Heightened Tensions- Chapter 3
"So, what exactly happened back there?" Bubbles asked the rest of the family as they sat together at the dining table. Buttercup still hadn't returned home yet, and the professor was carefully wrapping Blossom's cut in a stark white bandage.
Blossom shook her head, flexing her hand to see if the wrap job was satisfactory enough. "Well, I don't exactly know, but apparently Mojo's found a way to make his robot's able to do damage to us," she said, setting her hand down on the table with a sigh. "Well, the outer shell can at least."
Bubbles leaned both her elbows on the table and began shifting a loose napkin around with her hand, her eyes fluttering in concentration.
"That part is obvious. What about… the saw thing?" she asked quietly, shifting her eyes onto Blossom. "Do you think its weapons are made out of X3Ti6?"
X3Ti6: A mixture of Xantium and Titanium, the only metal that could cut their skin.
Blossom stood from the table and wandered over to the fridge, where she began drumming her fingers against it nervously.
"I suppose that would make sense. Mojo knows that mundane metals can't hurt us… so he wouldn't even try those types of weapons unless he knew they could do damage. I suppose after seeing that giant saw thing, its safe to assume that Mojo's found a way of manipulating X3Ti6 into weapons. Maybe that's why you couldn't throw it, perhaps the metal makes it too heavy for us to move it."
Bubbles suddenly slapped her fist against the table, startling the professor enough to make him fling the roll of bandage tape onto the floor.
"The medical store house! Remember?! He stole a bunch of crates of medical supplies! I bet that's what was inside! X3Ti6 needles!" She said excitedly.
"Well, I wouldn't get too happy about it. This means we could potentially be in danger, assuming that robot has other weapons made of the same material. We need to be a bit more careful with Mojo next time," Blossom said, finally opening the fridge to claim a bottle of soda. She sat back at the table and set it down in front of her.
"And about your hair. I have absolutely no idea why he would have taken it. There's absolutely no value in it for him. All hair has is maybe some proteins and perhaps some DNA in the cells, but other than that its pretty useless for a mechanical genius."
"Maybe he's scanning it for weaknesses?" Bubbles said hopefully. Blossom shook her head.
"No. He's been dealing with us long enough to know what we can and can't handle, which isn't much. The only thing I would be worried about now is that robot and when its going to pop up again. We'll really need to be on our guard if we have to deal with it again. There's no telling what kind of long range weapons it could have." Blossom finished, glancing at the clock.
Bubbles shuddered at the thought and leaned her head against the professor, who was looking at Blossom very studiously.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about something."
"Hey!" Bubbles cried as if she'd just realized something important. "Didn't you tell us that Mojo used to be your lab animal?"
The professor looked down at the table in an obvious attempt to avoid eye contact. He didn't like talking about the past, especially when it involved any of the multiple versions of their birth story.
"Well, yes, but do you also remember that I made most of the old story up?" he said, facing down as if the table had just asked him the question. "But, I did know Mojo before you were born."
"Well, how so?" Blossom asked, glancing again at the clock. Buttercup had been gone an awful long time.
The professor took a deep breath and stretched. He folded his hands in front of him on the table and looked at Blossom.
"Well, before we started on human embryos, we did experiments on animals-" Bubbles gasped, and put her hand across her mouth. "-Now, no animals were hurt, Bubbles." She relaxed. "Well, Jojo was the only test subject. We thought that the similarities in gene structure to humans would give us a good indication as to how human's were affected."
"Ha, and despite the results you went ahead and did humans anyway?" Blossom laughed. It was no secret that Mojo was just a little bit crazy- no- scratch that- he was insane. Ever since they could remember he'd attempt time and time again to best the three of them. It usually involved some sort of mechanical abomination, or occasionally he would just outright attack them personally with hand weapons. He never succeeded, and the stories always ended the same. They'd beat him up, he'd get carted off to jail, they wouldn't see him for about a week, and then he'd just break out. Then the cycle would start all over again.
But there was sort of a Bittersweet friendship between the four of them. It was also common knowledge that Mojo had some how been mutated by Chemical X. He was incredibly intelligent (one could say his large, protruding brain was evidence enough for that), he spoke and behaved like a human, and he even acquired the same super strength that the girls had. Even his body shape had changed just slightly, making him more suitable to walking upright. Although, he didn't have the assortment of powers that the girls had received, the power of flight the most obvious of those shortcomings, he seemed to manage fine without them. It was this little factor of Chemical X in Mojo that made him somewhat of a brother to them. There were rare occasions when they'd just show up at his home on top of the volcano, and he would actually be civil to them. Sometimes, he'd even helped them save the city (but only if the girls managed to convince him that unless he did something, his title of evil genius would be swiped from under his nose). A bittersweet friendship indeed.
Still, they were pretty sure he wanted to kill them. Was it jealousy, or was it just anger? Nobody really knew.
The professor had once told them that Mojo had been his pet before they were born. During this period his real name had actually been Jojo, and he was always down in the lab with the professor. Jojo had been very young; perhaps only about a year old, and the old story went that Jojo had been the cause of the fateful Chemical X accident that had granted them life. The professor had told them that Jojo had pushed him over while he'd been trying to concoct the recipe for the perfect girl, thus causing him to knock over the vial of Chemical X into the mixture. In the explosion that ensued, the Xantium had also affected Jojo, but the professor had been so elated with his new children and everything they could do, that he forgot all about his faithful companion.
In jealousy Mojo left the house, and the professor never even noticed. There were sooooo many glaring flaws in this story it just couldn't possibly be true. First of all, the biggest problem was the fact that it was scientifically impossible to create human beings out of kitchen supplies. That part had already been established long ago. Second of all, the professor, being in the room, should have also been affected by the blast, but he wasn't. Lastly, how could the professor just forget about Jojo? Surely he wasn't that heartless. Certainly he would have noticed at some point that Jojo was missing.
"Okay then, how did the real story go?" Bubbles asked pointedly. The professor sighed and brought his hand to his chin, thinking deeply.
"Well, let me see," he said quietly. "Well, as I said, Jojo was our first experiment. Our results were in fact a success, despite the fact that we knew he was very unstable in the head. He was strong, intelligent, and had even begun to converse like a normal human being. These were the results we had hoped for-"
"Except for the whole brain thing," Blossom cut in.
"Well, yeah, that was a little bit unnerving. We were hoping that same side effect wouldn't happen to humans. It just wouldn't do to have people walking around with their brains falling out of their skulls."
"Oh, just think of the problems with sanitation!" Blossom squealed, grabbing her soda. She frowned as she realized she'd let it get warm.
"Think of how gross that would be!" Bubbled chimed in, getting up to claim her own drink from the fridge.
"Well, yes, but that isn't the point," the professor said. "Now, where was I? Oh yes, back to Jojo. Well, we knew that despite the brain thing, the test was initially a success. After all, Jojo seemed fairly in tune with reality, and he certainly wasn't dead."
"But we didn't know it was going to make him insane, and we didn't know how not in tune with reality he really was. He rebelled against us, and eventually broke out. We spent weeks trying to find him until we finally decided to move on. We were hoping we'd have better luck next time…"
"You mean, when you tried it on us?" Blossom asked. The professor looked at her very mournfully, and then he finally dropped his head onto the table.
"Yes," he said heavily, his shoulders dropping in defeat. He went completely silent after that. Bubbles set down her bottle onto the table and slapped the professor on the back.
"Hey! Guess what! It was a success!" she said jovially, smiling brightly. Talking about it had obviously upset the professor, and he was once again going through one of his guilt trips. He did this every time a small mention of their convoluted birth story came up.
"Dad," Blossom said, setting her hand on top of his head where it was still lying on the table. "You don't have to feel bad. We understand that you didn't have a choice."
He looked up at her with tired eyes and smiled, the faint lines of age on his face creasing. He sat up once again and took a deep breath.
"I need to go take care of something…" he trailed off, and then he stood from the table and left the room, leaving Blossom and Bubbles alone.
"So, why do you think Mojo wants to kill us so bad? If it isn't because the professor turned his back on him, then why?" Bubbles asked, her eyes conveying that very faint adoration for Mojo that she'd always had. For some reason, Bubbles had always found some shred of decency in her heart to feel bad for Mojo. Or maybe it was just because she thought he was cute. After all, he did seem kind of cuddly sometimes, except for the whole brain thing. Not to mention his eccentric manner of speech was simply hilarious.
"Well, maybe that isn't too far from the truth. Maybe he does hate us because we weren't such screw-ups like he was. Maybe it is just jealousy, and he just doesn't know how else to handle it except take it out on the entire city that has grown to love us."
"Or maybe he's just an insane freakish monkey that wants to rule the world," a third voice cut in as Buttercup entered the kitchen, looking completely disheveled and exhausted.
"Geez! Took long enough!" Bubbles cried, but only received a very fierce stare from Buttercup.
"Maybe its because I was the only one doing any cleaning at all!" she said before plopping herself down onto a third chair at the table. "Man, does sitting feel good…" she said, closing her eyes and arranging her face into something of pure bliss.
"You missed our conversation about Mojo," Blossom said, finally grabbing her soda and opening it. "It was quite illuminating. The professor told us where he really came from."
"Oh yeah?" Buttercup said off-handedly, her eyes still closed as she leaned back in the chair leisurely. "Yeah, I asked him about it last week. It was right after Mojo's last robbery."
"Ah," Blossom said bemused. For some reason it just bugged her how Buttercup could be so off-hand about grilling the professor like that. But, then again, they'd practically just done the same thing, so perhaps it didn't really matter anymore.
Instead of scolding, Blossom turned her attention to her warm soda and groaned. She hated doing this, but it was so much easier than going to the freezer and grabbing ice from the tray.
She brought it to her mouth and spit a quick burst of cold air into the bottle. The insides edges crystallized over in a light film of frost, and the liquid itself chilled to a more desirable temperature. But, the bottle had become just a little bit too cold, and it was biting at Blossom's hand with dry freeze.
"Ow! Perhaps I overdid it," she said casually, and she set the bottle down, only to notice that Buttercup was staring at her.
"What?"
Buttercup had gone strangely mute, but Blossom could definitely tell that inside she was ready to burst with some sort of unimaginable anger. Her body was visibly tight and her brow was narrowed in hatred. Bubbles was looking at the both of them, dumbfounded.
"Oh for god sakes, could you have a little shred of decency!" Buttercup shrieked angrily as she leapt up from her seat at the table. She stood for a beat, glowering down at Blossom, and then she spun around and high-tailed it out of the room. Tears had begun swelling in her eyes, and Buttercup never let people see her cry unless there was a very good reason for it. Soon Blossom was once again alone with Bubbles.
"What's wrong with her?" Blossom said quietly, yet she had a very good idea as to what was actually wrong. Her untouched drink had suddenly become very uninteresting.
"I don't really know, Blossom," Bubbles said and Blossom nodded her head in response. She took the bottle once again in her hand, and let the chilled glass fuel her anger and shame. It wasn't her fault she could do it. It wasn't her fault that Buttercup couldn't do it either. Then why did she get so angry every time Blossom wanted to make use of her own gift?
She looked down at the icy bottle and suddenly hated herself for doing it; hated herself for ever being able to breath ice. Tears welled up in her eyes, but they were tears of anger.
Not wanting to start bawling in front of Bubbles, Blossom excused herself from the table and ran up stairs to her room. She stopped just outside of the guestroom door, the room that had become Buttercup's after their move, and thought about knocking. She really wanted to talk to Buttercup. Blossom didn't know what she intended to say, because she knew that no words could make Buttercup feel better, but she just wanted to say something. This wasn't one of Buttercup's usual angry fits, this was angry depression, and Blossom didn't want her to stay that way for very long. Buttercup was prone to do stupid things when she let her emotions get in the way, and there was no telling what she would do if she felt bad about herself.
But, Blossom knew from experience that Buttercup wouldn't talk to her about it. She never did. She would probably just get angry and start breaking stuff, because stubborn as she was, she never liked to be confronted about her mood swings.
So, instead of trying to reason with her, Blossom walked to her own room, the room she shared with Bubbles. It was their old room, the one with the three circular windows, except now there was a curtain up that separated the room in half. It wasn't like they didn't enjoy sharing the room together, but they did need their privacy from time to time. Instead of worrying about the mess of building a completely new room in the house, Bubbles and Blossom had both agreed that they would be willing to share the room. Besides, Buttercup needed the seclusion more than they did, and they had all argued that nobody wanted Blossom to sleep alone. Blossom would have ended up sharing her room with Buttercup, but she had pointed out that Buttercup tended to snore.
And so, that had been the deciding factor in who should get their own room. Needless to say Buttercup hadn't been too disappointed.
Blossom walked into the bedroom and shut the door behind her, before turning on the lamp that sat on her dresser. The room was filled with soft, glowing pink, and Blossom preferred that to the harsh glare of the ceiling light.
It was very quiet, so Blossom hummed to herself as she peeled off her shirt. She threw it in the laundry bin and went to her dresser to grab a nightshirt. She fiddled with it for a beat, and in that beat she caught sight of herself in the mirror next to the dresser. To be more precise she caught sight of the hideous scar. It looked much bigger in the dim light, and she frowned as she ran her finger across it. It felt disgusting, and looked disgusting, and she felt her face grow red as she continued to stare at it. She didn't want to think about it anymore, so with an inner feeling of sadness she tore her eyes away from it, and was about to put her shirt on when-
"It is a marvelous piece of work isn't it?"
That voice!
Blossom gasped as she spun around, simultaneously stuffing the shirt over her head in embarrassment. As soon as it passed over her eyes she could see her entire room, and nearly screamed as she realized where the voice came from.
She cowered back, pressing herself against the dresser, feeling her heart begin to pound against her breast. Her breath shuddered in her throat, and her throat went dry as her legs began to tremble, instantaneous panic taking over all of her involuntary functions. No, this was not good at all
Sitting on a chair on the other side of the room, right next to her own circular window, was none other than the being she feared most.
"Oh, Blossom, are you really that excited to see me?"
And Blossom didn't even scream as Him stood up from the chair, leering like the devil he was.