Bunny Z
by Dee Eon

Chapter Three

Foreword: This was originally to've been an extension of a short and prematurely posted Chapter Two, but it would've been missed by most readers since there'd be no "re-written alert" for it. Nevertheless I brushed up Chapter Two some for grammar and clarity so you might wish to take a peek back at that. As always I welcome all feedback and constructive nit-picks, and always strive to include reader suggestions and ideas in my stories, as heavily occurs with this chapter. Thanks for your read and please leave reviews!!

ooOoo

"We can't locate the girls," Professor Utonium announced with anxiety in the lab's monitor room.

"No contact at all?" Powerpuff Bunny asked, fresh out of a cab.

"None wan!" Peaches barked.

"No even their compacts?"

"No pings answering our hails," Ken informed. "It's like they're not even out there!"

"Weird! Like, what could take them down all at once?"

"That's the troubling part," Utonium explained. "It'd suggest that they were ganged-up on by super-villains who hit them faster than any of them could alert us with a distress thought command to their compacts."

"I don't want to think about it, wan!"

Ken added. "Another mystery is that we've no reports of wanton destruction or disturbances in the city, which means they didn't even get a chance to fight!"

"It might also mean they're lying low too, right?"

"Yes, that's the only comforting possibility," Utonium said. solemnly facing her. "Bunny, though this is your first mission, we're not asking you to fight any monsters. Puffs have a sixth-sense to tell whether you're in proximity with another, so if you can just stroll the city and feel them out for us that'd be half the battle. Just locate the Puffs and try get them to contact us or if they're in a hazardous situation, contact us from a safe location."

"Professor –" Bunny said, trying to sound polite over irritated, "I might be a Puff but I'm not cream! My compact's stuffed my head with all kinds of warrior tactics and how to fly and materialize my weapon and other cool combat stuff, so don't treat me like a meter maid, please sir?"

Smiling over concern, Utonium bowed. "I stand corrected, Bunny. You also have to understand that legally we've no right to endorse or encourage a minor to engage in hazardous pursuits. When Powerpuff Girls are on a mission, they're strictly doing so under their own volition despite our – vehement dissuasion in a public facility, understand?" he said like fine print. A smile seeped Bunny's lips at Utonium's deft dance, sounding like a meek principal demurely turning his back on class cutters.

"O well, I guess starting out my crime-fighting career as a juvenile delinquent's good as any!" she gibed with a wink and Ken groaned.

"I know that emotionally and chronologically you're not even near mature enough to sense when humor's appropriate or even works, still I wish you'd refrain from making corny jokes and awful quips!"

Bunny smiled like a well-bred big sister politely putting up with a haughty kid brother prodigy. "Kenneth darling, I know that you're 'chronologically' way way older than I am by maybe, oh, ninety-six times -- which must be a great consolation in light my 'older' Puff sisters -- but do you know just how I see myself? It's like the man who goes to a publisher and says 'my poodle's able to type killer novels on my keyboard!' and the publisher says 'your dog can type?? That's fantastic!' And the man says 'Not really! The dummy keeps misspelling!'"

Utonium chuckled while Ken smirked. "Lighten up, Ken and see her point! It's a virtual miracle she's even here and as psychologically sound as she is, not to mention being so sanguine and perky despite the fact that dark proclivities have assumed her id and is anxious to usurp her newborn consciousness."

"I think I have a handle on the 'beast', Professor," Bunny tentatively asserted. "I try not to get too annoyed or upset about anything and not take Ken's zings personally. Like, I can feel 'it' lurking in back of my mind just itching for a chance to pounce any slip I make, but like you said a positive attitude is its best cage!"

"I'm really pleased you've developed such self-control so fast, Bunny."

"Well, Mom's protected me almost every minute over thirteen years, and it's about time I walk alone, so if anything bad happens I asked for it, just like I told mom. Besides, isn't dancing in harm's way what Powerpuffs are designed for??"

Utonium chuckled then curiously stroked his chin. "Odd you should phrase it so, as though that big I.Q. boost of yours has suspicions about that."

"Oooohh, a little..." Bunny coyly said, "I mean it's not everyday that a kernel of nucleotide plasma smacks you a mega makeover like this, right? And I have a feeling that the truth of our Powerpuff origins is going to blow a lot of people away."

Utonium blinked aback. "'Nucleotide plasma'?? Mmm. What made you think that?"

"Uhh...I dunno. Just something that popped into my head from some stuff I gleaned off the educator I guess."

"Nucleotide plasma is a very recent hyper-theoretical construct which I highly doubt was part of any scholastic database!" Ken skeptically remarked. "You might've seen the word somewhere, but I seriously doubt you know what it is much less to link it with white energy!"

"Excuse me, Kenneth, darling, but I think I know enough to postulate how it might serve as a subatomic template to reprogram a biological entity within a transmuational matrix."

"Bah! You're guessing!"

"Hold it, Ken," Utonium said in fascination, "Bunny, are you saying you're making a transformation presumption based on a theorem you've never seen?"

"I just wondered what'd it take to make a mortal transform into a Puff based on all the physics I learned from dad's educator, and out popped that wild guess, that's all."

"Like the theory of relativity's just a 'wild guess'! You mean it happens automatically? Does this happen often?"

"Like, I've been jiggling numbers in my head since day one, like humming songs all the time. I'd be counting everything around me to a zillion then twist them around in my head to play with new numbers. Bugs, pebbles, the straws on a broom, speaks on a wall, I'd count them all. Like, I drove my mother nuts."

Chasing an exciting hunch, Utonium scratched his chin. "You played with numbers in your head? How far did you manipulate them?"

"Oh addition, multiplication, division, the whole nine yards. Mom used to park me in front of Sesame Street hoping to stir my brains but I always fell fast asleep so she figured it failed, only she didn't understand that all that simple number crunching just bored me to sleep!"

"Fascinating. How about actual equations?"

"Oh, it took me a while to catch on that symbols could also stand for math operations on morning college classroom shows before cartoons came on, but after that it was like reading a book. Like one of my fave games was watching those old sci-movies where a scientists plasters all these busy formulas on a blackboard and I'd giggle myself silly over how bogus they were, forget how so totally wrong!"

"What's the cube root of ninety-eight point six zero?"

"Uh – three point one five one one – five??" Bunny blurted then looked abashed as though she'd just burped. "Sorry, just came out. Habit I guess."

Utonium was elated. "No, not habit, Bunny! Something more fascinating. You're a idiot savant!"

"Uh? Er, trust me, professor, I didn't exactly think I was all that brilliant watching shows like that just to see things move. Besides, isn't that only supposed to be a fluke of mental retardation – or are you going to say something that'll really make me feel really freaky?"

"Not at all, Bunny! It might be a quirk natural talent or by mutation as a result of your father's radiation overdose. Whatever, it's somehow survived your brain's transformation for you to come up with brilliant conjectures as you've just made. For all intents and purposes it makes you a mathematical genius!"

"Great! A Puff Prodigy!" Ken muttered, crossing arms humbled.

"You're heaping way too much praise on me, really! Like, I'm just a hollow 2-D person. I mean, most everything I know came from dad's educator and the T.V. because I had no real life before! Zit! My thoughts – my whole personality's just a skim off Leave it to Beaver and The Simpsons!"

"Don't belittle yourself, Bunny. Your plucky personality's doing just fine in the real world considering it's less than a month old."

Ruefully, Bunny shook her head. "Trust me, Professor, I'm a still a baby head-faking that she's way older every step of the way! Like an actor who's only read scripts all his life and suddenly stands in the starring role on the biggest stage in the world. I mean, I so feel awkward at how to act and what to say and how to say it and whether I should anyway that I want to hide in a closet!"

Utonium chuckled. "You're more a normal teenage than you realize! Your father was a genius in making his educator structure your learning patterns to promote positive constructive self-cognition, and that's why you're psychologically as complete and stable as you are! But you bring up an interesting mention; you spent a lot of time watching T.V.?"

"Like do birds fly? I've seen every show and channel on cable three times over! Weird thing is outside numbers I hardly understood zit anything I was seeing or hearing; westerns, dramas, news, science or history shows, it was all just a light show to babysit me."

"Nevertheless there must've been some absorption there! Tell me, can you recall any of those shows now – in depth?" asked Utonium with mounting fascination while Bunny's pink tongue brushed her lips in reminisce.

"Now that you mention it, I think I remember most of them. More than that. I think I even recall every word and scene! Awesome!"

Utonium clapped. "Fantastic! That explains your protean persona!"

"Huh?"

"As incredible the educator was at accelerating your intellect, it alone couldn't have possibly supplied you with all the worldly background and life experiences it takes to construct a personality! Just as with your savant abilities, your T.V. memories have been retained and boosted by your advanced Puff brain to full out a new personality! Fantastic! I wish I could move that brainpower in with Ken!"

"Hey!" Ken cried and Bunny chuckled and petted his head.

"Hey, don't worry, little guy. I don't care to share my room with bugs and slimy creepers either! And professor, you might call me a 'genius', but I'd really just settle for being a full-time plain old normal girl who sucks at math. But since fate smacked me out of the blue, I guess I have to settle for part-time. So I better start looking for my sisters. Where do I start?" she asked and Ken punched up a Tokyo City map.

"They were on last patrol in this area."

"Wow! That's an awful large area to search. Good thing I've got several episodes of Sherlock Holmes in my head!" she lamely joked. "Well, I'm on my way!"

"Take care, Powerpuff Bunny!" chorused Utonium and Ken and Peach as she sauntered for the door then stopped and turned with a sheepish look.

"Uh, I know this sounds kind of tame, but can you call a cab? I'm terribly afraid of heights, remember?" she said, noticing their exasperation. "Look, I'd like to get over it too – really, but part of the reason is because it touches something bad that happened to me, and you all don't need me psycho-analyzing the beast within right now, right?"

Ken hustled to the phone.

ooOoo

Bunny was like a gawking Alice in Wonderland strolling Tokyo City's streets while peeking in most every door and alcove and alley along the way. In fact she often forgot why she was out there.

The educator's videos really couldn't do reality justice of the honking traffic and shrill sirens and auto exhaust mixing with the succulent aromas from takoyaki and okonomiyaki stalls. Every storefront was like a theater stage to her, whether it was a furniture or hardware store or a restaurant or printers. Her country-girl-in-the-big-city awe was humorously apparent to most passersby, and had she been in New York it was likely a pimp would've approached her like a callow recruit fresh off a bus from Minnesota, so it was she finally realized with a start that a lot of the male looks she was receiving were focused below her short short skirt.

Bunny wasn't exactly embarrassed at this; her vanity was too immature to be offended and her innocence of the male psyche missed the kinds of thoughts she was evoking in them, but she did sense by other girls and women on the street that maybe indeed her rather skimpy purple Powerpuff costume wasn't exactly mainstream modesty, and if there was anything Bunny most desperately craved was to fit into a normal life as much as possible. So when she spotted a Junior Boutique she she entertained a wild notion and somewhat nervously went in.

"Hi!" the sales lady said, "My, I see we're cosplaying early today!"

"Cosplaying?? Oh no, this is the genuine article!"

"Of course!" the woman chuckled. "So what can we do for you?"

"I'm looking for something to throw over this outfit so I look less conspicuous."

"Well, I can equate with that. Do you have something in mind?"

"Er, something nicer than a bathrobe, ha-ha! Uh, that was supposed to be a joke. I know, I'm greener at it than Ho-Ho-Ho! Uh, er, look, all I know about clothes and fashion comes from Mom's magazines and commercials. I really am clueless about what my peers actually wear outside a TV show."

"Then I'm sure we can find something for your new – teen sophistication."

"Oh great! Thanks!"

"So how much do you wish to spend, dear?"

"Spend??" Bunny's violet eyes rolled; 'Oh great, 'genius'! How'd I overlook a simple thing like that?? Then I never had to shop for anything before, ever, so I guess I can chuck this oversight...'

"Uh, can you call Professor Utonium at the International Science Institute and tell him to charge Bunny's purchases on their dime?"

"Er, I don't know whether that's possible..."

"See, I'll be filling out a whole new wardrobe top to button – and it'll be a blank check."

"What's the phone?"

The eager saleslady gave Bunny the store tour and Bunny tittered and swooned like a child locked in a candy store as she tried on fashions and styles unknown to her before; 'Mom's so used to putting me in kiddie rompers and overalls, so she's going to flip seeing what's coming through the door!'

Also, much to her abashed titillation, Bunny realized something else while the saleslady measured her through dozens of selections to ship home. "I think we'll try you with a size 4b for that, Bunny, since you're a bit more developed than most thirteen-year-olds."

Bunny blushed. "I am?? Gee. That's the first time anyone told me that I was more developed than other kids in anything!"

"That's surprising. You're just budding with precocious promises that's sure to charm a lot of admirers."

"Really??" Bunny said, surprised and titillated by such a positive appreciation of self. "Well, I did see a lot of men and boys looking at my legs outside. Is that a good thing?"

The saleslady tittered; "Goodness, you really are innocent! I'm surprised there're any of you all left! But hardly, my dear! That's a very good thing because in years to come it'll give you advantages in life better than a degree and a dozen resumes."

"What kind of advantages?"

"Well, er...hasn't your mother ever sat you down about the facts of life?"

"Of course she has! All the time!" Bunny defensively parried. "Like stepping into my rompers one foot at a time and sitting straight on the potty and how to catch a ball --" She was cut off by the saleslady's laughter and she blushed, sensing she made a foible but not exactly how.

"My-oh-my, dear! You are a little comedienne, aren't you? You should be in a variety show!"

Bunny's baffled abashment perked into pleased surprise. "I should?? Er, thanks for the compliment! I do kind of get tired of -- my kid brother ragging me about my jokes! But I do sense that I'm kind of wanting in some social skills that mom -- kind of overlooked."

"Well now..." The saleslady smiled like a mentor who found an apprentice to break a boring day. "Being you're so eager and pretty, just between us, I can pass on a few tips of experience that you might find useful for catching more important things than balls..."

Curious and intrigued, Bunny nodded and leaned close with wide ears drinking in brash chatter and banter while strolling clothes aisles and dashing into try-on rooms to giggle in enthrall in once undreamt fashion and titillating styles until her shiny purple compact beeped.

"Cool cell!" the saleslady commented as Bunny plucked her compact from her belt and turned aside;

"Hello??"

"What you mean 'hello'?? Who else would be paging you??" Ken barked, looking sour on the tiny screen. "Progress report!"

"Uh, progress??"

"The search for the Puffs! You haven't reported in for nearly three hours!"

"Three hours??" Bunny blurted in surprise. "Wow! Time sure flies when you're having fun!"

"Fun?? You're supposed to be searching! What have you been up to??"

"I've been -- researching."

"You mean you've been going back where you searched already! That's pointless and wasteful! Gee, I guess that artificial sky-high intellect isn't all that protean as Papa -- er, the Professor thinks!"

"Ken, will you get off my case? Do you know I haven't been fully conscious like this for more than forty-eight hours total out of thirteen years of sucking my thumb? Everything's new to me -- I mean everything! You really need a case of amnesia to appreciate what I'm going through!"

"I can appreciate it! In a way Peach is the same way you are; one second just a dumb dog-bot then the next a pooch with a real soul!"

"Then how about treating me with the same compassion, huh? Really, Ken, it's gotta be more than B.O. or bad jokes that you dislike me so! I really don't deserve this so lay it out for me! Please!" Bunny half pleaded, her compact's brief silence speaking volumes. "Ken, are you there?"

"'Course I am!" he snapped back then other pause before his voice returned with almost furtive quietness. "Alright, I'll tell you -- and only just once, and promise never to tell Papa -- er, the Professor -- ever!"

"Just between us, Ken," Bunny promised then another long pause latent with thoughts being reconsidered at the other end before he startled her;

"I...don't...trust you!"

"What?? What do you mean?"

"Not saying anymore."

"Then maybe I should ask the Professor!"

"Hey, you promised!"

"Then spill the 411!!"

Ken grumbled. "Alright, alright. In a nutshell, I have severe doubts about you! Every calculation says white plus black light can't equal gray! Like the same poles of two magnets will never join! I just don't believe you're as Miss Goody Two Shoes as you pretend to be."

"I'm NOT pretending! That is how I began and Am -- and trying to grow on from that!"

"Grow? You're so chock-full of black energy it's almost off the scale! Even Mojo and Fuzzy and the rest put together can't match it! You're telling me you're keeping such seething evil all bottled up just by the nice whiteness of your personality??"

"I don't know how, only that I do, Ken! What are you trying to say? That I'm faking who I am? That I'm some kind of -- of spy??"

"Then why haven't you found the Puffs yet?"

Bunny blushed, stammered; "Because -- because I -- I was -- distracted."

"From an important search as this?? That's why until we find out how you tick, I think it's wrong to let you be in the lab much less the Puffs!" Ken stated, then as though to sound a little compassionate added; "And even if you're really innocent, all that dark energy hiding in back your brain is probably like a pipeline to Kare. I'm sure Buttercup's thought about that and Peach won't even comment!"

"So what do you want me to do -- resign??" Bunny retorted, barely keeping her wits in check and dark pressure at bay. "Man, what a thing to lay on a girl! All I ever wanted to do was help out like a real person and instead you're all looking at me cross-eyed? Brain suck! That hurts me, Ken! It really hurts!!"

Almost flustered to tears, she held her compact high overhead like a baseball pitcher aiming for the open large window which Ken's monitor would have a good view of. "Say the word and I'll throw this out the deepest part of Tokyo Bay, and I'll fold up back into a baby again for good so I can't endanger anyone anymore! Nobody will ever know what happened and you all will be safe! Just say the word, Kenny!"

"Hey, calm down, calm down!"

"Oh that's right, you're worried about my dark beast popping out from all this stress too, huh? Don't worry; it'll shrivel up down the same brain drain my mind goes!"

"Bunny don't do it! Stop! Look, you're taking all this too personally! I'm just thinking of the others! Bunny, put it down -- please!"

"Why should you care? I'm a dark spy, right?"

"I was talking off the top of my head! To -- To zing you one, that's all!" the boy said like in desperation forced to swallow humble pie. "Look, Bunny, it's real embarrassing for me to say this...but -- I'm just -- jealous of you."

Bunny's fire dimmed. "Jealous?"

"Ever since you came it's been Bunny this and Bunny that and oh look how incredible Bunny is, and I -- I just got tired of hearing it, that's all!"

"That's all? I was about to do something uber stupid in a rage because you're jealous of something I never asked for??"

"Uhhh...yea. I -- I really shouldn't have said all that just to hurt you. I -- apologize."

"Huh! What's more upsetting is maybe you believe that crap!" Bunny snorted, met by a long pause. "You're still suspicious of me, right?"

"Bunny..." Ken tactfully began, "Papa -- the Professor -- says you're almost as intelligent as I am --"

"Gee, thanks."

"So I'm asking you to stand in my shoes and say how would you deal with someone as unique and mysterious and potentially -- dangerous as yourself? Don't take it personally; look at it objectively!"

Bunny wanted to rip into him but didn't want to rouse a restless thing deep inside so she took two deep calming breaths. "Kenny, don't take this personally either, but I'm going to let this go because you're even more of a child than I am -- let me finish! You're right, I have a lot to prove with a dark King Kong on my back, but you could've gone to the Professor with your doubts and he would've dealed with them with more finesse without pissing me off! Now I know that's not going to soothe your doubts about me, so I'm going to give you an option which the Professor's way too sensitive to dare, and that's for you to dream up a remote off-switch for my compact that only you know about or can use."

Ken's jaw dropped. "What??"

"You can stop me dead in my tracks any time you feel I'm turning traitor on the Puffs or on the phone with Kare."

"That's -- that's not funny!"

"Not meant to be. In fact I insist! Even the Professor worries about how my dark energy will affect my mind in a battle with other dark forces; whether it makes me susceptible to Kare's whims or soft on any monsters I fight. It's like a dark cloud always pushing on my mind and I can't let up one second pushing back...except when I'm Rini. So I want you to do this, Kenny, on the sly and in secret!"

Ken paused long, looking bemused and hesitant. "You -- sure about this?"

"Dead sure!"

"Look Bunny, I'm not ignorant of what your mind goes through regressing into Rini. Our readings say it's like both drowning and being crushed alive at the same time."

"Compassion, Kenny?" Bunny wryly said.

"I -- just don't want you thinking I'm a bad heartless guy, that's all. I don't really dislike you, honest! In fact as a person, sure, you're kind of quirky, but really cool..."

"It's just my dark demons getting in the way, right?"

"It's not personal, Bunny, Honest! I -- I kind of wish you were a normal girl so you'd know it isn't personal!"

On an impulsive notion, Bunny effused; "Ken, if you can make that happen I'll love you forever!"

"Huh??" Ken blushed on the tiny screen and held his head. "Aw...you didn't have to say that."

"I meant it, Ken. You'd kill two birds with one stone. Your doubts about me and my getting a life. A whole real life."

"Huh...yeah, but -- it'd be a daunting project. We barely know how you tick."

"Just say the word any time and I'm on your examination table in a heartbeat."

"Gee...er, I dunno. I -- I can't give you any promises..."

"Just try is all I ask. For me, Kenny?..." she very softly entreated and Ken seemed to start aback, nonplussed. "What?"

"Gosh! Do you have to -- soften out your voice like that?" he awkwardly chided.

"What do you mean?"

"Because it feels...feels...er, uncomfortable," he demurred with a blush then straightened and cleared his truth. "Al --Alright, I'll take a crack at it, but it's going to take a long time."

"I've been waiting thirteen years. What's a few more? And start on the compact switch."

Uhhh...I dunno," his concern reluctantly said. "I mean, I'd have to test it to see if it works, you know?"

A lump of appreciation welled Bunny's breast and she softly smiled. "I'll survive -- again. It's important you all trust me even if it comes comes out I can't trust myself."

Ken nodded in grudging admiration -- and more. "You're a gutsy girl, Bunny. No. A lady. And I'm -- glad you're my new kid sister. Even though your jokes are atrocious!"

"And I can do a bratty brainy kid brother too! Over and out!" Bunny chaffed back, snapping her compact shut and stowing it in her belt and wiping a damp eye. 'But he's right at being concerned about my core allegiance. I think the only reason my dark energy matrix hasn't possessed my mind yet is because I have no long life experiences to grapple on like a vine on a Teflon wall. That must be why spores can't turn babies into monsters and it's my one ace in the hole. I guess being 2-D helps after all!

"Hope it's not serious," ask the saleslady, sauntering up. "You seemed a little perturbed."

"Oh, just my --kid brother. Drives me up a wall -- but I love him," Bunny added with a chuckle. "He's reminding me to get on the reason for being in town..." she looked at the pile of boxed high fashion purchases labeled 'To International Science Laboratory', "Only I still haven't really found a thing to wear for now."

"Well, just take another last look, and remember – shop with feelings, not plastic!"

Bunny drifted around the shop when something caught her eye in the junior miss section; A powder mauve mini yatuka with light lilac gauzy sleeves and a purple pastel waist sash above a mid-thigh high eyelet hem.

A wondrously vague fascination grabbed her;

'Awesomely cute'!

Taking it to the try-on room, Bunny's impulse to undress again for the twentieth time froze as she eyed over the outfit.

'No...let's do take-out!' she giggled and with the command in front her thoughts, Bunny touched her compact and in a purple flash her PPG-Z outfit was zapped into null space which was like its not only being invisible on her but separated in time and space as well, and in doing so exchanged with her pajamas there.

'Great! Good thing I hadn't transformed right after a shower!' sighed Bunny as she zapped her pajamas into null space after her Puff outfit and suddenly abashed, sheepishly she peeked outside her trying room curtains. "Er...can I buy some underwear too??"

A half-hour later Bunny emerged the store, her huge fluffy ponytail matching her bouncy stride, quite proud of herself.

"My first real shopping! Awesome! I've just got to do this again next week!"

Just as awesome was what met her stop before a storefront window's reflection to check herself out in the real world of a busy street. The mini-yatuka snugly fit her lithe frame's mild curves and its filmy full sleeves felt like butterfly wings. The saleslady suggested thigh-high pale violet leggings to go a pair of grape patent leather low-heel pumps, making her leggy and slinky as the models in mom's womans' magazines. Since her Powerpuff belt was too bulky to hide flat under her tight sash, she carefully removed the compact and zapped the belt into null space then slipped the compact into a weave-like packet in front of her sash.

'As long as it's within range to regenerate my Puff aura I'm okay,' Bunny hoped with a shiver of consternation. She couldn't confess to Aki just how terrifying it was turning back into her 'normal' self; the sensation of her mind shriveling up into a tot's was like falling and drowning down a deep shrinking well that burst into an abrupt state of total cluelessness where Rini's awareness of her teen-self wasn't anymore real to her than a cartoon show in an existence where every day was the same day, highlighted by meals, playtime and motherly hugs helping her to dress.

"The worst thing is, I had totally no sense of myself as a real person much less knew about the world until I transformed! If I knew I'd be like that forever now, I'd jump in front a bullet train!" Bunny mulled with solemn sincerity then shook her head. "But – I can't do that to Mom. At least if I bit the dust in battle as a Puff, her grief would be softened by honor. I can't cheat her that."

Sighing, Bunny forced her mind back to her storefront reflection and indulged a giddy swell of sly smugness of her new maturer appearance, specially how her mildly mounded bosom somewhat exaggerated her budding charms. Apparently passersby liked what they saw too and Bunny giggled at their lingering ogles behind her back;

"Hey, cutes!" chirped a passing college guy and Bunny blushed and shyly turned and nervously teased one of her long corkscrew earlocks.

"Awesome! Men are smiling nice at me too! I must look way older than thirteen – like fifteen or sixteen maybe! Wow!!" she tittered, hugging herself. "O but I've got to stay this way forever! I must! There's just no going back! I've got to work with the Professor to find a way without transforming! If I can do that then I wouldn't have to worry about my demons taking over me and the world!"

As high as a kite and not looking, Bunny skipped around a corner and ran into a husky lunch delivery boy and his full tray of fried rice and green tea and melon malts dumped right smack over her.

"Huh! Sorry, miss!!"

"O no! My new dress! Uh –??" Bunny's instinctive lament was cut by the instant realization that the food and liquid had slid off her hair and clothes more fluidly than rain off a duck's back. It was like nothing touched her.

"Wow!!" blurted the astonished delivery boy. "What kinda stain guard you using??"

"Mmm. My compact must be amplifying my life aura's force-field enough to permeate any material my skin's in contact with," she absent-mindedly mused aloud to the bewildered boy and shook his head at his spilled delivery.

"Aw man! My fifth job! I'm gonna lose it for sure!" blurted the delivery boy, and for the first time Bunny felt a twinge of sympathy for a boy almost her peer.

'They're not all bad. I have to always remember that! Besides, he looks like a really nice boy! In fact, he's kind of a husky hunk in a way.

Even – handsome? Or is that just guessing??'

She stooped and helped him collect the debris in his tray. "Look, this is my fault, so let me fix things, okay?"

"Yea, how? My boss said up more screw-up and it's beam me up Scotty!"

"Mmm. I don't seem recall that actual phrase ever being said."

"Geese, who are you, 'Miss Spock'? My new job's splattered on the pavement!"

"Sorry..." she said with contrite meekness as a tweak of guilt lashed her breast and she anxiously rummaged every placative notion in memory. "Wait! I have a great idea! Go to the International Science Laboratory and ask for Professor Utonium and tell him that Bunny says to give you a job there!"

The boy snorted. "Yea right! A fancy joint like that? Who are you? His daughter?"

"No. He's – kind of like an uncle."

"'Kind of'! Great!"

"And I'm sincere. He'll do it. Honest!"

He snickered but his doubts waned at the steady earnest in her violet orbs and he edged a smile. "Look, I don't mean to doubt you, but what makes you so sure he'd just give me a job at a place where college grads fight just to be janitor when my resume is part-time aeronautics major, part-time middle school quarterback and full-time no experience?"

"Because I mean more to him than all the gold in Fort Knox."

He laughed aloud but her steady eyes punctured his mirth, "Uh, gee, you sure sound like you ain't kidding. Er, sure, maybe I'll just do that. But what do I do with this?" he asked and she gestured at a garbage receptacle. "But my boss –"

"Tell him you resigned."

"Man, that'll sure be a different tune from 'here's your last check'! Heck, he won't even miss me! Chumps are a dime a dozen, but I bet someone like you could write your own check!"

"I don't understand."

"Well, aren't you a model or actress or something?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, I'd temp assignments at advertising firms where I'd sneak peeks at models on sets, smiling and posing up next to tires and dogs and stuff, and the way you sashay and act and look just like them! Besides most chicks our age don't stroll 'round all fancy like that!"

Bunny blinked aback and blushed; 'Chick'? He called me a 'chick'! Only pretty women everyone wants to be on TV get called 'chicks'!' Bunny tittered inside and shyly teased her corkscrew earlock.

"Uh...well, I suppose I have gleaned a little of their demeanor from T.V., but I'm not a model though.I just – came from shopping since I don't really have much home. It's so cool shopping, you know? Like, I can shop all day! Do you?"

"Well, I dunno. I'm too busy tryin' to break exams and stuff."

"Oh, you go to school?"

"Doesn't everybody?"

"Huh, yea. Dumb question."

"Naw, no way you're dumb," he said with a smile. "With that uber proper way you talk and act, I bet you're from a lady school, right?"

"Actually, I've never set foot in any school all my life."

"Home-schooled, uh?"

"And for everything else too."

"Now you're pulling my leg! I bet you hardly see the inside of your house! Man, all your boyfriends sure are lucky!"

Bunny stopped at a weird tingly pound deep her padded bosom. "Boyfriends??"

"Yea, you must got a dozen!" he complimented in a funny wistful way to her.

"Dozen??"

"Com'on, you must! All kinds of guys must tripping all over just to say hi to you!"

Bunny's giddy glow abruptly dimmed and she somberly shied her face. "I...I... don't really know any boys that much. I – mean, the only ones I ever knew weren't... weren't very nice to me."

He looked genuinely surprised and dismayed. "Well, you shouldn't let slime get to a classy chick like you. Fools don't deserve a piece of your mind or time!"

She looked up, brightened and nodded. "When you put it that way, you're so right! It's the good things we ought remember most in life, not the downers!"

"I couldn't agree more!" he said, regarding her fondly and she found herself suddenly deliciously awkward and excited, especially when after a long pause of skittish hesitation, he held out his hand. "I'm Brad. Brad Saki."

"Hi Brad Saki!" she perked with a shy titter and shook his hand before his pleased grin that stretched and stretched on like some ritual had gone uncompleted,

"And – you?..." he coaxed to her sheepish blink and profoundly nervous titter;

"Uh? Oh my goodness! I forgot my manners! Silly me! Er I'm Bunny – Bunny – Utonium. Right, Bunny Utonium!!" she gushed, vigorously renewing her handshake and he nearly staggered to the ground.

"Wow!!" he yelled, startling her to break her handshake and he wrung his hand. "Whatta grip! You bionic or something??"

"Uh? Er, no, no, I – I've been practicing for my bowling league, sorry!!" she apologized with a bowling swing. "Oh gosh! Like I hope that doesn't make me too weird."

"Naw, I know one or two who bowl."

"I mean, I really don't like hurting people, even boys! Even when they...they..."

With a silent gasp from a punch in the mental gut, Bunny gnashed her lower lip as a sharp shiver of appall ripped through her and a ghostly cloud enveloped her with vague figures cackling, snarling, jeering at her bewildered helplessness, touching and mauling her in sacred places, slandering her senses and ravaging her soul. Her mind cringed, cowered in a corner, crying out for a white knight to snatch her from the ravaging only none called, but from the dark mists she sensed a dark one galloping, ready and anxious to sweep her from the pain and humiliation if she'd only stretch her arms and embrace him and take him wholly inside herself so that it would take care of her leering tormenters in spades –

"Hey, you alright?" a boy's voice, a different boy's voice, crashed her daze and suddenly the dark knight shrank back, bellowing in protest while dragging with him her lashing pain and helpless. "Hey, Bunny, you okay??" the familiar concerned voice repeated and Bunny she shook her head to shove the dark cloud back down its deep closet to leave her totally clueless and innocent again...

Lifting her head, Bunny weakly smiled at his unawares of helping win a struggle before his eyes. "S – Sorry. I – I just had a – a slight migraine attack."

"Oh man, sorry about that."

"That's okay. It – only happens when I'm a little stressed out."

"Oh..." He suddenly looked guilty and she suddenly realized her foible.

"No, no, I didn't mean it that way! Honest! Yes, I was kind of stressed out – but in a good way, like a nosebleed, you know –??" She gnashed her lip again as he smugly smiled at her impulsive overboard analogy, even though it wasn't far from her excited truth, "I – I meant I'm stressed from – from looking for my friends. They're – lost."

"Lost? What are they? Out-of-towners? Tourists?"

"Er, actually they were – having a full-dress rehearsal for Halloween."

"That's months away! What were they doing; trying to beat the rush?"

"Oh, sorry. Er, I meant that – that they were on their way to a masquerade party and lost their direction and apparently don't have any change left to call home."

"Sorry for my saying this, but why do you sound like such a poor liar?"

"Look, I haven't been around all that long, so give me a break, okay?"

"Okay, Okay. So, what were they full-dress masquerading as?"

"Uh, Powerpuff Girls?"

"Gee. Bet it took them all week to come up with that! Oh well, since I'm between jobs now if your 'uncle's' as generous as you say, I got all day to help you out."

Bunny squealed and hopped up and down, clapping. "Oh goodie!!"

He askanced like she was mental. "'Goodie'?? Oh – oh I get it! You're a part-time actress into kiddie parts, right?"

Bunny calmed down and ruefully sighed. "No...but you can say I had a lot of practice."

ooOoo

After strolling every street and alley in an ever closing pattern, the duo ended up at a huge old dilapidated mansion incongruously surrounded by some of the swankiest and modern skyscrapers in Tokyo City.

Brad read the mailbox's label: "'The Mister and Most Honorable Mojo A. Jojo, ArchVillian and Poet. No Flyers.' Man, whatta dump! Makes 'The Munsters' place look like the Taj Mahal!"

"It's a highly alleged villain's place after all!" Bunny chided, muting her high suspicion and logical expectations.

"But how was an ape able to swing digs like this right smack the middle of a city?"

"He inherited it from a little old animal-rights activist whose family goes back to Edo times here. She saw him in a zoo before the black light hit him and put him in her will on the spot."

"I gotta hang out in zoos more! So why would your friends be here?"

"Er, well, since we've scoured this target section of the city without a trace, and this is the only place left, there's a high probability they're here."

"Doing what? Having cold milk with cookies with Dracula?"

"Then, they also could've been kidnapped."

"Kidnapped? Isn't that something left for the cops?"

"When was the last time you saw a policeman anywhere in Tokyo City?"

"Umm. You gotta point," he said alongside her saunter down the long cracked front walk to the massive door.

"For now, Brad, speak for me, please."

"Why? You haven't been doing too bad even getting squirrels to answer you!"

"Because this isn't just an anthropoid mentality but an insufferably macho one as well, and he won't be paying much attention at what I say."

"Speaking from experience so early?"

"Actually, it'll give you a chance to 'wander' and sniff around for – my friends."

"What – you want me to check the basement too?"

"When he gets nervous at your 'wandering around', I'll know he's hiding something he isn't suppose to capture -- er, possess."

"So how am I gonna snoop around for your friends without his getting suspicious and kicking us out -- or worst, fined for trespassing?"

"Oh...I'm sure he can be distracted -- somehow..." she coyly mulled.

"Yea? What can distract a mad mutant megalomanical male ape, huh??" Brad snickered before her unfacing sly smile stopped him in his tracks "What the hey? Kiddin'! You're not thinking --?? Com'on, that's crazy! Like you're only what – thirteen??"

"It's not age; it's wiles and finesse," she demurely replied.

"Yea, so where'd you get all that 'wiles and finesse' from, 'Miss Only Thirteen', huh? Sure you ain't from high school??"

"Trust me, Brad. Everything I'm doing is tried and true without getting my hands or anything else dirty!" she assured, stepping up on the 'Not Welcome Mojo' doormat and rapping the massive door's knocker that resounded inside like a gong.

"Man, I'm already creeped out!" Brad muttered, jumping as the outside intercom speaker clicked and crackled;

"No peddlers, no taxes, no Ed McMann, Mojo!!" crackled a harsh brutish voice.

"Er, hello sir!" Brad gushed, effecting a manly pose. "Er yes, see, we're – students majoring in -- in interior decorating and we'd like to check out your pad?"

"Negative, Mojo!!"

"O Sir?? O Mister Honorable Excellency Mojo, sir --??" Bunny sweetly pushed in, "We only wish a few of your gracious minutes to write up a highly favorable review in a school magazine read on Wall Street, your reverence!"

"You missed 'Your Highness', Mojo! Is that a young female, Mojo??" the voice excitedly perked.

"Naw, I'm a drag ventriloquist!!" Brad wryly quipped. "That was – my groveling school paper's editor, Bunny Blake!"

"Pretty, Mojo?"

"Pretty??" Brad blushed redder than Bunny's shying face. "Er, uh, I guess you can say that. Uh...Very!" he impulsively added, startling himself.

"Nice legs too, Mojo??"

"Er –" Brad dropped his eyes to check before her smirk scolded him straight. "Er, trust me, if they're like the rest of her, you'll be crying for a month too."

"Nice legs, Mojo? Magazine, Mojo? Favorable review, Mojo? Come in! Never turn down good press, Mojo!"

The intercom clicked off and Brad muttered, "Yea, especially since you're destroying half the town all the time."

The intercom clicked; "What was that, Mojo??

"Huh? Er, I said – you can sure pack half the town in this place!" Brad briskly said as the door remotely unlatched and they entered a ramshackle lofty space worthy any cathedral, the floor and corners piled with discarded inventions or ineffectual weapons and various assorted junk. Brad whistled.

"Man, you can hold a football game and kite contest in here the same time between the crab grass, but he really ought deport the maid!" He noticed Bunny looking about as though she was somehow familiar with the place. "So, what do you think?"

"Be careful," she demurred, "He might look like an amusing crazed little monkey but he's the Joker on steroids."

"More hints from 'experience'? I forgot to ask, just what do we do if he does start getting ansy about me nosing around?"

"Then you excuse yourself outside and leave the rest to me."

"Kiddin'? Leave you here all alone with some hairy ape??"

"Mojo no 'ape'! Mojo primate, Mojo!!" a voice barked behind them made them jump and whirled to see the robe-shrouded turbaned seven foot monkey wearing an Iron Chef apron, but who seemed more like a chimp on shrouded stilts.

Brad collected himself and bowed, and he blinked aback at Bunny actually performing a curtsy before Mojo; 'Man, talk about laying it on thick!'

"I do so apologize for my colleague's gross misuse of terms, honorable sir!" Bunny dulcetly said, her starry-eyed groupie smile welded the chimp' surprised face. "Especially when in my eyes, you're most elegant example of an anthropoid I've ever met. Bunny Blake, at your service, sir!"

Scratching his bristly hairy chin, Mojo perked from wariness to flattery."You are, Mojo? So I am, Mojo!!" he cheerfully blurted, hastily pimping himself before gallantly taking her raised slim hand as she rose to her feet.

Brad rolled his eyes; 'Jeesus! Am I in 'Gone With The Wind'? How's she getting away with this dainty doll crap??'

"Er – and I'm Brad Taylor, like I said outside!" he eagerly effused while the chimp blatantly ignored him as he led her to a beaten up sofa which she daintily perched like a Queen. Humbled, Brad sat across from them and whiffed.

"Er, you go something in the oven – 'sir'?"

"Huh? Oh – Mojo was preparing special home fries, Mojo, but can postpone it for interview with lovely lady, Mojo!" the chimp suavely said, tossing the apron and primping himself. Bunny beamed.

"Yes, O handsome sir! My readers at school wish to know all about the unique architecture here and your indescribable interior decorating!"

Mojo coyly cackled. "Aw, it's just this and that, Mojo."

"Your modesty proceeds you, sir!"

"Modest? Mojo? Nay, nay, a hundred percent, Mojo!" he said with a dismissive wave though his eyes jumped as she demurely crossed her knees.

Brad coughed; 'The heck she's doing? Rattling his cage??'

"Er, she's a school reporter in our eighth grade class?"he blurted to the deaf chimp. "Eighth grade? You know, having thirteen-year-old kids?? Does the word underage ring a bell?"

Bunny sighed as though Brad was a gadfly crashing an intimate conversation; "I regret to say that my colleague's correct about that sir – just so that there're no legal complications, you understand."

Mojo chuckled and shrugged. "What legal, Mojo? Mojo archcriminal, Mojo! 'Legal's not in our vocab – unless someone defames Mojo's character, Mojo!"

"So you don't mind robbing cradles, huh?" Brad quipped but the two ignored him and Mojo grappled Bunny's slim hands up in his paws before her pageant smile.

"Mojo give leggy cutie exclusive long as you want, Mojo! You're even nicer my human schoolteacher babe, Mojo – and nicer eyes too, Mojo!"

Bunny tittered, "Why thank you, sir! Now, you don't mind if I just ask a few itty-bitty long questions about your splendid domicile, would you now??" Bunny chimed, cocking a coy smile at him while her drawn breath swelled a mildly-mounded bosom high, bugging out the chimp's drooling ogle.

'Geeze – !!' Brad coughed, and an irritated Mojo rummaged his robes to toss him a lozenge then returned to pay an alluring Bunny his full suave attention and life story, giving Brad a sly excuse to regard Bunny himself since his own primal-guy was as piqued and he shifted in his seat again so it wouldn't be too obvious;

Past his first-sight dazzle, Bunny was indeed very pretty. Not a uber knockout yet but promise – I mean only thirteen or so, right? She was fresh, vivacious and eager to express herself, as though trying to prove something or make a stamp in reality to show she existed before being plucked out of it. Obviously extremely talented to so impeccably impersonate a demure flirt, yet there was something else beyond which he couldn't quite pin down, even though its subtle impression was almost a cliche; of a very young but very precocious d actress posing as a coed. It was a bafflement that only spiced his wonder and enthrall.

'Man, the guys at school wouldn't believe my luck if they caught me with a fox like this! All my dumb luck holding on to dumb stuck up chicks and I bump into a looker who puts them in the doghouse! Cuter, smarter, nicer all over, Man, I'd be one no-brainer fool letting her slip my fingers!'

By chance his rapt gaze at her caught a laughing violet eye flicking at him over Mojo's shoulder as though it was chiding and directing him, and in abashment he rapped his head.

'Huh?? Oh Sheesh, forgot!! Man, what a A-hole I am! She's been cozying up to the monk to give me a chance to check the place out! Idiot! Man, hope I can do this before the chimp sweeps her upstairs!'

Brad quietly rose and backed off into the living room while Bunny tittered away before Mojo's effusive banter and bragging. Winding his way through heaps of junked computers and odd devices, Brad knocked into a box of dials and lights over which abruptly buzzed and rang.

Mojo jumped up. "What you doing there, Mojo?"

"Er, sorry, I was just – just looking for the bathroom."

"Bathroom in Outhouse in back, Mojo! Leave a quarter, Mojo!!" spat Mojo, his suave grin returning to Bunny suddenly wiping off his face as he realized what Brad bumped was. "What?? Er, pardon me!" the ape apologized, gallantly taking up and kissing Bunny's hand before leaping over to Brad to eye the ringing device

"What, Mojo??" he blurted in astonishment. "Puff detector, Mojo?? It works, Mojo??"

Bunny gasped and quietly, anxiously rose.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to bump – uh? What you mean 'it works'??" Brad puzzledly asked before the ape hurriedly ran to a cabinet and grabbed a huge futuristic gun with a dark aura and scurried out a far door.

Bunny turned pale as a ghost.

"What was that all about??" Brad asked as Bunny rushed over.

"I think it's time to do like a banana with fudge and ice cream and split!"

"Whatever happened to 'excuse yourself and leave the rest to me,' lady Delilah?"

"A dirty cop once said that a wise man knows his limitations – and that creepy gun was mine! Let's vamos!"

Mojo burst out of the door, looking all around nonplussed. "None escaped, Mojo! All three accounted for, Mojo! But why alarm, Mojo??"

"No escape? What escape?" Brad asked.

"Er, maybe your machine's on the fritz, you know?" Bunny lamely tittered, drifting for the front door.

"Not fritzed, Mojo! Just never worked before, Mojo!"

"Well, we'll leave you alone to take care of it, dude."

"Hey, what bout interview, Mojo?"

"Er, rain check??" Bunny weakly apologized before breaking for the door.

"Flirty tramp, Mojo!!" the outraged chimp said, cocking the gun at her and fired.

Brad cried out. "BUNNY–!!

The gun's dark ray splashed Bunny like a smashing wave and it was like she suddenly imploded, and where a teenage girl once said stood, a tot in identical tiny clothes fell to the floor in stunned surprise.

"What??" blurted Brad, totally astonished. "What – what'd you do to her??"

"Isn't it obvious dumb jock, Mojo??" Scratching his turban, the chimp looked as bewildered as Brad. "Why Infanto gun turn flirty tramp turn into tot, Mojo? Spore energy only supposed to kiddilize Puffs, Mojo! But just stun mortals, Mojo!"

"You sicko ape! You turn her back!" hollered Brad before gasping as Mojo leveled the gun at him and fired, spraying the boy with a cloud of dark spores that smacked him like a taser, throwing him to the floor.

"See? That's how she should be, Mojo!" Mojo declared, baffledly examining his gun. "Must mean spores affect different people different, not just Puffs, Mojo! What Mojo gets for using second hand spores, Mojo!"

Brad staggered to his feet. "Yea, well figure it out after you return her to normal!"

"No normal yet, Mojo! Must study her why first, Mojo!" Mojo said, moving up to scornfully look down at Bunny. "Not so sexy reporter now, are you, Mojo? Tried to distract me with luscious smile, incredible legs and bouncy boobs so your sneaky friend could steal Mojo's secrets, right, Mojo? Ha! Amateurs, Mojo!"

"Looked to me it was working before I tripped over all your junk, Mr. Clean! Brad wryly asserted. For several moments tot Bunny looked up nonplussed under Mojo's eye then suddenly she dropped on crossed knees and rolled her violet eyes up at Mojo and reached up to him.

"Daddy! Daddy!" she wailed.

Mojo snorted. "Forget it, Mojo! Got three disappointments on my back already, Mojo! You sneaky boy, Mojo! Pick up flirty brat and go out that door, Mojo!" Mojo ordered, waving the gun, and Brad gently carried Bunny through the swinging doors into large ramshackle kitchen with a huge roaring brick oven. And in the corner was a large cage where sat three Powerpuff Tots.

Brad blurted in appall. "Kidding!! The Powerpuff Girls too??"

Mojo cackled. "Soon the Powerpest blue-plate special, Mojo!"

"Hey you all!!" Brad shouted at the tykes. "Get up and do something you all! This monkey's your greatest animus!!"

The Powerpuff Tots jumped to the bars which they could probably squeeze between and looked defensive. "Mojo's no animal!" chided little Blossom. "He's our Daddy!!"

"Yea!" Bubbles echoed. "Leave daddy alone!"

"Yea or I'll whup your tail!" Buttercup added to Brad's appall;

"'Daddy'?? You all too??"

"Leave daddy alone!!" cried Blossom. "Tell daddy get us ice cream pleeze!!"

"Why bother; your brains already frozen!" snickered Brad, passing the open Grimms' Tales book on the table next to a huge tub of batter and with a shock saw the illustration of an evil witch shoving Hansel into a huge brick oven on a giant spatula. "What the freak??"

Mojo gleefully chortled. "Yes, Mojo make batter-fried Puffs, Mojo! You behave and you can have a leg or thigh or flat breast too, Mojo! Ha-Ha-Ha!"

"You're outta your hairy skull! What kinda sicko cannibal are you??"

"Watch your trap, Mojo! Once Mojo froze Puffs in ice cubes to make Puff-flavored shaved ice cups and no fans complained then, Mojo! If you don't want your cheeky flirty friend to be dessert, shut up and move, Mojo! And Mojo not cannibal if Mojo eats humans not apes, Mojo!" He pressed a wall button that opened the cage door and waved his gun at Brad.

"See, Mojo! Lots of pretty company till Mojo figures what to do with you, Mojo!"

"Suppose I gotta take a leak?" Brad quipped behind the slammed door and Mojo tossed him a tin cup. "Thanks, Mr. American Standard."

"Could we watch T.V now, daddy, pleeeze??" cried the Puffs at the bars.

"No, Mojo! Learn your lesson first or no brownies or '24' tonight, Mojo!!"

"Awwww!!" the pouting girls slunked away as Brad set Bunny on the floor and the other tot Puffs hopped up and down around her with eland; "Hi Bunny!! Hi Bunny!! Hi Bunny!!"

"What is this? A day care reunion?" Brad muttered, frantically examining the cage while the little girls squealed and played ring around the rosy. "Great help you shrunken babes are! Man, you're poster kids for a bachelor life!"

"Unless you're Houdini I'd chill if I were you!" admonished a tot's squeaky voice behind him. Brad turned and looked down to see Bunny slyly winking up at him.

"Bunny?? Are you – still you??"

"Just humbly over-rejuvenated – like I really needed it!"

"But why didn't that ray turn your brains to mush like theirs too?"

She demurred; "I – I'm not sure but that's a moot point. We have to escape before they're turned into Tokyo City Fried Puffs."

"That's gonna be difficult in a steel cage."

"Well, let's just see about that," Bunny said, backing to the bars and grasping one with a chubby hand and tugging and to his astonishment Brad saw it bend.

"Holy shit! You've got super powers too??"

"Shhh! Don't advertise!"

"Huh, sorry! But what the heck??"

"If you must know, I'm a Powerpuff incognito."

"A fourth Puff? You??"

"Yea, from out of the blue. Kinda makes you get religion."

"So why didn't you speak up instead of that 'Daddy Daddy' act out there?"

"First to pocket an element of surprise for later; two, I really didn't need another shot of that stupid gun, and three I glimpsed their Powerpuff mission report of the last time Mojo pulled this on them, so I was on the lookout for lollipops which Kare spiked with rejuvenation spores, not any gun."

"Man, those black spores are sure some uber wicked shit, huh?"

"Actually Kare was being more mischievous than malicious when he created these to reprogram Powerpuff entity matrixes like this."

"Well, if the devil dude's really all that powerful, why doesn't just lay you all away instead of fooling around?"

"Then he'd no one left to mess with, I guess. We don't really know the reason, but the worry is that his underlings will do what he's passing up, like Mojo converting spores into an Infanto gun."

"Well, what can cure you like them last time?"

"Ice cream."

"Ice cream??"

"Preferably hot Butterscotch. That's my crave."

"Gee, would Rocky Road work any faster?"

"I'm serious. Spores share Kare's aversion to cold, and one good scoop down the hatch and they're like Ex-Lax."

"Well, I don't see any refrigerators around here so he must have it locked up in his room if I read his warped mind right! So, what kind of highly-trained crack-ace Powerpuff combat tactics are you using to break us out of here?"

"Er, maybe you should know that – this is my first mission."

"First mission?? You're a trainee?? Great!"

"Hey, let's not talk about on-the-job training, delivery guy!"

"Touche. Alright then, if your friends there are still as strong as you, why haven't they escaped by now?"

"Because they're being punished."

"What??"

"While you doing an Alcatraz break survey, I gathered from them that Mojo locked them up in here for spilling grape drink on his sofa."

"You gotta be joking!"

"Nope! Ever try to scrub out grape stains?"

"Geese, and I thought your cerebellum was unaffected!"

"They knew Mojo was very upset and felt remorse to do whatever he says to make up for it else no hot fudge brownies at tuck in."

"You mean they're hanging in here to spank themselves? That's crazy!!"

"Trust me, I know how little kids think," Bunny parried with a glum sigh.

"Well, can't you play heroine and bust us outta here before he makes dumplings out of you all?"

"I'd like to oblige, but appearances are deceiving." she declared, warily scanning the ceiling's torn-up tiles and pipes and floorboards.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, even my mush-brained sisters here aren't exactly going to skip to Mojo's command into a tub of batter then a blazing oven. Also, I feel a faint sympathetic tingle of dark energy around here. There must be some kind of dark energized white energy neutralizer around here ready to damp out our white aura like a arctic shower if we don't cooperate."

"You mean the instant you all step foot out of this cage you're zapped clean of your powers? Sucks! But then why hasn't he used that kind of power against you Puffs all along?"

"For one thing Kare's ultra jealous with his spores, and that Mojo's apparently managed to scrape some up under his nose tells me he has a very small amount else Kare would be on his hide like white on rice. He'd most likely harvested most his spores to power that Infanto gun for a knockout punch, and the rest to power a neutralizer of very limited range."

"Huh. I take back the unaffected mind crack" he said, sighing aside; "Man, if we get out of here I'll friggin' marry you!"

"You will??" Bunny squealed with clapped hands and starry eyes and he sheepishly blushed.

"Uh, it's a joke! A joke! Geese! You look more goo-goo goofy than they do! Look, if there's such a 'neutralizer' around here, it only affects Puffs, right?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"Bend the bars enough for me to squeeze out so I can clunk the chimp with a rolling in or frying pan."

"I see. So how are you getting past the motion detectors out there? The chimp's terminally paranoid you know."

"Uh, yea. Still working that out. Can't you convince your lil' friends there to help?"

"I don't have any candy on me."

"What?"

"To them a Hershey bar in the monkey's paw is better than two empty wrappers in the cage."

"You're a walking pile of cliques, you know that?"

"Sorry. I haven't been around long enough to be original."

"It shows! Com'on! You're way smarter than this! What we going to do?"

Bunny pondered, looking out the kitchen. "Well...Mojo's a glutton for flattery..."

"And snacking on pan-fried little girls! Man, they don't even do that in anime!"

"Do you burn?"

"Huh?"

"Cook!"

"Cook? Er, a little. Forced to since mom's gone veggie."

"How about deep battered shrimp? Pork? Chicken? Eggplant?"

"Er, sure, I do puffy and crispy and crunchy fish too. Why?"

"Then you're going to tell Mojo that you're fascinated by his culinary skills and that you've long wanted to get rid of a pest like me so you're going to take his cue and make me your dish of revenge!"

"What??"

"We need the element of surprise! I'm dead sure there's a neutralizer in here but I'm totally clueless how he activates it. It might be hidden button or voice command or a remote control on his belt."

"What makes you think he won't turn it once when he comes in to play Benihana?"

"If he had endless energy to neutralize the Puffs he would've done so all along I'm betting that his original plan was to drug the girls asleep all at once and turn on the device to kill their auras so he could carve away like Thanksgiving."

"How El Grosso! You really want me to pose a sicko cannibal like him?"

"Don't think you can fake it?"

"No, no, I didn't say that! Just – Just it's sick!"

"It's also the only way we can surprise him. He's never boxed in the Puffs like this before."

"Crazy! But there's a big bug in your plan, Einstein; why wouldn't he throw the switch the moment he lets a Puff out for my bake-off just in case?"

"Because he doesn't know I'm a Puff."

"Huh? Ahh...clever! But if he suspects something's up before you or I can act you're French toast!"

"That's why once Mojo sees you sliding me inside, he'll trust you like a Rowdy-Ruff son, then you can take him with a spatula over his noggin."

"Hey, I ain't rolling you into that oven!"

"No problem. I just hold my breath. A Powerpuff's white aura can withstand a monster's blast-furnace breath, remember? Once he's busy with you I'll kick the oven door out to help."

"That's a heck of a chance if he hits that mystery button while we're dancing! Can't you just fly right out the chimney then U-turn to kick ass?"

Bunny shied; "Uh...I – I get air sick."

"Huh?? Just great! A grounded superheroine!!"

"Hey, don't make it hard on me! I've got issues like you can't believe!"

"Awright, I'm sorry..." Stooping at her eye-level, Brad touched Bunny's chubby cheek. "Look, you sure about this? If Mojo gets so paranoid that he flicks on this neutralizer thing anyway he'll be snacking you over fries."

"There's really no choice. I can't trust these ditzy dolls on not helping 'daddy' if we move against him. Technically I'm stronger than they are, but if they move against me then Mojo will hit the panic button and it'll be a bon appetite banquet."

Brad shook his head. No way. I'll fight him to the death, I swear! If he singes just one hair on your head I'll – I'll...!"

Bunny tenderly smiled. "Don't let such dark thoughts possess you, Brad, even for Mojo. They'll eat your soul sure as evil. Trust me, I know."

Brad considered her with refreshed admiration. "Yea. Think you really do! Funny."

"Funny?" she asked and he abashedly turned aside, collecting and mustering deep awkward thoughts never considered before or even meant to be uttered;

"I mean...I – I never told this to anyone before, but I never met a girl like you before," he sheepishly admitted with shiny regard. "Like in one day she's a knockout model, a food spiller, an employer, a tour guide, a cute tiny kid, a Powerpuff Girl and now she wants to be my dinner. Instead of me taking you out to dinner," he shyly added to her happy beam.

"Is that a date hint?"

"Uh?? Naw, naw –"

"Why not?"

"Because – because why would a fox like you wanna go out with a dorky hunk like me??" he effused as though hastily plucking a splinter before it hurt.

Bunny smiled, "There're way worst things than being a dork, Brad," she gently corrected, pursing her lips to plant his cheek and smiling as he touched it. "And that's the very first time I ever kissed a boy, so don't fudge that date, got it?"

"Date??" he clucked, on top the world. "Wow, I'd take you out right now!"

"Think your folks would have something to say about that!" she tittered then faced the far door and heaved a breath, "I guess it's time. You call him in and after I dump on him, smack me hard against the bars and and I'll fake being knocked out and you take it from there."

Brad shook his head. "Crazy! I can't hit you! Runt or not!"

"I won't feel it; my aura, remember?"

"But – if I screw up like I did bumping that stupid Puff detector and he gets suspicious and hits that hidden button while you're in that oven –!"

"Brad, I trust you..." she gently assured, her violet eyes mating his and drawing close till her pale coral lips pressed his in a gentle knead that breathlessly peeled apart and blushing Brad chuckled;

"Man! Gonna get me arrested!" he said before a coy nymphet before suddenly aware they had a gawking audience.

"Wow! Can I do that too??" Blossom gushed, fascinated.

"Me too!!" Bubbles bubbled.

"Let me try a shot to straighten me out!" Buttercup chimed in.

"Er, when you're older – much!" he exclaimed, hastily grabbing a tin cup and rattling it over the bars. "Yo, Mojo Jojo!!"

The far door slammed opened and vexed Mojo appeared. "What's the commotion, Mojo??"

Bunny cackled. "Gee, look-it the funny monkey!"

Mojo bristled. "Don't call Mojo monkey, Mojo!"

"Funny stupid ugly monkey can't talk straight! Mojo-Mojo-Mojo!!"

"Shut up little girl, Mojo!"

"See what you get, Mojo?" Brad snickered. "All you did was turn my worst pest into a baby bitch!"

"Stupid Brad! Stupid monkey! Mojo monkey! Mojo monkey!!"

"Shut up little pest, Mojo!!"

"Yea, shut up!!" Brad snapped, under his breath whispering "I'm sorry" to her as he landed a roundhouse slap her cheek that sent her flying against the bars with a horrible CLANG! then fell insert to the floor. Brad struggled not to wince.

"Man, wish I could toast her cute lil' ass in that oven too for some munchies – but with my own recipe, not that stupid Grimm's book!"

"No stupid book, Mojo! Is classic, Mojo!"

"Naw! I can batter pan-fry her butt way better than that old hag witch with – with cinnamon and celery and allspice and garlic powder!"

Mojo frowned, curious. "Cinnamon? Celery? Allspice, Mojo?"

"Yea, mom's old recipe, you know? Even won some cooking rewards and stuff! Turns the toughest meat – or cheekiest butts – into filet mignon!"

"Filet mignon, Mojo? Not like chicken, Mojo??" Mojo's mouth was starting to water. "What's recipe, Mojo?"

"Uh, see, I – can't write it. It's like – painting a picture. You gotta show it, not write it!" Brad demurred, lightly kicking Bunny's body, "Love to try it out on her butt! Lots of nice tenderloin there since she's a baby bitch now. Bet she's like one big leg of lamb."

"Leg of lamb, Mojo??" Drooling Mojo stroked his bristly black beard, eying the three clueless Puffs. "You – wanna cook pesky girlfriend too, Mojo??"

"'Girlfriend??'" Brad caught his abashed surprise and hastily chuckled. "Oh, er, yea, girlfriend! Yea, I though she was a real fox when I ran into her, only she started getting on my nerves you know? Always complaining about everything, always taking her sweet time, always 'borrowing' your wallet –"

"Tell me about it, Mojo!"

"Yea, so sure, I'd like to shake and bake her lil' butt right now! Save me some lunch money."

"Then do recipe with girlfriend now for Mojo, Mojo!"

"Naw, it's a family secret!"

"Cook pesky flirty ex-girlfriend with family recipe and Mojo let go free, Mojo!"

"Well, since you talked me into it..." Brad stooped and gathered limp-as-a-rag-doll Bunny in his arms and followed Mojo into the kitchen.

"Mojo watch close! No tricks! Only use organic spices here, Mojo!"

"Sure, sure!" Brad laid Bunny out on the table and proceeded sprinkling over her random assortments of spices between flipping her over while Mojo furiously scribbled on a notepad. "Uh, there I guess; all that oughta tenderize her but good. Er, also parsley, cherries and two bananas too!"

"Bananas, Mojo! Now we're talking, Mojo!!" chuckled Mojo as Brad sliced the fruit and stirred them in the huge tub of batter then, hesitantly, lifted Bunny and steeped her in the creamy brew.

"No chop-up, Mojo??"

Brad's cackle masked his appall; "Kidding? You serve pig nuggets at a luau too, dude? Er, barbecue sauce, and lots of relish, quick!"

After a throwing in a few more odd ingredients, Brad gently lifted the batter-covered tot to a cart's large cooking tray. Mojo was elated, dancing and waving his notes." Got all the perfect ingredients, Mojo! Can't wait turn to dunk and roast those pesky Puffs, Mojo!"

"Er, I thought revenge is a dish best served cold."

"Eskimo warrior said that, Mojo! What's he know, Mojo??" Mojo produced a huge mallet over Bunny's head. "Nightie-night flirty, Mojo!"

"Hey, put that down! I mean, we wanna keep all the tasty juices flowing in her till the end, just like steaming lobsters fighting to get outta the pot! Besides –" Brad elbow-poked Mojo's side and winked "–You don't wanna cheat their pain, right?"

"Ah! So right, Mojo!" Mojo chortled, helping roll the cart to the oven and Mojo opened the door and fearsome flames spat out, and aside his fingers squeezed Bunny's batter-coated wrist like a prayer before Mojo eagerly shoved her into the inferno and slammed the iron door shut with a Clang!!

"'Call Mojo ugly will you, Mojo? Call Mojo monkey will you, Mojo? We see who gets last bite now, Mojo!" Mojo cackled with a vengeful smack to his lips. "How long to bake flirty ex-babe, Mojo?"

'How long can she hold her breath – if that really matters now??' Brad grimly murmured under his breath, staring at the iron door like a crematorium.

"What was that, Mojo??"

"Uh? Oh – I said – maybe three minutes or so at a thousand degrees I guess," Brad blindly conjectured, sourly eying the chimp;

'Man, he really is an animal! Happily shoving her alive in there! At least Bunny has powers; what chance would some poor chick he picked up have??' Wait! Chance?? Time! Freak! I gotta to buy her time by getting his ass outta here so he won't guess squat what's happening!

"Er, so Mojo, ole buddy, you wouldn't happen to have any wine to go with her, would you?"

"Wine, Mojo? Of course, Mojo! Red wine goes good with crispy chicks, Mojo! In wine cellar, Mojo!"

"Hey, you're the man – er, ape! Let's check it out!"

"Must hurry! Not want pretty appetizer to scorch, Mojo!"

No sooner had they turned for the cellar steps did Brad finished nerving up;

'Alright, it's now or never!'

He made a break for the voluminous living room.

"Stop, Mojo!" the ape snarled, pulling out of his robes a massive six barreled gun. "Nobody fools, Mojo! Mojo no fool!!"

Suddenly a BOOM! shook the kitchen as the oven's iron door blew off like a volcano and a little figure looking like a flaming overdone Pillsbury doughboy bounced out.

"What is this, Mojo?? Doughboy Torch, Mojo??" the startled ape gushed before turning the gun to a new target – just as Brad leapt on his back.

"O no you don't!" yelled Brad, wrestling the chimp to drop the gun. "Get your filthy ape paws off that button too!!"

"Traitor cook, Mojo!" the ape said, flipping Brad off and with cowardly monkey-speed scampered to a wall's glass red box to yank its attached hammer and smash the glass to pull a handle inside. Suddenly the floor trembled so much that Brad nearly lost his balance as several trap doors flew open in front of Mojo and out popped metallic crabs with huge scorpion-like stingers and glowing red eyes.

"Oh-Oh," Brad muttered. "Gotta feeling I'm kinda outclassed!"

"Mojo always prepared for emergencies, Mojo!" chuckled the ape, vehemently pointing at the crusty doughgirl and Brad. "Mojo crabs, turn them into pin cushions, Mojo! Attack!!"

The crab-bots rattled the floor with pointed feet marching toward Brad who turned as golden crust cracked and dropped off a coughing Bunny; "Phew! Like I'm not gonna touch another biscuit again!"

"Er, look, I know this is your first mission – but got any good ideas??"

"Duck!!"

"Huh??" Brad said before barely taking the hint in time as a pouncing crab-bot sailed over his dodging head. He jumped up to see a legion of them converging on him, high metal stingers rocking. "Shit!! Should've stayed in the frying pan!!"

"Get away you creeps!!" cried Bunny's squealy tot voice as her tiny form bounced in front of Brad, and with the intuition of desperation her eyes closed a moment to command her compact to materialize out of null-space a purple frisbee shield bigger than she was in her hand, flicking it with the speed of a gun's dropped hammer toward the crab-bots to smash through them like a bowling ball.

Brad whooped in relief. "Way to go, Buns!"

"What is this, Mojo?? " Mojo blurted in astonishment. "Who are you, Mojo?? A new super pest, Mojo??"

"Boy, you sure need glasses, Bonzo!!"

"Mojo got 10-10 vision – no laser surgery, Mojo! Just what Mojo needs, Mojo! A new super minx making life hard for Mojo!"

"Minx??" Bunny quizzically said before remembering she was wearing a tot's version of her previous mini-yutaka ensemble. "O Gosh! I forgot to change!"

Taking advantage of her vain pause, Mojo whipped out the Infanto gun from his robes and aimed it at her. "Say yo to your embryo, minx, Mojo!"

"BUNNY!!" Brad yelled as a bright ray spat from the gun – and blasted the wall where Bunny had been standing an instant before she sprung like a flea high overhead and managed to grab a rafter.

"Hey!" Brad cried in surprise, "I thought you couldn't fly!"

"Doesn't mean I can't jump!!" she yelled back then mewed with distress. "But how do I get down??"

"Allow me, pesky flirty minx, Mojo!" the ape cackled and aimed high. Gasping in horror and prayer, Bunny shut her eyes as Mojo fired – the moment after his barrel was knocked aside by a broken crab-bot Brad frantically pitched at him. The spore ray just missed Bunny but the blast knocked her from her roost, and with a cry she fell into a pile of junked inventions and garbage.

Snarling, Mojo's other paw pulled out another six-barrel gun at Brad. "Eat lead, traitor cook, Mojo – UHHH??" Mojo gasped in surprise as a shield disk smashed his Infanto gun in two before circling back to raze another column of crab-bots under telepathic control. Brad ducked from an expected hail of bullets that never came; seeing his line of defense crumble, Mojo dropped the six shooter and ran for a cabinet which split apart, revealing the open cockpit of his Mojo Bot.

"Man, this guy's got more escape routes than Enron's loopholes!"

"Hey! You forgot something, Mojo!!" Bunny cried, flinging her shield at his cockpit's bubble dome and shattering it, hurtling Mojo out of the ejection seat.

"No Mojoooo!!" bellowed the ape, crashing into his plasma TV, both totaled in a heap.

"Awesome!!" Brad clucked, kicking broken crab-bots out of the way. "Man, and I thought this was gonna be another dull day!"

"Daddy??" cried the three Puffs from the cage room. "What's wrong daddy!! We can't get out!!"

"Daddy just fell down getting ice cream!" Bunny called back, snatching her boomeranging shield out of the air. "We'll let you out soon, okay?"

"Yeeyyyy!! Ice cream!!" the threesome cried back while Brad moved by Bunny,

"You okay?"

"Just a little crispy around the edges," she said, smiling. "Like, that was so brave of you jumping him like that. Thanks."

Brad shyly chuckled and scratched the back of his head. "Uh, well, what else was I supposed to do? Anyway, since they're stuck in that cage it means their powers got zapped, just like you guessed. I bet seeing a cute croissant pop out startled him from throwing the switch just long enough until you were clear the kitchen."

"I couldn't have done it without you, Brad," Bunny softly said with an admiring wet smile and warm shimmering gaze that made his chuckle feel uncomfortable.

"Er, thanks...but somehow it doesn't – feel right coming from a little kid!"

ooOoo

Utonium's van arrived at Mojo's along with the police who put the dazed chimp in cuffs and hauled him away. "Book 'em, Danno!" Brad cheered.

Little Bunny sighed. "The worst part about it is everything he's done is just a routine misdemeanor and he'll be back to his old tricks trying to kill us all here in a week!"

"So a Puff's work is never done, huh? Sucks," Brad agreed, watching Utonium and Ken lure the tot Puffs into the van with a basket of candy. "Say Professor, why don't you just give 'em some ice cream like last time?"

"Because my policy is to suck and store every erg of dark light and spore in the lab than have them fly back into Kare's kitty!" Utonium said, looking curiously at Bunny. "Do you sense any change in your dark aura after that hit?"

"Just a faint tingle – all over!"she tittered like a kid.

"Mmm. I guess is that your recessive dark aura absorbed enough dark energy so it only just managed to transmute your atomic structure and regress your body instead of your mind too. We'll find out more at the lab."

"Can't happen soon enough for me!" chuckled Brad down at Bunny. "You make one awfully cute chibi, Bunny, but I'll sure be glad when you're back your foxy normal self!"

Bunny's face lost its happy glow.

ooOoo

Back in the lab, Utonium played the chemical particle gun over the tots laying on the lab table like sardines while rainbows rays grew them back into their mortal teen selves and regular clothing and to sit up embarrassed by their ordeal.

Except Rini grew up instead of Bunny, curling up on the table in pajamas with her thumb in her mouth, tresses totally disheveled like she just woke from sleep.

Bewildered Brad moved up to her. "Bunny? Bunny, you playing around? Bunny??"

"Rini!!" she blurted with infantile annoyance of being misnamed,

"Hey, something's wrong!" Brad said with alarm as Rini cocked her head at him with a drooling crossed-eyed grin. "Look! It didn't work!"

"It – worked," Utonuim soberly affirmed, looking on with the other Puffs.

"What you mean 'it worked'?? Look at her! She's all messed up!"

"That's the reason Bunny was still able to think and function after Mojo's infanto ray hit her. It couldn't regress her mind below Rini's basic normal state so her advanced Puff intellect was left unscathed."

"Normal state'?? What are you saying? Aren't you all gonna do something? Look at her!" Brad gushed and Blossom moved up and gently held his hands.

"Brad..Rini – Bunny's – really mentally retarded."

"What? You're crazy!"

"It's true," Utonium stated. "She's severely mentally challenged with the mind of a three year old, but her exposure to the white energy that also created the Puffs boosted her brain as well as her body."

Stunned, Brad turned to Bunny's silly smile. "Are you telling me that – this is how she really is??"

"Yes –" Bubbles put in, "But she's trying to get away from that to live a normal life."

Rini bleated at Brad; "Brady-Brady!!"

Dismay tweaked Brad's chest. "Does she – understand what happened today?"

Ken answered; "Rini doesn't recall actually being Bunny; it's if she remembers her Puff experiences as a T.V. show."

"Aw man!" Brad faced Utonium. "Can't you turn her – well, back like she was before?"

Utonium looked reluctant. "It's not a good idea for her to bounce between contrary mental states within a short time period. Even a bar of steel snaps if it's flexed too much. In fact, based my last examination, Bunny must to return to 'normal' for a whole day after three hours in her Puff state or suffer severe a gradual instability that could allow her dangerous dark side a chance to emerge."

"Besides – " Buttercup put in, "I don't think it's a good idea for her to know you saw her like this."

"What difference does it make?"

"Huh! Takes a boy to say something like that!" Bubbles quipped then gently explained, "It's like a beauty queen who's had her face destroyed in a terrible accident. She might get over it in time, but the shock and shame of facing even her family so is often too much to bear. Don't ask; it's a girl thing."

"Well, she got over it for you all!"

"That's different! You're a boy!"

"What difference does that make?"

"Duh!!" snickered Buttercup. "Look, she's under enough stress! She's never handled complex girl feelings before, forget any boy!!"

"Hey! I'm a boy too!!" Ken cried.

"Little bro's don't count!" Blossom said, facing Brad. "Brad, if you really like her and want to do what's best to help her through this, you'll forget you saw her so."

"How can I forget? She saved my life! Your lives! She's going to know I saw her like this sooner or later."

"Better later!" Bubbles piped, and frowning at her, Brad turned to Utonium,

"Look, I know I've only known her for a real short time, but she's the most awesome girl I ever met – super or not!" He faced Rini's lazy crossed-eyed grin. "She already knows I'm here and knows her truth, so why lie? Can't I just talk to her for a minute?" Brad begged Utonium.

Utonium looked bemused then nodded.

"Professor!!" the Puffs protested and he raised his hand.

"Bunny's most profound wish is catching up all the emotional growth she missed, as painful it might be. For the first time in her life she's been fully conscious and a person unto herself, and I think a close male friend is one the best things she can use to fortify her soul and humanity. Besides..." He smiled almost fondly at Brad, "The reason Mojo's ray didn't work on her is because she had a first crush on you."

"A crush??" the Puffs blurted in a chorus.

Brad blinked aback. "Crush??"

"Yes. The positive emotion repelled Kare's negative rejuvenation spores from regressing her brain right off the bat – which was damn good thing because there's no telling how that would've influenced the dark energy matrix inside her."

"Wowzers!!" Buttercup suddenly realized a close call with appall. "That's just what we needed; her dark side being pumped up even worst than Mojo!"

"And even stronger than us!" Bubble fretfully admitted.

Blossom grudgingly turned to Brad. "I hope she really likes you enough that you knowing her truth doesn't matter! She might be too polite to admit otherwise."

They nodded and filed out. Utonium turned to Peach at the door. "Think you got her quirky activation frequency down yet?"

"I try, wan!" the digital dog squeaked then cried out; "Powerpuff Bunny Z! Go-Go-Go!!"

Peach ducked inside the other room with the others, leaving the two alone where Brad gasped as Rini was enveloped in swirling fluid energy like a sparkling scintillating waterfall within which her form revolved in a graceful waltz, her Powerpuff costume appearing piece by piece in place her pajamas while her tresses folded into a thick oversized ponytail with a purple scrunchie. In seconds where a tot-like girl once sat stood a slender girl-woman in purple Powerpuff regalia.

She gasped, as though he had opened a door catching her naked and she shied aside. "Bunny –" Brad gently said.

Terminally dismayed, she shook her head. "No!"

"Bunny, please don't be ashamed that I saw you – like that."

"No–!" she half whimpered. "No, go – go away! Please!"

"Why Bunny? I'm your friend – at least I want to be."

"I – I can't have any friends! Not real friend!"

"Now that's silly! We all need friends!"

"Don't you understand? I'm not real! I'm a fake! A mask!"

"Com'on now –!"

"It's true! I never had a real life, forget any normal one! Ninety-nine percent of me is all fill-in stuffed together from T.V. shows, that's why I talk in cliques all the time! The only thing I remember beyond a month ago is sucking my thumb and catching butterflies around a garden everyday! I'm just – a very smart baby actor faking it as a teenager!"

"No, it doesn't matter where you came from but that you've arrived!" Brad said, clasping her slim hands and gazed deep her trembling violet eyes. "Bunny, I don't care if you're three or thirteen, it's the person you are when we're together that counts. And if you're going to catch up with life, then catch it up with me, alright?"

Bunny's lower lip quavered with a grateful smile and inadvertently her fingers brushed her compact the same moment a wistful flitted passed her mind and there was a purple flash of a null-space exchange. Anxious and curious, several heads popped out of the door.

"What happened??" Buttercup said, looking around. "We saw a transformation flash!"

"Yes, and it came from in here!!" Bubbles shrewdly added then blinked at Bunny's mini-yatuka ensemble. "Hey! Where's your Powerpuff uniform?"

Bunny sheepishly blushed. "Oh, er, sorry. I forgot compacts materialize whatever's up front your mind when you touch it. I – I was just wishing that I looked like when Brad first saw me."

"Good thing it couldn't read what was on my mind!" Brad japed.

"Doesn't look bad at all!" Blossom critiqued. "There's something neo-Chaki chaki about it. Very clique!"

"Yea!" chimed fashion plate Bubbles. "Cute and cool!"

"Well, she did her first mission in it – and in different sizes!" Brad chuckled, then recalled; "In fact, Mojo thought she's a new superheroine! He called her 'super minx'!"

Buttercup laughed. "Boy, I bet that really scrambled the ape's mind!"

"Mmmm, but this might be a tactical advantage," Utonium thought aloud. "If monsters and villains believe there's another superheroine out there besides Powerpuffs, they might either decide to leave town or split their efforts and attention trying to destroy the Powerpuff Girls."

"Papa – er, Professor – are you hinting that you want Bunny to occasionally pose as a red herring super-heroine?" asked Ken with qualms.

"Mojo already knows that unlike the other Puffs, his infanto ray only worked on Bunny's body, not her mind, so he's sure to believe she's a whole another animal. The public appearance of two different sets of superbeings could be an enormous ace in the hole that could reduce ambushes and concentrated efforts to destroy the Puffs, not to mention keeping villains guessing crazy at her mystery."

"Not a bad idea!" Buttercup quipped, "Anything that'd decoy Mojo's mind from waxing us sure works for me!"

"Then, suppose they all decide just to take her on instead?" Blossom rebuffed.

"How do you feel about that, Bunny?" asked Utonium.

"Doing double duty with an extra bullseye on my back?" Bunny said like imitating Buttercup before mulling with a shrug. "Well, sisters should do anything for sisters, and that includes watching another's back. For over thirteen years my life was stuck at three, so how can I turn down a way to catch up like this?"

"Yaaaa!!" The Puffs excitedly gathered around her. "So you want us to call Bunny 'Minx' when she's like this, Professor?" posed Bubbles and the others chuckled.

Buttercup nodded. "'Minx'. Bad luck for Mojo, Bad luck for monsters! Fits nice!"

"Yea, just like that eye candy outfit!" Brad gibed to Bunny's blush.

"So we have another Bunny first!" Ken exasperated; "A Puff who moonlights as the mysterious Minx! Now if she could only learn to fly!"

Everyone laughed while Bunny simpered and ragged Ken's hair and Utonium checked his watch and soberly reminded; "Uh, better revert soon, Bunny. Sorry."

"In a moment, Professor!" Brad said, taking Bunny aside. "Man! Three hours a day sucks!"

Bunny sighed. "I feel blessed just to have that time to be -- really alive."

"I hope they find a cure real quick!" Brad said, pausing as though about to tread on eggs; "Bunny...I – I want to check up on you at home whenever I'm free, whether you're a Puff or 'Minx' or – or Rini..." he said to her start of dismay. "Look, it doesn't matter, Bunny! I want to be near you, no matter how you are, no matter what you are! It means a lot to me because I care. A whole friggin' lot! -- And I'm gonna do it anyway, so I'm just telling you!"

Bunny's lip trembled like her liquid violet gaze back before she dropped her head and nodded with resigned gratitude that couldn't be exhausted. "I...I...thank you, Brad," she softly said, almost with shy swiftness pecking his lips and hugging him like a pillow. "Today's like a whole new first birthday for me. I've lived more today more than for the last thirteen years...and met a – most awesome friend too."

"Hey, that goes triple from my side!" Brad asserted then wondered at her sudden vague worried look aside. "What's wrong?"

Bunny shook her head, nonplussed with uneasiness. "I...I don't know. Something inside me..."

"What?"

"I – I know it sounds funny...but it feels like – like something in me is cheering at being called 'Minx'."

"Well, it's kinda a cute name too, Bunny."

"But that's not why. It's like – like it's finally found itself a name more fitting than mine."

"I – I don't get it," Brad wondered just as she braced in consternation as Utonium moved up with the chemical gun. Brad quietly squeezed Bunny's hand under the table she perched back on, and she swallowed a hard lump as her feathery eyelashes knit shut. "I'm ready," she quietly said.

"We're rooting for you, Bunny!" cried Bubbles and the others passionately echoed her as the rainbow ray bathed Bunny and her mini-yatuka ensemble faded back into pajamas and a lazy grin took over her lovely face and Rini swayed if about to topple off the table but Brad caught her and gently stroked her askewed tresses.

Her violet crossed-eyes looked up at him and gave a crooked drooling smile. "Like – you!!"

"I – like you too, beautiful," Brad said with a smile, kissing her brow and she giggled and yawned and huddled against his shoulder, sucking her thumb as she swiftly dropped into snoring sleep.

"Poor thing. She must be exhausted!" Blossom said.

"She's not a 'thing'! She's – Bunny!" Brad sharply corrected. "How long, Professor?" he asked and Utonium paused and dumped pretenses.

"I – honestly can't say. Understand, I'm just scratching the surface understanding how the Puffs work, and she's a whole different animal with that white-black energy mix along with her inherited radiation damage confusing things even further. There might be a medical path, but the human brain is one of the most complex structures in the universe. Even if there was a cure that'd repair Rini's brain in our lifetime, she'd be starting a new life on a clean slate, without the advanced neurological developments that white light energy created which spawned Bunny's personality."

"That means that Bunny's existence as an entity is inexorably dependent with being a Puff, not Rini," Ken agreed with unusual empathy.

Brad soberly nodded and looked down upon a pretty snoring face. "Thanks for being honest."

"Brad, I also want to say I admire what you're doing," Utonium added. "You're the first young man she's ever trusted over a horrible incident, and her first emotional attachment. In one day you're filling a void of thirteen years in her short life. More. Her feelings toward you are helping to keep at bay a terrible dark force that threatens to take her over, so you're just as important member of our team because of that."

Brad nodded like it all really didn't mean much. "I just want her to get normal, that's all!" he said, and to the mixed surprise of all, gently scooped snoring Rini into his arms like an overgrown baby and kissed her brow. "Let's go home."

ooOoo

END CHAP
ooOoo

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Dee