Chapter 16: Convalescence
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
8 FEB (Wednesday) 1989. 1113.
Selicia had to carry Blossom to her room after Thomas was done checking on her injuries - the professor had opted instead to remain in the lab to continue his work on Anti-X, making final checks on his calculations and chemical theories. The Girls were recovering quickly, though their wounds were too heavy for an overnight convalescence. Blossom held on gratefully to Selicia's neck with both her hands as she began to doze off. Lack of sleep last night and her injuries meant that they would need an extra nap.
Emerging into the Girls' room, she put her down on Buttercup's side of the bed, beside her sisters, who were already asleep, partly because of the medication they consumed. Blossom slipped into the green side of the tri-colored blanket on her own with a wince.
"There you go, Blossy-dear," she said as she tucked her in. "All safe and sound now."
"I love you, Mom," Blossom liked Mom when she was like this - caring and nurturing, almost as much as Dad. As she thought about this fact, Selicia leaned in and gave her a kiss on the forehead.
"But don't you feel too safe, dear," Selicia said as she took a bottle of concentrated painkiller from the nightstand on Blossom's side. The painkiller was specially produced for the Girls, made to overwhelm their resistance to the usual concentration of chemicals.
"Why, Mom?" Blossom asked with a yawn - with sleep overtaking her, she didn't read too much into what she said, nor would she be all that capable of it. "I feel safe with you and Dad…"
"Because I won't forgive you for what happened to Buttercup in the woods," Selicia said bluntly, before producing a spoon and pouring some painkiller into it. Blossom had been on the cusp of sleep, her eyes closing, but on hearing this, they opened wide. The little girl pushed herself up close to the headboard, trying to sit up, but she'd ended up about halfway up as her wounds had started to hurt them.
"Mom, please don't," Blossom pleaded with her Mom, who seemed to have transformed right before her eyes on the effects of her magic words. "I tried - I really tried. I love Buttercup, I really do!"
"Shh… It's okay, darling. I believe you," Selicia simply shushed Blossom derisively with a smile as she ran her hands down her face - she liked it when the powerful enhanced little girl was terrified of her so utterly. "It's worse that you love Buttercup. It just means you've failed someone you love."
"Your punishment will come. Just not now. We'll talk about it when you're fully healed," Selicia pushed the spoon of painkiller up close to her lips. "Now drink."
Blossom opened her mouth and let the spoon slip into her mouth, her eyes still fixed on her Mom's. She felt the spoon tilt in her mouth, and she swallowed the bitter-tasting fluid. Selicia took a glass of water from the nightstand and fed Blossom some water for the taste after that.
"Now lie back down dear," Selicia said, deceptively sweet and warm. She helped pull Blossom into a comfortable sleeping position, looming over her like a bear. A dangerous, magically transforming momma bear. "Sweet dreams…" She chuckled before leaning in again to plant another peck on Blossom, this time right on her lips, up close and personal, just to invade what little personal space she had and show the little enhanced bitch who owned who. Blossom tried to get away from it, but her injury and the tight space meant that she could not.
The painkiller took effect quickly, and as Selicia stood up, Blossom could immediately feel its side effects. Her vision blurred, and no matter how she fought to stay awake, she soon slipped into a much-needed sleep.
The City of Townsville. Downtown. Sal's Milk Bar.
8 FEB (Wednesday) 1989. 1521.
As promised, Detective Mullens had met the Girls for their fortnightly meet-up at Sal's Milk Bar. Detective Olivia and Stanley Talker had come along too. They were all out of uniform; the Girls had been deactivated for duty as they had yet to recover fully from their atrocious injuries, while Mullens, Olivia, and Stanley had all taken the day off.
The Girls were in their normal dresses with their sashes tied around their waist like ribbons. White high socks and Mary-Jane shoes. But they were also dressed as much in bandages, and Blossom had suffered the worst of it: the Purple Man's blow was hard enough to cause hairline fractures in her arm. As such, her left arm was in a sling. Most of the bandages were wrapped around the chest, out of sight.
The detectives were out of their trenchcoats – that was just about the only difference with them. Stanley Talker the talking dog had opted to go with a grey hoodie and a short pants.
Things had changed - it didn't take a veteran detective to notice things. The Girls used to sit together at the bar tables, but now, Bubbles had retreated to an empty booth, nesting in a corner seat by the window as if shielding herself from an explosion waiting to happen. Her milkshake sat on the table untouched, where everyone else's was almost done. The ice in her tall glass had already melted halfway to nothing, forming a film of cloudy water on top.
Still, Bubbles sat all alone, hunched and staring into the table, her eyes glazed over like a corpse's. Had Mullens not known any better, he would have thought that she was a wax statue installed by the milk bar to improve customer patronage.
Blossom and Buttercup, on the other hand, seemed to be getting along a little better. They were talking to each other a little more, likely because Bubbles had been taken out of the equation. What did require a veteran detective to figure out was the fact that the Girls had gone through another traumatic event the previous day in the woodland reserves. He'd called up Agent Blake to check on the Girls, and it wasn't as easy as it seemed; he had to go through a USDO operator before he was allowed to speak to him.
From what he heard, it ain't good. Blossom had spilled everything to Agent Blake, who was her next closest confidante after her father, and he'd found out from Blake that Bubbles had basically committed a sin in police partner code terms. She had failed to watch her sisters' back even when they'd watched hers. And her reason wasn't any better: It was because she was scared.
It sounded bad, and Bubbles ought to sound like the dirty little villain, but the detective couldn't blame the little kid. After all, they were kids, whether three months old or five years, it didn't matter. She wasn't ready for the kind of shit even adults fear in the streets, super-strength and eye beams or not.
Stanley Talker had taken notice of Bubbles earlier on. After slurping up his milkshake in a bowl, he'd jumped on top of the booth seat Bubbles was on and licked her in the face, anticipating a giggle or at least a smile. It didn't work. So he sat next to her and did what he was best known for.
"Hrrr… Can't be that terrirle, can rit?" the talking dog said. The truth was, even he knew that it was bad - Detective Mullens had briefed him and Olivia on what he'd found out about the Girls' operation the previous day. Bubbles did not answer. "Talk to re, kid."
"It was…" Bubbles whispered in such a soft manner that even the talking dog had difficulty hearing it.
"Rut you knor what?" Stanley Talker said, trying to coax Bubbles into talking more. He found it to be effective as far as he knew. There were lots of officers in his station who needed someone to talk to - they'd treated him as some sort of a therapy dog and he was a damned good one at that, being able to fulfill the roles of both a team pet and conversation partner at the same time.
"What?" Bubbles mumbled as a tear escaped an eye.
"The world risn't so rad," the talking dog said, and by that he meant that the world wasn't so bad. "Rook rat re - Ri ras running from re rUSDrO for ronths rand now life's reen good rith re police."
"I hate myself," Bubbles sniffled. "I hate this world."
"Don't say that," Talker said. "Tell yourself that things will get retter. Trust re, Rur-rles." Bubbles did not say a word to that. In her mind, it was impossible to believe the talking dog. Things were bad in the past, and things had been bad since. January was good only because it wasn't as bad. The world seemed to consist only of different degrees of terrible to Bubbles.
"Rur-rles?" the talking dog tried to get Bubbles' attention when he realized she hadn't replied to him. "Do you want to re ralone?"
Bubbles replied by wrapping her arm around the dog's neck, and the talking dog knew what he meant. Sitting down in the booth beside her, he allowed Bubbles to lean on him and rub her tears away with his hoodie.
Time slipped by like a trickle of sand in an hourglass. Bubbles had done nothing in the meantime, taking not even a sip of her milkshake. If there was an hourglass, it was broken because time seemed to have stood still at that moment.
The stillness was only broken when Detective Mullens slipped into the booth, sitting on the opposite side of the table as Bubbles.
"You mind if I have a minute with Bubbles here?" he asked Stanley Talker. Wordlessly, the talking dog stood on all fours, gave Bubbles a friendly lick in the cheek before turning around and jumping off the seat.
"I heard it was bad," Mullens spoke respectfully, softly to the depressed little girl. She, however, had kept staring at her lap. The old detective continued: "I won't lie to you, girlie, and I won't sugar-coat it. It was terrible, what happened yesterday, and I can't say that you're blameless."
Bubbles' only response was to shut her eyes. What she did wasn't a mystery when tears had fought through her eyelids regardless. The detective could feel, no, he knew, that she had balled up her fists. He knew because he used to do it, back in the day when everyone he cared about were still fresh memories that he could almost touch.
"You could have done something to distract the Purple Man. Shot at him or punched him, or anything to get your sisters out of the way. They would have been killed, Bubbles," the detective went on. Despite the accusative content of his words, he was still being soft-spoken and gentle – something Bubbles would never have imagined Mullens to be more than a month ago.
"I'm sorry…" Bubbles mewled, then sniffled.
"That's good. It means you know what's wrong. It means you love your sisters, and you won't do it again," Mullens added. "As much as I hate the idea of the three of you leading the fight against crime. Bubbles, I know what you want, and I'm sure many people want the same for the three of you just as much. Including me. Children, you know, should be safe and happy and having fun."
"I don't want anything anymore," Bubbles sobbed.
"Yes, you do. You're just too upset right now to see it," Mullens said. "You know, an old man like me… I've made mistakes like yours too. Wanna hear it?"
Bubbles sniffled. "It can't be as bad as yesterday," she said. To Mullens, it felt like a win because, at the very least, she seemed interested in what he had to say.
"Oh, but it can be. I was once a young, handsome cop in a neat uniform, you believe that?" Mullens reminisced.
"No…" Bubbles let slip.
"Right. Anyway, I wasn't so handsome when I had my first multiple armed perps scenario," the old detective went on with his story. "Old jewelry store in Old Town. We went in there, guns blazing. I was caught in the shoulder like you. My partner and two others went on, but it went south really quickly. They called for my help, but I stayed down for, I don't know, half a minute maybe. By the time I got my act together, my partner had to be put in ICU and those two other cops? They gave their lives for a fistful of pretty, shiny stones belonging to some man they don't know. All because I took half a minute too long to act."
When Bubbles heard the story, she finally broke into a full-on sob.
"Bubbles, hey," Detective Mullens said softly to the enhanced little girl – how times had changed; two months ago, he would have more likely smacked Bubbles in the cheek but now… "Look at me." And she did, giving him that needy, thirsty look. "Do you understand what I'm getting at?"
Bubbles shook her head – too upset to think, so upset she likely couldn't even add one to one, much less put two and two together.
"That story I told you? It was a dime in a dozen. I've made more mistakes since and I'm still sitting here with a badge on my belt and a gun to waste them low-lives," the detective spelled it out for her. "You're luckier than I am, Bubbles. Do you believe that?"
"No…" Bubbles said dejectedly.
"You have two sisters, Bubbles. I had one really close brother-in-arms and he's gone. Your sisters are still there, drinking strawberry and mint milkshakes. You still have a chance to make things right with them. And those men who died because of me? No matter how many criminals I put in the slammer, I can't bring them back." Detective Mullens said, a hint, just a hint of sadness in his voice. The stonewall he'd been building in him over the past few decades had gotten as long and thick as the Great Wall of China, but it was never enough to keep all of it in, and Bubbles saw that. She reached out for his hand, and he took it, even though he had great reservations for showing any emotions except in front of Olivia.
But Bubbles soon fell back into her depression again, like a flatlined heart a doctor had failed to resuscitate.
"But they hate me," she murmured. "Buttercup has always hated me and now Blossom hates me too…"
"They're just really mad. Give them time, kid," Detective Mullens advised. "If my ol' pal could come around eventually – even though he shouldn't have - I'm sure your sisters will."
"But you weren't there yesterday," Bubbles said, and the bare mention of 'yesterday' had gotten her sobbing harder than ever.
"What do you mean?" the detective asked. "Here, at least take a sip of your milkshake before you die of dehydration." He pushed Bubbles' blueberry milkshake closer to her. The sweet little girl took one short suck of the straw from it as if it was laced with poison, before insisting on death by dehydration.
"We were taken home yesterday late at night, and Blossom and Buttercup hadn't spoken to me ever since the Purple Man…"
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
7 FEB (Tuesday) 1989. 2113.
The Girls were taken home late at night, and Blossom and Buttercup hadn't spoken to Bubbles ever since the Purple Man. This was despite their injury having no effect on their voices and consciousness - Buttercup had woken up hours ago. Despite being put in the same Lamborghini speed transport - Mister Blake's - Blossom and Buttercup hadn't even so much as turned to look in her general direction. They had only spoken briefly to each other, but never to her, and sometimes about her, rudely referring to her in the third person.
When the speed transport had finally pulled up at The House, the light at the window was already switched on. Professor Utonium and Selicia were out the door faster than the Girls could leave Agent Blake's car, and the Girls were in a deplorable state - most of their gear was taken off, they were bandaged all over and all of them had thick thermal blankets on. Blossom's face looked like it had been trampled upon. Bubbles was a poster child for a Good Samaritans depression detection ad. Buttercup's mouth was kept close by a cloth wrapped around her head, under the chin.
Professor Utonium and Selicia were, of course, shocked, with the former looking almost sickly, something that had never happened ever since the previous year. Rushing up to the Girls, Selicia bent down to hug Buttercup while the professor did the same with Blossom and Bubbles - though he had to pull Bubbles closer as she was trying to stay away from Blossom for some reason.
"How on Earth did this happened, Blake!?" the professor accused the Girls' chaperone. "What did you do!?"
"I'm sorry, Utonium," Agent Blake said, making no attempts to defend himself. His second-in-command and closest men, however, had become more guarded.
"They were trying to help my men and they were… attacked by a hostile enhanced individual. I rushed to help them as fast as I could and…" he tried to explain. His soft voice, his apologetic tone, however, did nothing to calm the professor down. Standing up, he started aggressively towards Blake.
"I put my daughters' lives in your hand! I trusted you and-" the professor growled at the security lieutenant.
"Dad, no!" Bubbles cried and pulled her Daddy by the hand strong enough that she was able to stop him, at the cost of aggravating her wounds. "Ow!"
"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry!" the professor desisted when he realized he had hurt his sweetest adopted daughter in his anger. Selicia came up to the professor, putting her arms around him.
"Thomas, honey, we need to take care of our Girls first," Selicia said, and reluctantly, he backed away from Agent Blake. She then turned to Blake and whispered an apology to him.
The family had literally spent the night in the lab as a result of the disaster that was the manhunt. The Girls' injuries were grievous enough that they had to be put under and performed on simultaneously. By midnight, they had hundreds of stitches between them and the professor thought that the Girls were lucky they did not have internal injuries. He had examined their wounds while they were asleep and came to the conclusion that whoever it was that attacked them was strong enough to maim them as easily as a bear would a regular human being. Had the Purple Man aimed a little lower, he might have ripped open their bellies and done the damage he wasn't sure even their healing factor could remedy.
The next day, he and Selicia had made sure to prepare the biggest, tastiest breakfast for them, and before they even woke up, they carried them upstairs into the living room. With them convalescing, even with their lightning-fast healing factor, it would take more than a night for them to come back from the Purple Man's savage attacks.
When the Girls finally woke up, it didn't take long for the professor to realize that the damage done to them wasn't just physical. At the dinner table, there seemed to be a change in the relationships between the three of them. Where Buttercup was previously the odd one out, Bubbles had fallen silent with her eyes glued to everything else but her sisters - mostly her plate of waffles. Blossom was talking to Buttercup more, though not as much as Blossom and Bubbles would have. Every time Bubbles tried to engage in conversation with Blossom, she would be given the glare and ignored.
Not wanting to force the Girls to get along as it would be futile, the professor left them be. Selicia secretly liked the new dynamic better, even if she disliked Blossom. It meant that Buttercup had risen in importance. Although she had less against Bubbles than she did against Blossom, Selicia thought that Bubbles didn't deserve to be at the right hand of Blossom - she had neither worked for it nor put her position to use. Blossom had been making decisions all alone and Bubbles would just follow them blindly and jump off a cliff like a lemming if the almighty and glorious leader said so. Buttercup would make a better right hand, if not a better leader.
At least, that was what Selicia read into the dynamics among the Girls.
School was out again as a result of the Girls' injuries. The professor had to phone Miss Keane about it, and Miss Keane had expressed her fears that the Girls' education would be affected if this kept up, going on to say that early childhood was a critical period for the Girls' development, a period which would end whether or not the Girls had learned everything their potential would allow.
"I can't thank you enough, Miss Keane, for looking out for the Girls," Professor Utonium had said before hanging up. "But it won't come to that. I think I have a solution for that too."
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
8 FEB (Wednesday) 1989. 1315.
Playtime was more passive than before, owing to the severe injuries the Girls had suffered. Bubbles, however, bore the brunt of it as she had kept to herself as much as Blossom and Buttercup were alienating her. While Bubbles played with her dolls in a corner of the room half-heartedly, more miserable than having fun, Buttercup had brought out her car collection, and Blossom had joined in on the vehicle mayhem she was starting. The pink-eyed girl had even managed to get Buttercup to play a more tame game simulating the traffic they'd been seeing in Townsville.
Their Dad had seen it all. He had passed by the room on purpose several times to check on them. He had suspected since breakfast that animosity had grown between Blossom and Bubbles, and he had been waiting for the perfect opportunity to 'corner' Blossom so he could solve this problem before it got any worse.
"Girls, I think it's time we prepare for your trip to the milk bar," the professor called out to them. Blossom and Buttercup responded with enthusiastic smiles on their face. He padded up to Blossom and Buttercup and stroked the latter girl in the head. "Why don't you go to Mom and she'll give you a sponge bath?"
"Bubbles, go with Buttercup," he said when he turned to the hunched form of the blue-dressed little girl in a corner of the Girls' room. At first, it seemed as if she didn't hear him, but then she got up (very) reluctantly and ambled towards the door.
"What about me?" Blossom asked, still beaming.
"I'll give you your sponge bath, flower bud," the professor said, before taking her hand. She had to go around him as one of her arms was in a sling. "I think your Mom will have her hands full with both Buttercup and Bubbles to take care of.
The professor led Blossom to the common bathroom out in the corridor. Inside, he shut the door behind them before turning the faucet at the bathtub.
"How are you, Blossom?" he asked as he felt the heat of the water, gauging it to be of an acceptable temperature. "Hanging in there?"
"I'm fine, I guess…" the leader of The Three said as she tried to remove her own dress, only to feel pain in her side. "Ouch…"
"Let me do it," the professor said, coming to her. "You get to be a princess today - you've done a lot yesterday. Too much, in fact." The professor's word choice had reminded Blossom of Princess - Elodie - and she could only wonder how she'd been doing all this while.
The professor removed Blossom's dress, slipping it from above her. He then went on to gently remove her bandages. The sight underneath was horrific - the wounds had healed just about halfway, which meant that there were still hideous rifts in the enhanced little girl's skin, all across her chest and arms. The stitches were still there, many dozens of them. Blossom had seen it while she was changing into her dress, but she couldn't get used to it: seeing it again made her upset. And angry. And the professor could see it in her eyes. It was the perfect opportunity for him to act.
"Do you want to talk about it, Blossom?" he asked, and as the water rose in the tub, he sat down on the side of it and gently - carefully - lifted Blossom and placed her on his lap. She didn't answer as she was conflicted about it.
"Whatever happened out there, Blossom should stay out there," the professor said. "Bubbles is still your sister - and she'll always be your sister. She's the sweetest girl I know. You're lucky to have her."
"Lucky!? Look at what she's done to me! I should have listened to Buttercup!" Blossom yelled, out of control, before regretting it when she realized she had startled her own Daddy. She had been going out of control lately, and it was something she couldn't fail to notice. Hot tears prickled her eyes after she realized it had happened again, and right in front of her father. "I'm sorry…"
"Honey, it's okay," the professor cooed at Blossom, but she'd already started crying.
"I've changed, haven't I?" Blossom sobbed. "I promised you I'll always be your little Blossom and now I've changed."
"Hey, you are my little Blossom - that hasn't changed," her Dad comforted her, wiping her tears away. "It's not Bubbles' fault bad things happened. You have to accept that, Blossom."
Try as she might, Blossom couldn't understand what the professor said. Bubbles was clearly at fault, for failing to act when she could have. She was mostly fine, and could have done something to help. She was mostly fine, and she and Buttercup were badly hurt because she had cowered when they needed her. Without knowing it, Blossom had put on a scowl as hideous as her wounds, and the professor noticed it.
"She did nothing when the Purple Man was hurting me, Dad," Blossom asserted. "She loves me but she did nothing when I needed her."
The professor sighed, unsure of what to say. The way Blossom had put it, it did seem like it was Bubbles' fault. Still, the professor could never blame Bubbles - the Girls weren't supposed to be out there, to begin with. At least, that was his view.
"I don't expect you to forgive her immediately, but you have to try Blossom," he added. "You're the smartest of them all. Why not show Bubbles how wise you are and maybe she'd be inspired to do better next time?" Memories of Bubbles cowering while she was getting pounded on and cut up by the Purple Man, however, told her otherwise. This, along with how she had screwed up in the sewers and factory, had put the final nail in the coffin.
"I'll think about it," Blossom said in a defiantly sarcastic way. It seemed familiar to the professor. Where had he heard that before? It was the first time he heard Blossom say it.
Unknown to both of them, Selicia had redirected Bubbles back to the professor as she wanted to be alone with Buttercup. Feeling unwanted and miserable, Bubbles was walking back to her room when she heard both her dad and Blossom talking. Even her Dad thought she was wrong. She'd been eavesdropping, and she'd heard the whole thing.
And what they had said behind her back broke her heart.
The City of Townsville. Downtown. Sal's Milk Bar.
8 FEB (Wednesday) 1989. 1535.
When Bubbles was done narrating her story, she was back to sobbing again, not that she had ever stopped.
"Jesus, kid," Detective Mullens said. "That's really something alright."
Bubbles story had rendered him speechless. It wasn't every day that he'd heard such stories. It was just about as bad as the kind he would hear from street kids - children who were either mixed up in gangs or had family members who were into that kind of stuff. Except Bubbles' was the limited edition law enforcement version.
"Listen… People say all sorts of things when they're mad," he reasoned. "And your father's just trying to make peace between you and your sis. I don't think he agrees with Blossom at all."
Bubbles sniffled. "You think so?" she said. "What if she's angry forever?"
"Nah, ain't gonna happen, girlie," the detective said. "It takes a lot of energy to be angry. I know for a fact that it… eats away at you. Olivia used to be mad at me, and she's as stubborn as they come, just like me."
"Really?" Bubbles said, unconvinced. She was no stranger to stories and tall tales that weren't true.
"I'm not playing with you. Look at us now - a dad-daughter team, and a pretty good one too," Detective Mullens said, trying to sound as optimistic as he could, no matter how much the world had beaten him down. Even if he had to appear a little cartoonish. "My point is, anger isn't forever, kiddo. Now, a lil' girl like Blossom… I don't think she's got it in her to stay mad for very long."
Bubbles looked out the window. The winter clouds above had blocked out most of the sunlight, but there was a silver lining between two clouds, allowing some light through. Mister Mullens had said much about her problem - and she thought that that was enough, even if she doubted most of it. Perhaps there's a silver lining for her too, after all?
"I believe you…" Bubbles said. It was all she could do, with things going out of her control. Finally, after what seemed like forever, she took a hearty, long sip from her milkshake.
