(16)
"Noodle!" The nasally voice alerted her to his presence even before she saw him.
Noodle was already grinning fully, freely when her friend bounded up to give her a rough hug with one arm. It was customary, and not out of a choice to be delicate with the 4"11 woman - Ace knew perfectly well that Noodle could break him in half if she wanted to. All of her boys knew it.
"I got someone I wanna show ya!" Ace said. "It's… I mean she's here and I want you to meet her!"
One of Noodle's eyebrows rose. "She?"
Ace's mouth dropped open, but it clicked for Noodle instantly. "Oh! She!"
A tremor ran along the guitarist's spine as she imagined one of her childhood heroes somewhere nearby. Noodle had loved hearing about the Powerpuff Girls and their exploits, even before she could articulate how empowering and badass they were, especially for little kids.
Bubbles slowly edged into the doorway, small hands wrapped around herself as she tried to look anywhere but at her two companions. Her shyness shown not only in her posture, but also the scarlet red of her flushed cheeks and the way her feet shuffled on the glassy floor.
A bonafide adult, and she was no less adorable for it.
Noodle immediately moved to greet Bubbles, a wide grin on her face. She'd always plunged into tricky situations with plucky, enthusiastic spontaneity; and even if she was over the moon in meeting one of her role models, Noodle didn't let it stop her this time.
"It's so nice to meet you, Bubbles!" She was shaking the blonde's hand vigorously. Noodle tried not to coo over the way Bubble's looked at her through her lashes. In the back of her mind, the guitarist remembered that she was years the powerpuff's senior.
From woman to woman, it shouldn't have mattered.
(16)
Buttercup was the first to find the letter. She read it thrice over before she could begin to explain the tightness in her throat, and piece together everything into some form of coherence.
She spent moments after that staring blankly at the wall of their former room. The round windows they'd once made as children showed nothing but the darkness of the empty night. The moon was nowhere in sight, nor the stars to make spaces in the sky.
(0)
"I'm not trying to be rude, I'm sorry." She spoke so softly that he had to lean in to hear her. "But I… I don't want to be here."
The man sitting across from her had a careworn face and salt and pepper hair. He looked like someone's nice grandpa more than he did a medical professional.
"Many, many people in this world attend therapy." He said. "Even therapists have therapists. It doesn't mean the person in need of help is terrible or crazy."
Bubbles nodded mindlessly, but she still hid within the confines of her sweater. That was what most frightened her. Being crazy. "Blossom says the same thing."
He smiled. "You know, I actually admire you. I don't often hear about superheroes receiving counseling, and honestly they might need it the most. You're very brave, Bubbles."
The doctor's words made Bubbles's train of thought hitch. She was twelve-years old, still with pigtails on either side of her head, and shrinking down in her peacoat. The heroine felt anything but brave.
They had been going through growth spurts.
The mayor had died last April.
Ms. Keane was still teaching, but the girls weren't little anymore. They'd been separated by ability - Blossom had moved up to the advanced classes while Buttercup took a shine to sports.
With that came new friends and new experiences, not all of which Bubbles could participate in.
Bubbles was average at best, and unlike her sisters, the urge to be competitive and outspoken only hurt her.
The beauty of the green grass and leaves on trees, the wonderful blue sky and the sweet smelling air were an afterthought now.
When they fought crime, it wasn't always together. They couldn't always depend on each other, even when Bubbles needed them the most.
What scared her the most was that she was probably crazy. Lately, she'd surveyed damage done by villains of all creeds and had had recurrent thoughts. Ugly thoughts. Thoughts of how nothing mattered, and of never leaving her bed despite the despair just outside her room.
"There are different kinds of bravery." Her counselor stopped taking notes and made eye contact with her. "It's not all about defending others. I think it's brave when people acknowledge that there's something they need to work on about themselves. Part of growing up is learning that not everything stays the same as it was in the beginning.
"Life is ever-changing." He huffed a laugh. "Not always in ways you expect."
(14)
He was on the floor with her, fingers working to deliver the melody that he'd reluctantly promised. The bass was a beat up old thing. It looked like it had been well-used for years, and so it had been. Ace didn't remember everything about the past, but he remembered being a kid and looking through a shop window.
The music shop was mostly used for selling records, but he'd caught sight of the flashy blue and purple bass guitar and stared at it for what might've been hours. The tv monitors ranging in size all showed the same scene - fingers gliding over the strings of a guitar as sweet music came muffled from the other side of the glass.
He could hear himself in her words.
Bubbles inhaled as she spoke with wonder. "I wish I could do that!"
Ace glanced at her with a smile, warm all over, inside and out. His girl lay on her side with her long hair splayed out all around them as she listened attentively. Her smile was glowing in the dark, sincere and overjoyed. When had sharing ever felt so damn good?
Ace couldn't play the songs to perfection with just this instrument alone, but he did his best. The sound of Clint Eastwood couldn't be mistaken for anything else, not after he'd practiced like hell, especially in the past few weeks.
"Yous should listen to the real thing." He stopped to lean down and kiss her with a sudden fervor.
(1)
"'D?"
Russell squinted in the darkness, just making out the shape of a lanky man half-hidden in the dark. 2D had done weird shit in the past when he'd had too many painkillers, but the way he stood in the doorway was unsettling.
His posture was perfect, but his limbs twitched to some beat that Russel couldn't hear. The larger man sat up in his bed and switched his bedside lamp on.
"What the hell 're you doin'?" Russell sighed.
He jolted when his unwanted companion began to speak. "There's somefin' in my room again."
Russell sighed again, scrubbing a hand down his face. "We can't keep doin' this, man."
"No, no, no! Russ!" 2D's eyes were wide and eerily bright. "It spoke this time! I can't get it to go away by myself! Please! Just look!"
He bent down and was on his knees then, with only two strides into the room. The look of desperation on he gave Russel was alarming to say the least, and though he wanted nothing more to ignore it… Russel rose from the comfort of his bed.
He let himself be walked to the other end of the house, where 2D scurried to open the door. It was no surprise that there was a gigantic mess of clothing, bottles, cigs, and assorted things that Russell had no intention of investigating inside. Everything else looked relatively normal.
"You leave the window open?" His eyes went straight for the firmly shut pane as 2D stuttered. There was a crack between the curtains, casting a silver sliver of light through the center of everything.
"No." He shivered. "Wouldn't do tha'. It's not outside though, it's in me closet!"
Groaning, Russell turned from one side of the bedroom to the other and approached the closet door. The thing looked like an ancient prop out of a horror movie with its whitewashed doors and ventilated slits, but that wasn't what deterred Russell.
He paused just shy of opening one of the doors by its handle as a pit formed in his stomach. He couldn't hear anything. He couldn't see anything.
But it smelled like death.
Prying it open, Russell starred in silence at the sight of a dead and mangled manatee, left raw and bleeding on the closet floor.
Heedless to the gasp that came from just over his shoulder - as 2D covered his eyes and wailed over the corpse in front of them - Russell opened the doors as wide as they could go.
He turned on his heels and grabbed 2D by the wrist. "Go get Murdoc."
A/N: Thank you for the reviews! I wanna address a few things - I don't actually have any particular dislike toward Blossom. She's just kind of a perfect part of the catalyst when it comes to Bubbles's issues. Also, more characters are going to start getting involved in the plot, mostly from PPG but also a couple from Gorillaz lore. Some of it might be surprising...