Chapter 8: A Long and Serious Talk
"Sorry it's not much." Wednesday apologized preemptively. "The sort of job I have doesn't tend to make me a lot of money."
He opened the door to a studio apartment and the main room was indeed spartan and bare; there was a basic kitchen, a basic living room, a fold-out couch, a desk with a computer, and a bed all in one place. Buttercup was hardly complaining though. All she cared about was that it was clean.
"Are you kidding?!" She exclaimed with excitement. "This is way better than the Shady Inn Motel!"
For one thing, the building wasn't covered in grime. There wasn't a smog in the air outside from toxins and pollutants, no graffiti scribbled over every surface, and no landlord that also served as a part-time criminal.
The inside of Wednesday's place in particular was even better. Buttercup didn't see an infestation of roaches scuttling over the creaking, broken wooden floors. She didn't see spider cracks in the peeling walls or green sludge dripping everywhere.
"Wait! There's one thing I gotta check!" She checked the faucets in the kitchen and the bathroom, laughing with delight when she found that all the water was clean and running just fine. Taking baths was always absolutely out of the question at the Shady Inn. The girls would always end up even dirtier than how they started, with all the brown, awful muck they had to work with from that sewage system.
Wednesday looked at all of this with a curiously flat air. To see a little girl express so much joy at things that ordinary people tended to take for granted. "You say your father took you to live in a place like The Shady Inn Motel for a while?"
Mr. Wednesday had seen the state of apartments over there and those grim buildings were certainly no place to try to raise a child. There was just about every health violation known to man in those things. Rodents, pests, mold, fungus, bugs, excess dust and more.
"Yeah," Buttercup said nonchalantly, joining him in the living room again. "Man, it was so bad too. Imagine living and sleeping in a place where the bed bugs really do bite! We actually got pretty sick once we finally made our way home. We even got scabies for the first time! Can you believe that? Scabies!"
The Professor had to treat them all, including himself with a special topical cream to kill all the mites and their eggs, and he also had to go out of his way to decontaminate all of their belongings so it wouldn't spread to their sheets, toys, or clothing.
There was hardly any distress in Buttercup as she shared this. If anything, she disclosed it like it was another day in the life. To Wednesday though, this information was more than a little slightly disturbing.
"Was there a reason why he was so dead-set in keeping you near such filth?"
"Yeah, he had a job offer all the way out in Citiesville." Buttercup responded conversationally. "He took us there to move and that's how we ended up in the motel." She looked up at him briefly and told him with the bluntness only a young child could possess, "Citiesville sucks by the way."
"Yes, that area is rather rough." Wednesday agreed. "I've worked there myself."
Buttercup gave him a truly pitying look for this. "Geez, bummer. Good thing you got outta there while you could!" After all, he'd used the word 'worked' as in past tense.
This exchange ended just in time for Buttercup to hear a noise she never thought she'd hear with a man like Wednesday: a light yipping and barking along with the tiny pattering of feet scurrying across the floor. Her mouth dropped open at what she saw bounding towards the two of them. Not only was it a dog but it was a cute one too. Hardly a dog even; more of a small, white, fluffy puppy.
"Hey there, Snow Ball." The truant officer greeted casually, not really smiling but not outright rejecting the tail-wagging pup either. He bent down to give her a rub behind her ears.
"Snow Balls?" Buttercup laughed, bending down to gather the affectionate puppy in her own hands as it barked loudly and licked her.
Wednesday shrugged. "Yeah, like the snack cakes. I was hungry when I named her."
Buttercup laughed again, finding this to be a punchline to a goofy joke. For the guy who seemed so stuffy, he could actually be pretty funny.
"The Professor gave us a pet once!" She shared with him excitedly. "He made it for us himself, and the name he gave it was 'Beebo'." Beebo was actually an acronym. An acronym for The Biogenetically Engineered Experimental Bipedal Organism.
"Beebo, huh?"
"Yep! He was so small and cute, just like this puppy! Let's see," She tried to remember everything the Professor had told her about him as soon as he was finished making him down in his lab. "He was the perfect man-made pet. He knew a variety of tricks, never made a mess, never grew old, and had a playful and loving nature! The only caveat was... we could only feed him once."
That sounded curious. A pet that only needed to be fed once? "Once as in once every day?" Wednesday questioned, taking the time to hang up his coat and his hat.
Buttercup shook her head playfully at him. "Nope. Not once a day." She clearly wanted him to try guessing again, curiously taking humor in it. Since it was giving her a childish sense of pleasure, he willingly obliged her.
"Once as in... once in a while?" He tried next.
"Noo." She said again, and then happily revealed the answer. "Once as in once and that's it."
"Forever?"
"Forever."
"You're kidding."
"Nope! And do you know what we all did? We did all feed him once... each that is! And then Beebo just kept eating. And eating and eating."
"Wait," Wednesday suddenly said, getting a sense of recognition. "Was that the fuzzy creature that nearly ended up eating the whole town?"
"Wait, was that the fuzzy creature that nearly ended up eating the whole town?"
"Yep, that's the one!" Buttercup proudly proclaimed. "Good thing he exploded in the end, huh?"
"Good indeed. We should also count our blessings that that giant furball didn't believe in chewing."
Finding this also to be funny (even though Wednesday was being entirely serious), the little green Puff got herself into another fit of laughter. It made sense why she wouldn't be too rattled by incidents like that. Life as a Powerpuff Girl in the city of Townsville meant dealing with a lot of weird, silly, and unexplainable things day-to-day.
"Well, speaking of food, I haven't had any breakfast yet and I'm feeling pretty hungry. How about you?"
As if on cue, Buttercup's stomach growled quite loudly. She nearly forgot about making her decision to 'run away' from her home so early at dawn without even having a bowl of cereal first.
"Yep, I'm starvin'!" She voiced enthusiastically. "Got anything good?"
"You'll have to tell me." Traversing into his kitchen and putting on a pink 'Mr. Good Lookin' is Cookin' apron', he rolled up his sleeves and began to get out everything he would need. "Since you seemed to like this kitchen so much, you wanna help me with this English fry-up?"
An 'English fry-up' as it was turned out to be a little different than a typical American cooked breakfast. There was still the bacon, sausage, and eggs, though in the bacon's case it was "Irish" or "back" bacon, which was cut from the back of a pig instead of the pork belly like American bacon usually was. It also had a different appearance. Instead of coming in thin strips with streaks of fat running along them, the British bacon was leaner with a rounder shape and a border of fat along the edge. There was also the addition of baked beans of all things, tomatoes, fried bread, and mushrooms. The bread also wasn't put into a toaster but pan-fried in a skillet with oil.
"I don't think you're quite ready for black pudding yet." Wednesday said, when they were finished with the cooking and plating everything up. "So I decided to skip out on that. It's a bit of an acquired taste."
"Dude, are you kidding?" Buttercup objected. "Who doesn't like pudding?"
"It's not exactly pudding though. It's more of a blood sausage."
"Wait, you mean...?"
"Yep. It's mainly made out of pig's blood. That or beef. Then there's the fat, oats, or barley."
"That... sounds weird." And it made no sense why they called it a pudding when it was actually a sausage then.
"It's heavenly though." For once, the old man sounded wistful. "At least for someone like me."
"So," Buttercup said, taking a longing look at the coffee-maker on the tabletop. "I see that you've brewed some coffee..." Perhaps even darker and stronger than the kind the Professor drank in the morning.
He dashed her hopes pretty quickly. "Don't. Even. Think about it. Far too much caffeine for a child."
When she harrumphed and crossed her arms with a scowl, he decided to make the tiniest of compromises. "I can't give you coffee but I can give you tea. IN moderation of course."
"What kind of tea?" Buttercup questioned skeptically.
"A green or herbal tea. Herbal tea doesn't usually contain caffeine and it has some health benefits for children that outweigh the risks."
"Mm, okay. Better than nothin' I guess." She took a look at a bounding puppy coming into the dining room. "Hi Sno Balls..."
"Oh, no you don't!" Wednesday warned, killing her idea even before she first snuck her first forkful of food underneath that table. "She's spoiled enough as it is and she's got food of her own. Don't start sneaking her stuff."
"Okay, I won't." The Puff replied easily. Far too easily for comfort. But since he was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, he decided not to eyeball her suspiciously throughout their entire shared breakfast. Of course as soon as Wednesday set his down, Buttercup decided to cut a small piece of sausage off of her fork and sneak it underneath the table for the Bichon Frise at a speed that would be far too fast for anyone to catch, even a man with eagle eyes like him. Besides, what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. She snickered at her own successful sneakiness.
"So, I notice that you're talking better. And a whole lot more without having to stop because of pain."
Buttercup shrugged modestly. "That's Chemical X for ya." She swore that one day it could be sold on the market as a miracle drug. But then again, so much about it was still unknown and if it ended up in the wrong hands, there was always the potential for horrible abuse of the potential product.
"Does it hurt to chew?"
"Not really." She newly noted, and she liked the liberating feeling.
"Well I'm glad you're feeling better. Or you're starting to anyway. I think now would probably be a good time to give your family and your father a call, just to let him know that you're okay."
Buttercup's carefree attitude disappeared in an instant. She had a really bad feeling about this. "Are you sure?" She asked, almost finding the gesture unnecessary. Her eyes clouded over again. "I don't think they're too worried about me."
"Any respectable parent would be worried." He argued, the keyword being 'respectable'. And despite her earlier injuries, the tough Powerpuff Girl did look well-taken care of, at least in the physical department. She wasn't dirty or ill-dressed and they weren't any blatant signs of neglect.
"Well, if you think so." Her tone was still highly doubtful though, even with her forced nonchalant shrug.
After thinking things over and finishing off the last of his eggs on his plate, Wednesday decided that this would probably be a conversation best done away from his young charge's impressionable ears. It wasn't that the man planned on losing it or anything, but he definitely had some choice words prepared for her previous guardian and caretaker.
After getting up and washing off his plate in the sink, the truant officer pulled out his trusty mobile flip phone and dialed the cell number for Professor Utonium, figuring that he was probably out in the streets, searching fervently for his 'lost' daughter. His guess proved to be correct when he only had to wait a few seconds after dialing for a response.
"Hello?!" A frantic voice answered.
"Yes, Is this Professor Utonium? The guardian and father of Buttercup Utonium?"
"Yes!" The voice on the other line answered quickly. "I've lost my little girl-"
"I know." Jack Wednesday said, cutting him off. "She's with me."
"She is? Oh, thank god!" He truly did sound grateful. "Is she alright? The girls and I have been looking for her since she left in the morning!"
"Your child is safe," Wednesday assured him, but his tone became a lot darker as he continued. "But I think that you and I need to have a long talk about why she chose to leave in the first place."
"R-Right" Professor agreed, making a gulp over the phone. "This... this is all my fault. I want you to know that. I take full responsibility for her not feeling like she was loved here and not feeling like she belonged in this family. When I read that letter from her... it was so heartbreaking to me. All I wanted to do after I read all of that was to tell her how much I loved her and how much I truly cared."
This was a heartfelt expression of emotion but Wednesday's priorities were mostly set upon Buttercup. How she was feeling or what was truly the best for her own proper well-being.
"I'm going to be honest. Whether your little girl comes home with you or not is all up to Buttercup. If she truly doesn't want to be with you, then I'm not forcing her. She'll be under my guardianship for as long as she needs it. Maybe even permanently if that's how it has to go."
"I-I understand that too..." And he understood the implications as well. "But I can assure you sir but this was just one horrible mistake in a long line of many. I would never deliberately or maliciously withhold love from my own little girl."
"I believe you." Wednesday allowed. "But I need to ask you some questions. Buttercup's been telling me things... things that I'm not sure I like. About how you tend to treat her? About the type of environments she's sometimes left in on her own?"
"W-What has she been telling you?" Professor asked bracingly, hoping he hadn't mussed up too bad.
"Well for one, how you kicked her out of the house because she refused to take a bath. Do you do that often when she doesn't do what you want her to do?"
"No!" The scientist exclaimed. "Absolutely not! That was only because of her smell! N-Now I know that sounds awful... and on paper it really is. But I only did that when I felt I had no choice. Wednesday, I assure you the stench was truly like no other. If she was only a little dirty or smelly, there is no way I would ever take her out of the house. But this was nearly septic. We all could've gotten sick from it!"
"So why didn't you try to tell her she would get sick if she didn't take a bath? Did you any incentives? Any good reasons why she should want to take a bath?"
"I-I... well I guess not really. I mean I have educated her about her own personal hygiene but Buttercup can be so stubborn at times... I just wanted to give her something to think about. When she told me to just kick her out if I didn't accept her stubborn refusal to take a bath, I decided it would be a shock to her system if I took her straight at her word. B-But I had no intentions of leaving her out there for a long period of time and I truly thought she would snap out of it if I just gave her some time to think about the silliness of her own actions!"
With a sigh Wednesday acknowledged, "Buttercup did say that she didn't leave you much choice. The girl does have superpowers and I do understand that it's not a question about force. Forcing her would be impossible. But it still disturbs me that you were so fine with doing something like that to her but apparently none of the others."
There was a tense silence over the line. "Are you telling me that I treat my other two daughters differently? Because that isn't the case at all! All of the girls are punished when they're misbehaving or fighting with one another and I don't take sides with either of them or show favoritism or unequal treatment."
"Okay. Can you give me a few examples?"
"Well, there was the time where Bubbles was bringing home all of those stray animals. I had a very stern talk with her about that! And when she went on to disobey me and brought home a whale..." Well, when he thought about it, he wasn't really that harsh on her at all. He simply tried to make her understand. "Well I just... talked to her. Then she released all those animals from the zoo. My fault for poor wording though!"
He didn't even ground Bubbles for what she did, even though in hindsight, he probably should have. He could've taken away some privileges, given her a sense of consequences.
"And then when it came to Blossom and how she stole those Pro-Excellence 2000 golf clubs... I told the officers to go easy on her when she finally told them all the truth." But had he 'gone easy' on Buttercup? Not really, in the grand scheme of things. Granted, Blossom had a sympathetic motive for her theft: she'd simply wanted to make her unfortunately materialistic father happy with an item that he'd expressed very deeply that he wanted very much. She sought his approval and sank to the depths of theft and crime to achieve it.
He only warned Buttercup that the allowance he was about to give her for successfully performing her chores wasn't something to be taken lightly once. He chided her for deliberately trying to knock out Bubbles's teeth for money in and out of the house once. Then he simply left her to her own devices and expressed no sympathy for her when she had inevitably found a fiendish way around his open rules. He warned her against hurting her sisters; he had said nothing about bad guys. Even if those bad guys happened to be doing nothing wrong.
"Professor listen, I understand Buttercup can be a difficult child. I understand that she can be stubborn and it's not always easy to talk some sense in her,"
"Right-"
"But abusing her to get her to behave isn't the answer either-"
"But I'm NOT abusing her!" The Professor cried, horrified. "I would never abuse Buttercup! I love her!"
"Abusing her isn't just causing bruises or breaking her bones, Mr. Utonium."
"I know that! But I would never abuse her emotionally either! I've never said hateful or hurtful things to her and I've never neglected any of her needs! Even when it came to that... horrible dental incident, I never denied her medical care! I was disappointed and I was cold when I really shouldn't have been but my intention was never to hurt her. I really thought I was teaching her."
"I understand trying to instill a lesson, but was the lesson worth your child possibly having a form of PTSD?"
"W-... What?"
"When I had Buttercup looked at in a county hospital, she actually zoned out on the nurse and me when she was asked about the big prehistoric museum assault that brought her there in the first place. I've never seen a look like that on her face before. It was like she wasn't even there."
A silence preceded over this line. Then there was a long, staticky breath. A choked cry of anguish.
"At the very least Utonium, your child is going to need some counseling. I can provide that if you're short of money, but I just thought you'd like to know."
"There's no way something like that wouldn't be traumatic..." The Professor finally began quietly. "I didn't appreciate that and neither did Blossom or Bubbles. They were simply trying to give her a taste of her own medicine by planning all of that out. I had no idea they had done that until they talked to me about it. And I assure you sir, that they did feel ashamed."
"Well I'm gonna be honest with you, Utonium. I'd like to see you and your daughters in person. I think it would be better if we had a family intervention of sorts in person and you can say whatever you feel you need to say to Buttercup too if you want. I'll leave the decision of what she does next after that to you."
"O-O... Okay. Yes, that would be favorable!"
"In the meantime, would you like to say a few words to her now over the phone?"
"Yes sir, I would!" The Professor couldn't agree to this hard enough. "Is she nearby with you right now?"
"Yes, she's just had breakfast. I'll ask her if she's feeling up to it." Placing a hand briefly over the receiver, Wednesday briefly called out into the kitchen, "Buttercup? It's your father. Would you like to speak with him now?"
"Um..." She gave him a bit of a nervous look, or maybe it was just apprehensive and shy. She really had no idea what her father's reaction would be to her pulling a stunt like this on him.
"He wants to know how you are," Wednesday elaborated. "He's not mad at you at all."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
She hesitated for a bit, carrying around his foreign sense of caution. "Are you sure he actually wants to know how I am?"
"Yeah, I'm positive. When I gave him the chance to speak with you, he leaped at the possible opportunity."
"Well," If he was really that desperate, who was she to deny him? "Okay."
Giving her the phone, the child now meekly spoke into it. "Uh, Professor?" She asked, wondering what his mental state was.
"Buttercup! Thank goodness! Sweetie, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Professor! Really!" The child answered, sounding overwhelmed at all this boundless concern. "Why do you sound so worried?"
"Why do I sound so worried?!" The man repeated, sounding appalled she would even ask. "Buttercup, you just up and left us with only a letter and a missing blanket! On top of that, you were still injured! Anything at all could've happened to you! In fact, we've all been so worried for you all this time that we didn't even remember to eat! Thank God that you actually managed to have a little breakfast!"
"Well I'm fine now," She insisted, finding his concern way out-of-proportion. "And I'm sorry I made you worry. But you don't have to worry about me anymore because I'm not gonna be around to cause you any more trouble."
"Buttercup, listen to me." The scientist implored. "I love you more than anything and there's nothing in the world that can change that. I'm sorry I've been such an awful father to you but I'm willing to try to make it up to you now."
"Professor seriously, this isn't necessary! I mean you can come up here if you want but... why do you really want me back?"
"Because I love you and you're my daughter!"
"But Blossom and Bubbles are better than me."
"No they're not, honey. Nobody is better than anybody. They... told me what they did. How they worked with the other villains and willingly let them beat you up. Buttercup, I never knew that. If I did, I would've been against it from the beginning. I would never ever endanger your safety like that or deliberately put you into danger, even if I thought it would teach you a lesson. When I heard that from them, I didn't know what to think. No matter what you did, they had no right to do something like that. So in that moment when it came to them... they were really no better than you."
Buttercup shook her head at this, even though of course her father wouldn't be able to see it. "They were only speeding up something that would've happened anyway, Professor. I've put a lot of thought into it, and I know I would've gotten what I deserved anyway even without my sisters' help."
"That still doesn't make it right."
"That doesn't make what I did right either." And with that she ended the call, hitting the red little phone symbol and closing the flip phone back up again. She handed it somberly to Mr. Wednesday.
"Can I go to bed now? I don't really feel all that good, sir."
"Sure Buttercup."