"Er… girls?"
The three heroines hovered, backs turned, huddled in an embarrassed, impromptu sort of rugby huddle that none of them were particularly comfortable having. When they had been summoned by the mayor to deal with a crisis, they obviously had not expected to be dealing with a naked man in the skies above Tokyo City.
"We have to do something!" one made the whispered argument.
"If none of us turn around, he might fly off while we're not looking," another said.
"You have brothers, right? You're used to this sort of thing, so you should talk to him!" said a third.
"What? That has nothing to do with this!"
"Girls?" the man repeated. They paused, glanced back at him, once again turned bright red, and turned away. He looked them up and down intently. "Something here is so familiar, so universal," he speculated to himself. "You know, it's not often I find a world where people besides me are flying around. It's only happened a few times. And those colors…" His hand ventured to his chin. "Oh, what were they called?" Then he snapped his fingers. "Ah, that's right! Excuse me, but… do the names, 'Blossom,' 'Bubbles,' 'Buttercup' mean anything to you three?"
This elicited a reaction. All three turned around at once, obstinate.
"That's Hyper Blossom!"
"Rolling Bubbles!"
"Powered Buttercup! Get it right!"
Once again both parties locked gazes, one in fascination with this strange, semi-familiar trio of girls, and one in awkward realization of just how naked this man was. Once again, the girls were the first to break, turning away in embarrassment.
"Look, we're here because there was some kind of explosion over the city!" Blossom announced, back turned, arms waving frantically in nervous explanation.
"Explosion?" the man pondered. "Yes, that was me. Or, rather… that's just what happens when I enter a new world. Nothing to be alarmed about, it won't happen again."
He clearly wasn't bothered by the girls being bothered.
"Will you please put on some clothes?!" Buttercup shouted impatiently.
"Psst…" Bubbles whispered. "Don't you think we should bring him back to the lab? What if he has something to do with the black particles?"
"Hmm… seems likely," Blossom assessed. "He is up here flying, after all."
"What, you think some dark energy hit a nude beach or something?" sassed Buttercup.
"All right, listen, you're coming with us!" Blossom announced, all three girls turning to face their opponent. To their surprise, he had vanished.
"Damn! We lost him!" Buttercup cursed.
"I told you this might happen…" lamented Bubbles.
"Er, girls?"
"Wah!"
The girlz all reacted in surprise to the male voice behind them, and turned around in unison.
"WAH!"
They turned around again when they realized that the man was still naked, and now even closer. He'd nearly given them a heart attack, suddenly appearing behind them like that.
"I'm very interested in learning more about you three. If you'd like to take me along somewhere, I would be happy to join you."
"F… fine! Great!" Blossom stammered, flustered. "Just… stay with us, okay?" She then turned to Buttercup and whispered, "One of us has to fly in the back to keep an eye on him. You're up!"
"What? Why me?!"
"Y'know, cause you've got brothers."
"What about you?! You're the one who's always ogling your latest boytoy!"
"That- er…"
Blossom had no response. She reluctantly took up the rear as the strange formation of four took off flying towards the city laboratory.
"…and that's how it happened, Professor."
"My, goodness gracious, girls, you've really found one this time," he fretted, reacting in understandable surprise to the muscular, naked stranger. Now that she'd come to notice their guest's impressive physique, Buttercup found herself sneaking a peak now and again, whenever she thought she wasn't being watched. Blossom didn't fare much better.
"Yeah, w-whatever," stammered Buttercup, feigning disinterest, "do you think you can hit him with the anti-Z-ray-gun-thing and change him back already?"
"Now hold on," the man protested. "I'm not letting you hit me with any sort of ray-gun-thing until I know what it is. I think some explanations are in order. In fact, I haven't even gotten the chance to introduce myself, have I? I-"
The lab doors opened.
"Uwa!"
"Oh, bless me, we're never going to get anywhere…"
The man sighed, exasperated, as a young boy in lab gear entered the room, reacting to the naked man present and starting off on one thing or another. Really, the whole situation was getting tiring for everyone. Introductions were definitely in order.
"So you three are superheroines," the man assessed. The girls nodded in affirmation. "This here is Professor Utonium, the city's premiere scientist, and his prodigal son, Ken." Again, nods. "You were granted superpowers when this father-son science duo accidentally fired a device that bathed you in white Z-rays, simultaneously giving rise to several monsters who were transformed by black Z-rays."
"The Z-rays were in a giant iceberg!" Ken corrected, as if that somehow made more sense. "But… that's more or less the gist of it."
"And you've been able to turn most of these monsters back into whatever they were before they got hit by the black Z-rays using some sort of ray-gun device. Do I have that right?"
"Yup, you're pretty much caught up now," Bubbles said helpfully.
"All right, that's good," the man nodded. "Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have nothing to do with this black Z-ray business. If it only affects monsters, then I doubt such a device would have any effect on me. You're welcome to try it, I suppose."
The girlz all looked over to the professor, who shrugged and pulled out the device. In the past, it had failed to fully restore even some of the creatures who had been affected by the black Z-rays. The device was designed to be harmless to those it couldn't purify. After only minimal debate, he fired the ray, and as advertised, it had no effect at all on the muscular stranger.
"Now that that's established—everyone's here, right?" he confirmed, not wanting to repeat himself. "I am Zero, god of truth and passion. And truth be told… my arriving in this world is completely and totally an act of chance."
"Ehh?! You're a… a god?!" Blossom cried, surprised by this unexpected revelation.
"Oh my, to think they really exist…" reacted Bubbles. Buttercup was somehow less reverent.
"I don't care if you're the second coming! Show some decency already, will ya'?!"
"Eheheh… it really would be a good thing if you were to throw something on…" the professor suggested sheepishly, motioning to drape a blanket over Zero. The glare he received as he did so stopped him in his tracks. "Or… not."
"I'm quite comfortable, thank you," Zero retorted.
"Yeah, well what about the rest of us?" Buttercup harped.
Zero eyed her carefully for a long while, sizing her up before responding. He took his time in addressing her.
"Suppose I were to say I didn't like looking at you," he finally answered. "I thought green was an ugly color, or something along those lines. What then?"
"Buh? What the hell are you talking about?" she asked.
"Would you have to change the way you looked, or dressed, because I didn't like green?"
"What's wrong with green?!"
"That's not the-"
"Listen, you, if you're lookin' for a fight…!"
Buttercup lifted her rather large hammer aggressively, causing the professor and the other two girlz to panic—her using that thing inside the lab wasn't going to turn out well for anyone. Zero, however, seemed altogether unconcerned.
"First of all, you missed my point entirely, and second, you couldn't hurt me with that if you tried."
BOOM!
That goading was enough to get Buttercup to swing full force, pounding the massive mallet squarely into Zero's face. He didn't budge. In fact, for several seconds after the fact, he didn't seem to react at all. Eventually, he began to slowly reach up and grasp the narrow shaft of the weapon. Buttercup tugged and pulled, but no matter what she did, enhanced strength or not, she couldn't get the weapon to move an inch. It was firmly in Zero's grasp. Finally, he began to move the weapon away from his (undamaged) face, lifting the shaft in the air and Buttercup along with it. The tone in his voice suggested that perhaps she had made a mistake as he looked her squarely in the eye.
"You do understand that I am a being with the power to wipe this entire universe out of existence in a matter of seconds… yes?" Zero informed her very matter-of-factly, as if the act of destroying a universe would equate to morning tea for him. The others present didn't like the implications of where this was going.
"You'd blow up the whole world over one little spat?" Buttercup criticized.
Zero bowed. "Of course not. I'm just trying to give you some much-needed perspective."
"Uh…? Wah!"
Buttercup flipped onto the floor involuntarily as an invisible forcefield seemed to repel her from her own weapon.
"It's obvious to me that you have no regard for the beauty of the human form," he lectured, his unwilling pupil still sprawled on the ground. "I think you'd do well to learn to appreciate what you have. Yes, yes, a lesson is in order." He turned to face her once more. "You have thirty seconds before the clothes you're wearing are destroyed."
"Ehhh?!"
"If they're valuable, you might want to take them off quickly. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight…"
Zero continued counting as Buttercup and everyone else present stared at him in disbelief.
"What do we do?" asked Blossom. "Do we fight him?"
"Kaoru's hammer didn't do anything to him at all…" fretted Bubbles.
The professor, wasting no time, darted off into the next room. Ken merely stood there, shocked at how things were playing out; Buttercup didn't seem especially intimidated.
"You… you wouldn't dare," she boasted, sure that he was bluffing. As if to prove her wrong, an invisible force began to stretch and pull on her costume, demonstrating Zero's power over it. She began to get nervous.
"Kaoru! Here!"
The professor returned with a bathrobe, hurling it towards Buttercup, who caught it in a somewhat unprepared fashion.
"What am I supposed to do with this?!"
"You have to take your costume off! It's too important to lose!"
"Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen…"
"But… but it's magic, right?! It'll come back if it's ripped up… right?"
"We can't risk it!" the professor fired back.
"But… but everyone's watching!" Buttercup protested.
"Oh! Ah, er, uh, right!" he stammered, turning around. "Ken, come on! We should, uh… go to the other room! Yes, right away!"
Ken hurriedly complied, leaving the girlz and Zero alone in the lab for a moment.
"Twelve, eleven, ten…"
"Kaoru, hurry!" Bubbles prodded.
"All right, all right already!"
She shouted and fussed as she very hurriedly changed out of her outfit and threw on the bathrobe, just in time for Zero's countdown to hit… well, zero. The very moment it did, the bathrobe she was wearing exploded into tatters.
"Yahhh!"
Buttercup screamed in a surprisingly girly fashion, trying to cover herself in futility as she now stood naked in the laboratory. She reached for her costume once more…
"Careful," Zero warned. "If you try to put that back on, it'll just be destroyed as well."
"You ass!" she shouted. "What the hell am I supposed to do, then?!"
"We're back, we're ba- aaaah!"
"Get out, get out!"
Ken and the professor were quickly turned around again after trying to re-enter the lab.
"It's all right, gentlemen, you can come on in," Zero vetoed. "It won't make a bit of difference now—Kaoru's going to be dressed like this for a while."
"K-Kaoru?!" Buttercup stammered. "A… a while?!"
"That's what the professor called you, right? I'm assuming that's your real name. It's quite nice," Zero said with a smile that was utterly inappropriate to the situation at hand. He then turned his attention to the other two girls. "I'd very much like to know your names, as well. There's not much point keeping them a secret from me now, especially since I can read minds."
The girlz were suddenly very afraid of this seemingly-omnipotent new foe. His power… was there no end to it? His claim of being a god seemed more and more believable by the second. What did that say for Kaoru's fate?
"I'm… ah, er… Momoko…" Blossom finally relented. The look of defeat on her face was palpable. Bubbles, too, gave a defeated sigh.
"My name is Miyako," she announced.
"Oh, girls, please, don't worry," Zero tried to assure them in as pleasant a manner as possible. "You've both been quite gracious. I have no intent of being your enemy. Kaoru… she just needs a little lesson in humility, that's all."
"Like hell!" the naked Kaoru barked. The girlz were on her side. No matter how sweet and innocent this "god" acted to them, he had barged in and decided to more or less take their teammate hostage. It would take a lot for them to move past that.
"Ah! Er, Kaoru…" the professor started, having a thought. "What would happen if you were to de-transform?"
"Good question," Zero answered. "Care to try it?"
Kaoru angrily grabbed her costume; she had planned on doing it herself, but now that Zero had told her to, she didn't want to oblige him out of principle. Still, it was something she needed to know. With the belt in hand, she activated the button that usually turned off "Powered Buttercup" mode. Like usual, she found herself powered down. Unlike usual, the deformation turned the costume back into her regular clothes without putting them on her. Which made sense, since she hadn't been wearing the costume.
"Wait," asked Momoko, now de-transformed herself, "what if we get called on to deal with a monster?"
"We can't have Kaoru flying around with us like… er, that…" said Miyako. Kaoru blushed angrily; she didn't need to be reminded about being naked.
"Another good question," said Zero, pondering that to himself. He took some time to do so before speaking again: "I guess for the time being, you're a duo. Or else I suppose I could lend you a hand. What do you think of Powered Zero, huh?"
He was obviously joking, judging by his jovial grin, but most of them weren't in much of a laughing mood, Kaoru especially.
"Quit messin' around!" she shouted. "What about my family? What about school?! What am I supposed to do there, huh?!"
"You'll be going to both just the way you are now," he said, much to her dismay. "In the same skin you were born in."
"That's… unreasonable!" protested the professor.
"She'll get arrested!" Ken added.
"Don't worry about that," Zero insisted, dismissing their concerns with a wave of his hand. Kaoru was sweating. With a knowing smile, he assured all of them: "When a god tells you something will happen, it'll happen. Didn't you know? That's what they call 'fate.'"
