Getting inside the house was chaotic. They stumbled with tables, chairs, and each other, but in the end, all of them were in.
"Finally!" said some of the Ruffs, as they unceremoniously dropped the unconscious boys from this world onto the floor.
"What are you doing! They're hurt! H-U-R-T!" Blossom shrieked to the guys.
"Oh, c'mon, Blossom, I'm sure they've had worse," was Buttercup's justification as she grabbed the red and blue boys and dragged them away, "But you could help me take'em to the lab, if you want."
Blossom let out an exasperated sigh but immediately followed, leaving the dozen perplexed Ruffs and Mojo Jojo in the wreckage of the living room.
Once the girls went back, Blossom leaned against the couch.
"I'm sure you all have a lot of questions. Let see, where should I start?"
Buttercup jumped in.
"Argh! Just tell them! Huge kaboom, Mojo's gone, and the boys are living with different families now!"
"Show some empathy, Buttercup!" hissed the older.
"You're just sugarcoating the truth because it scares you!" shouted back Buttercup.
Bubbles looked at the confused boys and monkey.
"I guess I'll explain it to you," she said nervously, while she picked up a package from a drawer and placed it on the coffee table.
"Hum, it all started a year ago. Around 3 am, the explosion on the volcano woke us up…"
Behind the door to the lab, Butch, the one from this world, was listening as Bubbles described how they arrived at the volcano and helped the people from the neighboring apartment buildings that were in the zero zone.
He didn't remember the chaos.
But he remembered the feeling: the explosion had caught him completely off guard. Actually, he didn't remember that, just the striking buzz in his ears as he struggled to get off the rubble. His eyesight was blurred, not just by dust, but because his brain was displaced by the sheer force of the blast; yet, through the haze, he found Brick moving through the debris.
Some voices downstairs brought him back to the present for a moment. But none of them were his brothers.
"They must have gotten into a tough fight, huh?" said the man whose voice and accent has has become so familiar in the last months.
"Yes, I think this is the worst I have ever seen them," said Professor Utonium.
"You should have seen how they arrived to the ER..."
Butch didn't listen anymore. Of course he had few clearer memories of how bad those two were. He couldn't fly away because of the risk of hurting them even more. Especially Boomer. The green had scattered memories of pulling him out—lots of blood. Butch barely remembered tearing off some clothes to make bandages for Boomer's head and right side. Even if he didn't have clear memories, he assumed he carried them away from the volcano up to the street. He knew that because at some point, someone took his brother away from him. A light was pointed at his eyes, someone was asking him his name and address, while he was desperately looking for the other two Ruffs. Voices were calling, "We have two white codes. Trauma specialist needed," and then nothing much, but a confused soup of people asking him about family, relatives and phone numbers. Until they got him into an orphanage.
"Since your family is still missing, you will have to stay with the other kids," Mother Ruth, the old nun, had told him the very first day. "Don't miss any of the belongings you have got."
She led him to a room with three bunk beds. Four of them were taken already.
"We start the day at 5:00 am. Older kids help wake up and get the youngest ready. At 6:00, we all hear the mass before breakfast. After that, you will take turns helping with the cleaning".
A kid about 5 years old stood in front of him and looked at him with curiosity.
The nun patted the child's head before giving her last instructions.
"I'm sorry to say this, but if no relative comes for you, you will get into the adoption list. Unfortunately, teens have few possibilities of getting adopted. Think about that."
The next months went slowly. Butch followed the book: do not move from a safe place until you make contact. So, that's what he did: he walked to the park, detoured from school, and drew codes in case his brothers were also looking for him.
One of those nights, while he was watching the news, looking for any clue, Mother Ruth faced him with his options.
"You're the only kid I've known who likes to watch the News. Are you hoping to hear anything special?"
Butch shrugged.
Without missing a point of her knitting, Mother Ruth asked the important question:
"You've made your decision, haven't you? The Thornsons are good people. They're willing to adopt a teen. Of course, being the substitute for their gone child is not the preferred situation." She placed the safety tip to start knitting a finger on the glove, "Of course, you can always stay here until you turn 18. Then, you will be free to choose what you want to do, and no one will stop you."
So, Butch moved with the couple. True that an orphanage wasn't a high-security lab. He could have left any time. And he had waited enough. A house, of course, would have zero security and easier access to resources before leaving the place.
But there was a little thing he hadn't checked before. When he was about to fly away, he found out all of his powers had been gone.
In the living room, the girls were just finishing explaining how they found the volcano and how Mayor Bellum sent the research to the cold case, suspecting the explosion was Mojo Jojo's mistake.
"Unacceptable!" Mojo, the one that was alive, of course, shrieked. "I, Mojo Jojo, cannot accept the possibility that one of my transdimensional beings had committed such a mistake! The volcano is a very obvious source of clean and free energy. That is the reason why I, Mojo Jojo, have built a perfect system in the so-named volcano in order to use the energy generated from the lava!"
"Calm down, Mojo. Let them finish," said Butch, while he scratched his forehead next to the piercings.
"Yeah, you girls haven't explained yet how you found the boys."
"Oh, we're in the same class." Bubbles explained in a burst of joy. "We really thought they were gone in the explosion, especially because we found some huge spots of blood, but not a single trace of them."
"Yeah, it was quite a shock when Butch just walked into the classroom. Even Buttercup threw the comic book she was reading in class," Blossom added with a relieved sigh.
"What?! I didn't! I wasn't even worried about those jerks! Why would I? And I wasn't reading a comic book!" Buttercup lied, her face turning bright red.
"So, what happened?" asked one of the Bricks, "What did he tell you about the accident?"
"Yes, and most important, he should have told you that Mojo Jojo didn't cause the explosion," said Mojo Jojo as he jumped in. His son, Brick, pulled the monkey back down.
"Well, nothing. He never says more than three words in a row." Bubbles let escape a frustrated sigh. "It would be a lot of help. It would have been at that time, too."
Blossom pinched the rim of her skirt. Of course, when Butch just appeared at school as a regular student but with a different last name, they looked for the first chance to ask him everything. But before they could even address him, he had left the classroom. They separated to find him. "It's the school, of course, he can't leave it in the first recess!" Buttercup had said before leaving. Bubbles went to the cafeteria, and Blossom looked at the upper classrooms up to the roof. She found him there. The girl combed back her skirt. She had a promise to keep.
From the ajar door of the lab, Butch noticed the gesture of the girl. He was thinking on that day, too. He didn't want to talk to them. They've never been friends before, after all. And it was hard for him to accept he was so lost that day, without his powers, without any idea of where his brothers were after he had seen them so close to the verge of death, he even had a dark thought he was about to execute when the girl found him and stopped him just by pinching his jacket. He just sighed and jumped back to the roof. He sat down, thinking of another option. Blossom just sat next to him all that time, not speaking at all. Just being there.
"So, it was just a lucky strike that you found Butch?" asked Boomer, the punk one.
"Well, yeah. It was because of that we started looking at orphanages and found Brick," explained Blossom.
Boomer stopped playing with his zippers.
"Wait, so, your Brick is now a Utonium?"
"Unfortunately," Buttercup grumbled.
"Buttercup!" Blossom jumped in, "Of course he is. In fact, since Mojo Jojo is the Professor's creation, that makes him his son and therefore, a Utonium too."
An uncomfortable silence covered the living room.
"So, you girls would be…" said the boy shyly.
"I'm not your aunt," Buttercup cut him off immediately.
"But, Butter, we've already talked about that. Besides, thanks to that relationship, we could prove we were his closest relatives," managed Bubble.
Brick, the one on lumberjack, and Brick, the punk, were reading the notes, newspaper cuts, and copies of the forensic teams.
"So, after a year, this is all you've got of what happened at the Volcano?"
Bubbles agreed, proudly.
"You really have nothing at all!" they both said, and it was hard to tell which hurt the most, Punk jumping in anger, or Lumberjack standing motionless, looking at them with an expression of cold, utter pity.
"It's not our fault! We would have this case advanced if the boys told us what they remember!" Blossom protested. Exasperated, she turned to the group of adults that came out of the lab. "And I don't understand how you are fine with all this."
"Oh, Blossom, sweetheart, you can't build trust in a day," said a middle-aged woman with long marron hair. "They'll sure tell us everything when they feel like."
"Oh, come on! I've told you those guys won't trust their own shadow!" was Buttercup's exasperated complaint. "If they weren't, then explain why they didn't tell these guys everything!" she said, pointing to the multiverse RowdyRuffs Boys in the living.
The adults looked at the group. The woman frowned and barely expressed her opinion, but instead let out a "I'll make tea."
Blossom also let out a sigh.
"Ah, right. Guys, these are the Thornsons, Emma and Jon. They're the couple who adopted Butch. And this is Mr. Parra, he had just fulfilled Boomer's adoption when we found him."
"Which I'm grateful for, I don't know what we'd do if we had those three here," grumbled Buttercup. "Why are you so surprised?" she added, seeing the faces on the boys and the monkey.
"Why didn't Him take them on?" asked the Butch in sports shorts finally.
"And since we're in that, why did Him attack us?" added the Brick with piercings.
"Uh? Why would Him do that? I mean, looking after you. I'm sure he had reasons to attack you," was Buttercup's only show of curiosity.
The boys grew more and more confused.
"I, Mojo Jojo, don't understand the reason for that question. I knew the RowdyRuffs Boys were unstable due to the absence of good quality Chemical X, a situation used for that informal magical creature to bring back my boys once they were defeated."
"Wait, there are worlds where we defeated you, guys?" asked, incredulous, Buttercup.
"And Him brought you back?" kept Blossom.
"So, Him is like your other dad?" finally wondered Bubbles.
"Well, as far as I know, the boys we know have nothing to do with Him, except when it comes to causing problems. In any case, I don't think those three would wake up now, even if we threw a bomb at them. We'd better get some sleep and see what they have to say in the morning," concluded Blossom.
"Yeah, I hope we have enough blankets," Bubbles was talking to herself, counting mentally.
"K, so, what do we do with this girl, Butch?" said one of the blonds.
"Who now?"
The boy pulled up the hand of a raven-haired girl in a loose blue sweater. Unfortunately for him, this girl was in fact a "Butch", and shared his same temperament. And she paid him back just as Butch would do: lowering her hand fast before he let go, she used the leverage to force him to bend down and delivered a swift kick to his stomach.
"Told you she's a Butch," said the boy from the floor, barely able to catch his breath.
"I'm not sure. She could be a PowerPunk Girl," said Butch, one with a V-collar shirt.
From the floor, the boy asked the green.
"Butch, why do you go sleeveless?"
"Cause chicks dig it," answered at the same time the punk and the one in shorts.
The kicked Boomer then pointed to the girl.
"And why do you wear your hair in a loose ponytail?"
"'Cause guys drool when I let it down," she said, letting her long and shiny dark hair fall to her waist. The predicted result—several Ruffs staring—was instantaneous.
"Okay, she is a Butch! We get it!" said Blossom in a hurry, her face flushed. "She's sleeping with us. And you two, stop looking at both Butches!"
As morning came, a new chaos arose.
"Brick,"
"What?" answered five boys.
"Not you, the other Brick."
"Uh?"
"The other, other Brick."
"This isn't working," said Brick, sitting at the kitchen table, his face hidden in his arms and his short hair untied. "We need a better way to call each other besides our names."
"I have a headache," was Boomer's only answer, his head resting on the table.
"Forget about naming them. We need to find a way to send them back to their own worlds ASAP," Butch called, in the same position as his brothers.
"What? You wanna get rid of us?" said Punk Butch. "You haven't given us a single straight answer, and I'm really tired of this game!"
He was angry. But the other boys didn't even flinch.
Offended, he tried to take it out on Boomer, who was closer at the moment. He tried to throw a punch, but he had barely started the movement, the blond caught his fist, twisted it, and made Butch fall hard next to them. The blue boy didn't even lift his face.
"Oh," said Buttercup, next to the dark-haired, "have you found out they are always in a rotten mood in the mornings?"
"Well, they're not the only ones. We want answers too!"
Brick lifted his face to look at the Brick that had spoken. It was the punk. And he stepped back in surprise as he said:
"Man, what's with you! I've never seen anyone with such dark eyes! And I've been in raves!"
The alluded dropped his face into his arms again.
"We aren't fully recovered from the explosion at the volcano; it wasn't a good moment for fighting that monster," he finally answered.
"By the way, why were you fighting him?" said a third Brick as he put his flannel shirt on.
The brothers shrugged.
"Never seen him before," explained Brick after a while.
"Oh, I've heard you're a Utonium now!" said the Boomer with piercings, appearing behind the two Bricks. It wasn't clear if he was trying to make small talk or have fun.
"Unfortunately."
"How did it happen? Did they fly to the window and call you? By the way, how is an orphanage? Is it like in the movies? Did you make any friends there?"
When the three boys lifted their heads, they found this guy sitting at the table, with a sheepish smile on his face, waiting for Brick's story.
Boomer, the one from this world, put on his earphones.
Brick and Butch looked at each other. They both knew the place. Actually, the same place.
The older remembered little about that night. They arrived at the volcano past midnight. Mojo usually didn't let them go to movies or interact with other people unless it was for a mission. Probably that was the reason the three of them didn't like these multiverse ruffs: they were normal boys. Nothing like the military training they lived. For the three of them, this permission to go to the movies, have a night on their own was strange.
The military training was so normal for them that the only indulgence Brick gave himself after arriving was to head to his room instead of reporting to Mojo. In fact, he was angry after an argument he had with Butch on their way back. Brick went straight to his room, a couple of levels above the lab. He saw a folder on his bed. When he was about to open it, he heard a noise, but before he could identify it, the blow hit his leg. He tried to get away, but everything crumbled over him. During the next days, his leg regenerated so fast that doctors were always angry at each other, thinking they had been given the wrong medical report. And then, they sent him away with crutches. To the orphanage. There, he received the same instructions from Mother Ruth:
"Don't miss any of the belongings you have got. We start the day at 5:00 am. Older kids help with the youngest."
Brick followed her without a word. As he played the shy boy, he recollected information about the place.
"Due to your actual situation, you will be excused from some chores until you get better."
"As if", he thought. "First chance I get, I leave."
" Also, long hair is strictly forbidden…"
Brick eyes shone: the perfect opportunity to escape had just flown to him.
"Luckily for you, one of our former kids comes every weekend and does it for free. You won't have to walk there."
And just like that, the opportunity left him, too.
But he didn't have to wait too much to leave, since that same weekend, while the woman was cutting away his long braid, Mother Ruth came running to the room, despite her age:
"Brick! Brick! It's your family! They're here!"
The boy didn't notice he had left the room in such a hurry that he didn't pick up his crutches, and ran all the way to the office, limping and falling. He spied two pairs of pants, a green and a blue, but when he finally got there, he was discouraged to meet not with his brothers, but with the PowerPuff Girls.
And now, not only he had to deal with the girls calling him "Utonium", but also with a bunch of guys who looked like him and his brothers, but behaved in a totally different way. Boomer was right. Now he also had a headache. And the guys around them had no intention to leave without answers he didn't know he could answer.
The Boomer sitting among them finally understood the red and green at the table wouldn't answer. So he turned to his other self.
"What about you? Hey, I know you're not really listening to music, 'Blue Boom'?" he said, leaning to the guy.
Boomer lifted his face and stared at him. His brothers did the same.
"What did you call me?"
"Blue Boom. We need a nickname to tell each one apart, right?" He pointed to the other two ruffs with a gesture of his face, "'Red Uto' and, well, 'Thornton'. Or 'Freakles', since you're the only ones with freckles, but I think is dull."
The three guys sighed in annoyance and hid their faces again. Boomer, or "Blue Boom", swept the kitchen with a glance. It took him less than a second to analyze everyone in. From his seat, he could have a perfect vision of everyone. That was the reason he sat there. There were the Punk Brick and Punk Butch, and the Flannel Brick. Of course, this "Chatty" Boomer. And the four were waiting for answers.
Those would be easy to deal with.
Further back, at the counter, he saw Parra, the trauma doctor who treated him at Grandcity Hospital, where he was taken due to his injuries, and later adopted him. And next to him, there was another Brick. The one with piercings in his left ear.
No, it wasn't good that this Brick was talking to Parra. To Dr. Parra. The doctor Parra, who had left his small Purépecha town in Mexico, sought logical answers. The doctor who had been taking notes related to the "miraculous" regeneration of Boomer after he had lost one-third of his body and brain. And most importantly, this red guy could put his "father" in danger.
Blue Boom crossed that last thought. But definitely, he didn't want that Brick talking to Parra. He didn't like the red asking everything he wanted without them curating it first. Nor he want him making all these things of families and healing and being apart even more complicated for him and his brothers.
With a yawn, he leaned forward, placed his face on a hand, and looked straight at the Piercings Boomer.
Blue Boom crossed that last thought. But definitely, he didn't want that Brick talking to Parra. He didn't want the red asking everything he wanted without them curating it first. Nor he wanted him making all these things of families and healing and being apart even more complicated for him and his brothers.
With a yawn, he leaned forward, placed his face on a hand, and looked straight at the Piercings Boomer.
"What do you want to ask?"
He ignored the exasperated "Finally" of Punk Butch. The important thing was that while "Piercings" Brick could be asking nonsense to Parra, his attention was now on the table.