"Very well, it's time to train," Mili announced, standing up.
"If we want to keep Him confused, we need to start mixing our battle patterns," Bossy explained.
"That's why we're drawing lots and creating new teams," continued Mili, handing out straws. "And I'm not taking 'no' from anyone. Especially you, Ghosts. Uhm… Uto? Thornton? Blue Boom?"
Everyone looked around, but the Ghosts were already gone. Loud Brick opened his mouth to speak, but Mili cut him off.
"Don't tell me. I know…" She said as she tossed the unused straws away.
In one of the corridors, the Ghosts were walking without direction. Blue Boomer finally broke the silence.
"Guys… remember last night? When we were outside?"
His brothers nodded.
"Yeah. I thought someone was there," Thornton added. "You even said we were getting paranoid, man."
He looked straight at Red Uto.
"I know what I said. And I still think so. All this gossip about spirits and magic is messing with us. Just ignore it."
"Yeah, you should only trust your senses," said a voice right behind them—and the three Ghosts jumped.
They whirled around only to find the PowerPuff Boys standing there. Bloom, Bubble, and Butterscotch stared back at them, not amused—simply bewildered by the Ghosts' hair-trigger reaction.
Bloom broke the ice and kindly changed the subject.
"Hey, is there any other place where we can train? Besides, you know… the place we're sleeping in?" He crossed his arms. "The Nerds have the science covered. I wanna be useful again."
The Ghosts could relate. They led the Boys through a side door near the improvised bedroom. It was the Weather Room—a special chamber that simulated every possible climate for battle training. Butterscotch noticed another door at the very back.
"And what's that one?"
All three Ghosts shivered.
"The Survival Room," they muttered.
"Sounds cool. Let's check it out!"
He would have walked right in if Bloom and Bubble hadn't held him back. They had noticed the Ruffs' hidden tremors and took them as a warning.
"Let's start with something easy," Bloom suggested gently. "Actually… you know what, Ghosts? We could try switching leaders. It might give us new combat ideas."
The Ghosts shrugged, pretending not to care, while hiding the uncomfortable truth: they'd never trained with anyone else before. Especially Red Uto and Blue Boom.
Red Uto ended up inside the Weather Room with Butterscotch and Bubble, while his brothers stayed behind to set up something "easy": a no-power escape from a desert simulation. Of course, Thornton didn't miss the chance to brew up a sandstorm too, forcing the boys to find shelter and also making Bubble and Butterscotch lose track of the exit.
"I think we came from the left," said Butterscotch.
"Let's take the right."
"Don't guess," Red Uto snapped, rubbing his forehead as if the sandstorm were in his skull instead of the room. "Seriously—how did you two survive missions in the desert?"
"We fly," answered both Puffs in perfect deadpan.
Red Uto sighed. This was going to be a long day. He lay back on the warm sand, pulled his cap low over his eyes, and was barely drifting off when he heard someone calling his name.
Brick…
Brick…
He opened his eyes. He was no longer in a desert. Around him, mountains of garbage rose like dunes. Yellow, toxic fog floated sluggishly above the piles. It looked like the Pit, but wrong. Dead. Starved.
Uto squeezed his eyes shut, hard. When he opened them again, Butterscotch and Bubble were arguing about where north was. He got up sharply. Enough. He'd have to re-teach them everything about surviving in a desert from scratch.
Up in the control booth, Thornton was bored. He left for the kitchen to get a drink. He was alone. But someone tapped his shoulder. He turned instantly, but saw no one. He pulled at the back of his shirt, confused. There was a pale gray, fingerprint-like smudge on the fabric—too cold to be dust, too deliberate to be a stain..
Blue Boom, meanwhile, sat on a chair, slowly swiveling in half-circles, thinking. He had a lot to talk about with his brothers, but Red Uto needed to get the Puffs out of the desert first.
Two hours later, the trio finally emerged—white with sand and looking exhausted. The other Ruffs went in and, despite Bloom's complaining, got out fifteen minutes later, dripping mud after crossing a flooded rainforest simulation. The six boys headed to the showers. There were four individual stalls in the Weather Room, plus a convenient washing machine humming in the corner. Red Uto, Blue Boom, Butterscotch, and Bubble took the first turn. The two Puffs didn't—couldn't—hide their frustration at being beaten by the Weather Room. "We should tell Professor Utonium to build something like this," Bloom said from outside, calculating something aloud. "We could get tons of new tactics—"
Butterscotch sprayed him with water.
"Don't even think about it. That place is torture without powers."
"I hope we never have to do this again," Bubble groaned, washing his hair for the third time and still finding sand.
"Come on, we must be ready for anything in the future," Bloom insisted.
"I don't think we'll need desert training in Law School," Butterscotch deadpanned. Then he looked at Bloom, then at the Ruffs. "Speaking of which—you four are in the same boat, right? None of you have chosen a college."
"There's still plenty of time," declared Bloom dramatically.
The Ruffs exchanged a look. The red Puff was clearly uncomfortable with the topic. Blue Boom asked, without thinking:
"Why? I thought you guys already had that figured out."
Bloom waved a dismissive hand.
"Too many choices. I'm sure I can get into any major I want—I just don't know if I'm built for a life without crime-fighting. And I don't want Law or police work. That'd be the same thing but alone. Maybe I should try something different."
He revealed so much that the Ghosts were left speechless. They'd never thought about their own futures. Not once.
Red Uto stepped out of the shower, contemplative.
Blue Boom shut off the water and dried his face. The idea of a future –an actual future- hit him like a punch. Mojo planning everything suddenly felt… easier.
"Hey, Booms," Bubble called.
He turned, and got hit with a sudden squirt of water in the face.
Bubble giggled. The others burst into laughter.
Red Uto and Thornton watched, unsure how to react… until they saw Bloom and Butterscotch sharing that mischievous "let's-do-this" look.
"Butch! Don't shield behind me!" was all Uto managed to say before a blast of cold water hit his back.
Once the Ghosts were alone again, Red Uto and Thornton faced Blue Boom.
"What happened back there? You're supposed to keep an eye out for us!"
Thornton hit his blue brother's arm.
"Ouch! I know, I think something's wrong with me," Blue Boom answered.
This time, he got hit twice: Uto slapping his head and Thornton hitting him again, harder. "Don't start talking like him," Uto said, avoiding naming Mojo. "You're probably tired, that's all. Let's see if Parra can give you something."
"Or at least, you may get some sleep without all the others' conmotion," Thornton concluded, not stopping the hitting.
But Parra wasn't in the clinic.
"He must be in his room," said Blue Boom.
The three took a deep breath. The first night, everything was chaotic. The girls were flying here and there looking for sheets and blankets, asking questions, and complaining about how to organize every detail. Because of all the fray, the Ghosts didn't have any chance to reflect on the fact that they were in the bunker again.
And now, for the first time since, they had to go downstairs, to the third level. They looked at the corridor and floated slowly, as if they were walking the green mile. Mojo's bedroom was at the end of the corridor. On the right were the boys' rooms: Thornton's was the closest, then Uto's, and finally Blue Boom's.
And in front of them, one more bedroom, the second largest, after Mojo's.
The one they had never asked about and had never tried to enter.
Joseph's room.
They made an effort to ignore the heavy feeling, that sudden, unwelcome urge to open the door and find out who this man was—if such a person had ever truly occupied that space. The possibility that someone else had once existed for Mojo, someone who had left a footprint where they were now trying to stand, became a sudden invisible burden even if it could give some lights on Mojo's cold behavior. But they contained themselves. Instead, they knocked on Blue Boomer's bedroom door, and Parra opened it.
"Oh, Uto, you're here too," said Professor Utonium, appearing next to the man. "Good, I was about to go looking for you."
As Professor left, he took Red Uto with him and headed to the red head's room, where the Professor was staying.
Blue Boom entered his old room immediately after the two left and closed the door behind him, forgetting about Thornton. So, the green boy found himself alone in the corridor, with Mojo's door at his right and Joseph's behind him.
He felt the need to look into some of these, but instead he flew into his own old room, fear fueling his moves.
Blue Boom was rushed when he entered.
"Parra, I think I'm…" he was about to say "wrong," but rephrased it, "sick, or something."
The man immediately adopted his doctor persona.
"Is it? Where does it hurt? Let me take your temperature."
"No, it's more like I'm missing something in my visual field or not hearing well…"
Only then did he notice Mojo sitting at the desk, quietly reading. He hadn't sensed him at all.
"That, my son," the monkey said as he slid down from the chair, "sounds more like you're calm, not unhealty."
He walked out, leaving the boy staring after him.
Once alone, Parra put a hand on the boy's shoulder, and Blue Boom gasped.
"You OK? You seem tense."
"Yeah, I am," he breathed and sat on the bed, though his voice betrayed him. "But it's weird. I always notice everything. I'm supposed to."
"And that's wrong because…?"
"What do you mean? I'm supposed to keep an eye open, before anyone can hurt me or Brick, or Butch," he said, using their real names, not the nicknames.
"But, who would hurt you here?"
Parra's question felt like cold water.
The man sat next to him.
"Hey, I'm a traumatologist, not a psychiatrist, but I can hear you out."
"As a doctor or…?" Boomer bit down on his lip, forcing back the word father before it could slip out—and still, the unsaid thing lingered faintly between them, fragile and fleeting, gone the moment he lowered his eyes.
"Whatever helps you feel better." Parra leaned back. "Argh, your aunt was right; kids give you green white hair."
"What? It doesn't make any sense."
"Probably not. I'm too tired to translate." He chuckled, then switched to Purépecha, voice warm and teasing. "I knew parenting was hard, but the three of you? A whole new challenge."
"Don't do that" the boy complained.
Parra looked at him, confused by his own exhaustion.
"Do what?" he asked again in his native language.
"That." Boomer pointed at him. "Speaking that."
"Oh, this?" Parra continued in Purépecha, smirking. "Why not?" he kept in his native language.
"Because you know I'll learn it by listening! I already speak like fifty languages! I don't need another one!"
"And how are you supposed to talk to the family when we visit them this winter?" the man kept going in Purépecha.
"I don't know! Spanish? Or English. I don't know." Boomer curled up in a ball, hiding half his face in his knees.
Parra exhaled a soft, helpless laugh—the kind parents made when frustration and affection blurred and stopped teasing him. Instead, he leaned forward and spoke English again.
"Hey. It's okay. One thing at a time, all right? Right now, stop worrying about… everything. No one will hurt you or your brothers here. And the other Ruffs? They just want to play and have fun. You should try that too, because if you keep this level of stress, you'll wear yourself down before the big fight, and that would be really bad."
For a moment, Boomer felt the unfamiliar urge—no, the need—to hug him. But he held back. Parra stood and gently insisted he take the room for himself so he could sleep.
And Boomer let him. Because for the first time all day, he was tired enough to stop fighting the quiet.
Thornton was lying on his bed. He had overheard some of his brothers' conversation using his superpowers. He felt a pressure on his chest. He touched it. There was nothing there. Not even the gray spots he had seen earlier. This was a different feeling. Something inside him was sinking.
He squeezed his eyes shut, taking deep, measured breaths. When he opened them again, he faced the clean white ceiling. He tried to conjure the image of the sky-blue color from his bedroom, the one he slept in at the Thornton's, the couple that had adopted him. But it appeared only as a blurred concept in his mind—the familiar frustration of aphantasia. Being unable to imagine objects had never been a problem before. All he needed was to see, touch, or feel at a map to complete his mission.
He went into the bathroom and washed his face. He looked at his reflection.
Dark hair.
Green eyes.
A dusting of freckles across his nose.
The first time he met the Thornton couple, they were at the orphanage looking for their son. They described him as a teenager with dark hair, green eyes and a dusting of freckles across his nose. They had heard that some children suffering from PTSD might not remember their names or parents, even believing they were someone else.And the couple trekked from orphanage to orphanage, from hospital to hospital, and even through the streets of the city, asking for any teen that shared those features.
He asked himself: "How funny is that?" The last hope for these parents to find their own child was that he had forgotten them and stayed as a No Name.
But when they saw Butch—the small, angry boy with the green eyes and the fierce sneer—their last hope vanished.
And yet, two weeks later, they were there again, at the orphanage, asking to adopt him, even if they, everyone, knew, he wasn't their son. It was only a desperate action to grip on normality again, to have their small family fixed again.
Usually, the social workers wouldn't allow such a thing, but they were currently overwhelmed by the quantity of children who had lost their families. Since many of these kids were in need of medical care and attention they couldn't provide, the social workers allowed the adoption.
For the first two weeks, Butch felt a constant, itching discomfort. The couple was always wary around him, speaking in soft, hushed tones he couldn't decipher. It wasn't fear, and it wasn't worry, but it wasn't natural either. It was as if they were tentatively approaching a wild animal, waiting for him to finally see them. He didn't know how to react. He had been trained to play the "lost boy" or the "irresponsible tourist" for a few hours, but he had never been trained on how to actually live inside a home.
There, in that small apartment, Mrs. Thornton would ask him: "Is there anything you'd prefer for dinner? Spaghetti and meatballs? Maybe chicken broth?"
And he was never able to answer. As a soldier, he knew one of the primary rules was to consume whatever was available, whenever it was provided. He had eaten every kind of food from the most remote corners of the world: samosas, bao, pupusas, and even boa meat. But he had never once stopped to consider if he liked them or not. He had only focused on fuel—on surviving long enough to complete one more mission.
He laid back down. His chest still felt too tight, too full.
Of all things, he found himself craving chicken broth—Mrs. Thornton's chicken broth.
So much for being unbreakable.
Meanwhile, Red Uto had to fight his own demons, his greatest nightmare, the mother of all his fears: people in his room.
He had shown some reluctance to let Professor Utonium in what used to be his own room, but somehow, it was more acceptable than seeing the three girls there, sitting and stepping on the bed, leaving the sheets with irregular wrinkles. Forget about the irregularity: there were wrinkles. He thought he could see a light spot of mud, as if someone had pulled off a shoe while resting.
And the colors! Against the perfectly white walls, hung now some red and blue ribbons. The girls had washed their hair ties and hung them to dry.
"Ugh, Uto, this room is so depressing," Bossy Blossom was saying as she opened the closet.
"You only have black uniforms?" asked Bluee Bubbles, helping her sister in her dressing inspection.
"No, I think I remember they had red, blue, and green stripes, right, Uto?" said Buttercup, lying and rolling on the bed, creating more wrinkles. "By the way, your books are boring," she said, setting the huge volume about the Mycenaean army on the side table.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, and immediately turned to the Professor. "What are they doing here? I thought you wanted to have a word with me?"
"Relax, Red Boy, we're leaving," said Buttercup, offended.
She leaned next to him and softly confessed, "Don't worry about your diaries; I've hidden them from these two."
"Come on, Buttercup," the Professor intervened, "it's a family meeting, after all."
"A what?" Green Butter and Red Uto said simultaneously.
"A family meeting," repeated Bubbles. "You know, when we spend time together and talk and…"
Her explanation was interrupted by Buttercup's shoe.
"Come on, everyone, let's take a seat."
Both Bossy and Bluee sighed with disappointment as they stopped their gossip, and sat on the bed. They moved closer to leave a space for Red Uto, but he remained next to the bed, his arms crossed.
"Honestly, Professor, I don't have time for this… things."
"Oh, how so?" asked Buttercup, all the poison in her voice. "Are you busy training with us and the others? Or befriending someone so you can be less paranoid?"
"In his defense, he trained with the PowerPuff Boys, that's something," Bubbles said.
"Yeah, and then he disappeared. Again. The three of you, actually," Blossom scolded him.
"Hey, what my brothers and I do is none of your business," the boy replied.
"Professor! He's doing it again!" Shrieked Blossom.
"Calm, everyone, let's start over again," the man said in a gentle voice.
Brick leaned against the wall, his only answer a sigh of sharp annoyance. This wasn't the first time they'd gone through this—the forced smiles, the endless patience. Since the day he'd arrived at the Utoniums', he had maintained the same cold distance. He found it exhausting how the girls insisted on introducing him as their "brother," pushing for conversations, games, and other useless activities under the banner of "family bonding." They had even dragged him to a social worker, seeking professional advice on how to "integrate" him.
Yet, for some reason, the weight of the wall against his back triggered a memory. He recalled another afternoon, leaning against a different wall, listening through a closed door to the girls' muffled complaints about his behavior. They were at the orphanage with a counselor, and the woman had suggested Brick wait in the hallway.
As he sat there, a soft, small voice broke the silence. He turned to find Toby—the pipsqueak who had shared his room for barely a week, yet had never left his side. Somehow, Toby was terrified of everyone else, and Brick was the unlucky soul the little boy had chosen to cling to.
"Sometimes people feel safer with those that don't show interest in them," Mother Ruth had told him. "It's sad when it is caused by the fear of getting attached to others. I've seen it many times."
The woman gave him an analytic look as she said that. Then, she continued.
"For others, it's just about respecting limits. They feel better around someone who doesn't show interest because they know this person won't ask or do anything that bothers them. I think that's why Toby prefers you," she explained.
She handed him the socks she was knitting.
"For you. This place is cold in winter."
The boy looked at his boots. Under them, he was wearing the purple socks, hiding under the white ones. He had accepted the gift because he knew Mother Ruth would insist on that, but he wasn't sure why he had taken them with him when they had left the Utonium's place before heading to the bunker. He also knew Butch Thornton had a brownish pair. Then again, Thornton didn't give any thought to clothes. As long as they were functional, he would wear any clothing, any color.
It was only logical that Brick remembered now that Mother Ruth had died. Of course, it wasn't a surprise. She was very old. She should have retired time ago, but she insisted on staying with the kids.
Something about a promise she had made to God.
Not that Brick was interested in religion, but it had always amazed him how far some people could go for that. He had met people who would kill those who didn't share the same religion, and others that would let themselves get killed to protect others who didn't share their faith.
And then, there was him. And his brothers. Just following orders as they came.
He suddenly noticed that they'd never stopped to see if they had killed anyone. With their superpowers, and their mission, they would get in and out a place without seeing who was in the line. The sudden realization they may have committed such an act stunned him.
He watched at his own hands. Of course, they were clean. No spots on them. No blood spots. The funny thing was that he didn't know what to feel. If they had done it, if they had killed anyone in the middle of a battle, were they to blame? Were they cruel for it? Or maybe, the cruelty was in thinking of the act as a natural one? People die all the time: sickness, accidents, and yes, war too. Soldiers were supposed to be ready for that. The three of them had been trained to accept this undeniable truth: every battle may be your last. Well, Mojo hadn't survived at the volcano. And for the first time, Brick realized that he and Boomer had come too close to dying there, too.
He was so absorbed in this thought—the sudden, tangible weight of his own mortality and the possibility of having committed murder without registering it—that he didn't notice the noise in the room had stopped. The girls were now quiet, watching him. Professor Utonium spoke softly, breaking the profound silence.
"Uto. Brick. You're thinking too much about the past, and too little about the present. You are here. You are safe."
Brick looked at the professor, then at his hands, and finally back at the three girls who were watching him with an incomprehensible mix of concern and curiosity.
They were safe.
But at what cost? And for how long?
He couldn't stand the pressure of their presence, the implicit demand for connection and honesty. He pushed off the wall, resuming his stiff, military posture.
"If we're done, I'm leaving," Red Uto said, voice sharp enough to scratch glass.
Blossom tried to stop him, but Buttercup crossed a leg over her sisters, stopping them.
"Oh, come on, leave the boy alone. He needs some 'me' time. Like Punk Brick Me, and Loud Brick Me, and Flannel…"
Before she ended the tally of Bricks, Red Uto sat on the bed, in the farthest corner, turning his back to them. Not surrendering—just not running.
Brick looked down at his hands again. Still clean. Still steady. For now.
He wasn't sure if this was a good idea. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to be here at all.
His brothers would have laughed at him for even hesitating.
Mojo would have lectured him about discipline.
Mother Ruth would have told him that letting people stand near you doesn't make you weak.
He wasn't sure who he wanted to listen to.
The girls exchanged quick glances. Professor Utonium smiled in that small, relieved way adults do when a scared animal stops hissing. For the first time, maybe because the room wasn't his anymore,maybe because of Mother Ruth's socks still inside his boots, or maybe just because he was too tired to keep fighting everyone—he let himself stay.
Not connect.
Not open up.
Just… stay.