Oh by the way. More Than Human, ch9 part 1.
Sticky post was updated. Still needs more, but whatevs for now.
Was going to put a long rambly misleading entry post about all this, but my morning's already late and I got a dog to walk. It's not like you guys will appreciate this any less, so here. Other parts will follow in about half an hour to an hour.
More Than Human, ch9
part 1
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
Title: More Than Human
Chapter 9: Monday Broke My Heart, or Everybody Knows You Cried Last Night
Pairing: RrB/PpG
Rating: R/M, because they're teenagers and a good handful of them use terrible, filthy language.
Disclaimer: Pay your respect to Craig, not me.
Summary: There is no way I can make this sound original, ever. My attempt to write a believable RrB/PpG in high school fic. Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. - Camus
Notes: Thanks to mathkid and juxtaposie who are the best. Around. Nothing's ever gonna keep 'em down.
More Than Human, Pt. 2 - Senior Fall Semester
September - Monday Broke My Heart, or Everybody Knows You Cried Last Night
-sbj-
“If one of you flies us back, we can get our powers back and come help you-”
“Waste of time.” Brick dismissed Blossom's idea as a boom resounded in the distance. “It'll be quicker for the three of us to wipe them out ourselves.”
“How many of them are there?” Bubbles asked.
“I'd estimate just over a hundred,” Brick replied.
“Okay, I repeat: where the hell was Mojo hiding those things?” Buttercup said in disbelief.
Brick looked at Blossom and said, “You three need to get somewhere safe in the meantime.”
“I'll take them,” Boomer said, his hand gripping Bubbles'.
“Butch has the shield,” Brick pointed out.
“Wasn't by choice,” Butch muttered.
Another crash echoed, followed by Mojo's laughter, and Blossom winced and said, “We'll be fine. Just, all three of you, hurry and go!”
Brick hesitated. Then he turned to his brothers.
“Butch, I'm giving you this section here. Boomer, take this end. I'll take the middle.” He glanced back at Blossom. “Whoever wipes out their guys first will come back for the girls and carry them home.”
“We'll be moving,” Blossom said.
“We'll find you,” Brick responded, and she went warm.
“Now be good little damsels-in-distress and don't get your pretty little selves hurt,” Butch cooed, and Buttercup and Blossom bristled at him.
“What?!” they both snapped, murder in their eyes. In the background, Bubbles gave Boomer a kiss for luck.
“Butch, quit dicking around.” Brick's eyes skipped over Blossom one last time before turning to the city.
Something occurred to her, and she said, “Brick!”
He looked back, his expression bewildered but oddly expectant. “Yes?”
“Try to minimize the damage to the city,” she said. “As best you can.”
He stared at her a moment before turning away again. “We'll try. Alright, boys. Let's roll.”
The girls watched the boys take off in a burst of colored light. Finally, Blossom started running in the direction of home.
“Hurry, girls. We need to get somewhere safe.”
“What's the use?” Buttercup grumbled, but she fell into a run beside Blossom anyway. “All the danger's moving that way.”
“Danger moves in more than one direction, Buttercup,” Blossom sighed.
Bubbles glanced back over her shoulder as she ran. “Do you think they'll be okay?”
“I hope Butch won't,” Buttercup snarled. “I hope he gets punched in the sack.”
“Buttercup!” Blossom snapped.
“I do,” Buttercup said, unapologetic. “That testosterone-stuffed idiot.” Her eyes darkened. “I'm nobody's fucking damsel-in-distress.”
“The streets are so empty,” Blossom said. “We need to call the Mayor and tell him people need to be evacuated!”
As Bubbles tugged out her phone and dialed, a sudden crash distracted them, and they rounded a corner to see a guy leaping out the window of an electronics store with a TV in hand.
“For real?!” Buttercup cried, indignant. Often during monster attacks, some idiots would attempt to loot the city in the ensuing mayhem.
Her exclamation caught the guy's attention, and he froze upon spotting the Girls.
“Put it down, jackass!” Buttercup bellowed, and naturally the guy went running off in the other direction. She swore and bolted after him.
“Buttercup! We have to-oh, geez.” Blossom groaned and pulled at Bubbles, who had just finished her phone call. “Come on!”
***
Brick took his time destroying the robots. It wasn't that he was reluctant to, or that he felt some warped alliance to the side of villainy. He'd purposely chosen this section because he'd heard Mojo's cackle echo in this direction. Brick wanted to talk to him. He figured it wasn't much of a shot, but he had nothing to lose just by asking...
He wouldn't be going after the girls. He'd known that even when he'd said one of the boys would go back for them. It was the perfect opportunity for him to go out and seek Mojo. Butch was out; he'd be having too much fun destroying things. That left Boomer, who-with the way he'd volunteered almost instantly to take the girls home, along with the wounded puppy expression he kept fixating on Bubbles-would wipe out the robots in his area as fast as possible so he could get back and haul them off to safety. His brothers were so obvious about these things.
Brick blasted through another three, hearing Mojo's familiar laughter echoing back, closer now. He wondered if the chimp even knew he was here.
***
Buttercup took off after the burglar so quickly that within the matter of a few blocks her sisters lost her. She didn't turn to see how well they were keeping up; she had an idea how well since she could hear their footsteps falling further and further behind. Buttercup was so athletic that even without powers, breaking into a full run and keeping that energy up wasn't an issue for her. She almost liked it. The way the cement rose up to catch her feet as they pounded against it, drove her closer and closer to her target... The sound of her breath, just hers, panting, flooding her senses so that it was the only noise she registered...
He was a damn good runner, but she was closing in and had one good sprint left in her. She snatched up the lid to a trash can as her feet hammered the pavement, took aim, and flung it like a Frisbee. It didn't have far to go; it knocked into the back of the guy's head and he stumbled, fell. The TV screen shattered as it hit the ground, and Buttercup grabbed the lid again, whacking the guy in the jaw with it as he tried to stand. He fell back, groaning, and then lay still.
There was a stitch beginning to twist in her side as she panted for breath, and after a moment's consideration she dragged him against the wall of the building and called the police to tell them where to collect him. She glanced back down the street as she closed her phone. She must've run her ass off. Her sisters were nowhere to be seen.
She was rubbing at her side and starting back in the direction she'd come from when a giant robot crashed into the street, sending up chunks of flying asphalt. Buttercup backed against the wall and shielded herself. Thankfully, nothing hit her. She realized, though, that that was the least of her problems, as the Robo Jojo stood and caught sight of her, then started lumbering toward her.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
She was just about to turn and start into another run for it when a bright sheet of green sparks shot down vertically, slicing the robot's outstretched arms off. Buttercup watched as they crashed to the ground, and another sheet came down and sliced the robot right down the middle, neatly in half, and that too collapsed in a shower of gnarled metal and flying sparks.
“I thought you were supposed to run away home, princess.”
Buttercup glared at Butch. “I'm going to rip you a new one.”
His eyes glittered at the threat. “Kinky! Sounds like fun.”
A few robots had pursued him and were now catching up; Buttercup caught sight of them over his shoulder. “Look-”
Before they fired Butch was in the air, blasting his eyebeams. A couple went down, but a couple more stayed up, and one of them began to power up its laser.
Butch jetted off over the roof of the building Buttercup was standing by, and the laser fired a deafening ray at him, skimming the top of the structure. Bricks smashed on the sidewalk at Buttercup's feet, and she glanced up to see an impending rain of heavy things-heavy things she didn't want falling towards her-falling towards her.
“God damn it, God damn it, God damn it,” she said between gritted teeth as she ran off-fuck, she couldn't go in front, the robots were already in the street, advancing. She turned into the debris, glancing up to dodge it as best she could. Concrete ricocheted off the streets as she ran, and something rammed into her shoulder blade, but she ignored the pain and kept running for safety-
A huge piece of debris shot into the ground in front of her, cutting off her path. She was running too fast; she stuck her arms out to lessen the impact but it still hurt when she ran into it, and she fell back against the sidewalk. Buttercup could hear more concrete coming down, and she hunched into a ball, covering her head with her arms and praying this wasn't her moment to go.
Something scooped her up, and she had the faint sensation that she was moving, but as if she were in a car, shut off from the outside. The sound seemed off, too-dimmer, further away. She uncurled to find herself riding in a green sphere, being commanded by Butch.
His voice was muffled but still discernible. “I gotta tell you, Buttercup, you're playing right into this whole 'Rescue the Princess' mission we've got going on tonight.”
“Fuck you, asshole!”
Butch was flying back towards the two remaining robots that had attacked, and he sneered as he spun in the air, bringing the sphere holding Buttercup around and crashing into the head of one of them. Buttercup banged around on the inside, her head ringing. It almost felt like being in a car accident, except without a seatbelt, much less a seat, to cushion the blow. She could already feel bruises forming as she stared down at the decapitated Robo Jojo lying prone in the street. Butch took care of the second with his eyebeams, then grinned at Buttercup.
She glared at him through the green. “I'm gonna kill you, Butch.”
“Looking forward to it,” he said, and headed back for his section of still-rampaging robots with a shielded Buttercup in tow.
***
“Where did she go?!” Blossom cried, exasperated and heaving for breath. She stopped, her hands braced against her knees. How far had they run? Were they even heading towards Buttercup anymore?
“Think she caught him?” Bubbles asked, leaning on her sister as she too gulped at the air.
A commotion boomed a few blocks away, and the girls looked up to see Butch dodge a laser cresting the roof of a building.
“Bubbles!” Boomer landed, his relief evident as Bubbles came up and threw her arms around him.
“That was quick,” she said, impressed.
“I had the right motivation,” he replied, his gaze catching on Blossom. “Where's Buttercup?”
Blossom was interrupted by Butch as he flew up to them. “Hey! Fancy seeing you guys here!”
Blossom ignored him and said to Boomer, “She ran off. I don't know where she is.”
“Who, Buttercup?” Butch pointed back where he'd come from, where two Robo Jojos were lumbering around. “I just saw her over there.
The girls stared at him, then Blossom shrieked, “You left her there?!”
Butch blinked. “Oh. Yeah, guess that was a bad idea. I'll go get her.”
“You'd better!” Blossom snarled as he took off.
“Okay, how are we going to do this?” Boomer held his arms out to either side and looked at the two girls he was going to have to carry.
In the end he wound up with one girl on each side, his arms wrapped around their waists to hold them in place-Blossom blushed, embarrassed by the close contact-and after they worked out the mechanics of how to create a sort of human safety belt-Bubbles and Blossom gripped each other's arms, woven around Boomer's shoulders, and also wound their legs around Boomer's to keep from dangling-he took off.
“I feel like I'm wearing some sort of girl armor,” he remarked once they were in the air. “It's weird.”
He was flying pretty fast; Blossom asked him to slow down a little lest the girls lose their grip and fall.
“I'd catch you,” he assured them.
“You're missing the point,” she said. “I don't want to fall in the first place.”
“They've got a perimeter set up already,” Bubbles said. Sure enough, flashing blue and red police car lights created a barrier sectioning off the un-safe zone. A number of citizens looked up and waved.
There were a couple of news helicopters in the distance approaching the girls and Boomer. Soon enough the helicopters passed over them. The girls tightened their hold and hunched their shoulders up. The whirring of the blades was so loud it almost hurt.
Blossom glanced over Boomer's shoulder and gasped. “What are they doing?!”
“What they always do,” Bubbles said, but she too looked worried. The two helicopters were flying right for the carnage, headed towards the remaining Robo Jojos.
“Stop,” Blossom said as she watched them approach the battle, a glowing red streak weaving amongst the giant robots.
Boomer paused, confused. “'Stop?'”
“I mean them-” Blossom started, then cut off with a gasp as sure enough, a wayward Robo Jojo's arm collided with the blades of one helicopter, sending it crashing on the top of a building.
“Oh my gosh,” Bubbles whispered.
“Boomer, head back!” Blossom cried.
“What?”
“We have to help them!”
Boomer seemed a little thrown by what amounted to an order that didn't come from his leader, but he obeyed. It was clear he regretted it, as the helicopter had landed dangerously close to the action, and his grip tightened around Bubbles as they drew near.
He set them down on the roof where the one helicopter had landed. The second was exercising a little more caution now and hovering a decent distance away.
The cacophony of power blasts and whirring metal was threatening in its near proximity. Blossom ignored it as Boomer set her down. He still clung to Bubbles even as she tried to pull away.
Blossom scurried to the helicopter-overturned, its sides damaged from the impact-and counted two, no, three people inside. She tried to pry the door open, but it was severely dented and wouldn't budge. She looked back at Boomer.
“I could use someone with powers,” she said, kind of irritated that he hadn't come up on his own, and after a moment's contemplation he let go of Bubbles and dashed up. Blossom had him cut through the metal, and then the three of them tugged the trapped passengers out. One of them was conscious but had suffered a concussion.
“We should take these guys to safety,” Blossom said as Bubbles piled them onto Boomer.
“I guess you guys can grab onto my legs or something,” he said. “I'm not used to carrying around piles of people like you two.”
“Yeah,” Blossom said, glancing up at the few Robo Jojos left, only blocks away.
As if on cue, Brick was suddenly whacked by one of them, and he came hurtling towards Boomer and the girls. He struck the helicopter, sending it screaming across the rooftop to the other end, and Boomer grabbed Bubbles and had to take off to get out of the way.
Blossom wasn't so lucky. She got hit by the helicopter's tail fin in her midsection and found herself being shoved off the edge of the roof; Brick had hit it at such a speed. She grabbed the fin just as her feet scrabbled off of the concrete and then she was overcome with a sudden fear of her own mortality as she dangled some ten stories off the ground. The helicopter caught on an air conditioning unit, jerking to an abrupt stop that nearly made her lose her grip.
She almost missed Brick falling to the ground. She gasped, looked down, then instantly looked back up, wishing she hadn't. The sound of him hitting the asphalt put a sick feeling in her gut-she knew he had superpowers, but still...
The helicopter groaned and began to overbalance, and a jolt of panic surged through her.
“No no no no no,” she whispered, pleaded, and still she felt the world moving too fast around her as the tail fin swung down, arcing her towards the outside wall of the building...
Right through an open window. She couldn't believe her luck.
As soon as she was inside she released her death grip on the helicopter and threw herself to the floor, reveling in its stability. She heard the helicopter whiz down and crash against the street. She wondered for a frantic second if Brick had gotten out of the way in time.
“Blossom?”
She looked up to find a teenage boy-he looked familiar, he must have been a student at Townsville High-kneeling at her side. It looked as if she'd landed in his living room. His parents were looking over the back of their couch at her. A small girl's head peeked up from between them.
“Are you alright?” he asked, then, after a moment's hesitation, touched her arm.
She brought her hand up to sweep her hair out of her face, a gesture with the slight purpose of shying away from his touch.
“I'm... fine,” she said, then a thought occurred to her. “Why haven't they evacuated you guys?”
He shrugged. “We've seen a lot of these. Monster fights, I mean. The building's pretty sturdy. It's never come down once, despite all the attacks.”
He almost sounded arrogant about it, which annoyed Blossom. They were putting their lives in danger! And they had a little one!
As if sensing her anger, the boy said, “Don't worry, we'll be fine. Nobody in this building ever evacuates anymore-”
“What?!” Blossom cried, incensed.
A crash resounded from outside, almost deafening and so near that it shook the building. Blossom glared at the boy as he dashed to the mantel to rescue some falling picture frames.
“Old hat,” he shrugged, holding up his armful of pictures to punctuate his statement.
She started, “You guys should-”
Metal against metal screamed from outside the window, interrupting her, and Blossom looked up to find Brick smashing into the heart of the Robo Jojo that had emerged. He soared out the other end, leaving a sparking hole in the robot's center, and as it fell another dashed up to take its place. Without skipping a beat, Brick zigzagged around its limbs, slicing them off with his eyebeams. Within moments only the torso remained, and before it could fall he roundhouse kicked it into the sky, sending it flying off into the distance.
Brick then hovered, staring off into the night sky where the Robo Jojo had disappeared, a mere glint in the deep, endless darkness. He was framed perfectly in the window's center, and then the wind picked up, and Blossom's heart skipped a beat.
Blossom had never had to deal much with other people being heroic and actually living up to the hero part of it. Watching Brick now-Brick, who had just bested two giant robots, and more before that, and probably more still to come, and it wasn't like she couldn't have done that with superpowers, but that was neither here nor there-put a strange sort of pull in her chest, a want to see him fight more, do more, to continue to look heroic and be heroic, because... it suited him.
She watched the wind tug at his shirt, his hair-long even for him, but attractive, still-and thought he should stop hovering in the wind like that. Better to be inside, here, with her.
He took off, and Blossom stood as he disappeared from her sight. Smoke from the first robot Brick had felled billowed up and began drifting into the window. She backed away, covering her mouth and fanning the air.
“Um, can we get you anything?”
She looked over at the guy setting the family picture frames down on the coffee table. “Oh! No, no, I'll be going-and so should you all, actually-”
A faint, low cackle started up from outside the window, and Blossom looked back at the smoke. There wasn't a lot, but it was thick. It cleared for the briefest moment to reveal Mojo Jojo in his own Giant Robo Jojo, looming. She stiffened, afraid he'd spotted her, but no, his attention was elsewhere...
She saw the reflection of Brick's back in the glass of the giant robot, fighting off the few Robo Jojos that remained, and watched as Mojo readied an arsenal of weaponry that popped out from behind his robot's shoulders. Then the smoke pushed up again, blocking him from her vision.
“Bri-” she tried to cry out, but she had drifted closer to the smoke without realizing it, and the lungful she inhaled sent her into a violent coughing fit. She couldn't warn him, and Mojo was about to fire-
Firm hands clasped her arms and started guiding her away from the smoke. “Blossom, come on, let me get you some water...”
As the guy pulled her along, she saw his mother fanning it back with a magazine and his father moving to close the window.
“No,” she croaked, still struggling for breath. “Not yet!” Then she spotted a throw on the couch.
She threw him off her and bolted for the window, snatching the throw on the way. The father instinctively backed off when he saw her coming, and she wound the blanket over her shoulders, wrapping up her arms, and entertained only the briefest flutter of fear before her foot hit the sill and she catapulted herself into the open air.
In the instant the smoke cleared away from her vision she spotted Mojo, still there, who turned to gape at the girl he'd previously rendered helpless on the ground as she shielded her face with her arms and came crashing through the glass.
Blossom hit the floor and rolled, tossed the throw off of her, and dashed toward Mojo. Recognizing her intention, he turned back to his control panel and grabbed one switch to maneuver the robot and another to fire his weapons. She fumbled for his cape and yanked, causing him to not only overbalance the robot, which went stumbling back and nearly crashed into another building, but also to inadvertently pull the switch for his arsenal, which blasted high, aimlessly, into the sky.
“Rrrrgh!” he seethed, right before Blossom punched him.
“Ow ow ow,” she whined as she pulled back, flapping her hand. “I didn't realize how much that's supposed to hurt!”
“Are you actually fighting me without the use of your superpowers?” he said, making a face.
She tensed. “What's with that tone? I could take you, superpowers or no.”
“Oh, in that case,” he said, then produced a really big gun from behind his back.
“Buttercup has a point,” Blossom said. “Where do you hide these things?”
“You'll never know, because it is a secret, and I, for one, will never tell you, it being a secret, as you know, and also due to the fact that even if it were not a secret I would still not choose to tell you anyway, and also because I am about to destrooooy you!” Mojo cackled, and pulled the trigger. Blossom dove out of the way.
Nothing happened.
Mojo looked at his gun, then shook it, and tried firing again. The trigger clicked, clicked, clicked. Nothing.
“Are you-oh, are you kidding me?!” he wailed. “I can't believe I forgot to charge this stupid thing!”
Blossom shot towards him, but he swung his arm back and smacked her in the side of the head with his gun. There was a blinding, ringing pain at her temple when she hit the ground, and something wet trailed down her cheek. As she groaned and tried to blink the whiteness in her vision away, she felt Mojo pick her up and carry her over to the jagged hole in the glass that had been her entry point.
She gasped and twisted back so he lost his balance, and she swung him by his cape-it was handy, him having that thing on-into the wall of his machine. As he wobbled, dazed, Blossom made for the control panel.
She paused when she reached it-there were so many buttons, and levers, and some of these dumb things weren't buttons at all but just lights, and not even necessary lights, most of them were just there for decoration...
“Mojo, you have no gift for simplicity,” she muttered, then spotted a giant button to the side with the words POWER DOWN adorning it. “Or subtlety.”
She struck the button, and the lights flickered off, followed by the telltale sound of a machine whirring down.
“I do not know why I continue to include those things in my inventions,” Mojo grumbled, then faltered as the Robo Jojo began to tilt.
The glass that decorated the floor made a shimmering sound as it began to slide, all to one side. Blossom gasped and grabbed onto a switch on the panel as Mojo scrambled for something to grab along the wall. Unfortunately for him, the walls provided no such salvation, and he frantically ran uphill until the angle became too steep and he fell back.
Blossom grabbed him-again, by the cape-as he fell, cutting off his scream. The arm of hers that was holding onto the switch protested the extra weight, and she suddenly felt tired, and weak...
The switch in her hand began to move, and she looked up in horror. She was hanging perpendicular to the way it moved, but with the extra weight Mojo had created...
She looked down, desperately seeking out somewhere to land, but the Robo Jojo was still a good eight stories off the ground-its fall having been stopped by another building that miraculously hadn't crumbled under the impact-and the path down was through sharp, jagged glass besides.
The switch groaned against her weight, shifting fully, and, lacking in other options, she screamed as she began to move.
Her scream stopped when she stopped. Lights began flickering back on, machinery began to whir once more, and she looked up. She'd pulled the ON switch.
“Mojo, why do you have a switch to turn the robot on and a button to turn it off?”
“Do not question the complexity of my grand designs!” he shouted. “My designs are too complicated and too intricately designed for puny brains such as yours to comprehend, so if I were to explain it to you, I would become veeeeery frustrated at your inability to process the information I was giving you-”
“Will you shut up and just grab the switch that gets this thing moving?!” she snapped. “We're both trying to survive right now; I'd say we have a mutual interest in getting this thing righted so we can actually get down!”
“Very well,” he muttered, and reached over to the panel.
Blossom furrowed her brow. “That's not the stick you were using to control it before-”
“Self-destruct activated,” a robotic voice announced.
“Oh. Right,” Blossom said colorlessly.
“Mwahahahahahaha!” Mojo cackled as the robot's voice began to count down from twenty. “Seeing as you, Blossom, Powerpuff Girl, are without your powers, and I, Mooooojo Jojo, have not been tainted by Antidote X, and seeing also as how I have an uncanny penchant for survival when faced with danger, including falling from extreme heights, getting blasted with lasers, and other such sundries that I won't get into, activating the self-destruct, while indeed promising a good degree of pain on my part, promises nothing but the sweet release of death for yourself!”
Blossom dropped him, relishing the way his maniacal cackling gave way to frantic screaming. Then she tried to think of a way to save herself.
“Seven... six...”
And I was doing so well, too, she thought glumly. At least, as well as a superhero without superpowers could do...
A beam of red light slashed into what little remained of the glass, and Blossom gasped as Brick exploded through it, snatched her, and then shielded her as he dashed her away. She heard the dim explosion of the Robo Jojo behind them as she clenched her arms around Brick's neck, feeling, despite all her heroics, very much a damsel-in-distress.
Typically this feeling wouldn't have sat well with Blossom. But the wind was blowing his hair back, riffling the collar of his shirt, and his arms were firm and steady as they cradled her, and she felt that-just this once-being a damsel-in-distress wasn't necessarily a bad thing, considering the perks.
***
Brick had just taken down the last non-Mojo containing Robo Jojo when he'd heard the scream. It was short, abrupt, and he'd been hearing lots of screams tonight, but this one stood out in that it had sounded unmistakably like...
“Blossom,” he whispered, horror flooding his senses, and he tore off through the streets, searching for her and ready to shower death upon whoever had inspired her short-lived scream. The possibility that it might have been short-lived because someone else had viciously or, worse yet, murderously cut her off entered his brain, and no, he had to stop thinking of scenarios or else he'd go ballistic when he did find her...
As he rounded the corner he saw Mojo falling out of his robot-which looked like it'd taken a hell of a spill-and caught him as he shot past.
Mojo stopped screaming and stared at Brick for a second before snarling and pointing. “You!”
“Where is she?!” Brick snapped, and then he heard it-the countdown to self-destruction. He halted and looked back at the Robo Jojo.
“If you are talking about who I think you are talking about, which would make you a traitor, then I am happy to inform you that you are too laaaaaaaaaaate...”
Brick had dropped Mojo and was now hurtling back towards the robot, the wind screaming past. He built up a beam in his hand and sliced into the glass, his eyes already locked on her, his arms already outstretched. He wrapped his arms around her, a favor she gratefully returned, and shot away, his immense relief giving way to anger.
He could see his brothers' streaks in the distance and decided to find an empty space to land. Butch was circling a deserted street corner, the smoldering remains of several Robo Jojos beneath him, and there Brick touched down, not letting himself notice how Blossom didn't immediately jump off. She remained curled against his chest, her grip almost tightening around his shoulders.
There was a gash on the side of her head, it was bleeding, and Brick was enraged.
“I thought I told you to get to safety!” he shouted, still holding her.
Her grip loosened and she blinked at him in utter confusion. “What?”
“What the hell, what the fucking hell were you doing in Mojo Jojo's God damn robot?!”
“Stop cursing at me!” she snapped, and her hands, formerly clasped around his shoulders, shoved at his chest. She stumbled back on the ground, her eyes glazing over, and he grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.
“And you're dizzy from losing blood, besides! Why didn't you listen to me?!”
She blinked her eyes into focus and glared at him, trying to jerk her arm away. They sensed their siblings landing nearby and ignored them.
“There were people I needed to help!”
“There are always people you need to help! What about you?! It's one thing when you're putting yourself in danger and all a twenty-story fall is going to do is stun you for a second, but when you're vulnerable? When you're helpless?”
“I am not helpless!”
“You could've fucking died!”
“What do you care?!”
“I told you to get to somewhere safe!”
“You know, that's the last time I try to save your stupid life! If all you're going to do is curse and shout at me-”
“What could you possibly have done to save my life?! I'm the one with the superpowers!”
“Um,” Boomer interrupted, raising his hand-
“Shut up!” Brick and Blossom screamed at him in unison.
Bubbles comforted her boyfriend as he pouted. Brick cut Blossom off before she could start again.
“You lost your powers, you nearly got crushed-no, you shut up and listen to me-you've got a fucking hole in your head, and I found you dangling from a God damn robot about to self-destruct! What were you going to do? Huh? How could you have saved yourself? What do you think, what do you fucking think would have happened if I hadn't been there?!”
She clamped her mouth shut, her eyes flashing. Now when she yanked her arm away he let go, and they resumed their habit of glaring at each other.
Some rustling attracted their attention, and they all turned to find Butch digging through some building debris on the street.
“What are you doing?” Boomer asked.
Butch mumbled something unintelligible.
“Wait a second,” Bubbles said, frowning as she looked around. “Where's Buttercup?”
Butch mumbled again.
“What?” Blossom demanded.
An unhappy Butch spoke louder. “She was with me.”
“Well, where is she now?” Blossom said, and then the answer hit her. “Oh, no.”
Brick stared at his brother, dumbfounded. “You didn't.”
“Yeah, um.” Butch looked up, his expression almost guilty. “I kinda dropped her.”
“What?!” Blossom and Bubbles cried, horrified. They all dashed over to the rocks.
“Where did you drop her?” Brick asked.
“I can't believe you dropped her!” Blossom cried, frantic.
“Oh, God, I hope she's okay,” Bubbles whimpered.
“Gold stars, Butch,” Boomer grumbled.
“It was around here,” Butch said. “She might-might be over by the robots, too...”
“I can't believe this, I can't, oh my God, this is the worst night ever,” Blossom said to herself, trying to overturn a giant rock.
Brick pushed her back, his expression grim. “You stand over there. I've rescued you enough God damn times tonight.”
Blossom was about to launch into another tirade when they all heard a sudden shifting. They looked around and saw Buttercup emerging from the wreckage underneath a Robo Jojo, kicking away sheets of metal and broken wood.
She seemed dazed, and there was something off about her arm...
Then she grabbed it and, with a pained grimace, popped it back into place.
Bubbles covered her face and dropped to the ground. “Oh my God! Oh my God, that was so gross!”
“Dude,” Boomer said, a little awed as he rubbed his own arm and winced.
Blossom dashed up to her. “Buttercup! Are you okay?”
Buttercup was bleary, and her blinking was slow, heavy-lidded. Then she caught sight of Butch over her sister's shoulder, and her vision focused. She pushed Blossom out of the way as she broke into a staggered half-run towards him.
Butch actually looked and sounded relieved. “Dude, thank God you're-”
Buttercup cut him off by kneeing him between the legs so hard she nearly toppled over. Unfortunately, without her superpowers, this had little effect, as did the multiple kicks and punches (with her good arm) that followed. Butch just stood there, thoroughly amused as she landed several painless blows.
“This is kind of awesome,” he said, cocking his arms on his hips while his would-be attacker let loose with a string of obscenities.
“You're fucking dead, Butch!” she shouted. “Fucking dead! You hear me?! You hear me, you little fucking fuck?! When I get my powers back I'm going to fucking kill you!”
Butch responded by laughing in her face. She stopped, then looked at Boomer.
“I'll give you ten bucks,” she said.
Boomer immediately slugged his brother in the face. Buttercup later gave him an extra ten for the sound Butch made as he ate the asphalt.
***
“Hey, Brick, come to the darkroom with me.” Bubbles snatched Brick by the arm and, true to form, dragged him out with her before he could protest. “Have you guys started practicing yet?”
He groaned. It had been a week since the whole incident with Mojo Jojo, and what had developed between Brick and Blossom out of studying and chatting together at the boys' apartment had been undone by their fight. Now they were back to avoiding each other and not talking.
“You haven't, have you.” She chirped a, “Hello!” to the various Journalism students hanging out in the classroom, then muscled Brick into the darkroom, where she shut them in. While Brick's eyes adjusted to the dim red light, Bubbles hummed to herself as she unclipped several photos hanging from clothespins.
He made a face. “It smells like vinegar in here.”
“That's the stop-bath,” she explained, packing her photos into a box. She handed it to Brick. “Here.”
He peered inside at the photo resting on top. It was a blurry close-up of... hell, he had no idea. Somebody's arm? A chair?
“This one didn't really come out...” he said dubiously.
“No, it did,” she assured him. “They all did.”
Without asking, Brick shuffled through some of the photos. They all were unreadable, blurred images. She must be making a collage. But how was she going to do anything with them, they were barely-
“Here.” She piled another box on top of the first.
“What the-”
“More photos.”
“'More?''
“Come on, my dad's waiting outside with the car.” She guided him out of the darkroom, out of the Journalism room, and back into the hall.
“Why didn't you get Boomer to do this?”
“To save him and the Professor a little grief,” she explained, and tugged Brick out of the main doors. “Hi, Professor!”
“Hello, sweetheart!” he said, then sobered as he saw Brick.
“And of course you know Brick.” Bubbles took the keys from her father and skipped to the trunk.
Brick nodded around the boxes, ignoring the Professor's penetrating glare. “Sir.”
The Professor remained silent.
“Thanks for last month. That whole... thing with the AB Virus. My brothers and I really appreciated it.”
“It was a pleasure,” the Professor said, in a voice that sounded like the experience had been the exact opposite of pleasurable for him.
Brick wasn't intimidated, but he was starting to feel a little uncomfortable. Without looking at the glaring, grim-faced man, Brick floated over to the back of the car, where Bubbles was shifting stuff around the trunk to make space.
“Alright, set them down. Thanks, Brick.”
He grunted. Bubbles tossed her father the keys. “Okay, Professor, let's go!”
The Professor, still eyeing Brick with all the distaste he could muster, settled into the driver's seat.
“Brick, I'll see you later.”
“Are you skipping class?”
“No, just leaving to work on my independent study project at home. I cleared it with Miss Maybury. Hey, go talk to her.”
“What could I possibly have to talk about with Miss Maybury?”
“I didn't mean her,” Bubbles sighed, as if it were obvious, then shut herself into the car and waved at him as her father drove away.
***
English was his next class, and he shared it with her.
He ate his lunch in the Art room and then left early to go to Mrs. Yang's. She had her AP English III class going, but she was a laid back teacher and allowed him to sit on the couch in the corner while she wrapped up with the Juniors.
Talk to her. Hmph. What was there to talk about? She'd acted an idiot. He'd heard from Boomer that they'd turned around to go help those stupid people out of their downed helicopter. Granted, they'd probably have died if she hadn't told Boomer to turn around-Brick had crashed into it, after all-but then that put her life in danger. Her life, which was so much more valuable than-
He caught himself, then rationalized, No. From an objective standpoint, her life is more valuable. Blossom was a hero. She saved people. Three less people who could do virtually nothing to help their fellow man was not a loss compared to losing Blossom. If she was gone, how many more people would be doomed without her around to save them?
The bell rang, jarring him out of his thoughts, and he watched as the class rose and made the usual frenetic bid for the doorway. A few students lingered behind to talk to Mrs. Yang, with a couple of Seniors already filtering in.
Brick was just shifting to get off the couch and head for his seat when Blossom walked in. Their eyes caught, then hers skipped on over to her table.
Talk to her? Brick rolled his eyes. She didn't even want to make eye contact.
As she passed by Mrs. Yang's desk, one of the students turned and said, “Hey!”
Blossom, her attention caught, turned, then lit up in recognition. “Oh! Hey, um-”
“Robbie,” the boy supplied. “Sorry, we never got properly introduced. I mean, well, obviously I know who you are.”
Brick frowned.
Caught off guard, Blossom sputtered, “Yeah, I'm-sorry about the blanket, I just-”
“No, no, don't worry about it. You really freaked us out, you know, when you jumped out of the window and did that whole crashing into Mojo's robot! You know? It was like something out of an action movie or something!”
Is this guy seriously in AP English? Brick thought to himself, hating the way the guy spoke.
To his displeasure Blossom blushed and said shyly, “No, that's just... you know, what I do...”
“Why did you? I mean, there was all that smoke, and you totally could've eaten it-”
“I...” Blossom's eyes flicked in Brick's direction. “I... Mojo was about to fire at somebody and I just, um... wanted to stop him.”
The guy-Robbie, that was his stupid name-grinned. “Well, that was cool of you. Props. You falling into my living room was one of the coolest things that's ever happened. My little sister can't stop talking about you!” He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous tic before he resumed that dopey grin. “You know, she'd love it if you dropped by... signed her arm or something, I don't know...”
Blossom laughed. “Maybe I will!”
“She'd love it, seriously. That'd be cool. Well, you know where I live, so... see you around.”
“Bye, Robbie,” she said, grinning. “Nice meeting you.”
Brick stared at the guy, who was beaming as he walked out the door. Then his eyes settled on Blossom, taking her seat.
After a tense second he stood, weaving around the other chattering students, and took a seat at her table, right next to her. She cast the briefest of glances at him, then pretended to busy herself with flipping through her papers.
Brick did the same, then cleared his throat and said, “Did you really leap out of that guy's window that night?”
She gave it a few seconds before responding. “Yes, I did.”
“Through glass.”
“... Yes.”
“So not only could you have fallen, but you could've gotten cut to pieces.”
“Actually, just the former,” she said stonily. “I wrapped myself up in a throw prior to going through the glass, to minimize the possibility of getting fatally injured.”
“I'd count the possibility of falling from twenty stories high a good potential fatal injury.”
“It wasn't twenty stories,” she sighed, exasperated. “More like... seven.”
Brick recalled how she had glanced at him when she'd told Robbie...
“Who were you...” He cleared his throat and started again. “Who were you trying to save?”
She didn't respond.
“Was it me?”
She shifted in her seat.
“You could've said something.”
“There was a lot of smoke,” she muttered. “I tried, but I went into a coughing fit.”
“I probably would've been able to dodge it in time. And even if I'd gotten hit, I don't think it would've killed me.”
“Yes, sorry,” she snapped. “I was completely useless and my intervention was totally unnecessary. I was only putting myself in danger for absolutely no good reason at all.”
Brick thought of her surrounded by smoke, unable to fly or engage in the fight, the threat of death looming over her as she sailed through that window, through that glass, all because...
He picked at a corner of his textbook cover, trying to straighten it and thinking of how easily she had smiled at Robbie. “I can't believe you did that. Without powers or anything. Jumped through glass, I mean. Up from seven stories. And then beat Mojo Jojo, on top of it.” He could almost sense her relaxing beside him, her anger giving way to a slight confusion. “You're kind of a beast,” he said, and she fidgeted.
“Um... thank you,” she said.
The bell rang, but just before Mrs. Yang could get class started Blossom seemed to reach some inner conclusion and whispered, “Um... should we... did you want to start practicing today?”
Brick thought about what they'd talked about two weeks ago, about the promise of his arms around her waist and her cheek against his. They were silly thoughts. They wouldn't be dancing anything that involved her face so close to his.
He set his jaw and thought of Mojo.
“Sorry,” he heard himself say. “Let's start tomorrow. Tomorrow morning. I'm busy this afternoon.”
***
Townsville Prison was more heavily protected than Brick would've expected. Never mind the guards; of course they were idiots. But there were surveillance cameras all over the place, and Brick had struggled to come up with a way to get past them without damaging the building. And, of course, without being seen.
That had been last week. Then, over the weekend, he'd realized he had an empty volcanic observatory full of stuff he could use.
That had done the trick. They'd thought that Mojo had cameras stationed all around the world, but the truth was more reasonable: his system could access any surveillance camera he wanted, worldwide. (Brick had decided not to question how he'd gone about setting this up. The chimp with the oversized brain had an uncanny knack for grandiose feats that defied reason and logic.)
Within a day Brick was viewing the surveillance feed from the prison. He then-with some difficulty-hacked into the surveillance system itself, and set it up to loop recorded footage for the duration of thirty minutes one afternoon.
That afternoon was today. Brick-who had been thwarted inadvertently during last week's attack-was going to see Mojo Jojo.
The cameras were fine; now Brick just had to get past the guards. He'd double-checked with his siblings about the girls' whereabouts. Butch had not been able to speak to her for a week without getting punched in the nuts, but he'd known that Buttercup would be at volleyball practice. Brick had told Boomer to take Bubbles out this afternoon. Besides that, the blonde was working on her Independent Study Project for Art at home. Blossom, of course, was at Dance practice.
Brick managed to steal into the building without being seen, then approached the guard behind the glass in the waiting room.
“Excuse me, hi,” he said, and the guard looked at him. “It's still visiting hours, right? I'd like to talk to Mojo Jojo.”
The guard squinted at him. “Aren't you one of the Rowdyruff Boys?”
Brick knew it wouldn't do to lie. “Yes.”
“You helped bring him down the other day, didn't you?”
“I did.”
For whatever reason, the guard relaxed. “What do you want to see him for?”
“I suspect he's up to something and want to see if I can get any info out of him.”
Within five seconds the guy had scanned him and was walking him down to the visiting area, coffee cup in hand. Brick eyed it and scoffed. Easy. Ridiculously easy.
“Now, because it's, you know, Mojo Jojo and all, I'll have to sit with you just to make sure everything goes hunky-dory,” the guard explained.
“Just doing your job, officer,” Brick said, uncapping Butch's bottle of sleeping meds in his pocket.
“Let me just get this door here,” he said, fumbling for his keys and holding his drink to the side as he did. Brick dropped half a pill into the mug and waited while he opened the door. “Larry, I'm gonna need you to send Mojo Jojo out,” the guard said into a walkie talkie. He led Brick inside, then took a slurp of his coffee. “Now, you sit right there, and I'll just be over here...”
“Thanks, officer,” Brick said, and settled back, only to fly up a second later to catch the guard's mug before it shattered on the floor. He smirked as he set it down, glancing at the snoring guard.
“You.”
Brick turned to find Mojo on the other side of the glass, eyes tapered to slits as he glared at him.
“Hey, old man,” he said, kicking back. “What's up?”
***
Boomer tried to examine his reflection in the window of a parked car. Did he look okay? He hoped he looked okay.
He took a deep breath and stared at the bright red door of Bubbles' house. He'd been here only a few times as a kid. He didn't remember it looking this imposing.
Shake it out, he told himself, and did so. That settled his nerves a bit, and he cracked one of his winning smiles before floating to the door. After a second's contemplation, he wrestled his phone out of his pocket.
Her sweet voice soon rang on the other end. “Boomer? Hey! What's up?”
“There's a surprise for you on your front doorstep,” he said, grinning.
She paused before venturing, “Really?”
“A surprise that wants to know if you're busy...” he said, his hand circling over the doorbell.
“Oh, Boomer. Hold on. I'll be right down.”
“Can't-”
The door flew open, and Boomer blinked as he locked eyes with Professor Utonium.
Boomer swallowed. “Wait.”
He'd seen the guy before-yes, when he was a kid, but also in photos, old newspapers, the like. He seemed like a harmless, amiable enough person.
Or had.
Professor Utonium smiled-a disarming tweak of the lips, which showed just enough strain to indicate that he wasn't smiling because he was genuinely happy to see Boomer.
Boomer closed his phone and pocketed it, never once removing his eyes from the Professor's. It occurred to him that he had faced way scarier things than this-Professor Utonium was a sane person who lived in a quiet suburb in a happy city, and Boomer was a Rowdyruff Boy. A fucking Rowdyruff Boy, and charming to boot.
He turned on his most beatific smile and saluted. “Hi there, Professor Utonium. Nice to meet you. I'm, you know, Boomer. I'm here to see Bubbles.”
“Of course,” the Professor said, and something curled in Boomer's stomach, something dark that screamed Danger and Doom and Death Will Soon Be Upon You.
“Come in, Boomer.” He backed away, revealing the bright, well-lit living room, and Boomer inwardly sighed, relieved at the pleasant setting.
“Can I see you in my lab for a second?”
Boomer's relief plummeted into the depths of some dark, icy ocean. A dark, icy ocean full of dead ex-boyfriends.
He shook the image away and said, “Um... why's that, Professor?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Professor Utonium said, waving him on to a door that said Lab that may just as well have read Here Lies Boomer. “I just want to talk to you for a second about Bubbles.”
He's just a regular guy, Boomer reassured himself. A regular guy who'd created three little girls in a laboratory, sure, and was a pretty well-known scientist, but by all other accounts, pretty much a regular guy.
Boomer was a Rowdyruff Boy. Please. What could the Professor possibly do to him?
***
“I'll be honest with you, Mojo, I don't have a lot of time. So before you launch into your long-winded bloviating about this, that, and whatever, I want to put this on the table-JS, Inc.”
Mojo's arms were crossed and he continued to glare at Brick.
“You know who they are. They've approached you in the past. Several times, in fact. And you've always turned them down.”
“My talents lie elsewhere.”
“Your talents are being wasted.”
“I don't believe my abilities nor my choices are the ones that should be coming into question here, seeing as how current parties with certain superhuman abilities have made choices that are of more questionable concern than my abilities. And my choices. Currently.”
Brick sighed and leaned back, looking up at the dingy ceiling. “You speaking for Him, now?”
“I speak for myself, and it is only myself for whom I speak.”
“Look. I work for a company that is the leading distributor of Evil in this country. We kill people, we spread diseases, we start wars, we manufacture and distribute black market weaponry, we call when you've just sat down to dinner, we cause traffic jams, and in the summer we get together to club baby seals-that's the name of it, Club Baby Seal, get it?”
“You do not directly allow yourselves to be tied to all those items you have described, which would-”
“Being the most evil one in the room does not necessitate having the loudest voice,” Brick interjected, his lip curling. “A lesson you would do well to live by once in awhile.”
“You insolent little whelp!” Mojo snarled. “You are giving me life lessons here? A teenager? A boy who shunned his duty, his destiny, the very reason for which he was created-”
“Excuse me,” Brick seethed, “for deciding that chasing after little girls who protect one stupid city in an entire world was an utter waste of my time.”
“You cannot even begin to understand-”
“Mojo, what can you say you've done? Successfully? I can tell you, because quite frankly, you're the loudest idiot in the room. You, with your superhuman intellect. You've attempted to take over the world how many times? Did it occur to you to leave Townsville? Did it occur to you to not broadcast your efforts when you did? Or is there a certain artistry to turning everybody in the world into dogs, or making a bunch of other monkeys with gigantic brains, or inventing one thing after another that ultimately fails because you never think of taking these giant machines that you can magically hide anywhere in Townsville out of Townsville? Where there's no trio of superheroes to come and stop you? Am I missing something there?” Brick leaned close, narrowing his eyes at this idiot, this waste of breath. “You had the world in your hands. You had that key, that stupid key that deemed you Ruler of the World, and what did you do?”
The mere thought infuriated Brick. He'd had it. Mojo had had it, in his hands.
“You know how many of us would kill for that opportunity? That authority? You had it, and you threw it away. And here you are, over a decade later, still chasing after three stupid little girls, building up a string of failures, one after the other. And you tell me that I'm the one whose choices should be coming into question, simply because I rejected a destiny that I can tell, just by observing my 'mentor figures' around me, will yield no outcome other than total failure?”
The amount of loathing being issued in his direction was only matched by the absolute disgust Brick felt as they stared each other down.
“You,” Mojo Jojo said quietly, “have been such a disappointment.”
Brick's eyes flashed.
“You say you rejected a destiny that holds no option for you other than failure, but did you ever make the effort? You accuse me, and those with similar inclinations like me in this city, of wasting our efforts, of essentially not being 'evil enough,' the Devil Himself included, the absolute paragon of Evil, the very Being who recreated you! You have no grasp of how significant your origins are! You are a part of something you cannot even begin to comprehend, and instead of taking that opportunity and living up to the responsibilities you shouldered-”
“I shouldered nothing. I was a kid, a stupid kid who didn't know any better-”
“And remarkably enough, nothing has changed. Listen closely so that you may remember this later and I will not have to repeat myself since you have already listened to it and taken this into consideration. You may submit to the idea that being evil means manipulating the world from behind a dark, secret curtain of secrecy, but in the end, how much more devastation will be brought about by you killing whatever rich person it is that you kill who has a lot of money because they are rich, than by destroying those that signify eternal hope and salvation? Those that have become symbols of love and beauty-”
“A symbol is only a symbol. Humanity is fickle. Symbols come and go.”
“Your youth does not excuse your stupidity,” Mojo admonished. “The devotion of the pitiful human heart is not to be underestimated, Brick.”
A silence passed between them, marred by the deep snoring of the sleeping guard.
“You and your brothers were created to destroy the Powerpuff Girls. Both times. Him even placed you with that duty, which is yours no matter what you believe. A task from the Most Evil One is not to be taken lightly, at least, not in my recommendation; I would advise against dismissing that which you are obligated to do.”
Brick stared at him, letting his hatred simmer. He wanted to remember this. This was why he had left. This was why it was so important that he get out of here as soon as possible. He would drown in inadequacy here, in this city, listening to drivel like this. He didn't owe anyone a fucking thing. No matter if Him had created them, and Mojo before. They belonged to nobody. Brick belonged to nobody.
“I am not obligated to do anything,” he said. Mojo, this idiot, couldn't see, would never see. None of them ever would.
“Of course you aren't. Nobody expects anything of an utter disappointment.”
Brick flew to his feet, his chair clattering to the floor as his eyes burned a steady, glowing red. Mojo continued to glare at him, his grim expression unwavering.
No. He couldn't do anything. He'd attract attention. The girls would find out, and then they might start digging, and Brick didn't need that. Slowly, steadily, the glow in his eyes subsided.
“Takes one to know one,” he muttered, before gathering up the guard and slamming the door behind him.
The guard was out, completely. Not even the noise of Brick's chair falling to the floor nor the loud echo of the door slam had stirred him from his slumber.
Suddenly the guard's watch beeped the hour, and he came to with a snort. Of course. “Huh? Whazzat?”
Brick stood him on his feet in the hall. “Hey. You passed out back there.”
“Did... did I?” The guard rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I don't remember...”
“Yeah. Here's your mug.” Brick had grabbed it on the way out the door, and he passed it back.
“Thanks, kid. Did you get what you were looking for?”
Brick's hands drifted into his pockets. “I... suppose I got about what I expected.”
“Mm. Well, let's get you back to the desk so you can sign out-actually, I'm sorry, I don't think I had you sign in-”
“That won't be necessary.” Brick whipped out a little device that went off like a flashbulb in the guard's eyes. The man blinked and his eyes went glassy. “I was never even here.”
***
Bubbles paced around the living room. Boomer wasn't at the door, and wouldn't pick up his phone. She huffed and crossed her arms. So she had taken a little time to get ready! It had only been, what, half an hour? He was going to need a stern talking to-
The door to the Professor's lab swung open, and she whirled to find her father and her boyfriend exiting.
Oh. Well, that explains it.
“Hi there, sweetheart!” the Professor said, and kissed her on the cheek. Behind him, Boomer looked a little gaunt.
“Hey, Professor,” she said, giving him a quick hug.
“You two go have fun now.” Her father ushered her towards the door. Boomer sidled to the door as well. He moved a little awkwardly-he appeared not to want to turn his back to the Professor.
“Love you, Professor!”
He waved. “Love you too, sweetheart.”
“Bye,” Boomer said, with some degree of difficulty. He exhaled once they were through the door.
Bubbles wrapped her arm around his and dashed him down the street. “Oh, you should've called me before you came over.”
“No, it... it was fine,” he said, gulping.
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing!” Boomer squeaked, then cleared his throat. “Nothing. He said nothing. Why would you think he said anything? He just showed me his lab. He does some neat stuff there. In his lab. With stuff. Hey, wow, I sure am hungry! Are you hungry? I hope you're hungry, because I'm starving. Seriously, I could eat a bear. Maybe two. Think they serve bear somewhere?”
As he pulled her along, Bubbles sighed. Well, at least they'd gotten that out of the way.
***
Originally posted at http://essbeejay.dreamwidth.org/105902.html.
Was going to put a long rambly misleading entry post about all this, but my morning's already late and I got a dog to walk. It's not like you guys will appreciate this any less, so here. Other parts will follow in about half an hour to an hour.
More Than Human, ch9
part 1
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
Title: More Than Human
Chapter 9: Monday Broke My Heart, or Everybody Knows You Cried Last Night
Pairing: RrB/PpG
Rating: R/M, because they're teenagers and a good handful of them use terrible, filthy language.
Disclaimer: Pay your respect to Craig, not me.
Summary: There is no way I can make this sound original, ever. My attempt to write a believable RrB/PpG in high school fic. Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. - Camus
Notes: Thanks to mathkid and juxtaposie who are the best. Around. Nothing's ever gonna keep 'em down.
More Than Human, Pt. 2 - Senior Fall Semester
September - Monday Broke My Heart, or Everybody Knows You Cried Last Night
-sbj-
“If one of you flies us back, we can get our powers back and come help you-”
“Waste of time.” Brick dismissed Blossom's idea as a boom resounded in the distance. “It'll be quicker for the three of us to wipe them out ourselves.”
“How many of them are there?” Bubbles asked.
“I'd estimate just over a hundred,” Brick replied.
“Okay, I repeat: where the hell was Mojo hiding those things?” Buttercup said in disbelief.
Brick looked at Blossom and said, “You three need to get somewhere safe in the meantime.”
“I'll take them,” Boomer said, his hand gripping Bubbles'.
“Butch has the shield,” Brick pointed out.
“Wasn't by choice,” Butch muttered.
Another crash echoed, followed by Mojo's laughter, and Blossom winced and said, “We'll be fine. Just, all three of you, hurry and go!”
Brick hesitated. Then he turned to his brothers.
“Butch, I'm giving you this section here. Boomer, take this end. I'll take the middle.” He glanced back at Blossom. “Whoever wipes out their guys first will come back for the girls and carry them home.”
“We'll be moving,” Blossom said.
“We'll find you,” Brick responded, and she went warm.
“Now be good little damsels-in-distress and don't get your pretty little selves hurt,” Butch cooed, and Buttercup and Blossom bristled at him.
“What?!” they both snapped, murder in their eyes. In the background, Bubbles gave Boomer a kiss for luck.
“Butch, quit dicking around.” Brick's eyes skipped over Blossom one last time before turning to the city.
Something occurred to her, and she said, “Brick!”
He looked back, his expression bewildered but oddly expectant. “Yes?”
“Try to minimize the damage to the city,” she said. “As best you can.”
He stared at her a moment before turning away again. “We'll try. Alright, boys. Let's roll.”
The girls watched the boys take off in a burst of colored light. Finally, Blossom started running in the direction of home.
“Hurry, girls. We need to get somewhere safe.”
“What's the use?” Buttercup grumbled, but she fell into a run beside Blossom anyway. “All the danger's moving that way.”
“Danger moves in more than one direction, Buttercup,” Blossom sighed.
Bubbles glanced back over her shoulder as she ran. “Do you think they'll be okay?”
“I hope Butch won't,” Buttercup snarled. “I hope he gets punched in the sack.”
“Buttercup!” Blossom snapped.
“I do,” Buttercup said, unapologetic. “That testosterone-stuffed idiot.” Her eyes darkened. “I'm nobody's fucking damsel-in-distress.”
“The streets are so empty,” Blossom said. “We need to call the Mayor and tell him people need to be evacuated!”
As Bubbles tugged out her phone and dialed, a sudden crash distracted them, and they rounded a corner to see a guy leaping out the window of an electronics store with a TV in hand.
“For real?!” Buttercup cried, indignant. Often during monster attacks, some idiots would attempt to loot the city in the ensuing mayhem.
Her exclamation caught the guy's attention, and he froze upon spotting the Girls.
“Put it down, jackass!” Buttercup bellowed, and naturally the guy went running off in the other direction. She swore and bolted after him.
“Buttercup! We have to-oh, geez.” Blossom groaned and pulled at Bubbles, who had just finished her phone call. “Come on!”
***
Brick took his time destroying the robots. It wasn't that he was reluctant to, or that he felt some warped alliance to the side of villainy. He'd purposely chosen this section because he'd heard Mojo's cackle echo in this direction. Brick wanted to talk to him. He figured it wasn't much of a shot, but he had nothing to lose just by asking...
He wouldn't be going after the girls. He'd known that even when he'd said one of the boys would go back for them. It was the perfect opportunity for him to go out and seek Mojo. Butch was out; he'd be having too much fun destroying things. That left Boomer, who-with the way he'd volunteered almost instantly to take the girls home, along with the wounded puppy expression he kept fixating on Bubbles-would wipe out the robots in his area as fast as possible so he could get back and haul them off to safety. His brothers were so obvious about these things.
Brick blasted through another three, hearing Mojo's familiar laughter echoing back, closer now. He wondered if the chimp even knew he was here.
***
Buttercup took off after the burglar so quickly that within the matter of a few blocks her sisters lost her. She didn't turn to see how well they were keeping up; she had an idea how well since she could hear their footsteps falling further and further behind. Buttercup was so athletic that even without powers, breaking into a full run and keeping that energy up wasn't an issue for her. She almost liked it. The way the cement rose up to catch her feet as they pounded against it, drove her closer and closer to her target... The sound of her breath, just hers, panting, flooding her senses so that it was the only noise she registered...
He was a damn good runner, but she was closing in and had one good sprint left in her. She snatched up the lid to a trash can as her feet hammered the pavement, took aim, and flung it like a Frisbee. It didn't have far to go; it knocked into the back of the guy's head and he stumbled, fell. The TV screen shattered as it hit the ground, and Buttercup grabbed the lid again, whacking the guy in the jaw with it as he tried to stand. He fell back, groaning, and then lay still.
There was a stitch beginning to twist in her side as she panted for breath, and after a moment's consideration she dragged him against the wall of the building and called the police to tell them where to collect him. She glanced back down the street as she closed her phone. She must've run her ass off. Her sisters were nowhere to be seen.
She was rubbing at her side and starting back in the direction she'd come from when a giant robot crashed into the street, sending up chunks of flying asphalt. Buttercup backed against the wall and shielded herself. Thankfully, nothing hit her. She realized, though, that that was the least of her problems, as the Robo Jojo stood and caught sight of her, then started lumbering toward her.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
She was just about to turn and start into another run for it when a bright sheet of green sparks shot down vertically, slicing the robot's outstretched arms off. Buttercup watched as they crashed to the ground, and another sheet came down and sliced the robot right down the middle, neatly in half, and that too collapsed in a shower of gnarled metal and flying sparks.
“I thought you were supposed to run away home, princess.”
Buttercup glared at Butch. “I'm going to rip you a new one.”
His eyes glittered at the threat. “Kinky! Sounds like fun.”
A few robots had pursued him and were now catching up; Buttercup caught sight of them over his shoulder. “Look-”
Before they fired Butch was in the air, blasting his eyebeams. A couple went down, but a couple more stayed up, and one of them began to power up its laser.
Butch jetted off over the roof of the building Buttercup was standing by, and the laser fired a deafening ray at him, skimming the top of the structure. Bricks smashed on the sidewalk at Buttercup's feet, and she glanced up to see an impending rain of heavy things-heavy things she didn't want falling towards her-falling towards her.
“God damn it, God damn it, God damn it,” she said between gritted teeth as she ran off-fuck, she couldn't go in front, the robots were already in the street, advancing. She turned into the debris, glancing up to dodge it as best she could. Concrete ricocheted off the streets as she ran, and something rammed into her shoulder blade, but she ignored the pain and kept running for safety-
A huge piece of debris shot into the ground in front of her, cutting off her path. She was running too fast; she stuck her arms out to lessen the impact but it still hurt when she ran into it, and she fell back against the sidewalk. Buttercup could hear more concrete coming down, and she hunched into a ball, covering her head with her arms and praying this wasn't her moment to go.
Something scooped her up, and she had the faint sensation that she was moving, but as if she were in a car, shut off from the outside. The sound seemed off, too-dimmer, further away. She uncurled to find herself riding in a green sphere, being commanded by Butch.
His voice was muffled but still discernible. “I gotta tell you, Buttercup, you're playing right into this whole 'Rescue the Princess' mission we've got going on tonight.”
“Fuck you, asshole!”
Butch was flying back towards the two remaining robots that had attacked, and he sneered as he spun in the air, bringing the sphere holding Buttercup around and crashing into the head of one of them. Buttercup banged around on the inside, her head ringing. It almost felt like being in a car accident, except without a seatbelt, much less a seat, to cushion the blow. She could already feel bruises forming as she stared down at the decapitated Robo Jojo lying prone in the street. Butch took care of the second with his eyebeams, then grinned at Buttercup.
She glared at him through the green. “I'm gonna kill you, Butch.”
“Looking forward to it,” he said, and headed back for his section of still-rampaging robots with a shielded Buttercup in tow.
***
“Where did she go?!” Blossom cried, exasperated and heaving for breath. She stopped, her hands braced against her knees. How far had they run? Were they even heading towards Buttercup anymore?
“Think she caught him?” Bubbles asked, leaning on her sister as she too gulped at the air.
A commotion boomed a few blocks away, and the girls looked up to see Butch dodge a laser cresting the roof of a building.
“Bubbles!” Boomer landed, his relief evident as Bubbles came up and threw her arms around him.
“That was quick,” she said, impressed.
“I had the right motivation,” he replied, his gaze catching on Blossom. “Where's Buttercup?”
Blossom was interrupted by Butch as he flew up to them. “Hey! Fancy seeing you guys here!”
Blossom ignored him and said to Boomer, “She ran off. I don't know where she is.”
“Who, Buttercup?” Butch pointed back where he'd come from, where two Robo Jojos were lumbering around. “I just saw her over there.
The girls stared at him, then Blossom shrieked, “You left her there?!”
Butch blinked. “Oh. Yeah, guess that was a bad idea. I'll go get her.”
“You'd better!” Blossom snarled as he took off.
“Okay, how are we going to do this?” Boomer held his arms out to either side and looked at the two girls he was going to have to carry.
In the end he wound up with one girl on each side, his arms wrapped around their waists to hold them in place-Blossom blushed, embarrassed by the close contact-and after they worked out the mechanics of how to create a sort of human safety belt-Bubbles and Blossom gripped each other's arms, woven around Boomer's shoulders, and also wound their legs around Boomer's to keep from dangling-he took off.
“I feel like I'm wearing some sort of girl armor,” he remarked once they were in the air. “It's weird.”
He was flying pretty fast; Blossom asked him to slow down a little lest the girls lose their grip and fall.
“I'd catch you,” he assured them.
“You're missing the point,” she said. “I don't want to fall in the first place.”
“They've got a perimeter set up already,” Bubbles said. Sure enough, flashing blue and red police car lights created a barrier sectioning off the un-safe zone. A number of citizens looked up and waved.
There were a couple of news helicopters in the distance approaching the girls and Boomer. Soon enough the helicopters passed over them. The girls tightened their hold and hunched their shoulders up. The whirring of the blades was so loud it almost hurt.
Blossom glanced over Boomer's shoulder and gasped. “What are they doing?!”
“What they always do,” Bubbles said, but she too looked worried. The two helicopters were flying right for the carnage, headed towards the remaining Robo Jojos.
“Stop,” Blossom said as she watched them approach the battle, a glowing red streak weaving amongst the giant robots.
Boomer paused, confused. “'Stop?'”
“I mean them-” Blossom started, then cut off with a gasp as sure enough, a wayward Robo Jojo's arm collided with the blades of one helicopter, sending it crashing on the top of a building.
“Oh my gosh,” Bubbles whispered.
“Boomer, head back!” Blossom cried.
“What?”
“We have to help them!”
Boomer seemed a little thrown by what amounted to an order that didn't come from his leader, but he obeyed. It was clear he regretted it, as the helicopter had landed dangerously close to the action, and his grip tightened around Bubbles as they drew near.
He set them down on the roof where the one helicopter had landed. The second was exercising a little more caution now and hovering a decent distance away.
The cacophony of power blasts and whirring metal was threatening in its near proximity. Blossom ignored it as Boomer set her down. He still clung to Bubbles even as she tried to pull away.
Blossom scurried to the helicopter-overturned, its sides damaged from the impact-and counted two, no, three people inside. She tried to pry the door open, but it was severely dented and wouldn't budge. She looked back at Boomer.
“I could use someone with powers,” she said, kind of irritated that he hadn't come up on his own, and after a moment's contemplation he let go of Bubbles and dashed up. Blossom had him cut through the metal, and then the three of them tugged the trapped passengers out. One of them was conscious but had suffered a concussion.
“We should take these guys to safety,” Blossom said as Bubbles piled them onto Boomer.
“I guess you guys can grab onto my legs or something,” he said. “I'm not used to carrying around piles of people like you two.”
“Yeah,” Blossom said, glancing up at the few Robo Jojos left, only blocks away.
As if on cue, Brick was suddenly whacked by one of them, and he came hurtling towards Boomer and the girls. He struck the helicopter, sending it screaming across the rooftop to the other end, and Boomer grabbed Bubbles and had to take off to get out of the way.
Blossom wasn't so lucky. She got hit by the helicopter's tail fin in her midsection and found herself being shoved off the edge of the roof; Brick had hit it at such a speed. She grabbed the fin just as her feet scrabbled off of the concrete and then she was overcome with a sudden fear of her own mortality as she dangled some ten stories off the ground. The helicopter caught on an air conditioning unit, jerking to an abrupt stop that nearly made her lose her grip.
She almost missed Brick falling to the ground. She gasped, looked down, then instantly looked back up, wishing she hadn't. The sound of him hitting the asphalt put a sick feeling in her gut-she knew he had superpowers, but still...
The helicopter groaned and began to overbalance, and a jolt of panic surged through her.
“No no no no no,” she whispered, pleaded, and still she felt the world moving too fast around her as the tail fin swung down, arcing her towards the outside wall of the building...
Right through an open window. She couldn't believe her luck.
As soon as she was inside she released her death grip on the helicopter and threw herself to the floor, reveling in its stability. She heard the helicopter whiz down and crash against the street. She wondered for a frantic second if Brick had gotten out of the way in time.
“Blossom?”
She looked up to find a teenage boy-he looked familiar, he must have been a student at Townsville High-kneeling at her side. It looked as if she'd landed in his living room. His parents were looking over the back of their couch at her. A small girl's head peeked up from between them.
“Are you alright?” he asked, then, after a moment's hesitation, touched her arm.
She brought her hand up to sweep her hair out of her face, a gesture with the slight purpose of shying away from his touch.
“I'm... fine,” she said, then a thought occurred to her. “Why haven't they evacuated you guys?”
He shrugged. “We've seen a lot of these. Monster fights, I mean. The building's pretty sturdy. It's never come down once, despite all the attacks.”
He almost sounded arrogant about it, which annoyed Blossom. They were putting their lives in danger! And they had a little one!
As if sensing her anger, the boy said, “Don't worry, we'll be fine. Nobody in this building ever evacuates anymore-”
“What?!” Blossom cried, incensed.
A crash resounded from outside, almost deafening and so near that it shook the building. Blossom glared at the boy as he dashed to the mantel to rescue some falling picture frames.
“Old hat,” he shrugged, holding up his armful of pictures to punctuate his statement.
She started, “You guys should-”
Metal against metal screamed from outside the window, interrupting her, and Blossom looked up to find Brick smashing into the heart of the Robo Jojo that had emerged. He soared out the other end, leaving a sparking hole in the robot's center, and as it fell another dashed up to take its place. Without skipping a beat, Brick zigzagged around its limbs, slicing them off with his eyebeams. Within moments only the torso remained, and before it could fall he roundhouse kicked it into the sky, sending it flying off into the distance.
Brick then hovered, staring off into the night sky where the Robo Jojo had disappeared, a mere glint in the deep, endless darkness. He was framed perfectly in the window's center, and then the wind picked up, and Blossom's heart skipped a beat.
Blossom had never had to deal much with other people being heroic and actually living up to the hero part of it. Watching Brick now-Brick, who had just bested two giant robots, and more before that, and probably more still to come, and it wasn't like she couldn't have done that with superpowers, but that was neither here nor there-put a strange sort of pull in her chest, a want to see him fight more, do more, to continue to look heroic and be heroic, because... it suited him.
She watched the wind tug at his shirt, his hair-long even for him, but attractive, still-and thought he should stop hovering in the wind like that. Better to be inside, here, with her.
He took off, and Blossom stood as he disappeared from her sight. Smoke from the first robot Brick had felled billowed up and began drifting into the window. She backed away, covering her mouth and fanning the air.
“Um, can we get you anything?”
She looked over at the guy setting the family picture frames down on the coffee table. “Oh! No, no, I'll be going-and so should you all, actually-”
A faint, low cackle started up from outside the window, and Blossom looked back at the smoke. There wasn't a lot, but it was thick. It cleared for the briefest moment to reveal Mojo Jojo in his own Giant Robo Jojo, looming. She stiffened, afraid he'd spotted her, but no, his attention was elsewhere...
She saw the reflection of Brick's back in the glass of the giant robot, fighting off the few Robo Jojos that remained, and watched as Mojo readied an arsenal of weaponry that popped out from behind his robot's shoulders. Then the smoke pushed up again, blocking him from her vision.
“Bri-” she tried to cry out, but she had drifted closer to the smoke without realizing it, and the lungful she inhaled sent her into a violent coughing fit. She couldn't warn him, and Mojo was about to fire-
Firm hands clasped her arms and started guiding her away from the smoke. “Blossom, come on, let me get you some water...”
As the guy pulled her along, she saw his mother fanning it back with a magazine and his father moving to close the window.
“No,” she croaked, still struggling for breath. “Not yet!” Then she spotted a throw on the couch.
She threw him off her and bolted for the window, snatching the throw on the way. The father instinctively backed off when he saw her coming, and she wound the blanket over her shoulders, wrapping up her arms, and entertained only the briefest flutter of fear before her foot hit the sill and she catapulted herself into the open air.
In the instant the smoke cleared away from her vision she spotted Mojo, still there, who turned to gape at the girl he'd previously rendered helpless on the ground as she shielded her face with her arms and came crashing through the glass.
Blossom hit the floor and rolled, tossed the throw off of her, and dashed toward Mojo. Recognizing her intention, he turned back to his control panel and grabbed one switch to maneuver the robot and another to fire his weapons. She fumbled for his cape and yanked, causing him to not only overbalance the robot, which went stumbling back and nearly crashed into another building, but also to inadvertently pull the switch for his arsenal, which blasted high, aimlessly, into the sky.
“Rrrrgh!” he seethed, right before Blossom punched him.
“Ow ow ow,” she whined as she pulled back, flapping her hand. “I didn't realize how much that's supposed to hurt!”
“Are you actually fighting me without the use of your superpowers?” he said, making a face.
She tensed. “What's with that tone? I could take you, superpowers or no.”
“Oh, in that case,” he said, then produced a really big gun from behind his back.
“Buttercup has a point,” Blossom said. “Where do you hide these things?”
“You'll never know, because it is a secret, and I, for one, will never tell you, it being a secret, as you know, and also due to the fact that even if it were not a secret I would still not choose to tell you anyway, and also because I am about to destrooooy you!” Mojo cackled, and pulled the trigger. Blossom dove out of the way.
Nothing happened.
Mojo looked at his gun, then shook it, and tried firing again. The trigger clicked, clicked, clicked. Nothing.
“Are you-oh, are you kidding me?!” he wailed. “I can't believe I forgot to charge this stupid thing!”
Blossom shot towards him, but he swung his arm back and smacked her in the side of the head with his gun. There was a blinding, ringing pain at her temple when she hit the ground, and something wet trailed down her cheek. As she groaned and tried to blink the whiteness in her vision away, she felt Mojo pick her up and carry her over to the jagged hole in the glass that had been her entry point.
She gasped and twisted back so he lost his balance, and she swung him by his cape-it was handy, him having that thing on-into the wall of his machine. As he wobbled, dazed, Blossom made for the control panel.
She paused when she reached it-there were so many buttons, and levers, and some of these dumb things weren't buttons at all but just lights, and not even necessary lights, most of them were just there for decoration...
“Mojo, you have no gift for simplicity,” she muttered, then spotted a giant button to the side with the words POWER DOWN adorning it. “Or subtlety.”
She struck the button, and the lights flickered off, followed by the telltale sound of a machine whirring down.
“I do not know why I continue to include those things in my inventions,” Mojo grumbled, then faltered as the Robo Jojo began to tilt.
The glass that decorated the floor made a shimmering sound as it began to slide, all to one side. Blossom gasped and grabbed onto a switch on the panel as Mojo scrambled for something to grab along the wall. Unfortunately for him, the walls provided no such salvation, and he frantically ran uphill until the angle became too steep and he fell back.
Blossom grabbed him-again, by the cape-as he fell, cutting off his scream. The arm of hers that was holding onto the switch protested the extra weight, and she suddenly felt tired, and weak...
The switch in her hand began to move, and she looked up in horror. She was hanging perpendicular to the way it moved, but with the extra weight Mojo had created...
She looked down, desperately seeking out somewhere to land, but the Robo Jojo was still a good eight stories off the ground-its fall having been stopped by another building that miraculously hadn't crumbled under the impact-and the path down was through sharp, jagged glass besides.
The switch groaned against her weight, shifting fully, and, lacking in other options, she screamed as she began to move.
Her scream stopped when she stopped. Lights began flickering back on, machinery began to whir once more, and she looked up. She'd pulled the ON switch.
“Mojo, why do you have a switch to turn the robot on and a button to turn it off?”
“Do not question the complexity of my grand designs!” he shouted. “My designs are too complicated and too intricately designed for puny brains such as yours to comprehend, so if I were to explain it to you, I would become veeeeery frustrated at your inability to process the information I was giving you-”
“Will you shut up and just grab the switch that gets this thing moving?!” she snapped. “We're both trying to survive right now; I'd say we have a mutual interest in getting this thing righted so we can actually get down!”
“Very well,” he muttered, and reached over to the panel.
Blossom furrowed her brow. “That's not the stick you were using to control it before-”
“Self-destruct activated,” a robotic voice announced.
“Oh. Right,” Blossom said colorlessly.
“Mwahahahahahaha!” Mojo cackled as the robot's voice began to count down from twenty. “Seeing as you, Blossom, Powerpuff Girl, are without your powers, and I, Mooooojo Jojo, have not been tainted by Antidote X, and seeing also as how I have an uncanny penchant for survival when faced with danger, including falling from extreme heights, getting blasted with lasers, and other such sundries that I won't get into, activating the self-destruct, while indeed promising a good degree of pain on my part, promises nothing but the sweet release of death for yourself!”
Blossom dropped him, relishing the way his maniacal cackling gave way to frantic screaming. Then she tried to think of a way to save herself.
“Seven... six...”
And I was doing so well, too, she thought glumly. At least, as well as a superhero without superpowers could do...
A beam of red light slashed into what little remained of the glass, and Blossom gasped as Brick exploded through it, snatched her, and then shielded her as he dashed her away. She heard the dim explosion of the Robo Jojo behind them as she clenched her arms around Brick's neck, feeling, despite all her heroics, very much a damsel-in-distress.
Typically this feeling wouldn't have sat well with Blossom. But the wind was blowing his hair back, riffling the collar of his shirt, and his arms were firm and steady as they cradled her, and she felt that-just this once-being a damsel-in-distress wasn't necessarily a bad thing, considering the perks.
***
Brick had just taken down the last non-Mojo containing Robo Jojo when he'd heard the scream. It was short, abrupt, and he'd been hearing lots of screams tonight, but this one stood out in that it had sounded unmistakably like...
“Blossom,” he whispered, horror flooding his senses, and he tore off through the streets, searching for her and ready to shower death upon whoever had inspired her short-lived scream. The possibility that it might have been short-lived because someone else had viciously or, worse yet, murderously cut her off entered his brain, and no, he had to stop thinking of scenarios or else he'd go ballistic when he did find her...
As he rounded the corner he saw Mojo falling out of his robot-which looked like it'd taken a hell of a spill-and caught him as he shot past.
Mojo stopped screaming and stared at Brick for a second before snarling and pointing. “You!”
“Where is she?!” Brick snapped, and then he heard it-the countdown to self-destruction. He halted and looked back at the Robo Jojo.
“If you are talking about who I think you are talking about, which would make you a traitor, then I am happy to inform you that you are too laaaaaaaaaaate...”
Brick had dropped Mojo and was now hurtling back towards the robot, the wind screaming past. He built up a beam in his hand and sliced into the glass, his eyes already locked on her, his arms already outstretched. He wrapped his arms around her, a favor she gratefully returned, and shot away, his immense relief giving way to anger.
He could see his brothers' streaks in the distance and decided to find an empty space to land. Butch was circling a deserted street corner, the smoldering remains of several Robo Jojos beneath him, and there Brick touched down, not letting himself notice how Blossom didn't immediately jump off. She remained curled against his chest, her grip almost tightening around his shoulders.
There was a gash on the side of her head, it was bleeding, and Brick was enraged.
“I thought I told you to get to safety!” he shouted, still holding her.
Her grip loosened and she blinked at him in utter confusion. “What?”
“What the hell, what the fucking hell were you doing in Mojo Jojo's God damn robot?!”
“Stop cursing at me!” she snapped, and her hands, formerly clasped around his shoulders, shoved at his chest. She stumbled back on the ground, her eyes glazing over, and he grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.
“And you're dizzy from losing blood, besides! Why didn't you listen to me?!”
She blinked her eyes into focus and glared at him, trying to jerk her arm away. They sensed their siblings landing nearby and ignored them.
“There were people I needed to help!”
“There are always people you need to help! What about you?! It's one thing when you're putting yourself in danger and all a twenty-story fall is going to do is stun you for a second, but when you're vulnerable? When you're helpless?”
“I am not helpless!”
“You could've fucking died!”
“What do you care?!”
“I told you to get to somewhere safe!”
“You know, that's the last time I try to save your stupid life! If all you're going to do is curse and shout at me-”
“What could you possibly have done to save my life?! I'm the one with the superpowers!”
“Um,” Boomer interrupted, raising his hand-
“Shut up!” Brick and Blossom screamed at him in unison.
Bubbles comforted her boyfriend as he pouted. Brick cut Blossom off before she could start again.
“You lost your powers, you nearly got crushed-no, you shut up and listen to me-you've got a fucking hole in your head, and I found you dangling from a God damn robot about to self-destruct! What were you going to do? Huh? How could you have saved yourself? What do you think, what do you fucking think would have happened if I hadn't been there?!”
She clamped her mouth shut, her eyes flashing. Now when she yanked her arm away he let go, and they resumed their habit of glaring at each other.
Some rustling attracted their attention, and they all turned to find Butch digging through some building debris on the street.
“What are you doing?” Boomer asked.
Butch mumbled something unintelligible.
“Wait a second,” Bubbles said, frowning as she looked around. “Where's Buttercup?”
Butch mumbled again.
“What?” Blossom demanded.
An unhappy Butch spoke louder. “She was with me.”
“Well, where is she now?” Blossom said, and then the answer hit her. “Oh, no.”
Brick stared at his brother, dumbfounded. “You didn't.”
“Yeah, um.” Butch looked up, his expression almost guilty. “I kinda dropped her.”
“What?!” Blossom and Bubbles cried, horrified. They all dashed over to the rocks.
“Where did you drop her?” Brick asked.
“I can't believe you dropped her!” Blossom cried, frantic.
“Oh, God, I hope she's okay,” Bubbles whimpered.
“Gold stars, Butch,” Boomer grumbled.
“It was around here,” Butch said. “She might-might be over by the robots, too...”
“I can't believe this, I can't, oh my God, this is the worst night ever,” Blossom said to herself, trying to overturn a giant rock.
Brick pushed her back, his expression grim. “You stand over there. I've rescued you enough God damn times tonight.”
Blossom was about to launch into another tirade when they all heard a sudden shifting. They looked around and saw Buttercup emerging from the wreckage underneath a Robo Jojo, kicking away sheets of metal and broken wood.
She seemed dazed, and there was something off about her arm...
Then she grabbed it and, with a pained grimace, popped it back into place.
Bubbles covered her face and dropped to the ground. “Oh my God! Oh my God, that was so gross!”
“Dude,” Boomer said, a little awed as he rubbed his own arm and winced.
Blossom dashed up to her. “Buttercup! Are you okay?”
Buttercup was bleary, and her blinking was slow, heavy-lidded. Then she caught sight of Butch over her sister's shoulder, and her vision focused. She pushed Blossom out of the way as she broke into a staggered half-run towards him.
Butch actually looked and sounded relieved. “Dude, thank God you're-”
Buttercup cut him off by kneeing him between the legs so hard she nearly toppled over. Unfortunately, without her superpowers, this had little effect, as did the multiple kicks and punches (with her good arm) that followed. Butch just stood there, thoroughly amused as she landed several painless blows.
“This is kind of awesome,” he said, cocking his arms on his hips while his would-be attacker let loose with a string of obscenities.
“You're fucking dead, Butch!” she shouted. “Fucking dead! You hear me?! You hear me, you little fucking fuck?! When I get my powers back I'm going to fucking kill you!”
Butch responded by laughing in her face. She stopped, then looked at Boomer.
“I'll give you ten bucks,” she said.
Boomer immediately slugged his brother in the face. Buttercup later gave him an extra ten for the sound Butch made as he ate the asphalt.
***
“Hey, Brick, come to the darkroom with me.” Bubbles snatched Brick by the arm and, true to form, dragged him out with her before he could protest. “Have you guys started practicing yet?”
He groaned. It had been a week since the whole incident with Mojo Jojo, and what had developed between Brick and Blossom out of studying and chatting together at the boys' apartment had been undone by their fight. Now they were back to avoiding each other and not talking.
“You haven't, have you.” She chirped a, “Hello!” to the various Journalism students hanging out in the classroom, then muscled Brick into the darkroom, where she shut them in. While Brick's eyes adjusted to the dim red light, Bubbles hummed to herself as she unclipped several photos hanging from clothespins.
He made a face. “It smells like vinegar in here.”
“That's the stop-bath,” she explained, packing her photos into a box. She handed it to Brick. “Here.”
He peered inside at the photo resting on top. It was a blurry close-up of... hell, he had no idea. Somebody's arm? A chair?
“This one didn't really come out...” he said dubiously.
“No, it did,” she assured him. “They all did.”
Without asking, Brick shuffled through some of the photos. They all were unreadable, blurred images. She must be making a collage. But how was she going to do anything with them, they were barely-
“Here.” She piled another box on top of the first.
“What the-”
“More photos.”
“'More?''
“Come on, my dad's waiting outside with the car.” She guided him out of the darkroom, out of the Journalism room, and back into the hall.
“Why didn't you get Boomer to do this?”
“To save him and the Professor a little grief,” she explained, and tugged Brick out of the main doors. “Hi, Professor!”
“Hello, sweetheart!” he said, then sobered as he saw Brick.
“And of course you know Brick.” Bubbles took the keys from her father and skipped to the trunk.
Brick nodded around the boxes, ignoring the Professor's penetrating glare. “Sir.”
The Professor remained silent.
“Thanks for last month. That whole... thing with the AB Virus. My brothers and I really appreciated it.”
“It was a pleasure,” the Professor said, in a voice that sounded like the experience had been the exact opposite of pleasurable for him.
Brick wasn't intimidated, but he was starting to feel a little uncomfortable. Without looking at the glaring, grim-faced man, Brick floated over to the back of the car, where Bubbles was shifting stuff around the trunk to make space.
“Alright, set them down. Thanks, Brick.”
He grunted. Bubbles tossed her father the keys. “Okay, Professor, let's go!”
The Professor, still eyeing Brick with all the distaste he could muster, settled into the driver's seat.
“Brick, I'll see you later.”
“Are you skipping class?”
“No, just leaving to work on my independent study project at home. I cleared it with Miss Maybury. Hey, go talk to her.”
“What could I possibly have to talk about with Miss Maybury?”
“I didn't mean her,” Bubbles sighed, as if it were obvious, then shut herself into the car and waved at him as her father drove away.
***
English was his next class, and he shared it with her.
He ate his lunch in the Art room and then left early to go to Mrs. Yang's. She had her AP English III class going, but she was a laid back teacher and allowed him to sit on the couch in the corner while she wrapped up with the Juniors.
Talk to her. Hmph. What was there to talk about? She'd acted an idiot. He'd heard from Boomer that they'd turned around to go help those stupid people out of their downed helicopter. Granted, they'd probably have died if she hadn't told Boomer to turn around-Brick had crashed into it, after all-but then that put her life in danger. Her life, which was so much more valuable than-
He caught himself, then rationalized, No. From an objective standpoint, her life is more valuable. Blossom was a hero. She saved people. Three less people who could do virtually nothing to help their fellow man was not a loss compared to losing Blossom. If she was gone, how many more people would be doomed without her around to save them?
The bell rang, jarring him out of his thoughts, and he watched as the class rose and made the usual frenetic bid for the doorway. A few students lingered behind to talk to Mrs. Yang, with a couple of Seniors already filtering in.
Brick was just shifting to get off the couch and head for his seat when Blossom walked in. Their eyes caught, then hers skipped on over to her table.
Talk to her? Brick rolled his eyes. She didn't even want to make eye contact.
As she passed by Mrs. Yang's desk, one of the students turned and said, “Hey!”
Blossom, her attention caught, turned, then lit up in recognition. “Oh! Hey, um-”
“Robbie,” the boy supplied. “Sorry, we never got properly introduced. I mean, well, obviously I know who you are.”
Brick frowned.
Caught off guard, Blossom sputtered, “Yeah, I'm-sorry about the blanket, I just-”
“No, no, don't worry about it. You really freaked us out, you know, when you jumped out of the window and did that whole crashing into Mojo's robot! You know? It was like something out of an action movie or something!”
Is this guy seriously in AP English? Brick thought to himself, hating the way the guy spoke.
To his displeasure Blossom blushed and said shyly, “No, that's just... you know, what I do...”
“Why did you? I mean, there was all that smoke, and you totally could've eaten it-”
“I...” Blossom's eyes flicked in Brick's direction. “I... Mojo was about to fire at somebody and I just, um... wanted to stop him.”
The guy-Robbie, that was his stupid name-grinned. “Well, that was cool of you. Props. You falling into my living room was one of the coolest things that's ever happened. My little sister can't stop talking about you!” He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous tic before he resumed that dopey grin. “You know, she'd love it if you dropped by... signed her arm or something, I don't know...”
Blossom laughed. “Maybe I will!”
“She'd love it, seriously. That'd be cool. Well, you know where I live, so... see you around.”
“Bye, Robbie,” she said, grinning. “Nice meeting you.”
Brick stared at the guy, who was beaming as he walked out the door. Then his eyes settled on Blossom, taking her seat.
After a tense second he stood, weaving around the other chattering students, and took a seat at her table, right next to her. She cast the briefest of glances at him, then pretended to busy herself with flipping through her papers.
Brick did the same, then cleared his throat and said, “Did you really leap out of that guy's window that night?”
She gave it a few seconds before responding. “Yes, I did.”
“Through glass.”
“... Yes.”
“So not only could you have fallen, but you could've gotten cut to pieces.”
“Actually, just the former,” she said stonily. “I wrapped myself up in a throw prior to going through the glass, to minimize the possibility of getting fatally injured.”
“I'd count the possibility of falling from twenty stories high a good potential fatal injury.”
“It wasn't twenty stories,” she sighed, exasperated. “More like... seven.”
Brick recalled how she had glanced at him when she'd told Robbie...
“Who were you...” He cleared his throat and started again. “Who were you trying to save?”
She didn't respond.
“Was it me?”
She shifted in her seat.
“You could've said something.”
“There was a lot of smoke,” she muttered. “I tried, but I went into a coughing fit.”
“I probably would've been able to dodge it in time. And even if I'd gotten hit, I don't think it would've killed me.”
“Yes, sorry,” she snapped. “I was completely useless and my intervention was totally unnecessary. I was only putting myself in danger for absolutely no good reason at all.”
Brick thought of her surrounded by smoke, unable to fly or engage in the fight, the threat of death looming over her as she sailed through that window, through that glass, all because...
He picked at a corner of his textbook cover, trying to straighten it and thinking of how easily she had smiled at Robbie. “I can't believe you did that. Without powers or anything. Jumped through glass, I mean. Up from seven stories. And then beat Mojo Jojo, on top of it.” He could almost sense her relaxing beside him, her anger giving way to a slight confusion. “You're kind of a beast,” he said, and she fidgeted.
“Um... thank you,” she said.
The bell rang, but just before Mrs. Yang could get class started Blossom seemed to reach some inner conclusion and whispered, “Um... should we... did you want to start practicing today?”
Brick thought about what they'd talked about two weeks ago, about the promise of his arms around her waist and her cheek against his. They were silly thoughts. They wouldn't be dancing anything that involved her face so close to his.
He set his jaw and thought of Mojo.
“Sorry,” he heard himself say. “Let's start tomorrow. Tomorrow morning. I'm busy this afternoon.”
***
Townsville Prison was more heavily protected than Brick would've expected. Never mind the guards; of course they were idiots. But there were surveillance cameras all over the place, and Brick had struggled to come up with a way to get past them without damaging the building. And, of course, without being seen.
That had been last week. Then, over the weekend, he'd realized he had an empty volcanic observatory full of stuff he could use.
That had done the trick. They'd thought that Mojo had cameras stationed all around the world, but the truth was more reasonable: his system could access any surveillance camera he wanted, worldwide. (Brick had decided not to question how he'd gone about setting this up. The chimp with the oversized brain had an uncanny knack for grandiose feats that defied reason and logic.)
Within a day Brick was viewing the surveillance feed from the prison. He then-with some difficulty-hacked into the surveillance system itself, and set it up to loop recorded footage for the duration of thirty minutes one afternoon.
That afternoon was today. Brick-who had been thwarted inadvertently during last week's attack-was going to see Mojo Jojo.
The cameras were fine; now Brick just had to get past the guards. He'd double-checked with his siblings about the girls' whereabouts. Butch had not been able to speak to her for a week without getting punched in the nuts, but he'd known that Buttercup would be at volleyball practice. Brick had told Boomer to take Bubbles out this afternoon. Besides that, the blonde was working on her Independent Study Project for Art at home. Blossom, of course, was at Dance practice.
Brick managed to steal into the building without being seen, then approached the guard behind the glass in the waiting room.
“Excuse me, hi,” he said, and the guard looked at him. “It's still visiting hours, right? I'd like to talk to Mojo Jojo.”
The guard squinted at him. “Aren't you one of the Rowdyruff Boys?”
Brick knew it wouldn't do to lie. “Yes.”
“You helped bring him down the other day, didn't you?”
“I did.”
For whatever reason, the guard relaxed. “What do you want to see him for?”
“I suspect he's up to something and want to see if I can get any info out of him.”
Within five seconds the guy had scanned him and was walking him down to the visiting area, coffee cup in hand. Brick eyed it and scoffed. Easy. Ridiculously easy.
“Now, because it's, you know, Mojo Jojo and all, I'll have to sit with you just to make sure everything goes hunky-dory,” the guard explained.
“Just doing your job, officer,” Brick said, uncapping Butch's bottle of sleeping meds in his pocket.
“Let me just get this door here,” he said, fumbling for his keys and holding his drink to the side as he did. Brick dropped half a pill into the mug and waited while he opened the door. “Larry, I'm gonna need you to send Mojo Jojo out,” the guard said into a walkie talkie. He led Brick inside, then took a slurp of his coffee. “Now, you sit right there, and I'll just be over here...”
“Thanks, officer,” Brick said, and settled back, only to fly up a second later to catch the guard's mug before it shattered on the floor. He smirked as he set it down, glancing at the snoring guard.
“You.”
Brick turned to find Mojo on the other side of the glass, eyes tapered to slits as he glared at him.
“Hey, old man,” he said, kicking back. “What's up?”
***
Boomer tried to examine his reflection in the window of a parked car. Did he look okay? He hoped he looked okay.
He took a deep breath and stared at the bright red door of Bubbles' house. He'd been here only a few times as a kid. He didn't remember it looking this imposing.
Shake it out, he told himself, and did so. That settled his nerves a bit, and he cracked one of his winning smiles before floating to the door. After a second's contemplation, he wrestled his phone out of his pocket.
Her sweet voice soon rang on the other end. “Boomer? Hey! What's up?”
“There's a surprise for you on your front doorstep,” he said, grinning.
She paused before venturing, “Really?”
“A surprise that wants to know if you're busy...” he said, his hand circling over the doorbell.
“Oh, Boomer. Hold on. I'll be right down.”
“Can't-”
The door flew open, and Boomer blinked as he locked eyes with Professor Utonium.
Boomer swallowed. “Wait.”
He'd seen the guy before-yes, when he was a kid, but also in photos, old newspapers, the like. He seemed like a harmless, amiable enough person.
Or had.
Professor Utonium smiled-a disarming tweak of the lips, which showed just enough strain to indicate that he wasn't smiling because he was genuinely happy to see Boomer.
Boomer closed his phone and pocketed it, never once removing his eyes from the Professor's. It occurred to him that he had faced way scarier things than this-Professor Utonium was a sane person who lived in a quiet suburb in a happy city, and Boomer was a Rowdyruff Boy. A fucking Rowdyruff Boy, and charming to boot.
He turned on his most beatific smile and saluted. “Hi there, Professor Utonium. Nice to meet you. I'm, you know, Boomer. I'm here to see Bubbles.”
“Of course,” the Professor said, and something curled in Boomer's stomach, something dark that screamed Danger and Doom and Death Will Soon Be Upon You.
“Come in, Boomer.” He backed away, revealing the bright, well-lit living room, and Boomer inwardly sighed, relieved at the pleasant setting.
“Can I see you in my lab for a second?”
Boomer's relief plummeted into the depths of some dark, icy ocean. A dark, icy ocean full of dead ex-boyfriends.
He shook the image away and said, “Um... why's that, Professor?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Professor Utonium said, waving him on to a door that said Lab that may just as well have read Here Lies Boomer. “I just want to talk to you for a second about Bubbles.”
He's just a regular guy, Boomer reassured himself. A regular guy who'd created three little girls in a laboratory, sure, and was a pretty well-known scientist, but by all other accounts, pretty much a regular guy.
Boomer was a Rowdyruff Boy. Please. What could the Professor possibly do to him?
***
“I'll be honest with you, Mojo, I don't have a lot of time. So before you launch into your long-winded bloviating about this, that, and whatever, I want to put this on the table-JS, Inc.”
Mojo's arms were crossed and he continued to glare at Brick.
“You know who they are. They've approached you in the past. Several times, in fact. And you've always turned them down.”
“My talents lie elsewhere.”
“Your talents are being wasted.”
“I don't believe my abilities nor my choices are the ones that should be coming into question here, seeing as how current parties with certain superhuman abilities have made choices that are of more questionable concern than my abilities. And my choices. Currently.”
Brick sighed and leaned back, looking up at the dingy ceiling. “You speaking for Him, now?”
“I speak for myself, and it is only myself for whom I speak.”
“Look. I work for a company that is the leading distributor of Evil in this country. We kill people, we spread diseases, we start wars, we manufacture and distribute black market weaponry, we call when you've just sat down to dinner, we cause traffic jams, and in the summer we get together to club baby seals-that's the name of it, Club Baby Seal, get it?”
“You do not directly allow yourselves to be tied to all those items you have described, which would-”
“Being the most evil one in the room does not necessitate having the loudest voice,” Brick interjected, his lip curling. “A lesson you would do well to live by once in awhile.”
“You insolent little whelp!” Mojo snarled. “You are giving me life lessons here? A teenager? A boy who shunned his duty, his destiny, the very reason for which he was created-”
“Excuse me,” Brick seethed, “for deciding that chasing after little girls who protect one stupid city in an entire world was an utter waste of my time.”
“You cannot even begin to understand-”
“Mojo, what can you say you've done? Successfully? I can tell you, because quite frankly, you're the loudest idiot in the room. You, with your superhuman intellect. You've attempted to take over the world how many times? Did it occur to you to leave Townsville? Did it occur to you to not broadcast your efforts when you did? Or is there a certain artistry to turning everybody in the world into dogs, or making a bunch of other monkeys with gigantic brains, or inventing one thing after another that ultimately fails because you never think of taking these giant machines that you can magically hide anywhere in Townsville out of Townsville? Where there's no trio of superheroes to come and stop you? Am I missing something there?” Brick leaned close, narrowing his eyes at this idiot, this waste of breath. “You had the world in your hands. You had that key, that stupid key that deemed you Ruler of the World, and what did you do?”
The mere thought infuriated Brick. He'd had it. Mojo had had it, in his hands.
“You know how many of us would kill for that opportunity? That authority? You had it, and you threw it away. And here you are, over a decade later, still chasing after three stupid little girls, building up a string of failures, one after the other. And you tell me that I'm the one whose choices should be coming into question, simply because I rejected a destiny that I can tell, just by observing my 'mentor figures' around me, will yield no outcome other than total failure?”
The amount of loathing being issued in his direction was only matched by the absolute disgust Brick felt as they stared each other down.
“You,” Mojo Jojo said quietly, “have been such a disappointment.”
Brick's eyes flashed.
“You say you rejected a destiny that holds no option for you other than failure, but did you ever make the effort? You accuse me, and those with similar inclinations like me in this city, of wasting our efforts, of essentially not being 'evil enough,' the Devil Himself included, the absolute paragon of Evil, the very Being who recreated you! You have no grasp of how significant your origins are! You are a part of something you cannot even begin to comprehend, and instead of taking that opportunity and living up to the responsibilities you shouldered-”
“I shouldered nothing. I was a kid, a stupid kid who didn't know any better-”
“And remarkably enough, nothing has changed. Listen closely so that you may remember this later and I will not have to repeat myself since you have already listened to it and taken this into consideration. You may submit to the idea that being evil means manipulating the world from behind a dark, secret curtain of secrecy, but in the end, how much more devastation will be brought about by you killing whatever rich person it is that you kill who has a lot of money because they are rich, than by destroying those that signify eternal hope and salvation? Those that have become symbols of love and beauty-”
“A symbol is only a symbol. Humanity is fickle. Symbols come and go.”
“Your youth does not excuse your stupidity,” Mojo admonished. “The devotion of the pitiful human heart is not to be underestimated, Brick.”
A silence passed between them, marred by the deep snoring of the sleeping guard.
“You and your brothers were created to destroy the Powerpuff Girls. Both times. Him even placed you with that duty, which is yours no matter what you believe. A task from the Most Evil One is not to be taken lightly, at least, not in my recommendation; I would advise against dismissing that which you are obligated to do.”
Brick stared at him, letting his hatred simmer. He wanted to remember this. This was why he had left. This was why it was so important that he get out of here as soon as possible. He would drown in inadequacy here, in this city, listening to drivel like this. He didn't owe anyone a fucking thing. No matter if Him had created them, and Mojo before. They belonged to nobody. Brick belonged to nobody.
“I am not obligated to do anything,” he said. Mojo, this idiot, couldn't see, would never see. None of them ever would.
“Of course you aren't. Nobody expects anything of an utter disappointment.”
Brick flew to his feet, his chair clattering to the floor as his eyes burned a steady, glowing red. Mojo continued to glare at him, his grim expression unwavering.
No. He couldn't do anything. He'd attract attention. The girls would find out, and then they might start digging, and Brick didn't need that. Slowly, steadily, the glow in his eyes subsided.
“Takes one to know one,” he muttered, before gathering up the guard and slamming the door behind him.
The guard was out, completely. Not even the noise of Brick's chair falling to the floor nor the loud echo of the door slam had stirred him from his slumber.
Suddenly the guard's watch beeped the hour, and he came to with a snort. Of course. “Huh? Whazzat?”
Brick stood him on his feet in the hall. “Hey. You passed out back there.”
“Did... did I?” The guard rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I don't remember...”
“Yeah. Here's your mug.” Brick had grabbed it on the way out the door, and he passed it back.
“Thanks, kid. Did you get what you were looking for?”
Brick's hands drifted into his pockets. “I... suppose I got about what I expected.”
“Mm. Well, let's get you back to the desk so you can sign out-actually, I'm sorry, I don't think I had you sign in-”
“That won't be necessary.” Brick whipped out a little device that went off like a flashbulb in the guard's eyes. The man blinked and his eyes went glassy. “I was never even here.”
***
Bubbles paced around the living room. Boomer wasn't at the door, and wouldn't pick up his phone. She huffed and crossed her arms. So she had taken a little time to get ready! It had only been, what, half an hour? He was going to need a stern talking to-
The door to the Professor's lab swung open, and she whirled to find her father and her boyfriend exiting.
Oh. Well, that explains it.
“Hi there, sweetheart!” the Professor said, and kissed her on the cheek. Behind him, Boomer looked a little gaunt.
“Hey, Professor,” she said, giving him a quick hug.
“You two go have fun now.” Her father ushered her towards the door. Boomer sidled to the door as well. He moved a little awkwardly-he appeared not to want to turn his back to the Professor.
“Love you, Professor!”
He waved. “Love you too, sweetheart.”
“Bye,” Boomer said, with some degree of difficulty. He exhaled once they were through the door.
Bubbles wrapped her arm around his and dashed him down the street. “Oh, you should've called me before you came over.”
“No, it... it was fine,” he said, gulping.
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing!” Boomer squeaked, then cleared his throat. “Nothing. He said nothing. Why would you think he said anything? He just showed me his lab. He does some neat stuff there. In his lab. With stuff. Hey, wow, I sure am hungry! Are you hungry? I hope you're hungry, because I'm starving. Seriously, I could eat a bear. Maybe two. Think they serve bear somewhere?”
As he pulled her along, Bubbles sighed. Well, at least they'd gotten that out of the way.
***
Originally posted at http://essbeejay.dreamwidth.org/105902.html.