Like a good communist, I own nothing.

"Gauntlet: Diaspora"
Part 1

June 11

The funeral, if you could call it that, had been a somber affair. It was not the first that Blossom had been to - there had been a service for Bunny, after her short, tragic life ended, too soon. This occasion, however, was the first where there was a body. She looked around, and distantly noticed the deconstruction and demolishing that was underway, but had been momentarily suspended.

She, like her sisters, had worn their only black clothes: identical dresses that the Professor had tailor-made.

It was, in a way, two funerals in one and it seemed no one would miss either of the deceased. Mojo had been cremated, and his remains scattered over what had, apparently, been his homeland, in Central Africa. He had left a Will, and the actual funeral had been paid for by a 'secret organization' called the "International Brotherhood of Anonymous Secular Supervillians," of whom he had been a member for some time. They had come afterwards and claimed a number of things from Mojo's Laboratories. There had been a halfhearted effort made to prevent so much technology falling into the hands of obvious villains, but it was a legal matter, and there wasn't much they could do that Blossom concerned herself with. They were also the ones who, she learned, had accounted for Mojo's frequently accrued legal fines and paid for his bail when it was set.

Brick, however, had not been around long enough to be a member.

A suited man, either from that group or some sort of government agency, had been present at the Rowdyruff boy's cremation, but said little except a few quick words with the Professor. Boomer and Butch had made it well known that their brother had demanded to be cremated, and his ashes scattered over an open volcano. He had obviously meant the one below Mojo's Observatory. Why it had any significance, she didn't know.

She didn't know a lot of things.

That had never been driven home more than when she looked around, at what had once been Mojo's Observatory. She, of course, had helped him construct it, and now she was watching as the busy and skilled wrecking crew, natives of the city Mojo had dedicated his life to dominating and destroying, took it apart, piece-by-piece. Much of what remained had been willed to the Rowdyruffs, but the two despondent boys had not returned to the place that had claimed their leader, and their brother.

She and Bubbles were the first to come back.

Buttercup had been... away, and opted not to return either.

Blossom and Bubbles passed by the open area, now covered by a scaffold, where what was left of Brick's body had been emptied into the seething cauldron below. Blossom remembered, with perfect clarity, the spark each tiny mote made when it touched the lava, and the sizzle of it, as the carbon dust disappeared forever. Just cremating the body had required a heat far more intense than the volcano itself produced, but she had made sure to see it done.

Brick would have no monuments to his name.

No plaques to his memory.

He had saved her life, he had spared her life, and he had defended and protected Townsville at the cost of his own. That, however, meant nothing. Already, she knew, he was being forgotten - but she would never forget. And she would feel an equal amount of sorrow for all those who instead felt joy, and relief, at his passing.

"Blossom?"

Blossom blinked, and realized she'd been staring.

"I'm fine..." She lied, but Bubbles didn't press the matter. For this, Blossom was thankful. It wasn't something she felt ready to talk about yet. It wasn't something she even really understood, yet. How could she talk about it?

They walked in silence, and Blossom had to remember to float a bit off the ground, so that her longer than normal black dress wouldn't snag around her ankles. Bubbles didn't seem to have any problems, and she remained graceful and seemingly unaffected by the whole affair. Blossom remembered the last words Bubbles had said to him.

"You're mean!"

He was.

He had been mean. Blossom couldn't argue against that. Yet... at the same time, he had done good things. He had been so smart. And a part of him had cared: for his brothers, for the city, a little, and even for her. He had been mean. He had been bad. But he had been good at being bad, and he had never faltered in his actions or ideals.

She still couldn't believe that he was dead.

She still couldn't believe...

It seemed so surreal.

The two sisters parted ways, silently, as they neared the part of the complex that the boys had claimed for themselves. They had never really had a bedroom, like the girls had. Instead, Mojo had given them free reign to cordon off little parts of a back lab for personal effects. Bubbles was here for Butch and Boomer's things, that they had started packing up earlier.

She was here for Brick's.

There was a large empty cardboard box on the ground, stamped with a 'this way up' sign, and a roll of duct tape inside. It seemed awfully small to carry the life and memories of a living person. She looked over what was there, mentally wondering what to keep, and what to leave. Whatever was left behind would be donated to charity, or simply thrown out with the trash.

Brick really didn't have much to start with.

There was a small library, as part of an expensive (probably stolen, she thought with a smile, caught herself, and turned it to a frown) redwood shelf. Some of the books were on their side, no doubt knocked down by the demolitions occurring relatively nearby, that would eventually completely remove the Volcano Observatory from the skyline. She picked up one that caught her eye.

'Latin and the Roman Tradition'

A memory flashed, and for a half second, she thought she was holding her 'Conversational Chinese' book. The instant passed, however, and curiously, she skimmed through the book. It was thick, over five hundred pages, both on speaking the language, writing it, and a few classical pieces for practice reading it. Brick didn't dog-ear, like she did. He instead used a series of bookmarks. It was neat.

Orderly.

Organized.

"Everything in its place." She remembered a saying. "And a place for everything."

Even in this, she supposed, he had to be in control. Even in this, he had to be aware and able to get what he wanted as efficiently as possible. Carefully, she put the book down in the cardboard box, and while she was at it, she took the roll of duct tape out. The other books were telling, in what they said of him.

There were military biographies of great generals and leaders, throughout the centuries, from Khan, Alexander and Hannibal up to Rommel and Macarthur, followed by numerous works on more recent wars in the Middle East. There were books on modern politics; several of Kissinger's works were displayed prominently. Philosophy: both classical (Plato and Sun Tzu), intellectual (Kant and Thomas Aquinas) and contemporary (Huntington and Fukuyama)... One thing occurred to her.

Brick had no toys.

There was a space that looked like it once had a computer, or at least a television, but it was empty. Likely, it had been stolen, or 'appropriated.' There were a few compact disks in a drawer, all classical music of several operatic scores. She gathered them up and put them aside. Pushing aside a brown screen on the main part of the shelf, she revealed a smaller area, normally hidden from view. Inside were several small wooden figurines, intricately made, and scorched slightly a shade of dark brown. Picking one up, carefully, she felt the texture in her hands.

"Brick made these..." She realized, with a start. He must have used his eye beams - he always had such perfect control with them. Power was something Brick had never lacked, but he had always reveled in control. He had carved them; she could still feel, almost, a little residual heat on their surface. She looked down at it, closely. It was a miniature of himself, standing, with his arms behind his back. The eyes were a slightly darker shade than the rest, and conveyed a measure of sadness, along with authority and dignity.

She held it close to her, and closed her eyes.

She willed the tears not to come, she willed the guilt to go away, she pleaded for the burden to pass to someone else... but it would not. So the tears came, and for a few terrible minutes, she stood there and cried, silently. Her control slowly returned, and she wiped her face, clearing her eyes. There were several of the little statuettes.

She saw one of Butch, on a pedestal, looking confident and self-assured. She saw Boomer, alighting on what appeared to be a rooftop, with his usual easy grace. What she saw next shocked her. There was a figurine of her, in a cut away of what had, long ago, been her cell. She was looking down, contemplating her doom, and wallowing in self-pity. Yet the 'roof' was open, and there was no door. Finally, there was one of the three girls, all of them standing on what looked like the body of some sort of monster. Bubbles was cringing a little, and her hair looked droopy and wet.

It was the beginning of that first fight they'd had.

Looking at it closely, she did notice that this woodcarving did seem a bit rougher, a bit sharper at the edges and less polished in finish, than the others. It had, maybe, been his first. Lastly, all alone in the back, there was an unfinished block of wood, with a rough figure cut into it, and a few marker lines drawn to indicate future approaches and carving points. It was impossible to really see what he had been planning with it.

Had it been her?

"Non omnia moriar."

His last words: burned into her mind.

Attached to the back of wood was a small piece of paper, folded in half and taped in place. There was a long passage of what looked like Latin, and then and there, she vowed to translate it when she got home. Heart heavy, Blossom packed away the books. The carvings, she would carry separately. She would not risk them being broken or ruined. The people of Townsville may forget about Brick, there may be no monuments or recordings of all he did... but she would remember. She would keep what was left of him, and she would never forget.

It was cold.

It was dry.

Simply put, Princess Morebucks didn't like the mountains. Of course, Princess Morebucks didn't like a great number of things. She didn't like having to work to gain other peoples' respect, and didn't like being kept in the dark, and she didn't like being upstaged by others. This was just the tip of the iceberg, but these three particular peeves were currently at the forefront of her mind.

She knew that she was going out on a limb, however, and was willing to take some small measure of discomfort and even annoyance in light of the situation. After their Old House had been destroyed at the hands of the Rowdyruffs, her father had finally had driven home the problems that came from associating with Mojo Jojo and his ilk. Her father was a busy man, and a businessman, first and foremost.

When he called her little 'involvement' with the local Townsville villains 'unprofitable...' That was when she knew she was in trouble. Her criminal record was bad enough, and could be erased with enough money slipped into the right hands, but the actual destruction of Morebucks property, and especially the house her father had been born and raised in, was unforgivable.

She had barely convinced him to give her one last chance.

For revenge.

First on the boys, and then on the girls.

Hence why she was in the mountains, training with her newest associates, freezing her butt off. They had been planning on waiting another month before moving to Townsville itself, but when news came that both Mojo Jojo and the leader of the Rowdyruff Boys had died in the latest monster attack, their chances had improved dramatically.

For once, she was doing her homework.

The boys and girls had been devastated by the loss, both in terms of leadership, ruthlessness, and unity. Princess smiled broadly as she remembered what she had heard of them. Of all they were going through.

"Hey!!"

"What's up, sweetcheeks?"

"Shut up, both of you! Can't you two work together for ten minutes without this happening?"

Princess sighed, drawn out of pleasant memories by harsh reality. She watched as the group's official leader, appointed by her father himself, tried to separate the other two members of the team. Burnsday had been a champion of the Powerpuff Girls, or at least he had called himself one. Princess, however, knew an opportunist when she saw one.

It was little surprise that, out of the small number of men and women that Professor Utonium had outfitted in the times when it looked like the Powerpuff Girls had been killed, only Burnsday survived. The rest had been hospitalized after their run-ins with the Rowdyruffs. Most had ended up paralyzed. Burnsday, however, had ran up against Brick himself, and escaped mainly intact. She knew little of his actual credentials, except for occasional references to 'jobs' he had in Southeast Asia and Central and South America.

He had a new and superior suit of Powered Armor: an amalgam of Utonium, Morebucks, and Mojo's technologies. Though larger, and built to his frame, it was nearly identical to her own, which she had repainted in platinum and silver. The only difference was that Burnsday also used small amounts of Chemical X, injected into his bloodstream, which made him physically faster, stronger, and tougher. Her role was as support, and oversight. Burnsday's loyalties ran to her father, and Princess had little doubt that when push came to shove he'd be equally amicable to removing the Powerpuff Girls along with their Rowdyruff counterparts.

Still, even with him, they could not hope to defeat their enemies.

"You back off, pal! I am warning you!"

"Sure thing, babe! Sure thing!"

That was where the other half of the team came from. One of them she had recognized instantly, from his brief stint as a superhero in Townsville. The unnaturally large frame, jutting chin, and heavily oiled crop of hair belonged to one 'Major Man,' though he had been contracted under the alias 'Rod McShaft' ... apparently he'd gotten into the porn industry after the superhero thing failed. When approached about being a supervillian, he had been cautious at first. Then promise of Chemical X, and more power, however, had drawn him in, hook line and sinker.

Of course, they couldn't afford to waste their limited supply of Chemical X on a relatively bit player like 'The Artist Formerly Known as Major Man,' and there had been a fair amount of the failed synthetic available, so... Still, the results had been mostly positive. His strength and toughness were greatly magnified. If his intelligence and memory suffered, well, that was a risk she was willing to take. Especially with Mojo being gone, and there being no real hope of getting more pure Chemical X.

"Will you two maggots calm down?!" Burnsday snarled, angry.

"Babe?! I told you not to call me that, you fat American pig!!" A loud female voice grated. She was an Asian woman, in a formfitting lightning-themed black and red costume.

The Artist Formerly Known as Major Man was taken aback. "What did you call me?!"

"A fat pig, you retard!"

The last part of their group had been an import, of sorts. They needed a speedster, and who better than the arch enemy of Japan's resident superhero 'E-Male?' Especially with the recession in that country, it proved a simple matter to convince 'Hate-Male' to take a quick job in America, where she could improve her English, earn some money, see more of the world, and learn to hate men of all races and creeds equally.

"All right! That's enough! Both of you; hit the showers!" Burnsday roared. "GO!!"

Hate-Male snorted at him, but didn't cross the man. Burnsday tended to drive his points home by shooting people in the hands and feet, which was something she had learned the first day she had arrived and dismissed his orders. The two headed back to the mountain retreat arguing and hitting each other (well, Hate-Male was hitting TAFNAMM anyway).

Princess sighed at the embarrassing display.

They weren't exactly a 'well oiled fighting unit' yet, but everyone except herself was expendable anyway. That, and from what she'd heard, Townsville wasn't exactly very attractive for supervilliany in general. Frankly, no one wanted to get near the place. Princess found herself not really wanting to return either...

But she had to follow through.

She had made the mess, starting with aggravating the Powerpuffs, and then trying to bully Mojo. This time, finally, her father wanted her to clean up after herself. Adjusting her helmet, she took aim at the targets down range, and kept practicing.

There wouldn't be any more chances after this.

Harris Daner was a citizen of Townsville. He was a respected accountant, and normally, he enjoyed his job. Normally. Lately, however, things hadn't been particularly positive in Mr. Daner's life. Aside from the latest monster attacks, which weren't that unusual for the people of Townsville, life had recently just seemed... empty.

He drove to work, he worked with some pointless numbers, and he headed home to two squealing little rug rats and an idiotic wife. The house seemed too small, much too small, for them all. Worse, whenever he came home, everyone ran up to him wanting things. Wanting toys, wanting money, wanting food...!

He headed for his car; head low, and avoided eye contact with the other people of the city. The last thing he needed to see was another vacantly smiling face. He saw his car, smiled a little, and opened the door with a sigh of relief. Plopping down on the driver's seat, he ran a hand through what was left his hair. As if things in his life weren't bad enough, he was balding.

"Hey!" Another Townsville resident tapped on his window. This man was younger: around twenty-two, well built and wearing an expensive suit. He had a full head of hair. Nearby, his girlfriend - a busty brunette - looked on in amusement.

"HEY!" The younger man yelled again, and pointed to the car Mr. Daner had parked next to in the parking garage. For the first time, Harris noticed that he had dinged the other man's red sports car when he opened the door to his family wagon. Oddly, the thought made him smile.

"You screwed up my car!" The younger man kicked the old Daner station wagon, and gritting his teeth pointed at the older man. "You wait right there, you smiling piece of horse shit! I'll fix your ass good!"

Mr. Daner was still smiling, up to and until the younger man opened the trunk of his car, and took out his car iron. As his girlfriend cheered, the man lifted the de-facto weapon like a club. With an angry snarl, the younger man smashed in the back window of Harris Daner's wagon. Cursing, fumbling to start up his car, Mr. Daner hit it in reverse, and the other man just barely jumped out of the way and avoiding being hit.

Turning quickly to drive away from the scene, Mr. Daner paused.

Looking at the other man, with his full head of hair, with his expensive suit, and expensive car, and beautiful woman... Distantly, Mr. Daner switched from reverse to drive, and floored the accelerator. The younger man's eyes widened in surprise then sudden fear and rage a second before Mr. Daner's station wagon hit him, crushing him between the side of his own Porsche and the hood of Harris' car.

The woman started to scream.

And Harris Daner... accountant... family man... laughed. Opening the door and stepping out of his vehicle, he reached over to the body on the front of his car, and pried the car iron from the other's man's limp fingers. The pretty brunette screamed and tried to run away, but with a surprisingly accurate aim, Mr. Daner nailed her in the back with the heavy metal tool-turned-weapon. She spun, tripped on her high heels, and fell to the ground, scraping her leg and arm.

"I've got you now, you little bitch..." He paused, reached down and picked up the trusty car iron. The woman stumbled through her purse, and pulled out a small case of pepper spray. She started spraying wildly, not thinking, but Mr. Daner shielded his eyes and kept out of range, laughing.

He didn't laugh when a fist snapped his head around.

He didn't even see it coming.

He just hit the ground, unconscious. The car iron fell out of his hands, and hit the ground with a clang, below Butch's feet. The green Rowdyruff looked over his shoulder at the woman, who had gone back to screaming, this time at him, and spraying her pepper spray indiscriminately. Butch's face was a scowl, and with a tiny breath, he blew what was left of the airborne irritant back into her face.

"Worthless." He snarled, at the world in general. In front of him, the woman howled madly, and started rolling around; rubbing her eyes and face. Without giving the scene a second thought, Butch took off.

The flight home, that night, had been an exercise in silence.

After dropping things off at home, Blossom and Bubbles had given the city a quick look over, before heading out to get Buttercup. Things had gotten worse over the last few days, and crime was on the rise. It seemed that Brick's death had emboldened a large number of people... or maybe it was Mojo's death that left a vacuum that needed to be filled. It was likely a combination of the two, Blossom suspected.

In one quick pass, they had broken up two fistfights, and an attempted robbery that looked about to turn into attempted manslaughter. It reminded her of last summer, when the record high heat, unemployment and mismanaged government bankruptcy had nearly led to riots. Then, when everything looked about to explode, Fuzzy Lumpkins crashed the party, even crankier than usual. At least it had lightened the mood a bit.

Everyone expected Fuzzy to act like that.

It seemed to snap most people out of a sort of heat-induced stupor. Things were back to near normal soon after, but Blossom doubted anything like that would help now. That one incident had always stuck out in her memory. The people of Townsville were normally a happy, helping, caring bunch, aside from all the criminals, of course. Still, at their heart, they were a mob. Worse: a stupid mob.

Butch, however, likely didn't see things her way.

Not anymore.

She'd heard about some of his little exploits on the news. Just days before, after the tragedy, the green Rowdyruff had woken up screaming his brother's name; remembering everything that had happened hadn't been healthy for him. He'd gone on a rampage for all of a few seconds, before something in him just... stopped. He hit the streets, now, hard. Every day. His vicious streak had magnified, but he hadn't crossed the big moral line yet. Truthfully, she was afraid to confront him about it.

What could she tell him?

To calm down?

Not to blame himself?

That was likely what Buttercup heard. The raven haired Powerpuff Girl had always been tough, always been a fighter, and always had somewhat of a vicious streak of her own. Maybe it was the exhaustion she had to fight through when she woke up, maybe there was a deeply rooted soft spot in her that had finally been touched. They didn't really realize something was wrong until she started acting weird.

Sometimes, they learned, she would see his face in a crowd, and so she would bolt off to see for herself, and it was someone else... or no one at all. She said she heard him sometimes. She said she thought everyone knew what she was... even strangers on the street. The first night, she couldn't sleep. Two nights later, she thought his ghost was in the room. The guilt had been eating Buttercup alive.

But, how could it not?

She had murdered someone.

Two, actually.

It wasn't like before, when they had blown the boys up in an almost innocent way, and hadn't known them. It hadn't even been their intention, and afterwards, they had been told that the boys would have eventually deconstructed anyway (a little white lie, she now suspected). This situation was wholly different. In her blind power lust, Butch/Buttercup had fractured Brick's rib cage, broken his lower back, and finally nearly choked him to death. Her intentions hadn't been just to defeat him, or to drive him away, but to murder him in cold blood. He had finally died, Blossom had learned, of extensive and irreparable internal bleeding. Buttercup had his blood on her hands.

His and Mojo's.

Blossom's brunette sister spent hours, sometimes, in the bathtub, trying to 'get the smell of blood off.' It was all in her mind, of course. Naturally, Blossom felt for her sister, yet a tiny part of her blamed Buttercup (and Butch) for what had happened. At that thought, Blossom always felt deep shame.

It hadn't been Buttercup's fault.

She hadn't been herself; she probably hadn't even been sane. The merging with Butch had greatly increased their love of power as much as their power itself. No: Blossom set her thoughts in stone. It hadn't been Buttercup's, or even Butch's, fault. Not in any way.

Mojo.

It was Mojo who had been responsible.

It was Mojo who had manipulated the situation to betray his own child. Blossom remembered, like it was just yesterday, when she had seen Brick's face, with a tiny scar that hadn't been there before. She had learned to picture his face in perfect detail - she could probably draw it perfectly with her eyes closed - so, of course she had noticed the small mark when she had returned to help defeat the spherical monster that was threatening the world.

She had known that he'd been struck, and that Brick would only allow Mojo to do it. No one else. Later, she had seen when Mojo had lost his temper, in the Robo Jojo, and again struck his 'son.' She tried to talk to him about it, she wanted so badly to do something about it but couldn't.

He didn't trust her enough.

Not enough to open himself to her.

Not enough to admit it hurt him.

Blossom's anger rose, directed solely at the new deceased Mojo Jojo. The Powerpuff's old enemy had done much to earn her anger, and the anger of others, but this... this she could never forgive him for. Brick and his brothers needed a father, they needed a family, and they needed love. How would she and her sisters have turned out in similar circumstances?

"So, Buttercup..." Bubbles said, breaking the silence.

"What?" Buttercup growled, surly and embarrassed. She had been seeing a therapist for several days. She'd stopped saying that she saw the red Rowdyruff in large crowds of people, and stopped claiming that she smelt like blood, but both Buttercup's sisters suspected she was just being defensive. The fact remained that Butch and Buttercup didn't talk to each other anymore.

Bubbles hadn't laughed in days.

Everything was falling apart.

They landed at home. Boomer was standing on the front step, waiting for them. He and Butch had moved in with the Mayor and his wife, temporarily. The Professor had offered them the opportunity to stay with the Girls, but they had politely declined. Boomer and Butch still came over, sometimes, though lately it had only been Boomer. In a way, they were the family he'd always wanted. They were, at that point in time, probably the only things keeping him from losing his grip on reality completely.

Bubbles landed next to him, and reached out.

He took her hand, and they walked inside.

Boomer didn't say much. He'd hardly spoken a word since Brick died, and never as loudly or boisterously as before. When he was around the Girls, he followed Bubbles around and the two of them stuck together like glue. Bubbles spoke for him most of the time. She was a sort of security blanket, Blossom supposed, for the blue Rowdyruff. Blossom heart went out to the boy.

She missed his jokes.

She missed hearing his voice.

She even missed him calling her 'Red.'

Boomer and Bubbles went straight to the table, to wait for dinner to be finished. Buttercup and Blossom went upstairs, and separated when they got into their room. As Blossom had suspected, Buttercup went to the bathroom, and in a second, the sound of running water was clear as crystal, even after the door loudly closed shut. Blossom ignored it for the moment, knowing there was nothing she could do: feeling helpless, and looked instead at the box of belongings next to her side of the bed. On the dresser, she had already put up the little wooden figurines.

She'd also taken out one of the books.

After translating the first two lines on the piece of paper she'd found, Blossom immediately know what it was: an old poem by William Butler Yates. Still, she took the time to check, and worked through the words and phrasing. With some time to kill, she jumped onto the bed, and went to work on what she hadn't gotten to earlier.

Turning and tuning in widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are possessed of a passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are the words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Yet, as she translated, Blossom saw that there was a small mistake. And another. Two tiny errors. A part of the last two lines were incorrectly translated. It was uncharacteristic of Brick, the total perfectionist that he was. She went over the lines again. This minor change was deliberate. Blossom was sure of it. But what did the change signify? What did it mean?

And what a crude quintessence, its hour come round at last
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born!