Chapter 3: Progression, Regression

The City of Townsville Suburbs. The House.

24 NOV 1988. 0823

"Hungy! Hungy!" The girls were screaming at the professor, throwing the word they'd learn from him, at him, imperfect but effective. Well, the girls sans Bubbles. Bubbles was still mostly silent. Professor Utonium thought that this was an opportunity to introduce them to solid food, and he had to hold off on the feeding.

"Hungy! Hungy!" They would shout even as he carried them out of their room, after changing their diapers. The potty training would come again later. They would only stop to gaze at the wider world around them, which they had thought was only the size of their room. Breathing heavily, his body aches acting up, he descended down the steps, afraid that he might lose balance, what with Buttercup swinging on his neck and the others acting like pendulums on his arms. He had to carry them because they hadn't learnt how to walk beyond a few meters - Bubbles couldn't even manage the walk.

Later at the kitchen, he was able to find kiddy chairs, and they were white of course. It reminded Utonium of his conversation yesterday on the phone. He would have done some shopping too, had it not been for the girls' inability to take care of themselves.

Plopping the Girls down in the chairs, he began cooking up something simple. He could still remember the ingredients, and it was easy to do so because the girls seemed to be awed by their surrounding, by The House. But he knew that it wouldn't last for long, especially when they seem to be capable of learning at a rapid pace, like how they grew to be 5-year-olds within 11 hours.

Soon, the chorus of "Hungy! Hungy!" began again. Pushing three bowls of porridge into the oven, he turned it up, and flew back to Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup.

"Food's almost ready- Patience-" he panted.

As with the results of yesterday's potty training, their first encounter with solid food was a mess. By the end of it, there was porridge everywhere. Slobbering on the girls' mouth, on the surface of the kiddy chairs, on the table, on Professor Utonium. But at least the chorus of "Hungy! Hungy!" was over.

Professor Utonium introduced them to the concept of bathing soon after - the kids were a mess. Yesterday, he'd washed them during potty training with a quick shower. They seemed to like it. The standard issue rubber ducky was an amazing sensation.

Time flew once more. Professor Utonium would go on to train them in standing and walking, and they were mastering the art increasingly fast. Even Bubbles was taking her first successful steps, and she would jump with joy over it, before falling over on her bum and crying. It served to ease Utonium's worries a little. Surely a child who could learn to walk within two days couldn't be suffering from any developmental problems, right? Buttercup could cross her room on her own, though she was still teetering worryingly on her heels on occasion.

Potty training remained a constant, and so did listening and speaking lessons. The professor could not wait for the day when they would be able to communicate with each other. Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup were exposed to more words. It helped that there were picture cards in the storeroom for their educational needs. They went through the basics: things that the girls would find at home. Their own bodies, and what the different parts were called. They went through toys, furnitures. They learnt what to actually call the activities they had been doing. While their pronunciation was always off, Professor Utonium knew that he was getting through to them. He'd discreetly tested them on their progress by playing a game of 'name the card', and the girls could remember most of the words they had learn, and connected those words to what they represent. Bubbles, as usual, had great difficulty in this. Bubbles' achievements for the day had remained largely confined to her own name, that whatever little confidence Utonium had gained that she had no issues was shattered.

25 NOV 1988. 0815

Snow had begun to fall. The girls continued to learn. They ate with increasing precision, though Professor Utonium was still doing the feeding, flying food aeroplanes into their mouths again and again. They moved with increasing agility. Buttercup could walk with alarming agility, and run almost just as well. Bubbles remained the third-placer, as she was still walking across the room with great difficulty. Potty accidents became minimal - even with Bubbles. Avoiding the 'icky' smell of human waste was still a great motivational factor.

They learned even more words, and brushed up on their pronunciations for words they had encountered before.

"Blossom! Blossom!" Blossom would shout her name with great confidence. "Blossom happy!" the red-haired girl would then laugh in a victory celebration. Buttercup was not far behind. Bubbles was trying to catch up with them, and had left the claustrophobic feeling that came with only knowing one's name. "Daddy! Daddy!"

26 NOV 1988. 0801

Snow fell in increasing volume. The girls continued to learn. They ate while spilling little. Professor Utonium had graduated them to scrambled eggs and bread for breakfast, and porridge enriched with tiny flakes of chicken for lunch and dinner.

The girls were allowed the first time to venture out of their room on their own power. Bubbles had to be watched very closely. The stairs became their arch-nemesis, to be conquered another day.

"Blossom love daddy! Blossom love daddy!" Blossom would proclaim today. Professor Utonium hugged the three girls upon hearing that.

"Bubbles love!" Bubbles imitated her more articulate sisters.

"Buttercup love!" Buttercup said the same.

"Blossom happy daddy!" Blossom would insist after they let go, and she loved the way it sounded. Rhyme and alliteration was lost on her, but she could instinctively appreciate the effect these literary phenomenons produce.

27 NOV 1988. 0840

It was winter proper. When the professor woke up this day, he could feel the weight of his debt incurred to bring his girls up to speed. He could barely get out of bed, and a paradoxical wave of both chill and heat swept over him the moment he was conscious. The alarm was blaring into his ears, and when he groped for it, he accidentally knocked it to the ground along with his useless pistol, which he had carelessly tossed onto the nightstand a few days before.

But something wasn't quite right. He could feel a lump by his leg. Pushing himself up with difficulty, he tried to make out what it was in the dark; he had to consciously focus his eyes to see.

One of the girls. Of all the girls, it was Bubbles. 'How did she get here?' he thought. He knew Bubbles, had seen her something like 18 hours of his life a day. She was reluctant to move any 'great' distance at all, and a 'great' distance to her was the boundaries of her room.

Seeing her gave him strength. Silently, he crawled out of bed and picked her up, cradling her in his arms. Gingerly, he walked towards the girls' room and deposited her in her own cot, careful not to wake the girls.

After that, he returned to his room to get dressed and look over the catalogue that his former-friend, the Chief of Logistics, had sent him. It didn't take long for him to realize that the selection wasn't much better. Wiggums had been working with a company that specialized in minimalistic furniture and interior design that favoured either bachelor pads or the cold, sterile insides of a lab. The clothes catalogue was a little better - dresses of all sorts and colors crowded the pages. Predictably, the clothes that Wiggums did get belonged to the budget section of the catalogue. Before he made any choices, the Professor decided that the girls should take their pick. Tossing the catalogue aside, he dragged himself towards the kitchen.

It was the start of another long day.

28 NOV 1988. 1754

A loud, piercing scream suddenly filled the room as Professor Utonium was teaching Blossom how to draw shapes on a piece of paper. It'd busted his eardrums, nearly giving him a heart attack. He wasn't expecting it; the girl had been nothing but peaceful, passive creatures.

All of that was about to change.

The professor turned to look. Bubbles was lying sprawled on the floor, crying her heart out. Buttercup stood over her, an abstract WHITE toy train in her hand, with a rather mean look on her face. He knew, somewhat, what had happened, but he couldn't be sure - back when he still had his own family, he had only one child to look after, and sibling interaction was something he just wasn't experienced in.

Professor Utonium got up to her and wrapped his arms around her. "Bubbles, what's the matter?"

Needless to say, it took Bubbles a long time before she could even speak - even in normal circumstances, she would have difficulty on the verbal side of things.

"Butt-Ta-Cut mean! Butt-Ta-Cut mean!" Bubbles cried. "The train!"

The professor turned to Buttercup. "Now look at what you did, Buttercup. Apologize to your sister and give it back to her," he said in a genial sort of way, hoping that Buttercup would turn her frown upside-down like before. But it seemed that her mouth was frozen that way.

"Buttercup, there's toys everywhere around you - and you've been hoarding quite a few on your side," the professor tried to reason with her, pointing at all the toys to make sure she understood.

"My train! Train mine!" Buttercup protested, waving the train in her hand in an infantile manner. While the professor thought that her aptitude in speaking was admirable, the message was clear: selfishness, an end which she met with violence and selfishness. "My train!"

"Butt-Ta-Cut mean!" Bubbles repeated, still crying.

The professor found himself frustrated, irritable, more than he wanted to be. The past week hadn't been easy. There was no one he could speak to, to reveal the mental pain that he had been enduring. The line between his life and work was blurred. The girls were a blessing, and yet they reminded him of the bloody past, and how it could just repeat so easily again. He had been working more than a double shift essentially for the past week, sleeping and eating little, much less having any kind of free time to himself. He was a single parent, and he felt the worst of it. He had to face the possibility of Bubbles suffering developmental problems, and now Buttercup was coming up with a little issue of her own.

"Buttercup! Give the train back to Bubbles," he said sternly to the black-haired girl, who responded by shaking her head while crossing her arms. He found himself gritting his teeth. Grabbing the train by force, he yanked it away from Buttercup and deposited it on the ground next to Bubbles roughly.

Buttercup was stunned, and soon, too, did tears welled up in her eyes. And then she started crying in that raspy voice of hers. The professor himself was horrified at what he had done. "Come here," he said as he wrapped himself around her, hugging her. She resisted at first, and she was strong - for a second there, she could have actually thrown the professor off her, but she relented as it felt good. Her cries became sniffles, and soon just straggling tears. She smiled.

"Don't do that again, okay? My Butterbear?" the professor said.

"Yes, daddy," Buttercup promised. The professor had forgotten about the apology, and Buttercup was glad he did.

As soon as the professor left, she turned to Bubbles, who was playing with HER train, and glared at her, at the same time smiling maliciously. All the while, Blossom had been watching, and although she hadn't learnt all the words for the thought yet, she thought that her daddy was heroic for what he did. She thought that what he did was good, and she wanted to be just like him.

'What was I doing? What was I thinking?' the professor thought, worried about his lack of control earlier. He had nearly lost it. 'I'll do better… It's all going to be fine, Thomas, you just have to bear with it…'

Then a thought occurred to the professor. The sudden burst of strength from Buttercup. The girls' physical strength hadn't gone unnoticed. At first, he'd thought that it was his mind playing tricks on him, that it was just exhaustion building a circus for him. For days, he had thought that instant growth and accelerated mental development were the only traits provided by Chemical X, but that view had been proven wrong (and gladly). Now, it was only a matter of testing its limits, and he had already come up with several ways to measure the girls' physical strength safely - and it would keep the Organization off his back and give him more time to raise Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup.