Chapter 3: Hard Questions
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
3 FEB 1989 (Friday). 0617.
The professor wasn't able to sleep after Bubbles woke him up. Instead, he was lying down there in his bed, enjoying the moment with one of his adopted daughters, spending the seconds mulling over the Girls. Specifically, how he could get them out of what was essentially conscripted child soldiering. Over the past month, he had been expanding on his Chemical X Unifying Theory, fixing calculation errors, amending whatever mistakes he had in his understanding of the enigmatic cross-dimensional substance.
But he wasn't solving the mystery of Chemical X for the sake of understanding this universe or the next any longer. He was doing it for Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. If he could understand Chemical X and all its little nuances, he believed he could 'cure' them of their Chemical X, and convince the USDO to let them go. He cared nothing for the consequences - Townsville could clean up its own mess for all he cared, and the USDO could get someone else to help them with it, and if the USDO did not fire him for rendering their only enhanced operatives inert, he would gladly come up with an alternative to the Girls if it meant that they would leave them alone.
Professor Utonium stared at his alarm clock as the seconds ticked by. Bubbles, his little bundle of joy, fast asleep under the glow of his table lamp and basking in the warmth of his body and blanket, turned in her sleep or at least tried to. Instinctively, her body knew that it couldn't, so she instead kneaded her head into his arm, which she had been using as a pillow. The sensation felt good.
06:19, the alarm clock read. Sometimes, he wished that the laws of the universe would cut him some slack, and time would freeze forever during the good times, such as when he was with Bubbles, resting in bed just before sunrise. For every day that started, there was always the probability that the peace would be shattered, and his Girls would have to answer the call to arms once more.
06:20, the alarm clock flipped a number. His waking dream was over. Professor Utonium got up. Carefully maneuvering around Bubbles, he slid off his bed and slid his feet into his house shoes. Looking at Bubbles one more time, he thought her to be a sweet little angel. Bending down a little, he stroked her blonde hair and ran his hand down her cheek before walking away reluctantly.
The City of Townsville. Pokey Oaks North. Pokey Oaks Kindergarten
3 FEB 1989 (Friday). 0947.
"I'm still really sorry about your legs, Sally," Blossom apologized to her classmate as they were solving a series of simple math problems together. The esoteric art of mathematical addition and subtraction, however, was just an excuse for Blossom to go through with her ritual of humility. It was a mere extension of what she had done last month, soon after the Battle at Morbucks Industries Research Labs.
While the USDO's intention had been one of good public relations, Blossom and Bubbles were sincere when they went around Townsville to visit the victims of the Highway 13 Incident to apologize for their mistakes and hand out gifts. Buttercup had only apologized out of fear of disapproval from Mom and Dad – in her mind, she was never at fault for anything.
"It's fine, Blossom," Sally, the wheelchair-bound girl, said. While she still held some kind of grudge against The Three, she had been told otherwise not to act on it – her family had seen what The Three had done for the city, and the parents believed that it was time to move on. "My mom said that I can still be a fashion designer…" What Sally did not tell Blossom was that she wanted to be an astronaut too, and now she'll never get the chance to either make the dream come true or grow out of it.
While Blossom was chatting with a former victim, Bubbles was drawing with a few friends at another table. The professor was right – with some time, the animosity between the Girls and their classmates had dissipated – and for good reason. Whether a few months old or a few years, a month was a long time for a little child. It took just a fraction of that after the Girls' redemption with Morbucks for them to play and laugh together once more (under the watchful eye of Miss Keane, of course). Thus, Bubbles was in good company. Better, in fact, than her own memories.
And it showed in her drawings. In her latest drawing block, she presented herself as she was in her dreams – the perfect little girl – but with tears flying in arcs from her huge, exaggerated eyes, drawn as cartoonish teardrops. She stood over a man she had killed in Morbucks Labs. While Miss Keane was walking by, she paused and looked at the drawing. She straightened her vest casually, unsure of how to react to Bubbles' development. It was unprecedented, after all, that she had been given responsibility over a trio of enhanced little girls 'working' as elite law enforcement agents who had killed and wounded varying numbers of people.
"That's…" Miss Keane tried to begin, but she couldn't even find her second word.
"I'm sorry I scared you, Miss Keane," Bubbles said without turning away from her drawing. She knew her kindergarten teacher was there from her shadow. She was just too engrossed with her futile attempt at catharsis.
"I… You didn't. Not at all, Bubbles," Miss Keane replied. Half of it was a lie. She was afraid of Bubbles and her sisters, no matter how good they were now, simply because they were incredibly powerful. But there was some truth in her voice – she was trying not to be. Realizing that she hadn't touched any of them for over a month, she reached out for her shoulder, tried to reassure her that way with some human touch. One of her pigtails brushed her hand when she did. Her blonde hair felt like silk, but they seemed tougher than that.
"I've killed a man before, Miss Keane," Bubbles opened up a little on feeling her teacher's hand on the back of her head. "He was shooting at me and I killed him."
"Are you upset that you did?" Miss Keane asked, unable to believe that she was having this conversation with a little girl – a baby even, considering that they were born late November, last year. It was terrible with Buttercup, but understandable considering what Professor Utonium had told her. With Bubbles, it was shocking.
"Yes…" Bubbles squeaked, looking like she was on the verge of tears. "I dreamed about him on some nights."
"Then that's good. It means you're a good girl, Bubbles," Miss Keane said with perfectly enunciated words as she sat down next to her. Bubbles stared at her eye-to-eye. Miss Keane thought that she had the most piercing gaze ever, what with it glowing baby blue. But she thought that it was also beautiful. Like precious jewels. Like Sapphire glowing under sunlight.
"I am?" Bubbles questioned, unconvinced.
"Yes, you are… Now how about smiling a little?" Miss Keane said. "It'll make you feel better… There you go." Bubbles had done as she was told, and she giggled after that, though it wasn't because she smiled. She was happy that Miss Keane had come around to not hating them weeks ago, and that hadn't changed. "How about if you draw something cheerful? You were good at drawing your family. Why not start there?"
Unfortunately for Bubbles, Miss Keane had to move on. With over twenty kids to look out for, she couldn't afford to spend too much time on her even if she wanted to. Next, she went over to Buttercup's table. Surprisingly, it hadn't blown up yet. Instead, Buttercup was being unusually nice and good. She was working on origami with a few other kids, including Mac, the boy who had made fun of the Girls when he found out that they had no belly buttons. Despite being nearly killed for it by Buttercup, he seemed fine with having her around.
Buttercup, Mac and another girl had been building paper frogs that could hop, but Buttercup had moved on to a simple paper airplane.
"Hiya, Miss Keane," Buttercup greeted her teacher the moment she saw her, with the sweetest smile yet, which was very uncharacteristic of her. "Do you like our paper frogs? Do you?" She stared at the teacher with those jade-like eyes of hers, expecting a reaction. Miss Keane had to physically force herself not to shrink away from them.
"They look perfectly folded, Miss Buttercup," Miss Keane laughed, and had to try to hide her nervousness at the change of tone surrounding Buttercup. Something had changed. "I'm glad you - urm - have learned to appreciate the simpler things in life."
"Miss Keane?" Buttercup had changed the tone further - starting with the tone of her voice, which had become a little more serious. "May I ask you something?"
"Why, of course, Buttercup. Ask away!" Miss Keane said with enthusiasm mustered with difficulty. She had to try to focus on the fact that she loved her teaching position, even if it had been subverted by the USDO to serve their agenda and focus primarily on the Girls.
"Can I ask you my questions alone?" Buttercup requested further. Miss Keane could not put a finger on it, but she thought it to be an odd request. Children could be shy and secretive at times, but with Buttercup in question, it could be a can of worms waiting to be opened. "I'm really shy about them."
'What could Buttercup be trying to hide from the rest of the children?' Miss Keane wondered, and she didn't like the possibilities she had thought up. Forcing herself to think positively, she struggled to believe that it could be something mundane. After all, enhanced and mentally unsound though Buttercup was, she was a child after all, with similar needs to the next child in the same room.
Maybe.
"Okay, Buttercup, you can ask me your questions at my desk…" Miss Keane agreed to Buttercup's request. Putting out a hand, at the same time restraining the urge to pull it away again, she offered it for Buttercup to take, which the enhanced little girl did. They went over to her desk, attracting some attention from both the other two Angels of Justice and some children before the kids returned to what they were doing.
Sitting down behind her favorite workspace in the world, she pulled up a chair for Buttercup. It was short enough for her to comfortably get on top of without the use of her floating abilities.
"So what is it, Buttercup?" Miss Keane asked, still aware of the irregular nature of Buttercup's request, just that she chose to hope. "Don't be afraid to ask me anything. After all, you're here to learn."
"Miss Keane… What is 'Fuck'?" Buttercup finally asked curtly. The teacher was about to take a sip of her freshly-brewed tea when she heard the word and nearly spilled her morning beverage as a result.
"Oh, that…" Miss Keane smiled nervously as she thought about what to say. The shock of hearing it from Buttercup's lips had scrambled her train of thought, though she didn't know why she would be so shocked to hear it from the roughest of The Three, whose mental condition would make her predisposed to harsh language because of the raw satisfaction it could give. She ran through her usual lines in her mind - it wasn't the first time she'd heard it from a kindergartner's mouth. The last F-bomber had been Mac, who'd asked the same question early last year. "Well… It's, um, a word that adults say when they're… angry, or in pain, or really, really upset, dear."
"Does that mean I can say it too?" Buttercup asked enthusiastically.
"No!" Miss Keane said, alarmed, before realizing that she had to get a handle on the situation calmly. "Absolutely not! Remember what I said? It's what adults say. You're not an adult yet, Buttercup. Besides, it's a bad swear word, honey. Your Mommy and Daddy wouldn't be pleased to hear it - or any other adults for that matter. Okay?"
"But why wouldn't they like it? Or allow it? They say it all the time, especially when they're shooting at me, or when I'm shooting at them, or punching them…" Buttercup probed the matter further. True, she didn't like the sound of it whenever it was directed at her, but she thought she could throw it at her enemies like a punch as if it was another weapon to be leveraged on in combat.
'She's persistent,' Miss Keane thought bitterly.
"Because they say it when they couldn't control themselves," Miss Keane explained further and patiently. She could feel her hands getting sweaty. Her forehead too. It wasn't the same as explaining swear words to Mac, somehow. "Or when they couldn't think of any other words to say Buttercup. So don't let me hear you say it, okay? I believe I've taught you many other words to use. Can you promise me that, Buttercup?"
"Yes, Miss Keane…" Buttercup agreed somewhat reluctantly. The enhanced little girl thought that there was more to say about swear words and why they should be allowed - or why she should be allowed to use it, but she knew the consequences of pursuing what was thought to be wrong. After all, she had killed when she was not supposed to. What's a little swear word compared to that?
"Now, do you have any other questions?" Miss Keane quickly asked before Buttercup could say anything else.
"Yes, Miss Keane," Buttercup said, her eyes lighting up once more. Usually, when a child had a question with that kind of look on her face, Miss Keane would be thrilled to entertain her. But with Buttercup, it was a whole different story altogether. "What does 'shit' mean?"
And she could only be glad that she wasn't holding her cup of tea, and that the other children were far away so they couldn't overhear it.
"It's a bad word, blah, blah, blah - don't say it," Miss Keane explained in a more abridged format, laughing nervously as she found her patience a little worn. Never in her career had a child dared to ask about two swear words on a single day… Until now. Even if it was Townsville she was living in. Even the more roguish of the little 'uns were smarter than that and would be dissuaded and wiser the moment she saw her smile disappear. It wasn't a milestone in her now-colorful career she cared to reach. "Do you have words to ask me about that aren't vulgarities?"
"Oh," Buttercup became downcast all of a sudden, and Miss Keane could feel guilt rising in her - had she been too tough on Buttercup? For a moment, she had forgotten that she was dealing with a little girl who had to skip the first four years of her life due to some mad science experiment on the part of the USDO, and now she wanted to somehow make up for it. But unknown to her, Buttercup had a different reason for being upset. The bad words had been fun, but the moment she remembered the real reason why she had approached her kindergarten teacher, it was as if the weight of months of sadness had gone down on her.
Miss Keane reached out to Buttercup and patted her on the back, sensing something disturbing. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"Promise me you won't tell my Dad?" Buttercup pleaded with her teacher.
"What is this about?" Miss Keane asked, nothing if concerned. Buttercup was never the one to be upset over anything - her most common mode of expression was either one of an extroverted exterior or outright, aggressive meanness. The way she looked right then had overridden the fear Miss Keane had for a psychopathic outburst, though she wished that she was never given the brief on the USDO psychiatrist Alice's discovery of Buttercup's mental condition.
"Please?" Buttercup repeated her plea.
"Yes, dear…" Miss Keane promised, her own curiosity stoked as well. "Ask away."
"Why would I be called a 'subject' and 'lab experiment', Miss Keane? It sounds wrong, and what does it mean?" Buttercup finally asked, dredging up her earliest memories of when she realized something was… off, though she didn't know what. The uncertainty gnawed at her and had haunted her time and again over the months, added onto by other words used to describe her, words she had overheard when they thought she couldn't hear. It had been two months, and she still hadn't divulged the fact that she had developed a powerful sense of hearing that could be focused to listen in on a conversation far away, or that was obstructed by sound-unfriendly obstructions, something analogous to Blossom's ability to see with clarity something extremely far away, even zooming in on it as if her eyes were binoculars. "Why do they call me a lab rat, Miss Keane?"
It wasn't what Miss Keane expected, and it'd thrown her for a loop a second time around. She considered what Buttercup had asked about carefully, even as the enhanced little girl was looking expectantly at her because she knew it had something to do with the USDO and the fact that they had created the Girls in a lab somewhere. How, she didn't know for sure, but it didn't make for a regular childhood, whatever the method was.
On one hand, she was sure that the USDO would not want the Girls to know anything about their genesis, but on the other hand… Professor Utonium and Selicia had trusted her with the job of taking care of them - and they weren't exactly just acting as their parents. She had seen hundreds of parents before, and she could tell very well the negligent from the role models, and the professor and security officer seemed to be the latter.
The Girls had implicitly trusted her - that was perhaps the most important thing, and she wasn't about to betray that.
'What do I say?' the million-dollar question continued to reverberate in Miss Keane's mind. 'What should I say?'
"Miss Keane?" Buttercup repeated her plea, inadvertently pressuring Miss Keane to make the impossible decision.
"Buttercup… It's not your mom and dad who said those things, is it?" Miss Keane probed further, buying time.
"No, teach. It's my Dad's friends," Buttercup replied. "And people I worked with when I beat up the bad guys, too."
In a way, that had been a lie. Buttercup had heard more than she let on, and some of it had come from Mommy and Daddy's mouths. She just didn't want to ruin it by asking too much from the teacher.
On the side, in her mindscape, Miss Keane couldn't help but lament the state she had been reduced to. Mere months ago, she had a perfect life and a routine going - she would have been happy being a teacher for the rest of her life. And then the USDO came and put her in charge of the Girls' education. She could take the Girls as a challenge - after all, how many teachers on Earth would ever have the opportunity to educate what were essentially superheroes straight from the cartoons or movies? The difficulties of working with an overbearing federal agency that wouldn't hesitate to burn the constitution and whoever stood in their way, however, was certainly not what she wanted to put up with.
"A lab experiment is something a scientist do to find out how things work," Miss Keane explained. "They call someone a subject when she's… I mean, he's been… uh, tested on. A lab rat is a rat used as a subject…"
She had all but given Buttercup the facts, deciding that her duty was to the children first and foremost. But with reservations. She had decided to let Buttercup connect the dots, and having worked with children for a long time, she knew that it would be a while before she could fully understand the implications of it all.
"Maybe you heard wrongly, Buttercup," Miss Keane suggested. "They might not even be referring to you. They could be talking about something else."
"Yeah, Miss Keane. Maybe you're right," Buttercup said with a flat tone; she meant none of it. She knew what she had heard, and though she vaguely realized that her memory was not as perfect as it used to be, she could remember, word-for-word, what she heard. 'I'm sorry for calling the kids subjects and lab experiments,' Wiggums had said when he visited back in early December.
'They may look like cute little girls, but they are dangerous! They are living weapons. Creatures. They're things! Not human!' Blackwater had called her all sorts of names back when Mister Blake was marched off by the big oaf with crow's feet and wrinkles on his face. With Blackwater, Buttercup understood things a little better. The words he used were simple, but they'd said a lot about how he viewed her.
It was at the tip of Buttercup's tongue. She had the answer to the mystery of these words, she knew it! The only thing barring her from the truth was her inexperience with the way of the world.
But even she knew that if she gave it enough thought, she would be able to understand what was going on.
The City of Townsville. Pokey Oaks North. Pokey Oaks Kindergarten
3 FEB 1989 (Friday). 1305.
"I knew that this would happen," Professor Utonium moaned as if he was in pain. He was sitting in Miss Keane's office, next to Selicia, his 'wife'. Miss Keane had called them for a meeting, about the Girls' development - well, mainly Buttercup and Bubbles. Selicia embraced him closely, trying to make the matter less painful. She couldn't be sure if it was helping. The Girls were his prime source of joy, even more so than she was or would ever be, and anything that happened to them were like grenades in his face, no matter how slight, no matter how inconsequential. It was a wonder he was still standing. "It's hard enough for a trained adult to keep his sanity and character intact whenever they head out there. I can't imagine… How much harder it is for the Girls."
Miss Keane had shown them the Girls' drawings in class - the ones she had kept hidden away in her 'Triple-B drawer'. The earliest one had dated back to just after the Girls' maiden mission at Townsville Central Bank. Buttercup had drawn a picture of her pulverizing a robber. After that, it was one gruesome sight after another, rendered increasingly detailed and accurate as Buttercup became better and better at drawing. Some of Bubbles' drawings weren't much better. Had Miss Keane looked at the drawings without knowing the kid, she would have thought that it came from a street kid in living in a bad neighborhood with a broken family or a young patient in a mental hospital.
And then she had told them about it. Buttercup's questions. Selicia couldn't see the big deal in it.
"And Buttercup… Jesus- Now that's exactly what she needs! Had she been a normal little girl, she wouldn't have learned those stuff just yet…" the professor lamented, looking like he was having a hard time keeping a straight face. He didn't just mean the fact that Buttercup was an individual enhanced by Chemical X - it wouldn't have mattered with that. It was her psychopathy that wouldn't be a good ingredient to mix with a load of expletives.
"Would it help if I say that it's not unheard of? For little children to ask such questions?" Miss Keane said. It wasn't the first time she had this conversation with a nervous wreck of a parent. That wasn't the problem - the problem was that they weren't dealing with normal kids here.
"Yeah, it's normal, right?" Selicia added, hoping to magnify the light Miss Keane was trying to shine on the issue. From her perspective, it was the norm for her. She had learned to swear right from the get-go, even before she went to school.
"Well, actually… nevermind," Miss Keane aborted her reply before she could do any real damage to their progress. "The point is, it's not the end of the world. Even when we're talking about… the other things. Buttercup's… um… issues and Bubbles' troubles. I've seen normal kids handle psychological issues similar to what your Girls are going through, and they turned out fine. It's part of growing up for some."
What Miss Keane did not tell them was that for every kid who turned out fine, there was one or more who didn't. But they didn't need to hear that. What they also didn't need to hear, Miss Keane decided, was Buttercup's other questions, questions that came too close to blowing the lid on the truth about her life and existence.
After all, she wasn't about to break a promise with one of her little schoolkids. 'It's like telling adopted children that they're adopted before they're ready - not exactly something one should do.' Miss Keane rationalized her decision, and it helped with her guilt and keeping a poker face in front of the Utoniums.
In the meantime, Buttercup had been listening outside the office, eavesdropping, just like she always did, while her sisters remained none the wiser, playing their lame finger games while they waited.
