Powerpuff Love

Chapter 10: America's Sweetheart

AN - This chapter has been edited and changed drastically. To all of my present readers: I hope that if you decide to re-read any of the story's chapters, you enjoy them more now than before the changes were made. To all of my new and future readers: thank you for taking the time to read PPL!

On with the chapter!

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...The next week at school...

Miyako's POV

Momoko, Kaoru and I haven't spoken a single word to each other since our huge fight last week. We'd never gotten into an argument that bad before; not since the day it was decided that Momoko would be the group leader, that is. And even with the bickering we've endured over the years, we always made up at the end of the day. We always apologized to each other.

And we always said "I love you" after we got past it, no matter what.

We have yet to do any of that.

Not only has life at home been strained, but school has become painfully awkward, too. We have every single class together (something Professor Utonium and Ken persuaded the school principal to allow; it made things easier when we got emergency distress calls during the school day for us to all be together) so there was no escaping the tension I so desperately wanted to leave at home.

The boys have been distant from each other, too. Seitarou was furious at Momo and Kao for making me so upset, and is on bad terms with Kazuo for defending Momoko through all of this.

Kao and Tadashi, on the other hand, couldn't have disagreed more with each other. They've barely spoken to each other, or to the rest of us. Tadashi has tried time and time again to reason with her, but she refuses to listen and just flies off every time he brings up what happened. He apologies to me every day for Kaoru's behavior, but I know there's nothing he or I can do to change her mind.

On top of everything going on between me and my sisters, none of us have been able to remember how we got home the night we had our sisterly bonding day. Momoko has become more inflicted with seizures (or so we think they are) and Kazuo worries that something may be seriously wrong with her — even life-threatening.

Kaoru and I have similar symptoms, too. Whereas Momoko has convulsions and seizures, Karou experiences mind-clearing aneurisms, and I have moments of asphyxiation that cause my entire body to shut down for seconds to minutes at a time. This worries the boys more than anything, seeing as how there's nothing we can do to stop these random attacks. And they only seem to be getting worse as the days pass by.

The Professor and Ken have done dozens of experiments and research on us to see if they can figure out what's causing theses things to happen, and if they can find a way to make it all stop.

No such luck.

Our families have yet to be informed of anything. The Professor says it's best not to frighten them with this knowledge until he and Ken find out what these attacks are and why we're suddenly having them.

I haven't been allowed to speak to Takaaki about it, either.

Seitarou has kept careful and constant watch over me since these breathless fits of mine started the day after the movie incident. He isn't in all of my classes, which scares him since he can't be there to rescue me if I ever experience an asphyxiation attack. They're unpredictable, too, and I can never feel them coming before the room goes white, my eyes go blank, and my body becomes lifeless.

Today marks a week since my sister and I have been inflicted by these unexplainable and seemingly incurable illnesses.

"It's halfway through the schoolyear and we're getting a new student?" Seitarou says from beside me. I bite into my octopus-shaped sausage and contemplate.