The Zombie Chronicles: Road to Sanctuary

Later on, that night, Kyle laid in the poofy bed he found himself in, having a hard time sleeping.

Beside him was Princess, curdled up in blankets with an arm around his bare chest.

Sex was something Kyle had thought little about since the world fell. He was more focused on survival or organizing his base... He had little time or interest in that sort of thing.

Especially after a certain teacher.

However, the girl beside him kept him awake with his thoughts.

He knew he had to stop her—he knew he couldn’t let her kill thousands of innocent people, and maybe more. But right now, he had no idea how to go about it. He decided the best course of action was to try and get out of bed before she woke up.

His efforts were short-lived, with Kyle gently lifting Princess’ hand resulting in her letting out a disgruntled sound and wrapping around him tighter.

Deciding that leaving was not an option, he sighed and closed his eyes again.

Not too long later, Kyle poked at a plateful of scrambled eggs beside Princess inside her dining room.

“I can’t imagine what they’ve been feeding you in that ration line...” She shook her head.

Kyle desperately wanted to say something, to protest against her plan, but swallowed his anger and took a bite of egg.

He had to do this smart... he knew he could find a way to beat her, but first he had to do things her way... whatever that would include.

“Don’t let this get to your head, but... that was probably the best sex I’ve had in a while.” Princess said, not looking at Kyle as she took a bite from her fork.

Kyle grew a tad flustered, but did his best to conceal it, somewhat failing.

“Thank you.” He simply responded.

The two had a few more bites of egg before Kyle initiated another conversation.

“...Why?”

Princess finished the piece of egg in her mouth before glancing at Kyle.

“Well, it’s been a while, and honestly, you knew some things that I've never seen before--”

“No, not that. I mean... why me?”

Princess let out a quiet “oh”, and set her fork down.

“Because I need someone to share all this with. That, and it helps that you don’t have much competition. I mean, Brick’s obedient and pretty hot, but he’s an idiot—and his brothers are worse. Other than them, not many other Enhanced guys that we’ve catalogued really interested me... That or they were taken. And loyal.” She rolled her eyes as she bit into another piece of eggs.

Kyle simply nodded, deciding to take that reasoning as a compliment.

“Okay... so, what happens now? Where do we go from here?”

Princess set her fork down again.

“Well, I’m thinking this should be a regular thing... we work together, so we could always just find somewhere there...”

Kyle felt his face grow warm at the thought of having sex at work, but what got him more is the fact that she could do that... she was the boss, after all. What was anyone going to do? Fire her?

“...and as for your conditions, I’m a woman of my word. Your friends are safe, and so are their loved ones.”

A surge of relief washed through Kyle, even though part of him suspected she was lying...

“I guess all that’s left is whether or not you want them to know about us. I’ll leave that to you; I don’t care either way...”

Kyle had begun to struggle deciding whether he should tell them or not... maybe he shouldn’t?

“Okay, then... happy to hear.” He smiled, getting back to his breakfast.

The two finished and washed up for the day. Not too long later, the two were dressed, with Princess having Kyle’s clothes washed, and left the manor to go to work.

The walk was fairly silent, with several townspeople looking at Princess in horror after the events of yesterday. Kyle felt a twinge of guilt in being in such close proximity to a murderer, but knew that he had no choice, no matter what she’d say to him...

To him, it felt like he never had a choice.

During their walk, Princess recognized a certain girl making her way through town, stopping and glaring at Princess...

Blossom quickly turned back and walked down her path, not wanting to start trouble...

She pondered on why Kyle was still with her—she didn’t think anyone would still work for her after what she did...

Blossom sighed and made her way toward her father’s house, knocking at the door and being greeted by Dexter.

“Ah, hello, Blossom... I assume you want to see your father?”

Blossom smiled for only a moment and nodded.

“Yeah, I’m gonna guess he’s in his little cave...” She grumbled.

Dexter nodded and opened the door for her, allowing her inside.

“I think I know what this is going to be about...”

“Oh, you mean how Princess murdered an innocent woman with my powers? The powers that he held on to despite me and my sisters wanting them gone for good? Yeah, that’s what this is about.” She huffed, marching down the hall and toward the lab entrance.

Dexter tried to respond, but knew that it was futile.

“Dad?! I need to talk to you!” She knocked on the door.

Moments passed, and a figure began to appear from the other side of the door. After pressing a few buttons on the door pad, the door opened and Professor Utonium stepped out.

“Hi, sweetie... before you ask, I had no intentions of giving Ms. Morbucks laser vision... I guess her DNA is more adaptable for Chemical X than I thought it was...”

Blossom scoffed in disbelief.

“Dad, an innocent woman was killed because of it, I’m not taking a ‘whoopsie’ for an answer! We need to do something!”

Utonium struggled to come up with a response.

“Come down here, honey, we can talk about it downstairs--”

“Dad, I don’t want to hear about the stupid padding again. You want to talk to me? Let’s do it right up here.” She stepped back from the door.

Utonium felt a gulp as he stepped upstairs and leaned closer to his daughter.

“Please... you know how good her hearing is.”

Blossom tried to protest, but relented and followed her father and Dexter downstairs. The door sealed shut behind them, and the three reached the central lab.

“Dad, what are we doing about this? Princess is only getting worse...”

Utonium sighed, reaching a door and unlocking it, allowing Blossom inside.

Once inside, she saw a single syringe containing blue liquid sealed in a steel case...

Blossom’s eyes widened as she realized what exactly was in front of her... her arm began to sting at the familiar sight of the needle.

“Is this...?”

“Yes. Buttercup never took hers, remember?”

Blossom nodded, her eyes fixated at the antidote. The antidote. The antidote that gave her and Bubbles free lives, the antidote that helped remove them from the public spotlight after years of being caught in the middle of it.

“...Why haven’t you used this, yet?”

Utonium sighed, Dexter entering the room and shutting the door behind him.

“Princess will not let us get close with this, and besides... even without Chemical X, she still has power, here. How long would it be until we’re dragged away, executed, and someone else continues our work, down here?” Dexter asked her.

Blossom slowly nodded, understanding their logic.

“We need a way to expose her. Perhaps the incident yesterday is a good place to start, but there is only so much we can do.”

Utonium nodded and resealed the antidote.

“And we need to do something soon. The variation of Chemical X she’s using has been observed to affect higher brain function... it was the closest we came before the world went to shit, and now it’s all we have...”

Blossom’s eyes widened as certain behaviors she had displayed began to make sense.

“Okay... so why are you giving it to her? Why give it to her in the first place?”

Utonium sighed.

“When I removed the X from you and your sister, I had every mean to destroy it like we agreed... but when you two were recovering, I was approached by a man saying to be representing the government... he said that he and his people had interest in the potential in a sort of... super-drug. Something to give soldiers your powers for a limited time... they offered to pay rather... generously... in exchange for my compliance.”

Blossom took a seat, absorbed into her father’s story.

“So that’s what I did. I researched each way I could, how it reacted with you three, why it reacted differently to my wife..., what it consisted of. It all led to my first prototype of a sort of temporary dosage. I handed it to them, they experimented with it, and sure enough... it had nasty side effects. But they took it anyway... so imagine my surprise when I learned that my work was being shipped to Morbucks Industries.”

Blossom leaned forward, shocked at this revelation.

“But... why would he want it?”

Utonium heavily sighed, holding his head in his hands.

“He wanted payback for me putting her daughter in that stupid TV show.”

In the mayor’s office, Princess went through an assortment of papers on her desk as Kyle jotted down the next day’s agenda... Every now and then, Kyle would glance over to her desk, knowing the secrets that were hiding beneath it.

“What should we do about the incident yesterday? People are going to be concerned... odds are a lot of them are gonna try to leave.” Kyle said.

Princess didn’t even look up from her papers as she rubbed her temple.

“For right now, we need to make sure that soldiers and whatnot are being fed... for now, anyhow.”

Kyle’s heart sunk at the notion of neglecting the townspeople, and his concerns only grew... that amount of starving people can be capable of many things.

“Okay, sure. But we need to do something sooner or later.”

Princess chuckled, finally facing Kyle.

“We’ll worry about them when they get too loud to put off. For now, let’s focus on what matters, ‘kay?”

Knowing he wasn’t getting anywhere and also risking losing the new advantage he had, he relented and went back to writing the agenda. While doing so, he set the notepad down to take a drink, but accidentally knocked a filing cabinet drawer open, seeing a dusty photo of two red-haired people inside.

Slowly reaching in and pulling out the photo, Kyle recognized Princess’ twin buns despite her appearing much younger, but didn’t recognize the man beside her. His hair was brown unlike her red, but the gold-and-black suit he wore told Kyle that he was also a Morbucks...

Turning to her, he showed her the picture.

“Is this your dad?”

Princess saw the photo and her face immediately hardened. She stood up and took it from his hand, observing it... as she did, her immediate anger passed and she took her seat again.

“Yeah... that asshole was my dad.” She sighed.

Kyle nodded and closed the cabinet, not wanting to push her about the subject.

“I’m sorry...” He simply said.

“Oh, don’t be. You weren’t the money-hungry bastard, after all.”

Kyle took a seat, wanting to see if she would share more...

“To think it started with that... stupid cartoon.”

He very badly wanted to say nothing, but he couldn’t resist, anymore.

“The Powerpuff Girls?”

Princess nodded, setting the photo on her desk.

“What do you know about the show?”

Kyle sighed and shrugged.

“Absolutely nothing.”

She shot him a confused glance, but nothing further.

“I remember back before they were in the spotlight... they were nice, and yeah, they helped people every now and then. Nothing crazy, especially since we were all in kindergarten, back then.”

Kyle nodded, recalling the photos of the young girls in Utonium’s house.

“They made the show when the girls and I were in third grade. They... made a lot of changes, added a few Saturday-Morning-villains for them to fight... but my dad wanted one more in the show.”

Kyle’s eyes widened as he realized where she was going.

“You. He wanted you in the show.”

Princess nodded.

“I barely knew them back then, but my dad didn’t care. He paid their dad quite a lot to have me included, as much as I didn’t want to. Turns out, it wasn’t even going to be voiced by me... he just sold my likeness.”

She let out a laugh as she shook her head.

“The one thing that got me the most... It was the girl they got to play me. Her voice... it was the most high-pitched, nasal thing you’d ever hear. It was one of those voices that you can’t unhear, and it was attached to me.” She growled, hints of a different voice hiding inside... almost like the voice she was using wasn’t her own.

“That voice, that personality, that name... it followed me years after the show was canned. It... it became me. I never had a choice in becoming anything else. Every time I tried-- ‘Sorry, but we can’t give a real role to a cartoon villain, har-har', or 'hey, weren’t you in that one cartoon? Do the voice, Princess, do the voice!’” Princess tossed her papers across the room, taking a moment to compse herself.

Kyle watched as she began to unravel, beginning to understand her.

“Wanna know the worst part? My dad never let me break away from it. Even though the Powerpuff Girls got rid of their powers and they got to live happy lives, there was dear old dad, making sure that every ad, every building, every store, every apartment... had my face on it. Same outfit, same hair, same everything...” Her voice finally began to crack, and she was slamming her eyes shut to try and slow the stream of tears.

Kyle’s heart sank as he heard more of the story, having no clue about any of this.

“So, after years of fighting it... I decided to embrace it. And look at me now...” She did a playful spin in her chair, desperately holding back her tears, but failing to do so.

A moment passed, and Princess stopped and leaned forward into her desk, letting the tears flow free. Kyle then carried his chair over and sat next to her, setting his hand on top of hers.

“Princess... I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

She wasted no time taking his hand, but stayed silent for a few moments before uttering one word...

“Jennifer.”

Kyle glanced over to her in confusion.

“My real name is Jennifer.” She looked up at Kyle.

Kyle ran the name through his head as he looked into her eyes, no longer seeing the maniac who had been ruling over the town for the last few months. Instead, he began to see the broken woman trapped underneath, the one who had possibly been hidden and buried away for countless years.

He saw someone who was in no state to be in such a powerful position. But he saw someone who didn’t need to be defeated or overthrown. He saw someone who needed help.

In that moment, Kyle began reevaluating the prior events as well as his plan. Was he doing this the right way? Was lying to her and using her like he just learned her father did the right solution? Should he tell her the truth?

“Jennifer...” Kyle repeated.

Princess let out a weak laugh, happy to hear someone—anyone—use her real name again.

“Yeah... it’s been so long since I’ve used it. But enough mopey shit—we have work to do.” She said, wiping her eyes and releasing Kyle’s hand.

Kyle stood up and went back to his notepad. As he wrote, Princess glanced over to her window.

“All this emotion, I almost forgot... I understand that you visited Professor Utonium on your own the other day.” Princess said.

Kyle’s heart sank in an instant, desperately trying to hold the notepad in his hand. His mind raced at the possibilities of the following conversation, and any doubt of Princess’ true nature was momentarily wiped from his mind.

“Don’t worry, I don’t care what you and that egghead talked about... I was just thinking that since your friends’ Geodes are there and whatnot, and the fact that I have no idea what it is they’re doing down in that lab of his... that I have you as my eyes and ears for the mad scientist duo.”

Kyle’s anxiety was immediately washed away by relief. He, however, did his best to conceal his change in emotion.

“I see... well, I’ll be honored.” He smiled.

Princess smiled ear-to-ear.

“Great! I’ll assign you to start tomorrow! And there’s... one more thing, if you’d be willing.” She glanced away and fiddled with her pencil.

Kyle glanced at the new behavior and nodded.

“Okay... what is it?”

She somewhat nervously looked over to him, an innocent smile on her face.

“Would you be opposed to staying over again, tonight?”