Buttercup pushes off of her right foot again as the wind whips against her face. She relishes simple moments like this whenever she would skate through Townsville.
The arrival of Prince had sat her nerves on end. Not to mention, the fact that she was uncomfortable with Butch who listened in on her conversation with him.
Not only that but Prince presence meant that he was not by himself and that his two lackeys would not be too far away from her sisters'.
'I wonder how Argos is doing?' She wonders to herself when she remember how close of a friend she was to him unlike the other two.
When he fell seriously ill, it was heavy felt amongst his five friends.
'He must be doing well. Prince would have told me about his condition if he didn't make it.' Buttercup assumes to herself.
She rounded the corner and the sight of her white cube shape house, with its bright red door, stood out amongst the other homes on their block.
Buttercup's instincts advises her to check out the sky when she spots two blue streaks.
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Bloossom nearly trips over her own two feet due to all of the supplies for her project while she inspects her hand.
She could not help but recall the result of her hand coming in to contact with Brick's hand.
"I wonder if it was my powers reacting with his, but why?" Blossom asks herself out loud.
She closely inspects her hand and registers that the tingle sensation cease after a while.
'Then Lucas and Argos appearing at the mall as if Lucas knew I was going to be there.' The orange hair girl considers before she realizes it was weird that those two just so happen to visit the mall when she was there with Brick.
'I wonder…did Buttercup come across Prince already?' Blossom pondered. She knew that within a couple of hours that their day of relaxation would come to an end.
'Not only that but Buttercup's new form that showed up at Bell's pool party resulted in Bell losing her life.'
'On top of that, the vault that was underneath her house with that voice coming from it.' Blossom runs down the list of things that occurred during the week.
Blossom decided that it would be best if they would sit down and talk about what all happened to them.
There was also the possibility that Buttercup could have ultimately killed Bell, which might possibly eliminate Pokey Oaks from the tournament.
A streak of blue light captures her attention before she immediately identifies exactly who it was.
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"Thanks again for the date, Boomer. I really had fun spending time with you." Bubbles thanks him after they land and made their way toward her front door.
"I hope we can do it again, sometime later. That's if you want too?" Boomer suggests a second date in a roundabout fashion while he scratches the back of his neck for the third time today.
"I would love that." She giggles out her response before she widens her arms in a hug fashion.
He acknowledges the gesture, leans in to her for a hug and presses a kiss against her cheek.
"Now, what do we have here, Bloss?" Bubbles overhears Buttercup's voice after the two blondes separate from each other with equal red tints present on their cheeks.
"Oh, it seems as if we came back home just in time, Butter." Blossom asserts.
She stands with her arms tuck underneath her chest with bags that dangles from her forearms.
"I was just dropping Bubbles back home, that's all." Boomer speaks up once he was able to regain his composure to answer her question.
"Well it sure doesn't seem like that to me, but anyway, excuse us for interrupting. We would like to get pass you two." Buttercup revels.
She could not help but get a kick out of the little scene in front of her and Blossom.
"Oh, I'm sorry about that." He apologizes as he removes himself from within their path.
The blonde silently swore that he was flashed an expression of approval from Blossom and even Buttercup herself.
At least that is what he had felt when he saw from Bubbles' sisters face.
"I think that that was awkward enough as it is. Well, I will see you tomorrow then!" Boomer mentions before he steps backward.
He nearly tripped down the steps because he wanted to watch her go inside.
Bubbles did not hear the door open again, Buttercup and Blossom watch the whole scene in front of them.
"So are you going to come in or not?" Buttercup teases her blonde sister.
She whirls around to behold her sisters' at the threshold of the door and assumes they witness the whole thing. Plus, she wondered if Boomer noticed them too.
Bubbles only grins at her sisters' over protectiveness of her as it provides a sense of reassurance when it came from Buttercup.
"You guys," She shrieks right before she enters her home to wide smiles and bright eyes.
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"So all three of you decided to come home on time…for once." Serena greets them.
She watches her three little brothers stand outside of their apartment door before she steps away from the entrance.
"We can at least do something right for once, can't we?" Butch counters since he was the first person to enter the house.
"No," Serena expresses her disbelief as Brick strolls inside of the apartment and includes, "This on time stuff isn't like you three."
She closes and seals the door behind Boomer when he steps pass the threshold of their apartment door.
"So are you going to tell me or do I have to do some probing myself?" Serena demands after she examines all three of their facial expression.
"Do you know anything about Pokey Oaks High and a incident that occurred there last year?" Butch abruptly questions her.
She pads over to her laptop on the coffee table, with a mug fill with lemonade off to the right, while the boys all crash on the couch.
"I can look it up for you." Serena confirms as she occupies the love seat, reaches out for her laptop, and pops the question, "What exactly am I looking for?"
"Try this schoolwide fighting tournament and/or this group name the Three Bandits." Butch rattles off from the top of his head, which prompts Brick to sit forward in his seat.
"Blossom told me about them when I ran into her. She said that they're three of them name Lucas, Argos and another one but I can't remember his name." Brick adds in his knowledge of the Three Bandits that he obtains from Blossom.
"His name is Prince. He's their leader and apparently has some type of special ability that Buttercup is aware of but she won't tell me." Butch inserts the last name in Brick's previous statement.
"Yeah, that's it! It seems as if they did something that affected Blossom and I believe her sisters as well. She froze up when she saw the both of them." Brick divulges.
They listen as Serena's fingers rapidly presses multiple keys on her keyboard at one time.
"Boomer, do you have anything that I might need to help with the investigation of Pokey Oaks from the previous year?" She requests as she addresses him in her military tone.
He simply shakes his head in a no fashion.
"I found information about Buttercup and her sisters' on here!" Serena broadcasts right before she pivots her laptop to reveal a picture of Buttercup, Blossom, Bubbles, Lucas, Argos, Prince, a girl name Tia and another unknown young man. Buttercup was pictured in the middle since she hoisted a elongated trophy over her head.
The title reads "Martial Arts Tournament Brings New Blood and Fresh Faces" by Amy Andrews, Editor-in-Chief, that was dated for last year.
"A school that was not well known for its martial arts abilities arrived with a team that consisted of entirety freshmen. They brought a new challenge to the tournament's well seasoned participants this year. Buttercup Utonium, was the second highest overall scorer on the team only falling behind their captain Tia by a mere half of a point. Not only that but Buttercup's teammates hold a significant relationship to her. After all, it was a family affair with her sisters Blossom and Bubbles Utonium, who were three points away from their sister's impressive score."
She spins her laptop back around toward her, slides her index finger across the mouse pad, taps the surface of it and declares, "There's another one!"
"Pokey Oaks appears to have established themselves as a new threat amongst the tournament. Captain Tia cannot wait to see how far she can take her team since this is her last year of eligibility at Pokey Oaks. The senior claims that "I feel extremely confident that Pokey Oaks will begin to make strides under my leadership. It's time for me to scout out suitable candidates for the captain position. I hope that this year, we can encourage more people to come and attend our school."
"Did something ever happen to this Tia character?" Butch inquired once he recounted that Prince said he had some type of mission.
It could have possibly involved Tia since she would have to train Buttercup in order to secure the position as Pokey Oaks Top.
Serena reverses her laptop to face her as she highlights Tia's name from the article. She then paste it in the search engine box and clicks on search.
"This can't be right." She mutters to herself while she scrolls through similar fields and examines that they were all the exact same thing before she selects one.
"This says that this same Tia died at the end of the year. It happened a couple of weeks after she graduated from Pokey Oaks. The seniors elected to have a traditional Japanese tea party as one of their going away rituals when someone laced her tea. She instantly dropped dead since the poison was a dangerously lethal combination of two potent poisons." Serena reads verbatim from the computer screen.
"No way…can we see it?" Butch requests when his suspicious about Prince begins to increase to a red level.
There was a young girl with shoulder length blonde hair and green eyes that stares back at them. A graduation cap adorned her head and a cape that covered her body. "Tia B. Gardenia" was printed underneath the image.
Butch leans back against the back of the couch. He makes an effort to process the information that Serena just present to them.
"Maybe if you look up the Three Bandits then that would probably give us an idea as to who exactly are they?" Brick recommends.
He then develops the sense that whatever they find out on the others would lead them right back to those three.
Serena types a way on her keyboard, except this time it did not take her as long as the others did. She tabs an article on the search engine as Brick and Butch reflect on the respective people that they ran across today.
"Are these the three boys that you're talking about?" Serena wonders as she displays an image of three boys to them.
"Yeah, that's them alright." Butch and Brick simultaneously confirm once they study the three boys' faces.
"Wait a minute, is this a fan girl site?" Brick poses.
The elaborate website's background coincides with girls' who do oh so little in their spare time or probably no time at all if they did not have any type of life at all.
"It seems as if they are pretty popular among the female population. They constantly have a wave of 100+ girls, who access the site on a daily basis! They even have recent pictures that they took and leaked them to their sites." Serena details after she briefly overlooks the website before she shows it to her brothers.
"I guess they're pretty popular guys…are you sure that these are the three young men that you and Butch ran in to today?" She poses once again to in order for Brick and Butch to confirm their identities.
"Yeah…wait did you say they have waves of 100 girls on the site a day?" Butch curiously requests.
He wonders how girls could find a spineless idiot, such as Prince, who cannot handle his own against one of the toughest teen age females, name Buttercup, to be appealing to the opposite sex.
Serena nods her and even observes the counter increase by the second and right next to it was a gray box with visitors written in black.
'Those cocky bastards…' Brick and Butch share similar thoughts about the website.
"I see their bios...they're your age and had recently transferred from Pokey Oaks to another school that they will not name. It's got a list of their personality traits, their preference in food, books, and anything else you can think off. It's a sophisticated top of the line fan girl page." She judges after she checks around the site a bit more before she exits out of the website.
"So tell me what does the death of Tia B. Gardenia, Pokey Oaks, Buttercup, her sisters and these Three Bandits have in common with each other?" Serena expresses because there were still some holes that Butch and Brick did not fill in for her.
"When I was with Buttercup she said that Prince had a mission to eliminate the Top of Pokey Oaks, which was Tia Gardenia at the time and anyone else who wanted to succeed in taking over the position. His mission became complicated because he had grew close to Buttercup. That's why he defected from Pokey Oaks so he would not have to kill her." Butch supplies an answer to Serena's question based off of what he heard from Prince and Buttercup.
"So are you saying that one of these boys, specifically Prince, had a hand in dealing with the murder of Tia B. Gardenia?" Serena implies after she listens to Butch's scenario on what links all four cases to each other.
"He pretty much said it to Buttercup! I believe she knows that he did it too, but only after the fact that he committed the crime." He discloses as he scoots to the edge of his seat.
"Which brings up another batch of questions…who employed the Three Bandits to eliminate the top of Pokey Oaks? Who else is their organization planning to aim at? Who else are they going to send in after they accepted another mission?" She outlines when her investigation skills starts to kick in.
"It seems as if once you find the answer to that then we have hit yet another roadblock with more questions." Boomer includes his opinion, because he was pretty quiet during the entire conversation.
"Maybe its because…"
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Author's Note:
07.18.16 Major editing revision