, all the way down to the lab.
“It’s the rogue robot!” Jenny found to their dismay that two SWAT team members had been stationed near the portal with Jazz handcuffed to a chair. The instant they saw Jenny, however, they turned and began firing.
Danny yelped and turned invisible. Jenny watched dumbly as a line of machine gun bullets ricocheted off their face; there was the sound of breaking glass as one of the shots broke an eye, but otherwise the damage was superficial.
The guns suddenly clicked out of bullets. Jenny blinked the undamaged eye and ran a finger across their metallic face.
“Hey, you guys dented me!” The six-and-a half foot tall, angry robot advanced on the two men, causing them to back off sharply, dropping their guns and screaming for reinforcements. Behind them, Danny placed a hand on Jazz’s shoulder and phased them out of the handcuffs.
Jazz stood up, rubbing their wrists. “I’d say thanks for the save, but you need to give me a really good reason for why this happened in the first place before I say anything to you.”
“Yeah.” Danny rubbed the back of their neck. “I can’t believe- whoa, is your eye okay?”
Jenny banged the back of their head with one hand, and bits of broken glass fell out from the ruined eye. The gaping hole to their internal wiring was replaced by a black eyepatch-like strip of metal.
“Guys, I’m sorry for the chaos.” Jenny pleaded. “But you have to help me! You know the Cluster guys I was talking about? They’ve taken over everything and they’re planning to destroy all my friends once and for all!”
“Can’t you do something?”
“I would, but I don’t think I can take them. I’m too damaged. My main power can’t be repaired, and I only have... twenty percent left in my auxiliary.”
Danny’s eyes widened. “What-what are we going to do?”
“First things first, we aren’t going to panic.”Jazz stepped in. “if you could explain exactly what-“
“This is the police!” A shout sounded from upstairs. Jazz backed up towards the portal, grabbing a pistol blaster along the way.
“Second thoughts, we can work this out on the way.”
Danny and Jenny ran into the swirling green vortex - the ghost boy stopping briefly to pick up their sister – not a second too soon before the SWAT reinforcements arrived. The Fenton siblings struggled to keep up with Jenny’s haste, and soon enough they arrived at the portal.
“Whew.” Danny panted, carrying their sister into the rock-lined portal. “You’re... fast... happy you’re on... our side...”
“Whatever. Go!” Jenny ushered the two of them in, and looked around the Ghost Zone once more before entering after them.
Or rather, attempting to. The robot frowned as their joints seemingly locked up, refusing to work. Though their neck was immobilised, Jenny could see that her body had begun to glow faintly, like that time she had to mess around with a nuclear reactor.
Not that this situation had anything to do with nuclear reactors.
Before Jenny could begin to freak out, a voice emerged from the shadows behind then.
“How... fascinating. So the rumours abounding the Ghost Zone are true.”
A glowing green man with sunglasses, white hair and a grey cape floated out from behind Jenny’s back, grinning. His very presence invoked a great deal of inexplicable fear in them; Jenny wanted nothing more at that moment to distance themself from his strange man but was still unable to move.
That didn’t stop them from trying.
“Hey, gremlin!” Jenny growled. “I don’t know what you did, but you’d better let me go before I find a way out of this!”
The ghost’s grin turned into a sneer. “Huh. The Cluster invented personality chips after I left? What a waste of time.”
“You won’t get away with this! I have-“ They stopped, dead. “Wait, you’re from Tremorton?”
“Unfortunately.” The ghost reached out with two green gloves and - as if he’d built Jenny themself - located the off switch on the back of their head with extreme precision. “But things got better when I was captured by the Cluster and worked for them. Machines are so much better than people.”
Jenny was all too acutely aware of the ghost’s hand on their off switch. “What are you going to do? Shut me down?”
“It’s annoying listening to your speakers, so, yes. I’ll see for myself what the Cluster has been working on lately before rejoining them through this portal of yours.”
Despite the situation, Jenny couldn’t help but object. “And there’s where you’re wrong, sunglasses! I wasn’t built by the Cluster; I was built by my mom, Nora Wakeman!”
At first, the robot was relieved when the ghost took his hand sharply off of her off switch. Then they saw his dark, convoluted frown, and they realised that the action was not taken out of fear.
“Nora...” The ghost hissed. “That murderer! Her and her Amegedroid... ‘Mom’, you say? I’ll have fun tearing up her daughter in my lab tonight!”
Jenny looked with their remaining eye at the portal. “Crikey... but can I at least know your name? Before you, uh, dismantle me and everything.”
“Dismantle is a nice term, whippersnapper. But I suppose you should know that the one who defeated you is-“ The ghost threw their arms up into the sky, and electricity sparked in their fingers. “Nicolai Technus, Ghost Master of Science and Electrical Technology, Lord of All Things Electronic and Beep-“
Behind Technus, Danny and Jazz reappeared out of the portal. “Hey, Technus! You should get a nickname for all of that!”
“Lay off our friend!” Jazz ordered.
Technus backed up, until they was right next to Jenny. “Friend, you say?”
There was something very malicious in their tone, but neither of the Fenton siblings seemed to notice.
“Yeah!” Danny aimed their silver-gloved hand at the centre of Technus’ head. “Give it up. We’re in a hurry, and you’re outnumbered and outmatched.”
“No. No, I won’t!” Technus went intangible and phased into Jenny’s wiring before anybody could apprehend him. They could only watch in horror as the robot closed their eyes and shuddered, putting a hand to their forehead.
“Stop it... get... out of-!” Jenny suddenly stopped, their face returning to a neutral, dead expression, their hand snapping back to their side. They opened one, solid red eye.
Technus formed a blaster with their robotic right hand. “Ooh, I don’t like to give my old college much credit but... all these fun gadgets to take over the world with! Now, where was I? Oh!” They pointed the blaster at the suddenly much less confident ghost. “You’ve outnumbered yourselves; I, Technus 3.0, have expertly taken over this futuristic robot like a trojan! You are an idiot!”
They fired a laser, and Danny instinctively went intangible. To Technus’ dismay, however, the shot passed right through his target.
“Huh?” Danny blinked. “I mean, hah! You had me going for a second, but lasers don’t hurt ghosts, only ectoplasm!”
“Only ectoplasm?” Technus raised an eyebrow. Then they retracted the blaster and formed the largest circular saws that were found on the robot’s body, the ones that ended at her elbow. Then they floated towards Danny, who was suddenly much less boastful upon seeing the faintly glowing blades advancing at his face.
“Still, uh, not ectoplasm!” Danny sweated.
Technus grinned. “Are you sure, ghost child? I believe my presence has fixed that particular design flaw.”
When the possessed robot had moved close enough, they wasted no time in bringing the blades forward and sawing off the ghost boy’s head. Ectoplasm splattered everywhere; on Technus, on Jazz and into the wide open spaces of the Ghost Zone.
“Danny!” Jazz screamed, and shot at Technus with their blaster. Caught off guard, it knocked off one of the rocket pigtails that they were using and sent them spiralling out into space.
Danny, in the meantime, had located their head. In a seemingly anticlimactic fashion, the two severed edges stuck back together with not so much as a green line.
“Whoa!” The ghost boy frowned. “What did I miss?”
“Danny, you idiot!” Danny found himself enveloped in a hug by their older sister. She then pulled herself off and glared sternly. “What were you thinking, just standing there? Next time don’t ever let somebody cut off your head, it scared me to death! Understand?”
Danny saw Technus had located foot thrusters and was now rapidly coming their way. “Yeah, yeah, I will! Uh...”
The ghost boy fired a shot at Technus, who effortlessly dodged it. They fired another, and another, but to no avail. In a last ditch effort, he opened his mouth and prepared a Ghostly Wail.
Technus slowed when he reached the Fentons and bent Jenny’s pointy, thrusters-powered knee. This he drove right in between Danny Phantom’s legs, followed up by a winding punch to the chest.
Jazz aimed with their blaster once more, but the robot took hold of the barrel and crushed it effortlessly. “Stay out of this, human.”
Then Technus turned to Danny, who had curled up into a floating ball of pain in the vacuum of the Ghost Zone. Danny looked up to see the one red eye grinning triumphantly down on them.
“Hah! Ghost child, you may have bested me so many times before, but even you are no match for this far out future technology that is your adversary, Technus 3.0! All it needed was a little ectoplasm, and the world is now mine... to... con...”
Jazz floated over, where they could see that the red eye had closed, and a familiar beeping had started up.
“Out of power.” Jazz concluded. “Well, attrition may not be the most effective way of winning a battle, but it got the job done.”
Danny somewhat painfully stood up from their foetal position. “Well, what are we going to do now?” They watched a grin creep into Jazz’s expression. “You have an idea, don’t you?”
“Take her back to the lab.” Jazz stroked their chin. “I think I can make this work.”

Chapter Text

"Empress." Smytus bowed deeply as Vexus entered the command centre of the Cluster flagship.

"Smytus. Is that you, or is that XJ-9 disguised as you, sent to destroy me?" The empress stalked over to the chair in the middle and sat down. "Now, stay where you are. What's going on down on the ground?"

"No communication from the base, Empress, yet life signs are detected. They appear to be pretending not to be there. Should we send-"

"XJ-9." Vexus interrupted, their hands clenching on the armrest. "Have you found XJ-9? That robot is a top priority to destroy before she destroys me!"

Smytus forced a neutral expression. "XJ-9 may well be hiding at the rebel base, my Empress."

"She's just waiting in the shadows to attack me." The Empress fretted. "She always has been, ever since I captured the Earth. She's coming for me, I know it. Smytus, more soldiers on the flagship to protect against XJ-9."

"My Empress." Smytus raised an eyebrow as they looked around the control room. It was overflowing with Cluster bugs. "With all due respect, anymore soldiers in this room will make it difficult to move-"

"That was an order, Smytus!"

"Yes, my Empress." The green robot turned and exited the room. Vexus spun their chair around to the front, where one had a perfect view of the nuclear power plant and the crater behind it.

"Finally." Vexus breathed. "XJ-9 won't be coming for me any longer."

One of the Cluster bugs directly to the right of the Empress gave them an odd look, which was noticed.

Vexus stood up and pointed a shaking finger. "You! You are a spy, sent by XJ-9 to destroy me!"

The soldier dropped their blaster in sudden fear and knelt on the ground, pleading for forgiveness. In response, Vexus took the weapon and fired it between the bug's eyes, causing their eyes to roll up and close and drop dead to the floor.

With a relieved, crazy laugh, Vexus sat back down and kept the blaster close at hand. "Now, prepare the fusion bomb."

~Line Break~

Jenny's one eye snapped open, and they sat up with a screeching metal sound. "Huh? What? Where am I?"

"Whoa, calm down. You're in the lab." Jazz's voice somewhat startled the robot, as it was coming from the side of Jenny's head that was missing an eye. "We don't want a repeat of the first time we met."

There was a bang and a shout at the top of the lab's stairs.

"My head... What happened?" Jenny turned to look at Jazz, who was holding a small green-and-grey thermos in their hand. "There was a fight with this weird ghost, and then..." Their eye widened. "Crikey. I remember, the cutting and... I'm, um, so sorry, guys-"

Danny spoke up. "Don't worry, Jenny! You get reprogrammed for evil about seven times in the original cartoon and never display any remorse for your actions, so you don't need to say sorry now!"

"Oh, yeah." Jenny snapped their fingers. "But... what about my auxiliary power? Didn't that run out?"

"That's why we have a temporary solution!" Jazz pointed to Jenny's back. They turned and saw a metallic cylindrical black box attached to the part where they usually charged up from or inserted batteries into.

The faint shout of 'Police! Surrender now!' came from above.

"You... covered up my power slot. I think you guys don't know how electricity works."

"Actually, my sister covered it up with a machine gun magazine. You know, from those SWAT guys who were in here earlier."

Jazz picked up what looked to be some sort of small metal tiefighter-shaped device, with a large green button on the top. "And then we put about a thousand AA batteries in there, so if that doesn't last, I don't know what will. We would've charged you up, but this Cluster thing sounds urgent."

"Okay..." Standing up, the robot winced as they looked at their wildly fluctuating power level. "Speaking of that, we should probably get going."

"Police!" The door at the top of the stairs shook a little.

"Great, I think they're using battering rams again." Danny switched into their ghost form. Jazz pressed the green button on the device, which surrounded their body with some sort of armour. "Now, let's try this again without Technus."

The three of them dived back into the Ghost Zone. Jenny attempted to fire their pigtail rockets, but to their dismay found that only one was intact. They fired up the rockets on their feet, a more tedious, slower system as it involved constant conscious adjusting of the flight path to prevent spiralling out of control. Annoying, but it worked well enough and before long they had once again arrived at the ghost portal into another dimension.

Danny looked around before motioning with their hand. "You first, Jen."

"Oh, yeah. Good idea." And with that, they stepped through into a dark new world.

Jenny gasped as they looked up and saw a sky full of Cluster ships, so many that they blotted out the sun and left the Earth below in a nuclear winter. Marching slowly but steadily, the army of robots all seemed to be converging on a single point in the distant horizon.

Their jaw dropped. Sure, a large invasion force was to be expected but this... this was insanity.

"Crikey."

"Hey, Jenny, why's it so dark out- oh." Danny came to stand by Jenny, their mouth open in a perfect 'O' shape. "That's a lot of ships."

"You can say that again." Jenny looked over to see Jazz emerging from the portal.

"That's a lot of ships."

Jazz arched an eyebrow. "Little bro, I think that was just a figure of speech."

The robot's arm clicked as they brought it up to stroke their chin. "But how are we supposed to get to Tremorton now? If they spot me, we're doomed."

Danny placed one hand on Jenny's shoulder, and the other on their sister. "Actually, that may not be such a problem. I can go invisible, remember?"

"Oh, right." Jenny blinked as Danny, then themself disappeared into thin air. "Oh, this is weird. Ohhh, this is weird."

That was the point when Danny began to float in the air, extending their weightlessness to Jazz and Jenny.

Jenny made a face "Hey, this is a great idea and all, but I think it would be best if I just fl-" The three of them suddenly began to zoom across the ocean. "-eeeeeew!"

Jazz reached across and slapped a hand across the robot's face, and they were silent for the rest of the trip. They passed nervously under waves of Cluster spaceships, ominously creeping forwards, enshadowing the green earth below. After a time, a nuclear power plant became visible...

"That's it!" Jenny whispered fiercely. Danny began to slow.

...accompanied by a nightmarishly large ship, shaped like a bug, presiding over the landscape. It was lime green, embroidered with a complicated pattern of gold. In between its pincers, an ominously familiar figure was delicately held.

"Jenny?" Jazz asked. "This may just be me, but that giant robot bug looks like it's holding a bomb."

"We came just in time." The robot turned to Danny. "Danny... uh, invisible Danny, whatever – we gotta get into the front of that flagship!"

Most likely out of reluctance, Danny said nothing and began slowly ascending to the ship. Jenny cringed when they began going through floors, but soon enough they arrived at the control centre.

It was a crowded room, being populated by a small army of cluster bugs. Smytus was standing by the wall, cramped, and the top of Vexus' head could be seen above a gold chair.

Danny let go of their invisibility, and the three of them dropped to the floor. Jenny made a clanging sound that instantly attracted the whole room's attention.

"XJ-9!" Vexus gasped, spinning around. "I-i-it can't be!"

Behind them, Smytus quickly slipped out the door.

"You'd better believe it, you jerk!" Jenny brought out their double blasters and pointed them right at the centre of the Cluster queen's head. "What have you done to my friends?!"

Vexus laughed nervously, putting a hand behind their back. "XJ-9, if you could just calm down-"

"No! No, I won't! You'd better leave my home right now before I rearrange your wiring, Queen Vexus!"

At that, Vexus stood up, a blaster in hand. "You've been out of the loop, so perhaps you haven't heard. It's Empress Vexus!"

They shot off the tips of Jenny's two blasters, rendering them useless. With a growl of frustration Jenny tried to replace them but was stopped by all of the Cluster bugs in the room turning and pointing their weapons at them.

"You are outnumbered." Vexus grinned. "Finally, I have caught you! Let XJ-9 and her... strange companions watch the destruction of her beloved family! Release the fusion bomb in ten, nine-"

Danny looked over and shot at the front control panel with their eye lasers, causing it to break and spark. The Cluster bugs around them fired, but they merely passed through the ghost, much to the utter shock of the Empress.

"How did you-"

Danny let out a short ghostly wail on one side of the room, which shattered glass, destroyed consoles and sent soldiers flying into the air. They looked the other way, and as soon as those green eyes landed on the Cluster they screamed and ran away from the control room.

Vexus raised their blaster, but Jazz shot it out of their hands. Jenny marched over and grabbed the Empress by the neck, lifting her up above the ground.

"Say," Jenny's mouth twisted in a mischievous smile as their other hand formed a bug swatter. "I wonder how far you can hit a cockroach?"

Jazz spoke up. "Hey, uh, Jenny? Sorry to interrupt your little vengeance moment, but I saw Smytus was running away. What do we do with him?"

"Smytus, that traitor!" Vexus snarled, and Jenny slapped the bug swatter across their mouth.

"We'd better split up and search the ship for them." Jenny decided. "Maybe if we took out the flagship entirely, this invasion could-"

At that point, Vexus reached up and grabbed Jenny by their remaining pigtail. They pulled down and caused Jenny to stumble back, trip on the edge and fall out of the ship, falling towards the ground below.

Danny gasped. "Jenny!" Before they could do anything, they felt a hand on their shoulder.

"It's okay, little bro." Jazz motioned towards the door out of the control room. "I think Jenny has this covered. We, on the other hand, have a flagship to take down."

Meanwhile, the two robots scuffled with each other as the air rushed past their faces. Jenny was desperately trying to get into a position where they could activate their rockets, whilst Vexus was making this as difficult as possible. They grabbed a hold of one of Jenny's arms and pulled it right off before they received a punch to the back of the head.

And then they passed into the steam of one of the nuclear power plant's cooling towers. They let go of each other and fell blind, the atmosphere darkening to a pitch blackness the lower down they went. There Jenny landed on a wire grid, which managed to absorb the shock of the fall. They jumped up quickly, feeling themselves already beginning to heat up dangerously in the blinding steam.

"Come out, Vexus!" Jenny demanded, turning on a powerful searchlight in their remaining eye. Even this only penetrated a few feet into the steam. "You can't stay in here forever!"

"And neither can you!" Something hit Jenny from behind, striking the back of their knees and causing them to fall. Their searchlight revealed steam coming up from a dark abyss below the floor, as if there was some sort of underwater hot lake boiling away under the wire.

There was a kick to Jenny's head, and this time they caught the offending leg and threw them away, giving time to stand up.

The wire beneath their feet strained as Vexus fell on them, and Jenny's eyes widened.

"Wait, Vexus! Don't do anything: there's some sort of boiling lake underneath us! We need to get out of here before-"

"Oh, it's too late for any kind of cooperation, XJ-9!" There was a running sound, and before they could react Vexus grabbed their remaining arm and twisted it, throwing them once more to the ground and shaking the wire. "You're out to get me, but you seem so much more broken than the last time we met. What were you doing all that time you let me take over the Earth?"

"It wasn't my fault!"

Jenny's overheating systems made their movements much slower than normal. Vexus took advantage of this, picking them up and slamming them into the wire. "So you just 'accidentally' abandoned your puny human race to years of enslavement? Oh, XJ-9, I forgot what a terrible liar you are."

Attempting to stand, Jenny picked herself up onto one knee. This focused weight finally broke the weakened wire, and they managed to grab hold of something before slipping into the abyss.

It was Vexus' hand that they had grabbed. Their voice echoed throughout the large open space as they spoke their final words to Jenny.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this moment, XJ-9. Long live the Cluster!"

As soon as Vexus let go, they had lost sight of Jenny in the steam. They picked themselves up and looked around the foggy blackness.

"Yes. Yes! Without that pesky XJ-9, I am finally safe! Now, to get out of this plant..."

A dim rumbling sound started down below the floor, which Vexus detected amidst the steam. They frowned and looked down, where a small pinprick of light could be seen, growing larger by the second.

"What?" Vexus' buggy eyes widened. "XJ-9? This is impos-"

Jenny flew up though the hole in the wire with the rocket boosters on their toes and grabbed the Empress by their shoulder.

"Took me for dead, did'ja?" They demanded before reaching back and throwing Vexus far away. The Empress shouted briefly before impacting with one of the cooling tower's concrete walls, causing a large, crumbling crack to appear in the wall.

The sun streamed through the growing fissures, illuminating Vexus. They were knocked unconscious, stuck in a large slab of wall. Jenny almost found this funny, until the slab began to fall forwards. They could only watch in horror as the concrete tore through the wire like tissue paper and toppled into the boiling water below, taking with it the ex-Empress of the Cluster.

There was a faint splash, almost silent compared to a growing roaring noise outside.

Jenny gasped in horror, but she quickly realised there was no time to dwell on this death. The entire tower began to moan and crumble, and concrete fell in chunks from the sky. They quickly blasted out of there, only to stop and stare in amazement at yet another disaster falling out of the sky.

Vexus' flagship was bearing down right on the nuclear power plant, a billowing white flag of black smoke flapping from its engines.

Even flying as fast as they currently could, the shockwaves of an earthshaking explosion caught up with her not long after a rumbling boom racked her audio sensors. They were thrown off course and driven into the ground, where they lay; heavily damaged, smoking, overheated... but alive.

Alive! They sat up amid the unsettling clicking of their built-in Geiger counter, and saw amid the fire and chaos a new crater had been punched in the Earth. This hole, however, was only a blip compared to Tremorton's; it was obvious that the fusion bomb Vexus was threatening to drop had not detonated.

A small escape pod-like capsule bounced to Earth in their field of vision, and lay still.

Jenny sighed in relief, looking up at the Cluster ships floating up ahead. They could only hope that their leader's death would cause them to leave Earth alone.

"Hey!" There was a familiar voice from behind the robot, and they turned to see Danny and Jazz running towards them. "We did it, Jen!"

"Yeah," Jenny breathed, shakily standing up. The Fenton siblings eyed their missing arm worriedly. "But what are we going to do about those ships above."

"They probably don't have much of an incentive to invade the Earth anymore." Jazz offered from within their Fenton Peeler suit. "Even they do, I'm sure we can figure out something."

Danny placed a hand on Jenny's shoulder. "Anyway, that was awesome! You're- whoa, you're hot!"

Their strange words earned a strange look from Jenny. "Excuse me?"

Danny flapped his burnt hand in the air. "You're hot! I mean, not hot as in hot! I mean, you're hot, but not hot. But you are hot, don't be offended... but... ah..."

Jazz snorted. "Okay, little bro. That's enough digging."

That was when a soft hissing sound interrupted the three. A door on the side of the nearby pod slowly lifted, and out came Smytus.

Jenny picked themself up. "Hey, you! Don't try anything; tell your soldiers to leave us alone!"

Smytus turned and cupped their hands around their mouth. "No, I don't think I will!"

Danny and Jazz pointed their weapons straight at the robot, who had begun walking towards them.

"We could... uh, take you prisoner!" Jenny tried to threaten. "Come on, can't you just admit defeat? We destroyed your flagship and your power plant!

"And, you killed Vexus!" Smytus spoke with a smile on their face, confusing the other three. "With her gone, I am next in line. You will now call me Emperor Smytus, Destroyer of Worlds! This was my plan all along."

Jazz frowned. "Wait, your plan all along? You by chance found our dimension, got captured by us and escaped just to have her killed when fighting the Rebels?"

"Uh, no." Smytus rolled their eyes. "Actually, I had a weapon I was having repaired in secret underneath my power plant for years. It wasn't too hard, as I had a little guy on the team who'd done it before. But, at least it won't go completely to waste; I can use it on you!"

Jenny placed a hand on their hip. "Oh yeah? That doesn't scare us. What have you got, a water pistol?"

"No, this." Smytus unveiled a red button on the bottom of his forearm, which he pressed. "I rewired my self destruct button, for easy access."

Danny opened their mouth, but they were interrupted by a sudden deafening screeching sound. Over by the remains of the power plant, a massive metal hole in the ground was opening, forcing debris to fall into the middle. They watched in horror as one red-eyed metallic robot rose from the ground, from the dead, their enormous body endlessly tall.

"Armegeddroid," Jenny breathed. She turned on Smytus. "Do you have any idea what you've just done?!"

Smytus' grin grew wider. "Of course I know what I've done. I've won."

"What is this?" Armegeddroid declared. "This world has been ruined by weapons! All weapons must be neutralised!"

"You're a weapon!" Jenny shouted, her response generating a laugh from Smytus.

"I had my engineers wipe his memory," They explained. "But I'm sure you two will find a way to hit it off again."

Armegeddroid heard them talking and focussed his eyes in. He identified an external weapon on Jazz's wrist, and out came the black tentacles.

Jazz screamed when it wrapped around their arm, and it only got louder when they were lifted in the air. Danny shouted and readied himself to chase after their sister, but Smytus took advantage of the chaos and bonked them on the head with a firm fist.

So Jenny jetted up and tried pulling at the tentacle, to no avail.

"Jazz!" They ordered. "Take off your armour thing, I think that's all he wants!"

So Jazz retracted the Fenton Peeler, and sure enough Armegeddroid dropped them in exchange for the device. Jenny caught them in their arm.

"Weapon neutralised!" The gigantic robot turned their eye on Jenny. "You are not standing in the way of justice, are you?"

"Haha, nope!" Jenny laughed nervously. "But-but there are those Cluster ships up in the sky. They're all full of weapons."

Armegeddroid's eyes flashed green "I thank you for your information, civilian! If you are on the side of justice, you have nothing to fear from Armegeddroid!"

Jenny lowered the two of them to the ground. "Yeah, uh, thanks buddy." Muttered to themself: "I'll deal with you later."

Upon setting Jazz down, they noticed the orange-haired teen had turned very pale, very quickly. "Hey, Jazz, are you alright?"

Jazz breathed heavily. "Yeah... yeah, I'm... fine. Just feel a little... sick... thanks for the sa-"

They bent down and threw up on the ground. Jenny raised their eyebrows worriedly and politely looked the other way.

"No! My ships!" Smytus was running towards Armegeddroid, shouting at the top of their metaphorical lungs. "You, robot, leave them alone!"

Armegeddroid was shredding Cluster ships like paper, giving no indication of stopping. The ships attempted to defend, but they couldn't penetrate the robot's thick metal frame.

Smytus picked up a rock, and struck one of their massive feet. "Stop! I command you to stop!" And the robot took notice.

"Fool. You stand in the way of justice, and you must be eliminated!" Two tentacles reached out for Smytus, who realised the danger too late and tried to run for it. They got five feet before one black tendril wrapped around their torso and the other around the arm holding the rock, and pulled him kicking and screaming into the fire.

Danny picked himself up. "Whoa, I think I got knocked out there... Hey, guys, look out for the giant robot!"

"I'll deal with him later." Jenny addressed the Fenton siblings. Jazz was standing weakly next to their brother. "But... thank you guys. Really. For all your help."

"No problem!" Danny grinned. "We probably can't stay for long, though. Mom and Dad are bound to be back from their robot hunt sooner or later."

Jenny shrugged. "Fair enough. We have a lot of work to do here now that the Cluster is gone. Take care of Armegeddroid, check for survivors, rebuild civilisation and other boring stuff. Will I see you guys again?"

Danny opened their mouth, but it was Jazz that answered. "Actually... I don't think that's too... wise. You've seen the... havoc ghosts can wreak with... robots. I don't think... the Ghost Zone would be too forgiving..."

"Jazz, are you alright?" Danny frowned concernedly and their sister nodded once.

"I guess you're right." Jenny sighed, and opened her arms. "Well, it was really great to get to know you guys, and I hope we can see each other again one day."

Danny grinned. "I hope so!"

"Take... care."

The three of them detached, and Jenny waved goodbye as the two of them took off back towards the portal for the final time. When they had disappeared over the horizon, Jenny turned around and began flying towards the base.

"Wow," They commented. "My Geiger counter is still going crazy. Once I'm charged up at the base, I should probably drill a hole quite a while away from all this radiation so that nobody gets an instant lethal dose."

Chapter Text

Five months later

New Tremorton – population 1790
Welcome to New Tremorton, one of the current five human cities! We have a range of recreational activities, such as:
Housebuilding
Lab ratting
Making dust angels
Thank you for reading this sign! Please, please stay here.

“And trumpet repair!” Jenny looked up from the sign they were nailing in to see Tucker hobbling towards them, a sandwich board around their shoulders. It read, ‘You’re Not Perfect: Free Trumpet Repair for Ten Wine Corks!’
Jenny frowned. “Huh? Where’d you get that sandwich board, Tuck?’
“Same place I found that wine cellar.” Tucker held out a marker to their robotic friend. “Now, come on! Put it on the sign before my brother-“
“Your brother what, Tuck?” Brad appeared from behind; it was still strange for Jenny to see that they did not tower over their younger sibling as much as before. “Oh, are you selling that trumpet repair again?”
“What’s it to you, Brad?”
“I already told you, I don’t think anybody wants to pay ten corks on repairing a trumpet. It’s a little higher up than we’ve gotten so far on Maslow’s hierarchy.”
Tucker rolled their eyes. “Ugh. You just don’t understand me!”
“Yeah, yeah. Fifteen year olds, amirite?” Brad looked to Jenny. “We actually just came over to show you something in the lab.”
Jenny stood up with a flurry of mechanical clicks and whirrs. “What is it?”
“It’s your-“ Brad slapped a hand over their brother’s mouth.
“It’s a surprise! Come on!”
The robot checked their auxiliary power level: 46%. “Okay, sure! I have to go back soon anyway.”
Brad and Jenny began walking down the rather dusty path back to New Tremorton. Tucker stayed a few moments more, marked ‘And trumpet repair!’ on the sign then ran to catch up.
“Hey,” Jenny nudged their friend. “You’ve got a lot of grease on your fingers. Is this some new invention you and my mom have been working on?”
With a nervous laugh, Brad ran their fingers through their red hair, accidentally giving themselves a cool black streak. “Well... you could say that. It’s something Sheldon could have done a little better, but...”
“Oh.” Jenny trailed off, and for a few moments the only sound was the clanking of metal against tarmac as the teenage robot walked. A long way from the original Tremorton’s location, they had settled in a desert. At first there was some grumbling about how hot it would be, but as people got used to it, they reluctantly conceded that things could be worse. The food was great, for one.
“What are you two talking about?” Tucker scurried between the two of them, breaking the silence.
“Nothing, tiger.” Brad ruffled their little brother’s hair as they came to the crest of a small hill. “Look, we’re here.”
A large number of one-story white buildings had cropped up in front of them, arranged in slightly crooked streets with bumpy tarmac between. A few people waved happily to the trio as they passed through the town, down to Nora’s lab at the end.
They opened the door, and stepped through into the carpet. Jenny noticed her feet were rather dirty, but Brad pulled them along before they had a chance to wipe it off.
“You can wipe your feet later, Jen! Come on!”
“Yeah!” Tuck chimed in. “The carpet’s great for that!”
Jenny’s eyebrows drooped with a click, but they dutifully followed the Carbunkle siblings downstairs into the main part of the lab. Here, Nora’s space was divided into three sections; one for growing in-vitro meat, one for extracting water out of the air and the last bit for whatever random experiments the scientist had in mind.
“Hello, you three!” A voice trilled, and screen with Nora’s face on it lowered down from the roof. “Hello, XJ-9!”
Jenny’s eyes went straight to a small object covered over with cloth in the middle of the floor. “Hi, mom. Was there something you were going to show me?”
“Oh, yes!” The screen moved back a little bit. “Bradly, would you do the honours?”
Brad stepped over to the middle. “Of course, Ms Wakeman!” They skipped over to the middle, delicately pinched the top of the cloth and pulled it away with a flair.
The thing underneath was a small metallic capsule, about the size of one of Jenny’s pigtails, with thin window-like panels on the side, showing a greenish glowing liquid sloshing around within.
Jenny frowned. “What is that?”
“It’s your replacement main power!” Nora exclaimed. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“My main power?” Jenny’s eyes widened. “So I don’t have to recharge every five seconds anymore?”
“You do not!”
“Or use my stupid solar panel which keeps breaking when I fly?”
“You do not, darling!”
They picked the capsule up, grinning ear to ear. “Yes! Yes! Freedom! I can’t believe it... didn’t you say it wasn’t going to be finished until another month?”
Brad rubbed the back of their head. “Well... I had something to do with that...”
“The radioactive components in this capsule would have taken a considerable amount of time to find.” Nora started to explain. “Fortunately, we found this fusion bomb lying around near the old Tremorton. Quite a stroke of luck.”
“Wait.” Jenny raised an eyebrow. “Since when was anybody over there? That’s really dangerous; if you needed something, then you should have asked me!”
Nora continued smiling. “Of course I’m aware of the dangerous levels of radiation, XJ-9. That’s why I only sent Bradly.”
“Seriously?” Jenny snapped, surprising their mother. “Just because my friend helps you with your experiments does not mean you can use him like some kind of Mr Scruffles!”
“XJ-9...”
Brad put a hand on their robotic friend’s shoulder. “Hey, hey, Jen. It was a cool adventure, and I haven’t grown a second head or anything. So, no harm no foul?”
“Technically, radiation poisoning doesn’t make you grow a new head.” Tucker pointed out. “Even big doses can take a few weeks to show-“
“And it’s been weeks since I visited old Tremorton!” Brad slapped a hand across their little brother’s mouth. “I’m fine, I promise.”
Jenny sighed. “Okay, but if you feel sick or anything you’re going to come straight to mom, right?”
“You betcha!” Brad playfully punched the side of Jenny’s arm, causing a clang. “Anyway, look at the cool main power thingy we made for you! Once we put it in, you’ll be able to fight Cluster, space bikers, petty thieves...”
“Ghosts!” Tucker butted in once again. “Like the ones you told us about on your adventure!”
Nora frowned. “Actually, no. From what XJ-9 has described, it would be nearly impossible for her to defeat one of them without completely remaking her.”
“But Danny closed the portal on them.” Jenny reassured before Tucker’s eye grew too wide. “So there’s no need to worry about those guys.”
Meanwhile, back in the ruins of old Tremorton, a forgotten Fenton Thermos ran out of its stored power. With one last beep, the inside depressurised and released its Ectoplasmic contents.
“Free at last!” None other than Technus himself emerged from the Thermos, stretching their arms up above their head. “Whoo, I was in there for a while. That ghost boy is going to pay for my time... hey, where am I?”
They cast an eye around the wasteland that lay before them. They were standing in a pile of concrete rubble in the middle of a giant crater, with such an absolute, desolate, mourning silence eerie enough to give a ghost goose bumps.
“Hey, this isn’t the Ghost Zone... or Amity Park!” Technus frowned. “Something’s happened. I guess I gotta go see what’s going on.”
And so Technus rose slowly up out of the crater. They looked around at their surroundings, and seeing nothing but destruction for miles around, turned in a random direction and flew away in search of some sort of answer to this confusing situation.
And a few hours later, the sun set. And the skies darkened. But it was still silent here. Silent, but not dead.
Not dead, but lying still in wait.

~Fin~