CHAPTER VII: SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX
Deep breathing emanated from Blossom's body, her chest slowly heaving up and down, but her eyes still closed. On her right, Bubbles' lip made a small inhale of air, followed by an equal exhale. Similarly, on her other side, Buttercup was moving back and forth in her sleep, her subconscious trying to find a comfortable spot. Grumbling slightly in her sleep, Buttercup did an involuntary dive-roll closer to Blossom. This move which she wasn't really aware of made her elbow knock into Blossom's own, causing her to jerk her eyes open.
'Wha?' Buttercup leaned up on confusion, while Blossom snapped awake at this too. Leaving the fiery redhead moving to shake Bubbles awake, Buttercup looked around at the area that they were currently located in. Very little to see, with a single doorway out of the room, and no appliances or furniture to speak of. The room would have been totally unremarkable if it wasn't for the fact that the architecture was unlike anything they'd ever seen; dark red wood walls that were not smooth, but instead, with sharp carvings in them, almost as if someone had taken a sword and slashed at the walls repeatedly. Yet, in contrast, the floor was a vibrant pink.
'Ugh...' groaned Bubbles in shock, finally standing up with the other two. Looking at her sisters, she instantly jump-started. Seeing this, they looked down, and were startled to see that they were wearing only their ordinary Powerpuff dresses, with the space suits completely gone and no trace of them left at all.
'I don't know where we are,' said Blossom in wonder, walking past the other two towards the door. Without warning, about a few feet from it, Blossom bumped off of something that she couldn't see.
'Huh?' Startled, she tried pressing her hand in front of her, but she couldn't get it any further then a few inches ahead of her face. Buttercup jogged up to her sister, but similarly, she rebounded off of whatever it was. All three of them proceeded to flying around the room, trying to find a way out, but whenever they got within a few feet of any wall, they rebounded in a similar fashion, the area which they had hit vibrating like a ripple on water.
'It's some kind of transparent dome of psychic energy,' ranted Buttercup angrily, trying her laser eyes on the strange shield, but producing not even a dent.
'Oohh,' came a spooky high-pitched voice from nowhere, 'well done Buttercup. You took the words right out of my mouth!' As if the room were under control, it turned a slightly darker shade of red.
'I know that voice...' said Blossom slowly, whipping her head around in fear, trying to find the creature who she knew was watching them this very moment. At that point a small pink cloud, a mere shadow of the tornado that had ensnared the girls, opened up in front of them, its smoky wisps retracting outwards. At long last, out of it materialized a red-skinned demonic creature, with long thin arms ending in crab-like claws, a woman's red jacket and skirt at the collar and hemline, black thing-high hooker boots. But his face was what stood out. A hooked nose on fiery red skin, with curved yellow eyes, a black goatee and numerous makeup in places.
'Him!' said a timid Bubbles in shock. 'You were that red tornado?'
'Well done,' responded the demon, stretching his eyes in delight. 'Now I have you little brats right where I want you!' He then proceeded to wave one of his claws through the air slowly, leaving a trail of small pink sparks in his wake. Magically, the room's walls and ceiling faded away into nothing, meaning they could see what was beyond the room. And it was totally not what any of them were expecting, even Buttercup.
Outside of their small psychic dome were other rooms of similar design, where the walls too had vanished; only the outer walls remained, making it feel like a huge open box right now. Yet in all the other rooms lay the other victims of Him's red tornadoes. Bubbles could see the chicken-like aliens, and Buttercup spotted the alien green blob too. Most of them were asleep, but groaning every so often from being trapped for so long. However, three particular ones were not.
'You'd better let us out of here!' screamed Brick in frustration, throwing a punch at a transparent barrier holding down the three Rowdyruff Boys, who had also lost their space suits since the girls had last seen them. The punch only caused him to rebound painfully, but the three boys continued screaming at Him as loud as their sonic screams could through the barrier, which wasn't very loud at all.
'Be quiet!' snarled Him viciously. The demon waved a claw quickly through the air, and the walls around the room where their dome was reappeared, muffling out their voices. He then turned back to the girls, evil victory present in his curved eyes, asserting that he really meant business.
'You girls have been so predictable this whole time,' he said delightfully. 'You fell for everything! The spell on the Mayor, the red tornadoes, even that monster, they were all my doing!'
'So you were the one behind this plan!' said Blossom in angry confirmation. She opened her mouth and sent forward a chilly wave of ice straight at Him, yet it too just hit the barrier, and melted on contact with it, the water dripping onto the ground. Bubbles and Buttercup lent a sonic boom and a flamethrower to the breakout attempt, but these attacks also didn't even get close to the immortal monster before they were neutralized by the barrier.
'Try all you want,' taunted Him, gesturing with single a claw to show that he was scoffing. 'I made it so you can't get through if you have super powers!'
The girls froze solid at these words. How could it be... that they would meet their downfall by –
'That's right!' interrupted Him, reading their minds and finishing their thoughts for them. 'Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness here!' He laughed in his falsetto voice for quite a few seconds, while the three girls exchanged looks with each other and shrugged, still confused about whether he was as masculine as demons would usually be.
'And to think...' Him glanced over at his shoulder at one of the other prisoners. Following his gaze, the three girls saw that it was Mojo, trapped inside a dome of his own. He was banging on it with his fists, glaring at Him as hard as he could. 'Monkey boy here thought that he was using me!' Another brief laugh followed this statement, only serving to heighten the level of insanity the girls thought he had. 'I was using him and the other villains! It was just so much fun to sit back and watch the events unfold! Do you know how much you girls suffered, and all because I planted a few seeds?' He laughed so hard at this point that it wouldn't have been too far-fetched to suggest he might have died laughing. 'I haven't had this much fun since I found Cartoon Network!'
'What do you want Him?' said Blossom, glaring the effeminate demon down. 'You can't kill us!'
'Oh, don't worry about that,' dismissed Him delightfully. 'I'll just let you fall apart from being trapped in there! Everyone else already has.' He brought up the walls of the Rowdyruffs room again, but they didn't notice. All they were doing was sitting very still, shaking with wide, blank eyes, and shaking every few seconds as though they were having a seizure. It couldn't have been clearer that they were going insane pretty quickly.
'I swear to you, you loser!' yelled Buttercup, curving her eyes much like His. 'When we get out of here, I'm gonna whip your ass so hard Hell will feel like Heaven!'
'I'm the one with the power around here, you little twerp!' Somehow, Him's powerful anger made Buttercup flinch in fear and retreat back to her sisters. 'And just for that, I think I'll make it even worse for you...' Him placed his two arms in a circle around each other, and then he proceeded to whip them around each other in a frenzy. On the ground just a foot outside of the transparent barrier, a small pinkish mist drifted around briefly before it vanished, leaving behind a glass flask containing a black liquid. On the flash were the words "Antidote X."
'How do you like that?' taunted Him in an even higher tone then the usual pitch of his falsetto voice. 'You're so close to escaping, yet so far! At that point he suddenly brightened up visually, as though he'd just thought of something important. He chucked his watch, and then flinched slightly in vaguely mild surprise.
'I'm gonna miss Johnny Bravo!' He jumped up into the air, and faced the stupefied girls one last time. 'I'll be back to torture you later!' He twirled back up into a red mist with its wisps retracting inwards, and vanished up it as it shrunk, the room's walls and door reappearing as soon as he was gone from their sight.
'No!' Buttercup slammed herself against the barrier, pounding and kicking it with all her might. She had never hit anything this hard before, ever, yet the barrier still wasn't affected in the slightest. Blossom and Bubbles, on the other hand, collapsed to their knees, with Blossom watching Buttercup's fruitless actions and Bubbles trembling
'No...' Buttercup threw one last final punch at the wall, but the container of Antidote X still wasn't reached, and she too collapsed to her knees. For the first time in her life... her strength was what kept her from winning. In the center of the room, Bubbles sniffled, very close to leaking a tear.
'I can't believe it,' said Blossom slowly. Her face was in total suspended motion, as she fell backwards onto the hard floor. Bubbles stared at her in desperation.
'What now?' she asked quietly.
'Nothing.'
'But... but...' She was stammering more then she had at any point on this journey thus far. 'Aren't we gonna get back, save Townsville, and Professor?'
'With our luck right now, I don't think we even gonna be able to save ourselves.' Blossom finally stopped looking at her sister as she spoke and just stared straight up at the ceiling instead. Emotion tingled in her eyes with every word she spoke.
'Are you saying this is the end of the Powerpuff Girls?' Buttercup crawled over beside them and looked down at her two sisters, not believing that they were giving up so easily, after everything that they'd gone through.
'Yes, Buttercup.' The leader Powerpuff continued to look directly upwards rather then look when she spoke. 'I guess Mayor was right all along.'
'You mean we never had a future?' The raven-haired girl's tomboyish attitude showed itself briefly there again.
'No.' Blossom turned her head to face Buttercup now. 'That we're just kids. Three 5-year old kids. We were doomed from the start of this race. We never thought properly before we went in... We let everyone down... We failed.'
'The... Planet of 1000 Hells,' said Bubbles frantically, yet also tearfully at the same time, making her sound both weak and desperate.
'Exactly, Bubbles.' Blossom reverted to her position of looking straight upwards. 'We didn't even get halfway through the mission.'
'No, look!' Bubbles pointed forward, and their eyes fell upon a miniature inscription on the woodwork of one of the walls that read: "Sellh 0001 fo Tenalp." 'Planet of 1000 Hells.'
'This is the place?' said Blossom suddenly. 'This is the Planet of 1000 Hells?' Rolling to the side, she used her X-Ray vision to look through the floor. And to her relief, below the unbreakable floor was a swirling vortex of red and yellow in sharp red rocks, just like Hell was always described to be.
'You're right Bubbles, this is that planet!' She rolled back to her normal position. 'Girls... we did make it.'
'Yeah.' Bubbles surpassed a small smile briefly at these words. 'I guess we did.'
'We weren't too shabby, eh?' Buttercup took this moment to lie herself down beside her sister, now showing as much care as Bubbles. Their small bodies in the room pinpointed exactly how the atmosphere felt right then. Without a doubt, this was their most serious situation ever, but they still stuck together.
'We did all right for a couple of screw-ups,' said Blossom finally. She sniffled softly, all three of their eyes open as fully as possible, being even wider than usual. Even though the Antidote X was still unreachable, Blossom seemed happy, yet in a final resolution kind of way.
She then put out her hand near Bubbles and nudged her softly. Turning to see this, Bubbles gently took Blossom's left hand in her right, lying back down on the hard, cold floor. She finally cried, but it wasn't wailing, for only a single big tear came out of her eye. The drop of water slid down her body onto the pink surface.
Blossom then actually leaked a tear of her own, and this tear slid down her other arm onto the ground as she held it out to Buttercup, who silently took it. They looked straight up for the final time, and they all closed their eyes with strange smiles on their faces, just as Buttercup too, for one of the few times in her life, involuntarily let loose a drop of water from one of her eyes. This third drop of water also made its way down on the ground, meeting with the other two in front of their feet. They bonded together into a bigger drop of water in the outline of a Powerpuff Girl. With the girls having closed their eyes, they finally stopped moving and fell into a happy rest.
The room lay silent for several seconds, during which nothing moved or made any sound whatsoever, rather like many shots in old anime. It still seemed incredibly creepy, even though the floor was the same shade of bright pink as Him's place back on Earth on those rare cases that the girls had gone to him, when –
The tear vibrated with unknown energy, and then started to move forward away from the center of the room. Almost magically, it approached the outer part of the barrier and went seamlessly through it. Moving rather like an insect, it approached the Antidote X flask. It somehow circled around the side of it and then scaled to the top of the flask. Stopping just before the tube that led down into the black liquid, it pressed forward on the glass, making the flask tilt forward...
Until it finally fell onto the ground, the black antidote spilling out of the top-open tube of the flask onto the ground everywhere. Seeing as this event took place only an inch or so away from the barrier, the majority of the chemical flowed straight through the barrier and congregated around the girls. As soon as it touched all three Powerpuff's bodies, it was absorbed straight through their arms, very small traces of smoke evaporating from it afterwards.
As they clearly had felt this, they suddenly snapped upwards, gasping in breath. They looked down, saw the liquid around their feet, and then they looked up, their eyes falling upon the upturned flask.
'Did it just...' wondered Blossom. Buttercup tried flying upwards, but her jump didn't even hold her in the air for a mere second. A smile of possible victory slowly crept over her face.
'But how?' asked Bubbles, curiosity taking the better of her.
'Him may sealed this barrier against our powers,' said Blossom with an air of sudden realization, 'but there's one thing he can't stop.'
'And what's that?' asked Buttercup, also curiously, staring down at the black liquid.
'Love.'
Buttercup and Bubbles looked up at each other, and then at Blossom. Of all the things they had learned along their emotional and spiritual journey... this was the biggest.
'Come on girls,' said Blossom triumphantly, gesturing with her arm over her shoulder towards the door. 'We've got a world to save!'
'That's more like it,' said Buttercup in agreement. All three of them made their way through the barrier without any hesitation, encountering no problem whatsoever with passing through this time.
Opening the door slowly in case they were being watched, they made their way across the much bigger room outside of their former prison, which was almost exactly the same. Past the barriers where all the other prisoners were, now in forced sleep, they approached a door bigger than all the others. Blossom grabbed the doorknob and yanked on it with all her might.
'It won't budge!' Buttercup moved forward towards it and tried to pull it, but nothing happened at all. Meanwhile, Bubbles glanced right, and saw a cartoon-style lever sticking out of the wall. The position it was in was "Lleh" while the other end read "Ytilaer."
'I guess we could do with a bit of reality,' shrugged Bubbles, flicking the switch down to the position it wasn't in previously.
The instant it hit the position, all the inner walls of the room instantly faded, and a ceiling materialized. But an extremely shrill alarm began beeping out of nowhere. Several of the aliens woke up at this, and looked around in confusion. Mojo stared with spherical pupils at the events that were happening.
'You annoying twerps!' Unlike his usually slow and melodramatic method of appearing, Him took this moment to literally pop out of nowhere right in front of the girls, who recoiled backwards in fear, knowing they had no chance against him now. 'You may have escaped, but without your powers, you're not going anywhere –'
Right there and then, his angry outburst was broken by the sudden shaking of the room. As it slowly started to reform into a more organic structure style, the barriers around each prisoner popped out of existence, one by one. Mojo looked up and down in unspeakable delight. The chicken aliens stood up, their multiple stalk eyes blinking repeatedly. The two brutish aliens pulled each other up from the ground. And one lavender alien even came out with a one-man band set, adding a French harmonica-style tune to the proceedings.
Him looked around in nervousness as the last of the psychic energy walls popped off, leaving every single alien glaring at him. Loathing would be too mild a term to describe their current feelings for him. As he remained there in both shock and puzzlement, someone tapped him on the shoulder. Turning around, he saw that it was none other than the Rowdyruff Boys, all three of them angrier then all the others put together. Brick put his hand up to his red cap, and pulled it down tighter over his head, while Boomer and Butch both cracked their knuckles.
'Uh oh.'.. The three Rowdyruffs launched themselves instantly upon Him, pummeling him to the floor. While they hit him in every way possible so fast that he was unable to defend himself or perform any kind of spell, all the other aliens helped out too. The purple reptile bit on Him's leg, while one of the alien girls that the Rowdyruffs had briefly fallen for gave him a wedgie by his pansies. Even the green alien blob joined in, squishing Him's chest. The lilac-shaded alien watched the brawl, shrugged in comical amusement, and then started the one-man (or in this case, extraterrestrial) band up again, the French tunes suiting it quite well as Him's punishment by his former captives continued without any further delay.
Finally, the girls slipped through the big door, slamming it shut after themselves. They leapt down off of the porch onto the rocky ground, running forward.
'Let's get back to Townsville!' commanded Blossom, the three of them looking around. The scenery was very familiar, as they were on a rocky outcropping outside, with a bottomless ravine below that perfectly resembled Hell in most ways.
'But how are we going to get back without our powers?' asked Bubbles innocently. Blossom looked around in desperation, realizing that they were stuck.
'Oh, I give up,' she moaned, falling onto her butt.
'I wouldn't give up so easily if I were you, Red,' said a very familiar voice. Looking up, she saw Buttercup gazing in awe at something a bit off. Blossom followed her gaze, and was very surprised.
An absolutely gigantic spaceship was resting on the far right of the rocky outcropping. It was in Him's style and taste, pure red with long slender legs on the ground. It looked almost exactly like Mojo's small spaceship from before, except it was much bigger, with loads of weapons and a much bigger cockpit. It would dwarf both the Dynamo and even the monster that swallowed it.
'Way to go, Buttercup!' approved Blossom delightfully. Giggling in delight, all three of them ran towards it, unbelieving at their massive turn of luck.
But as they vanished out of sight of the door, it was opened again, and an exhausted Mojo fell out, slamming it shut on the still-active brawl inside. Gasping in tiredness, he glanced around, and spotted the Powerpuff Girls sprinting in the direction of the giant spaceship. A steadily evil grin gradually crept across his face, and he got up and took after them.
The three girls got to the underneath of the spaceship, running up the open ramp hatch. By the time they got to the cockpit, Mojo had made his way into the spaceship. He punched the air in triumph, until he was suddenly stopped by the spaceship taking off. Flattened against the wall as a result of the incredibly fast travel, he desperately hung on as it shot its way upwards, leaving the planet's atmosphere within seconds. Mojo was having a hard time even maintaining his normal body shape!
In the cockpit, the three girls were safe in their seats as the spaceship left the planet's gravity, coming out into true space. Buttercup flicked a certain lever very slowly on instinct just as they passed the location where they had been previously abducted. The space around the cockpit slowly faded to a scene of blue-ish streaming lights as the ship entered hyperspeed, sipping out of realspace, back in the direction of the Milky Way galaxy, and back towards Townsville!
Red darkness loomed over the seemingly doomed city of Townsville. By now, all the citizens had been rounded up. Only a small handful of monkeys were still running crazy, as most of them were disciplined enough to carefully control their prisoners. Each Doot Da Doot, the Wizard of Oz-like monkeys, were still hovering around the buildings, making sure that no one was sneaking off, and still carrying a giggling Bossman, leader of the Amoeba Boys, on their jetpacks as a mild shield. The Go-Go Patrol was also swinging around the city, Ace and Snake of the Gangreen Gang at the front and back of the long line of 50 or so gibbons respectively.
A handful of giant cages were located around Townsville Hall, with the human prisoners being frogmarched into these cages. Killa Drilla and Blah-Blah Blah-Blah were positioned at the side of this to watch for any suspicious activity with their drill machine and tormato machine, Junior and Slim still strengthening their inventions defenses.
'Don't try escaping,' said Sedusa viciously to some of the citizens, her hair briefly assuming the shape of snakes and Cruncha Muncha, on her shoulder, snarling, making the people gulp and continue walking.
'You know what would make these bananas tastier?' said Arturo to Hacha, the two of them having bananas in hand beside a giant cage. Hacha looked at his Hispanic partner curiously, wondering what the answer was.
'Tacos!' he stated happily, holding up the well known Mexican dish. Hacha rolled his pupils in unspeakable delight, having just seen the best food invention since bananas. Apart from Grubber and Hota, all the other villain and monkey duos were beside the marching people, except for one.
'Hold up there!' said Cha-Ching to Bonzo Bango suddenly, pointing towards the crowd. 'Bring those three here.' Wacko, Pappy, Bonzo and several other monkeys brought Sara, Mayor and Professor out of the other captives up the steps.
'We have something special planned for them,' smirked Princess.
The big spaceship that was previously the property of Him zipped out of hyperspace, shooting forward through realspace at a very alarming rate. It whooshed right past the asteroid with the dome, the resulting throttle scattering the alien ninja android's body parts everywhere.
'Just a couple minutes away!' said Buttercup triumphantly, moving the controls just as well as she had with her powers.
'I can't believe you know how to do this!' said Bubbles in awe, watching Buttercup do what the blond-haired puff could never hope to achieve.
'How do you think I beat Mitch's score in Space Hyperdrive?' asked Buttercup matter-of-factly, not taking her eyes off the control pad.
'Right,' realized Bubbles slowly. 'Go on Buttercup! We're almost there –'
'Good.' All three girls whipped around in confusion, having just been interrupted by a voice. In the darkness of the corridor leading off the cockpit were two pink eyes with green pupils.
'That looks like...' Blossom didn't need to finish her sentence at all, as he stepped forward with two white boots and gloves, in his blue suit with a white belt, his usual tall head helmet and his flowing purple cape accompanying him.
'Ah!' yelped Blossom suddenly, all three of them jumping in panic. 'Mojo!'
'Did you miss me?' asked the chimpanzee, grinning triumphantly.
Approximate Chapter Running Time: 52:18-60:19 (NTSC); 50:13-57:54
We're into the last quarter of this movie now. Remember, it's not a fic, it's a movie. While this sequence was even more emotional then the last one, I tossed in a few side jokes, since I didn't want it to get too sappy. The story's also much longer then the first movie, as at this point in that, there were only three minutes left. But there's a good 18 left here!
Also, someone outside of this website asked me why Ojo Tango (the Orangutan with the giant tank that had two cannons) and Baboon Kaboom (the olive baboon with the monkey robot that used bombs as weapons) were missing from the monkey army. Simple; their machines exploded, so I figured that they died. All the others monkeys were merely beaten up or sent away. Just thought I'd clear that up, although I thought it was pretty obvious.
