I changed this chp's title and subject literally 3 different times. This is the end product, and I'm somewhat happy with it.
Pairing focus chapter yay. (But not very romantic boo).
No new reviews this time. Boo. :(
Disclaimer: I don't own PPG or characters, and this chapter contains no organic ones.
Enjoy~!
"Yo prof." Butch spoke, slipping past the Professor and into the house. Utonium let out a light chuckle.
"And you, Butch." Bubbles moved away from Boomer and leapt at the Professor, knocking him down with a full speed flying hug.
"Daddy!" She cried, calling him by the affectionate moniker she had grown used to using. At this, he laughed whole-heartedly, returning the hug to his most excitable daughter. With the assistance of Boomer, he was brought back to his feet, Bubbles still clinging to his side.
"Thank you Boomer, go ahead and grab something from the kitchen." Boomer mumbled a 'rad' and grinned as he walked off to the kitchen in search of a snack. Blossom walked up to her father, grabbing a quick hug from his free side. It was brief, and neither spoke, but it was a good, loving hug. The grumpiest of the group hung back, shoving her hands in the pockets of her skinny jeans and fidgeting, avoiding speaking.
"It's good to see you, Buttercup." The Professor tried quietly. Buttercup shot a nod in her father's direction, momentarily catching his gaze and muttering,
"Hey pops." She paused, then swept some of her pitch-black bangs out of her face and continued. "So, you called us here for a reason, right? Let's get to it." Accepting the distance of his third daughter, he gave a final squeeze to the other two and began walking toward his laboratory, the female triplets trailing behind him as he spoke.
"It's been about four years since you girls left, and as you know most of the issues that you were faced with when you were younger have either been resolved or can be dealt with by the other hero types in Townsville." The professor's laboratory had obviously been technologically updated since the last time the girls had seen it, Blossom especially noted this, examining the different security features that had been added. The professor opened a code box and input a pin that opened the heavy door to the lab, and Bubbles let out a 'woah', and spoke.
"Gee Dad, trying to keep someone out, much?" The Professor looked at his daughter and grinned, explaining himself.
"Actually, that was one of my assistant's renovations. He's more concerned about the security of my work." The girls looked at each other.
"Assistant?" Blossom asked, surprised that the professor had gotten an assistant. He had always pondered the idea, but since his last one had become a villain, nonetheless one of his daughters' greatest foes, his trust had been shaken. As they descended the steps, he turned to explain himself, but was cut off by the prior mentioned assistant coming into view, wearing his own white lab coat.
"Oh, they're here. Hello." His voice was low, and curt, but still not malicious. Even so, Blossom sprung forward, grabbing him by the shirt collar and slamming him against the nearest wall, pink trail streaking behind her briefly. An empty beaker on a nearby shelf fell and crashed to the floor from the impact. Her glare pierced his red eyes, and he simply sat limp in her grasp, making no attempt to look anywhere but directly at her.
"I don't know what kind of plan you're hatching, but this is too far. How dare you bring the Professor into this? In our house! This is too much…" She nearly yelled, her voice angry and uncontrolled, she was clearly prepared to start swinging, although phased by his lack of response. His reprieve came in the form of Bubbles, bringing Blossom into a firm hug and pulling her off of the steadily apathetic boy.
"Blossom, be rational. There's clearly a good reason that the boys are back*, shouldn't we listen to what our dad has to say about it?" The angry girl was snapped back into reality by her mediating sister's surplus of reasonability in the situation. Her muscles relaxed and they both descended from their hover and placed their feet on the ground, Bubbles releasing the restrictive grasp. The Professor, loosening his black-tied collar at his discomfort, took this as a cue to speak.
"After a rather unfortunate series of events took place here, the boys moved in and Brick became my assistant." A quiet Buttercup used this opportunity to pose a very important, albeit incredibly hostile, question.
"What kind of unfortunate event would make you want to let these lifelong convicts live in our house? And you even let one of the monkeys play with your lab equipment? Are you serious?" Her tone increased in aggression and disbelief with every word, clearly still not understanding why this was happening. The Professor looked somewhat sadly at the ground and the feeling in the air changed from resonating anger to an uncomfortable tension. Buttercup looked around, wondering what she had said to set off yet another situation. Brick straightened up his ruffled lab coat, and ran a hand through the back of his hair, fixing the kinks that the wall had stirred up. After he had made himself neater, he spoke once more.
"It's alright Professor." His sentence started off with a glance at the middle-aged man, and then he redirected at the person posing the question out loud.
"We came to live with the Professor after our father died."
Buttercup's jaw nearly dropped, and all three of the girls looked at Brick with awestruck expressions. The silence continued for a few moments before Bubbles spoke, almost sad when she asked the question of,
"Mojo is…dead?" Brick gave a curt nod and then spoke once more as he moved slowly past the girls and the Professor and made his way up the stairs.
"Please excuse me for now." All the three girls could do was stare after him, shocked at the information that had just been brought to their attention. Bubbles was too surprised to even cry at the idea of death, which would usually set her off into a bawling fit in an instant.
"When Mojo was exposed to the radiation of one of his experiments his health began to decline. Once he realized that his illness was most likely terminal, he called for my presence." The Professor walked over to a lab table and messed with some beakers, creating a minor chemical reaction that turned some liquid a purple color. "He told me that he didn't want the boys having to fend for themselves, and the only person that he could trust with his children was me. You can imagine my surprise, Mojo Jojo asking me to take in the Rowdyruff boys." He let out a bitterly reminiscent chuckle. "I think that was the first time that they had actually followed instructions. So they came to live with me. It was a strangely good timing for it, since you girls had left about six months earlier. They slowly came to accept the new situation, and their behavior improved drastically as time went on. The citizens even jokingly started calling them 'The Rowdypuff Boys', and to their disdain, it stuck." The professor laughed, remembering all the time that it had taken for the boys to become established in the city as do-gooders. Buttercup, having already shaken off Mojo's death, was now faced with another apparent truth.
"So…the mayor, the city. You. You replaced us." She spoke, a hurt undertone revealing itself within her constantly angry voice. The Professor turned to her, shocked at the accusation.
"Buttercup…" He started, but she wouldn't hear his explanations.
"This is bullshit." She said, turning and running up the stairs.
"Buttercup!" Blossom shouted, zooming after her. Bubbles looked at the Professor, eyes wide, and a hurt expression as though she had been caught in a bear trap. She frowned and lowered her head before starting after both of her sisters. The Professor sighed and mixed another concoction, hoping that this uncomfortable incident would soon pass as the mixture started bubbling.
As Blossom reached the living room, she hovered near the couch. The door was open and Buttercup had most likely zoomed off at a rate she couldn't match to who-knows-where. She sighed as Bubbles came up behind her.
"You should go find her." Blossom spoke, landing to be on equal ground with the blonde. In return, she let out a rare scoff, and crossed her arms. At the refusal, Blossom cast a glance at her sister; it was a silent order, a declaration from the leader. Bubbles groaned and flew out the door and into the sky.
"Ugh." Blossom mumbled, tossing herself backward onto the couch and covering her face with both of her hands. When she removed them, she was face-to-face with Butch, hovering and horizontally facing her. His black Princeton fade cut was accompanied by several piercings in his left ear, and he had another one in his bottom lip. She momentarily examined him as he looked at her with his dark green eyes. When she realized how close to her he was, though, she screamed and rolled off of the couch, which made him laugh and clutch his stomach as he made himself upright.
"Butch!" Blossom yelled at him, sitting up.
"My bad, Red, er- I guess you're more pink. Like cotton candy. Yum-" As Butch's flirting escalated, and he leaned toward Blossom, he was knocked to his feet by a closed fist to his head.
"That's enough sexual harassment for today, Butch." Brick's voice continued to be nothing besides professional and sophisticated, something that his counterpart didn't believe he was even capable of. His brother clutched his head where he had been hit and whined.
"Dude, that hurts like a bitch!" He spoke, followed immediately by both Blossom and Brick saying, respectively,
"Watch your language." and "Bite your tongue."
The two looked at each other, no longer paying attention to the upset brother's mock pleas for assistance. Suddenly, Brick grabbed Blossom by the wrist and pulled her in the direction of the East wing of the house, which she noticed had been further expanded.
"Hey…wait!" She called at him, to which he ignored. She heard Butch click his tongue and let out and envious 'dude…', and rolled her eyes. They approached a closed room with a sign clumsily stuck on the front that read 'Caution: Do Not Enter!'. Brick opened the door and pulled Blossom inside, shutting it behind him as they went. Faced in the room, she looked around at the different decorations. A few ribbons of excellence recognition, straight A report cards, a desk littered with different papers and plans, a shelf lined with beakers and his signature baseball cap resting on one of them. It was a fairly typical room for a teenage geek. Blossom was surprised at how normal her duplicate's bedroom was; if she had walked into it without him she would believe it was anyone else's. The bed creaked as he sat down on it and stared at her, motioning for her to take the seat at the desk.
"So ask." He spoke as she carefully pulled it out and sat down. She looked at him, confused, with her guard still up.
"Excuse me?" She responded. He let out a breath.
"Since you got here you've been wanting to know what's happening. After you found out about Mojo you wanted to know more, but you didn't want to ask. I'll answer whatever questions you like, so ask." His voice was strangely calm and peaceful, she almost found it relaxing.
"Why did the Professor make you his assistant?" She asked, dipping a toe in the conversation.
"He wanted help, and with you gone I'm the smartest person in Townsville, uncontested. But what you really want to know is why I became his assistant." Blossom looked and him and scowled, muttering,
"Presumptuous."
"Am I wrong?" He asked, never breaking his eye contact with her as the conversation continued. She looked at her hands and fiddled with her thumbs, begrudgingly shaking her head as a 'no'. He sighed.
"Mojo used us as tools from the day we were created. Our purposes were to destroy you three, as well as anything else that stood in his way. When Him had control of us, these purposes were intensified, and we were even more destructive. The Powerpuff Girls destroyed Him, and we regained our original mindsets, however after that you three left, and Mojo decided he needed us here. Butch was the strong-arm, Boomer was surveillance and I was the brains." She thought back on the events leading up to Him's downfall and cringed, but Brick went on.
"For a little while, it worked well, and our crime spree got Mojo whatever he wanted. But not long after he was messing with a pretty potent anesthetic, and it didn't work out as he planned. He got sick. Even as Mojo, as…our father was dying, he never once treated us like his family. The only person he'd let see him was the Professor. I figured there must be something to it, something he understood that I didn't. And since what Mojo wanted was for us to go live with him, he must have seen him as an important factor somehow."
"So you're using him." She concluded, gripping the sides of the chair to prevent her from getting angry and doing something irrational. Brick shook his head.
"I'm learning from him. I realized that it may have been the one decent thing my father ever did for us, was send us here. The Professor actually treated us like people, he looked past the fact that we were weapons, let us figure out what we wanted. We didn't grow up like you girls, and I noticed how good it was for Boomer to get an actual education, and for Butch to let out his aggression and hyperactivity. And he made me his assistant. Not his lackey. It was refreshing." Blossom looked at him and noticed that he let a small grin slip onto his face as he spoke of her father.
"So how did you all start fighting crime instead of causing it?" She asked, easing her grip off of the chair.
"The first time was because the Professor got kidnapped, and we just compulsively went after him. And when we did that, the townspeople just started relying on us for things, and we got used to it." She looked at him, taking in all the new information she had just received. With a deep inhale, she stood.
"You seem genuine enough, but I don't buy it. Maybe you're not as pointlessly evil, but people don't just change." Brick's tone didn't change at all at Blossom's harsh words and he continued speaking to her.
"I understand how you would be skeptical. But Blossom, there's something you have to know. The real reason the Professor had us all gather here. You won't like it." She turned the doorknob and paused upon his words, slightly looking back at him to receive his explanation.
"Utonium wanted us to have a similar experience as you three in being exposed to a normal life, so for the remainder of the school year, he wrote up the paperwork for us to be enrolled in East Ridge High School." Blossom brought her free hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose in frustration, knowing exactly what her dad was thinking when he made that decision.
"He wants us to be your babysitters." She spoke, exiting. This was of course met by the person in question reaching the top of the stairs as she walked out.
"I'd prefer that you referred to it as coaching them." He said.
"Hey Red! How about some health coaching?" Butch called to her with a laugh. The Professor let out a naïve chuckle.
"Good to see you interested in nutrition, Butch!" Blossom groaned and wondered how her father could be so oblivious to everything that happened around him.
"Dad, this is ridiculous. You can't expect us to-" Her protests were interrupted by the Professor's stern voice making an appearance to instruct her.
"It's already been arranged, like it or not. The boys will be attending East Ridge, and that's final. As a favor to me, you girls will help them adjust. Understood?" Frustrated even further, Blossom reluctantly answered her father.
"Understood…"
Eh. I blame this chapter not being super great on the fact that I have the flu and I'm writing through a Nyquil haze.
I hope you guys liked it a little bit though.
Please review, every bit of feedback improves the story. Thank you for reading!