And Everything Nice
5.
Buttercup held the bowl up to her face and used the chopsticks to spoon the rice into her mouth. She plucked individual bits of vegetables, shrimp and salmon from the bowl with the chopsticks, eating them one at a time. Buttercup got stares from her mother and tried to eat like a young lady, but she was quite hungry and ended up mimicking her father, wolfing down the meal.
Buttercup's dad was a professional wrestler, and he never took off the horned blue mask that he wore in the ring, except when showering, he even slept in it.
"Dad, am I ever going to see your face?" she asked.
"I told you I made a vow never to remove this mask until the day I retire from wrestling," her father said.
"Shess!" Buttercup groaned looking at her mother, "I bet you you have to look at that mask when the two of you sleep together!" she said giving her mom the evil eye (nudge, nudge, wink, wink!).
"That's none of your business, young lady!" her mom said, almost choking on a bit of mushroom.
Her father put down his empty bowl and quickly changed the subject, "So how was your day, Buttercup?"
"Same old, same old," the green eyed teen said, sighing. She really wanted to tell her dad all about her superpowers and all the hero stuff she went through with her fellow Power Puffs, but they had taken a vow to keep their identities a secret. Only professor Utonium, Ken, his dog Poochie, and now that robot kid Astro knew who the Power Puff girls really were.
Pabst Hops stared up at the huge tank. The six story high structure once held natural gas for the Metro City gas company. It had become useless scrap metal when the utility had gone out of business and shut down, a victim of changing times. Cheap electric power provided by solar, wind, tidal generators, thermal vents, and nuclear fusion had displaced the use of fossil fuels in Japan. Even aircraft were retrofitted to burn the clean hydrogen cracked from ocean water by cheap electric power.
When the city had put the old tank up for auction, Hops saw the possibility of using it as part of a huge fermentation tank for his brewery. He then lucked out in finding an engineer with contacts in the construction business able to retrofit the aging tank. The crew had just arrived and were already at work with their welding equipment, cutting away parts of the old structure and adding new bits. Soon its insides would be fitted with a plastic lining that would hold the thousands of gallons of happoshu that his brewery would be producing.
Inspector Tawashi thought he recognized the man standing on line in front of him while waiting for the teller at the bank to deposit his pay check. The man walked by him winking at the inspector and laughing to himself. Tawashi could have sworn that it was Skunk Kusai, but the mans complexion and hair color were all wrong, and he didn't look like he was wearing makeup.
Lamp was waiting in his shinny new SUV for his partner. "It must feel strange to be making a deposit in a bank instead of a withdrawal at gunpoint." Lamp laughed.
"You don't know the half of it," Skunk cackled. "That stupid flat foot Tawashi was in line ahead of me. I gave him the evil eye as I walked past him. He didn't recognize me, but I bet I really got under his skin."
"Yeah, what happened to us?" Lamp asked. "After we got struck by that black lightning we woke up looking about 20 years younger. I feel great, like I could bench press a few hundred pounds."
"Me too." Skunk replied, "I looked in the mirror last night and couldn't believe the changes in my body. So what's our next move?"
"How long do you think it will take for your construction friends to turn that old gas tank into a brewery?" Lamp asked.
"They'll have Mr. Hops ready to run his first batch of happoshu in a few weeks." Skunk said. "I told them to add an extra drain port with a hidden pipe so we can sneak up with a tanker truck and drain off a few thousand gallons for ourselves. What about your connections on the delivery end?"
"No sweat." Lamp replied. "My mob connections are all set. We'll be underselling Mr. Hobs with his own product in markets he never knew he didn't have."
Astro adjusted the straps of the rollerblades so the inline skates fit perfectly over his boots. This time for his P.E. class was now going to play roller hockey with the rest of the class, and once again he and Buttercup found each other on opposing sides. "I can't win for loosing!" Astro thought to himself.
Tamo stood nervously in the middle of the field. He was wearing a black and white stripped shirt, the uniform of the game official, the black rubber puck in his hand and a whistle hanging from a string around his neck. Nobody had picked him to play on either side, so being the odd kid remaining, he was given the job of refereeing the game. He quickly dropped the rubber playing piece on the ground between the two teams and beat a hasty retreat barely in time to avoid the flying sticks.
Astro almost got wood on the puck, but Buttercup beat him to it. She slapped the round object towards her team's goal just as Astro swung at air. "Damm, she did it again!" Astro muttered under his breath as his took off, the wheels on his skates screaming as they rotated at several thousand RPM.
Buttercup and Abercrombie relayed the puck back and forth between them, keeping just a few feet ahead of Astro's best efforts to catch up. The boy robot knew he could overtake them using just one of his arm jets, but that would be cheating. Astro's electronic brain computed that he wouldn't be able to intercept them and take over the puck to make a run for the other goal, but maybe he could prevent them from scoring. He made a straight line across the field and back towards the goal, arriving in front of the cage just as Buttercup blasted the puck towards the scoring line. Astro blocked the shot with his own stick, just as his teams goalie lined up to do the same. The puck made a bounce on a rough bit of pavement just at the last second to strike the top of Astro's stick, and was deflected over his head into the goal cage.
"Rats!" Astro thought to himself. "I stink at this game!"
Astro unstrapped the skates and the (totally unnecessary) shin guards, and threw the equipment into the large basket in the corner of the locker room. He quickly got out of his gym uniform and into his school clothes. "Hey don't feel bad Astro," Tamao said, patting him on the back, "Buttercup makes most of the guys look like wimps. Guess she takes after her dad, the masked wrestler."
"Thank's Tamao," Astro replied. "You know I could beat her, but I have to be real careful in sports not to over do it."
"Yeah I know," Tamao sighed, cleaning his glasses. "I guess it's hard for a robot to play with human kids, you have to limit yourself to our level."
The girls took their seats in the back of Ms. Keane's history class. "Ever since that fire last week, it's been quiet again in New Townsville." Bubbles said.
"Yeah." Blossom agreed. "We've been able to get our school work done for a change."
"Too bad." Buttercup smiled. "I'd love for us to meet up with Astro again as the Power Puff Girls. I had a lot of fun today embarrassing him on the Hockey field."
"You really like him don't you?" Bubbles said.
"Oh come on, he's just a robot." Buttercup snapped back.
"You don't fool me a bit," Blossom replied, "I can see you making eyes at him."
Buttercup quickly turned her head away from the corner of the room where Astro was seated. "Who me?"
Ken, Poochi and Dr. Utonium sat around a table. The doctor and his son were on opposite sides of the table, with Poochi sitting between them. They sat in silence contemplating the chess board that sat between them. "Your move Dad," Ken said.
"I'm thinking!" the doctor replied with his hand hovering over the board. He was about the grab his queen when the robot dog muttered, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Hey, don't interfere with the game," Ken snarled at his pet.
Dr. Utonium withdrew his hand from over the board and started scratching his chin with it. He then picked up his remaining rook and moved it across the board.
"Check!" he announced.
"Really?" Ken muttered as he captured the attacking piece with his bishop.
"Opps, didn't see that." his father sighed, moving his queen over two spaces.
Ken studied the board for a few minutes and nonchalantly moved a rook over two spaces.
"Checkmate." he announced.
The doctor threw his hands up in the air and walked away from the table towards the window.
"It's been real quite around here," he said. "We haven't seen the girls for several weeks now."
"They're probably busy with their school work." Poochi answered, "and it seems they only come over here when some thing's up, or they're bored."
"Or to rob some of my candy." Ken added.
Over on the other side of town PabstHops watched as the construction crew packed up their trucks. Lamp handed the owner of the brewery an invoice and smiled. "The modifications are all done, all you have to do is install your equipment and start brewing your beer."
Mr. Hops looked over the bill and then filled out a check. "Here's the final payment, Mr. Lamp," he said. Why don't you and your associate come by in about two weeks and have a taste of the best happoshu there is?"
"Yeah, sure." Lamp laughed. "Why not?"
Acetylene got into his SUV and looked to the right where Skunk was seated.
"How did it go?" Kusai asked.
"Seems we passed the baka's inspection." Lamp laughed. "Maybe your motley crew actually did a proper job."
"I highly doubt it." Skunk replied. "They cut too many corners. Still they do know how to put on a good show."
"We've been invited to come back in a few weeks to taste his brew." Lamp added. "Think it will be safe?"
"Yeah, probably." Skunk said. "Hops should be able to run his brewery for maybe a month before things go to hell."