Part Six – Post Trauma: Stress and Disorder


Buttercup regained her senses almost instantly, and fell to the asphalt below. She was disoriented and confused. Her eyes were blurry, and she tried to blink them clear. It was dark. She shook her head, focusing on the streetlight near the end of the alley, a low sick yellow.

"What just happened?" It was a question to no one in particular. She rubbed her head and looked at her surroundings. Bubbles was standing across from her, clutching something red in her arms, while her robotic appendages sprawled lifelessly around her.

"Bubbles!" Buttercup shot to her feet and stood beside her sister. She looked down. "Blossom!" She dropped to her knees, holding her hands out as if to offer some help, but didn't know what to do. Blossom's eyes were closed, and she was breathing weakly.

What do I do? she asked herself. She couldn't think. She felt powerless. Her eyes became damp. She couldn't move.

"She's okay," Bubbles said, lifelessly, and Buttercup stared at her in surprise. "She's just weak."

Buttercup continued to stare at Bubbles; she knew something was wrong, but even if she could see it, she didn't know how she would be able to help. She brought her gaze back to Blossom... her body was thin... pale... but... for some reason, it looked different. She couldn't figure out how.

Blossom moved in Bubbles' arms and opened her eyes.

Buttercup started. Blossom's right eye was... What the— "Blossom!" She gripped her sister's hand, eliciting a quiet murmur of protest from its intensity.

Blossom smiled wanly. "Hi." She turned to Bubbles. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," Bubbles murmured. Her eyes were running tears down her face, and she was doing her best to hold back her weeping.

Blossom shook her head. "It's okay to cry, Bubbles."

Bubbles screwed up her face and began to sob; at first, she simply squeaked. Soon, her emotions burst forth, and she threw her head back and began to cry in earnest.


Bubbles cried what seemed hours, and her tears dripped down to mix with Blossom's, as if to help her sister make up for the fact that one of her eyes could no longer make any. Buttercup had fallen from a kneeling to a sitting position, and sat there, too dazed to think. Even about her sister's fake eye.
When Bubbles seemed to be calming down, Blossom looked at Buttercup.

"Buttercup."

"Yes!" she said, all too eager to ease her sense of helplessness.

Her eye, it's... But she couldn't bring out the words.

"Could you help me to my feet?"

"Yeah, I—" Huh? "Didn't you have problems before?"

"Yeah, but I wanna try again."

"Oh." Pause. "Okay." She lifted Blossom gently from their sister's lap, and Blossom sat up and came to a standing position against Buttercup's shoulder.

"Wow... you did it," Buttercup said, clearly impressed. "I honestly didn't think you could stand right now."

Blossom laughed weakly. "Let's go home."

They walked.


They walked, and the city loomed above them in the still darkness. There had been sweet rays of sunlight still feebly clinging, clutching at the sky when Bubbles first walked forward on the arms. Now, apart from the spanning haze of light that seeps through the bottom of every city's sky and the occasional glimpse of the downtown through the shapes of buildings, an inking glow from the lamps shining on the empty streets was all that lit the girls' way. The thinnest layer of clouds kept the night sky empty, kept the stars from appearance save for the rare break in their lining.

In the unending night, every skyscraper, every office building, every restaurant and diner, every apartment complex rose around them broken down; it seemed that each block was worse than the last, rotten and menacing, reaching off into the horizon and eventually becoming one with the mire of dark concrete and sparkling lights that formed the unruly skyline of downtown Townsville.

The lights were brightest at the downtown checkpoint into the place where the girls now walked. A radio on the edge of these ruins came alive, and, solemnly in this quiet hour, the military began to pack their gear and move out.


There was no sound except scraping on the concrete; Bubbles cowered as she walked, the robotic limbs tangled behind her, bathed momentarily in the light of the moon. The soft pule of her voice drifted out between the raking of metal. She began to slow down.

Still helping Blossom walk, Buttercup turned her head to Bubbles. "Are you okay with those?"

Bubbles faltered. "I—I can't..." She jerked her body, looking back at the arms; they were dead weight.

Buttercup winced at Bubbles. "Want me to tear them off?"

Blossom inhaled. She didn't turn her head, her eyes lucent and hazy, but she spoke with apparent awareness despite her exhaustion: "It's probably not... Not a good idea just yet. The computer. It was forcing you to control them. Your... with your head. They're in your back... Aren't they?"

Bubbles' head was low. Her mouth moved several times before she gave a more concrete reply. "Blos—Ye—Yes. I c-can feel them... B-but they won't move..."

Buttercup shuddered. "Does it hurt?"

Barely above a whisper, Bubbles murmured, "No... n-not... not really."

"Let's wait, then. Wait until we..." Blossom took a slow, weak breath. "...until... we get home before we do anything."

"Right," Buttercup nodded. "Good idea."

Bubbles stopped to gather them up and they kept walking. As she walked, she kept stealing glances at Blossom; her lower lip trembled. Still on the verge of tears, she finally found the words.

"Blossom?"

"Yes, Bubbles?" She was still facing forward, but listening.

"I'm..." the lump in her throat pressed hard against her Adam's apple, but she forced it back and said, "I'm so—" she chirruped, "—happy... that you're alive."

Blossom smiled even as Bubbles wept again, turned her head, and told her, "Thanks. I'm happy to be back."

Bubbles' face glistened with tears even as the smile spread across her lips.

Now, still in Buttercup's embrace, Blossom directed her attention to this closer sister; even as she did, she began to tire.

"You had a dream, didn't you?"

"Wha—yeah. How did you know?"

"Something with Him in it?"

Her eyes went wide and she stopped, gaping at her sister with those words. "Yeah, Him was in it! How did you—what's going on?"

Bubbles let out a horrified squeak as Blossom slipped from her sister's grasp, stumbled, but managed to maintain her balance. Buttercup leaned to stop her fall, but pulled back when she didn't. Deliriously, Blossom moaned out, "Bubbles was... being forced by... the computer. She—this is as far as—as far as I..."

"Blossom, wait. I can't understand you. Are you okay?"

Bubbles gasped.

Blossom's body dipped to the side; and then she crossed her legs, and then she was barely standing, and then her head fell back, and then her eyes went limp and closed. "...go."

And then she dropped.

Buttercup dove to catch her, easing her to the ground. Bubbles' eyes bugged, and she began wailing hysterically. In her panic, she dropped her metallic arms, took a step, and tripped over them. She crawled toward Blossom, still babbling incoherently, one hand outstretched. Her bionic limbs scraped along the pavement, crashing against the side of the adjacent buildings, deforming nearby trash cans, slamming into anything within reach. Losing her balance, she pitched forward, head landing on the asphalt. Her eyes, devoid of sense, were locked on Blossom even as she lay twitching, her arm still reaching for her sister. Despite her apparent catatonia, Bubbles' cries still flooded the air, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Buttercup was nearly gaping as she shook Blossom's shoulder sternly. "Blossom! Blossom!" Even as she tried to revive her sister, Bubbles' horrified cries reached a fever pitch, and she hastened to calm her down. "Bubbles! Shut up! I mean, be quiet! I'm sorry. Be quiet! Okay?"

Bubbles held her hands to her face, crying silently; if she had grown up on any kind of religious foundation, she might have been praying. There was no indication that Blossom was alive at that moment; she relived a painful past experience. The limbs held rigid, cutting up the concrete.

Buttercup's panic was showing: she started to sweat, and she gripped the sides of her head, teeth grinding. She was talking to herself. "What do I do? What do I do? Bubbles, do you know CPR?" A wail. "No. None of us learned CPR. Hang on. Calm down. Just a sec. Are there pay-phones around?" There were none. "Damn it, what do I do?"

Bubbles was reaching for Blossom, and then pulling her arms back over and over, squeaking painfully. Buttercup looked up at her for a moment, and she went silent, all her powers of concentration set on determining what happened next.

Finally, Buttercup did something she only learned while watching T.V.

She checked Blossom's pulse.

She exhaled sharply, her eyes the widest they had ever been. "She's alive."

Bubbles started crying all over again, but for a different reason. In one movement, she threw her body over Blossom's, sobbing joyfully. Then, she too passed out.

Buttercup fell back onto her hands, just taking deep breaths, the stress from the event slowly fading away.

The lights on the building top closest to her flickered for a moment. She looked up, and then into the distance, and saw the whirl of blades around flying lights: helicopters. She strained, consciously stretching for her super hearing, and then all at once, she heard the troops trekking into Townsville. Her eyes narrowed; she knew what they were here for. She looked down at her sisters, then back up at the helicopters, and nodded. She took another deep breath and looked down at Blossom, at Bubbles, and at Bubbles' tube-like arms.

She blinked. How am I gonna get them both home?