Something Alien. Something Familiar.

"Whooaaaa" Jack wonders.

Brenda was over his shoulder as soon as the gun was opened, and she was equally impressed... But perhaps far more confused. The bulbous rear body held a small circuit board, no larger than a credit card, but attached to a dozen pins and sockets were wires like synapsis connecting the other pieces. The hilt contained a stack of circuitry lined with black postage stamps. It was the muzzle of the pistol that contained the oddities. 5 bright orange crystals nestled delicately in a cylinder of silicon. They glowed softly with an energy all their own, were long skinny, and unshaped. Three of the crystals were dislodged from the chamber, and two of those were broken.

"This is wild!" Jack suddenly exclaims. "Some crazy magi-science stuff."

"It's a toy." Brenda states evenly. "calm down."

"Yeah." He forces a laugh. "Of course."

"It looks like we just need to put the crystals back in..." Her voice is drowned out by the sound of Jack digging through a box beneath the desk. "What are you doing?"

"That's a raspberry pi controller." He gesticulates uselessly as his eyes wander. "Or at least it's a modified one." He pulls out a familiar usb cable, and slips it into a slot on top of the central circuitry. He plugs the other end to a laptop on the desk.

Brenda wanted to tell him to stop, but her own curiosity got the better of her as she watched. His fingers were a blur as a dozen screens opened and closed, then finally paused on a black screen with green text. She wondered if the colors were a stylistic choice, or just default for the computer. Her fascination waned when Jack asked her for a username and password.

"What?" She stammered.

"A username, and password... To connect to the controller?" Jacks voice became slow and halting.

"I... uhh... I don't know anything about that. I'm sure I can find out though!" She hurriedly finished her second thought, though had her doubts. She'd been checking her phone all day, and thus far hadn't gotten a reply from her former roommate Pat. "Just... Put the crystals back, and press the button on the side a few times." she concluded.

Slowly, deliberately, he did, though the two broken ones sat loosely in the cylinder. He reached underneath the gun, to press the button and Brenda took a sharp hopeful breath and bit her bottom lip. One press meant no more braces. Two presses meant no more ears or tail. Three presses would change her body back to pre-hot topic proportions. She closed her eyes tightly, and waited but Jack spoke before she had time to get her hopes up much farther.

"Is it supposed to make a noise or something?"

Brenda sighed. "No. It does something else... Just... wait here I need to make a call." She stepped out, came face to face with the ogre of a shop owner, and continued out into the mall hall to call Amy.

Jack, sits small on the work bench, and stares at his computer... A strange musing passes through his mind. "I wonder... If it's just the default password?"

He punches in Username: pi, and Password: raspberry. A moment later a new screen appears on his computer...