Equestria Girls: Girl's League

by Olakaan Peliik

It Came From Next Door

Crash!

Thunderlane looked up over the top of his sports magazine to the house next door; it was a large mansion-like house. The window on its front door was now broken. It wasn't broken when he had sat down to read. Walking past Thunderlane’s feet toward their house was Rumble, Thunderlane’s little brother, who looked as if he was trying to play something off.

“Rumble?” Thunderlane said, putting his magazine down as Rumble barely got by him. “What are you hiding behind your back?

Rumble smiled nervously. “Nothing.”

“Nothing huh? Turn around,” Thunderlane ordered.

Realizing he was gonna be caught either way, Rumble revealed the baseball bat he was hiding. “It was an accident.”

“Accident or no, come on.” Thunderlane stood and led his brother by the shoulder to the front gate of the house.

It was the Wakeman residence. The house was large, grey and old. The woman who lived there, Mrs. Wakeman, was some kind of big shot inventor. Although rumors suggested she had gone bonkers and hadn't invented anything in a long time.

“Alright, you are gonna go up there, knock on the door and apologize, and very nicely ask for your ball back,” Thunderlane ordered Rumble.

“But that’s the creepy lady's place,” Rumble argued.

“It's either this, or we tell Dad,” Thunderlane threatened.

Rumble reluctantly opened the little gate and slowly walked up to the door. Rumble knocked gently. When he looked to Thunderlane, he could see his brother urging him to knock louder. Frustrated his brother was making him do this, Rumble knocked harder.

The door must have been ajar. It swung open when Rumble knocked with a creaking sound. There, toward the back of the entryway-hallway was the baseball. Rumble decided if he could get the ball quickly enough, maybe he didn't have to apologize.

Tentatively he stepped inside. He looked around as he quietly made his way to the ball. Bits of old machinery littered the hallway. In some of the rooms that joined the hallway, bits of unfinished or seemingly failed inventions sat unattended.

It was dark, aside from the light that came from the open front door. The baseball lay at the edge. Trying to not waste any more time, Rumble went to pick up the ball, but then got the feeling of being watched.

He looked up to see the shadowy outline of a person with bright blue eyes. It was a girl. Rumble was caught. The girl reached down and picked up the baseball.

“Here you go,” she said in a kind voice offering it to him. Her hand and forearm illuminated by the light.

Before Rumble could take the ball he noticed little hexagon patterns on her skin. Looking back up at her eyes he noticed that they were not just bright, they were glowing electronically. Rumble had seen enough Syfy-Horror films to know what this thing was. This wasn't a girl, it was a robot.

“Yaaaaah!” Rumble screamed and ran out of the door. Before Rumble could get clear of the yard though, Thunderlane caught him by the collar of his shirt.

“Woah, little bro. You seem to be short a baseball. What happened?” Thunderlane asked.

“B-d-g-g-g-e,” Rumble mumbled.

“Come on, let’s try this again.” Thunderlane sighed and started to carry Rumble under his arm back to the door.

Rumble kept babbling, “G-b-n-n-m.”

“Looks like I’ll have to do all the talking,” Thunderlane sighed. He knocked firm and loud on the doorframe.

Finally, Rumble broke out of his stupor, “There’s a robot inside! A hideous bloodthirsty robot!” he shouted.

“What are you talking about?”

Mrs. Wakeman answered the door before Rumble could answer. She didn’t say anything and just glared at the boys. She was short, pale-skinned, had short spiky hair, wearing a yellowish lab jacket black pants and yellow shoes. Her glasses made her eyes seem a little bigger, but in no way did it impede that glare.

With Rumble squirming under his arm to get away, Thunderlane began to talk with Mrs. Wakeman. “Sorry to disturb you, but little Rumble here was practicing his swing for little league tryouts, and he accidentally put the baseball through the window of your front door. I will talk to our dad and see about fixing the window, but we wanted to ask for the ball back. It’s our only one.”

“Ask about the robot,” Rumble said aloud.

Thunderlane put a hand over Rumble’s mouth. “Childhood Imaginations, wild right? He probably just ran into an invention of yours, and in the dark thought, it was a robot. So about that ball?”

Mrs.Wakeman went into the house, retrieved the ball, handed it over to Thunderlane and slammed the door without a word. As they left, Thunderlane put Rumble down.

Hot on Thunderlane’s heels, Rumble started up again. “You could have at least asked if there was a robot in there.”

“There is no robot Rumble, you’ve just been watching too many sci-fi horrors lately.” Thunderlane pointed out.

Rumble growled frustratedly. “I had one nightmare, and I did too see a real robot! It was this close to me. It-”

“Look, Rumble. There is no robot, you were just imagining things. Now I don’t want to hear another word about any-” Thunderlane caught sight of a shadowy figure looking at them from the top floor of Wakeman’s place, too tall to be Wakeman. It was waving at them. “Robot.” Thunderlane mumbled.

“You were saying?” Rumble was looking at Thunderlane with his arms crossed. Thunderlane looked back up and the figure was gone.

---

“Xj-9!” Mrs. Wakeman shouted, opening the loft door.

There was no response from Xj-9, although her room looked a mess. Magazines and posters everywhere, clothes littered the floor, bed unmade and generally, unkempt.

“It seems you have forgotten the rules of this household...” Mrs. Wakeman started looking around the room for the hiding android. “...if you are not battling interstellar aliens...” She checked behind a wall of TV monitors. “...fighting off the abominations of evil scientists...” She looked in the android’s closet, not there either. “...or generally preventing the destruction of the earth and humanity with it…” She pulled aside a curtain that hid a three wall corner, where Xj-9 was hiding. “...you are not to leave this room. Do I make myself clear, Xj-9?”

“Jenny,” Xj-9 said irritated.

Now Mrs. Wakeman was confused. “What?”

“Jenny! I changed my name to ‘Jenny’. It's what I want to be called. Normal teenagers don't have designations for names, Mom.” Jenny stomped past her creator.

Jenny, by all accounts, appeared like a normal human, tall at six feet seven inches tall, slender at a weight of two hundred pounds, even wore a blue t-shirt and jeans like a human. Differences were that she had white skin, blue hair that she kept in a ponytail with a few strands loose to frame her face(as the fashion articles said), and glowing pale blue eyes. Oh and the ability to spawn impenetrable armor and devastating weaponry from any point of her body. Eating real food, drinking water, and sleeping was different for her as well, those were her way of recharging her energy cells.

“Xj-9, you are not a normal teenager. You are a highly advanced android artificial intelligence inhabiting a body made up of nanoparticles with the ability to mechamorph into any weapon or tool you need.” Mrs. Wakeman said matter-of-factly. “You were created with a singular purpose: Protecting the Earth.”

“What’s the big deal? So I left my room for five minutes to stretch my legs. Everything is fine!” Jenny sat down in a bean chair and picked up a magazine to read.

“Oh really?” Mrs. Wakeman reached over to a nearby monitor and turned it on, revealing a blaring alarm.

“Hehe, how’d that get turned off?” Jenny asked, hiding behind her magazine knowing she was in further trouble.

The monitor was displaying a warning alert for a meteor headed for the earth. The fourth one it had detected this week. The space proximity satellite that Mrs. Wakeman had Jenny bring into space was very effective. Too effective. It went off whenever an astronaut lost a tool or something.

“The satellite is detecting it as a Class-E meteor. You need to go intercept it,” Mrs. Wakeman ordered.

“Mom, if it is a Class-E, we have nothing to worry about. It will burn up in the atmosphere like everything that size and down. If I go up there, all I’ll be saving the earth from is a baseball-sized rock like that one.” Jenny pointed to a baseball-sized rock on display like a trophy on a shelf as she started to pace back and forth irritated.

Mrs. Wakeman tried to say something, “But, Xj9-”

“Can’t I have a day off just once? All you ever want me to do is battle aliens, or destroy a meteor, or… or… stop a volcano from erupting!” Jenny ranted.

Mrs. Wakeman sat on the end of the bed and listened. “I know nothing about the people I’m supposed to be protecting, and other than you, I’ve never even met one!” Jenny continued, pacing in frustration. “I want to hang out with teenagers, go to school, and make some friends! All I do Is watch them pass by the house day after day, trapped in here like some kind of freak!” Jenny had stopped in front of a mirror and looked at herself. “Maybe I am a freak.”

Jenny’s nanoparticle skin shifted like sentient sand around her hand and produced a sonic cannon and proceeded to blast away the mirror into dust with a single blast. As she put the cannon away, Jenny sighed and waited for her mom to take over the conversation.

“Xj-- I mean, Jenny. We still don’t know the extent of your abilities, your powers are still developing and it’s bound to be a confusing time.” She hopped off the bed and started toward the door. “When you get a little older, you’ll start seeing things my way. Now be a good android and go destroy that meteor.” And she shut the door.

“Yes ma'am, ” Jenny growled. Instead of doing as asked she laid down on her bed and yelled into a pillow.

“I wonder how much trouble I’d get into if I just sat there and did nothing,” she mused, dropping the pillow. “Humanity was just fine before I was built.”

Jenny sat up and looked to the window, her body starting to deploy her armor and boosters. But movement just outside the window caught her attention. When she looked she saw a teenage boy looking through her window. He tried to duck back out of view, but Jenny hurried to the window and opened it. It was the neighbor boy she always saw next door, the one she waved to just before hiding from her mother.

“Hey! I’ve seen you next door right?” she said excitedly, leaning out the window. Finally, someone to talk to.

“Um, yeah. Are you Mrs. Wakeman’s daughter or something? ‘Cause I didn’t know she had a daughter and I’ve also never seen you at school,” he asked.

“Definitely ‘or something,’ come in before you fall and I’ll explain.” Jenny moved back from the window.

He climbed inside the window and hesitated. “I have to say that this is a little odd. Typically when someone climbs up the side of a house to look in a window, it’s frowned upon.”

“I’m not worried.” Jenny pulled her bean chair over to an armchair so they could sit and chat. “If you were that kind of creep, I wouldn’t have waved at you from here. I’m Jenny, by the way.” She sat down in the armchair.

“I’m Thunderlane. So I gotta admit that you don’t look normal,” he stated.

“I suppose I should explain,” Jenny allowed him to sit in the bean chair before starting. “So my model designation is XJ-9, and…”

So she explained precisely what she was, an android made to protect the earth. She even explained a few of the things she could do and even demonstrated a few. She answered all his questions, and then he apologized for his little brother’s behavior.

“So Thunderlane, can I ask you a few questions now?” Jenny asked.

He nodded “Shoot.”

“What’s a school like? What are people like? What are other teenagers like?” Jenny asked excitedly.

“School is school, just something kids and teenagers have to do. People are people. Teenagers are just people desperately trying to climb the social ladder that won’t exist in adulthood.” Thunderlane explained.

Jenny frowned. “That doesn't sound fun at all. It sounds...”

“Depressing? Dumb? Pointless? Like a bunch of useless drama?” he asked.

Jenny nodded. “Yeah.”

“It’s not all bad. You can make some good friends along the way,” Thunderlane admitted. “Like at my school, there are plenty of teens that are about as different from each other as teenagers can be, but they are the best of friends anyway.”

“That sounds great! If only my mom would let me go.” Jenny slumped in her chair.

“Well, prove to her you can. Come on outside with me and I’ll introduce you to my brother, officially,” Thunderlane offered as he stood and moved toward the window.

“I don’t know, I'm supposed to-”

“Come on Jenny, a little teenage rebellion is good. It helps you grow.” Thunderlane grinned as he started his climb back down. “Look, if you want to get out a little, meet me over in my yard. If you want to continue to be cooped up in this place, stay and do what your mom asked you to do.”

He left her thinking about what she wanted to do. Thunderlane made it back to his yard where Rumble was waiting.

“So, how'd it go? Did it try to vaporize you?” Rumble asked.

“No, she didn't. We had a nice chat. I learned more science than I thought I would this summer while I talked to her, but still a good chat. I told her to meet us out here if she wanted to hang out.” Thunderlane picked up the baseball that started all of this, tossing it into the air and catching it with a smile.

“What makes you think I want to be friends with a robot?” Rumble asked.

Thunderlane shrugged, “Because she's cool. Besides, wouldn't you like to be able to tell your friends that you know a robot?”

Rumble pondered this. “That would be nice.”

“What would be nice?” Jenny said, walking up behind Rumble.

“Ah!” Rumble jumped.

“Just that it would be cool to have a friend like you,” Thunderlane told Jenny. “Decided to have some fun, eh?”

“Yeah, besides If I take care of every single meteor that goes towards the Earth, scientists are going to get bored,” Jenny shrugged.

“I hear that. So what do you wanna do first?” Thunderlane asked.

“I don't know. How about whatever that is.” She pointed to the baseball.

“Ah, unfortunately, we don't have a baseball field or enough people, but we can play catch,” Thunderlane suggested, picking up a glove.

“How do you play?” Jenny inquired.

“We just throw the ball to each other and catch it. Simple, but fun,” he smiled. Jenny still looked confused. "Just watch Rumble and I throw a few, and you just watch," Thunderlane suggested.

Jenny watched them toss the ball, observing the gloves they were wearing to catch it, how they threw it and with how much force in their ball (only enough to get it between them). Jenny looked at her hand. The gloves they were wearing weren’t weapons, she had no idea if she could form it or not. She concentrated to shift the metallic particles that her body was composed of.

It took longer than for any of her weapons, but after a moment, the nanoparticles formed around her hand and formed a replica of Rumble’s baseball glove.

Thunderlane caught the ball before noticing her glove. “Hey, look at that. You ready?” Thunderlane asked, Jenny, nodded. “Catch.” he threw it to her. Jenny caught the ball as she had learned before. “Great! Now just throw it to Rumble and we can keep going in that circle until one of us says ‘switch.’”

Jenny, staying silent, tossed the ball to Rumble. Rumble caught it and threw it to Thunderlane, the three of them did that several times. Then Rumble caught it and shouted.

"Switch!" Rumble threw the ball back to Thunderlane. Thinderlane caught off guard, almost didn't catch it. He threw it to Jenny and then she threw it back to Rumble.

Once it got back to Jenny, she said "Switch" and threw it back to Thunderlane.

This went on for several minutes. Eventually, they stopped because Rumble got distracted with the sound of an ice cream truck.

"Thunderlane, can I get a Snow Cone?" Rumble asked excitedly.

"Sure bud. Jenny, you want one?" Thunderlane asked.

"Sure," she nodded.

Thunderlane waved the truck down and it slowed to a halt. After a moment the driver climbed out of the back and stuck her head out. A big pink head of hair came out with a wide smile.

"Heya, Thunder!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed.

"Oh hey, Pinks,” Thunderlane greeted her. “Didn't know you were working the truck this week, I thought it was next week?"

"Eh, " she shrugged "Mr. and Ms. Cake let me pull a few more hours here." She looked up and noticed Jenny. "Oh hey, I haven't seen you around before! Did you just move here?"

Jenny was about to answer when Thunderlane interrupted. "Jenny is homeschooled. She's our next-door neighbor. Her mom doesn't let her out much."

"Bummer. So what can I get you?" Pinkie asked.

"Three Snow Cones please!" Rumble said, jumping into Pinkie's view.

"Three Snow cones, Coming right up." Pinkie disappeared into the truck for a moment, before returning with three snow cones in their packages. "That'll be three dollars, please."

Thunderlane had the money already ready and gave it to Pinkie. "Thanks. See you at school!"

"See ya!" Pinkie said going back to the driver seat and continued to go on her route.

Thunderlane gave Rumble his, just before giving Jenny her's. As the brothers started into their treats, Jenny hesitated. Thunderlane licked his patiently, while Rumble tried to just bite into the ice. Jenny thought Thunderlane's approach was more along the lines of normal so she did the same.

They sat on the grass and ate the snow cones for a time. That is until Jenny received a signal from her mother indicated by a trilling beep coming from her left hand. "Oh no, it's my mom. I have to answer it."

Jenny stood up turned around and took a few steps away from her new friends. She held her palm out and a little hologram of her mother appeared in it. "XJ-9, I have some information on the asteroid you are undoubtedly on your way to destroy. It-"

"Well here's the thing, mom…" Jenny started.

"You didn't go to destroy the asteroid like I asked, did you?" Wakeman asked.

"No."

"WHY NOT?" Wakeman shouted.

"It's not a real threat, and I wanted to meet the neighbor kid. We were having fun, something you don't understand."

"Well, the asteroid is a problem now! It hit a bigger asteroid in the asteroid belt and knocked THAT one toward earth. We now have an A-Class Extinction level asteroid headed toward the earth!"

"Um, that sounds bad," Rumble commented.

"Really bad." Thunderlane agreed.

"I'm on it, mom." Jenny turned off the communicator and immediately started to form her more robotic looking armor. It was a stronger configuration than the skin-like set up she preferred. It was bulkier, and more obvious that she was a robot, with booster rocket vents on the back and lower legs. With her armor formed she activated the boosters on her back and legs. She rocketed into the air and was quickly out of sight.

Thunderlane and Rumble stood there dumbstruck as they watched. Rumble’s snowcone unknowingly dropped to the ground as he watched Jenny ascend into space..

---

Jenny soared out of Earth’s atmosphere quickly, undoubtedly breaking many records set by the various space programs around the world. Her scanners quickly found the incoming asteroid. It was already past the moon. She plotted an intercept course and initiated a pursuit. It took no time to get to the asteroid.

She had a great many options to destroy this thing. Cutting it up with lasers, blowing it up with explosives, proton bombs, etc. But most options required her to make smaller chunks that she could lose track of. Redirecting the rock was the safest course of action.

Jenny started placing ion boosters on one side of the asteroid, a good forty points of thrust. Then she needed it to stop spinning. She grabbed hold at a good point and fired her own boosters. It took a minute but it stopped spinning. That is when she activated the other boosters.

It started to slow. But it wasn't fast enough. Jenny got on the same side with the boosters and poured all non-essential energy into her thrusters. Soon enough it had slowed to the point where she could turn it. She changed position on the asteroid and turned it so it would miss Earth.

It was harder to turn than it seemed. There was a limit to how close it could get to earth before the gravitational pull of the earth would be too much. Jenny was getting very close to that curtain. Only a few dozen kilometers away. But when the Asteroid stopped getting closer and started to move farther from the earth, Jenny started to relax.

She guided it a few thousand miles away and got its momentum back up as she headed away from the earth with it. Once it was far enough away she collected her booster rockets and headed back to earth.

---

She landed on her front lawn. Thunderlane and Rumble were both waiting there with Mrs. Wakeman. Jenny returned her head to normal but since her clothes were burned off during take-off she kept the armor on.

“Did you destroy the asteroid?” Rumble asked.

Jenny nodded and shrugged. “Redirected. It was too big to destroy, smaller chunks could have fallen to the earth,” Jenny explained.

“Woah, so is this what you are supposed to look like?” Thunderlane asked.

“It is what I had originally programmed her to look like,” another voice declared.

Jenny would have gone pale if she could, as she saw her mother walking up the street. “Oh...hi, mom,” she gulped.

“But I clearly underestimated how advanced her artificial intelligence was,” Mrs. Wakeman continued.

“Mom, I’m sorry I disobeyed you,” Jenny said holding her head a little low.

“The fault is mine. I should have expected this, given your rapid progress.” Mrs. Wakeman admitted. “Boys, would you excuse us, please? Jenny will see you tomorrow.”

“Wait, you mean it?” Jenny asked.

“Yes, as much as it pains me to admit it but interacting with humans might be good for your progress,” Mrs. Wakeman admitted. “You may ‘hang out’ with these two. We can talk about you joining a school at a later date.”

“Sounds cool. See ya tomorrow Jenny,” Thunderlane said walking away with Rumble.

“See ya tomorrow!” Rumble shouted.

Jenny waved to her friends as she followed her mother inside the house. Friends. She had real friends.

Author's Note:

So for those of you who watched My Life As A Teenage Robot when you were younger like me know that this chapter is very similar to the first episode of the show, it's purpose is it reestablish Jenny as an Android and not just your run of the mill Robot.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed this chapter, please hit the thumbs up if you did. If you got a positive comment is like to hear it.