Chapter 1: Schoolhouse Rocked
"You have to understand!" Miss Keane was currently pleading with very angry parents inside the school building after the Gangreen Gang had temporarily been her students. "I really had no idea they would cause so much trouble!"
"They're gangsters!" An incensed mother countered furiously to the poor educator, banging her fist down on top of her desk. "How much more of a clue did you really need?!"
"I know that..." Miss Keane admitted, looking off to the side with her words. It hadn't really been her idea in the first place to have the Gangreen Gang in her classroom, but she knew she wouldn't get anywhere right now trying to pass blame. Instead she tried to further explain her own actions by saying, "But they were made students of my classroom and I try to give every child a chance to-"
"Child?!"
This label for them caused even more outrage, perhaps rightly so. It was hard to really tell how old the Gang was supposed to be both collectively and individually. Ace was old enough for facial hair but it was hard to tell whether he was a teenager or an adult. Grubber was so deformed that determining his age was just as difficult and Big Billy was a cyclops. He was certainly bigger than every other kid on the block but that didn't necessarily mean he was an adult. He certainly had the mind of a child but that was only mental. Lil Arturo was short enough to pass for a toddler, but since the lad was also a midget that didn't give her any hints as far as age either since his height clearly didn't tell the whole story with him, and Snake? Well, Snake was the only one she could reasonably see as a lanky adolescent.
Either way, it was clear that these parents didn't see the Gangreen Gang as kids.
"Those thugs aren't children! They're creatures! And those creatures had no business being anywhere near any of our actual children!"
Tell that to Wednesday, Ms. Keane thought. But she knew they wouldn't understand if she tried to bring him up as an instigator to all this or his role as a truant officer for the boys, making sure that they at least had an education for themselves.
"Well, you see," Miss Keane tried to explain things from his perspective, from a legal perspective. "Because the Gang had never received a proper education before, it was decided by some... people, that it would be best for them to go to school. And since they never received any amount of schooling before in all of their years... kindergarten seemed like the best place to start?"
She winced with her explanation and the backlash she received for it was entirely predictable.
"Oh great!" Another mother cried, throwing up her hands in exasperation. "So just invite every Tom, Dick, and Harry to sit in and learn their ABCs with the rest of the kiddos too, huh?"
When she said it like that, it did indeed sound ridiculous but then again it still was not Miss Keane's original idea. The next barb thrown at her did not at all seem called for though.
"So what's next for our kids, huh? Are we gonna have to worry about convicted pedophiles sitting in the same classroom as our vulnerable children too?"
"Of course not!" Miss Keane gasped, horrified at her very suggestion. She was also quite sickened. Was a jab like that really necessary to try to prove her point? "I'm appalled you would even suggest a thing! It's sick and I would never put my students in danger like that-!"
"Well that's not what the medical bills are saying, honey! My son's lucky not to have come out of that skirmish with any broken bones, but he still says that you failed to help him while he and the rest of his classmates were being tormented by those punks!"
Miss Keane now looked sorrowfully at Timmy who gave her a sad, unhappy expression back. He looked worried for her, not happy to be here, but he also looked betrayed and beyond that... disappointed.
"Tell me Timmy, what was that horrible gang doing to you and the rest of the kids while your teacher had her head up in the clouds, too distanced from reality to pay you or the others any attention?"
Timmy played with his fingers and looked down at the floor before reciting everything. "They poured milk over our heads and stomped on all our cookies during snack time, they threw paste at us during arts and crafts, and they hit us with dodgeballs during recess. It really hurt a lot."
"Mmhm." His mother nodded her head. She wrapped an arm around Timmy. "And when that awful man Ace and his group of thugs were forcing cookies down your throat at the little table you were sitting at, what was your teacher doing Timmy?"
"Nothing." The boy shared sadly, not sounding happy to say it but not willing to lie either.
"Was she paying it any attention?"
"No, Mommy."
"Did she do anything to stop them once she saw what was going on?"
"No, Mommy."
"Did she discipline them at all?"
"No."
"Did she even make sure you were okay after such an act?"
"No she didn't, Mommy."
These were all very damning statements to make towards his main educator, and unfortunately, each and every last one of them was painfully accurate. Miss Keane really hadn't done anything to help him and it was all due to her distraction completing other tasks.
Even still, she tried to explain herself and rather weakly at that. "I... I-I was grading papers-"
"Oh! So 'grading papers' was more important than monitoring my son's health? If one of those cookies had gotten lodged in his throat and he ended up dying from choking on it, would you still be 'grading papers'?"
It was an awful visual to think about. A child actually dying on her watch due to her own negligence.
"I-I didn't see what was going on. I had no idea what they were doing. I should have been paying more attention and I do apologize-"
"You 'apologize', huh?" Obviously this wasn't good enough for the still irate woman. "Well, get ready to do a lot more 'apologizing' because we're not even close to finished!"
"Miss Keane always said she never saw them doing anything bad." A girl with puffy pigtails noted sadly to her equally angry father. It was clear that she too felt hurt at her teacher's lack of protective instincts towards her.
"How could she not have seen them doing anything bad, Sally?" The man questioned his daughter. The thought of her teacher being blind to everything his children had disclosed to him truly boggled his mind.
"She was always looking at something else..." The little girl explained, hardly making things any better for Miss Keane.
"So you can just get distracted by any ol' thing, huh?" The man criticized the older woman. "If I threw a stick across the room at you right now, would you drop everything in front of you to try to go get it?"
This jab had Miss Keane's cheeks blushing bright red, not only with embarrassment but also sheer humiliation. Being likened to a dog arose a real amount of anger in her. "Sir, I am not a dog."
"Well you sure get distracted like one! Explain that!"
"And what's this I hear about some dodgeball game being played that ended up breaking my son's prescription glasses?" The same mother from before brought up, getting into the heart of the matter. "Those weren't cheap, you know! Did you actually allow those horrible hooligans to play a DODGEBALL GAME outside with our CHILDREN?"
"The Powerpuff Girls tried to help." Timmy brought up softly, looking at his teacher with a defeatist air as he shared how she chose to handle that little situation too. "Miss Keane said no."
This did not go over well with the army of parents either who all shouted "WHAT?!" at the same time with sheer outrage.
"Oh, you gotta be kidding me!" There were cries of frustration, smacked foreheads, and gesticulations of disbelief all around.
Miss Keane floundered to explain herself yet again.
"I-"
She wasn't quite given the opportunity though, as she was interrupted by an incredulous father who actually had to take a seat in one of the kiddie chairs for that one.
"So the Powerpuff Girls have more sense than you?" He questioned, looking her directly in the face. He creased his brows and gave her a truly uncomprehending look for her incompetence. "Three little girls who are still attending kindergarten have more sense than you?"
"I only told them that because of the no-fighting rule in school!"
Perhaps some of those rules were arbitrary and badly outdated by today's standards, but she was simply trying to promote an atmosphere of peace inside her own classroom... or at least she had thought.
"So let me get this straight," A different man with long blonde hair reaching his back said. This was Joey's father, a little wheelchair-bound boy with similarly lengthy flaxen hair. "It's not okay for the Powerpuff Girls to try to protect our kids from gangsters, but it is okay for those same gangsters to put our own kids in the hospital?"
"No! That's NEVER okay! It shouldn't have happened-"
"You're damn right it shouldn't have happened!" Timmy's mother screeched again. "And what I want to know is if their hands were so tied about it, what were YOU doing about it?"
The answer was the same as it had been every other time: absolutely nothing. A fact she was becoming more and more ashamed about every time it was thrown back at her face.
The parents shook their heads scornfully at her, hardly improving their opinion of her. "Whose bright idea was it to send those little green monsters to Pokey Oaks Kindergarten for their so-called 'free public education' anyway?!"
"I did." A rather stern and gruff voice said from the open doorway, all heads whipping around to face a rather large, square, and dull-looking man with a trenchcoat and grey fedora hat. It was none other than Jack Wednesday, the man who had started it all as far as this whole mess.
He slammed the door shut behind him and stood tall against the army of parents. "I'm responsible for those kids, so before you start ganging up on a hapless woman, why don't you direct some of that same energy at me?!"