TROUBLE

Bliss clung to Ashley's back as they walked up the driveway. At least, while one of them walked up the driveway. "Bliss, you didn't lock the door did you?"

"We lef Absy and the guitar girl there." Bliss rested her head on Ashley's shoulder, gripping her hands as they pressed their palms against Ashley's collarbone. A tight grip clung on the pair of black heels in Bliss' hands. "They're fun."

"I don't know if you meant 'fine' or 'fun', but whichever you did, that's okay." Ashley pushed the door open with her hips, letting Bliss land her heels on the ground.


A tiny patter of footsteps rung out through the halls leading to the living room. "Abby? Kyrie?" Lil' Bliss looked around, seeing no one giving her supervision. She then looked to see the security alarm on the wall destroyed. "Uh oh, did someone break in?"

The tiniest of Bliss' ran to the living room, turning on the nearest lamp, and looking around to see nothing. Nothing but a woman rested on the couch. Did she break in just to take a nap? What an odd thing to want. Maybe she was a friend of Bliss'. The other Bliss. The bigger one. "Um, are you-"

"Hey! Why are you awake?" Bliss stumbled into the living room still wearing the green dress she left in. "You shoulda gun to bed. You think you're better cuz you're little? I'm better than you cuz I'm big."

Bliss dropped on the couch, laying behind Tyuki. "I dunno when we got a Tyuki body pillow, but this isn't comfy. All these dumb bones make it too hard." Bliss rubbed her head against Tyuki's shoulder. "You're stupid, Tyuki body pillow. You don't even know how to be a pillow."

A voice from the kitchen rang into the living room. "Bliss, I can't find Abby or Kyrie. They didn't just leave did they? Lil' Bliss could have gotten hurt."

"Huzzah wah?" This stupid pillow did not know how to be a pillow, and Bliss knew something amiss needed to be dealt with. Then the pillow dealt with her.

Tyuki rolled off the couch in a blur. Bliss just closed her eyes and let her head spin around. Bad idea. "I think the world just exploded. Tyuki pillow. I'm gunna throw up in your hair." But, Bliss was alone, holding on her arm like a pillow. "Tyuki pillow..?"

A firm grip grabbed Bliss' cheeks and squeezed them together. All the air began to fill in Bliss' head. The blur of the Tyuki became more clear. "Die-ooki?" Bliss chewed on the side of her mouth as she spit out her words. "I unted to fell crunk! I dun fell crunk!"

"You can't have any of the pop-tarts. Those are mine. And my dog, Ryzo. He can have some." Lil' Bliss still stood at the entry to the kitchen, watching as the new comer handled Bliss.

The hard felt hand moved away from Bliss' face. "Those are for everyone. You can't just eat all of them." After her head steadied, Bliss looked at Tyuki. "I thought you were dead! Everyone did! Where have you been."

Bliss reached out and hugged Tyuki. "We have pop-tarts. You can have all of them!"

Lil' Bliss looked around at the ground, swinging her leg. "Well, okay. But, I want one too."

"Hugs not drugs, Tyuki." Bliss forgot Tyuki stopped smoking weed because of Lucy Brillows, but no one needed to know. After Tyuki hit the kitchen, Bliss definitely did not know Tyuki stopped smoking. "Some of that was for tomorrow, but I guess we're living like there's no tomorrow now." Bliss grabbed some bread with an assortment of meat and some lettuce on it.

Lil' Bliss grabbed a pop tart and pushed it down in the toaster. "She's not my mom. My mom lives in Arcadia. She's the ruler of the underworld and she's really nice."

"First of all, she's not your mom. Your real mom is my mom for obvious reasons." Actually, the reason was not so obvious as it sounded clearly like Bliss described Lil' Bliss like her sister. "Second, of all, Madeline is not that nice. She's a dick as far as person standards go. She might be pretty nice as far as demons go though."

"I fought a clown and a scary woman. I climbed monkey bars and there was lava. Bliss was tied up to an elf lady." Lil' Bliss took a seat at the table with her hands on the table. "That's where I got my dog Ryo."

"Tyuki, where have you been?" The last bit of sandwich dropped out of Bliss' mouth. "It's been like a year. Your band has been tough to deal with. The liquid one keeps having aliens come and attack. The one with the arms learned what Internet trolling is, and something about ninjas too. And, the one with pink hair whom used to have blonde hair after having purple hair has broken all the windows in this house two or three times now-"

"I think Abby and Kyrie have been kidnapped." Ashley walked into the kitchen having slipped into housewear. "I think whomever did it thought they were you and me, Bliss."

Ashley gave Tyuki a hug before going to the table. "I told Bliss you were too tough to not make it back to us."

Tyuki made up for lost time with loudness. "I mean you aren't a damsel in distress, but you didn't call for a year, so, kinda inconsiderate." Bliss kept her arms crossed as Tyuki refused to let her edge a word in.

"Hey!" Ashley yelled from the table. "No tentacles in the kitchen! That's a rule for a reason!"

"Was your mom or dad an octopus?" Lil' Bliss kicked her feet under her chair.

"No, she's just special." Once the tentacles departed, Ashley went back to not needing to enforce the myriad of rules posted on the refrigerator. "It's okay to be special. You just can't be special in the kitchen when we're eating."

Lil' Bliss nodded her head. "Gotcha."

Bliss hit her glass with a spoon to quiet the room. "Abby is the assistant to my assistant. She becomes invisible, and possibly could still be here, because she also isn't very courageous."

"Abby is an informant for us. She's just fine at doing tasks as required and even decided to donate blood for Bliss- after we wrote it into her contract, which is a little shady and all, but-" Ashley took a surprised look for a moment. "Oh, and Bliss has a little bit of the vampire strain in her, because of an incident with Misaki Mae and Chelle."

"Bliss is special." Lil' Bliss cut her pop-tart with a knife.

"Very special."

"Okay, everyone's special. Bonnie can literally burn in Hell for all I care. I think I saw-

A stiff young woman walked into the kitchen. "My name is Yui. I play the bass." A spark shot out of a loose circuit in Robot Yui's head as the mech walked into the wall.

Yeah, Yui's doing fine. Where are Kyrie and Abby?" Bliss waved her hands around her head to try and materialize the information.

"Nuclear power plant. I don't know who captured them, but it probably isn't very good for them."

"It's never good. It can never be good."

The impression Tyuki gave brought no joy to Bliss. The dead stare from Bliss pulled enough emotion to keep her lips firmly held together in a pucker wanting to say something mean. The, Tyuki criticized Lil' Bliss having a knife by taking the knife.

"I'm eight. Knives aren't a big deal. I beat up a scary clown with the help of my dog Ryzo. He's really cool." The spoon given to Lil' Bliss did nothing to help her, relegating Lil' Bliss to eating her pop-tart like a Neanderthal.

"Why did you give her a spoon?" Bliss felt the words pour from her mouth at the lesser of situations going on.

"Spoons are better at killing cereal!" Lil' Bliss held it up in a He-Man-esque pose.

"That was good joke. You're so clever." Ashley patted Lil' Bliss on the head.

"Go to bed!" Bliss pointed to the hallway.

Lil' Bliss walked away from the table, putting pop-tart in her mouth. The sparks from Fake Yui shot just past Lil' Bliss as she made her way towards the hallway to return to bed.

"Oh, is this the fake Yui. We really need to figure out how to tell them apart." Ashley walked over to point Fake Yui in the direction of an open pathway. "Does the real Yui have wires that spark, or no spark?"

"Maybe she should develop personality or play a real instrument or something else." The chair to the table pulled out to let Bliss up as she walked towards the hall leading to her bedroom. "I'll be back. Gotta get ready for superheroine stuff."

Ashley eye balled away from Tyuki as she brought up her question. "In our defense, Kyrie is better off when we know where she is. And Abby turns invisible, so we need to put a cap on that and-"

"Bam!" A high booted foot erupted into the kitchen. The rest of Bliss' skirt and body suit had the perfect amount of bows to more bows ratios. "Mitsuko really brought together my idea perfectly if I do say so myself."

"I think we should ask Mitsuko that, but you can go right ahead and say whatever you want." Ashley lifted Lil' Bliss' plate and took it to the sink.

"I think I did great. Alright Tyuki, we gotta go save the world!" A confidant one finger held up in the air, quickly coming down to cross her off arm and allow her to make a steady point towards Tyuki. "How are we getting there, cause we Ubered home."

"Oh, the trackers. Right." Ashley turned on the radio and increased the volume. "Hmm?"

"Do we have one for you?" A smile crept over Bliss' face. After the revelation of her sister's designs, Bliss enlisted Mitsuko to make outfits for everyone who worked for Bliss, including all four members of Girl Alive! She paid Mitsuko the family price, which amounted to slavery, but the publicity Mitsuko got more than paid the price.*

*Actual Monetary price -$13,426

"Check this out. Remember when I said Bonnie could literally burn in Hell for all I care. Well, she stole the one I had for you because, and I quote 'suck it Bliss, I gotta to cool stuff.' Then, she started to fight the underground as Eclipse." Bliss held up a black and yellow outfit and tossed a pair of yellow boots to Tyuki. "At first it was green and yellow, but it looked like Kick-Ass and who would want to look like that?"

"If you got the wings, I got the pings." Riding Tyuki felt a little weird, the few times Tyuki carried Bliss, it typically did not involve Bliss' approval. However, it almost always saved her life, so Bliss never really pushed the problem any further. This time would be a little different though, as Bliss would need to operate a device she typically struggled greatly with: a GPS. "We just follow the little icons, which are both together and don't look like they are buried, so good news Kyrie and Abby probably aren't dead. But, yeah, power plant. Going to the power plant. Hopping on Tyuki."

Jumping on Tyuki's back did not appear as graceful as a horse- or even a donkey for that matter. Bliss locked her ankles around Tyuki's stomach and put her arms around her upper chest. "Here we go!"

The power plant rested at the beginning of the foothills of Palo Alto, just before the mountain range really began to climb. The lights stayed on, but the parking lot appeared empty. No one manned any of the guard gates, and an electronic front door failed to fully close, instead opening and closing again with its track shorted out. "Tyuki, I need to find the control room, so we know what's going on. You just need to make sure nothing bad goes down, alright?"

The snapping between Bliss' thumb and middle finger did not detract from her index finger pointing towards Tyuki. "I'm gonna level with you. We got halfway here and I realized I forgot them. I didn't really want to go back, because you- not blaming by the way- aren't the most comfortable ride."

"Oh my gawd!" Both of Bliss' hands pushed her cheeks in excitement. "You. Look. Adorable!" Bliss kept her mouth gaping in excitement until Tyuki finally let her know she had enough. "I mean, we do this all the time, and nothing terrible has ever really happened to us. Like, getting arrested at Spring Break level stuff is the worst I've ever seen go wrong."

With the door now lying on the ground, Bliss stepped through the door. Nothing bad happened. "This is fine. Everything is good." Bliss shimmied through the next door. "I don't see why you thought we should scan the place. I already found the security- This is not fine!" An appendage reached out from a vent, grabbing Bliss and beginning to pull her towards a blasted out vent.