Red Crown: And after a long session of Command and Conquer Generals I have returned. Those of you that reviewed, Thank you very much.
CHAPTER TWELVE: "Not as Evil"
The city of Townsville, Pokey Oaks High…
Brick maneuvered his way through the lunch tables with Boomer right behind him. He knew where The One was since he had seen Princess walk in the direction several times, but he had never seen the table itself.
What he saw surprised even him. Unlike the other lunch tables, The One had a white table clothe that covered it. On the far side of the table was a TV that had been bolted on. Instead of the simple plank seats that the other lunch tables had, The One had several comfortable padded chairs that were attached to the bottom of the body of the table. Brick thought it was a highly excessive display of their wealth.
He decided that he would much rather walk by and be told to sit down rather than approach and take a seat himself. He walked by and went along the length of the table. Just as he had predicted Kaitlyn stopped him and asked him and Boomer to take a seat.
Casually the red ruff sat down and let his eyes scan around at whom else was sitting at the table. He spotted Meagan, Kaitlyn, Princess, several football players and cheerleaders that he did not recognize, and finally an extremely beautiful blond sophomore woman sitting at the center of the table.
"So, Brick, where is your brother, Boomer?" asked Princess.
Brick turned around and expected Boomer to be right behind him, but it was then that he found Boomer had disappeared as well. He turned to Princess and merely shrugged.
"Hello, Brick! This is Natasha," said Meagan as she motioned toward the sophomore woman sitting at the center.
Natasha extended a hand to Brick. "You are very lucky," she said with a moderate Russian accent. "Not too many people get to sit at this table without knowing somebody here on their first day."
Brick politely shook her hand, "This is actually my second day. And, yes, I am a very lucky guy," Brick replied with his trademark smirk. "I can tell you were not born in America."
"My family migrated here from the Russian Federation about four years ago. My father grew very prosperous off the Russian oil industry and purchased a house here. We live very well," she stated. "Townsville is a nice place to live isn't it?" she asked.
"Yes, it is."
"What are you doing here in Townsville? You could obviously leave at any moment. What makes you stay here?" she replied as she slowly bashed her eye-lashes at him.
"I guess I'm just looking for trouble."
"Have you found any?"
"More than what I asked for," the villain replied.
Meanwhile…
Boomer was glad that he had successfully sneaked away from Brick without him noticing. Once he saw him heading towards the table where princess was at he immediately walked in the opposite direction. He didn't want to be anywhere near her. The blue ruff made his way away from the lunch tables and headed toward the lockers. Maybe he could find Butch and spend lunch with him.
He pulled out his cell phone and began to text his green-eyed brother to find where he was. However, as he was texting his wasn't looking where he was going and eventually walked into somebody carrying a tray of food. The food tray tipped as a result and all the food, which consisted of a burrito, peas, mashed potatoes, and orange juice, slid right off into the ground.
Boomer was slightly surprised to find that it was Bubbles who he had bumped into.
"Hey, you did that on purpose!" she said.
"No I didn't," he said sincerely. Boomer didn't know why, but as he watched her bend down to clean up the mess he felt a strange urge to help her. After a quick scan of the area to make sure that his brothers weren't watching, he bent down and began to pick up the bits of food.
Bubbles looked at him surprised. "What are you doing?" she asked slightly in disbelief.
"Helping you," he stated as a matter of fact.
After they had thrown the whole mess in the trash, Bubbles and gave Boomer a hard look as they stood near the trash can. An awkward silence seemed to move in until Boomer broke it.
"I guess I am not as evil as my brothers are," he said casually.
Bubbles tilted her head and curiosity began to take hold of her.
"Why are you evil in the first place?" she asked.
Boomer seemed a bit taken back by the question. No one had ever asked him such a thing in his life. After a minute of thinking he realized that he didn't have a good answer.
"My brothers and me have always been evil. I've got to stick by them, especially Brick. He's always looked out for me and I've followed him around all my life," he replied.
"Do you like being evil?"
"Yeah. It's fun a lot of times, but other times it's…" A flash back went through Boomer's mind of the night that they took the second jewel and Brick ordered Butch to kill the security guard. Brick merely thought of killing the guard as a tactical move necessary to win a chess game. Butch was clearly taking some sort of pleasure in it. For the blond ruff on the other hand, something churned inside his stomach and he did not like watching Butch do what he did. He would never say that to his brothers because he feared it would make him look weak so he had kept his mouth shut about it the entire time. "I guess there are some lines my brother's cross that I don't like."
"Why don't you tell them that you don't like it when they do that?" she asked.
"They would just laugh it off and make me do it anyway," he replied.
"Maybe you should stick up for what you believe," Bubble's said before she spotted her sisters. "I need to go to my sisters now. See you later," she said before leaving him.
Boomer watched her walk away. What she had said was pawning around his mind and soon he began asking himself the same questions. He decided to shrug it off for now and find Butch.
He pulled out his cell phone and discovered that Butch had replied.
The text read: "pandex 2 blocks down."
Boomer knew that "pandex" was short for Panda Express. He decided to head there as well.
After School...
Blossom headed to the Townsville Bank to see if she was allowed access to Henry Stanford's vault. She showed the bankers the journal and all of the possessions that she had taken off Henry's corpse as proof. After a lengthy process that took nearly all night in which the owners of the bank analyzed several bits Henry's possessions, mostly to affirm that the ID was real and that the handwriting in the journal matched that of Henry's other documents, Blossom was finally allowed access to Henry's vault.
One of the bankers led her down a long corridor of vaults with doors of five inch thick steel. Finally they stopped at one with the number A-0642498. The banker opened it with a key and let Blossom have a look inside. The leader of the Power Puff Girls reached inside and discovered several old papers and documents. She pulled them out and carefully placed them in her backpack. Something shiny at the back of the vault caught her eye. She lifted it out of the vault and, to her amazement, found that it was a small beautiful statue of an ancient Chinese dragon carved from pure jade. She carefully placed it in a plastic bag so that it would not get a scratch from anything around it.
She headed home to study the materials and hopefully find the next piece of the key before Brick found it. She had told Bubbles to draw the ancient hieroglyphics on several pieces of paper so that she could bring them to University in Iowa that she had found specialized in studying ancient languages. She hoped that Bubbles would finish by midnight.
After School…
Brick entered his room in the warehouse. The day had left him completely exhausted. He not only had to perform well in school, but he and his brothers had been going without a decent amount of sleep for sometime. He finally decided to head to his bed and crash.
Boomer had already given him the English translation of the hieroglyphics inside the ancient ruins. From it Brick had learned everything that Power Puff Girls knew. He had also discovered that the location of the next piece was somewhere near the southern end of an ancient Chinese city that hailed from the Zhou Dynasty. Two things puzzled him. In the ancient hieroglyphics there was a picture of a small green dragon that was necessary to unlock the key. Brick figured that he could get the answer from Him. The other thing that puzzled him was the Destroyer. 'What could it be?' he wondered. What exactly was he unleashing upon the world?
As he began to think about what his next move would be he decided to analyze the current strategic situation that he was in. The kids at school were extremely easy to fool. The teachers were even more easy. The most easy person to fool was Natasha. He had learned from his conversation at the table that Natasha was argubly the most beautiful and popular girl in school. She had communicated to him in more ways than one that she was interested in him. Brick didn't really care about her. He had achieved his main goal of the day, which was getting those pathetic idiot citizens on his side before the girls could reach them. They had proved to be easier to fool than he had originally thought. All in all, he had called the day a victory.
He knew that he had two options at that moment. The first option was to get an energy drink to make himself and his brothers more alert and head to the ancient Chinese city. The second was to get some rest. He looked over at his brothers and realized that they had already gone to sleep for the night. Brick decided that he should get some sleep as well since he didn't have enough information on the strange green dragon in the hieroglyphics. He collapsed in his bed and without another thought dozed off.
Meanwhile...
The clock read 1:05 AM. Blossom had just finished reading Henry Stanford's work and completed the agonizing process of putting the pieces together. She had discovered what the Jade Dragon statue was for as well. At that moment she knew that she had two options. The first was to get an energy drink from the fridge to get her sisters and herself more awake so they could go the ancient Chinese city to find the jewel. The second was to go to sleep. Blossom was tired, but she knew that she couldn't afford to let Brick get any further ahead than he already was. With this in mind she went down stairs and grabbed three energy drinks.
"Tonight is going to be a long night," she thought to herself.
Red Crown: I know this chapter was short. I've been kind of busy and have had a lot running around to do. Maybe I'll update soon if I get more reviews. :)