When I Grow Up . . .
by ButtercupSaiyan
Chapter
One
*rating may be subject
to
change.
-------
"Where's your mommy, little girl?"
A small, blonde girl wailed and burst into tears. A second child, with raven-black hair, soared up to eye level to the woman, and glared at her. The woman fell a step back, startled at the sight of children who suddenly flew into the air.
"Why can't insensitive people like you leave my sister alone!?" the brunette shouted, her emerald eyes flashing dangerously.
She floated back down, and hastened the crying girl away. A third girl, with long red hair, heaved a long suffering sigh. The woman glanced down at the redhead, and wondered if she had a bad case of pinkeye.
"I'm really sorry about this, ma'am. I don't have time to explain - we're on our way to work, and we're already late."
"Work?" the woman asked, ruffling at her shirt
with a sad and confused look. She blinked; she could have sworn the black-haired
one had flown up into the air. The three identical children ignored her,
and continued on. The blonde was still sniffling sadly.
***
It had been eleven years.
Eleven years! Bubbles thought sadly. Eleven years, and I'm still a child. Oh, Professor ... why did you overlook such a simple desire? Every time someone asks me where my mother is ... I don't have one and I'm nothing but some brainless kid. One of these days I'm gonna lose it, I swear!
Buttercup's touch was on her shoulder, patting her in an empty sort of consolation. Her sister was embarrassed to be seen with her because she was so emotional. Bubbles had her hands shoved moodily into her pockets and drifted along, bobbing up and down slightly. She was like a lost boat being pulled out to sea.
Blossom twirled a lock of hair around, and looked back at the other two anxiously. They took the hint, and walked faster. Bubbles remembered, and floated back down to the ground. The girls tried to avoid attention as much as possible in the city - it was all to easy to slip up.
The reporters had never let up in Townsville. At one time, they had been international celebrities, fighting crime and such. It was great when they were young - but it started to lose that special spark. Bubbles simply stopped caring. She wanted her own life and her privacy as she got older. And the Professor got older too ...
So they struck out on their own, and drifted out of the limelight. Citysville wasn't all that bad - and city life didn't have super villains and criminal masterminds. Just normal criminals. Fortunately, no one remembered them very well a decade after a little incident with a landmark bridge . . .
As for Townsville? Well, there wasn't much to do after Mojo Jojo was killed in an accident with an erupting volcano, and Him continued to torment them - but he never really cared about Townsville. The monsters stopped coming from Monster Island once it was made known that the Powerpuff Girls just didn't come to fight anymore. They became largely forgotten by their own choice. It was quieter - Bubbles only wished that she was happier as well. When she stopped caring about crimefighting, she didn't start caring about other pursuits. What could you pursue when you were trapped as a child?
They had taken jobs as police officers here in Citysville. They could still fight crime ... in a way. Their employer accepted the excuse that they just happened to be triplets all afflicted with hypopituitarism. It was a rare condition that slowed growth and development - leave it to Blossom to come up with that one.
"We're here!" Blossom announced.
Bubbles' head jerked up. The familiar sight of the police office on the corner of 7th and Main soothed her. The three entered through the front doors. Blossom settled into her desk to review paper work, Buttercup prepared for her daily rounds in the city, and Bubbles grabbed a folder off her desk. She walked back out through the double doors.
She shuffled through papers, and rested her hand on a file. She was to track down a possible suspect. Since they were too small to drive a squad car, they were relegated to walking. Bubbles looked around to make sure no one was looking, and soared up high into the air, in the clouds.
She could see perfectly well through the clouds, but people wouldn't be able to see her. She gauged the distance mentally, and dropped back down toward the city. Close enough; she was only a few blocks away. She went up to knock on the door on a rather disreputable night club politely. A large man, probably a bouncer, answered the door. He looked a little bewildered at the girl dressed in a police uniform.
"This ain't Halloween, kid, and we aren't handing out candy here," he said gruffly.
She started to reply angrily, but changed her mind. She wasn't known in this section of the city, and she only had one card to play. She did her best woe-betidden waif look.
"Please, mister. I'm looking for my daddy. He's called David Sanchez. I heard that he comes here. Do you know where he stays?"
The man looked uncomfortable, and softened. "I didn't know Dave had any kids. He's not married, and he never said anything 'bout no kids."
"My mommy never said anything to him. Please. I want to find him . . . do you know where he is?" Bubbles pleaded.
"Sure, kid. He lives behind the club, in apartment number three-oh-two. I'd be careful out there if I were you," he said.
She brightened. "I sure will! Thanks!"
Bubbles skipped away, and dropped back into a brisk walk when the bouncer closed the door. She felt so dirty after that, but it was the only way that she could get information sometimes. It was why she was often used as a tracker - having superpowers helped too. They didn't have to know how she got the suspects.
She studied the file again as she walked down the dark alley littered with used condoms and pools of something that probably wasn't water. Sanchez was suspected of three counts of burglary and one account of assault. Bubbles looked at the run-down apartment complex, and sighed softly. Sometimes she hated her job.
She found the room on the third floor, and walked down the dimlylit hallway. The fluorescent lights were on the verge of dying. She floated up, and knocked on the door. She opened it without waiting, and the door creaked its complaint.
The occupant on the room stood up the couch, having been watching TV. He turned around nonchalantly, and did a doubletake at the visitor.
"You're David Sanchez, right?" she asked in a no-nonsense tone.
"Uh-m, yeah," he replied uncertainly.
Bubbles fished a pair of handcuffs out of her work pants. She drifted over and snapped the cuffs on his wrists. He cried out, and tried to hit her, but she simply held his arm up effortlessly. The man stared at her in surprise at her strength.
"You are suspected of burglary and assault. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in court," she recited dully. The warnings on the Miranda Card she carried around had become second nature.
He tried to struggle, but she held him still. They were going to walk all the way across town back to the police station, and she was going to interview him along the way. Bubbles had learned that she had far more stamina than regular citizens had, and it was an easy way to break a person's will when they weren't allowed to rest. Most suspects only walked a few blocks to and from home.
"I can do a lot of other things besides fly," she said conversationally. "You won't want to find out what they are. Now, I'm going to turn on this recorder, and you can choose to answer or not. It might make your sentence easier. Just start walking - it's a long way to the police station."
It was just another day on the job.
***
Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup flopped down exhaustedly in the living room.
Buttercup grabbed the remote, and turned the TV on. Bubbles yawned and stretched,
then curled up in the soft chair. Blossom drifted upstairs with a stack of
papers in her arms. Bubbles sometimes wondered if she ever stopped working.
Buttercup was watching some new action movie exuberantly. Bubbles started to drift asleep to the droning sounds of the television. Her eyes slowly shut, and darkness crept upon her.
She dreamed that she was a grown-up woman, still living with a young Professor and her sisters, and working as a policewoman. In her dream, a woman named Johnette that she had tracked with a vindictive passion for two months was trying to seduce the Professor. The woman smiled at her, clutching the Professor. Suddenly, she was a child again. Her well-endowed sisters smiled and laughed at her. They drifted over beside Johnette, and grinned.
"You'll always be the baby," Buttercup taunted. Blossom beared her teeth at Bubbles. She smiled at the other woman, and ran her fingers languorously over the Professor's shoulder.
Something pointed softly touched her arms, stroking them with a deceptively delicate touch. Bubbles' eyes flew open, and her breath caught in her throat. She was confused for a moment whether she was still dreaming or not. Her gaze drifted to the VCR to try to tell the time. It, of course, only flashed 12:00 at her. She had no idea how late or early it was in this room.
"No . . . " she whispered to the darkness.
"Yes, Bubbles," a soft, feminine voice purred to her. Exhaled breath tickled her ear, but she wasn't laughing. Bubbles leapt off the chair, and landed crouched on the floor. Her eyes searched the blackness, and a shape loomed in the dim, flickering light of the television. Bubbles looked over at the sofa desperately, but Buttercup was nowhere to be seen.
Her midnight visitor came once every year, on the same day. How could she have forgotten? It was June 22nd ...
"Oh . . . you don't look happy to see me." Pearly, perfect white teeth briefly showed themselves in a feral grin. "Did you forget?"
"Please," she said quietly. "Why can't you leave me alone?"
Him entered completely into the uncertain light of the TV, and relaxed across the couch, propping his feet up on the armrest. He smiled at her. His voice was still quiet and feminine. "Why, my sweet Bubbles! Without you girls interfering, my influence has doubled. And today is our tenth anniversary."
She gritted, "Damn you."
"Sorry, I already am," he replied, laughing softly.
Oh, yes, she remembered what happened a decade ago to this day. It was the day they had failed Townsville.
It was like any other day. The hotline buzzed to inform them that Mojo Jojo was attacking City Hall. No problem. They had zipped out, prepared. Or so they had thought.
Mojo had created Antidote X again, and had hit them with it. The Professor could cure them with another dose of Chemical X - but he wasn't there right then. They had collapsed to the ground, helpless and unconscious. Normal little girls couldn't fight a gigantic robot.
When they awoke again, and went back to their house to get the antidote to Antidote X, the damage was already done. Mojo had wrecked half the city, and a monster had decided to attack at the same time. Parts of the city were on fire as well. City Hall was leveled to the ground. The Mayor and Ms. Bellum were nowhere to be found.
They had gone out and defeated the monster and Mojo Jojo, but it was too late for Townsville's faith in them. The media jumped at the chance, and sensationalized it. "The Powerpuff Girls haven't done it again!" "The day was doomed!" Every day they stayed there, a reporter was knocking on the door, hoping to get a 'special interview'. They were mocked and bullied at school.
Disheartened, the Powerpuff Girls begged the Professor to let them move somewhere else, anywhere else. Blossom had demanded that they stay no matter what to keep an eye on Townsville, and people that they still cared about. So they had compromised and moved to Citysville. The irony was that when they had left, things had gotten better. Him was there that very night to gloat. And Bubbles slowly stopped caring about Townsville.
"Ooh . . . did I disturb you? I'm so-o-o sorry," he cackled. "We should celebrate, you know. Wouldn't you like that?"
He reached a lobster claw toward her, and she took a step back, frightened. Bubbles wasn't sure that she could win in a one-on-one fight anymore: he was too confident, too bold to be lying about increasing his influence. She only wished that he hadn't taken such an interest in her.
"Don't get any closer!" she warned. And he didn't. However, something drifted downward near the corner of her eye, and she turned involuntarily to look at it.
"Happy anniversary," a falsetto voice whispered softly in her ear.
A lock of black hair touched by gray softly landed on the floor. She looked at it and trembled. It was the exact short, cropped length of the Professor's hair. Somehow, she knew with a gut feeling that it wasn't faked. She could hear those claws in her mind, snippety snip.
She opened her mouth and turned around, but he was gone.
-------