Author's notes: in case you're interested, you can to my website (in my profile) for the story too. The whole of Act I is up there currently, as well as some character profiles and other things. I warn you though, some of the material's a bit spoiler-ish, particularly if you're following the story here.

Zoe Rose: Settle now dear, it'll all be explained soon enough. ;) And, if you read over the story carefully, it should be pretty obvious who Johnny is.

Hairy Gregory: Him's always such a dominant guy, I just though it'd be something new to toss him into second-in-command in this story. Like I said, read on and you'll find out what his true agenda is :)

Something tasted like carpet.
Johnny opened his bleary eyes to find himself lying flat on his bedroom floor. Getting up, he noticed the rumpled sheets in the bed next to him, along with the octopus toy sitting on the pillow. Buttercup was already up and about, sitting at Johnny's desk. The boy shook his head in disgust. "You pushed me out of my own bed?" He grumbled.
Buttercup protested. "There wasn't enough room for Octi and me."

He got up and stretched out his stiff muscles. Then he craned his neck towards the desk, curious to see what his charge's early morning activity was. It looked like she was colouring something in…
"MY DOCTOR MANGNUM COMIC!?"
The young girl drew back in surprise and indigence as the horrified teen yanked his beloved comic away from her. His hand slapped to his head in exasperation when he saw the rainbow streaks of marker that stained the once pristine black and white pages.
"Not my first edition…" he lamented.
The child shrugged. "They looked a little boring. I was spicing them up for you!" She asserted, that proud smile of hers emerging. "I probably doubled the collector's value-you should be thanking me!"
Johnny sat on his bed, cradling the graffitied novel in his arms and mourned.

Just then, a knock was heard at the door.
"Johnny-chan?" Came Michiko's voice. "Are you up and dressed?"
The two youngsters looked at each other, gripped with panic.
"Er… hold on, Kaasan!"
Without so much as a warning, Johnny grabbed Buttercup off the chair and crammed her, along with Octi and the coloured-in comic, under the bed. Oblivious to her muffled protests, he quickly threw the covers over the edge of the bed and scrambled to don the rumpled clothes on his floor. Panting and wild-eyed, he finally opened the door for his mother.
She looked at her flustered son quizzically. "Daijoubu ka?"
He nodded awkwardly. "Un…"
She smiled at him. "I just wanted to tell you that breakfast is ready. Come out and join us before it gets cold, okay, musuko?"

When the door once again clicked shut, the boy puffed a much desired sigh of relief and flopped back down on the carpet, drained from the surge of panic.
Buttercup squirmed out from under the bed, clutching Octi.
"I hope your Mom made pancakes!"

Tapping his foot and grunting impatiently, Johnny waited for Buttercup to finish rubbing the fluffy stomach of the Welsh corgi leashed to a sidewalk bike rack.
"Must you do that to every dog we meet?"
Buttercup replied by turning her head and haughtily sticking out her tongue.
"We don't have time for this!" The last of the boy's patience finally wore away and he smartly tugged at the girl's free hand. She stayed firm on her spot, refusing to go along with her elder companion.
"I wanna pet the dog."
"Come on!"
And so it became a tense, lengthy tug-of-war between the two. Buttercup began squealing harshly, her face blotted with stubborn juvenile rage. Johnny cringed to see the small group of onlookers that had begun to stop on the sidewalk and gawk at the struggle.
Now I finally realise what a nightmare I was for my parents, he thought.
The girl affirmed her position by latching her two little hands onto the bike rack. Johnny pulled and pulled, but for some reason this child was a lot harder to budge than she seemed-both emotionally and physically.
"Do you wanna see your dad again or not!?" He shouted.

Suddenly, Buttercup fell mute. That one comment managed to whip her right back into line. With sad eyes she said farewell to the dog, took Johnny's hand and the two started off down the sidewalk once more.

It was Thursday morning, and a bright, crisp, sunny day. The landscape was fresh and damp from the previous night's storm. Johnny was using a free period (as well as two or three not-so-free ones) to help Buttercup in her quest. She wanted to find the man she called 'The Professor', and Johnny reasoned that there was no better place to find a professor than at good old Townsville University.

Together they entered the gigantic complex, and Buttercup stared up at the beautiful Federation-style buildings that lined the interlaced streets.
"Woah," she breathed, "is this where the Professor is?"
"Could be, Squirt." Johnny replied, looking around at the various departments of the school. "So what's he a professor of?"
"Science!" Buttercup answered assuredly.
"Yeah, but what kind of science?"
"Uh…" The five-year-old squinted hard to try and comprehend this unanticipated question.
Johnny's face fell like a depressed bloodhound's. "Don't tell me you don't know," he groaned.
"Well… I think it starts with a 'B'…" the girl tried to help.
The adolescent sighed tiredly. "This could take all day… but we may as well start somewhere familiar. Come on." He ushered Buttercup in the direction of the Physical Sciences block.

From the cover of a tall Norfolk pine, Him watched the two unsuspecting children amble down the paved university road. What the Master had told him last night was still weighing heavily on his mind as a terrible ethical burden. To think that they were ordered to hurt the boy! By the very man who should have known better than that! Him had always happily followed any orders that his Lord Alecto had given, no matter how gruesome or suspect they were, but this… Him just couldn't bring himself to do it. Surely there was some way to capture Buttercup without injuring Johnny… ?

The demon's guileful mind began ticking over, and with little conscious effort he soon came up with a quick plan of how to do so. Of course, he would be going behind the backs of his lieutenants, and more painfully, Lord Alecto, but as Him reasoned, this really was for the crime-lord's own good. And the good of Lord Alecto was the good of all of Townsville.

"Jonathan, my boy!" A short, podgy, decidedly bald man in a lab coat and rubber gloves waddled cheerfully from his paper-strewn desk over to the doorway to greet the young man.
"It is such a nice surprise you coming to see me!"
Buttercup, who was standing behind Johnny and wrinkling her nose up at the sulfuric smell of the chemistry lab, suddenly realised that the only thing thicker than this man's waistline was his exotic accent.
"Professor Tartakovsky," Johnny replied warmly.
"I have two hour break before I teach my next class. We both have plenty of time to chat. Terrific, yes?"
Johnny smiled, and moved to say something before the teacher grabbed hold of his forearm. Suddenly, he became very grim.
"Unless you are giving more silly theories about undiscovered chemicals not yet put on the periodic table! I tell you once, I tell you a trillion times, I do not have time for nonsense like that, boy!"
Johnny shook his head. "No, Professor. In fact, er, there's something I need your help with…"
Reluctantly, Buttercup peeked out from behind Johnny's legs.

Professor Tartakovsky's eyes lit up like two bulging light bulbs. He knelt down to the urchin's height and unashamedly pinched her left cheek.
"Oh, she is precious little babe! She looks much like you! She is your sister, yes?"
Johnny looked a little nonplussed. "No, actually. She's a friend of mine who's trying to find her father."
"Awww," Tartakovsky cooed, "you are lost, Pigeon?"
"I'm not a pigeon," Buttercup answered humourlessly, "and my dad's The Professor. Johnny says he might be around here somewhere."
"Perhaps so," the teacher scratched his chin. "What's his name?"
Buttercup turned away, gazing helplessly into space. "I don't know…"
Tartakovsky looked quizzically at Johnny.
"Er, she had an accident recently," he explained. "She's got amnesia, I think."
The old man tilted his head to the side. "Oh, that is very sad."

After a short silence, he brightened again, opening his arms out to the youngsters. "Come, I was just going for some morning tea. We go to the faculty lounge and look over the staff roster." He turned to Buttercup with an encouraging smile. "Perhaps we will find one who could be your papa."
"Thanks," Buttercup said quietly.

Johnny pursed his lips as he watched Tartakovsky, still beaming at the child, take hold of her hand as she exited the lab and skipped down the hallway. He didn't like how much attention she was stealing from him. First with his mother, and now with his mentor? It wasn't fair. Unrelated they might have been, but Buttercup may as well have been the upstagingly cute little sister Tartakovsky guessed her to be. He just prayed that they would find her dad as soon as possible so she could stop leeching off his own relationships.

"This one?" Tartakovsky pointed to a profile in a great fat binder that was open on the coffee table.
"Professor Bruce Winchester, head of geology. Born 1935…" he trailed the lines of text until he came upon what he was looking for. "Two sons, divorced."
Buttercup shook her head. "That can't be him." She concluded, albeit rather redundantly.
Johnny sighed and flipped through a few more profiles. He checked family status: all of them either without children or daughters.
It really was a blind search. They were scouring the profiles of each male professor in the science department, finding out which ones had daughters and which ones didn't. Johnny had gone around asking the professors he could find about Buttercup, but as for the rest of them, the teenager could do nothing but read out their whole profile to the little girl and pray that something would be familiar to her. But because of the poor state of her damaged memory, they could have already skipped over her father without even realising they had found him.

Flopping back in his spot on the sofa, Johnny stared up at the staff room ceiling and moaned. "This is so tedious."
"Come on Jonathan," Tartakovsky coaxed. "You have to be sticking to it. Besides, there is only so many male science professors in this school, yes?"
"Yeah, Jonathan," Buttercup teased.

Their search was interrupted by a young teacher's aid sitting down beside them on the sofa with a cup of coffee and a snack.
"Hello, Professor Tartakovsky. And Jonathan," she smiled at the group.
"Sadie," Tartakovsky began "would you be knowing of any male science professors in this school with a little daughter called Buttercup?"
The young woman thought hard for a moment. "Not that I can think of, sir."
Johnny's face fell, but Buttercup was more interested in the bag of potato chips she was opening.
"Where'd you get those?" She salivated.
Sadie smiled again. "From a vending machine in the hall."

Johnny turned to his charge. "Are you sure there isn't anything else you can tell us that will help the search?"
"Well…" Buttercup pondered, not once taking her eyes off the potato chips. "I do have two sisters called Blossom and Bubbles. We're triplets."
Johnny and Tartakovsky looked at each other meaningfully.
"Well, that certainly helps!" Johnny remarked.
"I want some chips!"
"I thought you wanted to find your dad," the teenager retorted, disgusted at the child's short attention span.
Tartakovsky smiled. "You take her down for a snack. I keep looking and see if I find anything."
"Okay. Thanks again, Professor, I appreciate this." Johnny reluctantly got up, crossing the room. "C'mon Squirt."
"I TOLD YOU NOT TO CALL ME THAT!!"

To Be Continued. . .