Part 2
It was Arts and Crafts hour at Pokey Oaks Kindergarten, situated in one of the nicer suburbs of Townsville. This was one of the more enjoyable parts of the day for Ms. Keane. She always delighted in the looks of concentration and enjoyment on the faces of the children, and she never had to pretend to like the work they produced, regardless of how strange, indecipherable, funny, even laughable, it was. No matter how much she believed in the value of education – and she was as committed now as she had been as an idealistic and perhaps over-zealous student in her first year at college – no matter how much she believed in it as the most basic, most important Human Right, the Right, indeed, upon which all others were founded, she never could quite suppress a feeling of slight sadness when she watched the faces of some of the slower kids during spelling or arithmetic classes. Still, there were some children that it was ever a joy to teach. Ms. Keane was fortunate enough to have in her class the three Powerpuff sisters, three girls that almost represented a teacher's prayer come true. How else could you describe three children that loved coming to school, that participated with enthusiasm in all subjects, that were kind and considerate beyond their years to their classmates and their teacher? Even here, though, there was a tinge of sadness. The girls had been attending Ms. Keane's kindergarten class now for seven years. Make no mistake, they were bright children: Buttercup was a little inattentive, and too prone to get annoyed when she got things wrong, but she was a good kid; Blossom was the opposite, patient, attentive, hard-working and clearly the most mature of the sisters; Bubbles, in some ways, was the most curious of the three, dizzy, absent-minded, dreamy, imaginative, inclined to be over-sensitive and over-emotional, but also, so Ms. Keane had observed, possibly the cleverest of the three, if she only chose to put her mind to it. The fact was, though, that bright as they were, these three little girls would never leave Pokey Oaks in the normal way, a fact that Ms. Keane had accepted with mixed emotions. Their 'father' – a rather loose term, given the circumstances of their 'birth' - Professor Utonium, had explained it to her once in some mind-boggling scientific jargon, but it boiled down to this: he had created three kindergarten girls and kindergarten girls is what they were destined to remain, indefinitely. That was the sad part. On the other hand, Ms. Keane had never had to deal with three such happy and well-adjusted children, and any concerns she might have in the privacy of her apartment melted away each morning at the sight of their smiling faces.
If there was one feature of having the Powerpuff Girls in her class that Ms. Keane did not like, it was the presence of a small toy-like telephone that stood on a table in a back corner of the classroom. This innocuous-looking object was in fact no toy, but the 'hot-line', a direct connection to the office of the mayor. If an emergency threatened Townsville – and there were a surprising number of emergencies – this phone would ring to summon the help of the Girls. And indeed, just as the class had settled down with their drawing materials, this was precisely what happened.
Ms. Keane was walking from desk to desk, encouraging and assisting the children, when suddenly, from the back of the room, there came the piercing beep-beep of the phone, causing her to let out a small exclamation and put her hand to her breast in an involuntary gesture of surprise. She could never get used to that thing! In a movement so swift that it left a residual pink streak for a fraction of a second across the vision of all those that saw it, Blossom leapt from her seat and flew across the room to pick up the receiver before the second beep had even finished.
'Yes, Mayor?' The other children watched in awe, their crayons and cardboard forgotten, as Blossom answered the tinny yet distinctive voice that could just be discerned coming from the telephone earpiece. 'A robbery at First Townsville Bank? We're right on it!'
Blossom slammed down the phone.
'Girls! Lets go!' she called.
In a flash of green, pink and blue, and with a crash and a fall of plaster, the three sisters exited from the room by the quickest means at their disposal – through the ceiling. Ms. Keane had been trying for most of the time that the Powerpuff Girls had been in her class to dissuade them from this ostentatious means of egress, but little girls are apt to get over-excited, and when those little girls are in possession of super powers a certain amount of incidental damage is to be expected. By now, of course, the class was in uproar, and Ms. Keane let out a resigned sigh, aware that she would be unable to settle the children for the rest of the morning.
Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup soared into a cloudless blue sky. Buttercup took the lead, pleased that they had finally received a call after more than a week without any emergencies, pleased at the prospect of action again. Much as she enjoyed the classes at Pokey Oaks, it was against her nature to be confined to a classroom. Stuck too long at a desk, she could become restive and irritable, and these crises, both large and small, no matter how terrifying they could sometimes be to the average citizen, were curiously soothing and relaxing to her. She also took a quiet delight in the fact that she and her sisters were special and could bust out of class whenever that little phone rang. Bringing up the rear, Bubbles, in her typical daydreamy way, was still thinking about the crepe-paper collage she was making in class and followed her sisters automatically, not even pausing in her thoughts to consider the mission she was on. In some ways, she was very dependent upon them. Her sisters gave structure to her life. She never had to worry what they were going to do, what games to play, what tactics to adopt against the criminals and monsters that it was their everyday task to battle. Blossom and Buttercup, sometimes acrimoniously, would make the decisions and Bubbles was happy to tag along. Whether this was simply in her nature, or whether this trait had become self-reinforcing, was difficult to say. Ms. Keane had, on a number of occasions, tried in a gentle way to see if she could interrupt what she worried was a cycle of psychological dependence, but the girls were inseparable from one another, and given the circumstances of their lives and of their future she had never had the heart to push too hard. Besides, it was not clear at all that this dependence was a one-way transaction. That Bubbles had a tendency to follow her sisters, figuratively speaking, was obvious to all, and outwardly it appeared that she brought very little to the relationship between the three of them; yet Ms. Keane was an experienced and astute enough teacher to realise that the two apparently stronger girls would be equally lost if they were to be parted from their sensitive sibling.
Blossom, like Buttercup, was pleased to be at work again. She loved school, and often went to sleep at night excited by the prospect of the following day's lessons, but it was these missions, when she and her sisters set out to rid Townsville of evil, that truly made her feel alive. There was something almost cosseting about the knowledge that the people of Townsville needed her help, a warm sensation that radiated from the city not so much of love – although there was certainly an element of that in there – but of gratitude and the understanding that she and her sisters were performing an invaluable task that only they were capable of. It could be quite a heady feeling, especially after a lengthy break, as now, and it produced in Blossom an overwhelming desire to immerse herself in the job completely, to the exclusion of everything else, almost to the point where she and it were one and the same. As she savoured the refreshing chill of the morning air high above the city, Blossom found herself reflecting on these emotions, and it occurred to her that it must have been some similar sentiment that had prompted Buttercup to give up washing and bathing for a week or two, a few months back. She smiled with new understanding at her sister, streaking ahead with her customary enthusiasm. For a second or two, Blossom was almost overcome by a tremendous feeling of safety and warmth, but a small, incessant itch at the back of her mind brought her out of her reverie and she called out to Buttercup.
'Stop!'
Buttercup turned in mid-flight, a manoeuvre that generated G-forces that would have crushed an ordinary mortal.
'What is it?' she snapped, annoyed that her own thoughts had been interrupted in this way.
'We've got to be careful,' replied Blossom, 'If we just go crashing in there someone could get hurt. Let's see what's happening first.'
As one, the three girls each directed a piercing stare at the roof of the First Townsville Bank, located some hundreds of feet below them. With a little effort on their part, rather akin to trying to focus on a distant object, layers of the bank's structure began to fade away before their eyes. First the tiles on the roof became glassy and transparent, revealing a jumble of stationery and obsolete office equipment stored in the bank's attic, then a ceiling faded to disclose people seated in offices, then, finally, a floor miraculously melted away to show the scene in the bank's main hall. It was immediately apparent that something extraordinary was happening. The bank's customers, perhaps a dozen people, were lying face down on the floor. The counter staff were standing in a line, their hands in the air. Someone, possibly the manager, was taking money from the small vault behind the counter and placing it in a nylon sports bag. Standing just inside the main doors was a man holding a pump-action shotgun, its barrel aimed at the terrified people cowering on the floor.
'Let's get him!' said a frowning Buttercup.
'Wait! By the time we've broken in he could have shot someone!' said Blossom, also frowning in her attempt to devise a suitable plan of action.
'No he won't,' replied Buttercup, irritated, 'We just bust through the door and he won't know what's hit him!'
'Oh no!' squeaked Bubbles, the only one of the three sisters who was still watching the robbery unfold below, 'Look! He's taken someone hostage!'
Blossom and Buttercup redirected their attention to the bank. The quivering manager, with her legs clearly about to buckle beneath her, had approached the robber to hand over the bag of money, only to have the shotgun held to her head.
'OK, Blossom, what're we gonna do now?' snapped Buttercup, adding, under her breath, 'If we'd just gone in there, it'd all be over now.'
'Wait for him to come out,' said Blossom, with new determination in her voice now that she had thought of a plan, 'Bubbles, you go and clear the street. Get everybody out of the way.'
In a blue flash, Bubbles was gone, hurtling towards the ground.
'Buttercup,' continued Blossom, 'as soon as he comes out, you break in through the back of the bank. I'll distract him and you snatch the gun away from behind.'
'Got it!' Buttercup shot away in a blaze of green.
Blossom flew down to street level. Already, Bubbles had done her job and there was no-one to be seen. Positioning herself across the road from the bank, just opposite the large glass doors, Blossom waited, hovering some fifteen feet or so above the ground. She did not have to wait long. Within a few seconds, the robber appeared, backing through the doors, one arm around the manager's neck and the other still aiming the shotgun at the woman's head. He shouted something at the people in the bank and turned around, in a violent gesture that almost wrenched the manager off her feet. She let out a little scream and Blossom shouted, fearing for the woman's safety.
'Put the gun down!'
A fleeting look of confusion passed across the man's face, as he attempted to locate the source of this imperious command. He had not noticed, nor expected to see, the strange-looking red-haired little girl hovering at first-floor level across the street. It was a moment's loss of concentration that Blossom had hoped for.
'You keep back or she…'
The man's hoarse, angry and possibly frightened words were cut short abruptly by an enormous crash and a spray of glass fragments as something like a green thunderbolt erupted from the bank behind him. He did not have the slightest chance to react to what happened next, and indeed it was only the three little sisters who could even follow the action. Passing at lightning speed, Buttercup grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and wrenched it both away from the bank manager's head and out of the robber's hand. The gun went off with a loud bang, the shot flying harmlessly into the air. Even before the befuddled robber had had a chance to close his eyes in autonomic response to the gun's report, Bubbles had burst out from behind a parked car to snatch the manager away to safety. Whether the robber felt or even knew anything about what happened next is debatable, for Blossom crossed the street in an instant and dealt the man such a blow that he was hurled bodily through the air to smash in a sickening crunch of breaking bones against the rusticated sandstone wall of the bank. His limp body fell to the pavement.
The air filled with a cacophony of wailing sirens as police cars and ambulances rushed to the scene. Shocked, dazed and greatly relieved people began to emerge from the bank. Allowed to come forward now, a crowd began to gather, and reporters and TV cameramen jostled one another for prime position. Into the middle of this melee, waved through by the policemen who were attempting to keep order, swept a limousine, which pulled up at the kerb by the entrance to the bank and was immediately surrounded by a crush of photographers. After a couple of cops had cleared enough space for the door to be opened, out stepped the Mayor, never one to miss an opportunity to be in the limelight, followed by his personal assistant, Sara Bellum. With four or five cops pushing back the crowd, he climbed the steps of the bank and turned to address the Powerpuff Girls – and the reporters.
'Girls,' he announced, with one eye on the little sisters and one on the TV cameras, 'I'd like to thank you for again helping to prevent a serious crime. As soon as I received the report from police headquarters, I realised the gravity of the situation and the potential that existed for a dangerous hostage crisis. As you know,' he continued, with a true politician's talent for gathering all the kudos for himself, 'it is the proud boast of the present Administration that violent crime has been virtually eliminated in Townsville, and today's events will serve as a timely warning to all criminals that their presence will not be tolerated within my… our city limits.'
Turning directly to the TV cameras, the Mayor continued.
'I would like to announce today that as a mark of the City's appreciation for their assistance, and of my personal respect for them, the Powerpuff Girls will receive the Freedom of the City of Townsville in a ceremony to take place, er… Saturday.'
There was wild applause from the crowd.
'Thank you, Mayor,' chorused the Powerpuff Girls, in unison.
Sara Bellum, a tall lady who towered above the diminutive figure of the Mayor, leant forward.
'Thinking on your feet again, Mayor?' she whispered, dryly, 'There's no such thing as the "Freedom of the City".'
'I've just instituted it,' replied the Mayor, quietly, through the toothy smile he was still presenting to the crowd and the cameras, 'See if you can get a presentation key or something made up. And try to get the national media involved. Try selling it to them that the Girls are the youngest people ever to receive the freedom of a city.'
'Are they?' asked Sara, unimpressed.
'Who cares? Tell them I'm available for comment at any time. Now,' - he addressed the reporters again - 'shall we have some pictures of me with the Girls?'