Ahh, this is so long winded!
Enjoy anyway! :D
Disclaimer: All related characters and elements are (c) Craig McCracken.
The Tuxedo
Chapter 2: Tomboy
The man in the tailor shop looked down, frowning as his fingers stroked his slick black goatee. He drummed his fingers on the glass counter.
"You?" he asked, raising a long eyebrow.
His little customer flashed his most innocent smile and nodded.
He turned to the other two standing beside the customer. "All three of you?" he asked again.
Brick and Boomer chorused "No".
"He has a date," Brick explained.
"Saturday night!" cried Boomer.
"So he needs a proper tuxedo to impress his girl."
"Yeah! Get him something that really fits."
"Not only that. He must look good."
"It's all for his future happiness!"
"And we're willing to sacrifice a little just for him."
"Because . . ."
"Because we're the Rowdyruff Boys!"
"And we're broke," Boomer added under his breath.
Now the man raised both his eyebrows. "Oh? Then what do you suggest?"
"We'll see," said Brick vaguely.
Butch floated up and sat on the counter while his brothers wandered into the stock room and oohed and aahed at the array of suits hanging neatly on hangers and racks, and at all the different fabrics available. The shop owner only continued observing the green boy.
"Do you have one my size?" Butch asked the tailor hopefully.
"What is your size?"
"Um . . . XXXXS?"
Butch sighed. At this rate we're going, he thought miserably, there's no way I can ever make her pleased.
Quite suddenly, there came a flurry of excitement from the stock room.
"Hey, check this out!"
"Word . . . this is sure cool."
In a flash of red and blue the two brothers emerged from the back room, and held up a magnificent tuxedo before Butch. It was a black double-breasted suit length coat with shining satin lapels, a crisp white collar and a small white satin bow tie. There was a slight pocket slit on one side of the coat and a cummerbund — a broad sash over the waistband of the pants. It was also some twenty times bigger than Butch himself.
Butch stared at this model costume, and let his jaw meet the smooth floor.
"And furthermore . . ." Boomer added dramatically.
Brick reached down and slammed a pair of perfectly polished leather shoes onto the counter. Its glossy finish dazzled under the bright interior light.
"Ta-da!" Boomer sang. "The perfect tuxedo!"
The tailor looked at the three brothers, all red, green and blue eyes twinkling, looking like perfect little angels in a paradise of their own. If only they weren't made of such repulsive stuff.
"You want to rent it?" he asked.
All three faces fell simultaneously.
"Maybe not . . ."
"How much does it cost anyway?"
"And it's way, way, way too big!"
"Yeah."
Brick turned to the owner and grinned sheepishly at him. He took off his cap, ran his hand through his hair and began his well-rehearsed request.
"Um, sir, I was thinking if you could have a . . . custom-made suit for Butch. Using that one as a model of course." He gestured to the tuxedo they had picked out, patting the sleeve. "But! But, but, but, listen to this — if we have one custom-made I know it's gonna cost a bomb. But then the tux is for him —" he gestured to Butch — "and, well . . . you wouldn't need a lot of fabric for that, would you? So I guess that would, at least, lower the cost a bit . . ."
The man touched his goatee again, this time a slight smile unfurling on his face. "Are you indicating that you have no money?" he suggested.
"Busted!" Boomer winced.
"Not really . . ." Butch turned to his brothers anxiously. "How much have you got?"
Brick dug into his pockets and proudly pulled out a ten-dollar bill and a small mountain of coins. "The pizza guy said I was very efficient, and this was my pay!" he declared.
"Yeah, and by the time the pizzas got to the customers half the cheese had already been flattened to one side of the box already," muttered Boomer.
Brick ignored the sarcasm. "Then I was planning to save this for the electricity bills . . . but for the sake of my —"
"Aw, just shut up about that!" Butch cut in, flushing.
Boomer, snickering, placed a squashed mess of notes next to Brick's pile. "A fiver, two one-dollars and sixty-five cents," he rattled.
Brick decided not to ask any further about the origin of the cash, as there was a probability that it came from 'downstairs'. "What about you, Butch?" he asked.
"I ain't got any money," Butch confessed. "I spent all of it in the arcade . . ."
For a moment Brick felt like punching him, but then he decided not to — who knows what that Buttercup would do if Butch went with a bruised face? "Well," he said instead. "I guess that makes about twenty bucks. Is it enough?"
The owner's smile had by then become a very amused grin. "We'll see, we'll see. It's a challenge to make a tuxedo given your size . . . Come here," he ordered to Butch. "I'll take your measurements."
Butch almost did a green firework display while the other two slapped victorious hi-fives. "Thank you!" he cried excitedly. "Thank you boss! You're my life-saver!"
"Yeah, now you owe me two . . ." Brick unturned his empty pockets and glared at Butch, now grinning from ear to ear (assuming he has any) as the man took his dimensions with a miniscule measuring tape.
Same old brand new me, Butch thought smugly. She'll be so bowled over by my makeover . . .
– – –
". . . make way! We're coming!"
"Watch out!" cried Blossom.
WHAM! This was a tremendous crash.
And this was silence.
"What's the hurry, Buttercup?" Blossom exclaimed angrily.
Buttercup hovered in mid-air, folding her arms and snickering at the tangled heap of metal — a mixture of silver, black, red and blue — in the middle of the cross junction. "I just like to see car crashes."
"You're sick," moaned Blossom. "I'm still can't believe you're my sister."
Buttercup shrugged. "Suit yourself." She sped off in a green ribbon of light, which led right into the neat little house in the suburbs. A pink trail closely followed.
"Oh well," Bubbles sighed, making her own way home in a meandering path of blue. "And life goes on."
– – –
"I'm beat." Blossom flopped onto the couch.
"I'm hungry." Bubbles flopped onto the couch.
"I'm the only one in the whole world who never gets tired just because of a few hours of school."
Blossom glared at Buttercup hovering above them. Why does she always have to oppose me? she thought, fuming.
"You're back, girls," called Professor Utonium from the kitchen. "How was your day?"
"It was great!" Bubbles exclaimed, sitting up suddenly. Then, pigtails bouncing, she started to gush, "We did a lot of colouring today, and—"
"No way!" Buttercup interjected. "Colouring sucks! At least not to you, arty-farty."
"Buttercup." The Professor's voice was stern. "I heard that."
She shrank into her chair by the dining table, sulking. Blossom snickered, and slid into her own chair next to Buttercup's.
"It was fine, actually," she said evenly. "Nothing special."
The Professor came in from the kitchen, and smiled at Blossom's sensibility. He loaded pancakes onto the girls' plates and poured maple syrup over them. "Tuck in, girls," he said, probably pleased that the pancakes weren't burnt this time.
There was a few minutes of rare silence as foamy bits of pancake appeared and disappeared from between two sets of teeth, coupled by the delicious squishing of thick syrup. Blossom was simply chewing her food like a polite grown-up would.
"By the way, girls . . ." Professor Utonium started. All three girls stopped in their lunch, and their silver forks paused in mid-air and mid-mouth.
The Professor cleared his throat, and eyed at them carefully. "What happened to . . . the phone?"
Buttercup hacked.
"It broke into two," Bubbles supplied.
The Professor gave a strained smile. "I can see that, Bubbles — but who did it?"
Both pink and blue eyes narrowed down towards the blinking green ones that was in the middle of each pair. "Who, me?" Buttercup asked innocently.
Professor Utonium sighed. "What happened exactly, Buttercup?" he asked. "And what's with all that shouting yesterday? I was trying to come up with a formula that would make all of you fly faster when—"
"But I didn't do it on purpose!" Buttercup blurted.
The Professor looked at her, somewhat smug that she had admitted to her mistake. "Care to tell me what happened, then?" he asked.
Buttercup put her fork down and stared at the table. "Well, we were all just watching TV and suddenly the phone rang and Blossom picked it up and it was for me and . . ."
"And then?"
"It was Butch," Blossom cut in.
"Butch?" The Professor blinked at her.
"One of the Rowdyruff Boys," Bubbles supplied again.
"Really."
"And he asked her out for a date," Blossom concluded. "Tomorrow night at six at the park entrance."
The Professor spluttered out his coffee. "Pardon?" he cried out.
Buttercup was just wincing at his reaction when suddenly something dawned on her, and crashed down like a granite rock squarely on her head.
She whirled to face Blossom. "How did you know that?" she demanded.
"Know what?" asked Blossom.
"The . . . the time, the place . . ."
Blossom rolled her eyes. "Please, you were screaming so loudly. Of course I could hear you."
"But I thought Buttercup didn't mention the time?" Bubbles quipped. And it was then that Blossom got a little bit uneasy.
Buttercup suddenly remembered the phone in Blossom's room. (Of course, the Professor had approved of that, too.)
"You were eavesdropping," Buttercup snarled.
"I wasn't!"
"You were eavesdropping!"
"I was not!"
"Was too!"
"Was not!"
"Was—"
"Girls! This is getting out of hand!" The Professor shouted. Then, as though his energy was suddenly exhausted from this outburst, he slumped back into his chair. "I . . . I get it now . . ." He let the truth sink in for a few seconds further before saying, "We'll leave the date for later. First—"
Blossom hung her head low.
"It's wrong of you to listen to other people's conversations over the phone, Blossom. I don't want it to happen again, or I'll cut your line. Is that understood?"
Her head bobbed up and down slightly.
"And you." Buttercup forced an embarrassed grin as Professor Utonium looked at her. "A date. I suppose that's just a tad too early isn't it?"
"Er. Is it?" Her grin became wider.
"And by six it's rather dark already. Granted, you have superpowers, but I still think it's unsafe. You're a girl after all." Buttercup's grin vanished at this last sentence. "And who knows what that . . . that Rowdyruff Boy would do to you."
"So does that mean . . ." Buttercup trailed off.
The Professor smiled apologetically and said, "A definite no-no."
"Great. Now I have nothing to boast about," the green girl muttered, leaning back into her chair, miffed. Bubbles caught the comment and giggled. Blossom was trying to glare at either of them without actually turning her head.
The Professor shook his head with a smile. Of course. His girls were growing up. Too fast, in fact. Things were going to take a definite turn after this.
– – –
"Nooo!"
"Oh yes!" Boomer whistled. "I . . . I can't find a word to describe this . . ."
"Meaning it sucks!"
"No, no, no, no, leave it on!" Boomer forced Butch's arms off his face, and turned him towards the mirror again. "You see? It's a tuxedo all right. No mistakes about that. And you look totally cool."
"Oh really," Butch sighed bitterly. "I'm that impressed."
Brick was still laughing his cap off at one side of the store, clutching his stomach and practically tearing the stripe off his shirt. "Gawd!" he howled. "You . . . you look like a dorky penguin!"
"What?" Butch cried. He clutched at his cowlick and wailed towards the ceiling in despair.
Brick slammed his cap onto the floor repeatedly and continued guffawing, the tears streaming out of his oversized eyes as he caught a few more glances of his brother — in a custom-tailored little tuxedo complete with a shining white satin bow tie, no less.
"Well?" the tailor asked, suddenly appearing from the stock room.
Butch pulled at the two butterfly ends of his tie. "I dunno," he sighed again. "I think this is too . . . too snug for me . . . is it?"
"Hahaha! Now you look like a dumpling!"
"Oh just shut up, bro." Boomer punched a laughing Brick in the shoulder, then exclaimed, "We need to give Butch our full support, remember?"
The blond-haired boy then turned to the tailor. "Are you sure that was the same design as the one we saw?" he asked, though uncertainly.
The tailor narrowed his eyes at Boomer. Then his gaze shifted over to Brick — finally settling down but still bursting into small chuckles every now and then — and to Butch, who was half pleased with the outcome and half convinced that he really looked stupid.
"Of course I'm sure," replied the owner. "And I've added something else to that suit too."
Butch snapped his head up to look at him. "You added what?" he cried hysterically. "Itching powder? Fleas?"
"Nope." The man only smiled a secretive smile. "Watch this."
He whipped a small controller out of a small box at the side of the glass counter, and extended its slim antenna. With a nudge of a button, the black suit on Butch suddenly shuddered, and a ripple ran down from the shoulders down to the sleeves, and to the pants.
Brick stopped laughing.
All three boys stared agape at Butch's suit. It looked so shiny all of a sudden.
Boomer was the first to recover. "Wow. What's that?"
The burly man smiled an even wider smile. "The cloth was immersed in electricity for a few days, and now it's power-charged. The negatively charged field keeps the tux wrinkle-free for a week, and the positively charged field sends an electric current to any target and you can decide what you want the current to do to that person or object."
Now the awe dropped from Boomer's face. "Woah," he commented, in a rather obligatory manner.
"You invented this thing yourself?" Brick asked.
"Sort of."
Brick rubbed his hands together excitedly, even though he — or either of his brothers — had absolutely no idea what the tailor's jargon was all about. "That's so sci-fi, dude! Can I wear it then?"
The other three shot him a firm 'I wonder who took this tux as a joke earlier' kind of look.
"Okay, okay, fine," Brick mumbled, retreating. "My loss."
"Does that mean," wondered Butch, "that I can zap Buttercup to make her go all jelly when she sees me?"
"Depends on whether that tux wants to cooperate." And the moment the tailor spoke the last syllable, there came a second shock of electricity that radiated all over Butch's tuxedo.
"Aaarrrggghhhhh!"
"Oh, sorry. Wrong lever."
"Gimme that." Boomer snatched the controller over from the tailor. "So . . . how much is all this in total?"
The owner drummed his fingers on the counter. "The total cost for the cloth is about ten dollars, but if you count in the tailoring and the cost of the electricity . . ."
"Damn . . . and our bills are high enough already," Brick grumbled lowly.
"But hey," Boomer protested. "For the sake of our beloved bro we must at least—"
"Just shut up about that will ya?" Butch yelled. He grabbed the tin of money in Brick's pocket, and drew out the ten-dollar bill before giving the rest to the tailor.
"I'll take this tux, I'll take it," he said hastily. "And please boss, I need the ten bucks for a present for my — my date! Yes! So . . . I just need it. I really do. Please, boss. Okay? Okay? Deal."
The speed at which Butch flew out of the store after his speech was enough to produce a whole barrel of green exhaust with stars sprinkled in it —
"I hope that 'present' he's talking about is gonna be flowers or something," Boomer mumbled.
— right into the arcade.
"Noooo!" the two remaining brothers cried.
"The bills!"
"My money!"
"Uh, boys . . ." the owner trailed off.
But in a flash of red and blue, both Brick and Boomer had already gone. The owner stared at the rusty tin in his hands and sighed. "Well," he sighed to himself. "At least I helped them. And that special piece of fabric has got to be used someday . . ."
-tbc-
I still can't imagine any of the RRB in a tuxedo, though. xD
Stay tuned!