Inner Turmoil-Chapter 5
Blossom's room was suddenly flooded with light as Professor Utonium rushed into the room to see what the commotion was. Blossom was on her bed, fully dressed, but she was also thrashing around, screaming in horror.
"Blossom! BLOSSOM!" he cried out, clearly alarmed at the state of Blossom's enhanced emotional distress. He ran over to her bed and grabbed her arms in an attempt to calm her, which was quite a challenge in itself seeing as how much stronger Blossom naturally was. Blossom's entire body was covered in a moist layer of sweat, and her young face was molded in tortured sobs, tears pouring from her eyes.
After a few seconds she stopped thrashing, but she was now trembling violently. The professor lifted her up gently and put his arms around her tightly, rubbing her head gently as she continued to whimper softly.
"It was just a bad dream, you're okay now, " he cooed. Blossom was clearly alert now, because she mumbled something into the professor's white work shirt between gasping sobs. He didn't hear her, but thought it wasn't appropriate to ask her what she'd said.
Bubbles had rushed into the room just as soon as the professor had, and she stood next to the professor, her hair out of her pigtails and her plush Octi squeezed in her arms. Strangely enough, Blossom's agony had attracted Buttercup out of her room as well, and she clearly had not been asleep at all. Buttercup remained in the doorway, watching Blossom with interest.
"Professor?" Bubbles asked tentatively. Professor Utonium looked up at Bubbles and risked a light smile, his own heart still beating madly from the scare.
"She just had a nightmare, that's all. I was so scared that." he trailed off again, something he'd done a lot that previous day. It was now four A.M.
Blossom sniffed and gently pulled away from the professor's grasp. She wiped the tears roughly from her wet cheeks and let out a shaky sigh to calm herself. She was still trembling, but obviously aware that she was in no real danger. Blossom looked at the professor who was watching her, concerned, and for a second she felt a rush of loving gratitude towards her father.
Blossom looked around her room. Convinced it was just the four of them, as it would naturally be, she turned back to the professor. He still watched her calmly, but there was a definite air of loving worry on his brow. He seemed like he was waiting for her to say something.
"I want to talk." she mumbled.
The professor nodded.
And then Blossom told him about her dream, about how real it felt, and about how familiar the danger was. As she spoke, she began to think it was some sort of warning from her advanced sub consciousness, apparently sensing some sort of great peril on the horizon. Or perhaps Bubbles had been right; a relapse of memories so painful, it was causing her to feel them so vividly.
Given the absence of using their abilities, perhaps memories were finding ways to soak through to her awareness, slowly becoming more and more real as time progressed. But the only thing was, nothing like her dream had ever actually happened to her before.
That last dream had been different. It had been worse, much worse. Before, she could feel the presence of her attacker, but this time, she could definitely feel more. Hatred and evil. and malicious happiness as it hurt her. The dream had been more vivid, enough that it had caused her to wake up screaming.
Blossom then told the professor about her elusive visitor the night before. She didn't say anything about Bubbles, out of respect for her sister's privacy.
"You didn't see anybody? Are you sure?" he asked finally, after Blossom had finished talking.
"Yes!" she cried, feeling slightly harassed and still a little disoriented.
"Have any of you felt the same thing?" he asked, directing his question at both Bubbles and Buttercup. For a second Bubbles looked like she wasn't going to say anything.
"I have," Bubbles said softly. She released Octi from her choking grasp and brought the stuffed toy level to her face. "A few days ago. but I haven't had any dreams."
"What about you?" the professor turned to Buttercup standing in the doorway. She merely glared at him and snorted, then shook her head no. "You know Buttercup, I really think-"
But Buttercup left the room before he could finish what he wanted to say. Blossom quickly put her hand on the professor's shoulder.
"Professor, I'm sorry about earlier. It was mostly my fault. I shouldn't have started arguing with her in the first place," Blossom said. The professor shook his head and patted her hand gently with his own.
"No, I don't think it's your fault. I think there's something else wrong with her that she isn't saying," he said, and then he stood to go. "I suppose you probably want to go back to sleep now."
"No, actually, I don't think I'll be able to," said Blossom, "I think I'm just going to get up now- Professor, why are you already dressed?!" Blossom blurted very suddenly. She hadn't noticed at first that he was already dressed as if going to work.
"Summer term did just start a few days ago, and I already feel like I'm behind," he said. Then he playfully rolled his eyes. "The head of the science department is just a bit too demanding for my taste. Grades have gotta' start coming in." And then he walked from the room, still talking even as his voice began fading away. Blossom knew he was lying again, because she could tell by the puffy bags under his normally cool brown eyes that he hadn't been sleeping.
"Bubbles, wait. I want to talk to you," Blossom said, putting a hand on her sister's arm. Bubbles nodded and then sat herself on the edge of Blossom's bed. "Have you ever thought of asking him?"
"Asking him what?" she asked, looking at Blossom quizzically. She then turned her attention to her old, ratty nightshirt and began folding out the creases in an effort to busy herself, or perhaps to avoid eye contact with Blossom.
"What's wrong with him."
"Oh."
"Do you think it has anything to do with us?" Blossom asked her sister. Bubbles looked away from her shirt and began playing with Octi, swinging the toy forward and letting it fall back against her legs repeatedly.
"I don't know," she finally answered. "Why would it?"
"I wonder if he's worried about us being found. by maybe the government or something, wanting to use us as a weapon," Blossom said, risking a casual glance to the door to make sure nobody was there. The professor had gone into his room and shut the door.
"That sounds silly," Bubbles giggled.
"But it could be really serious. He's awfully keen on keeping us from using our powers. He wasn't this bad in Townsville, even in the beginning when the whole city thought we were psychotic."
Thinking about the very beginning of their lives suddenly made Blossom very aware of the fact that the professor had been lying all along about their origins. Very suddenly she wanted to pop the question to him, but decided against it, knowing this wouldn't be one of the best times.
"Have you ever wanted to ask him where we really came from? I mean, if he wants to hide us so much, then maybe there's more to our birth that he hasn't told us. Something serious even."
"You mean he's trying to hide us from some sort of government agency?" Bubbles asked, turning back to her sister.
"Well, no, not necessarily. But he's hiding us from something, that part is obvious. Ever since Buttercup started freaking out about wanting to save the day again, he's been acting really nervous about us being out in public. It's like he's worried we'll want to show off or something."
"Like that game of tag?" Bubbles smiled. Yes, those memories were rather funny. That had been so long ago, 12 years in fact, but it seemed like it had only been a short while ago.
"Well, maybe not that serious," Blossom sighed. "But he definitely doesn't want anyone to see us, but the question is, who specifically?"
"Are you going to ask him? You are the one who's coming up with all this after all."
"I don't know. at some point I suppose. just casually ask him where we really came from." Blossom said, sitting up from her bed. "Well, you go ahead and go back to sleep, I think I'm going to get up now."
Bubbles nodded and left the room, leaving Blossom alone. She shut the door and turned back to face her entire room. She really wanted to just sit and think for a while. There was so much going on at the moment that was racing through her head: her dream, her stalker, Buttercup's actions and now the professor.
She heard the professor come out of his room and head downstairs, and Blossom wondered if she should just come out and ask him today.
Maybe not. Maybe she'd wait until there wasn't a whole bunch of crazy things happening.
Then something crept into her mind. If something was really watching them, had Buttercup felt it too? She'd said no, but who was to say she wasn't lying? Is that why she was acting the way she was? Was she scared?
Or did she find something out?
The basement.
A realization hit Blossom very suddenly. Buttercup had gone into the basement to look for her glove. She'd said the professor had things down there he didn't want them to look at-
-What if Buttercup saw something she wasn't supposed to see, and she was now either angry or guilty about it. She was certainly acting very strangely towards the professor. Now she was saying things about not trusting him. That certainly seemed like a very Buttercup-like thing to do. But what exactly could she have seen that had made her so angry? She certainly seemed weirded out when she'd come back up from the basement, not to mention the fact that she had been ready to pound Blossom into a bloody pulp.
Blossom had the urgent need to go down into the basement herself and look, perhaps see what Buttercup had seen. It would certainly shed some light on the otherwise clouded situation. It may also be easier to speak with Buttercup if they were on the same page. Maybe they could all get answers without having to come out and ask the professor, save him the humiliation and worry.
A few minutes later she heard the professor walk back up the stairs, into his room, where he shut the door behind him. Now was as good a time as any.
Very quietly she cracked open her door and peered out into the dim hallway. All the doors were closed, and no sound escaped into the hall whatsoever. Quickly Blossom crept out of her room and tiptoed downstairs, purposely jumping the last step, which had a tendency to creak. She landed with a soft thump on the plush carpet, and moved to the basement door.
The tall wooden door seemed oddly beckoning, and Blossom was only too happy to oblige as she moved against it, gently turning the brass handle. It opened with a soft creak, which seemed strangely loud to her, but only because she was attempting to be stealthy. Not wanting to wait anymore, she quickly tiptoed down the basement stairs into the cold darkness of the open room.
Blossom shuffled around, looking for the boxes she had told Buttercup about. The room was dusty and full of cobwebs. Tons of various unpacked boxes still sat waiting in the corners and against just about every space they could find. It was mostly the girls' stuff that they'd grown out of years ago, but the professor was too sentimental to chuck the stuff out.
Then, against one of the far walls, she saw the jumble of boxes next to the old cabinet that had been stored away a long time ago. Blossom hurried over to where they sat, scanning them to find some sort of evidence of Buttercup's passing. Sure enough, one of the boxes had been opened just slightly. Perhaps Buttercup had tried to hide her snooping, but whatever the case she definitely had known she wasn't supposed to be in the box. It was clearly not labeled toys.
Blossom got down on her knees and looked behind her to make sure the coast was clear. Thankfully, the view from the doorway was blocked just slightly by a support beam in the middle of the room. She turned back to the boxes and carefully opened the box, making sure not to bend the flimsy cardboard.
When she opened it, the first thing she saw was a large, old folder that had been thrown haphazardly on the top of a pile of very important looking paper work. Blossom gingerly lifted the book out of the box in order to get a better look at the papers. They were obviously personal papers of the professors; past work that he'd done.
Much of it was scribble of the professor's loopy handwriting; numbers and sketched graphs adorned many of the pages. At the top of each page there was a corporate symbol that Blossom just vaguely recognized as belonging to a pharmaceutical company. It was called Medical Communications, or Medicom for short, and Blossom had seen a lot of their products lying around the house; apparently perfectly harmless medicines. Why would the professor want to hide that? If he'd just worked for a drug company, what could be so bad about that?
Blossom turned her attention back to the old folder she held and carefully opened it, careful not to jar any of the loose pages. Inside the folder were more notes and diagrams, quickly drawn and slightly sloppy. Blossom couldn't really understand any of it, but she did recognize some of the sketches as the double helix of DNA, complete with various labels and calculations.
She continued to scan the pages, glancing at notes about blood chemistry levels and growth patterns; nothing seemed overly harmful that would freak Buttercup out. Then one particular thing caught her eye. There was writing about something called Xantium. Naturally Blossom knew what it was.
"Chemical X," she said softly to herself. She leafed through more of the folder, trying to find more information. After a few pages and more notes about hormone levels and chemical analysis, she spotted a Polaroid picture. The photo itself was hard to make out because the colors had faded over the years, and it was a little splotchy given the poor quality of the film. Blossom could swear she saw three people in the photo-
-No, three children, little children. lying motionless on an operating table.-
-Blossom gasped out loud and dropped the book onto the ground in front of her as if she'd just found a huge insect in her hands. Her heart was pounding, her mind racing with a sudden realization. The children in the picture had most certainly been her and her sisters; the same hair colors and everything. That was why Buttercup had looked so lost when she'd come back up from the basement. She'd seen everything and clearly didn't know how to respond, except for treating the professor as if he was some sort of nasty slug that didn't deserve the time of day.
It was true, he lied, but Blossom didn't think Buttercup was going about it the most appropriate way. Clearly they should ask him why he lied, but that was an entire ordeal all on it's own. It would be difficult, because Blossom saw the anguish in his eyes every time he looked at them, which had never been there until recently. It was clearly an emotional ordeal for him, and really had no malicious intent at all. He was trying to protect them from the truth, because he knew it would only hurt them.
Plus, there was also the fact that they'd been snooping in his personal things that they really didn't have any business in at all.
Then something shoved the entire ordeal out of her mind. She could hear with amazing precision, just down the hall, the professor walking towards the basement. In a worried haste Blossom scooped the folder back up from the floor and shoved it back into the box where it had been, forcefully folding the flaps of the box closed.
"Blossom? What are you doing?" she heard him call from the doorway that led down to the basement. Numbly, Blossom fished around for some sort of excuse, then she spotted a half concealed stuffed animal in one of the boxes. She snatched it up very quickly, knocking the entire box over, sending squeaking plush toys and wooden blocks all over the floor with a mighty crash in front of her.
"I-er- was just looking for. this!" she chimed nervously, jumping out from behind the pillar so she was in full view. She held the stuffed animal out in front of her for him to see. It was one of Bubbles's old toys; a rather shabby looking unicorn plush that had at one time been white, but now looked like a mix between brown and yellow.
The professor stood at the top of the steps with his hands on his hips, but he didn't look angry at all. Blossom let out a huge breath of air when she saw his face. He bought it. "I, thought maybe I could do for a little comfort at night," Blossom smiled. The professor looked at her incredulously.
"Yeah, well you might want to clean it up a bit first. It looks terrible," he said. And then he walked away. Blossom watched him disappear from the doorframe and let out another huge sigh. That had been incredibly close. If he'd found out what she was doing, she would have been in so much trouble.
Blossom left the basement with the stuffed animal in her hands, and headed to the laundry room. Might as well wash it, since that's what she'd led the professor to believe she was doing. Her thoughts turned back to what she'd found.
Medicom was nothing more than a pharmaceutical company that made over the counter drugs. What would they have been doing with genetic research, and more importantly, why had the professor been working there? Was there something about the company nobody knew about? Clearly, they had been doing something shady, because it wasn't often that a major corporation crafted bioweapons for the good of humanity. What was the horrible accident that the professor refused to talk about? What had happened exactly that had put Blossom and her sisters under his care?
It was clearly time for a trip to the library to do some research on the company, but when Blossom would be able to find time for that she didn't know. She'd have to be discreet about the whole thing.
Blossom threw the dirty unicorn into the washer and started the machine, still thinking about the corporation and what she'd try to find at the library when her thoughts suddenly turned to Buttercup.
Blossom knew she'd have to calm her some way. It was clear that the information she'd found had caused her to seriously distrust their adopted father, but Blossom was eager to get her to change her mind. That however, was quite the daunting task, being the stubborn girl she was. Blossom would have to prove to her that the professor had only been doing what he thought would be the best for them. That could take some work, and possibly some pain.
Not wanting to go back to her room, Blossom decided to go lay on the couch for a while and think things through. She was very careful not to fall asleep again.
Blossom's room was suddenly flooded with light as Professor Utonium rushed into the room to see what the commotion was. Blossom was on her bed, fully dressed, but she was also thrashing around, screaming in horror.
"Blossom! BLOSSOM!" he cried out, clearly alarmed at the state of Blossom's enhanced emotional distress. He ran over to her bed and grabbed her arms in an attempt to calm her, which was quite a challenge in itself seeing as how much stronger Blossom naturally was. Blossom's entire body was covered in a moist layer of sweat, and her young face was molded in tortured sobs, tears pouring from her eyes.
After a few seconds she stopped thrashing, but she was now trembling violently. The professor lifted her up gently and put his arms around her tightly, rubbing her head gently as she continued to whimper softly.
"It was just a bad dream, you're okay now, " he cooed. Blossom was clearly alert now, because she mumbled something into the professor's white work shirt between gasping sobs. He didn't hear her, but thought it wasn't appropriate to ask her what she'd said.
Bubbles had rushed into the room just as soon as the professor had, and she stood next to the professor, her hair out of her pigtails and her plush Octi squeezed in her arms. Strangely enough, Blossom's agony had attracted Buttercup out of her room as well, and she clearly had not been asleep at all. Buttercup remained in the doorway, watching Blossom with interest.
"Professor?" Bubbles asked tentatively. Professor Utonium looked up at Bubbles and risked a light smile, his own heart still beating madly from the scare.
"She just had a nightmare, that's all. I was so scared that." he trailed off again, something he'd done a lot that previous day. It was now four A.M.
Blossom sniffed and gently pulled away from the professor's grasp. She wiped the tears roughly from her wet cheeks and let out a shaky sigh to calm herself. She was still trembling, but obviously aware that she was in no real danger. Blossom looked at the professor who was watching her, concerned, and for a second she felt a rush of loving gratitude towards her father.
Blossom looked around her room. Convinced it was just the four of them, as it would naturally be, she turned back to the professor. He still watched her calmly, but there was a definite air of loving worry on his brow. He seemed like he was waiting for her to say something.
"I want to talk." she mumbled.
The professor nodded.
And then Blossom told him about her dream, about how real it felt, and about how familiar the danger was. As she spoke, she began to think it was some sort of warning from her advanced sub consciousness, apparently sensing some sort of great peril on the horizon. Or perhaps Bubbles had been right; a relapse of memories so painful, it was causing her to feel them so vividly.
Given the absence of using their abilities, perhaps memories were finding ways to soak through to her awareness, slowly becoming more and more real as time progressed. But the only thing was, nothing like her dream had ever actually happened to her before.
That last dream had been different. It had been worse, much worse. Before, she could feel the presence of her attacker, but this time, she could definitely feel more. Hatred and evil. and malicious happiness as it hurt her. The dream had been more vivid, enough that it had caused her to wake up screaming.
Blossom then told the professor about her elusive visitor the night before. She didn't say anything about Bubbles, out of respect for her sister's privacy.
"You didn't see anybody? Are you sure?" he asked finally, after Blossom had finished talking.
"Yes!" she cried, feeling slightly harassed and still a little disoriented.
"Have any of you felt the same thing?" he asked, directing his question at both Bubbles and Buttercup. For a second Bubbles looked like she wasn't going to say anything.
"I have," Bubbles said softly. She released Octi from her choking grasp and brought the stuffed toy level to her face. "A few days ago. but I haven't had any dreams."
"What about you?" the professor turned to Buttercup standing in the doorway. She merely glared at him and snorted, then shook her head no. "You know Buttercup, I really think-"
But Buttercup left the room before he could finish what he wanted to say. Blossom quickly put her hand on the professor's shoulder.
"Professor, I'm sorry about earlier. It was mostly my fault. I shouldn't have started arguing with her in the first place," Blossom said. The professor shook his head and patted her hand gently with his own.
"No, I don't think it's your fault. I think there's something else wrong with her that she isn't saying," he said, and then he stood to go. "I suppose you probably want to go back to sleep now."
"No, actually, I don't think I'll be able to," said Blossom, "I think I'm just going to get up now- Professor, why are you already dressed?!" Blossom blurted very suddenly. She hadn't noticed at first that he was already dressed as if going to work.
"Summer term did just start a few days ago, and I already feel like I'm behind," he said. Then he playfully rolled his eyes. "The head of the science department is just a bit too demanding for my taste. Grades have gotta' start coming in." And then he walked from the room, still talking even as his voice began fading away. Blossom knew he was lying again, because she could tell by the puffy bags under his normally cool brown eyes that he hadn't been sleeping.
"Bubbles, wait. I want to talk to you," Blossom said, putting a hand on her sister's arm. Bubbles nodded and then sat herself on the edge of Blossom's bed. "Have you ever thought of asking him?"
"Asking him what?" she asked, looking at Blossom quizzically. She then turned her attention to her old, ratty nightshirt and began folding out the creases in an effort to busy herself, or perhaps to avoid eye contact with Blossom.
"What's wrong with him."
"Oh."
"Do you think it has anything to do with us?" Blossom asked her sister. Bubbles looked away from her shirt and began playing with Octi, swinging the toy forward and letting it fall back against her legs repeatedly.
"I don't know," she finally answered. "Why would it?"
"I wonder if he's worried about us being found. by maybe the government or something, wanting to use us as a weapon," Blossom said, risking a casual glance to the door to make sure nobody was there. The professor had gone into his room and shut the door.
"That sounds silly," Bubbles giggled.
"But it could be really serious. He's awfully keen on keeping us from using our powers. He wasn't this bad in Townsville, even in the beginning when the whole city thought we were psychotic."
Thinking about the very beginning of their lives suddenly made Blossom very aware of the fact that the professor had been lying all along about their origins. Very suddenly she wanted to pop the question to him, but decided against it, knowing this wouldn't be one of the best times.
"Have you ever wanted to ask him where we really came from? I mean, if he wants to hide us so much, then maybe there's more to our birth that he hasn't told us. Something serious even."
"You mean he's trying to hide us from some sort of government agency?" Bubbles asked, turning back to her sister.
"Well, no, not necessarily. But he's hiding us from something, that part is obvious. Ever since Buttercup started freaking out about wanting to save the day again, he's been acting really nervous about us being out in public. It's like he's worried we'll want to show off or something."
"Like that game of tag?" Bubbles smiled. Yes, those memories were rather funny. That had been so long ago, 12 years in fact, but it seemed like it had only been a short while ago.
"Well, maybe not that serious," Blossom sighed. "But he definitely doesn't want anyone to see us, but the question is, who specifically?"
"Are you going to ask him? You are the one who's coming up with all this after all."
"I don't know. at some point I suppose. just casually ask him where we really came from." Blossom said, sitting up from her bed. "Well, you go ahead and go back to sleep, I think I'm going to get up now."
Bubbles nodded and left the room, leaving Blossom alone. She shut the door and turned back to face her entire room. She really wanted to just sit and think for a while. There was so much going on at the moment that was racing through her head: her dream, her stalker, Buttercup's actions and now the professor.
She heard the professor come out of his room and head downstairs, and Blossom wondered if she should just come out and ask him today.
Maybe not. Maybe she'd wait until there wasn't a whole bunch of crazy things happening.
Then something crept into her mind. If something was really watching them, had Buttercup felt it too? She'd said no, but who was to say she wasn't lying? Is that why she was acting the way she was? Was she scared?
Or did she find something out?
The basement.
A realization hit Blossom very suddenly. Buttercup had gone into the basement to look for her glove. She'd said the professor had things down there he didn't want them to look at-
-What if Buttercup saw something she wasn't supposed to see, and she was now either angry or guilty about it. She was certainly acting very strangely towards the professor. Now she was saying things about not trusting him. That certainly seemed like a very Buttercup-like thing to do. But what exactly could she have seen that had made her so angry? She certainly seemed weirded out when she'd come back up from the basement, not to mention the fact that she had been ready to pound Blossom into a bloody pulp.
Blossom had the urgent need to go down into the basement herself and look, perhaps see what Buttercup had seen. It would certainly shed some light on the otherwise clouded situation. It may also be easier to speak with Buttercup if they were on the same page. Maybe they could all get answers without having to come out and ask the professor, save him the humiliation and worry.
A few minutes later she heard the professor walk back up the stairs, into his room, where he shut the door behind him. Now was as good a time as any.
Very quietly she cracked open her door and peered out into the dim hallway. All the doors were closed, and no sound escaped into the hall whatsoever. Quickly Blossom crept out of her room and tiptoed downstairs, purposely jumping the last step, which had a tendency to creak. She landed with a soft thump on the plush carpet, and moved to the basement door.
The tall wooden door seemed oddly beckoning, and Blossom was only too happy to oblige as she moved against it, gently turning the brass handle. It opened with a soft creak, which seemed strangely loud to her, but only because she was attempting to be stealthy. Not wanting to wait anymore, she quickly tiptoed down the basement stairs into the cold darkness of the open room.
Blossom shuffled around, looking for the boxes she had told Buttercup about. The room was dusty and full of cobwebs. Tons of various unpacked boxes still sat waiting in the corners and against just about every space they could find. It was mostly the girls' stuff that they'd grown out of years ago, but the professor was too sentimental to chuck the stuff out.
Then, against one of the far walls, she saw the jumble of boxes next to the old cabinet that had been stored away a long time ago. Blossom hurried over to where they sat, scanning them to find some sort of evidence of Buttercup's passing. Sure enough, one of the boxes had been opened just slightly. Perhaps Buttercup had tried to hide her snooping, but whatever the case she definitely had known she wasn't supposed to be in the box. It was clearly not labeled toys.
Blossom got down on her knees and looked behind her to make sure the coast was clear. Thankfully, the view from the doorway was blocked just slightly by a support beam in the middle of the room. She turned back to the boxes and carefully opened the box, making sure not to bend the flimsy cardboard.
When she opened it, the first thing she saw was a large, old folder that had been thrown haphazardly on the top of a pile of very important looking paper work. Blossom gingerly lifted the book out of the box in order to get a better look at the papers. They were obviously personal papers of the professors; past work that he'd done.
Much of it was scribble of the professor's loopy handwriting; numbers and sketched graphs adorned many of the pages. At the top of each page there was a corporate symbol that Blossom just vaguely recognized as belonging to a pharmaceutical company. It was called Medical Communications, or Medicom for short, and Blossom had seen a lot of their products lying around the house; apparently perfectly harmless medicines. Why would the professor want to hide that? If he'd just worked for a drug company, what could be so bad about that?
Blossom turned her attention back to the old folder she held and carefully opened it, careful not to jar any of the loose pages. Inside the folder were more notes and diagrams, quickly drawn and slightly sloppy. Blossom couldn't really understand any of it, but she did recognize some of the sketches as the double helix of DNA, complete with various labels and calculations.
She continued to scan the pages, glancing at notes about blood chemistry levels and growth patterns; nothing seemed overly harmful that would freak Buttercup out. Then one particular thing caught her eye. There was writing about something called Xantium. Naturally Blossom knew what it was.
"Chemical X," she said softly to herself. She leafed through more of the folder, trying to find more information. After a few pages and more notes about hormone levels and chemical analysis, she spotted a Polaroid picture. The photo itself was hard to make out because the colors had faded over the years, and it was a little splotchy given the poor quality of the film. Blossom could swear she saw three people in the photo-
-No, three children, little children. lying motionless on an operating table.-
-Blossom gasped out loud and dropped the book onto the ground in front of her as if she'd just found a huge insect in her hands. Her heart was pounding, her mind racing with a sudden realization. The children in the picture had most certainly been her and her sisters; the same hair colors and everything. That was why Buttercup had looked so lost when she'd come back up from the basement. She'd seen everything and clearly didn't know how to respond, except for treating the professor as if he was some sort of nasty slug that didn't deserve the time of day.
It was true, he lied, but Blossom didn't think Buttercup was going about it the most appropriate way. Clearly they should ask him why he lied, but that was an entire ordeal all on it's own. It would be difficult, because Blossom saw the anguish in his eyes every time he looked at them, which had never been there until recently. It was clearly an emotional ordeal for him, and really had no malicious intent at all. He was trying to protect them from the truth, because he knew it would only hurt them.
Plus, there was also the fact that they'd been snooping in his personal things that they really didn't have any business in at all.
Then something shoved the entire ordeal out of her mind. She could hear with amazing precision, just down the hall, the professor walking towards the basement. In a worried haste Blossom scooped the folder back up from the floor and shoved it back into the box where it had been, forcefully folding the flaps of the box closed.
"Blossom? What are you doing?" she heard him call from the doorway that led down to the basement. Numbly, Blossom fished around for some sort of excuse, then she spotted a half concealed stuffed animal in one of the boxes. She snatched it up very quickly, knocking the entire box over, sending squeaking plush toys and wooden blocks all over the floor with a mighty crash in front of her.
"I-er- was just looking for. this!" she chimed nervously, jumping out from behind the pillar so she was in full view. She held the stuffed animal out in front of her for him to see. It was one of Bubbles's old toys; a rather shabby looking unicorn plush that had at one time been white, but now looked like a mix between brown and yellow.
The professor stood at the top of the steps with his hands on his hips, but he didn't look angry at all. Blossom let out a huge breath of air when she saw his face. He bought it. "I, thought maybe I could do for a little comfort at night," Blossom smiled. The professor looked at her incredulously.
"Yeah, well you might want to clean it up a bit first. It looks terrible," he said. And then he walked away. Blossom watched him disappear from the doorframe and let out another huge sigh. That had been incredibly close. If he'd found out what she was doing, she would have been in so much trouble.
Blossom left the basement with the stuffed animal in her hands, and headed to the laundry room. Might as well wash it, since that's what she'd led the professor to believe she was doing. Her thoughts turned back to what she'd found.
Medicom was nothing more than a pharmaceutical company that made over the counter drugs. What would they have been doing with genetic research, and more importantly, why had the professor been working there? Was there something about the company nobody knew about? Clearly, they had been doing something shady, because it wasn't often that a major corporation crafted bioweapons for the good of humanity. What was the horrible accident that the professor refused to talk about? What had happened exactly that had put Blossom and her sisters under his care?
It was clearly time for a trip to the library to do some research on the company, but when Blossom would be able to find time for that she didn't know. She'd have to be discreet about the whole thing.
Blossom threw the dirty unicorn into the washer and started the machine, still thinking about the corporation and what she'd try to find at the library when her thoughts suddenly turned to Buttercup.
Blossom knew she'd have to calm her some way. It was clear that the information she'd found had caused her to seriously distrust their adopted father, but Blossom was eager to get her to change her mind. That however, was quite the daunting task, being the stubborn girl she was. Blossom would have to prove to her that the professor had only been doing what he thought would be the best for them. That could take some work, and possibly some pain.
Not wanting to go back to her room, Blossom decided to go lay on the couch for a while and think things through. She was very careful not to fall asleep again.