JMJ

Chapter Twelve

The Bottom of the Barrel

"Stupid Snake," I spat and kicked some indefinable thing down the street before shoving forward.

Halfway down the street I felt it.

Prickles popped like zits all over me. It wasn't just paranoia; I'd just been off a little in triangulation. I spun around towards the truck. Even brand new after the one I broke for them, I heard, I smelt, I felt those scientists and their lab as it swerved in front of me. I just stood there slumped forward, hands between bowed legs and my gob gaping with syrupy drool coming out from the side of my mouth.

"Ah, Ace!" exclaimed that horribly cheery little voice of Dr. Form's; that voice from my nightmares. "There you are!"

Like a dog hunted down to his last ounce of strength I stared. I could have attacked him. The physical strength was there, but the mental strength was strained to the last noodle— exhausted like a car that wouldn't start, but the engine still ground. I hated him was all I could think. I hated him so much I was ready to pull his face off his skull if only in my mind. It was my own skull that was burning with disbelief.

"I know you're in excruciating pain!" said Form's rosy-cheeked face as he waved out the window of the truck. "We can fix that. We've just figured out a way to fix the problem we had earlier that you likely overheard, and if you would just quietly come back with us, we can overcome all our misunderstandings. You're still an exceptional young person, and the only person for this mission."

"You're breakin' my heart, Form," I muttered, but I wasn't sure he heard me.

He went on, "Ace, you are the finest being ever to live!"

My cheeks flushed under my eyes and swelled enough to blur my vision. I was smiling not bloating, if you can believe that. I laughed. Loud and hard. I almost expected some lightning to strike with a round of piercing, chest-blasting thunder.

"You think I haven't heard that one before?" I cried cuz my laughter was so strong I was tearing up, and I was wiping my eyes clean. "Who do you think you are? I'm Ace of the Gangreen Gang, and I'm a dupe to no one, especially a glorified four-eyed dweeb like you trying to ass-pat me back like I'm a stray donkey!" I thrust my finger towards him pin-pointing him out of the universe for this momentous moment. "Get ready to find out just what you created, Form. That is if you dare to take one step towards me! Do ya have the guts, Form!?"

"Believe me," said Form kindly— a fake sugar-free kind of sweetness, really. "I feel terrible about all this. If there was one thing I learned working for Pr. Ex, it was a little bit of empathy. He lost so many for lack of it himself."

I wasn't in the mood for his life story.

"I can smell your fear, Form," I derided, feeling a touch of swagger I had not felt in ages. "And it's aaaaaaaaaall thanks to you."

The others in the vehicle squirmed. Adrenaline was at fever pitch in their only-human bodies, but Form tried hard to appear undaunted. It was just downright creepy the way he swallowed that adrenaline back down, but I was just as strong in my own stance now.

"Ace, there's nowhere to go," he pleaded with me like I was a poor little lamb. "You won't live without…"

His voice trailed off. Though, it had nothing to do with my ferocity, admittedly. That had probably only been making him more keen on keeping me, but at that moment everything trailed off. At last that smile faded and his pink face turned as pale and undefined as vanilla pudding.

It was the sound of a helicopter.

I had heard it before this, but I had thought it was one of those medical helicopters. I was wrong. Hardly had it appeared in all its police-force glory when it fired. Its beam hit me square in the chest before I could gasp. It hit me with a sock to knock the wind out of me, but I wasn't hurt. I was trapped in that beam. I was still passing out, though. Everything was getting fuzzy, I don't think it had anything to do with the beam. It was all just me.

Funny thing was I didn't resent any of this. All I could think was relief and even pleasure at seeing the fear in Form's face as the police directed all anger at him and all his little Ex-crony pals of Pr. Ex. About time! And who had I to thank? I was pretty sure I knew.

Snake and I had been way too loud for her not to have heard, and what else would a good parent do when her son was trying to fight peer pressure from a volatile creep that used to be his so-called friend? She called 911.

Thanks, Sanford's mom, I thought and not a wink of irony.

I hope his mom told him how proud she was of him for breaking out of that bad loyalty and finally telling off such an abusive buffoon. At least, now I do. Didn't think of that then. Just passed out.

#

I wasn't out for long. I was in the jail cell before I knew it. Home sweet home, really, and lo and behold! Who should be next door for my welcome-home party but an old friend of mine!

"Hey, Boss! Boss! It's me Big Billy! Hey, Boss, you okay? You no look good, Boss! You okay, Boss? Boss?"

He had been talking like that since he saw me come through the door guarded by super-armored guards.

"Hey, Big Billy," I muttered once inside the cell; then I withdrew my hands from the bars.

I slunk into the shadows of the cell like the broken beast I was.

"Hey, Boss, do you know what's going on? Hey, Boss!" Billy went on and on. "You been gone! Where'd you go, Boss? Gang was worried, Boss. Hey, Boss? You hurt, Boss! Big Billy missed you, Boss. Boss? Ace? Boss?"

He'd missed me. Of course, had. I was the only family he had. I knew that for a fact.

Whether an orphan or not, he was basically without anyone else in the whole universe if not for me taking care of the big old baby, but I didn't feel like talking right now. I really wasn't in the mood for human interaction of any kind. I kind of just wanted to sleep.

I closed my eyes. A violent tremble ran through my body like some alien electroshock therapy from the inside-out. My eyes popped back open, swollen raw. My breath gone, my voice box just non-applicable.

"Boss? You choking, Boss?"

I was choking alright.

"You sick, Boss?"

So sick and yet not dying. It was like a sweet shrieking metal song.

"Boss! Hey, Boss, can you not hear Billy?" Billy asked so candidly.

That unnatural roar erupted like a popped champagne bottle. Pain not anger exploded from me. I felt it was the last time.

#

Meh! Not to be.

Now, I was promoted to a maximum security cell. Guess after the Powerpuff Girls weren't so powerful anymore, the police really had picked up their game. No chances taken.

After wrecking my cell and part of Billy's, I was suddenly in the dark in solitary confinement with no windows, thick sleek walls on every side, and a sealed door that might've been taken from a nuclear bomb shelter. A narrow slot like a nozzle to a nuclear vacuum could be used to push food through to me in a plastic tray that I couldn't take off the rotating slot— just the food on the tray could be moved before the tray was taken away in about a half hour's time for the next of the three lame meals a day. No other link to the outside world. It was like being sealed into an anteroom in the middle of a military stronghold. The toilet had instant disintegration instead of being part of the sewer system. The bunk was a solid thing coming out of the wall with a non-spring pad and a microfiber blanket that sprinkled me in static just going near it in this dry sterile chamber.

I moaned and threw my hands over my sweaty greasy head in dismay.

"Couldn't they just kill me!?" my voice echoed against the walls like needles back into my head.

I was not even killable, though? Maybe I would just spend eternity like this.

I slumped down on the bed shelf in an orange uniform. My clothes were completely ruined, anyway. I leaned on my knees lifted up to my chin and then pressed my face into them. Clicking the roof of my mouth I just sat there.

What was the point of moving, anyway?

Grubber was right. I was a dupe. I always had been a dupe. The rest of the gang were just dupes of me. Maybe that made them stupider to be a dupe of dupe. Maybe that was why I didn't even blame Grubber and Arturo anymore even if I still begrudged it al. The Gangreen Gang had only been what it was because of Ex's experimentation. But Snake on the other hand was wrong about at least part of what he had been saying.

I shivered a little before thinking on.

I didn't show it well, I guess, but I had cared about them all. I don't think I realized it till now in this cell, but they were my brothers.

Every one of them I always treated with the utmost responsibility, I told myself.

I helped them when they needed it, right?

Even the way I'd treated Snake was from my point of view more just cuz I'd been trying to get him to stay focused. I could have been a little nicer, but he always had been the one to stray from the group the most with his ever-wandering mind. He had the brain of a day dreamer. Without me he'd dream his life to its end and get himself into the kind of trouble that dreamers dream themselves into cuz they don't look and watch where their feet are— no matter where the mind is, the feet are always subject to gravity. So, basically I was keeping him awake. Since the moment I took him in, I knew he was vulnerable, gullible, awkward, and cautious, so I'd always taken that into account with him, but I guess, I hadn't counted on the fact that he would take my wing I put him under the wrong way.

Grubber was sharp as a tack but lacked confidence. I'd given him that confidence, and we were confidential in a way that let Grubber use me for secrets that the others did not have to know about. He was a thinker, but unlike Snake he knew where both bare feet on the ground were treading at all times and what he tread between his toes without even looking. Some might have even called him jaded, but I never asked about what. He respected me for that. In all other things, all we had to do was wink at each other and it was that deep understanding of Greek sages.

Billy had nothing but body and more heart on his sleeve than even his sleeve could hold so that it was dripping down his arms and through his fingers. I'd given him the brains to protect him even from himself and in return he gave me an armor of the more physical kind. It was simple, and, I thought anyway, pretty pure for a street gang.

Arturo had a long family history he was both proud of and inherited him an instinct that was beyond the rest of us. The side affect of all that was that as small as he was, he was packed with the weight of eons. It made him basically as heavy as a rock. I'd been there to lighten him up when nothing else would have. That's why he stuck to me like glue. Always right there at my ankles. His inner buoyancy came to life when he wouldn't've had it at home with an old man in prison and half his rellies had met crazy dark ends. I was the raft he clung to in deep waters, otherwise he'd have sunk to someplace at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico long ago.

What was I? Their dad? Funny, wasn't it?

I chuckled stupidly to myself, but my smile got stale fast. Sickly and moldy, it shriveled into a raison over my teeth.

The dad I'd always wanted my dad to be…?

I blinked out in hollow surprise.

"Tch, now that's pretty schmaltzy," I scoffed. "Your brain's going softer by the second there, Ace! But whatchyoo trying to prove anyway? You're not spending eternity here. Your brain's already puke ready to be flushed down the drain."

Besides, if my dad had really been who I had wanted him to be, he would have had a dame who wouldn't have abandoned him. Poor chooser. Poor loser.

But am I any different?

A cold chill gripped me. I was too weak to fight it. Staring out into the blackness miserably, I recalled my vow to never think of Sedusa and what she'd done to us even if it had been her that had made us realize our true power in the green. I… had let my gang down with that one. I wasn't their dad, I was their older brother, and I had not only found what I thought I wanted, I'd wanted to actually share it— me sharing? I mean, I never thought about myself as a sharing kind of guy— I'd wanted to share it with my dopey younger sibs.

"Oh, my precious boys. No one is as special to me as you are."

It was so silent in this chamber and I felt so sick anyway that I could hear the voice of the seductress in my head. Maybe I was starting to get feverish. I felt kind of hot… when I didn't feel cold.

No one had ever said those words to me before, but she had said them. It had felt like the right words from the right person to the right people. I felt even now the warmth from her hand on my face, petting my cheek like a mother supposedly does to her child when he's down in the dumps. I closed my eyes and let it linger before she ripped the flesh clean to my teeth with her tiger claws spurting out between her slender fingers.

I jolted awake.

Silence. Stillness.

I sighed.

I don't know what the gang thought I'd wanted from her. Even I hadn't really known at first, but to just go out and say that I'd been hoping she'd be my replacement mother was basically admitting I was just some dumb punk kid. All the lies I'd ever told the guys about my identity and my history… it all came back to haunt me. All the ghosts of those tall tales bigger than Paul Bunyan's Axe were pointing in one direction sharpened slick along the edge. They were dripping in clanking chains like vines on a rotted house, veins in popping flesh, grime-lines on the Titanic. I followed their claws to the grave of my childhood, dead before I could even say the word "Mom."

Even as a kid I'd broke my dad's stuff on purpose. I'd laugh when he'd scream cuz at least it meant he noticed me. I existed. That was something. Not enough, though… I'd scare cats, I'd made dogs howl and growl. I'd make women shriek and babies wail. When people'd tell my dad all the horrible things I'd done, I'd feel proud.

Shattered glass looked good under my feet. The sheen of new cars looked good in dents. I'd always been a monster… broken, sick, mutated in the brain. That's why the green had made me feel soooooooooo good— better than any drug or fake stimulant. It had made my outside look like my inside. Gangrene. Gangrene from birth! A whole gangrene Gangreen life! It was destiny that had nothing to do with Pr. Ex. Only… that had not been good enough for that funny thing fate was. I had had to make my whole being feel like my soul. Thanks to Dr. Form I was complete now. A complete mess like I was supposed to be to the very atoms of my being.

Irony. I was in love with it like a bad lustful romance. My brain was rapping it in its synapses; my heart was strumming it on electric strings.

Then the tears? My soul sang them rather than my eyes released them— not that it was very nice to listen to— kinda discorded and experimental, y'know.

There was nothing left to hold them back. If some guards were watching on camera, who cared what they thought anyway? I was crying like a city park spout for kids and puppies to play in. I couldn't tell in the darkness, but I was imagining that my tears were yellow just like the rest of me— bug-juice yellow.

I shuddered and wheezed. I wailed. I screamed. I pounded the walls till my fists felt numb. I got satisfaction when my throat felt scratchy and I couldn't yell anymore, though the choke was there for a long time. At least it felt like a long time. It was there when I woke up not even realizing I'd been asleep.

There was a weird beeping sound that dried up my misery into crusty irritation.

A bomb?

If only, right?

No.

I shuddered weakly, surprising myself that my legs were crumpling tight beneath me. Still limbs attached to my torso? Wow.

"A visitor is requesting permission to speak with you," said a blank female voice.

I strained a growl through my teeth still in place enough to grit, but too weak to hold steady.

"Who?" I heaved, fearing Form, beside myself.

"Pr. Utonium."

I paused.

Utonium?

I knew that name. The Powerpuff Girls guy.

"That's right," I muttered.

"What was that?"

"Yes!" I snapped.

Silence. Then the speaker crackled a little as a weird candid kind of voice said something I couldn't make out to the lady. Then the voice became clear. Yeah. I knew Pr. Utonium.

"Mr.—"

"Just call me Ace," I sighed.

"Ace," said the voice. "I was asked to look into your… condition."

"Uh, huh."

"Some of the residue from your performance in your previous cell was left for me to study last evening, and if you allow me to help you I believe that there is an answer to all of this that will please everyone."

"I'm in a cage, ain't that good enough for them?" I snorted.

"The volatility of your condition is still unknown, in all truthfulness." There was pity in his voice. I hated it. "It is believed by many that even this containment may not contain you. After studying the substance induced into your biological makeup, it could indeed prove unstoppable next time you transform."

I snorted very loudly.

"They will only allow you to leave this containment—"

"That they don't even know will contain me," I interrupted with a third and final snort.

"If I get your permission…" Utonium insisted rather tersely at my rudeness. "I'm not exactly keen on the notion of helping someone who doesn't want to be helped myself."

I sighed, and threw my head back against the wall.

Ow, I thought, and rubbed the back of my head.

"Look," said Utonium. "I know you have a reputation, but—"

"Is it worth my life?" I sighed allowing my desolation to come through at last.

Utonium waited for me to answer my own question. Didn't feel like testing it, really.

"Already found out what I apparently think my own life's worth with this whole mess to begin with," I said with a slumping shrug.

I drummed my fingers against the side of my space-mission bunk and bit my lip. My eyes lifted to the door, and I swallowed hard. It was like the door itself was looking down upon me like I was a lost, diseased puppy. Rabid or just ill? The door seemed to be wondering. Was I even worth it, it was thinking.

But of course, the door couldn't think, and I was on my last scrap of sanity, even if the old man of my former enemies was for some reason in a backwards kind of way keeping me more grounded than I had been in a while.

I don't know how I answered 'yes' out loud, but I must've finally got the affirmative through my lips. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, but I was no self-destructive, defeatist kind of guy. At least, not purposely. It wasn't in my nature, see? No matter how stubborn I was. No matter how humiliated or depressed or tired, I wanted out. Not through death but life. Believe it or not, I was addicted to it, and after living in death for so long I felt like I could use a little bit of life again.

But I think the reason I don't remember what I said, exactly was that right after that, they beamed me. Not like in the old fashioned sci-fi way for those geeks out there. I mean they beamed me into a beam again so they could haul me safely to Townsville Research Center like a can of tuna. I was as ticked as the Townsville Town Hall clock, but I didn't blame Utonium, really.

In the end, there I was in another lab. Had to hand to Utonium, though. It may not have been as big as the place where Form worked, but it wasn't nearly as messed up for neo-Frankenstein. It was more like a place school kids went on a field trip to go to learn about space only my new quarters didn't have a planetarium. Not that I needed one like a mobile above a crib for me or anything.

I was still in the beam when Utonium arrived out of breath from catching up with the crew that dropped me off. He opened the door and pushed his way into the room shaken and irritated.

Thankfully still relatively in my own body and mind, all I did was grimace at him when his eyes met mine. I felt kind of like an action figure on display up there, especially since Utonium was not the only scientist around, but I think they all knew why I was there. A person would think I'd almost be deadened to the idea of having my body on display by now, but really I was so sick of it that my insides went upside-down, though, it could have just still been my illness.

"Sorry about that," said Utonium with a weak smile. "I didn't know they were going to quite do that."

At least it wasn't a crooked smile or worse— like the toothpaste commercial smile of Form. I even forgave Utonium's sympathetic undertone this time. Well, I appreciated it, actually.

I sighed as answer and rolled my eyes into a close.