Chemical X (A Dark Powerpuff Girls Fanfic)

CHAPTER ONE - The Contagion

I think I have been staring at the triple chocolate mousse cake for nearly an hour or so.

Today is my birthday and gawking at the chocolate abomination pushed me a step closer to puking my guts out. A few pints of ice cream, I could handle, but stuff like this cake that practically screamed CHOCOLATE! made my stomach churn in disgust. 

Twelve years has already passed since that incident.

I was still very young when my father, a brilliant scientist, rolled over the edge of sanity and ran out of lab rats to experiment over. The government agency that had appointed him with the experiment received inside information that things weren't going well in the lab and every specimen injected with his test chemicals only got worse. They shut down the experiment and stopped supporting my father. The twisted genius ended up using his own assistants as test subjects, all of whom had died minutes after being injected with his failures. Becoming frustrated of his errors and being desperate, the scientist had given his four-year-old daughter the worst birthday gift she would remember forever. 

He injected her with the Chemical X, his last attempt for his experiment.

His daughter had lost consciousness and became a flat-liner instantly after being injected with the chemical. Consumed by his guilt, mistakes and frustrations, he killed himself in the same room his daughter was contained in.

However, fate was a cruel thing. Three hours after the injection, his daughter regained consciousness and called the police, leaving the child to her aunt, who was the scientist's sister.

That was everything the police said to my Aunt Lucia, before she took me in then cared for me and loved me like I was her own child. My memory had been swept clean of everything else that had happened before I awoke in her arms in a police car. The story supplied by the police were obviously incomplete since the government agency hadn't allowed the leakage of "classified information',

Last night, I had a nightmare that was a vague memory of my father singing me a Happy Birthday before he injected me with the Chemical X. Thanks for greeting, Dad. Twelve years and you're still scaring the crap out of your precious lab rat who other people call your daughter.

I think the triple chocolate mousse cake would send Aunt Lucia's soul straight to heaven the moment she tastes it for her sweet tooth (eww . .), so I buy the stuff anyway and walk straight to the forest.

Thorn Heights is a very convenient place to live in. Situated uptown, the subdivision boasts its fantastic view of the city lights below at night and a splendid image of the night sky studded with twinkling stars and the serene moon. Atop the mountain, everything is at peace and the hospital, schools, convenience stores, churches, malls and other places that we needed to go to are just reachable by walking.

Following what had become my usual tradition, I walk out of the subdivision and spend an hour walking in the woods so I could laze in the forest's silence and comforting darkness. On our birthdays, Aunt Lucia and I would have a picnic at night and talk about random stuff until we discover that dawn had already arrived and sleep till morning.

I look back at the subdivision and the tall tower that displayed the huge THORN HEIGHTS lettering with the green mountain and houses is already a good miles away.

I reach our usual spot, a clearing Aunt Lucia and I made at our first visit here and find no one. A red striped cloth is messily lying in the clearing and the destroyed pieces of what used to be Aunt Lucia's picnic basket is scattered everywhere, the fruits, sandwiches, soda and other food it had left around.

My mind shatters at the sight of blood a step away from the red striped cloth. No one else knew this place. This was our place and my whole body shudders at the thought of what could've happened to my aunt to have left this mess. Aunt Lucia never leaves a mess. She's too organized and anything that comes her way doesn't just get left untidy.