...but I got back from my party early
More Than Human, ch6
part 1
part 2
Title: More Than Human
Chapter 6: We’ll Still Have The Summer After All, or Permanent Jet Lag, Please Take Me Back
Pairing: RrB/PpG
Rating: R/M, because they're teenagers and a good handful of them use terrible, filthy language.
Disclaimer: Pay your respect to Craig, not me.
Summary: There is no way I can make this sound original, ever. My attempt to write a believable RrB/PpG in high school fic. Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. – Camus
Notes:![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mathkid and juxtaposie deserve more credit than they get for how much they help me. Ch. 6 is TEF’s Beach Episode. Yes, you may thank me later.
More Than Human, Pt. 1 - Junior Summer
June – We’ll Still Have The Summer After All, or Permanent Jet Lag, Please Take Me Back (cont.)
-sbj-
***
At first it wasn't swimming so much as wading, although once Brick hit the deeper water he did disappear into the distance for awhile. Five minutes later he was swimming back to shore, against the tide.
He stayed up to his neck in the water for a minute. Several females' eyes were on him, waiting for the divine moment when he rose out of the water, dripping. He thought he'd entertain some peace and quiet for a little longer before he gave them the satisfaction.
His gaze drifted along the shore to Blossom, who was most definitely not looking at him because she was very concentrated on studying the sand. She had gathered up her skirt in her arms, up around her waist, and was letting the water come up to her knees. The boys, still back by the volleyball net, were torn between gazing lustily upon Blossom and glaring traitorously at the girls fixated on Brick.
As he made his way to shore (and ignored Blossom, plus the high-pitched keening noises coming from the girls), he heard something else and paused.
It was an almost imperceptible high-pitched whine. For some reason it was setting off warning alarms in his head like crazy... he knew that sound, or should know that sound...
He turned and looked up into the sky. Nothing in that endless blue, save for—
“Do you hear that?” Blossom suddenly said, her brow furrowed.
“Hear what?” Bubbles asked.
“It's like... like this high buzzing noise,” Blossom said, looking around.
“I don't hear anything,” Butch said.
“No, there it is—I hear it, too,” Boomer said.
Robin and Kim exchanged confused glances. “What are you guys talking about?”
Buttercup cocked her head to the side, concentrating. “It's getting louder. What is that?”
Blossom's gaze fell on Brick, whose was staring up at the sky looking like he'd just been punched in the gut.
“Brick?”
Mine, he thought, the word frantic in his brain. That's mine, mine, what the fuck is it doing here, what the FUCK—
A dark triangle of black suddenly whooshed over them, only visible to those with supersight, high up in the air. Brick took off after it.
He heard a round of voices cry out after him but didn't turn to see whether they'd followed. Maybe he'd made a mistake. Maybe it wasn't his.
The closer he drew the more he knew it was an empty hope. He'd know that aircraft anywhere. He'd only spent weeks upon weeks sketching and designing and re-designing it, even if he'd never had a hand in its construction. At Smith's recommendation—Brick hadn't wanted to keep it at their headquarters where too many board members were liable to discover it—construction had been done off-site, and communication had been very limited in case someone got wise to what they were doing. People in charge tended not to like Brick very much.
As an added precaution Brick had asked Smith to cease production on it while he was gone; without him around JS to act as watchdog he didn't want to take any chances. Not even his brothers knew about this. It wasn't supposed to be out; fuck, it wasn't even supposed to be done for another five months! And what the hell was it doing here, in Townsville?! Why would Smith do this?!
He slowed as he flew just beyond its range of detection—he had designed it to pick up on spikes of Chemical X, fuck, fuck, he had only done that to sell it to Smith, to show him how completely trustworthy he was—
A multicolored flash surged by, interrupting his thoughts. The girls were flying ahead of him, and he swore under his breath.
“Stop!” he shouted, but the lasers had already kicked in, swiveling around and firing.
A shield of green flickered in front of them to block the beams—
But the beams passed through anyway. It was as if they displaced the tiniest area of shield around it, and luckily the girls had the sense to dodge them despite the shield. Brick had to spiral out of the line of fire himself.
He wouldn't, Brick thought frantically to himself. The lasers should've bounced off, unless...
“Pull back!” he yelled as the fighter fired again.
“How did that thing burn through my fucking shield?!” Butch cried as he came up beside his brother.
Brick ignored him and shouted, “Hey! Pull back!”
Blossom halted and glanced back, but her sisters kept flying—
Brick gritted his teeth and surged forward—he couldn't grab both of them, and Bubbles was closest. He tackled her around the waist and as she yelped he dragged her down, narrowly avoiding the lasers.
“Wh-what are you doing?!” she cried.
“Getting you out of range,” he said, watching as the fighter carried on. Butch, in a rare show of intelligence, had taken a cue from Brick and grabbed Buttercup. They were now struggling with each other as the fighter sailed away.
Boomer was hovering with Blossom as all six of them came together.
“That thing looks like a military aircraft,” Blossom said as she watched it grow smaller and smaller.
“Why would the military be testing here?” Buttercup wondered.
“Is it one of Mojo's?” Bubbles suggested. “It did fire at us—”
“If it was Mojo's then it'd still be after us,” Buttercup pointed out.
“There's nobody in there,” Blossom said, suddenly looking at Brick. “I got close enough to see. There's no way that thing could have a person inside it.”
“How do you know?” Boomer asked.
“It's too sleek and thin. Brick,” she said, and suddenly all eyes were on him. “How did you know where to stop before the lasers started firing?”
He stared at her. He shouldn't have told them to pull back. If he hadn't said anything, he could have pretended he'd been playing it safe, but—
“Um, you know how we said it wasn't Mojo because it wasn't after us anymore?” Bubbles said, and everyone's attention drifted to her. She was staring at a rapidly approaching black dot. “I don't think we should completely rule Mojo out.”
Laserbeams shot toward them, and they all careened out of the way in six different directions. Blossom shouted an order, and her sisters fell into formation, attempting an ambush attack.
Brick, after flying a ways away, paused and hovered, tracking the path of the fighter as the girls pursued it, ducking its fire. Fire that had pierced through Butch's shield.
When he thought about it—and the very idea made him sick to his stomach, sick with himself—Smith had betrayed him. Why else would he infuse the fighter's weaponry with Antidote X, then send it flying over Townsville, where he had sent the boys on vacation? He had clearly taken the opportunity of Brick not being there to accelerate completion of the fighter. And if he'd pushed that ahead, he'd probably taken Brick's other two projects and—
The mere thought had Brick practically choking with anger. He'd trusted him! Fuck! And now the aircraft's computer would be collecting data on this. Data on how to destroy him and his brothers if he didn't destroy it first.
His siblings and the girls were exerting way more Chemical X than he was just floating there, so the fighter wouldn't come his way. He had to break into it. He needed to bust open the hull and destroy the aircraft's computer before JS could get their hands on it. But he couldn't fly at it head-on. If he got too close the aircraft would twist away from him and fire...
He took a deep breath and dove to join them. It was a miracle no one had been hit yet.
“Where the hell are you chasing it?!” he called to Blossom, at the head of the group. 'Chasing' might have been poor word choice; they were going back and forth so much it was hard to tell who was chasing who.
“I'm trying to get it as far away from land as possible!” she cried back. Trust the hero to place civilian safety stupidly high on her list. He rolled his eyes.
“Butch! Boomer!” he ordered, and his brothers pulled up alongside him, dodging the fire. “You two, get in front of it and fucking fly. Make sure it's on your tail, not the girls'—it's detecting Chemical X and the more you expend, the more of a target you become. Fire your beams, shields, whatever, I don't fucking care! Keep that up for about five seconds, then lead it back around this way. Keep it right at the altitude we're at now.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Boomer asked.
“I'm going to tear that fucker apart,” Brick said, the words sounding hollow and dead in his mouth.
As his brothers flew ahead, Brick angled upward for a couple hundred feet, then turned to watch. Butch and Boomer were succeeding in commanding the aircraft's attention and looked about ready to turn it around. Blossom was screaming at them, trying to get them to tell her what they were up to.
Three years, Brick thought bitterly to himself. Three fucking years of all that fucking work, down the God damn fucking drain. But it wasn't just three, no, this had been going on his entire life. His entire life was a fucking waste of time, spent on stupid shit under the tutelage of idiot so-called father figures who had nothing better to do but chase around three little girls with superpowers when they could've had the fucking world at their command—
The fighter was coming back. He had to time this just right. Count to three, and then...
Brick stopped flying and let himself fall backwards, bracing himself for impact.
He'd been close enough that he could've reached out and grabbed his brothers if he'd dropped any earlier. He crashed into the metal, his shoulders denting it, and as he grabbed on he suddenly heard the top lasers whirring around. His aim was perfect. He'd landed right between them.
He twisted and pushed away as they fell for the oldest trick in the book and fired, destroying each other in the process. Unfortunately, one of the beams grazed the back of his hand as he pulled it away, and he bit back a cry as a deep red welt surfaced on his skin. Shit, he thought. He couldn't afford to fuck up his fucking hands if he was going to do this.
The fighter suddenly angled to the right, trying to throw him off, and Brick punched into the hull as close to the computer as he could get, clinging to the metal as the fighter spun into a corkscrew.
He forced it right side up, leveraging it with his legs, and started to tear away at the metal.
Something went wrong as soon as his hands pulled that first hunk off. All of the sudden his body began to feel heavy, fatigued. He almost lost his balance, something that never happened, and had to grasp at the torn hull to keep from falling off. The burn on his hand flared, as if someone was dragging a knife across his skin and actually drawing blood.
Brick stared in horror at the thin wire mesh just underneath the outer metal—no, not mesh. Like an intricate capillary system, leaking tiny, near-microscopic drops of Antidote X. He couldn't get to the computer without going through it first, and he'd already broken through it and made contact with it—
He gritted his teeth and shoved his arms through, grimacing against the pain in his hand. No, he couldn't reach it. Fuck. He had to tear a bigger hole. Already his strength was waning; he could feel it being sucked away. The threat of death loomed over him as his body weakened, the same threat that he imagined every normal human being felt, every single second of every God damned day.
The wind felt less like wind and more like a thousand battering rams coming at him. He had to work to get the next piece off, and the edges of the jagged metal were already staining with blood from his hands. The hole looked barely big enough to fit his arm through, and he still had to go through the netting. He could suddenly feel the fighter readying itself for another corkscrew, as if it knew of Brick's newly acquired vulnerability.
It started to bank left, and Brick clenched at it, the sharp edges of the hull still cutting into his skin and reminding him how much he absolutely hated to be normal.
Something hit the fighter, hard, leveling it out, and Brick almost bounced off from the impact. He lifted his head to see Blossom at the head of the aircraft, leveraging it the way Brick had earlier with her legs and arms.
“What are you doing?!” he screamed, throat protesting as he shredded his vocal cords.
“Helping!” she screamed back, and had to force the aircraft to keep from banking right.
“Where's everybody else?!”
She pointed ahead of them, and now Brick saw it. Their brothers and sisters were all flying together, leading the fighter on and dodging the bottom lasers.
“You're trying to get at the computer?” Blossom shouted, and started to come forward. “Let me help—”
“This thing's drowning in Antidote X! Don't touch it!” The aircraft tried to go into another corkscrew and Blossom immediately steadied it. “Besides, you need to keep it from going upside-down!”
“Then hurry up! They can't dodge those lasers forever!”
Brick swore and raised himself up as best he could on his knees, punching into that Antidote X infused wire netting. It cracked underneath his fist, the wire scratching his skin and drawing blood. He punched again, making a hole just big enough to get his arm through, and fuck, this thing was hot...
He couldn't use his supersight to see, but save for the web of Antidote X, he could still see his blueprint in his head. He knew where it was, how to destroy the computer. But he was going to suffer for it. He'd bleed, get burned.
And he'd be taking down his baby. His brainchild.
Three fucking years of all that fucking work, down the God damn fucking drain.
It hurt. It hurt when the web's metal edges clawed at his skin, raked red lines all the way up his arm. It hurt to plunge it into that insufferable heat, so much so that it was a miracle he maintained the presence of mind to not yank it back out because he'd just have to do it again, and with a burned arm it would be that much worse.
His hand closed around his precious baby's brain, and that was the worst. That endless moment of agony before he killed his own.
He clutched and pulled.
With its brain in his bleeding, scarring hand, the stealth fighter ceased fire and began to lose altitude. Brick's stomach was suddenly scuttling up into his chest, his neck, then Blossom lifted off and grabbed him just as the aircraft went into a tailspin.
He watched as it fell away from them, its hull torn apart, dying—no, dead—as it dropped further and further away. Its corpse plunged into the water and disappeared from his sight.
Fuck, it hurt.
It wasn't long before Blossom set him back down on the beach, their siblings trailing behind them. She'd chosen to settle on the dunes. Back on the other side of the rocks, their friends, who'd been watching the water and skies, caught sight of them and began running over.
Brick's numb arm was still grasping part of the aircraft's insides. Blossom reached for it and since he couldn't stop her from taking it, he didn't.
“What is this from?” she asked, turning it over and examining it from all angles. She looked up at Brick, her brow furrowed in suspicion. “Why did you hang on to it?”
He stared at her as their siblings landed. “I guess when you're normal you just forget how to let things go.”
She huffed, and her sisters pushed forward to look at it, too. Buttercup was covered in red welts, clearly having made contact with the lasers on several occasions. Bubbles was sporting a number of burns herself.
Brick turned to his brothers. “You two all right?”
“Fine,” Boomer said. “It didn't get me as much as it got Butch.”
True to form, Butch was poking experimentally at every raw patch of skin he had with a sadistic grin on his face.
“Ow. Ow. Ow.”
“We all got off better than you did, though,” Boomer said, his eyes on Brick's arm. Little spots of red were dripping onto the sand.
“Oh my God, Brick, I didn't even see,” Bubbles said, horrified. “What happened?”
“That thing was laced with Antidote X,” Blossom said before he could reply. “There was a small amount in the beams, which explains why our skin scarred instantly when it came in contact with us. From the looks of it, it released it in a much more concentrated form as soon as Brick broke into it.” She kept staring at him like she expected him to make some sudden confession.
“Am I right, Brick?” she asked quietly.
“That's right.”
“Brick you need to wrap that up or something,” Bubbles said, fussing. “Hold on, I'll be right back.”
She took off, and Blossom went back to examining the mess in her hands.
“Who do you think's responsible for this?” Buttercup asked, and Blossom's eyes flicked to Brick's blood on the sand.
“That thing was pretty impressive,” Butch said, staring wistfully at the horizon. “Shame it had to go deep-sea diving.”
Brick clenched his jaw. “Yeah.”
“I think Bubbles was right,” Blossom sighed, and everyone turned to look at her. Brick's eyes widened.
“About what?” Buttercup pressed, then the light bulb seemed to flick on. “You mean Mojo?”
“I didn't get a good look at the guts of the machine,” Blossom said, and held up the parts that Brick had yanked out. “But I've seen the insides of his previous work, and this is remarkably similar to what he's done in the past.”
Unbeknownst to the girls, as he'd grown older Brick had often secretly watched their battles with Mojo. As soon as they'd defeated him (which always happened) and left the scene, Brick would steal behind the police tape and examine the inner workings of the machine for himself, be it giant robot or giant gun or giant robot with giant gun. By age ten he was already in the habit of rummaging through Mojo's garbage, collecting discarded weapons blueprints to study. The stealth aircraft's guts would resemble Mojo's work. That was the only way Brick had learned.
Rummaging through Mojo's garbage hadn't only yielded blueprints. It was also responsible for bringing the boys and JS, Inc. together.
“Besides, who else do you know who has access to Antidote X and would create something designed to release it?” Blossom continued. “That thing was clearly out to get us.”
“Do you have any use for that whatsoever?” Brick asked abruptly, and Blossom glanced up at him.
“No—”
“Butch, fire,” he said, and in a blast of green there was nothing but ash between Blossom's hands.
“Wh-what was that for?!” she cried.
“Safety precaution,” he said flatly. “You don't want Mojo collecting data on how to defeat you, do you?”
“He didn't defeat us,” she corrected in a steely voice.
Brick indicated his arm. “Could've been you with the mangled arm.”
“Hey!” Robin, Mike, and all their friends were waving from the other side of the rocks. “Are you guys okay?”
“We're good!” Buttercup called back. Butch and Boomer waved.
“You couldn't have broken into that thing without me,” Blossom said.
“I know,” Brick sighed, surprising her. “Yeah, I know.” He looked at his arm again, and, after a long moment, said, “Thank you.”
A stunned Blossom blinked at him. Brick wanted this to be over. He needed to go home. He needed to call JS.
“Brick, here,” Bubbles said, reappearing with a towel. She wrapped his arm as gently as she could; Brick hissed against the pain, nonetheless.
“Do you—” Blossom cleared her throat. “Do you have a way of getting your powers back? The Professor's prepped for this kind of thing when it happens to us, if you need—”
“I can take care of it,” he said, then waved at his brothers with his good arm. “Come on. Let's go.”
Boomer and Butch exchanged a glance.
“Um,” Boomer ventured, “does that mean one of us has to carry you?”
***
After a brooding flight home (Boomer, for his inquisitiveness, had won the privilege of carrying him) and the standard Chemical X injection to restore his powers, Brick sat in the kitchen, carrying on with the brooding. His brothers wanted to go back to the beach, but Brick ordered them to stay home. He didn't want them going anywhere until he talked to Smith.
He watched his arm as the bleeding stopped and the cuts slowly began to close. The swelling was going down, the redness fading in intensity. His anger, however, was doing the exact opposite.
Once his arm was a respectable pink, Brick stormed into his room, refusing himself the pleasure of physically destroying the entire apartment.
Breathe, God damn it, he thought viciously to himself as he reached under the desk, stabbed at the console, and the communication screen flickered into life. He won’t take you seriously if you don’t calm down. Breathe.
He took a few deep, furious breaths, decided that was good enough, and punched in JS’ number. It rang for a good minute before JS picked up.
“John,” Brick was talking before the screen could even pick up his face. “What the fuck was my fighter doing out—”
He stopped cold, eyes subsequently widening then narrowing as Darius appeared.
“Brick!” he chirped, eyes lighting up. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Enjoying your vacation?”
“Where’s John?” Brick asked in a steely voice.
Darius peered at Brick's arm. “What's that? A sunburn? Tsk tsk tsk, Brick. Even superbeings such as yourself need sun protection.”
Brick ignored the smug, satisfied smirk on the fucking bastard's face. He knew.
“Where's John?”
A thoughtful line appeared between Darius’ eyebrows. “John? I think you’re a little confused.”
“The man whose office you’re standing in,” Brick snarled.
Darius blinked and smiled, amused. “Definitely confused, my boy,” he said in a slow, placating tone, and then smirked. “This is my office.” He leant a little closer, as if to better see the temper tantrum he expected. Despite the instantaneous urge to fly into a no holds barred, homicidal rage, particularly at the guy whose image flickered on screen, Brick merely tightened the back of his jaw.
“Is that so? Congratulations.” Brick’s voice was low and forcedly neutral.
Darius—or the new JS—settled back a bit, clearly disappointed.
“So where’s Cole?” Brick continued, referring to the last JS by his given name.
“Out of work.”
“Alive.”
“Not really.” Darius pulled a chair into frame and sat back, tenting his fingers. “Brick, I’m glad you called.”
Fuck. Cole was dead, or as good as, and now that he was gone all his files would be turned over to—
“I spotted a stealth fighter in the area not half an hour ago,” Brick suddenly interjected, keeping his voice level. “I recognized it.” Mine you fucker. You FUCK. What are you doing with MY PROJECT—
“Oh yes, that was ours,” Darius—JS—said, waving a dismissive hand. “One of Cole’s personal files. When he was relieved, the files were turned over to me, being the new JS and all—as I’m sure you’re aware—and I turned it over to the Weapons Division.”
“And sent it on a test run in my immediate area.” Brick’s gaze was cool. Darius sent it there to piss him off. He had to have known the project was Brick’s, so he’d taken it from him and fired it off his way, rubbing his victory in Brick’s face. “You realize,” Brick said quietly, “that the fighter was one of—”
“Yes, Cole had your name attached to it, along with two other projects.” Darius shrugged. “He always had a fondness for you, thought of you as his protégé. But—” He sat up, resting his elbows on his knees and smiling at Brick. “I know how much you want to… move up in the company, son.”
Brick’s eyes flared.
“Riding the coattails of a successful man, however, is not the way to do it here.” Darius clapped his hands together and shook his head. “Using Cole’s fondness for you as a means of attaching your name to—”
“Those projects are mine and mine alone,” Brick interrupted. “Cole had next to nothing to do with brainstorming or their execution, he was merely stowing them away for when I returned so they wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“Brick.” Darius reached off-screen for a file and flipped it open. “You expect me to believe that you were developing three projects at once—one each for Weapons, Surveillance, and Specialized Training Sims all by yourself?”
“The original plans are all mine,” he responded. “If I had been able to physically extricate them from the facilities for safekeeping, believe me, I would’ve.”
“Because?”
“Because I want credit where credit’s due.” Brick narrowed his eyes. “Now I’d like for you, Darius—excuse me, JS—to halt further development on said projects until my return. I’ve been working on these for a very long time—”
“I think you forget your age, son.” Darius took great pleasure in drawing the last word out. “You’re barely seventeen, and half of these projects date back almost three years ago, which would make you fourteen when you conceived of them. Now, I won’t deny you’ve a sharp mind for your age, but you can’t seriously expect anyone to believe that Cole didn’t help you along with these pets of yours.” He returned the file to its off-screen home and turned his attention back fully to Brick, adopting a smug, conciliatory tone. “This is how the real world works, Brick. You work for things. You earn respect and a position of power. You reap what you sow. Now, I’m going to turn your extra credit work over to their respective divisions and from there on we’ll decide what’s worth pursuing and what isn’t—”
“All of those projects are ‘worth pursuing,’ and I will gladly relieve you of that decision-making when I return in a week—”
“You don’t seriously expect to return next week, do you?” Darius said in a cold voice, and Brick halted. “Your name is on three ‘secret projects’ that only one man in this company knew about—”
“So you’re admitting these projects have significant value to you—”
“It looks very incriminating, Brick, and frankly, you’ve made it clear to everyone on the board what your aspirations are—”
“The turnover rate on the board is so high no one’s been there more than two years, tops—”
“Your adolescent arrogance doesn’t make you popular—”
“I have been with JS, Inc. for five years with no vacation and twice the entire board’s hours, I know the inner workings of this company inside and out—”
“And even if it weren't for all that, the fact remains that we had to do some extensive work when you failed to keep your brother's destructive streak from committing massive property damage to Townsville.”
Brick stopped and stared blankly at his screen.
“Don't look so surprised, Brick. Who do you think they hired to reconstruct downtown after your brother's little... flight of fancy? You remember us telling you to keep a low profile, right?”
He paused, waiting for Brick to answer. Like a fucking child.
Brick was practically grinding his teeth into fine powder. “I remember.”
“And you couldn't even manage that.” Darius tsked again, shaking his head. “How could you ever expect to lead a company when you can't even keep your team in line? No, best you stick to being a field agent, Brick. Destroying stuff, you know. You're good at that.”
Darius paused again, waiting for the explosion. Brick held back, his fists shuddering with anger.
The man sighed. “But you are right about one thing. You and your brothers have accumulated an inordinate amount of work hours without so much as a day off since you came to the company. Why, you were here three years before me, after all. You deserve a vacation. So really, this isn't so much a punishment for Butch's destruction as it is a 'Thank you' for all your years of hard work. And at such a young age...” Darius smiled. “Enjoy your Senior year, Brick. We'll see you when you graduate.”
The screen flickered off before Brick could respond. Graduate? As in, a year?
Brick stared at the empty space above his desk. Then he turned and eyebeamed his bed in a blinding flash of red light.
“Fuck!”
***
Boomer tossed an extra set of blankets onto the couch, along with his spare pillow. He glanced at his leader, seated in front of the closed door to his room with his head buried in his hands.
“Um, here, man.”
Brick said and did nothing.
Boomer scratched the back of his head and padded over to him.
“So... a year?”
Still no response.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and glanced out the window at the darkening sky.
“Good thing I hadn't started packing yet,” he said, a little laughter in his voice.
“Just go,” Brick finally said. “I know you want to, and Butch already left anyway. So just go.”
Boomer fidgeted. “You sure?”
“I order you to get the fuck out of my face and go back to the fucking beach,” Brick snapped.
“Whatever you say, boss,” Boomer replied, and made for the door, grabbing his acoustic along the way. Before he could leave, he turned and looked back at Brick one last time.
“You know... it probably won't be as bad as you think. Five months went by pretty quick—”
“Stop trying to cheer me up and go already,” Brick said viciously.
Boomer stared at him a moment longer before easing the door shut. As it clicked into place, the delighted smirk that he'd been suppressing ever since Brick had delivered them the news finally burst onto his face, and he zoomed out of the building and back out into the night sky.
***
Not long after the boys had left, Blossom had decided she'd had enough of the ocean for one day and had gone home. Buttercup and Bubbles had stayed behind.
As dusk settled in Mike struck up a fire and they all gathered around it, laughing and talking and roasting the occasional marshmallow. It was stilted socializing, though, at least for Bubbles. Something was off. Something was missing.
Buttercup seemed to feel it, too; her mouth was doing more marshmallow consuming than talking. They sat together, absorbing each other's silence while the rest of their friends engaged in actual conversation.
“Robin, pass me the marshmallows,” Bubbles said, and as the bag was passed to her she stuck two on her stick and three on her sister's. They rotated them in the fire slowly, side by side. Bubbles leaned against her sister and rested her head on her shoulder.
“Miss them already, huh?” she said quietly, and Buttercup only scoffed.
“Whatever. Maybe. Definitely the eye candy, though,” she said, and Bubbles giggled.
“Good day for that kinda thing.”
“Should've gotten his top off sooner,” Buttercup agreed, pulling her marshmallow stick back out to examine it. “Mm, ready.” She made to eat off the top one just as a hand reached over her head and grasped the half of the stick that was in her hand.
They turned to see Butch angling it his way so he could bite off the first marshmallow.
“What's up?” he said, voice muffled.
“What are you doing back here?” Buttercup gasped as he ate a second one.
The hand not grasping the stick held up his surfboard.
“Thought I'd do a little night surfing. Up for it?”
Buttercup, realizing her marshmallows were quickly disappearing, wrenched the stick away and hastily ate the last one.
“Yeah, sure!”
They said their goodbyes to the group as Buttercup grabbed her board. As they made their way to the water, Bubbles nibbled at her marshmallows and overheard Butch say, “You ever been to Hawaii?”
She turned her head to look after them just as Kim and Bobby glanced up and said, “Boomer?!”
Bubbles looked up in surprise at the boy settling down beside her.
“Hi!”
The delight in her voice was a total slip up, one that Boomer noticed. He paused and returned it with a slow smile, and she tried to subdue the happy expression on her face. He plucked carelessly at a couple of strings.
“Hey yourself.”
“I, um—” Bubbles looked down and busied herself with the ribbons on her sandals. “I didn’t think… I thought you were done with the beach for the day?”
He made a face and said, “Brick was. Is. Whatever.” He looked back at the neck of his guitar and strummed, adjusting the tuning. “I felt like… coming back and being social.”
“You like the beach that much, huh?” Bubbles laughed.
Boomer paused and smiled. “Something like that.”
Something was stuck in her throat, and then he looked at her, which only encouraged it to scuttle up another few inches. She swallowed and looked at the fire, blushing.
***
No, Buttercup had told Butch, she'd never been to Hawaii.
“It's pretty,” she observed as they gazed out to the horizon. The sky was exploding into orange and gold as the sun set. “My second sunset of the day.”
They were laying on their stomachs on their boards out in the water, side by side. Butch shrugged.
“'S not bad.”
Buttercup gave him a look. “'Not bad?' Is that it? Why'd you suggest going to Hawaii if it's only 'not bad?'”
He jumped up, standing and balancing on his board as the waves gently rocked them.
“Just 'cause.”
She snorted and stared at a volcano way off in the distance, tiny streams of red lava cutting their way down. Evidently it was right on the edge of the island, because where the lava would've hit the water there was a wall of steam billowing out into the air.
“I wanted to go somewhere a little private,” Butch suddenly said, and she looked at him, dread curling in her stomach at his words.
“Is that right?” she said slowly.
“Yeah. I got something I want to tell you.”
Buttercup's eyes widened and she refrained from gripping her board lest she unintentionally smash it in her hands (it was a good board). She swallowed.
“What kind of something?” she asked, voice strained.
He looked at her, his green eyes dark and reflecting none of that red-orange sunlight in the sky. Buttercup suddenly realized she didn't want to hear him say it, didn't want him to ruin this, this whatever they had, because then it would just be Mitch and Harry and the twins all over again—
“I kinda work for an evil corporation,” Butch said, and after a long moment of silence, Buttercup blinked.
“...What?”
“Well, maybe not kinda. More of a definitely.”
She stared at him. “Are you fucking shitting me?”
“That's what we were doing all that time we were gone. Working for this company, I mean. Brick got us in.”
“What the hell kind of work does an 'evil corporation' make you do?”
Butch shrugged. “Stealin' shit. Computer things and files and whatever. Sometimes you... take care of people.”
“'Take care of people?' Are you for—why are you telling me this?”
He looked her dead in the eye. “I wanted to see if you were going to do something about it.”
She stared up at him. Stealing? Killing people? She'd seen him do the former, so that wasn't a stretch to imagine. But the latter...
“You've killed people,” she said flatly. She'd meant to phrase it as a question, but she already knew the answer.
He shrugged again. “If it makes you feel any better, our targets killed bunches of others.”
“That doesn't make it right!”
“Does that mean you're going to do something about it?” he challenged.
She jumped up on her board and glared at him. He was a murderer; he'd just told her so himself. A thief and a murderer. And kind of a whore, since he got paid to do it.
“What are you doing in Townsville?” she demanded.
“We're on vacation,” he said.
This threw her off. She blinked away most of her confusion and the rest of it asked, “Why the hell did you pick Townsville?”
“We didn't. The company sent us here. Townsville here, not Hawaii here.”
“Why the hell did they pick Townsville?”
“Search me.”
“You're not on a job?”
Butch laughed. “What the hell kind of job would they send us to do in...” He trailed off as Buttercup crossed her arms and glared.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess you guys are pretty important.”
She stared at him, unsure what to feel. There was anger there, yes, but it felt like there wasn't enough of it to do something. There was also reluctance, disbelief, and beyond that, relief that he hadn't said what she'd been afraid of hearing in the first place.
“So what are you going to do about it?” he asked, his gaze as dark as the night sky. Now there was light in them, though. Funny how his eyes wouldn't reflect sunlight, but moonlight lit them up something fierce.
She stared at him a moment longer, then sank to her board, kneeling.
“I don't know if I can do anything.” She could practically hear Blossom screaming at her YES YOU CAN!
Butch sank to his knees, too. “You still want to... you know, hang out?”
“The people you've killed,” she said abruptly. “Were they... bad people?”
He took a second to consider, then said, “Brick says everyone is, really.”
That wasn't exactly the answer Buttercup had been looking for.
“But they'd definitely done bad things,” Butch continued. “Worse things than most others.”
It was a small consolation, but Buttercup latched onto that, and it became a hundred percent truth in her mind. Brick was right. Everyone was bad, to a degree. It was only human. And some probably did deserve to die more than others, though she'd never say it out loud.
She sighed and laid back on her board, stretching her legs out and letting her hands drift into the water. There never seemed to be this many stars in Townsville. Funny thing. Then again, it wasn't like she ever looked that often.
“Hey, so are we good or not?”
She splashed a hand in the water. “Little late to tell me now, now that we're all friends and shit. Besides, you're leaving in a week, aren't you?”
There was a long pause, followed by an, “Oh, yeah,” and then Butch stretched out on his board, too.
***
“So you don’t drink, huh?” Bubbles asked, her wedges in one hand as she trudged across the sand barefoot, the laughter at the campfire fading in the background.
“Oh, you know, sometimes,” Boomer said, idly strumming his guitar. After some exuberant fireside singing that had involved group renditions of Bohemian Rhapsody and The Distance, a cooler had been busted open and beer passed around, to Bubbles’ disappointment. She'd shaken her head when one was passed to her, expecting Boomer to take it, but instead he'd turned to her and said quietly, “Wanna go for a walk?”
She was still recovering from the shock, as well as the leap her heart had taken at his suggestion. Her shoes bounced against her thigh as the two of them ambled towards the ocean.
“You know, I don’t mind that kind of thing,” she said lightly. “I mean, Blossom would, and like, no one ever even tries drinking in front of her, but I don’t mind it. So you could’ve taken one, if you’d wanted.”
Boomer stopped strumming and stepped closer to her, swinging his guitar around so it rested on his back.
“I guess. Given my options, though, I’d say I made the right decision. By the way, there’s nothing in the rulebook against friends holding hands, right?”
His hand slipped around her free one, and she nearly dropped the shoes she held in the other. His grip was firm but didn’t hurt, and a warm shiver traveled across her chest.
“I’d have to check,” she said, and he smiled and swung their hands back and forth a little.
A niggling little thought hung in the back of her mind, and for sake of her happiness—the happiness she felt right now, that was growing and growing the longer they walked together, the longer he held her hand—she didn’t want to bring it up. For sake of her sanity, though, it was probably the thing to do.
This wasn’t going to work out anyway, with him taking off in a week.
“When are you and your brothers leaving?” she asked quietly, and his grip on her hand loosened, very slightly.
He studied the sand crunching underneath their feet for a few steps.
“Funny you should mention that.”
***
Buttercup lifted her head off her board and looked at the boy floating beside her.
“Seriously?”
Butch’s eyes were on the stars above them, and he dangled a hand off his board into the water.
“Yeah, man. We’re here for a whole ‘nother year.”
“Huh.”
What are you going to do about it?
After a long pause, Buttercup laid back down, feeling cool water pooling along the back of her head.
“That’s really cool.”
“Yeah?” Butch’s voice drifted along the water, gentler than the waves that rocked them. Their hands floated close enough to touch, but neither reached for the other.
He was kind of a dick. And kind of a whack job. And he'd done some really terrible things, she was sure. Worse things than she could imagine, probably.
But.
Buttercup thought about it for a second and found herself smiling as she stared at the moon.
“Yeah. It is.”
His hand bumped hers, and he splashed some water onto her. She didn't splash him back.
“Hey, you can't tell anybody else,” he suddenly said.
“What do you think I am, stupid?” she scoffed. “Don't worry about it. I got you.”
He raised himself up on his elbows to stare at her. She kept her eyes on the sky, and, after awhile, he laid back down.
A second later he kicked her board over, sending her rolling into the water, and he laughed as she sputtered and snarled and dragged him in after her.
***
Blossom set down her copy of The Stranger and shifted to hug her knees to her chest, the bedsprings squeaking faintly as she did so. The Professor had been happy to see her home so soon—relieved, really—and then had resumed fretting about her still-absent siblings.
She'd showered and changed, and then the Professor had made a small dinner for two. It had been a nice, quiet evening, and she'd been happy to get their father to herself for once. After dinner he'd retreated to the lab to finish work, leaving Blossom to meander upstairs and finish her book.
Now that, too, was done. So she curled her arms around her knees and stared out at the night sky, thinking about Brick.
Not, of course, about shirtless Brick, or how warm he'd been when she'd unintentionally crashed into him, or how all that water had been dripping down his skin after he'd finished swimming. Though the memories may have crossed her mind. Briefly. Once or twice.
Really, though, she was trying to figure out exactly why he'd seemed so... upset about the stealth fighter. It would've been one thing if he'd been upset at his wounded arm, but he'd clearly been agitated prior to that. Why, also, would he have gone to such an effort to stop the thing? Granted, it had been going after anything Chemical X-y, but he could've hung back and left the work to the girls. After all, he'd demonstrated a reluctance to help in the past.
Unlike the hostage situation at the school, Brick hadn't needed any convincing here. He'd actually been the first to leap into the air and take off after it. And then there was that whole thing about him knowing just where to stop to avoid getting fired at.
A part of Blossom thought she might be over-analyzing things, but another part knew it was more than just a string of coincidences. It all meant something. It had to.
Then again, he was leaving, what, next week? The thought crossed her mind and inspired the slightest twinge of disappointment. It wasn't likely she'd discover more in just a week. Brick obviously liked to keep his secrets.
But that's not really why you're disappointed, she thought to herself, and her mind flitted to that image of him glancing at her as she tried to hide herself in her hat—
The door swung open, and Blossom jumped as if she'd been caught doing something inappropriate.
“Oh, God, Bubbles, it's just you,” she said in relief.
Her sister didn't respond. She only floated to her bed—she'd changed back into her one-piece to save her father the heart attack and/or killing rampage—and sat, face shadowed and conflicted. She didn't look at Blossom.
After a moment, Blossom uncurled her legs and floated over to her sister.
“Bubbles? Is everything okay? Did something happen?”
Bubbles turned her gaze on her sister, biting her lip.
“Everything's fine. Just... there's news.”
Blossom's muscles tensed. “Good news or bad news?”
She expected Bubbles to say the latter, based on her expression and the faraway look in her eyes. She hadn't noticed the faint blush or the twitch of her lips that was a smile threatening to break on her face.
Bubbles looked at her and let her lips curl just enough into a small grin, waiting for her sister to ask one more time.
-end Ch. 6-
part 1
part 2
Title: More Than Human
Chapter 6: We’ll Still Have The Summer After All, or Permanent Jet Lag, Please Take Me Back
Pairing: RrB/PpG
Rating: R/M, because they're teenagers and a good handful of them use terrible, filthy language.
Disclaimer: Pay your respect to Craig, not me.
Summary: There is no way I can make this sound original, ever. My attempt to write a believable RrB/PpG in high school fic. Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. – Camus
Notes:
mathkid and juxtaposie deserve more credit than they get for how much they help me. Ch. 6 is TEF’s Beach Episode. More Than Human, Pt. 1 - Junior Summer
June – We’ll Still Have The Summer After All, or Permanent Jet Lag, Please Take Me Back (cont.)
-sbj-
***
At first it wasn't swimming so much as wading, although once Brick hit the deeper water he did disappear into the distance for awhile. Five minutes later he was swimming back to shore, against the tide.
He stayed up to his neck in the water for a minute. Several females' eyes were on him, waiting for the divine moment when he rose out of the water, dripping. He thought he'd entertain some peace and quiet for a little longer before he gave them the satisfaction.
His gaze drifted along the shore to Blossom, who was most definitely not looking at him because she was very concentrated on studying the sand. She had gathered up her skirt in her arms, up around her waist, and was letting the water come up to her knees. The boys, still back by the volleyball net, were torn between gazing lustily upon Blossom and glaring traitorously at the girls fixated on Brick.
As he made his way to shore (and ignored Blossom, plus the high-pitched keening noises coming from the girls), he heard something else and paused.
It was an almost imperceptible high-pitched whine. For some reason it was setting off warning alarms in his head like crazy... he knew that sound, or should know that sound...
He turned and looked up into the sky. Nothing in that endless blue, save for—
“Do you hear that?” Blossom suddenly said, her brow furrowed.
“Hear what?” Bubbles asked.
“It's like... like this high buzzing noise,” Blossom said, looking around.
“I don't hear anything,” Butch said.
“No, there it is—I hear it, too,” Boomer said.
Robin and Kim exchanged confused glances. “What are you guys talking about?”
Buttercup cocked her head to the side, concentrating. “It's getting louder. What is that?”
Blossom's gaze fell on Brick, whose was staring up at the sky looking like he'd just been punched in the gut.
“Brick?”
Mine, he thought, the word frantic in his brain. That's mine, mine, what the fuck is it doing here, what the FUCK—
A dark triangle of black suddenly whooshed over them, only visible to those with supersight, high up in the air. Brick took off after it.
He heard a round of voices cry out after him but didn't turn to see whether they'd followed. Maybe he'd made a mistake. Maybe it wasn't his.
The closer he drew the more he knew it was an empty hope. He'd know that aircraft anywhere. He'd only spent weeks upon weeks sketching and designing and re-designing it, even if he'd never had a hand in its construction. At Smith's recommendation—Brick hadn't wanted to keep it at their headquarters where too many board members were liable to discover it—construction had been done off-site, and communication had been very limited in case someone got wise to what they were doing. People in charge tended not to like Brick very much.
As an added precaution Brick had asked Smith to cease production on it while he was gone; without him around JS to act as watchdog he didn't want to take any chances. Not even his brothers knew about this. It wasn't supposed to be out; fuck, it wasn't even supposed to be done for another five months! And what the hell was it doing here, in Townsville?! Why would Smith do this?!
He slowed as he flew just beyond its range of detection—he had designed it to pick up on spikes of Chemical X, fuck, fuck, he had only done that to sell it to Smith, to show him how completely trustworthy he was—
A multicolored flash surged by, interrupting his thoughts. The girls were flying ahead of him, and he swore under his breath.
“Stop!” he shouted, but the lasers had already kicked in, swiveling around and firing.
A shield of green flickered in front of them to block the beams—
But the beams passed through anyway. It was as if they displaced the tiniest area of shield around it, and luckily the girls had the sense to dodge them despite the shield. Brick had to spiral out of the line of fire himself.
He wouldn't, Brick thought frantically to himself. The lasers should've bounced off, unless...
“Pull back!” he yelled as the fighter fired again.
“How did that thing burn through my fucking shield?!” Butch cried as he came up beside his brother.
Brick ignored him and shouted, “Hey! Pull back!”
Blossom halted and glanced back, but her sisters kept flying—
Brick gritted his teeth and surged forward—he couldn't grab both of them, and Bubbles was closest. He tackled her around the waist and as she yelped he dragged her down, narrowly avoiding the lasers.
“Wh-what are you doing?!” she cried.
“Getting you out of range,” he said, watching as the fighter carried on. Butch, in a rare show of intelligence, had taken a cue from Brick and grabbed Buttercup. They were now struggling with each other as the fighter sailed away.
Boomer was hovering with Blossom as all six of them came together.
“That thing looks like a military aircraft,” Blossom said as she watched it grow smaller and smaller.
“Why would the military be testing here?” Buttercup wondered.
“Is it one of Mojo's?” Bubbles suggested. “It did fire at us—”
“If it was Mojo's then it'd still be after us,” Buttercup pointed out.
“There's nobody in there,” Blossom said, suddenly looking at Brick. “I got close enough to see. There's no way that thing could have a person inside it.”
“How do you know?” Boomer asked.
“It's too sleek and thin. Brick,” she said, and suddenly all eyes were on him. “How did you know where to stop before the lasers started firing?”
He stared at her. He shouldn't have told them to pull back. If he hadn't said anything, he could have pretended he'd been playing it safe, but—
“Um, you know how we said it wasn't Mojo because it wasn't after us anymore?” Bubbles said, and everyone's attention drifted to her. She was staring at a rapidly approaching black dot. “I don't think we should completely rule Mojo out.”
Laserbeams shot toward them, and they all careened out of the way in six different directions. Blossom shouted an order, and her sisters fell into formation, attempting an ambush attack.
Brick, after flying a ways away, paused and hovered, tracking the path of the fighter as the girls pursued it, ducking its fire. Fire that had pierced through Butch's shield.
When he thought about it—and the very idea made him sick to his stomach, sick with himself—Smith had betrayed him. Why else would he infuse the fighter's weaponry with Antidote X, then send it flying over Townsville, where he had sent the boys on vacation? He had clearly taken the opportunity of Brick not being there to accelerate completion of the fighter. And if he'd pushed that ahead, he'd probably taken Brick's other two projects and—
The mere thought had Brick practically choking with anger. He'd trusted him! Fuck! And now the aircraft's computer would be collecting data on this. Data on how to destroy him and his brothers if he didn't destroy it first.
His siblings and the girls were exerting way more Chemical X than he was just floating there, so the fighter wouldn't come his way. He had to break into it. He needed to bust open the hull and destroy the aircraft's computer before JS could get their hands on it. But he couldn't fly at it head-on. If he got too close the aircraft would twist away from him and fire...
He took a deep breath and dove to join them. It was a miracle no one had been hit yet.
“Where the hell are you chasing it?!” he called to Blossom, at the head of the group. 'Chasing' might have been poor word choice; they were going back and forth so much it was hard to tell who was chasing who.
“I'm trying to get it as far away from land as possible!” she cried back. Trust the hero to place civilian safety stupidly high on her list. He rolled his eyes.
“Butch! Boomer!” he ordered, and his brothers pulled up alongside him, dodging the fire. “You two, get in front of it and fucking fly. Make sure it's on your tail, not the girls'—it's detecting Chemical X and the more you expend, the more of a target you become. Fire your beams, shields, whatever, I don't fucking care! Keep that up for about five seconds, then lead it back around this way. Keep it right at the altitude we're at now.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Boomer asked.
“I'm going to tear that fucker apart,” Brick said, the words sounding hollow and dead in his mouth.
As his brothers flew ahead, Brick angled upward for a couple hundred feet, then turned to watch. Butch and Boomer were succeeding in commanding the aircraft's attention and looked about ready to turn it around. Blossom was screaming at them, trying to get them to tell her what they were up to.
Three years, Brick thought bitterly to himself. Three fucking years of all that fucking work, down the God damn fucking drain. But it wasn't just three, no, this had been going on his entire life. His entire life was a fucking waste of time, spent on stupid shit under the tutelage of idiot so-called father figures who had nothing better to do but chase around three little girls with superpowers when they could've had the fucking world at their command—
The fighter was coming back. He had to time this just right. Count to three, and then...
Brick stopped flying and let himself fall backwards, bracing himself for impact.
He'd been close enough that he could've reached out and grabbed his brothers if he'd dropped any earlier. He crashed into the metal, his shoulders denting it, and as he grabbed on he suddenly heard the top lasers whirring around. His aim was perfect. He'd landed right between them.
He twisted and pushed away as they fell for the oldest trick in the book and fired, destroying each other in the process. Unfortunately, one of the beams grazed the back of his hand as he pulled it away, and he bit back a cry as a deep red welt surfaced on his skin. Shit, he thought. He couldn't afford to fuck up his fucking hands if he was going to do this.
The fighter suddenly angled to the right, trying to throw him off, and Brick punched into the hull as close to the computer as he could get, clinging to the metal as the fighter spun into a corkscrew.
He forced it right side up, leveraging it with his legs, and started to tear away at the metal.
Something went wrong as soon as his hands pulled that first hunk off. All of the sudden his body began to feel heavy, fatigued. He almost lost his balance, something that never happened, and had to grasp at the torn hull to keep from falling off. The burn on his hand flared, as if someone was dragging a knife across his skin and actually drawing blood.
Brick stared in horror at the thin wire mesh just underneath the outer metal—no, not mesh. Like an intricate capillary system, leaking tiny, near-microscopic drops of Antidote X. He couldn't get to the computer without going through it first, and he'd already broken through it and made contact with it—
He gritted his teeth and shoved his arms through, grimacing against the pain in his hand. No, he couldn't reach it. Fuck. He had to tear a bigger hole. Already his strength was waning; he could feel it being sucked away. The threat of death loomed over him as his body weakened, the same threat that he imagined every normal human being felt, every single second of every God damned day.
The wind felt less like wind and more like a thousand battering rams coming at him. He had to work to get the next piece off, and the edges of the jagged metal were already staining with blood from his hands. The hole looked barely big enough to fit his arm through, and he still had to go through the netting. He could suddenly feel the fighter readying itself for another corkscrew, as if it knew of Brick's newly acquired vulnerability.
It started to bank left, and Brick clenched at it, the sharp edges of the hull still cutting into his skin and reminding him how much he absolutely hated to be normal.
Something hit the fighter, hard, leveling it out, and Brick almost bounced off from the impact. He lifted his head to see Blossom at the head of the aircraft, leveraging it the way Brick had earlier with her legs and arms.
“What are you doing?!” he screamed, throat protesting as he shredded his vocal cords.
“Helping!” she screamed back, and had to force the aircraft to keep from banking right.
“Where's everybody else?!”
She pointed ahead of them, and now Brick saw it. Their brothers and sisters were all flying together, leading the fighter on and dodging the bottom lasers.
“You're trying to get at the computer?” Blossom shouted, and started to come forward. “Let me help—”
“This thing's drowning in Antidote X! Don't touch it!” The aircraft tried to go into another corkscrew and Blossom immediately steadied it. “Besides, you need to keep it from going upside-down!”
“Then hurry up! They can't dodge those lasers forever!”
Brick swore and raised himself up as best he could on his knees, punching into that Antidote X infused wire netting. It cracked underneath his fist, the wire scratching his skin and drawing blood. He punched again, making a hole just big enough to get his arm through, and fuck, this thing was hot...
He couldn't use his supersight to see, but save for the web of Antidote X, he could still see his blueprint in his head. He knew where it was, how to destroy the computer. But he was going to suffer for it. He'd bleed, get burned.
And he'd be taking down his baby. His brainchild.
Three fucking years of all that fucking work, down the God damn fucking drain.
It hurt. It hurt when the web's metal edges clawed at his skin, raked red lines all the way up his arm. It hurt to plunge it into that insufferable heat, so much so that it was a miracle he maintained the presence of mind to not yank it back out because he'd just have to do it again, and with a burned arm it would be that much worse.
His hand closed around his precious baby's brain, and that was the worst. That endless moment of agony before he killed his own.
He clutched and pulled.
With its brain in his bleeding, scarring hand, the stealth fighter ceased fire and began to lose altitude. Brick's stomach was suddenly scuttling up into his chest, his neck, then Blossom lifted off and grabbed him just as the aircraft went into a tailspin.
He watched as it fell away from them, its hull torn apart, dying—no, dead—as it dropped further and further away. Its corpse plunged into the water and disappeared from his sight.
Fuck, it hurt.
It wasn't long before Blossom set him back down on the beach, their siblings trailing behind them. She'd chosen to settle on the dunes. Back on the other side of the rocks, their friends, who'd been watching the water and skies, caught sight of them and began running over.
Brick's numb arm was still grasping part of the aircraft's insides. Blossom reached for it and since he couldn't stop her from taking it, he didn't.
“What is this from?” she asked, turning it over and examining it from all angles. She looked up at Brick, her brow furrowed in suspicion. “Why did you hang on to it?”
He stared at her as their siblings landed. “I guess when you're normal you just forget how to let things go.”
She huffed, and her sisters pushed forward to look at it, too. Buttercup was covered in red welts, clearly having made contact with the lasers on several occasions. Bubbles was sporting a number of burns herself.
Brick turned to his brothers. “You two all right?”
“Fine,” Boomer said. “It didn't get me as much as it got Butch.”
True to form, Butch was poking experimentally at every raw patch of skin he had with a sadistic grin on his face.
“Ow. Ow. Ow.”
“We all got off better than you did, though,” Boomer said, his eyes on Brick's arm. Little spots of red were dripping onto the sand.
“Oh my God, Brick, I didn't even see,” Bubbles said, horrified. “What happened?”
“That thing was laced with Antidote X,” Blossom said before he could reply. “There was a small amount in the beams, which explains why our skin scarred instantly when it came in contact with us. From the looks of it, it released it in a much more concentrated form as soon as Brick broke into it.” She kept staring at him like she expected him to make some sudden confession.
“Am I right, Brick?” she asked quietly.
“That's right.”
“Brick you need to wrap that up or something,” Bubbles said, fussing. “Hold on, I'll be right back.”
She took off, and Blossom went back to examining the mess in her hands.
“Who do you think's responsible for this?” Buttercup asked, and Blossom's eyes flicked to Brick's blood on the sand.
“That thing was pretty impressive,” Butch said, staring wistfully at the horizon. “Shame it had to go deep-sea diving.”
Brick clenched his jaw. “Yeah.”
“I think Bubbles was right,” Blossom sighed, and everyone turned to look at her. Brick's eyes widened.
“About what?” Buttercup pressed, then the light bulb seemed to flick on. “You mean Mojo?”
“I didn't get a good look at the guts of the machine,” Blossom said, and held up the parts that Brick had yanked out. “But I've seen the insides of his previous work, and this is remarkably similar to what he's done in the past.”
Unbeknownst to the girls, as he'd grown older Brick had often secretly watched their battles with Mojo. As soon as they'd defeated him (which always happened) and left the scene, Brick would steal behind the police tape and examine the inner workings of the machine for himself, be it giant robot or giant gun or giant robot with giant gun. By age ten he was already in the habit of rummaging through Mojo's garbage, collecting discarded weapons blueprints to study. The stealth aircraft's guts would resemble Mojo's work. That was the only way Brick had learned.
Rummaging through Mojo's garbage hadn't only yielded blueprints. It was also responsible for bringing the boys and JS, Inc. together.
“Besides, who else do you know who has access to Antidote X and would create something designed to release it?” Blossom continued. “That thing was clearly out to get us.”
“Do you have any use for that whatsoever?” Brick asked abruptly, and Blossom glanced up at him.
“No—”
“Butch, fire,” he said, and in a blast of green there was nothing but ash between Blossom's hands.
“Wh-what was that for?!” she cried.
“Safety precaution,” he said flatly. “You don't want Mojo collecting data on how to defeat you, do you?”
“He didn't defeat us,” she corrected in a steely voice.
Brick indicated his arm. “Could've been you with the mangled arm.”
“Hey!” Robin, Mike, and all their friends were waving from the other side of the rocks. “Are you guys okay?”
“We're good!” Buttercup called back. Butch and Boomer waved.
“You couldn't have broken into that thing without me,” Blossom said.
“I know,” Brick sighed, surprising her. “Yeah, I know.” He looked at his arm again, and, after a long moment, said, “Thank you.”
A stunned Blossom blinked at him. Brick wanted this to be over. He needed to go home. He needed to call JS.
“Brick, here,” Bubbles said, reappearing with a towel. She wrapped his arm as gently as she could; Brick hissed against the pain, nonetheless.
“Do you—” Blossom cleared her throat. “Do you have a way of getting your powers back? The Professor's prepped for this kind of thing when it happens to us, if you need—”
“I can take care of it,” he said, then waved at his brothers with his good arm. “Come on. Let's go.”
Boomer and Butch exchanged a glance.
“Um,” Boomer ventured, “does that mean one of us has to carry you?”
***
After a brooding flight home (Boomer, for his inquisitiveness, had won the privilege of carrying him) and the standard Chemical X injection to restore his powers, Brick sat in the kitchen, carrying on with the brooding. His brothers wanted to go back to the beach, but Brick ordered them to stay home. He didn't want them going anywhere until he talked to Smith.
He watched his arm as the bleeding stopped and the cuts slowly began to close. The swelling was going down, the redness fading in intensity. His anger, however, was doing the exact opposite.
Once his arm was a respectable pink, Brick stormed into his room, refusing himself the pleasure of physically destroying the entire apartment.
Breathe, God damn it, he thought viciously to himself as he reached under the desk, stabbed at the console, and the communication screen flickered into life. He won’t take you seriously if you don’t calm down. Breathe.
He took a few deep, furious breaths, decided that was good enough, and punched in JS’ number. It rang for a good minute before JS picked up.
“John,” Brick was talking before the screen could even pick up his face. “What the fuck was my fighter doing out—”
He stopped cold, eyes subsequently widening then narrowing as Darius appeared.
“Brick!” he chirped, eyes lighting up. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Enjoying your vacation?”
“Where’s John?” Brick asked in a steely voice.
Darius peered at Brick's arm. “What's that? A sunburn? Tsk tsk tsk, Brick. Even superbeings such as yourself need sun protection.”
Brick ignored the smug, satisfied smirk on the fucking bastard's face. He knew.
“Where's John?”
A thoughtful line appeared between Darius’ eyebrows. “John? I think you’re a little confused.”
“The man whose office you’re standing in,” Brick snarled.
Darius blinked and smiled, amused. “Definitely confused, my boy,” he said in a slow, placating tone, and then smirked. “This is my office.” He leant a little closer, as if to better see the temper tantrum he expected. Despite the instantaneous urge to fly into a no holds barred, homicidal rage, particularly at the guy whose image flickered on screen, Brick merely tightened the back of his jaw.
“Is that so? Congratulations.” Brick’s voice was low and forcedly neutral.
Darius—or the new JS—settled back a bit, clearly disappointed.
“So where’s Cole?” Brick continued, referring to the last JS by his given name.
“Out of work.”
“Alive.”
“Not really.” Darius pulled a chair into frame and sat back, tenting his fingers. “Brick, I’m glad you called.”
Fuck. Cole was dead, or as good as, and now that he was gone all his files would be turned over to—
“I spotted a stealth fighter in the area not half an hour ago,” Brick suddenly interjected, keeping his voice level. “I recognized it.” Mine you fucker. You FUCK. What are you doing with MY PROJECT—
“Oh yes, that was ours,” Darius—JS—said, waving a dismissive hand. “One of Cole’s personal files. When he was relieved, the files were turned over to me, being the new JS and all—as I’m sure you’re aware—and I turned it over to the Weapons Division.”
“And sent it on a test run in my immediate area.” Brick’s gaze was cool. Darius sent it there to piss him off. He had to have known the project was Brick’s, so he’d taken it from him and fired it off his way, rubbing his victory in Brick’s face. “You realize,” Brick said quietly, “that the fighter was one of—”
“Yes, Cole had your name attached to it, along with two other projects.” Darius shrugged. “He always had a fondness for you, thought of you as his protégé. But—” He sat up, resting his elbows on his knees and smiling at Brick. “I know how much you want to… move up in the company, son.”
Brick’s eyes flared.
“Riding the coattails of a successful man, however, is not the way to do it here.” Darius clapped his hands together and shook his head. “Using Cole’s fondness for you as a means of attaching your name to—”
“Those projects are mine and mine alone,” Brick interrupted. “Cole had next to nothing to do with brainstorming or their execution, he was merely stowing them away for when I returned so they wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“Brick.” Darius reached off-screen for a file and flipped it open. “You expect me to believe that you were developing three projects at once—one each for Weapons, Surveillance, and Specialized Training Sims all by yourself?”
“The original plans are all mine,” he responded. “If I had been able to physically extricate them from the facilities for safekeeping, believe me, I would’ve.”
“Because?”
“Because I want credit where credit’s due.” Brick narrowed his eyes. “Now I’d like for you, Darius—excuse me, JS—to halt further development on said projects until my return. I’ve been working on these for a very long time—”
“I think you forget your age, son.” Darius took great pleasure in drawing the last word out. “You’re barely seventeen, and half of these projects date back almost three years ago, which would make you fourteen when you conceived of them. Now, I won’t deny you’ve a sharp mind for your age, but you can’t seriously expect anyone to believe that Cole didn’t help you along with these pets of yours.” He returned the file to its off-screen home and turned his attention back fully to Brick, adopting a smug, conciliatory tone. “This is how the real world works, Brick. You work for things. You earn respect and a position of power. You reap what you sow. Now, I’m going to turn your extra credit work over to their respective divisions and from there on we’ll decide what’s worth pursuing and what isn’t—”
“All of those projects are ‘worth pursuing,’ and I will gladly relieve you of that decision-making when I return in a week—”
“You don’t seriously expect to return next week, do you?” Darius said in a cold voice, and Brick halted. “Your name is on three ‘secret projects’ that only one man in this company knew about—”
“So you’re admitting these projects have significant value to you—”
“It looks very incriminating, Brick, and frankly, you’ve made it clear to everyone on the board what your aspirations are—”
“The turnover rate on the board is so high no one’s been there more than two years, tops—”
“Your adolescent arrogance doesn’t make you popular—”
“I have been with JS, Inc. for five years with no vacation and twice the entire board’s hours, I know the inner workings of this company inside and out—”
“And even if it weren't for all that, the fact remains that we had to do some extensive work when you failed to keep your brother's destructive streak from committing massive property damage to Townsville.”
Brick stopped and stared blankly at his screen.
“Don't look so surprised, Brick. Who do you think they hired to reconstruct downtown after your brother's little... flight of fancy? You remember us telling you to keep a low profile, right?”
He paused, waiting for Brick to answer. Like a fucking child.
Brick was practically grinding his teeth into fine powder. “I remember.”
“And you couldn't even manage that.” Darius tsked again, shaking his head. “How could you ever expect to lead a company when you can't even keep your team in line? No, best you stick to being a field agent, Brick. Destroying stuff, you know. You're good at that.”
Darius paused again, waiting for the explosion. Brick held back, his fists shuddering with anger.
The man sighed. “But you are right about one thing. You and your brothers have accumulated an inordinate amount of work hours without so much as a day off since you came to the company. Why, you were here three years before me, after all. You deserve a vacation. So really, this isn't so much a punishment for Butch's destruction as it is a 'Thank you' for all your years of hard work. And at such a young age...” Darius smiled. “Enjoy your Senior year, Brick. We'll see you when you graduate.”
The screen flickered off before Brick could respond. Graduate? As in, a year?
Brick stared at the empty space above his desk. Then he turned and eyebeamed his bed in a blinding flash of red light.
“Fuck!”
***
Boomer tossed an extra set of blankets onto the couch, along with his spare pillow. He glanced at his leader, seated in front of the closed door to his room with his head buried in his hands.
“Um, here, man.”
Brick said and did nothing.
Boomer scratched the back of his head and padded over to him.
“So... a year?”
Still no response.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and glanced out the window at the darkening sky.
“Good thing I hadn't started packing yet,” he said, a little laughter in his voice.
“Just go,” Brick finally said. “I know you want to, and Butch already left anyway. So just go.”
Boomer fidgeted. “You sure?”
“I order you to get the fuck out of my face and go back to the fucking beach,” Brick snapped.
“Whatever you say, boss,” Boomer replied, and made for the door, grabbing his acoustic along the way. Before he could leave, he turned and looked back at Brick one last time.
“You know... it probably won't be as bad as you think. Five months went by pretty quick—”
“Stop trying to cheer me up and go already,” Brick said viciously.
Boomer stared at him a moment longer before easing the door shut. As it clicked into place, the delighted smirk that he'd been suppressing ever since Brick had delivered them the news finally burst onto his face, and he zoomed out of the building and back out into the night sky.
***
Not long after the boys had left, Blossom had decided she'd had enough of the ocean for one day and had gone home. Buttercup and Bubbles had stayed behind.
As dusk settled in Mike struck up a fire and they all gathered around it, laughing and talking and roasting the occasional marshmallow. It was stilted socializing, though, at least for Bubbles. Something was off. Something was missing.
Buttercup seemed to feel it, too; her mouth was doing more marshmallow consuming than talking. They sat together, absorbing each other's silence while the rest of their friends engaged in actual conversation.
“Robin, pass me the marshmallows,” Bubbles said, and as the bag was passed to her she stuck two on her stick and three on her sister's. They rotated them in the fire slowly, side by side. Bubbles leaned against her sister and rested her head on her shoulder.
“Miss them already, huh?” she said quietly, and Buttercup only scoffed.
“Whatever. Maybe. Definitely the eye candy, though,” she said, and Bubbles giggled.
“Good day for that kinda thing.”
“Should've gotten his top off sooner,” Buttercup agreed, pulling her marshmallow stick back out to examine it. “Mm, ready.” She made to eat off the top one just as a hand reached over her head and grasped the half of the stick that was in her hand.
They turned to see Butch angling it his way so he could bite off the first marshmallow.
“What's up?” he said, voice muffled.
“What are you doing back here?” Buttercup gasped as he ate a second one.
The hand not grasping the stick held up his surfboard.
“Thought I'd do a little night surfing. Up for it?”
Buttercup, realizing her marshmallows were quickly disappearing, wrenched the stick away and hastily ate the last one.
“Yeah, sure!”
They said their goodbyes to the group as Buttercup grabbed her board. As they made their way to the water, Bubbles nibbled at her marshmallows and overheard Butch say, “You ever been to Hawaii?”
She turned her head to look after them just as Kim and Bobby glanced up and said, “Boomer?!”
Bubbles looked up in surprise at the boy settling down beside her.
“Hi!”
The delight in her voice was a total slip up, one that Boomer noticed. He paused and returned it with a slow smile, and she tried to subdue the happy expression on her face. He plucked carelessly at a couple of strings.
“Hey yourself.”
“I, um—” Bubbles looked down and busied herself with the ribbons on her sandals. “I didn’t think… I thought you were done with the beach for the day?”
He made a face and said, “Brick was. Is. Whatever.” He looked back at the neck of his guitar and strummed, adjusting the tuning. “I felt like… coming back and being social.”
“You like the beach that much, huh?” Bubbles laughed.
Boomer paused and smiled. “Something like that.”
Something was stuck in her throat, and then he looked at her, which only encouraged it to scuttle up another few inches. She swallowed and looked at the fire, blushing.
***
No, Buttercup had told Butch, she'd never been to Hawaii.
“It's pretty,” she observed as they gazed out to the horizon. The sky was exploding into orange and gold as the sun set. “My second sunset of the day.”
They were laying on their stomachs on their boards out in the water, side by side. Butch shrugged.
“'S not bad.”
Buttercup gave him a look. “'Not bad?' Is that it? Why'd you suggest going to Hawaii if it's only 'not bad?'”
He jumped up, standing and balancing on his board as the waves gently rocked them.
“Just 'cause.”
She snorted and stared at a volcano way off in the distance, tiny streams of red lava cutting their way down. Evidently it was right on the edge of the island, because where the lava would've hit the water there was a wall of steam billowing out into the air.
“I wanted to go somewhere a little private,” Butch suddenly said, and she looked at him, dread curling in her stomach at his words.
“Is that right?” she said slowly.
“Yeah. I got something I want to tell you.”
Buttercup's eyes widened and she refrained from gripping her board lest she unintentionally smash it in her hands (it was a good board). She swallowed.
“What kind of something?” she asked, voice strained.
He looked at her, his green eyes dark and reflecting none of that red-orange sunlight in the sky. Buttercup suddenly realized she didn't want to hear him say it, didn't want him to ruin this, this whatever they had, because then it would just be Mitch and Harry and the twins all over again—
“I kinda work for an evil corporation,” Butch said, and after a long moment of silence, Buttercup blinked.
“...What?”
“Well, maybe not kinda. More of a definitely.”
She stared at him. “Are you fucking shitting me?”
“That's what we were doing all that time we were gone. Working for this company, I mean. Brick got us in.”
“What the hell kind of work does an 'evil corporation' make you do?”
Butch shrugged. “Stealin' shit. Computer things and files and whatever. Sometimes you... take care of people.”
“'Take care of people?' Are you for—why are you telling me this?”
He looked her dead in the eye. “I wanted to see if you were going to do something about it.”
She stared up at him. Stealing? Killing people? She'd seen him do the former, so that wasn't a stretch to imagine. But the latter...
“You've killed people,” she said flatly. She'd meant to phrase it as a question, but she already knew the answer.
He shrugged again. “If it makes you feel any better, our targets killed bunches of others.”
“That doesn't make it right!”
“Does that mean you're going to do something about it?” he challenged.
She jumped up on her board and glared at him. He was a murderer; he'd just told her so himself. A thief and a murderer. And kind of a whore, since he got paid to do it.
“What are you doing in Townsville?” she demanded.
“We're on vacation,” he said.
This threw her off. She blinked away most of her confusion and the rest of it asked, “Why the hell did you pick Townsville?”
“We didn't. The company sent us here. Townsville here, not Hawaii here.”
“Why the hell did they pick Townsville?”
“Search me.”
“You're not on a job?”
Butch laughed. “What the hell kind of job would they send us to do in...” He trailed off as Buttercup crossed her arms and glared.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess you guys are pretty important.”
She stared at him, unsure what to feel. There was anger there, yes, but it felt like there wasn't enough of it to do something. There was also reluctance, disbelief, and beyond that, relief that he hadn't said what she'd been afraid of hearing in the first place.
“So what are you going to do about it?” he asked, his gaze as dark as the night sky. Now there was light in them, though. Funny how his eyes wouldn't reflect sunlight, but moonlight lit them up something fierce.
She stared at him a moment longer, then sank to her board, kneeling.
“I don't know if I can do anything.” She could practically hear Blossom screaming at her YES YOU CAN!
Butch sank to his knees, too. “You still want to... you know, hang out?”
“The people you've killed,” she said abruptly. “Were they... bad people?”
He took a second to consider, then said, “Brick says everyone is, really.”
That wasn't exactly the answer Buttercup had been looking for.
“But they'd definitely done bad things,” Butch continued. “Worse things than most others.”
It was a small consolation, but Buttercup latched onto that, and it became a hundred percent truth in her mind. Brick was right. Everyone was bad, to a degree. It was only human. And some probably did deserve to die more than others, though she'd never say it out loud.
She sighed and laid back on her board, stretching her legs out and letting her hands drift into the water. There never seemed to be this many stars in Townsville. Funny thing. Then again, it wasn't like she ever looked that often.
“Hey, so are we good or not?”
She splashed a hand in the water. “Little late to tell me now, now that we're all friends and shit. Besides, you're leaving in a week, aren't you?”
There was a long pause, followed by an, “Oh, yeah,” and then Butch stretched out on his board, too.
***
“So you don’t drink, huh?” Bubbles asked, her wedges in one hand as she trudged across the sand barefoot, the laughter at the campfire fading in the background.
“Oh, you know, sometimes,” Boomer said, idly strumming his guitar. After some exuberant fireside singing that had involved group renditions of Bohemian Rhapsody and The Distance, a cooler had been busted open and beer passed around, to Bubbles’ disappointment. She'd shaken her head when one was passed to her, expecting Boomer to take it, but instead he'd turned to her and said quietly, “Wanna go for a walk?”
She was still recovering from the shock, as well as the leap her heart had taken at his suggestion. Her shoes bounced against her thigh as the two of them ambled towards the ocean.
“You know, I don’t mind that kind of thing,” she said lightly. “I mean, Blossom would, and like, no one ever even tries drinking in front of her, but I don’t mind it. So you could’ve taken one, if you’d wanted.”
Boomer stopped strumming and stepped closer to her, swinging his guitar around so it rested on his back.
“I guess. Given my options, though, I’d say I made the right decision. By the way, there’s nothing in the rulebook against friends holding hands, right?”
His hand slipped around her free one, and she nearly dropped the shoes she held in the other. His grip was firm but didn’t hurt, and a warm shiver traveled across her chest.
“I’d have to check,” she said, and he smiled and swung their hands back and forth a little.
A niggling little thought hung in the back of her mind, and for sake of her happiness—the happiness she felt right now, that was growing and growing the longer they walked together, the longer he held her hand—she didn’t want to bring it up. For sake of her sanity, though, it was probably the thing to do.
This wasn’t going to work out anyway, with him taking off in a week.
“When are you and your brothers leaving?” she asked quietly, and his grip on her hand loosened, very slightly.
He studied the sand crunching underneath their feet for a few steps.
“Funny you should mention that.”
***
Buttercup lifted her head off her board and looked at the boy floating beside her.
“Seriously?”
Butch’s eyes were on the stars above them, and he dangled a hand off his board into the water.
“Yeah, man. We’re here for a whole ‘nother year.”
“Huh.”
What are you going to do about it?
After a long pause, Buttercup laid back down, feeling cool water pooling along the back of her head.
“That’s really cool.”
“Yeah?” Butch’s voice drifted along the water, gentler than the waves that rocked them. Their hands floated close enough to touch, but neither reached for the other.
He was kind of a dick. And kind of a whack job. And he'd done some really terrible things, she was sure. Worse things than she could imagine, probably.
But.
Buttercup thought about it for a second and found herself smiling as she stared at the moon.
“Yeah. It is.”
His hand bumped hers, and he splashed some water onto her. She didn't splash him back.
“Hey, you can't tell anybody else,” he suddenly said.
“What do you think I am, stupid?” she scoffed. “Don't worry about it. I got you.”
He raised himself up on his elbows to stare at her. She kept her eyes on the sky, and, after awhile, he laid back down.
A second later he kicked her board over, sending her rolling into the water, and he laughed as she sputtered and snarled and dragged him in after her.
***
Blossom set down her copy of The Stranger and shifted to hug her knees to her chest, the bedsprings squeaking faintly as she did so. The Professor had been happy to see her home so soon—relieved, really—and then had resumed fretting about her still-absent siblings.
She'd showered and changed, and then the Professor had made a small dinner for two. It had been a nice, quiet evening, and she'd been happy to get their father to herself for once. After dinner he'd retreated to the lab to finish work, leaving Blossom to meander upstairs and finish her book.
Now that, too, was done. So she curled her arms around her knees and stared out at the night sky, thinking about Brick.
Not, of course, about shirtless Brick, or how warm he'd been when she'd unintentionally crashed into him, or how all that water had been dripping down his skin after he'd finished swimming. Though the memories may have crossed her mind. Briefly. Once or twice.
Really, though, she was trying to figure out exactly why he'd seemed so... upset about the stealth fighter. It would've been one thing if he'd been upset at his wounded arm, but he'd clearly been agitated prior to that. Why, also, would he have gone to such an effort to stop the thing? Granted, it had been going after anything Chemical X-y, but he could've hung back and left the work to the girls. After all, he'd demonstrated a reluctance to help in the past.
Unlike the hostage situation at the school, Brick hadn't needed any convincing here. He'd actually been the first to leap into the air and take off after it. And then there was that whole thing about him knowing just where to stop to avoid getting fired at.
A part of Blossom thought she might be over-analyzing things, but another part knew it was more than just a string of coincidences. It all meant something. It had to.
Then again, he was leaving, what, next week? The thought crossed her mind and inspired the slightest twinge of disappointment. It wasn't likely she'd discover more in just a week. Brick obviously liked to keep his secrets.
But that's not really why you're disappointed, she thought to herself, and her mind flitted to that image of him glancing at her as she tried to hide herself in her hat—
The door swung open, and Blossom jumped as if she'd been caught doing something inappropriate.
“Oh, God, Bubbles, it's just you,” she said in relief.
Her sister didn't respond. She only floated to her bed—she'd changed back into her one-piece to save her father the heart attack and/or killing rampage—and sat, face shadowed and conflicted. She didn't look at Blossom.
After a moment, Blossom uncurled her legs and floated over to her sister.
“Bubbles? Is everything okay? Did something happen?”
Bubbles turned her gaze on her sister, biting her lip.
“Everything's fine. Just... there's news.”
Blossom's muscles tensed. “Good news or bad news?”
She expected Bubbles to say the latter, based on her expression and the faraway look in her eyes. She hadn't noticed the faint blush or the twitch of her lips that was a smile threatening to break on her face.
Bubbles looked at her and let her lips curl just enough into a small grin, waiting for her sister to ask one more time.
-end Ch. 6-