Chapter 4: The Crush Brush

No fingerprints. No facial recognition. No identification whatsoever. Days were beginning to turn into weeks and the Representative was still relaxing in lock-up without a name to the moniker. He still sat there with little enthusiasm. Tyler Osborn felt he was losing an uphill battle every time he glanced into the room. Passing through the string of interrogation rooms, he could see Mr. Grant's blond lawyer coming down the opposite way. Osborn gave of a snarl that he didn't see as he approached.

"Why are you here?" Osborn asked. "You client is dead. You were informed of that, right?"

"I was," he replied snidely. "I am actually here representing his widow. She is going to sue the Townsville Police Department for failing to protect him when his life was in mortal danger. I just thought I would give you a heads-up in case you would like to settle this out of court."

"My officers risk their lives everyday. I'm not settling anything out of court, blond lawyer whose name I refuse to remember."

He shrugged as if it was a common reaction to his statement. He turned to leave, but stopped abruptly. He was looking into the interrogation room housing The Representative. "I wasn't aware he was back. Is he waiting for his client?"

"Who?"

"Malcolm."

"The man in that room is responsible for releasing three feral dogs onto Townsville. He's the one charged with your client's murder, as well as the attempted murder of Kathleen Keane and John Utonium. Are you telling me you know him?"

"Of course," the blond lawyer said. "He's Malcolm Jules. He told me he was going to practice law Denver. I wasn't aware that he had come back. Are you sure he committed the crime?"

"I was there."

"Let me talk to him."

"He's already refused counsel."

"Then let me interrogate him, then."

"I might actually be willing to remember your name, blond lawyer. Get your ass in there."

Blond lawyer nodded and calmly opened the door. He looked at Malcolm Jules, who glanced back at him. He looked at him as if he were Tyler Osborn or one of the many other faceless officers he had seen in the passed few days, not as if he was a colleague he had previously worked with. "Do you know who I am?" Blond lawyer asked.

"That is certainly an odd question," The Representative replied. "All of the previous police officers have been intent on discovering my identity. Do you not know your own identity? Do you need me to help you find it?"

"You're Malcolm Jules. You should know who I am."

"You are just a human," The Representative replied snidely. "Your brain cannot hope to comprehend the intricacies of what I am now, no matter what degree you hold. You memory has allowed you to deduce my physical identity, but nothing more. Malcolm Jules is now only a face. I, who I really am, am just a representative of a higher power."

"What higher power?"

"Now you are beginning to act like the other police officers. You prattle on with pointless questions that will not yield you the answers you seek."

"That depends on whom I'm asking. Malcolm Jules or the Representative."

"You will get an answer from neither, especially since you are directing the question to one who is not here."

Blond lawyer saw his eyes twitch. " I beg to differ. This question is not question is not directed at The Representative. This question is directed directly to Malcolm Jules. Who is the Higher Power?" There was no answer, a satisfying response as it differed from the comments that he would usually prattle off. "I'll ask again. Who is the higher power!?" The Representative began to breathe heavily before hopping up and pushing blond lawyer back against the wall. He ran to the door and rammed it until it came of its hinges. Tyler Osborn reached for his gun, but was knocked back before he could get it out. The Representative ran to the nearest door, easily pulling that off it's hinges as well.

After a week of attending kindergarten, the girls were getting used to their new daily routine. Bubbles and Buttercup were content with what they had, but Blossom trying to figure the schedule for two people. Monday through Friday, she and her sisters would be at school at 8:00 in the morning until about 1:00 in the afternoon. On Mondays and Wednesdays, Justin Bradley would be at school starting at 10:00 in the morning until school ended and on Tuesdays and Thursdays he would be at school for start until 10:00. He didn't come on Friday.

She planned to wait for him to come through the doors on Monday at 10:00, just to look at him. He was pretty to look at. Bubbles and Buttercup found her fascination odd, but also nothing to be preoccupied with. For once, Professor Utonium looked forward to a lazy Saturday. He hadn't had one in a long time, and just wanted to relax. That relaxation was marred with a doorbell. Lethargically, he answered it. Sarah Bellum was at the door, with a crew behind her. She seemed to notice that Utonium was at the door, but she didn't acknowledge him as she instructed her crew to begin moving in the parts. A few men came in with a telephone and a table. They began to hook it up as Utonium watched.

"Am I going to be told what any of this is?"

"Eventually," Sarah finally said. "Mayor Meyer wants to tell you himself."

"Doesn't it seem odd saying Mayor Meyer?"

"Yes, but it's my job to say it that way."

"You could say the mayor. You could just say Meyer. You could say Elliott. God knows I'm don't respect him enough to call him mayor." He looked at the men as they finished installing the phone. They waved at Sarah as they left. She waved back. "I'm not getting changed anything extra on my phone bill for this, right?"

"It'll be a minor addition to your current bill," she replied. "You don't want to know how much taxpayer money Meyer put in to this little Powerpuff Project already."

He wanted to say something mean back, but she didn't deserve it. She had just taken his suggestion to call him by his last name only, and making her the target of his anger seemed misplaced. The phone rang. There would be someone he could take his anger on. "Professor," Meyer began. "I am so glad that the phone works. It's separate from your other line. If I ever need to call the girls in case of an emergency, I know I can always reach them."

"Actually, this will only reach them when they're not at school out outside already," he pointed out. "On the other hand, what is this I hear about me being charged for this?"

"Got to go," he said swiftly before the dial tone came up. Utonium looked up to see that Sarah Bellum had already packed up and left a long time ago.

"I'm going to start ranking people in my life," he told himself. "Kathleen is on the good list. Everyone else can go to Hell."

Monday finally rolled around in Townsville. The Representative was once again on the loose. Thanks to blond lawyer (who Tyler Osborn managed to remember was named Greg), The Representative was identified as a lawyer named Malcolm Jules. He practiced in Townsville for approximately ten years before moving to Denver. There, he practiced one year before leaving his job. He didn't resurface until the incident in the warehouse.

Malcolm Jules was selected for a reason. He was not reported missing, meaning he was not a friendly person to begin with. No one missed him in Denver, and any family he had lived just fine without any contact from him. Whoever the higher power was must have been in Denver a few months prior, perhaps tailing Jules. This was Osborn's theory as he patrolled Townsville, not wanting the girls to intervene. He looked up to see the stream in the sky. It wasn't multi-colored. It was only red.

He pulled the car over and continued to stare at the stream traveling south until it disappeared behind a building. He pulled out his cell phone and called Miss Keane. "Hello Kathleen. It's Tyler Osborn. If I'm not mistaken, the girls began attending kindergarten a while back."

"Yes. That's right. There right here. Why do you ask?"

"Well, if you're so sure, then maybe you could help me with a little mystery. Besides a super powered girl known as Blossom, what else could cause a ray of red as if flew by in the sky?"

Tyler Osborn could hear her put the phone down. She was talking, likely to Bubbles and Buttercup. She came back to the phone. "I'll handle it. Thank you Captain Osborn."

At Pokey Oaks, Miss Keane hung up the phone. She had an angered look on her face while the remaining two Powerpuff Girls sat with paper and crayons in front of them. Buttercup had drawn squiggles, and Bubbles had drawn a stick figure drawing of herself and her sisters. "You girls knew that she was going to leave. Right?"

"That's a complicated question to answer," Buttercup said. "Yes, we knew that she had plans to split. We did not expect her to do it when she did. Had we known, we would have tried to stop her."

"Tried," Keane asked. "It doesn't sound like you were all that interested in stopping her."

"Again, complicated,' Bubbles said. "She said she wanted to see Justin in his natural habitat instead in here, because she feels inferior to him here. She's developed a crush of sorts, and Pokey Oaks Kindergarten didn't really seem like the best place to act on that."

"So that explains why you didn't stop her, or why you didn't tell me."

"Right," they said in unison.

"And that also explains why you're going to go after her and bring her back as soon as possible or neither of you get a snack before your nap."

"Right," they said again in unison, this time despondently. They dropped their crayons where they stood before whooshing off to retrieve their sister. Kathleen kept a sour look on her face.

Bubbles and Buttercup knew exactly where she was going. Blossom hadn't stopped talking about Justin Bradley since first spotting him. Incognito, she followed him back to school on Tuesday. Townsville High School. That's where he would be and that's where she would be. Class was in session and the girls landed on the roof unnoticed. There were only a handful of students wandering outside the building. A few were clearly skipping class, and a handful appeared to have something of importance to do. Buttercup assumed they were skipping anyway.

"We have to be very careful," Bubbles said. "We have to look for Blossom, but we have to do it in such a way that the other students and teachers don't notice our existence. The last thing we need it to be caught skipping school, in a completely different school to top it."

"Yeah," she replied. Buttercup had clearly tuned out. "You can look your way. I have my way." With that, Buttercup sped off. Bubbles shrugged, confident that her way would be more successful. Casually, she dropped to the ground below, receiving impressed gawks from the skippers. She walked to a school map and followed it to the front office. To the left was a binder filled with the schedules of all the students that attended the school. Convenient. She checked the clock as she looked at Justin Bradley's class schedule, showing he was in volleyball in the gym. Bubbles sped off before she was even noticed by the employees in the office, and she was in the gym instantly.

The gym was filled to the brink. Bubbles noticed there was more than one class going on inside. On the left side, a handful of students played basketball, and the volleyball net was set up on the right side. Justin Bradley was on the blue team, getting ready to serve the ball against the red team, poised and ready.

He looked at one of his teammates, who nodded back knowingly. He rolled his shoulders and tossed the ball in the air. As it came back down, he rammed the ball with his fist and it flew over the net. The red team managed to hit it back, and the blue team managed to save it. The ball flew backwards and Justin managed to lob it back over to the red side. The ball was tossed back over to the blue side. The ball was high in the air, and Justin slid close to the net and got on his knees. He cupped his hands as another player ran to him and used Justin's hands as a jumping off point. He spun around and slammed the ball directly into the ground on the red side.

Justin shook his hands off to regain feeling before joining his team in celebrating the apparent victory. Bubbles managed to take her eyes off the game to see Blossom sitting with a few other students on the brown wooden bleachers. She hadn't taken her eyes off Justin. Bubbles walked over to Blossom, tripping over the rickety bleachers as she reached Blossom. It wasn't until Bubbles sat down that Blossom realized her sister's presence.

"What are you doing here?"

"Did you really think you could just pop away without being noticed? Miss Keane is very observant."

"I was going to come right back. Fine minutes tops."

"It's been half an hour."

"Really?"

"It's time to go back to school. Justin will be there with us at 10:00."

"As our teacher," she replied condescendingly. "As our babysitter, for a lack of a better term. All I can do there is stare at him from afar."

"As opposed to now?"

"I was just biding my time!" Blossom defended. "I'm going to talk to him right now." She stood up and looked at the celebrating team. Justin was no longer among them and Blossom sped off in a blind search for him.

Justin Bradley had slid out into the locker room amidst the confusion. As he left, he glanced back at his celebrating team. They were too absorbed in themselves to notice anything else. One teammate, the one who made the winning slam, was the only one who appeared to notice Justin's sudden disappearance. He looked around to where Justin had gone off to, and Justin picked up the pace to the locker room.

As he went inside, he looked around to see if anyone was with him. He was alone, and he immediately took off his gym clothes and changed them for his regular set. He looked around again as he tied his left shoe. He was in the clear until a figure pushed him from behind.

"What was that?" he ordered.

Justin picked himself up and spun around. The kid, a few inches taller than Justin, stared at him irefully. There was no sympathy in his eyes. He wasn't out for an answer. He was out for revenge. Justin tried not to seem intimidated, but his bravado was thin, if existent at all. "It's exactly what it looked like," Justin defended. "I decided to win. I like to show things as they are, and helping you appear the winner would just be lying. I can't do that, Lucas."

"We had a deal. You were supposed to lose. Not only do you go back on your word on the last play, it looks like you set that play up beforehand. You don't just cup your hands and expect Zachary to get it. You planned it. Doesn't that mean you lied to me?"

"Well, I suppose there exists certain people in this world who can be lied to—who have to be lied to."

Lucas didn't have a reply. Instead, he shoved Justin back down. Justin stood back only to be shoved again. Justin sat on the ground and looked up at Lucas, standing tall and imposing. He had a triumphant look on his face, which irked Justin even more. Instinctively, Justin hopped up and shoved Lucas into the lockers behind him.

He wasn't sure what he was doing, but he knew he had to keep doing it. The anger in Lucas's eyes had grown in intensity, and the only thing Justin could do was to continue to hold his wrist, keeping him pinned against the lockers. His arms were growing weak rapidly and Lucas's arms were beginning to move. He looked down and swung his foot at Justin's stomach.

Justin recoiled backwards, letting go of Lucas's wrists. "You want to mess with me? Fine!" Lucas balled his hand into a fist and punched him in the stomach. Once again, Justin recoiled back. He tried to stand straight as he moved backwards slowly. Justin kept a close eye on Lucas's hands as another punch came. He dodged the hook and managed to catch the jab. However, he used both hands, and had nothing with which to block his other hand.

The hand stopped. Someone caught it, but it wasn't Justin. They turned their heads to see Blossom, enraged, clenching the fist. She began to hold it tighter until Lucas began to reel backwards in pain. As soon as he had let go of Justin, she threw him back against the lockers.

She stood with her back to Justin, still staring at Lucas, as he lay motionless against the lockers. "That was amazing," Justin said in awe.

Blossom suddenly realized there were more than just two people in the room. Cautiously, she turned around to face Justin. He was in utter surprise, but it was her that was at a loss for words. "I still can't believe you did that."

She was still at a loss for words. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. Justin kept talking. "Wait. You're one of Miss Keane's new students. You're one of the Powerpuff Girls. Blossom!" Still at a loss for words, she found herself at the receiving end of a statement that required a response, and she couldn't find one. After staring at him for a few seconds, she ran off.

When Justin came to Pokey Oaks, Blossom ignored him. After about ten minutes, Justin took the hint and stopped trying to talk to her. Her sisters, thankfully, didn't bring it up. Buttercup was too preoccupied with fending off Bubbles. All she could talk about was how her method worked, and how Buttercup found herself running aimlessly around the school halls until giving up and returning to Pokey Oaks.

They left school as soon as possible, before Justin could find Blossom again. At home, Utonium sensed something was wrong. He didn't ask. As night fell, things began to quiet down in Townsville, and even Elliott Meyer was ready to turn in for the night. "Another day, another paycheck," he said to himself, although Sarah was standing nearby.

"As mayor," she began, "I would hope that the paycheck is not your top priority."

"Of course not. It's just one of the most important. Hell, we have the Powerpuff girls doing the most important things."

A new voice came in. "Excuse me, Mr. Mayor," he said. It was a pretty calm voice, nothing too special about it. Meyer raised an eyebrow when he saw where it came from, a man if slightly below average height standing at his doorway.

His expression wanted to ask who he was, but Sarah answered for him before he could ask it. "That's Tom Seaton. Your press secretary. He's been with us since the campaign." It wasn't ringing a bell. Sarah turned to him. "What is it, Tom?"

"I just wanted to ask for permission to use the computer. During the campaign I saved something on that hard drive—a lot of things, actually—I need them now. Would it be okay if I just downloaded them onto my flash drive?"

"We are about to leave," Meyer said, "but you have a pretty trustworthy face. Tell you what I'm going to do, Tom. I'll leave you the key and you can lock up. I am going home for a good night's sleep." Meyer fished in his pocket for the key and tossed it to Tom. Sarah was visibly against the decision, but she left the room with him without saying a word to Tom Seaton.

Seaton sat down at the computer and plugged in his flash drive. He sat, doing nothing, for about ten minutes, until he was sure they had left. He stood up and close the door before heading to the phone that connected on to the Professor's house. He pulled out a microchip and a screwdriver. He unscrewed the bottom and placed the tracker into the phone. Cautiously, he screwed the bottom back onto the phone and left it as he found it.

Seaton removed the flash drive and a made a quick phone call. "It's done."

"Thank you Tom Seaton," the Representative said.