Chapter 155: The Boomstick

Pokey Oaks County. Pokey Oaks Woodland Reserve

25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 1308.

Stirring awake, Blossom opened her eyes. For a moment, she had expected to find herself in her own room, with Dad opening the door and greeting her. Instead, she found herself staring at the wooden ceiling of a less familiar dwelling. Glancing at her sisters, she found that she was the first to wake up as usual. Sitting up, she turned to the first source of noise she could hear to find Lumpkins with his massive purple-furred denim-covered back turned to her. He was working at the 'kitchen' area of the cottage, preparing something.

Blossom could smell both smoke and food, what amounted to an aroma in these parts.

Her first instinct, however, was to cower away from Lumpkins. Crawling up to Bubbles and Buttercup, she nudged them awake. It took them awhile to be fully alert. By the time they were, Lumpkins had turned around with a wooden tray in his mitten-covered hands and a leather apron around him.

"Afternoon to the three of ya," he greeted the Girls. He still appeared terrifying even when his smokey-grey eyes had gained some character. "Yer three hungry?" he showed them the dishes on his tray. There were three dishes and a large bowl. Lumpkins' share was his Venison on Forest Stew from yesterday. The Girls' dishes were brimming with food. Scrambled eggs, mainly, but with sticks of venison to go along with it.

"Afternoon?" Blossom wondered, looking out the closest window.

"Da three of you slept really soundly," Lumpkins said. "Didn't think you'd trust me that much."

After a brief bath and the rinsing of their mouths with nothing but water, they settled down for breakfast around the dining table, an expectant Lumpkins watching them with enthusiasm uncommon in him.

"What?" Buttercup asked as she was munching on her dried venison, annoyed that she was being stared at, but worst yet, she was annoyed that she was sitting behind the same table as someone she was actually afraid of.

"Well? 'Ow's breakfast?" Lumpkins asked, smiling – actually smiling – for once.

"It's really nice," Bubbles said. Lumpkins studied her face and decided that she was being sincere. He was satisfied with his own conclusion; in his time with the Powerpuff Girls, he'd noticed that they had no guile and were easy to read.

"Yeah, it's better than yesterday's stew," Blossom added. "I really like the eggs. Did they come from the chickens behind your house?"

Lumpkins didn't frown this time. Instead, he kept on smiling. He'd gotten a compliment even if it came at the cost of another jab at his stew, but he'd take whatever he could get. After last night's revelation, he could finally find within himself some kind of patience, some kind of peace, and it was all thanks to the Girls.

"Yea', those were some good chick'ns," he said. "They don't run or squawk much."

"Maybe we should thank them for the eggs later," Bubbles said with a smile and a giggle.

"Hey, purple man, do you have milk somewhere in this house?" Buttercup asked.

"No, I ain't got no cows 'round here," Lumpkins said.

After they were done, Lumpkins would scoop up all the dishes, which were picked clean by the still-desperate Girls, and bring them to a basin of water at the kitchen corner before dumping them in.

"You know, y'kids ain't that bad," Lumpkins said with his back turned as he did the dishes. "The three of you can stay if y'want," he added.

"Do you really mean it?" Blossom asked, jubilant. It was the first time in a long string of catastrophes that things were looking up.

"Do we really even w-" Buttercup received a habitual elbow jab from Blossom before she could finish.

"That would be nice, Mister Lumpkins," Bubbles said toothily.

"But why are you being… nice all of a sudden?" Blossom asked. Lumpkins stopped before turning around. He said down behind the dining once again, though this time the Girls didn't feel threatened by him. He would then go on to tell them about what he had recollected last night while they were sleeping.

"An' 'twas all thanks ter you, err…" Lumpkins stopped, realizing something. "I just 'membered that we hadn't 'ad a proper 'ntroduction."

Lumpkins' words were music to Blossom's ears. She smiled. She's making a new friend, it seemed!

"I'm Blossom," the leader of the three introduced herself, reaching out for a handshake. Lumpkin's claw-tipped hand engulfed hers.

"And I'm Bubbles," the smile and the laughter of the three said, shaking hands with the purple man next.

"And I'm Buttercup," the toughest of the three took her turn, though with less enthusiasm.

"And I'm still going by Lumpkins, Mister Lumpkins, since the three o' you pr'fer t' call me that," the beast reintroduced himself.

Later that day, Lumpkins had gone on to assign chores for the Girls, getting them to scrub the bathtub and clean the house while he went out to forage for more food. For the rest of the day, they chatted happily, getting to know each other better.

It was different in the forest. Unlike the city, there were no distractions from TVs and radios, no cars to honk at you or blast toxic exhaust In your face. There were no other people, and for a time, it was good.

Blossom, Bubbles and eventually, Buttercup did not know that they could chat with someone for such a long time. Eventually, however, the conversation turned towards the city once more.

"I miss Dad…" Blossom said, her mood turning melancholic once more. "I miss my house…"

"I miss Miss Keane, our class…" Bubbles added. "Bunny…"

"And Mom…" Buttercup reminisced alongside her sisters, caught up in this wave of sadness.

"And what can you do about it?" Lumpkins said as gentle as he could.

"I don't know," Blossom said. "Maybe we can go search for Dad… I really need to know for sure if he's alive or… or…" She fell silent for a second.

"But how can we find him in such a place as big as Townsville?" Bubbles said. Buttercup kept her mouth shut; she knew better than to challenge Blossom at such a time.

"I'll search through the city one building at a time if I have to…" Blossom said.

"Tis noble of you, but how 'bout making a huge ruckus and get yer USDO friends to come scramblin' atcha?" Lumpkins suggested. "Beat them all, git one of them to talk. That's how I'd do it."

"I don't know if we can…" Blossom admitted. The USDO had been growing stronger and stronger by the day. The last time they went up against it, they were met with a wall of fire and a cloud of disempowering mist.

"Yes y'can," Lumpkins said.

"How, Mister Lumpkins?" Bubbles asked.

"Cause I'm comin' with ya," Lumpkins offered.

"Really!?" the three Girls shouted in unison.

"Yes, really," Lumpkins said. "I'll make a ruckus with the three of you. But I'm parting ways with you in the city after that."

"But what are you going to do, Mister Lumpkins?" Blossom asked.

"I'm gonna look fer my wife and kid," Lumpkins said. "Blossom, ya helped me. Helped me remember some stuff. I reckon I can remember more if I git out there… Maybe there's somethin' in the city to help me 'member."

"Great. When are we leaving?" Buttercup asked excitedly – the idea of having Lumpkins at their side was thrilling. Together, she could only guess how much destruction they could cause.

"How 'bout right now?" Lumpkins said. "If we set off now and fly there, reckon we could reach the city 'fore nightfall, how does that sound?"

Blossom smiled. While she had doubts about the plan, she appreciated the dramatic change in Lumpkins and his offer to help more than anything. It'd given her hope. If Lumpkins, a formerly brutish monster, could make a turn for the better despite their differences and past, then anything could happen.

"It'll be great, Mister Lumpkins," she said, hovering into him for a hug. Lumpkins was surprised, but hugged her back.

"Imma start packing," he said after letting Blossom go.

"Hope the three o' you can carry my fat ass!" he joked as he started filling reused plastic containers with his stew. The Girls laughed and helped; they had only their firearms to collect in the cabinet.

All was well and the mood was great… Until there was a knock on the door.

Everyone: Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, and Lumpkins, looked up at the door.

"Hide!" Lumpkins whispered to the Girls, gesturing for them to hide, though he did not say where.

'Who could be visiting at this hour, and this deep in the woods?' Lumpkins thought. He had never had a visitor before until yesterday, and to have two visits in two subsequent days was extremely unusual.

'Two times' the charm' was a common saying that even Lumpkins knew despite his amnesia. He had been lucky the first time as his visitors turned out to be the friendly Powerpuff Girls. He thought that the second time wouldn't be so full of rainbows and sunshine.

The Girls scrambled to hide wherever they could, now all the more alert, and aware that the cottage wasn't exactly a great hiding spot due to the windows. Blossom hid behind a bookcase full of junk (and a few rare books) while Buttercup crammed herself in the gun cabinet, where there were no guns. Bubbles hid behind a chair at first, and when she saw that it wasn't sufficient, rolled under the bed and pulled down a part of Lumpkins' blanket to hide herself better.

Lumpkins picked up his crude, wonky wooden pitchfork once more and approached the door. After giving another growl-sigh, as if saying 'here we go again', he slammed open the door abruptly and pointed his pitchfork at whoever was on the other side of the door.

He had all sorts of ideas as to who was visiting: the deputy sheriffs of the closest town, forest rangers, unruly hooligans and the USDO were all possibilities he considered.

But not even for a second did he ever expect that a woman in a red cloak would come knocking on his door. Well, it wasn't just a woman in red. She had brought along some kind of a manservant who was muscular and showing it off since he was without a shirt – not that it intimidated him at all. The manservant appeared to be carrying a huge bag holding something long. The bag itself did not look like something made by city folks; it was made of leather stitched together and strange runes were painted on it.

"What d'ya want!?" Lumpkins asked gruffly.

"May I come in?" the woman simply asked, appearing unfazed by his aggressive stance. Lumpkins studied her, noting whatever features he could discern: she had light-brownish skin, and she appeared Asian; raven hair, brown eyes with knife edges. Her accent had been Japanese. She was wearing nothing under her cloak and she had been braving the forest floor with naked feet.

"I'm not takin' visitors t'day, lady," Lumpkins replied. The woman walked in regardless, appearance as if she did not hear him. Her manservant followed obediently, carrying that strange tribal bag of hers(?) "You deaf, lady? I says I ain't taking visitors t'day! Git da hell outta ma house!"

Something was off with the visitors. Way off. For one, they didn't seem intimidated at all - previously there hadn't been a single person who wasn't intimidated by him. Not even the Powerpuff Girls (before they were friends) could face him without showing terror in their eyes. Lumpkins looked down at where the red-cloaked woman had trodden on, for a brief moment worried about his floor.

There were no footprints where there ought to be normally. It had been rainy the previous day. The manservant had left none either.

"I know who you are… 'Lumpkins'," the woman in red said. Lumpkins was left dumbfounded. How did she know? The only people he had introduced himself to were Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. The grave! That no good, weird little city woman must be snooping around his place before knocking on the door! Yet, it wouldn't explain how the woman would knew he'd go by a dead man's name, and the surname no less.

Lumpkins didn't like any of this. He gripped his pitchfork tightly. The Girls might be in trouble, he was thinking. The pair of weirdos might be out looking for them, he reckoned, hunting for a bigger group or some such.

"I says, 'what d'ya want?', and yer bein' rude by not answerin'," Lumpkins demanded from the woman.

The woman in red turned around.

"I know exactly what you want, Lumpkins," the woman said in turn. It was driving Lumpkins nuts, how the stranger wasn't being straight forward. He would have torn her in half had her statement not intrigued him.

"I can bring it all back, Lumpkins," the woman said, coming closer to him. "You poor, poor thing. You've lost so… so much."

"What are ye talkin' about?" Lumpkins challenged the woman. Surely, she couldn't read minds, could she?

"Your broken possessions in this new life, answers to your endless questions…" the woman began listing off things that Lumpkins wanted, and they were exactly what he wanted. "Your old life. Your wife and son. Your job and your simple abode. Your memories…"

"How d'you figure all of ma stuff out?" Lumpkins said, completely taken off guard.

"I serve a powerful lord," the Japanese woman said. "A kind, giving lord, who demands little in return… And he knows you. He knows every inch of you - your problems, your needs… your wants."

Lumpkins glared at the woman. There was a catch somewhere. There was always a catch. The woman in red laughed.

"Why, of course there's something he wants in return," she said, as if she could read his mind. "But he is kind and courteous. He does not expect an answer immediately. In the meantime, he has something for you…" The woman turned to look at her manservant, who understood, as if this was all rehearsed, and started forward. After finding a table, the hulking manservant gently deposited the large tribal bag on it, as if it was made of fragile, thin glass.

"Think of it as a gift from a friend, someone who's been watching you since your birth," the woman said. "Even if you should reject the hand he extends towards you, you may keep it."

"An' what makes yer think I'd help him out?" Lumpkins said.

"Because he knows you'd want more than just what is in that bag…" the woman said as she turned to look at the bag. Lumpkins wondered at first what had held her attention before he himself turned to look at the bag, that strange red leather bag with the runic symbols painted on it. "Go ahead. I believe you'll understand once you see it."

Bewildered, Lumpkins approached the bag as if it was some dangerous wild beast from the forest. As he reached out to open it, the bag actually leapt a little, startling even the physically imposing Lumpkins. He did not try again until he was sure the bag would stay still.

He tried feeling for a zip, but there was none. Instead, there were leather straps looping around bone pins. He undid those and flipped open the leather bag quickly, as if expecting some kind of creature to jump out at him from the inside.

There was a gun in the bag, and it wasn't just any gun. It was Joe Lumpkins' old lever-action shotgun. He was sure of it! He could already see the old man's initials on the stock, except…

There were differences. It was bigger than he remembered, large enough that a normal man would look like a child if he tried to wield it - but the shotgun would fit well in his hands, too well. There was one other thing. The barrel was lined with what appeared to be red, glowing ancient runes.

They seem to speak to him.

They were speaking to him.

Both curious and needy, Lumpkins gripped the shotgun by the handle and picked it up. Energy coursed through his veins immediately, tendrils of red, tendrils of angry, bloodthirsty red!

He could feel a surge of power underneath his fur and skin, more so than ever before. It was as if all the muscles in his body was clenching up, being buffed up by an unknown, overwhelming force. His fur fluffed up, turning red.

And now he could no longer think of anything except one thing. He turned around to regard the woman in red with bloodlust, then glared at the beefy manservant beside her. Pumping the massive lever on the shotgun, he raised it and shot the manservant in the head.

There was nothing standing on the manservant's shoulders after that. The shots had gone right through and through the wooden wall behind him. Blood and tiny bits of brains, bone and skin spattered the singular room of the cottage.

Lumpkins pumped the shotgun eagerly and trained it on the woman in red while he was panting, completely pumped with adrenaline.

"I see that you're enjoying it," the woman in red said, completely calm as if this was all mundane and part of everyday life. "My master awaits your reply. In the meantime… go nuts."

With that, the woman turned around, undisturbed by the headless body of her fellow cultist, even stepping over it as if it was just a rotten log.

For some reason, Lumpkins did not fire his new cultic shotgun, and without another word, he lowered it and simply stood at the doorway, staring out of it and into space, still panting as if he had just gone for a marathon run.

Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup hid until they could hide in silence no longer. Blossom scanned the room once, then scanned it once more with her x-ray vision up. Whoever the cultist speaker was, she was gone, so Blossom signalled for she and her sisters to get out of their hiding spots.

But something was wrong. There was something different with Mister Lumpkins.

The Girls gathered into their bunch, watching Lumpkins huffing and puffing as if he was going to blow his own house down.

"M-mister Lumpkins?" Blossom murmured to him, frightened by his demeanor, and it was already almost completely dark out. "Are we still going to the city together?"

"Mister Lumpkins… Are you okay?" Bubbles mewled timidly.

The mountain of red fur turned around slowly, his new runic shotgun clutched in one hand. He stared down at them with glowing, red eyes. He seemed even larger than he was before, and his fur was red. Had all his teeth been fangs all along? The Girls knew it meant trouble.

"Get out," Lumpkins growled in a low, hushed tone, something which he didn't usually do.

"But Mister Lumpkins, what about you? You said you need to go to the city too," Blossom pursued suddenly.

"Yeah, you said you'd help us!" Bubbles added.

"Adults are all the same, they don't help," Buttercup added too, but this time, all Blossom could do was flash her a brief, annoyed look.

"Get out. I says out," Lumpkins continued speaking in that near-whispering tone, like a volcano about to explode. And then he did: "I SAID GIT! GIT DA HELL OUT OF MY 'OUSE!"

"Whoa, okay, okay!" Buttercup screamed in shock. "I didn't think I was that mean!"

Bubbles was completely paralyzed. Even Blossom couldn't believe her eyes; she felt her mind locked out for a second from sheer terror. But she was the leader, and she shook herself into action – pulling Bubbles and Buttercup by the hands, she led them out, running out of a cottage they were previously welcome in.

"GIT OUTTA MA 'OUSE! GIT OUT 'FORE I CHANGE MA MIND! OUT!" the Girls could still hear Lumpkins screaming, his voice along shaking the foundations of his wooden abode.

The Girls took flight as fast as they could, speeding away at the fastest speed they could muster, once again on the run. Even when they were far away, they could hear Lumpkins roaring like some forest cryptid.

There was nothing the Girls could do but fly into the night, with Blossom and Bubbles wiping their tears away.

It seemed that they had lost another friend. It wasn't lost on them that it had something to do with the cultist woman and the gun she gave him.

This time around, the Girls were truly lost, and it wasn't a pleasant feeling especially to Blossom. Once again, her plans had all but failed, and once again, she and her team were in trouble.

"What are we going to do, Blossom!?" Bubbles pressed her frantically, panicking and afraid since they were cast out, once again, from a place they were comfortable in – and it wasn't the first time. "Where are we going to go!? I thought Mister Lumpkins was a friend!"

"Yeah, Bloss, we need an idea and we need it now!" Buttercup followed along. Tough though she was, getting thrown out once again without a meal and any guarantee of the next meal was unpleasant. They were already getting hungry when the woman in red decided to pay a visit.

"I don't know!" Blossom cried as she looked left and right frantically, as if the sky could tell her where to go next, where to seek help. It couldn't.

And it didn't take long before someone would drive home the fact that they were now unsafe, for a squadron of choppers were now flying towards them from a distance, silhouetted against the darkening sky like banshees out on the hunt.

"We need to run! And quick!" Blossom shouted, contesting the wind for loudness, and by that, she meant flying away to escape. Forming a small delta, the Girls retreated in the same direction as fast as they could, their tri-colored streak lengthening as they picked up speed. The helicopters were still gaining on them, not close enough to fire upon them, but too close for comfort. They were a constant specter in the darkening horizon, like ghosts haunting them, reminding them of their past mistakes.

"But where to!?" Bubbles asked even as they were flying at top speed. The direction they had picked led further away from Townsville, and the great unknown of the world outside frightened her.

"I don't know, just fly!" Blossom screeched at her, more than annoyed by Bubbles' constant pestering for a solution.

"What about Monster Island!?" Buttercup suggested.

Monster Island. They had seen it on more than several occasions while they were patrolling the skies of Townsville. It was far off the coast of Townsville. Mayor Wilford had talked about it before when they mentioned it. Apparently, it was a lawless place where even the police and coastguards feared to tread. It was a far-from-ideal destination for anyone except suicidal thrill-seekers (or fugitives), a far cry from the amusement park and resort it once was.

It was better than nothing.

"Monster Island, it is!" Blossom agreed, for once, with Buttercup.