THE MORAL COMMITTEE ::: CHAPTER ONE ::: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A COMMITTEE MEMBER
"Ugh what's that stench!?"
Students gathered towards a concentrated area in the school's hall, all of which, complained about the malicious perfume extruding from behind an empty classroom's door. Two male companions both commenting on its foulness, and the source of which it would be found, "Hey," one of the two young men said to the second, "it's those brothers right?"
"No doubt," the second one replied, "it's definitely those guys. Those lazy assholes think they can do as they please."
"They're doing it again on campus in the middle of the day," A feeble female student whispered hesitantly to another and covered her mouth and nose to keep from inhaling the noxious fumes, "ugh...no one can offer a complaint to those guys...they never listen..."
In betwixt the soft whispers of gossip and coos of disbelief, came the thunderous storming of feet coming down the hall. School loafers, three pairs, hitting the ground in partial unison as if to split the Earth and unleash the wrath of hell and its demons. Three pairs of school loafers, on feminine legs which came up to disappear behind the dark pleats of a uniform skirt. All made way for the malignant trio and their indignation, flinching at the loud crack of a bamboo sword slicing the ground and dragging behind them.
"Hey...aren't they..." Whispers arose from bystanders on either side of the hall as they zipped through and approached the classroom door.
"Oh man! It's...!"
With a single powerful shove, the door flung itself open, nearly off its hinges, and came to a rattling collision with the wall behind it, and the bamboo sword is risen in the air, and pointed at its culprits. "You...you three!"
"Ugh...it stinks..." Bubbles retched to the grotesque aroma and pinched her nostrils tight. Whilst she and Buttercup stood behind Blossom, who held the sword high in resentment, with her free hand on her hip. The three males inside shielded their eyes from the light penetrating the room from the outside, groaning in discomfort. "Shit...it's that bitch..."
"That's President of the Moral Committee— Blossom Utonium, to you punk!" Blossom struck the ground again with the end of the bamboo sword, causing everyone on the outside to shudder from the painful sound, "And you three won't go any further doing whatever you like on school grounds!" She swung the sword up from the ground once more to strike the light switch of the darkened room, shining light on the trio of delinquents inside. And also, shining light on the source of the foul stench.
A rolled brown paper, smoking at its tip and unleashing an unsavory scent unto the building, and even with the window partially open behind them, the aroma was still thick in the air. Blossom wrinkled her nose, her jaw dropped in disbelief, and she pointed the swords tip back to the circle of boys, "I—is that—!? Marijuana!?"
"Huh...? Oh, what? You mean this?" The one of the three males holding the joint held it higher in attention, his lips crooked in a wolfish smirk.
"You know very well I mean that!" Blossom boiled in resentment, "Bubbles! Go open those windows!"
She nodded obediently— Bubbles inhaled deeply, the air outside the classroom less tainted with smoke, and made a mad dash through the room and past the boys to the cracked windows. She opened one fully, poking her head outside to inhale more fresh air before coming back inside to open the others across the wall. "Buttercup!" Blossom bawled again, "Confiscate the illegal substance immediately!"
"Can't you just say, fetch the weed?" Buttercup snickered in response. Blossom turned her attention to her snarky sister, taking her eyes off the boys for even a second— would prove to be her downfall.
"Go!" The red-headed male of the group, or the ring leader as Blossom referred to him as, gave is cue for the other two to follow him in their slippery escape. All three vaulted up from the ground and sprinted to the open windows, their athletic physiques allowing them to spring through the opening quickly, and roll out on the other side. The last of the men, blowing a thick cloud of dark smoke into Bubbles' face to make his escape.
"Gack!" Bubbles gagged, flipping into a frenzied cough that rendered her very weak very quickly and gave her watering eyes. "Bubbles!" Both Blossom and Buttercup cried, running to their sister's aid, and Blossom, dropping her sword to the ground.
"Bubbles! Are you okay!?" She questioned feverishly, pushing locks of blonde out of Bubbles' face to look into its expression. Buttercup kept her hand on Bubbles' back, with her other on her abdomen to ensure her standing was steady, while Blossom held her face by it's wet burning cheeks.
"They're...they're getting away!" Bubbles sobbed, "Don't let them get away Blossom! Don't let them go!"
"Right!" Blossom nodded. Perched high on the window sill, she turned back, giving her sisters one final glance of reassurance, "You make sure Bubbles is okay! I'll be back!"
"Go!" Buttercup routed venomously for Blossom's departure, and watched as the flying red-haired girl pierced the air with her agile body and took after the boys. As the smoke cleared, Bubbles finally ceased her coughing, and swallowed for fresh air. "You alright Bubbles?" Buttercup inquired of her beloved sister. She nodded her head quickly, her twintails of blonde shaking as she did, before she lifted her head and her body up to their erect position.
"Let's go!" Bubbles demanded of Buttercup, as she too came to the window, lifting Blossom's abandoned sword into her hand. Buttercup nodded, without a single word of detest, but simply nothing more than a look of understanding, as she watched Bubbles take a flipping leap out the school's window. Buttercup stepped several feet back, back out of the classroom's door and into the hall where the surrounding students all watched her in awe. Her body falling, in the ready position for track and field runners.
Set!
She lifted up on the ball of her foot, her other knee pushed up into her chest, and her body steady supported on the pads of her fingers.
Go!
Buttercup sprinted back through the door, back into the classroom where she cut into a skillful flip and handstand, plunging herself through the window legs first. Landing on her feet, on the other side, outside in the grass where she took off in a powerfully mad dash after her sisters. So quickly in fact, that she caught up to Bubbles and Blossom without a moment's notice.
"Which one has the drugs!?" Bubbles question in panting, broken breath. Blossom flung her arm out to her side, and looked back to her sisters for help, "Bubbles! Buttercup! I need you guys...we need to form—"
"The Utonium Cannon!" Both Buttercup and Bubbles cheered in the same seconds of their excitement. The Utonium cannon had been a signature move of their creation, since they were young girls in elementary school, on the same cheer team together. Though it has simply been nothing more than Buttercup and Blossom launching Bubbles high into and through the air, as it'd been done in cheerleading, the three had adopted it into their own lives as a special team-move to catch and capture "bad guys".
Or simply as a fun trick to do at the pool for extra air and a bigger splash.
"Ready!" Buttercup and Blossom locked their hands together tightly for extra security in their grip.
"Ready!" Bubbles slowed her dashes, until she'd created a distance of about five feet between her sisters and herself as they ran. She flew into quick sprints, until she shortened her radius from them, and then, jumped to land both her feet in the palms of their hands.
"Launch!" Blossom and Buttercup both flung their arms and her body forward at the angle they'd perfected for maximum air and speed. Several feet from the ground, Bubbles tucked her petite figure into a small ball and whipped through the sky. She threw Blossom's sword into the air before her, and exploded back into her whole form— her arms and legs spread out, with legs high in the air as she came down atop the male with the backwards crimson cap and red hair.
She snatched the sword from the air, targeting her victim like a the deadly missile she became. "Holy—" The smallest of the boys running, with the short blonde hair and blue eyes, turned and pointed in the air, and unwittingly, his brother's turned to bare witness as well.
Witness to the pair of frilly baby blue panties coming down at one of them, at speeds unmeasurable, until she collided with the male with such force that he'd flown back into the ground and made his mark in the dirt as he slid several feet, his red cap flying off his head and landing several safe feet away. "Shit!" The dark haired brother hissed and snatched the blonde boy's wrist as he ran.
"Dammit!" He struggled beneath Bubbles' girth and threw his head up to snap at her viciously, "Don't you fuckin' Utonium's have any mercy!?" He was quick to drop his head back down into the Earth, as Bubbles brought the bamboo sword down swiftly through the air, and brought its tip to ghost directly above the male's forehead, between his deep haematic eyes.
"Mercy, is for the weak!" Bubbles ground out between jaws lugubriously clamped together so her teeth would grit so tightly one could hear them grinding. The man beneath her fell silent, and swallowed his words down deep into his belly so that not another one would come to life outside his lips while he was under her control.
"Buttercup! Search him!" Blossom clamored to meet Bubbles by her side as Buttercup fell to her knees to frisk his pockets, and even down to his socks—
"There's nothin' on 'im!" Buttercup announced in despair.
"What!?"
"He doesn't have anything!"
He chuckled wolfishly, and Blossom came to replace Bubbles in her position sitting atop his abdomen, "Wipe that smug grin off your face, dirt bag!"
"Pretty president came all this way just to frisk little ol' me?" His menacing smile stretched far across his face, "Y'know, your sister there didn't really check everywhere. If ya really wanna take a thorough search, I wouldn't mind you putting your hand down my—"
Blossom smacked her hand down atop his mouth, clamping her fingers tightly into his cheeks to keep another slimy word from slipping out. "Damn," Buttercup swore between cracked breaths, "the other two...are gone...we lost them! I can't believe..." She fell to cup her hands to her knees, too out of breath to throw a tantrum now. While Bubbles stood up on wobbly legs to catch her own breath, she supported her body on the sword sticking out the ground.
He took his hand and viciously tore Blossom's from his mouth, unveiling his wicked smile once more, "You know, having you on top of me is fun and all, but you've got nothing to hold me on. So really..."
"Shut up," Blossom snarled. She smacked his hand away from hers and pushed up to her feet, joining her sisters in their stance only about a foot away from their only culprit. He brought himself to a stance and off the ground, patting his uniform clean of loose debris and brushing past the girls to retrieve his baseball cap from the ground.
"But hey! If ya ever wanna straddle me again..."
Blossom clenched her fists tightly to her side, gripping the bottom of her skirt to keep her hands from flying upward. As she watched this snake of a man slip further and further from their grasp, until he disappeared from campus, and off elsewhere into the city of Townsville.
"Are you okay, Blossom?" Bubbles came to her sister's side and placed a delicate hand on her shoulder. She flinched lightly, and turned to avert her stare from where he once stood, and sighed, "Yeah." She said.
"I just...really hate that guy."
XXX
After school.
Moral Committee meeting
"Time to call role—!"
Over enthusiastic, Blossom took her trusty clipboard tight in hand and brought it to her face to read out the names of those who were on it. "Committee president— Blossom Utonium! Present!" She scratched a quick check beside her own name and continued, "Committee vice president— Bubbles Utonium!"
Silence.
"Bubbles!"
"Oh c'mon—" Bubbles whined in dole, "you know I'm here! We come to school together every morning!"
"Protocol is protocol, Bubbles!" Blossom exclaimed, slamming her clipboard down to the table, "What would a committee be without order!? Role call is a very important step to ensure that all committee members are present—!"
"They are all present," Buttercup said flatly. She leaned with her elbow on the table, her legs crossed and her cheek against her palm, "You. Me. And Bubbles." She emphasized on the emptiness of the room furthermore by waving her hand around to bring Blossom's attention to the empty chairs surrounding the table, "The only committee members."
Blossom crumbled, her enthusiasm— foiled, "Why don't we have...more...members...?"
"Because," Bubbles perked to the opportunity to answer, "you scared and drove them all away with your 'leadership'."
"You mean her bitchiness," Buttercup mumbled. Blossom flung herself over the table in an enraged roar, "I beg your pardon!?"
Buttercup, unmoved by her sister's threatening gesture, only scraped the corner of her nose with the black painted pinky fingernail of her free hand, "I said, nobody wanted to stick around because her highness tight-ass only wanted to boss people around and unleash her wrath of having her panties in a bunch."
Blossom trembled in anger, her hands shaking and gripping the edges of the table, "It's because of me that we drove out that terrible Gangreen Gang! It was our committee that brought them to justice! Doesn't anybody realize that!? Ungrateful swine!" She dropped herself down to the table, burying her head in her folded arms and groaning in melancholy. Bubbles giggled and smiled softly, turning her head so that Blossom wouldn't catch her teasing.
"Aside from that! We have three glaring issues at hand and in our school right now!"
She rummaged through her satchel bag for a manila folder which she laid out on the table. Flipping its cover to reveal three photographs taken in black and white by the school's cameras, photographs which she took out and flung out dramatically onto the table one at a time with a name after each one:
"Brick," She said as she slid a photo of the red-haired man from earlier out onto the table. He wore upon a face a mischievous grin with teeth sharp and dangerous. His hair, long and dripping down past his shoulders, is wild and the top if covered by a cap turned backwards with spikes on its bill. And his ear lobes are stretched to small holes with white spike plugs in them.
"Butch," Buttercup hissed at the second picture to be lain out on the table. A picture of a man with dark black hair, spiked atop his head and untamed as his brother's was. He wore an expression of dullness, unmoved or amused by anything or anyone around him, with small silver tunnels stretching his ear lobes, silver rings piercing the cartilage of both his left and right ears, and the tragus of just his left ear.
"Hey!" Bubbles chirped, she leaned into the table and placed her finger upon the third and final photo to be lain out on the table, "That's Boomer!" She tapped her nail against the photo, a photo of a younger faced male— definitely the youngest looking of his brothers— smiling innocently with eyes as big as her own, and very short choppy blonde hair which spiked atop his head, and the rest around his dome had been shaved low. He had only two small silver rings in his ears.
"Of course it's Boomer," Blossom yelled to the very top of her lungs, "who else had you thought was the third brother in their band of rebels!?"
"Well, no! I knew they were brothers! It's just that...Boomer isn't as bad as they are! In fact, he's a cry baby! I even help him with his homework sometimes...his brothers just kinda drag him along into their really stupid charades."
"Well nonetheless, he still takes part in them, so he's just as bad as the other two! Just look at these three! Piercings, tattoos, total disregard to their surroundings and the people they hurt," Blossom huffed and slapped her hands down on the table, "they're even wearing their uniform wrong! We've got to do something to keep these guys from bringing our school to the ground! They're trying to control it! They've already got all the students— and even some of the staff beneath their thumbs! They're just going around making everyone their puppet!"
"They're pretty vicious," Buttercup mumbled nonchalantly, "I dunno. It's not like we can just drive them out of the school. We need actual reason. Conviction!"
"We need to catch them in the act!" Blossom screeched, "Like we did today! Only next time we can't let them get away! Those slippery snakes...they won't slip me again...oh no..."
"Easy there Blossom, your crazy is showing."
Again, Bubbles giggled. And Buttercup smirked slyly at her own remark. "Whatever," Blossom scoffed, "anyway...on another note...where do you guys wanna get something to eat? I'm starving!"
"Yeah, me too," Bubbles whined, her hands placed atop her growling stomach, "we spent our whole lunch break chasing those guys..."
"Wanna grab a slice of pizza?"
Bubbles nodded wildly in response. Buttercup, shrugged her shoulders lightly. "Alright then," Blossom sighed, retrieving her phone from the pocket of her skirt and tapping the screen gently with her thumb, "I'll call The Professor..."