Bunny Z
by Chaki Chaki Girl
Bunny Z origins: The original Powerpuff Girls Bunny was a poor huge mentally deficient hunchbacked monster who was so haphazardly created by the PPG that she exploded. These are the roots of Bunny Z. The driver inspiration came from combined ideas tossed around on both Bunny topics on the "To The Z!" web page, which is a great PPGZ hangout! Inspirational renderings of Bunny Z can be seen at Yuji Battakun's awesome PPGZ page at www.geocities.jp/yujibatta/gallery-M06.html.
- - - -
"Ma-Ma, play wits Dollie??" Rini Osato burbled, one thumb in her mouth while extending her raggedy doll to her mother in their fenced-in backyard.
Aki Osato tenderly smiled at her pretty raven-ponytailed daughter whose lazy grape-blue eyes looked more crossed than straight at you, like her slurring baby voice from pleasant but sometimes drooling lips, and Aki was about to reply when she caught sight of her patronly sister, Uran, waving from the house's back door.
"Er, in a while, Rini. Mommy has to go potty. Go play with Dollie in the sandbox till I come back, all right?"
"Okay ma-ma!!"
The child's scruffy sneakers waddled off, her slim form awkward in a peach romper that caught Aki's heart;
God, she's so beautiful? Why did fate punished her so for it?
Aki rose and met Uran inside her home's back door.
"Aki-san," Uran sighed with languorous sympathy and regret, shaking her head at Rini; "You're so good, but Rini-san's much too much a burden. Your widow's benefits runs out next month! Soon you two will be out on the streets if you can't make the mortgage!"
Aki grimly nodded, the memory of her late husband still too fresh. "I know, I know – but Rini-san! Who'll watch over Rini-san?"
Uran tactfully said; "You can still institutionalize her."
Aki was appalled. "An asylum?? No! She's my daughter! My poor lovely little daughter!"
"Aki, she's not three! She's thirteen years old! You don't like the term 'mentally retarded' but she's classic! Her whole world is stuck at three years old and she's never going to be normal – ever! Tokyo's best doctors said that, not me!"
Aki chewed her lip and shook her head. "It's all my fault!"
"You can't blame yourself, sister. These things happen out of the blue. Miscarriage, downs syndrome. It happens. Look, in a state home she'll get good care and you can get on with life! Find a husband! Have new kids! Or that hotel cocktail waitress job's still open you know."
"I – I don't know–"
"Aki-san, Rini-san will never be more than a tot for the rest of her life. Do you want that to hold back your own development as a person? It's not right for you – or her!" Uran's voice hardened. "Do you want what happened when she wandered off last month and ran into those boys to happen again?"
Aki gasped and looked up and started to sob. "That was my fault!"
"You can't watch her every second, Aki! Besides, mercifully, she's too enfeebled to remember and comprehend what happened. It's time you pass her off to more eyes and hands than you have! Look, I can help you start off the right foot by selling off all those things Sato left in the basement."
"But that's his life's work!"
"Unfinished – and unsold as usual!" Uran bitterly reminded, not with much compassion. "None of the Japanese companies were interested in his educators, only entertainment. Besides, even though she was his admirable inspiration for it, it never would've helped Rini to begin with."
"But Sato just wanted – to help every child!"
"Huh! If he really wanted to help his own, he never should've played around radiation for his inventions back then! If he hadn't, poor Rini wouldn't have been born this way – or any kids after her!"
Aki nearly sobbed and Uran braced her shoulders; "There, there Aki! Look, you've still young and beautiful! You have a choice of clinging to hopelessness or seizing a chance to sow a new life with new normal kids! At least give Rini some brothers and sisters to play with once a while and who'll remember her by! Think!"
Aki grudgingly nodded.
- - -
Behind the hedges, playing with her frisbee more as a hat than a throwing object, Rini looked up and saw high in the sky arching toward her two brilliant white and black bolts of light.
Rini giggled. "Firecracker!!"
The bolts slammed into her like berserk drones vying for a Queen bee and Rini became a ball of mad molding energy.
Rini's moment of surprise and fear was swamped by awe as she felt her body of its own accord move to a strange cadence like a graceful dance amid swirls of incandescent energy, rushing around and through her, some of it forming sheets of materialized energy molding her torso and feet and hands, solidifying into garments and accessories made of woven forcefields. She nearly swooned at the awe of it all and her hijacked body's mindless sinuous disco dance, but abruptly the silent fireworks around her ended and in bafflement she blinked and looked down to see, in place of her romper and sneakers, a deep purple vest and body suit and short ruffled skirt and futuristic ankle boots with thick donut-like ankle bracelets like the ones on the wrists of her fingerless gloves. Gasping in total bewilderment she felt her face bracketed by thick long corkscrew locks the same deep grape-blue as her new thick waist-length flipped ponytail.
And her frisbee. It was now a purple shield the size of a garbage can lid – only she sensed she knew how to handle it far beyond any mere toy which it was no longer. And connected to that, faintly she sensed an odd knowledge in her, almost fanciful, like her wonder of birds flying was no longer a thing to envy, and the strange feeling that she needn't feel be fear anyone or anything again because she know how to stand against it with unmitigated might. And that wasn't the only or most important difference she realized in herself.
It felt like – in her infant-like way, she was once a gopher having spent all all its life underground suddenly popping to the surface and seeing the sky -- feeling the wall-lessness of infinity. For a moment she was terribly afraid and wanted to curl back into herself but there was nowhere to hide anymore. Her total conscience had shrunken into a tiny corner of her mind which suddenly ballooned into a huge void left. A ravenous void in her mind craving to be filled...
Her mind was starving. Hungry. Thirteen years famished from knowing and comprehending the world. And herself. She didn't quite know how to sate it, but she dimly equated that to something daddy did a lot before he stopped coming home. Still clumsy, uncertain how or why, Rini answered the faint compels chasing her mindless notion and moved toward the basement door. It was always locked from intruders but the concept of crime and theft meant nothing to her; she was a tot seeking out the aroma of a cookie jar. Her long slim manicured fingers grasped the steel door's metal handle and gave it a little yank but it resisted.
'Must be stuck a little, like the baafrum door', her infant mind thought and she applied a little more torque and with a renting squeal the handle came loose in her hand, followed by the sound of something metallic snapping loose inside the door.
'Ah! So easy now!' she thought, lifting the metal door easily as her cardboard playhouse's door. 'Oh! Close the door behind me to keep the flies out, like ma-ma says!' She twisted the handle which seemed to screech before letting it go.
Rini had only been in the basement twice, first while Sato Osato held her up on his arm long long ago watching the renovations that puzzled her, but since then it'd been off-limits to anyone -- not that she would've noticed or cared in her closed tiny universe. Yet somehow, faintly, there was something familiar -- no, scratch that; something oddly uncomplicated about the mass of computer gear facing her. She knew squat what it was, only that on her second and last visit here not long ago, daddy was showing mama how he made all the buttons and monitors do their thing -- whatever that was.
He sat on that very chair -- which Rini hopped high backwards several to time before perching it...
And he wore these funny ear muffs on his head, which she proceeded aping herself then she thought back what else daddy did to make all the nice lights and screens come on. The sudden crystal clarity of her memory was missed on her self-awareness while she half-randomly pushed several buttons before by fluke it booted up.
"Ha!!" she happily squealed and clapped her hands like a baby at fireworks.
"Welcome!" issued a soft male voice from nowhere which thumped and swelled her little heart and made her anxiously glance about.
"Da-Da??"
"My name is Sato Osato and welcome to my heuristic educator in beta mode. What would you like to learn today?"
"Da-Da??"
Where was he?? He'd been away so long! She wanted to hug him so bad!...
"Allow my brief introduction, please. Via voice analysis, response patterning and subliminal feedback cues this system will automatically measure your aptitude and progress your pace with onboard and on-line interactive encyclopedias and multimedia. It is currently set from kindergarten to eleventh grade ranges. Where do you want to start?"
"Da-Da??"
"Where do you want to start? Please state your preference."
There was something authoritative in Sato's voice that made her pay attention.
"Start, Da-Da??"
"Assessing client reading level."
"Huh??"
"Please read this sentence," the computer said and flashed on a nearby screen; THE WORLD ECONOMIC SCENE IS IN FLUX.
It might as well been Greek to Rini. In fact she didn't even know it any different from all the encyclopedias images flashing on all the other screens. After a long pause the system voiced; "No response. Elementary level test." and flashed on the screen; CAT AND DOG. "Please read this sentence."
"A-B-C!!" Rini giggled, more prompted by a Sesame Street repeat before the show got too sophisticated for her.
"Sub-Elementary level ascertained," the system voiced. "Functional literary projection in 2000 hours standard pace."
"What is your name??" the computer said in a new woman's tender playful voice.
That was friendly!
"Uh...Rini-san!!" Rini blurted like triumphing a spelling bee.
"Hi Rini-san! My name is Mentor. Say my name please."
"Mentor!" Rini giggled. Now that was TOO easy!
"Very good, Rini!" The screen flashed the alphabet in sequence. "Say this letter," the system said "A."
"A!" yelped Rini, bright eyes fascinated and for the first time in over thirteen years comprehending.
"Very good, Rini. Now say this letter," the computer said, flashing a "B"
"Bee Bee Bee!!..."
Rini just found a new friend that really understood her.
- - -
Aki overlooked the basement because like the police the backyard metal basement door wouldn't budge even with two Sumo-type officers trying, so a frail thirteen-year-old with a tot's mind wouldn't have a ghost of a chance either, and since the basement windows were bricked up along ago searching the basement was passed-up for more credible avenues if searching for a missing child.
None of the neighbors saw a wandering Rini and even the dogs were of no use outside the Aki premises. Kidnapping was almost unheard of, so the thought that Rini had crossed paths with a sample of the troubling growth of Lolita-teased perverts laced Aki's heart cold. Almost as horrific was that Aki lived next to one of the large storm channels that laced the city and there was still a good torrent of water from yesterday's storm, and that the police were dragging nets downstream seized Aki's breast with angst and misery.
"Maybe it was better for her that way," Uran finally said in a tactlessly gentle way to Aki while neighbors came to console Aki through the night and was a thin edge from total distraught. "She never really had a life existing that way."
Aki was too emotionally drained to carp at her sister, and besides she had a cold but bitter hope that she was right; that Rini left by the work of natural than the ravaging of a savage.
Aki finally went to sleep and awoke mid-day at the doorbell of a police sergeant updating her on the search, and wearily having breakfast, she sat in the kitchen pining a photo of tot Rini with her and Sato. How she loved Sato despite all his quirks! She also sensed that the inventor blamed himself for Rini's condition by his early dabbles in radiative materials. She wanted to ease his mind of that but Japanese tradition forbade her from trespassing a man's most private abode of honor and virility, even a husband's.
It was while fighting back tears again that Aki thought she heard something different in the house, like the whispery hum of an extra fluorescent light somewhere, and puzzled she searched about and came to the blocked and padlocked basement hatch under the stairs. She hadn't been down there for almost a year, right after Sato passed, and because it was bolted and padlocked the basement obviously hadn't been entered by adult or child so the police passed it up. Yet the faint electric buzz was coming from down there.
Bewildered, Aki found the keys and unlocked the padlock and unbolted the hatch and opened it and was startled to see light. It's been left on after all this time??
Aki stepped down the steps and gasped. The educator computer was on! Its seven monitor screens alive, each running different images. One on history channel, one a university class in physics, another featuring works of classical literature, another of modern dance and musics, all running at dizzying speed. And someone was reclined on the chair facing the console!
Aki gasped, her first notion that it was perhaps a runaway teen by the skimpy purple costume she was wearing, but moving up close Aki's heart and soul bounced with joy recognizing the strangely placid face illuminated by the psychedelic computer images.
"Rini!!" Aki cried, stepping up, incredulous, and the small head wavered as though jarred from sleep and turned to face her with strange new warm smile.
"Hi mom," Rini greeted with a soft almost British accent in her perfect Japanese, her whole expression so sure yet tender with a new confidence that it wasn't just infinitely more mature than before but even lovelier.
"Rini-san!!" Aki pounced to seize her daughter in her arms then drew back, her tears wiped by the other's shoulders and by her bewilderment of a face familiar yet somehow alluringly alien. "Rini??"
"Yes, it's me, mom. At last!" Rini said, wiping her own damp eyes. "Oh momma, I feel like – I've just met you for the first time!"
Aki was stunned. "Rini! You're -- you're talking! Really talking!"
"Yes...and a lot more now," Rini said with a pleased smile, suddenly abashed. "I hope I'm not too rough around the edges. Everything I know's come from here, not experience."
Aki shook her head in disbelief. "I -- I don't understand. Are you -- you really my Rini??"
"Yes, just not the same Rini you knew all these years, mom. I'm finally where I'm supposed to be – maybe even more," Rini said, one hand's fingers blurring over a keyboard and a info screen displayed: LITERARY PROFICIENCY AND GENERAL KNOWLEDGE APTITUDE, ELEVENTH-GRADE. EDUCATOR ACCELERATION LIMIT REACHED.
Aki shook her head. "I – I don't understand."
"It means it's taught me scholastic basics up to its programmed limits."
"But – that's impossible! From kindergarten to eleventh grade in a day??"
Rini grinned. "Well, it just fed me lessons fast as I could take them so I just – pigged out I guess!" she giggled. "Actually it's not all that many school hours when you omit P.E. and lunch and homework time and just get down to raw learning without repeating anything."
"But still – how's it possible??"
"I don't quite know why yet, but I've gained hyper-powers and hyper-senses from these two energy bolts that struck me in the backyard."
"Bolts? Like lightning?"
"No. More like bolts of alien patterned energy. They transformed me down to the subatomic level like some kind of electromagnetic DNA."
"What??" Aki asked and Rini blushed.
"I'm just guessing from my physiology and quantum physics lessons of course, but it has to be something elemental like that. This new form of mine's no fluke. It was designed, but by who or what I'm totally clueless."
Aki shook her head in awe; "You sound like – like a coed from grad school! You even look older than you are!" she said with a wild twinge of regret.
"It's so awesome wonderful, mom! It was like my whole world and conscience was crammed in a shoe box in a huge gymnasium and suddenly I've burst free! I'm going to investigate everything I've missed! I want to learn everything!"
"You sound so -- so intelligent! So eager! But – why do you speak such perfect Japanese with a British accent? You almost sound like that girl in the cartoon 'Alice In Wonderland'!"
Rini tittered. "I do?? Wouldn't know! Maybe because so much of the educator and web's knowledge base is in English, and early on in the program the educator taught me to speak in exact English pronunciations."
"Just by studying these??" Awed, Aki looked at the seven busy computer monitors, "But how – how can you – see all these screens?"
"Awesome, isn't it? It feels like I can concentrate on any of them with no more effort than one – and I don't notice the speed at all! In fact, I've a photographic memory so detailed you wouldn't believe! In fact, mom, I feel so different all over and inside and in my mind that I don't think I'm really human anymore. Like, check this out!"
Aki gasped as Rini's futuristic boots lifted off the floor and her daughter levitated a foot up. "Rini!"
"Don't worry, I'm not going too high; I'm still afraid of heights -- I guess from falling down stairs a lot, you know? But what's really cool is I could feel a quiet humming inside me when I do this, like something inside me is repelling a giant magnet under me. It's like I'm some kind of hyper-advanced electric eel, and I sense that my batteries taps my power from this." She removed her compact. "Look familiar, mom?"
"Vaguely.. but I can't exactly recall."
"Well check this out!" Rini's fingers blurred over a keyboard and on one display was a newscast of the new Powerpuff Z girls knocking the stuffing's out of Mojobot.
Aki gasped. "The Powerpuff Z??" She looked at Rini's uniform as though for the first time.
Rini nodded, looking slightly bemused. "Obviously I'm related to them somehow now, though I'm not sure I'm really one of them. I mean, something in me naturally wants to meet them, join them...but there's something else in me that's – that's afraid of them. That even...even..." She gnashed her coral-glossed lower lip. "I guess I need to get it all sorted out first before I make any introductions. I want to know my secrets first, this compact's secrets. How bolts of organized energy could totally change me so rad and create this!"
Rini passed the compact to a curious Aki but the second it left her hand a violent purple flash blinded Aki and when she recovered from her surprise and alarm she saw Rini fall back on the ground – instantly wearing her usual romper and sneakers again. The child-girl looked up, crossed-eyes rolling around totally confused and hurt by her pratfall.
"Ma–Ma??"
Bewildered and shocked, Aki dropped the compact and stooped to hug her daughter, "Rini! You're back! Oh, I was so scared I lost you!"
"Ma–Ma??" Rini asked, sucking her thumb and looked around as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened except she was in a strange place. "Dollie? Mah Dollie??"
"Dollie's upstairs darling! Oh, I'd carry you upstairs if you weren't so big! Come upstairs now, dear. I have a lot of thinking to do!"
"Toy??" Rini asked, spotting and scooping up the compact before Aki could stop her and suddenly there was a bright flash and Powerpuff Z Rini stood in her place, gasping and totally bewildered but far more collected.
"Oh wow! What a throwback!"
Partially dismayed, Aki shook her head. "What – What happened?"
"I'm not sure. Suddenly I have a frightful feeling I shouldn't let go of this!" Rini said rather shakily, stowing the compact in her belt and soberly mulling. "It seems that my advanced brain development's also part of my Powerpuff Z state, which kinda makes sense since my brainwaves must be tuned in special to my compact to telepathically control my Puff powers. So my Powerpuff talents and abilities vanish if I revert to my original state again, uh? Just nice!"
"Did you remember being like this while you were back?"
"Oddly enough, yes, only I couldn't grasp my memory's meaning, as though I was watching a very talky movie that's in a langauge I can't understand. Maybe because my brain structure that way is too crippled to handle complex thought such as that. That bites – but beggars can't be choosers I guess. I'd hate to think everything I just learned could be totally wiped out by reverting into a retard again!" Rini said, missing Aki's wince at the term.
"You're not just far more intelligent, Rini. It's like -- you have a whole new personality now," Aki stated with a touch of loss.
"Yea, isn't that cool? Maybe that comes from all the pop cultural knowledge I've gleaned too, but most of it is too 2-D to really pass in the real world. I have to get out and fill in the blanks if I want to be a complete real person now!" Rini said with eager anticipation before noticing Aki's look of uneasiness, as though her daughter was alien to her. Rini clasped her mother's slim shoulders; "Hey, I'm still Rini, mom! The same daughter you've always had, only her porch light's finally on bright – and I'm happy like this! Believe me! Eternal childhood's only fun for Peter Pan! It's like living in a bare cave all your life, only you're too dumb to know how badly off you are!"
Aki contritely blushed. "I – I'm sorry, Rini."
Rini hugged her mom. "I know. Mom, I'm not as cute as a hollow china doll anymore, that it?"
Aki blushed. "I – I suppose it's going to take me a while to get used to this."
"As I. My head's crammed with all kinds of stuff now, from body English down to a street map of every town on earth, but I need to get out and touch things and people and sniff the flowers. I'm going out for a walk, is that alright?"
Aki's eyes widened. "A walk? Alone??"
"Mom, I can take Godzilla down now – for real! Besides you've been by my side almost every moment for thirteen years. We both need a break, okay?"
Her eyes watering, Aki hugged her daughter.
- - -
Aki called the police station and sheepishly reported that she found Rini sleeping under her marriage bed and took their relief and veiled chastisement before hanging up to bask in the joy and awe of a new different daughter taking her public debut.
Throwing on a simple chemise dress over her Powerpuff uniform, Rini took her first solo stroll since birth, marveling the busy streets and the parks where she felt trees and grass and savored the smell of Suzi vendors, filling in the social sensations missed by her programmed knowledge. To happily skip without falling and even singing to herself was a luxuriant experience to her as well as spending all her first allowance trying every snack she could get hold off. She especially loved Octopus puffs and the taste of orange-spiced green tea drinks. She felt her body strumming with power but resisted the urge to fly. For some reason lost to her she was scared of flying and of water. She tried to plumb the reason but they were buried in the muddle of her retarded memories, as though they'd been paved over by her new knowledge and self esteem.
'Not like I'm missing much,' Rini mulled with a shiver, recalling what happened earlier, the way her mind shriveled into an infant's during the period in the compact was out of her hands. It was almost like a minor death being reduced to a scared tiny mouse and it frightened her silly. 'Must never ever leave the compact's side. Ever!'
But what was really cool was she noticed that she was being noticed. Not the shallow sympathetic manner and sorrowful shaking heads she recalled receiving since birth, but looks that brought wide smiles and flashing eyes to every face that met hers.
Especially the boys.
The way their eyes followed her was at once scary and tingly and fascinating, and she basked the giddy glow of vanity and fascination of her first positive attention from human beings.
'Oh, how could've I lived so long and never known the world was this full and you can feel this happy??'
Rini idled around the park, shying eyes and anyone starting to move on her. Her boosted intellect told her she wasn't quite emotionally mature yet to really socially engage people and leave a good impression and this was very important to her, but something deeper in her told it her that wasn't the only reason.
'But why? Why I'm I so timid to talk to anyone or let them come near me?'
As the park started to empty at dusk a thoroughly excited and joyous Rini skipped for home, turning inside an alley short-cut to her home street –
"Hey, you!!" a boy nearby shouted, the voice ringing a familiar chord in her like a buried nightmare.
Her gasp turned into a growl.
Something in that boy's lewd shout bristled Rini's chilled spine, and even as she turned to face the four shoddy haughty junior high jocks she felt a dark seething welling in her.
"Hey, you look a little like psycho chick down the next block!" japed the ringrleader. Tommy Zero. "You her older sis or what?""
Rini darkened as past images flashed through her mind, mercifully only glimpses of their jeering faces surrounding her cornered terrified cower in a dark garage. Horrible terrible shadows, mocking, poking, and -- and worst. Far far worst.
And them laughing so cocky through it all...
"You bastards!" she quietly seethed like a hissing snake totally unbecoming her docile soul. "You bastard bullies! You all belong in jail!"
Tommy chuckled. "Jailed? Hell for??"
"Yes! Hell!" Rini uttered, nodding. "Yes, that's where you all belong!!"
She felt a cold darkness come over her and the gang's grins evaporated into a look of surprise then horror and their eyes seemed to rise as though following her upward even though her boots hadn't left the ground. She felt more than heard her chemise tearing, popping, shredding, dropping off. The gang gawked up at her like deer seized by the headlights of an onrushing car.
Rini felt disdain and deep deadly hated welling her for each of them. "I'm gonna squash you all like a bug!!" her jeering voice growled deep like a huge grizzly bear and indeed she felt as huge and daunting, as the boys' upward gawks testified.
One screamed and took off followed by second and third – but she grabbed Tommy by the collar and hauled him up off the ground up before her face .
"Remember what you did to me, you bastard scum??" she snarled with deadly vengeance. "A poor helpless retarded girl??"
Tommy nearly shrieked. "I'm sorry!! Didn't mean it!"
"Like hell you all didn't! Like hell!! Now it's time to send you there!!"
Tommy cried out, his fingers frantically scratching against her to push away, by chance knocking the compact out of its belt recess and onto the ground. There was violent purple flash and a romper-suited Rini fell on the ground in a nest of shredded chemise unlike Tommy who wasn't hanging around to wonder but bounced to his feet and took off like a bat out of hell and never looked back.
Bewildered Rini cried out; "Ma–Ma?? Ma-Ma??"
Rini half-remembered like a television show what just happened, but the danger and peril was lost on her. She remembered the fresh bad faces and what they once did to her long ago and the terrible recall of it made her curl up and wail till she exhausted herself asleep in a fetal position which was how a desperate Aki found her before gently shaking the groggy child-girl awake. For a moment Aki just looked at the fallen compact before reluctantly stashing it in her pocket.
Aki let three days pass before being jarred by Rini's tumbling down the back steps for her ball and being bruised black and blue which moved her to reluctantly push the compact in the child's hand and after the silent purple explosion, the teenage Purple Powerpuff appeared, looking slightly upset and Aki knew Rini remembered everything that happened. Knew that she'd been kept from becoming a full person again and suffered for it.
"I'm so sorry, Rini!" Aki half sobbed, falling at Rini's feet. "I – I missed my baby I raised for all these years, but -- I couldn't leave you like that! It – It's not cute or sentimental seeing you talk and act like a helpless toddler. It's cruel. Forgive me, Rini."
Rini looked at her contrite mother and hugged her. "Of course I do, mother!" she assauged, soberly adding with a grim sigh. "Though in a way, maybe it would've been better if you hadn't brought me back now."
Aki looked nonplussed before a terrible notion came to her; "Do you mean -- the wild stories the boys are spreading?"
"What are they saying?"
"That you turned into a huge ponytailed brute with a black glow that was about to eat them and they barely escaped. Of course no one really believes them, but are you saying there's something to it?"
Rini soberly nodded. "When I saw them after my stroll, something came over me. Something dark and bitter and – and which felt so good getting back..." She paused. "I was very very dangerous, mommy. And I couldn't – didn't want to control it. If it weren't for Tommy being so insanely frantic..."
Rini took out her compact and ruefully pondered it and moved to the trash bin but Aki caught her hand before dropping it. "No, Rini!"
"Mom! I almost killed someone! I – I even wanted to! That's even more scary than Tommy deserving it! I really wanted – was about to tear his head off!!"
"No Rini, not you! Something dark inside you! You mustn't give up on your power! Or you at last being a grown-up girl! This is your only chance for a normal life!"
"Being tied to a compact?"
"Better than a dialysis or heart-lung machine!"
"They don't turn you into a murderous dark monster!"
"No...but there's someone who just might help you, Rini. Better than all the years I prayed and wished you to cure you!"
- - - -
Peach was the first one who sensed it when Rini timidly entered the International Science Institute. "Powerpuff Z!! Powerpuff Z!!"
"It's like bad B.O., uh?" Rini quipped just as the Professor and Ken ran in and gawked over Rini in a purple PowerPuff outfit.
"The fifth white energy bolt!" the Professor said, relieved by a long vexing puzzle.
"I'm afraid it's got dark company," Rini soberly added.
After a deep briefing of her history, the Professor ran Rini through tests and the chemical scanner while Blossom and Buttercup and Bubbles raptly eyed their new chagrined sister as she reverted into a wide-eyed mental tot and back a precocious teen several times, much to their tugged heartstrings of dismay and sympathy.
Utonium nodded. "Yes, you've a balance of white and dark energy in you, and it's highly unstable. Extremely. That's why you don't need Peach or even the compact to transform, though it does maintain your Puff integrity."
"Can you disarm my dark side, sir?" Rini solemnly asked, her question pleasing the Professor.
"I honestly don't know. There's a lot of alien high energy nanotechnology going on with these three girls here which I barely understand just with white light alone, much less ANY experience with black light at all. Factor into that the radiation damage to your genes which your father passed on to you which caused your mental retardation, which might not be its only effect on your body to complicate things even more. You're an utterly different hybrid that doesn't follow any example."
Ken added; "The dark force having access to white and dark powers combined in one Puff is especially worrisome though besides making you nearly as strong as the other PPGZ put together."
Soberly, Rini shook her head. "In the alley...I wanted to powder those boys...and I almost did..." She took out her compact if to leave it on the desk but Blossom clasped her hand.
"You don't have to do that, Rini-san!"
"Don't you understand? You can never trust me! This dark side's a part of me, like all my dislikes and things I loathe to the nth power! It knows and feels everything I do and it's ready and waiting for its turn to walk in daylight too! I mean, it's bad enough that I don't dare even sleep with my compact on for this -- this beast inside to take me over!"
"You'd rather go back to the way you've always been??" Bubbles said in dismay.
Rini sighed. "I – don't have any choice. I don't want to hurt anyone."
The professor patted her shoulder. "Keep your compact. With that kind of sterling willpower and selfless compassion, the only way the dark energy can fully take you over is if you let your baser emotions get the best of you."
Rini wryly said. "Respectfully Professor, I'm an adolescent girl who's just discovered herself and life and new emotions! I'm going to meet a lot of things -- and people I won't like!"
"True enough, you're a perky pubescent girl with the mind of a coed grad, and I think with bio-feedback techniques and yoga and by sheer intellect, you can get a handle on your dark side and your understandable subconscious hate. You're a very intelligent young lady, and we'll all be lesser without you, Stay you. For all of us."
Rini considered this and tenuously nodded and stowed her compact. "Just to keep my mind alive and growing, nothing more, Professor."
"So join us!!" Blossom and Buttercup and Bubbles cried, circling Rini who wistfully smiled and soberly shook her head.
"Not yet. I can't trust myself around you until I know there's no way the dark spores or Kare can use my dark energy against you, especially in battle. It could happen that -- I won't even know whose side I'm on, because I've a bad feeling that my white-black energy mix is just chock full of real nasty surprises. Peach knows what I'm taking about, right Peach?"
The little robot dog dropped its head. "Rini-san is right. Sorry."
"Besides, I've a childhood to catch up with. Friends at home to make. I know tons of facts and figures and places, but there's nothing 3-D in my life yet. I'm not really as mature as I ought to be till I fill out my humanity. Can you understand?"
The others were crestfallen but the Professor spoke up. "Then, you can be the Powerpuff Auxiliary."
"Auxiliary?"
"Sure!" Ken piped. "If there's a monster that the girls need a helping hand with, we'll beep you!"
"Yes!" Bubbles moist-eyed beamed, clasping Rini's hands. "Our new Puff sister Bunny – like your name!!"
Blossom nodded. "A reserve Puff! I like it! We can use a tag team partner between battles to time out for snacks and desserts!"
"Yea!" Buttercup said. "Being our spare tire will keep your dukes polished to cream some real monsters!"
"Yes, what a wonderful idea, Bunny!" Bubbles perked and Blossom threw out her hand to start a joining circle of the girls.
"All for one and four for all!!"
"Three and a half!!" chimed Peach.
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