Little Girls, Who Made Thee?

To say we were shocked about it all was a bit of an understatement. I mean, nobody wants to go around, living their lives and what not, and discovering that they actually didn’t do the things they thought they did, and said the things they did, and whatever else happened in their lives because, supposedly, someone else came up with all of that. And that we three were just supposed to shut up and go off gentle into that good night when they supposedly figured out how to do our job better than the way we did it. Even though we had done our job well, and effectively, for what we thought was quite a long time.

That’s what we assumed was going on when we were told about us being replaced. And we were not happy about it, of course. So we did what we had to do, that’s all. No words, just action. Because that’s just what you do when you save the day for a living, isn’t it?

*

What? Oh!

I guess we’ve been away longer than I thought, if you haven’t heard of us at all. I have this tendency to plow into discussions verbally when I get approached directly for a conversation like this. I suppose that’s why I got named Babbles in the first place, I guess.

I got a photo here if you don’t believe me. Let me get it out….

There. You can see me in the middle. I’m the blonde. My role is kind of uncertain and fluctuating, although I’m a bit less of an innocent boob than I appear to be. Or, I should say, we all are. The redhead is Britomart- she’s the brains of our outfit. The brunette is Barracuda- the muscle. They must be somewhere around here. If you had to separate us like this, you really must think that we….

Oh. You’re just questioning us separately, not holding us. You’ll let us go as soon as we finish up here?

But where will we go to? We have no home left! You destroyed it! Trying to destroy us, I might add! Wipe us from the face of the Earth as if we never existed in the first place!

Well, that’s what I’ll tell them at the hearing when this comes to trial. And it’s the truth! The three of us don’t trade in deception, and we don’t like it much, either.

Huh? “Elaborate”? What does that….?

Tell the whole story, huh? Finally! Somebody’s got to!

*

I thought everyone had heard of us, but I guess I was wrong.

Anyway, the three of us are-were-no, are the Jet Puffed Girls. The fastest, strongest and most otherwise empowered young ladies on the planet. The friends of all good people and the nemesis of all bad ones. When trouble struck, we were always prepared to fly into action and set things right. Sometimes it took our fists, sometimes our wits, sometimes some weird combination of those two things, and sometimes it was just dumb luck. But it always happened, somehow. We always saved the day and kept our home town from falling into the peril that seemed to be threatening it.

Until today, that is. When we found out about what a sham our whole existence was, and successfully avenged ourselves on those who had done us wrong. Even if it might be against the “laws” of whatever this world is where we are now, it wasn’t against those we govern ourselves by. Superheroes aren’t controlled or controllable by any “higher” forces, regardless of what you might believe, Mr. Policeman.

This is what happened:

*

We had been called in for what, for once, was a fairly routine proposition. One of those monstrous creatures that emerges from the seashore every once in a while and wreaks havoc because it doesn’t know any better and feels threatened by the human race. That sort of thing. We had hoped this would be one of those kind that was able to talk, or communicate with us some other way, so we could get their version quick, resolve things, and then get on with our lives.

No such luck.

This was the other kind. The one that struck quick, drew blood and looks on you as nothing more than a chance for a bite-sized meal. And not just us. Everybody and everything in town, if it felt so inclined.

We knew this wasn’t a time to fool around. And we didn’t. So we went in, with fists and legs flying and attack cries in our throats. As we predicted, it was too stupid to counter-attack when we three went at it at once, so it was beaten and dead right quick. As it should have been.

But what should not have been happened when Barracuda kicked the lifeless corpse and it sailed off into the air, back to the Island of Monsters where it came from, presumably.

Instead of traveling in a straight line high in the air, as we had all become accustomed to seeing, it travelled only a short distance before it ripped a hole in the space-time continuum as if it were simply a sheet of fabric (at least, that’s what Britomart said happened; I couldn’t figure it out for myself until much later on) and a giant burst of wind howled out of it, sucking anything and everything in its path towards it without any resistance. Even- and especially- us.

We were right in the path of the wind, and even with our super-speed, we weren’t able to move anywhere out of its way before it hit us and pulled us in.

We were helpless and powerless to stop it. Can you believe that?

Really, we were. All we could do was drift helplessly along, in the breeze, as if we were just simple leaves. Until….

We ended up here.

*

Well, not here, of course. Not this building. We only got to this building just now when you captured and arrested us. I mean the other one. The one the three of us completely trashed just now. For justifiable reasons.

The wind spit us down into something resembling a drainpipe attached to a large building, and we tumbled down it, landing somewhere on one of the building’s floors in a heap. We quickly got to our feet and tried to figure out what had happened.

Or, rather, Britomart did. She’s always been faster on the draw in that respect than me and Barracuda. That’s why she’s our boss.

“If I’m not mistaken,” she said, “this is not where we belong. Whatever that wind was, or, more likely, whoever was responsible for it, wanted to get us out of the way for some reason.”

“That’s obvious,” said Barracuda, with not a little bit of sarcasm. “But what are we gonna do about it? To start with, how are we supposed to get back to where we came from and deal with it?”

“Not really sure about that yet,” responded Britomart. “First thing to do is figure out where we are, and then figure out where we came from. That’s the only way to handle….”

She paused suddenly at that moment. Because we all managed to hear, with our advanced hearing, some laughter than sounded very familiar to our ears.

Because it was ours.

But we weren’t laughing. Far from it. So who was doing it? And why were they sounding the way we did?

“Who is that?” uttered Barracuda.

“And why do they sound the way we sound?” I asked.

“No time to be wasted asking those kinds of questions,” concluded Britomart. “There’s only one thing we can do. Follow the sounds and see where they lead us. That’s the only possible way we can get out of this trap, whatever it is.”

So we flew down the hallway, burning rubber. We only stopped at the end of the hallway, where some very big wooden doors stood guarding the entrance to some sort of video recording facility. We guessed that by the fact that it said “STUDIO B” in white letters over the middle of the two doors, along with the smaller legend “Do not enter the room while the red light is on, because recording is in progress.” The red light was over to the side, and it was on.

But was that going to stop us? When we’d been abducted by the wind without notice, and had no possible way of getting back where we came from, and this was the only way we could find out how to get back?

Not likely!

We smashed the doors like they were made out of paper, and flew in…..

….and we faced the world where we had come from!

It was our home town, meticulously recreated from stem to stern. It looked good enough to fool anybody who’d never been there to assume that they actually were in that place. But not us. We knew it wasn’t where we really came from. However, somebody was obviously familiar enough with us and our activities to want to recreate them in some way, in flattery or otherwise.

But that wasn’t the biggest shock.

There were people milling around, obviously in the midst of producing a film or television project involving our hometown that we had, somehow, interrupted. They looked at the three of us in the same level of shock we had expressed on seeing the constructed town for the first time. It was understandable.

None the more so than the three young ladies who were in the center of the whole thing, who bore a very similar appearance to the three of us!

A fellow who had been sitting in a canvas-backed chair- the director of the program, obviously- got up towards us, and demanded to know what was going on here.

“That’s what we want to know!” retorted Britomart, hotly. “And we aren’t going to be leaving until somebody manages to explain what’s going on here!”

“And why should we?” said the director.

“Because we are the Jet Puffed Girls,” came Britomart’s answer. “The real ones.”

Well, that wasn’t apparently a good enough answer for him. The director said that there couldn’t possibly have been any “real” Jet Puffed Girls because that was “just” a television program that had been made a long time ago. One that they were in the process of remaking at that moment, as a matter of fact. So, as there had never been any “real” Jet Puffed Girls, how could we possibly put forth the idea that we were the “real” ones if it was a made-up proposition?

“What the hell do you mean by THAT, buddy?” snarled Barracuda. “You want to see how real we are, just try us!”

“You could just be some animatronic or robotic recreations,” said the director. “Pretty good, but not good enough to….”

“Not GOOD ENOUGH?” Britomart flared. “How can you possibly get away with saying that? After all we did to make sure that the world was safe for….?”

At that, the director burst our bubble further by explaining that the whole universe we had come from was a fabrication. It was something that had been planned all along. Everything that we had supposedly done, or said, or whatever, had been preordained. It was a completely dystopian outfit of control from afar, designed simply to provide the avaricious people who ran all the affairs at the top with more wealth they didn’t need, from filming our “exploits” for television broadcast without our knowledge or consent, to putting our images on the cheapest and most expedient merchandise they could find for a further level of profit!

We had had no say in how things happened, no say in what we said, no say in how we acted. Nobody else in the environment we came from had any say, either. Even the ones that we loved and trusted hadn’t. We were all just puppets meant to be played with by higher powers, and nothing else.

And now they were going to do it all again, with those three little….clones….of us. And we wouldn’t be able to have any say about how this all happened, any more than we had before.

Or so they thought.

We just exploded then. Even I, who am not known for having a temper, blew up at what we had discovered. We just completely went to town then, and no one was spared. We wrecked the whole building, but we let most of the people live.

You can probably guess who didn’t.

*

So that’s why we did what we did. If it was wrong, so be it. After all, they ruined our lives by exploiting us in that cheap fashion to begin with! We always were the ones who responded to threats. We didn’t cause problems. We fixed them. Tit for tat. This was just another one of those cases.

In any event, there are only three Jet Puffed Girls in the world now, and there always will be.

Even if we don’t have a real home anymore, we can still find ways to make things all right in this new one.

If you can forgive us for what we did back there. I know it’s not much, but it’s all we can ask of you now.

Can’t you?

Dedicated to Craig McCracken, from an admirer. Thank you very kindly, sir.

Also available on Medium:

https://dkperlmutter.medium.com/little-girls-who-made-thee-b5620e60e307