Sorry for the huge delay in getting this next chapter out. Most of the other chapters will be like this, about a week or two in between updates. I am VERY busy with two college summer classes. :o( Never take Genetics and Developmental Biology in the same summer semester...just don't try it. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. Happy reading! -Delly
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Beep…beep…beep…

Bubbles regained consciousness, but she could not find the strength to open her eyes. She felt exhausted, more tired than she had ever felt in her whole life. She had no idea where she was, only that she could hear a faint, beeping noise… She couldn't remember much. What had happened before she went to sleep? She vaguely remembered helping Buttercup find her snake, but everything else seemed like a blur… She let out a small groan of pain, and tried to sit up, but to no avail. She lied back down on the pillow behind her.

After a few moments, the blonde found the strength to open her eyes, if only slightly. The blurry view of a completely white room was all that was in front of her. It didn't take her more than half a second to realize she wasn't in her bedroom. She shut her eyes again. She took a short breath before attempting to speak. She was able to croak out a small "Professor", hoping that her father was somewhere around to explain what was going on. She could feel that something was poked into her arm, but she didn't know what. It wasn't long before she felt the familiar hand of her father, stroking her blonde hair gently, before she lost consciousness once more.

Beep… beep… beep…

Blossom was the second to awaken. She had woken up when she heard her sister, Bubbles, saying something unintelligible. The redhead let out a small whimper as she sat up from the bed, rubbing her eyes tiredly. She soon noticed the IV that stuck to her arm, and was taped in place. On her other arm, she had a small, orange wristband. She was in a hospital? Why was she in a hospital? She was still very groggy, and so she slowly turned her head to her blonde sister, who was lying in the hospital bed next to hers. The Professor stood in a chair next to Bubbles' hospital bed. They seemingly hadn't noticed that she had woken up.

The redhead let out a small cough. It was obvious that speech wouldn't be too easy for her, but she tried regardless. "P-Professor, wh-what happened…?" Blossom called out to her father, her voice not very loud at all but they were still able to hear.

Bubbles turned to face her sister, and she smiled widely at her. "Blossom, you're okay!" She cried out, overjoyed that her sister was seemingly in good health after what had apparently happened to them. Blossom returned her sister's emotions with a small smile.

"Of course she is fine, Bubbles," The Professor spoke, now, standing up from the chair he had previously been sitting in next to Bubbles. "You're all fine. You've been at the hospital for a few days, but you're all in stable condition now."

Blossom brushed the hair from her face with her fingers and let out a yawn. "I-I can't remember anything right now… what happened to us, Professor?" She looked up at her father as he began to walk towards her. Her head hurt a little, and everything seemed so fuzzy. She thought she remembered going down into the lab with Buttercup and Bubbles, but everything else was not coming to her easily. She hoped they hadn't been hurt too bad, but the Professor said they were fine...right?

"You three got into an accident down in my lab at home," the Professor spoke to her, obviously trying not to sugarcoat the information he was relaying to her. He mentally cursed himself for forgetting to lock the lab that night. He usually remembered to, but that particular night was a rough one, and he had forgotten. Of course, it would be the one night that the girls had decided to venture down there… He couldn't blame himself, though, or the girls. It was simply a freak accident. It was nothing that any of them could have predicted. He wouldn't be mad at them for messing around in his lab. Being in this hospital was punishment enough for them.

Blossom gasped, accidentally tugging at the IV on her arm and yelping a little from the pinched feeling. "I-I-I-I-I'm sorry!" she cried out, tears forming in her eyes. "I'm sorry, Professor!"

"Yeah, I'm sorry too," Bubbles was heard sniffling behind them. "I'm sorry that we messed with your lab stuff."

"It's okay, girls," he answered them with a sigh. "You just…have to be more careful, from now on." As he spoke, he began to scoop Blossom up into his arms to give her a reassuring hug. He had already given one to Bubbles earlier, as she was the first of the three to wake up.

Which begged the question…

"Professor," Blossom spoke, snuggling into her father's shirt, "…where is Buttercup?"

At this, the Professor gave a pained look, which went unnoticed by Blossom. "Buttercup is… in a quarantine room of the hospital," he tried to explain in the best way that he could. "The doctors are worried about her…condition. And so they decided to keep her separate from you two."

Bubbles lower lip quivered as she looked at the two, and the Professor turned to face the blonde, adjusting Blossom's IV so that he could continue to hold her. "Wh-what's wrong with Buttercup?"
-

The raven-haired child let out short, ragged breaths as she felt herself returning to consciousness. There were the sounds of several machines all around her. It seemed as if the noise was almost magnified in a way. She shut her eyes tight and grit her teeth. Oh, how she wished they would all shut up…

Realizing that she probably was not going to be able to go to sleep any time soon, she sat up from the bed and opened her eyes. She was in a thin cloth hospital gown, and she could feel several sticky pads lining her chest and stomach, which were connected to a machine making one of the beeping noises. She winced when she saw the two needles that were sticking into both of her arms. What was she doing back here? Was she dreaming? She had to be; she had done nothing that would land her back in the hospital. Or if she had, she certainly didn't remember what it was…

Looking around, she quickly noticed that she didn't see her sisters or the Professor anywhere in the small room that she was in, and she let out a small grumble of frustration. She was in the hospital room, completely alone, and she wanted answers…

Suddenly, the black-haired child felt an extremely painful muscle spasm wrack her arms, and she clenched her fists tightly. Her heart monitor's beeping quickened, and this triggered the machine to start sounding an alarm, presumably to alert a nurse that Buttercup needed attention.

Help for her would come very soon, sooner than she expected. A nurse walked into her hospital room and, checking her EKG, noticed that her heart levels were elevated. Before she could even ask Buttercup how she was feeling, the nurse looked over to see the small child trembling greatly, the muscle spasms having traveled over her whole body.

"Ahg!" She yelped out, clutching at her own sides. Her trembling grew even worse, and the nurse could have sworn the child bore a faint, green aura…

Buttercup barely had time to think before she felt her consciousness waning. Looking over, she saw the nurse had administered a powerful sedative into one of her IV tubes. Her last thought before she went under was a small twinge of frustration at the fact that she still had no idea why she was there or what was happening to her…
-

When Buttercup had woken back up, she noticed her sisters sitting on the bed with her, as if they knew that she would be waking soon. Bubbles smiled wide at seeing her sister finally awake. Both Blossom and Bubbles had been disconnected from their IVs, but Buttercup's remained. Her heart monitor was making a steady beeping noise. The black-haired child blinked.

"Blossom? Bubbles?" She murmured to them, sitting up from the bed slightly. Her head hurt, and she brought one of her hands to her scalp, rubbing it gently. "W-what are we doing here… what happened to you guys?"

Blossom crawled further onto the bed and towards Buttercup, only slightly. "We got in an accident in the Professor's lab, don't you remember?" The redhead blinked, looking at her sister intently in the eyes. That was when Buttercup noticed it…

"Blossom?" The black-haired child leaned toward her sister, looking into her eyes. She noticed they were… pink. Her eyes weren't playing tricks on her, were they? No, they really were pink! "Your eyes…" she whispered.

"What?" Blossom asked, tilting her head to the side in confusion. "What's wrong with my eyes?"

At this, Bubbles looked over at her redheaded sister, and she gasped at the realization that Buttercup had made. "Blossom, your eyes are pink!"

"WHAT?" Blossom shouted out. "I have… p-pink eye?"

"No, no," Buttercup tried to calm down her frantic sister. "Like… how me and Bubbles have green and blue eyes? Your eyes are pink. They're not brown anymore." Bubbles nodded at Blossom, confirming what Buttercup was saying.

Blossom, still not quite convinced, jumped down from the bed and eagerly ran into the bathroom to check, herself. After a few moments, she walked out of the bathroom, the color nearly drained from her face in shock. "They…they really are pink."

Buttercup bit her lip. "But…you feel fine, right? Like, there's nothing wrong with you guys, right?" She hoped that her sisters hadn't suffered the same fate as her, like the intense pain and muscle spasms that she had dealt with in waves for the last couple days. The doctors weren't exactly sure of the best way to treat her, so they had to resign to simply sedating her until the spasms stopped.

Blossom hopped back on the hospital bed with her two sisters. "Bubbles and I don't remember much, but we know we weren't allowed to come see you until the doctors said that we could."

Bubbles spoke out next, "yeah, they said you were under q-…qua…" She wracked her brain for the right word that the doctors had used, finding it on the tip of her tongue but not quite remembering what it was.

"Quarantine," Blossom answered her, which elicited a small thanks from Bubbles. "They said you were under quarantine, but nobody really said why," the redhead continued.

Buttercup scoffed. "Figures," she crossed her arms, despite the two IVs she was hooked up to. "We're just dumb kids and we don't know nothing, so the doctors don't tell us anything."

Bubbles lied down on the bed, which was plenty big enough for the three of them, and faced her two sisters. "I want to go home already… I'm tired of being here and I wanna sleep in my own bed, not these dumb hospital beds."

"And this beeping is driving me crazy," Buttercup remarked as she gestured to the heart monitor next to her.

"I wanna go home, too," Blossom spoke with a frown, "but we can't leave until the doctors say we can. And I don't know when that will be… the Professor said we've already been here for 4 days."

4 days? Buttercup could hardly believe that. How long had she been asleep? It seemed like she had been there maybe a day at most. She couldn't remember much about being at the hospital. She might have vaguely remembered being surrounded by doctors that were shouting orders at each other, but she was either too tired or too sedated to hear what they were saying to each other.

"Where is the Professor, anyway?" Buttercup finally asked her two sisters.

"I think he left to get us some food," Bubbles answered, "hospital food is really yucky, me and Blossom had some this morning," her face contorted into a disgusted look as she spoke, but she quickly recovered. "So I think he left to get us some real food."

"I don't think I even remember what real food is like," Buttercup joked with a chuckle, which elicited a small giggle from both Blossom and Bubbles.

It wasn't long before the Professor came back with some food for the girls. He had known that Blossom and Bubbles would be in Buttercup's special intensive care room, so he entered the room to see his three girls on the hospital bed together. This was the first time he had seen Buttercup in about a day, and the last time he saw her she was conscious, but heavily sedated, so she barely noticed or even acknowledged that he was there with her.

"Buttercup, how are you feeling?" He asked his daughter as he set the bag of fast food on the bed for Bubbles to promptly dig into.

"Ok, I guess," Buttercup answered him as she watched Bubbles crunch down on some french fries that she had fished from the bag of food. "My head kinda hurts, but otherwise I guess I'm okay."

The Professor pulled up a chair next to Buttercup's bed and sat down in it. "Well, Buttercup, unfortunately the doctors won't let you eat since you're still hooked up to your IV, but I promise I'll get you something to eat for dinner tonight if they take you off of it."

Buttercup simply nodded at this. Her sisters continued to eat and, Buttercup was starting to get a little annoyed by the lack of answers that she was getting about what was wrong with them… sighing, she looked over at the Professor. "So why are we actually here? What is wrong with us? Are we going to be okay and can we leave soon?!"

The Professor frowned at her black-haired daughter, and he struggled to find a way to answer her many questions. This is why he had been avoiding trying to explain anything to the girls. After a moments pause, he decided to just say it.

"I don't actually know what happened with you girls. All I know is that you got doused with a certain chemical from my lab. I am unsure of all the properties of the chemical, so I simply called it "X"," he looked over at Blossom and Bubbles. "The doctors are stumped. They wanted to keep you here to be sure that none of you suffered any ill-effects of exposure to the chemical. But once Buttercup started having severe muscle spasms, the doctors decided to separate her from you two, just to make sure that, if there was something wrong with her, it wouldn't spread to you." At this, he shrugged. "Buttercup seemingly stopped having the spasms, which I'm assuming is why they've allowed you two to be here with her."

Buttercup was still not one-hundred-percent satisfied, but she figured she wouldn't get a much better answer out of the Professor. She nodded and murmured, "okay."

"And as for Blossom's pink irises, I have no explanation either. And the doctors are just as shocked as we all are. We're all assuming it's just a side effect of the chemical exposure."

Blossom looked meek at this. Her eyes hadn't hurt much, so she didn't really have a reason to worry, right? She hoped she wasn't mutating into some weird alien freak like she had seen on TV sometimes. In fact, this entire situation seemed like something out of a bad sci-fi film. She shuddered a little internally, trying to push the invasive thoughts from her mind.

"But the good news is, if the doctors are pleased with how you three are recovering, then you'll all be out of the hospital by tomorrow morning," he finished speaking as a small smile graced his lips.

What a relief, they were soon to be free from the hospital. Buttercup was so sick of hospitals. She had spent too much of her young life in hospitals already, and she didn't want to be a part of this sterile environment any longer. She was tired of the needles that poked into her arms, and the nurses that came in to check her machines and administer medicine to her. She hated when the nurses took off the sticky adhesive from her heart monitors. It always hurt so bad! And they would do it without warning, too!

Buttercup seemed the most excited to leave, even though she was sure that Blossom and Bubbles were ecstatic, too. "Thank goodness," she murmured, leaning back down on her pillow, her eyelids suddenly feeling very, very heavy.