The Demon and the Butterfly (comic story)
The Demon and the Butterfly was the title of Chapter One of the Jenny Everywhere webcomic Jenny and the Multiverse, created by Aristide Twain.
The main plot was followed by an epilogue taking the form of an in-character Q&A where questions submitted by readers, presented having been conveyed to the characters using the Interdimensional Ham Radio, were answered by the characters.
Contents
Plot
Jenny agreed to help her girlfriend Laura Drake prepare for a presentation she's giving tonight at “the Museum”, but is having difficulty concentrating, looking at a butterfly through the window of Laura's office. Laura calls her out on it, melodramatically pretending to be mad at her before revealing that she's just teasing her and planting a kiss on her forehead which leaves Jenny very flustered. A weary Laura reassures Jenny that the best thing she can do to help Laura is simply to make sure to be in the audience tonight — and to dress for the occasion, meaning she'll have to put on some shoes, something she apparently frequently foregoes.
At the presentation, with a formal Jenny in the audience, Laura unveils her great invention: the Triangular Bisector, a device she's been working on for five years, intended to draw power from “the heart of an alien sun in another dimension”. However, as soon as she switches it on, a giant, flaming crocodilian creature erupts from the small portal, laughing maniacally. In front of the outcry, a distraught Laura instantly protests that she's no mad scientist, and ran tests before this public demo, none of which yielded such a result; speaking intelligibly (and cuttingly), the entity, who names himself as Lord Grallyx, explains that he was waiting all along for the right moment to reveal himself, after having been sealed in the sun for a billion years by the Disciples of Golden Light. After mockingly thanking Laura, Grallyx escapes through the roof, intent on “burning this world”.
Facing the outraged crowd, Laura is on the verge of a breakdown, but a haggard Jenny suddenly climbs on stage, intent on helping. She reassures Laura that it wasn't her fault, as Grallyx said himself that he tricked her, and suggests trying to use the Bisector to summon the Disciples so that they trap Grallyx again. Laura warns her that the machine was rendered unstable by Grallyx pushing his way through, but Jenny insists that “someone's got to try” and leaps at it. She is shocked by a blast of energy, and Laura briefly believes that she's just lethally electrocuted herself. However, she awakes, a strange rainbowy energy coursing through her body. Acting on a hunch, she uses that energy to summon an object from another dimension into her hand: a purple rose which she holds out to a flabbergasted Laura.
Meanwhile, not far, Grallyx has started laying waste to the countryside around the city. Tanks and helicopters try to confront him, but are hesitant to attack, unsure what they could possibly do against the entity. One soldier, Jimmy Westeron, tries to talk the monster into a peaceful surrender, despite clearly being scared half to death; Grallyx, finding him “amusing”, tries to goad him into taking a (useless) first shot at him, but before Jimmy has space to make what would have been his very last decision, Jenny and Laura arrive in Laura's Bubblecopter. They get Grallyx's attention and position themselves slightly above him, whereupon Jenny calls on her newfound powers and summons a huge glob of water atop Grallyx. After hovering in place for a moment, it falls down upon him, extinguishing the fire that makes up most of his being and leaving only a tiny, and very confused, lizard.
Some time later, back in Laura's room (where the lizard has been brought back and given a terrarium), Laura goes over the resolution of the incident, noting that everything turned out fine, with Jimmy sending his thanks and multiple investors interested in Laura's technology based on the “accident” have made themselves known. She also expresses a belief that shifting the large amount of water purged all the dimensional energy from Jenny's body, which Jenny falsely confirms, even though the rainbow energy is still bursting from her hand as she crosses them behind her back, and her shadow on the wall seems, for just a moment, to look like a butterfly's…
Special Q&A
While waiting for her Triangular Bisector to be repaired, Laura starts to play with one of her “old gadgets”, the Interdimensional Ham Radio. It begins spewing out questions from “interdimensional busybodies who've been watching Jenny and Laura's adventures”. Eager to keep them talking, Laura starts answering them and ropes Jenny and Jimmy into participating.
The first of the questions addressed to Jenny is about someone called Jenny Nowhere, and leaves her simply confused. Next, Laura is asked about how the Bubblecopter lands, given the apparent lack of landing gear; Laura, still smug about her invention, explains that the propellors turn into the landing gear as needed. The next question is directed to Lord Grallyx, asking him to explain his backstory. Someone finally goes for the obvious question and asks Jenny about her butterfly-like shadow, but all Jenny can say is that the mysterious phenomenon comes and goes, and that she's reluctant to tell Laura about it. When someone asks for the name of Laura and Jenny's universe, to Laura's surprise, the I.H.R. spontaneously puts them through to the Multidimensional Finders Service, where a weary-looking red-haired woman informs them that they're “currently located in Reality #775”. Finally, two different people ask for the story of how Jenny and Laura met. Laura is happy to recollect the memory, dating back to when the girls where sixteen, when Jenny, who'd been dabbling in urban exploration, abruptly appeared at Laura's window, having mistaken Drake Manor for an abandoned building, a tableau which Laura describes as “very Peter Pan”.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- This story introduces a Jenny who lives on the island of Mystepolia. She appears as a short, dark-skinned girl with big eyes and a wide grin, her hair worn in a mid-sized afro. She wears a sleeveless midnight-blue shirt and green trousers, the latter tied using a purple belt with a golden belt-buckle, matching her goggles, whose strap is purple while the metal lens-frames are golden. She apparently prefers to go barefoot.
Laura Drake
- This story introduces a Laura who lives on the island of Mystepolia. She's a white redhead about Jenny's height, her hair big and frizzy, and wears big round glasses, golden earrings, purple boots and a light-purple Howie-style labcoat.
Lord Grallyx
- This story features a version of Lord Grallyx from another dimension than the one in which the story primarily takes place. Described by Laura as a “giant demon-thing”, he is at least a billion years old and seems motivated by pure destruction. He appears as a huge, flying, fluid, flaming silhouette of a six-limbed reptile with six eyes and a forked tail. When his fire is burned away, he is reduced to his true organic form of a small green lizard, still with six legs, six eyes and a forked tail, wearing a very tiny golden crown. Once his fire is extinguished, he is apparently powerless to relight it. In the Q&A, he explains that he was “a Salamander Lord of the Elemental Court” during the “Time of Legends”.
Jimmy Wherever
- This story introduces a “Jimmy Westeron” confirmed by his variation of the Paragraph's usage in the footer to be this universe's version of Jimmy Wherever. He is, as yet, a complete stranger to Jenny, Laura and the Multiverse, and is a soldier in the army of the Mystepolian Republic. He appears as a muscular man with blond hair wearing a blue uniform.
Jenny Nowhere
- One of the “interdimensional busybodies” in the Q&A asks if Jenny Nowhere will have “a moth motif” to match Jenny's butterfly motif once she shows up. Naturally, Jenny Everywhere has yet to meet anyone by that name and is merely confused at the question.
- A woman who makes a cameo in the audience would go on to be identified in COMIC: Call Me Nowhere as the series' version of Nowhere. She has light hair cut in a bob, and is wearing a sleeveless evening dress, standing next to a man identified in Call Me Nowhere as her fellow Altern Corporation employee, Colonel Major.
Universes
- This story opens in the comic's main Jenny's home universe, identified as interchangeably “Reality #775”, “Dimension 775” or “the 775th Universe” in the Q&A. It is inhabited by humans, but includes such features as the island of Mystepolia and unusual architecture, with round, porthole-like windows seeming widespread in Jenny and Laura's home city.
- The Triangular Bisector opens a portal to “another dimension” where Lord Grallyx was sealed inside a sun for a billion years by the Disciples of Golden Light.
- The Q&A sees a glimpse of the 925th Universe.
Continuity
- This story features the Bubblecopter as one of Laura Drake's old inventions. A “one-woman Lauracopter” had previously been mentioned in PROSE: Family Business, also by Aristide Twain, as one of another Laura Drake's old inventions.
- COMIC: Call Me Nowhere, the next chapter of Jenny and the Multiverse, picks up a little while after the end of this story, clarifying that the new financial backers Laura acquired were the Altern Corporation.
Behind the scenes
Read online
This comic is and remains available on ComicFury. It is also reproduced here with permission.
Cover
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