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Chapter 7

Hitting Rock Bottom

Part Two

"I'll take care of these of these things. Bubbles, stay behind and try to not draw any attention, okay?"

Bubbles nodded, her face still frowning in pain, and while she began to float at a safe distance Blossom turned to focus once again on the new foes.

There was a swarm of flying creatures coming towards her. Once again, these ones were a completely different type of mutant from the previous fiends they had fought against: the ability of flight was theirs thanks to two pairs of dragonfly-like wings, which they used at a surprisingly high speed. They had just a pair of tiny excuses for legs, so it was clear they didn't rely on them. Just as the porcupines, the new mutants had an almost unrecognizable face, but instead of having two big eyes, they had a group of numerous small ones over their front, and they owned a functioning jaw, though it was devoid of any teeth.

Blossom noticed another feature that put her on guard as soon as she saw it: the bellies and sides of the creatures weren't very thick, and the pink puff was able to see that, inside, something emitted a mild red-yellow light that passed through their skin and changed its brightness along with the creatures' breath rates.

Whatever those things were able to do, she wasn't going to let them hurt her or anyone of her sisters more. With the porcupines, the Titan and the Chimaera, she had learned these mutants were not an enemy to be underestimated.

The swarm was fast, and in ten seconds the first Dragoon reached Blossom. It did not, however, try to attack the Powerpuff Girl head on: the mutant flew to the side of the pink-eyed girl, and just as Blossom began to float away to keep her distance, it opened its toothless jaw to expel… air?

As Blossom came to realize fast, it wasn't simple breath. It was something much hotter… and dangerous.

Blossom felt like her entire body had been suddenly enveloped by flames. She cried in surprise, and pain, before zooming away from the cloud that the creature had emitted. The cloud was yellow-orange in colour and inside it she could see that what could be described as tiny explosions, fire-crackers-like, which were taking place. The cloud slowly faded, and at the same time what seemed to be drops of an unknown liquid fell from it towards the pavement.

Blossom controlled over her body: there were now some bruises added to the scratches she had previously obtained courtesy of the beast at Bronislav's lab, as well as some burns which were located just where her dress had been reduced to ash. She took a flock of hair in her right palm and took out the fire that was burning it. Normally she would have freaked out about the mess her beautiful hair had been reduced to, but at the moment there were more important matters to think about.

So these arthropod-like beings were able to emit air hot enough to ignite fire and burn her superpowered skin… and hair. No, she knew her skin was able to sustain even more extreme temperatures, the only limit was the time, and she had escaped the attack right away.

…what was that smell? …acid?

Imaginary gears clicked inside Blossom's brain. The cloud… the explosion were chemical reactions, the mutant's breath with the air… the heat was just needed to start them, what really did the damage was that liquid. She didn't know the specifics, but she wasn't in great need of those.

She just had to avoid being enveloped by the creatures' breaths again. And that was something that might not have been as easy as she expected.

Three new dragoons darted towards her, the wings flapping at high speed and their bellies bright as they prepared to let out more of the deadly gas they hid inside them. Blossom charged up her eyebeams and fired a blast towards the nearest one of them.

The creature strangely did not move away to evade the laser, so it was hit with a direct headshot. The blast pierced easily through its body and when it reached the zone where the creature's main weapon was stored, it immediately channelled an explosive chemical reaction. The dragoon was obliterated, parts of it flying everywhere.

The other two dragoons cawed in surprised but did not lower their speed, so Blossom had to fly upwards to avoid being flooded by their breaths. The monsters followed her in hot pursuit, their jaws opened and ready to exhale more of the hot gas. Then, an idea hit Blossom: if heat was the catalyst… maybe she could deny that particular element!

She stopped in mid-flight and inhaled a deep breath before turning to the creatures. The dragoons slowed their speed, ready to evade what they probably expected to be another heat vision blast, but Blossom did something else, using an ability the monsters weren't aware of yet. She let out a strong gust of her special power, Ice-Breath, and the creatures were taken by surprise.

The cold wind engulfed the dragonfly-like beasts, and in three seconds they were entrapped in solid ice blocks; which, of course, instantly began to fall towards the floor, where they crushed in millions of shards. The same could be said for the dragoons, of course.

Blossom rotated her head only to see more of the dragoons getting around her… they now knew the extent of her powers, and they seemed smart enough to not try a full frontal assault.

"Bubbles! You're all right?" Blossom called behind her, still keeping her focus on the fiends swarming around her. "I'm okay, Blossom, but we can't keep this up! You-… We have to do something with the boys! They're the ones releasing the mutants!"

Blossom nodded, knowing her sister was watching her. She hoped that the dragoons wouldn't suddenly change target and go for her. "Good thinking, Bubbles. Just try to recover while we deal with these mutants; if Buttercup manages to defeat her ones before me tell her the same and to go for them!"

"Got it!" Bubbles responded with a hopeful tone, which was right away followed by a, "You are not going to do anything until we say so, Blossy!"

"BRICK! Stop this madness! Can't you see they're trying to KILL us!?" Blossom blurted out at the voice of her counterpart.

"Madness! This is, like, the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life! You're actually putting up an entertaining fight!"

Blossom put a hand on her forehead, exasperated, but still keeping one eye free to observe the movements of the dragoons.

"Is what those things have done to Bubbles entertaining to you?" she said in an attempt to make them see the seriousness of the situation.

"Don't play with me, Pinkie. That's just ordinary for you three… or aren't you the 'Puawherpuff Giiiirls' who save Townsville every day?"

Blossom sighed. Okay, words were not going to work… then, hard way it is.

"These girls are surely one boring interlocutor when they want… seems like we have to let loose something more challenging! C'mon, Butch, what do we have here? Is there something which shoots missiles?" Brick asked eager to see more action.

"Na-ah. Methuselah apparently did not like to add these things on them apart from himself. Though there is something here that…" Butch informed as he went through the paper list they found inside the control room.

"Hey. Oh boy! Oh boy! Free this one! This one!" Boomer interjected as he climbed over Butch and began to point at random names.

"Boomer! I swear that if you do not get the heck out of my back, I will annihilate you from this planet!" Butch shouted in anger, but the two of them froze when Brick uttered, "boys… I think the thing out there wants something from us…"

And right, out of the control room, attached to the glass and metal bars, there was a solitary dragoon who was staring down the three Rowdyruffs. Even Blossom noticed it from afar, as she had heard the entire conversation through the intercoms.

The dragoon cawed quietly, before opening its jaw and pouring out its breath against the boys. The gas impacted with the glass and the metal bars, reacted with the air and produced acid that instantly melted both elements. The dragoon entered the control room but its life here was brief a Butch fired a blast of heat vision at it, making it detonate.

"Huh. So that's what it looks like when they explode…" Brick commented, momentarily stunned.

"That's AWESOME!" Boomer cried in awe.

"I find more interesting the fact that out there are twenty or so of these things who're going for us…" Butch pointed out. Boomer and Brick watched outside to see an entire swarm of dragoons moving towards them.

"You know? I'm actually happy about it. Watching others fight is good but I wanna move around a bit myself, you know!"

"Yeah, let's show them who the real fighter is!" Boomer exclaimed.

"I'm good with that!" Butch agreed. Eventually, the Rowdyruff Boys bolted out of the control room and charged at the swarm of dragoons, startling the monsters. Of course, the kill count began to rise in favour of the new arrivals.

Blossom scoffed. Those boys… they were always the same. But in any case, that was one problem dealt with… now that the income of mutants was stopped, she just needed to eliminate the remaining ones.

She was surprised to see that there were only ten dragoons remaining. The rest of the swarm had moved away to join their siblings against the ruffs, apparently.

She prepared to go for the nearest one when Buttercup, out of nowhere, came into the picture roaring. She fired an eyebeam that blew up a single fiend, and then she began to zap from one beast to the other kicking and punching. Too fast for them, their weak bodies where mincemeat for Buttercup's powerful attacks, and some of them even saw their own bellies explode only because their skin was too damaged to bear the internal pressure.

The last dragoon cawed in fear and flew away. Buttercup was going to follow it when Blossom called, "Buttercup, that's enough. It won't return."

The green puff sighed and tried to calm herself down. She had visibly been in heavy battle mode. Various cuts dotted her body, sign that she had sustained some close calls in the battle with the porcupines, and sweat was all over her face. But other than that, she did not have any serious injuries, and Blossom was thankful for that.

"The hedgehog-like things… are gone for good. I don't think there-.. *sigh*…there are more of them around…" Buttercup said between the breaths.

"Good. The new ones are occupied with the Rowdyruffs, so I think we're free… for now."

"What about Bubbles?"

"I'm here…"

The two of them turned to greet their blonde sister. To their dismay, her injury was still bleeding.

"I don't think I'm feeling so good..." she said, almost whispered.

"Darn! …there must be some kind of first aid kit somewhere here…" Buttercup said, she was definitely worried, "Doctor Porter must have some of them, with all those things around ready to attack anyone at sight!"

Blossom's feelings were not too much dissimilar from her sister ones… but she had one idea. It wouldn't get Bubbles in safe zone, but it would at least stop the injury from making her lose blood.

She motioned her to come near herself, and when Bubbles was near her, she carefully took her wounded arm and put it right in front of her, the wound facing her own face.

"It might hurt, just try to think to something else and bit the bullet, okay?" Blossom warned. Her sister nodded, Buttercup was already at Bubbles' side keeping her free hand in hers, so Blossom focused on her task. She inhaled deeply, then she let out a tiny, controlled gust of ice-breath. The air went over Bubbles' wound and began to freeze it slowly. Bubbles clenched her eyes shut and her lips quivered, but she didn't cry.

At last, Blossom released Bubbles' arm. The area around the wound was frozen, but it was not covered by ice. The bleeding had been stopped… for now.

"That should do for some time. Bubbles, you need to leave this place and look for help. We will stay and look for Donnie," Blossom said. It was not a question.

"…but… but Blossom, I don't want to leave!" Bubbles protested with tired words, "I… I cannot leave you two here… leave Donnie here…"

"Bubbles, there's no way you can help us. You'll get yourself injured even more… or worse!" Buttercup reasoned, "It's for the best, you have to let us finish this. We can deal with Porter!"

Bubbles sniffed. They had good reasons… but she wasn't convinced. She couldn't let them go away like that. This was Containment Farm VII, what about all the ones before number seven? And the others after it? What about Porter? If he was as strong as Blossom said, they would have had to face him together! What about the Rowdyruff Boys, as soon as they would have finished fighting the remaining mutants?

What about Donnie? Was he even alive now?

A cry was heard.

The Rowdyruff Boys and the dragoons stopped fighting, both sides surprised by the sudden scream… the painful, heart-wrenching scream of a boy.

"…Donnie?" Bubbles whispered, saying what was already in her sisters' minds.

The reaction was instant. There was no time to argue. Their super-hearing had proved effective: they exactly knew from what direction the cry came from and, more or less, even the distance. It wasn't far.

Blossom and Buttercup bolted together at high speed. They were so fast the auto-door they moved for had just the time to open itself for the space just enough to let them go through them. When the door finished its movement, Bubbles passed through it, determined to follow her sisters despite her current state. She wasn't letting them face Porter alone, period. She was not leaving Donnie alone, either. The Rowdyruffs eventually shrugged the scene off and resumed to slay the mutants.

Blossom and Buttercup needed twenty seconds of high speed flight to reach their target. Another automatic door, but they didn't even stop themselves to check what the label recited. They slammed themselves towards the door, which they found out was not enforced with Duranium. The expense of energy was so high they not only burst into the room launching the door away in two halves, but they also caused a pink and green explosion which ended up destroying everything near the entrance.

They did not stop their movement: they had the element of surprise, they couldn't let the chance slip from their hands. The first points of interest appearing in their vision were the forms of Mojo Jojo and Doctor Porter, both startled by their appearance.

They didn't question why Mojo was here, but went directly for the attack. Blossom charged at Mojo, starting with a punch on the face, then letting loose a flurry of kicks, in the end finishing with a powerful hook. The ape didn't even have the time to register the events as he was sent flying into a set of shelves, crushing them and their contents in the process.

Buttercup went for Doctor Porter. For the first actual time he had been taken aback and Buttercup was not going to let the chance go unused. She attacked him right away with her eyebeams even before actually reaching him, which landed a perfect headshot. Stunned, Porter was left at the mercy of the green puff: she tried to do as much damage as possible, landing powerful hits all over his body. She had no clue about a weak point, so she tried to at least do something to the robot hands: maybe if she succeeded in breaking them Porter would at least lose the abilities those things had.

At the same time, Mojo Jojo sprouted up from the debris left by his last voyage, laser rifle at hand and surprisingly not knocked out. He's getting harder, Blossom noted as Mojo Jojo screeched in anger and began to fire red hot beams towards her. She responded with eyebeams of her own, but the rifle was a new model and its high rate of fire was effectively preventing her from taking a good aim at the monkey.

It was at this moment that Bubbles slowly made her appearance in the room. She gasped when she saw that Blossom and Buttercup were in combat, but she relaxed when she realized they had the situation under control… for now.

The blue puff looked around the laboratory, looking for the source of the sound that had brought the three of them here… and she found it.

Donnie!

She flew towards the yellow stain on the floor that was Donnie, trying to be as fast as her body could let her. It was clear that something was off.

"Donnie!" she started as she flew down and kneeled right at his side, "What happened? Are you all right?"

The little boy spent five seconds before finally making the decision to rotate his head to watch her. His face showed extreme sorrow and his eyes were red with tears, a spectacle that made Bubbles's heart go down.

"Donnie… what happened?" she repeated more quietly as the noises of the battle continue to be heard around.

Donnie opened his mouth, but the words that were let out of it were not what Bubbles hoped to hear. "I… I am… a failure…"

"What?"

"A failure! He's right," he said with a hard, almost angered tone, "he's freaking right! I'm just a failure and I've always been from the day I've been created!"

"What in the world are you babbling about?!" Bubbles said with surprise, but Donnie ignored her as he continued to grumble, "Porter's right… I cannot beat him, I cannot stop him… I won't be able to stop her…"

"Wait, wait, wait, hold on!" Bubbles ordered as she grabbed his shoulders and shook him off, "Donnie, stop thinking about it that way! You're scaring me off! I don't know what Doctor Porter has told you, but to be honest I don't care. You are not a failure!"

She put a hand under Donnie's chin and forced him to get nearer. They were really near to each other as Bubbles, her eyes fixed into his ones, said solemnly, "You. Are. Not. A. Failure!"

"Am I not?"

"You aren't!" Bubbles repeated, "Whatever bad things you've done Donnie, you weren't even yourselves! And you cannot consider acting bad something like not defeating Doctor Porter!"

"He's extremely strong, Donnie! He had managed to knock all three of us out, back when we were fighting with the Rodwyruff Boys, like it was nothing! When I heard your cry just minutes ago, you just cannot begin to realize how much worried I was about you! You should thank heavens you're alive, and you're here saying you failed? Do you realize how illogical is that?"

Donnie stared at her for some seconds… before nodding.

"Donnie, I've known you for enough time to think that you're good beyond any doubt. And what you managed to do after you returned to Ultrapolis is something you should be proud of. Everyone is proud of you! Your aunt was worried when we had to leave her to go deal with the ruffs! The Mayor of Ultrapolis was extremely worried when we came to him looking for information about the Doctor! That is, because they believed in you!"

By that moment, Donnie had completely stopped to sniff and sob.

"Donnie, there no way you should consider yourself a failure. You have achieved so much, you've become the opposite of it! What's a failure anyway? No living being should consider himself as such. It doesn't make sense... Even less in your case!"

She let out her right hand, making sure to keep the wounded limb hidden, and stood up as she said, "Promise me you'll never, ever, have that thought cross your mind again."

At first, Donnie kept lying on the floor, motionless, as he stared at the blue puff now over him.

Was she right? He had been so sure about it… it all made sense, and Porter's words were made from logic, even if they were evil…

But she was right. Because it didn't matter that his existence had caused Porter to resume his activities in Ultrapolis… in fact, for all he knew Porter would have begun to use the city's inhabitants as test subjects, or worse. There was no way to tell what Porter's plans beyond the current scheme were. And as for his attempts to test him, he had been able to stop them. Giant lizard monster included. And of the same idea were most of the people in Ultrapolis… including the Mayor himself, known to be hard to get on the good side, and the people he had started to call family after he lost his own creator.

Bubbles was right… Bronislav was right. He, his creator, had said it himself, wrote it into the last words of his journal. He was good. Porter may have been more powerful, but he was not invincible... they had not lost yet. They had not failed yet.

He moved his right hand and grabbed Bubbles' one. "You're right. I… I'm sorry, I've been stupid… It's just that… I don't know…"

"We'll talk about it later, Donnie," she said as he helped him stand up, "now we… you have to help Blossom and Buttercup!"

That brought him to the events at hand. Blossom was still trying to get nearer to Mojo, who had changed weapon to two akimbo plasma pistols, while Doctor Porter had been able to counter Buttercup for the first time and was beginning to get the upper hand.

First, though, he had to warn them about the danger of Porter's goal. "Bubbles, we have to stop Porter first. He's… he's going to do something terrible if we don't!"

He inhaled before continuing, the thought of it made his stomach ache, "…he's going to create a girl! A girl, super-powered just like me, made with the sole purpose of beating me!"

Bubbles was completely taken aback by that statement. She stumbled back, her arms trying to keep her equilibrium. "A… girl? You mean like us, you, but evil?! Like, a Rowdyruff Girl?"

"I don't know, but it may be far worse than that… we cannot let that happen!"

Bubbles nodded without adding further questions, there would have been time for those after they had incapacitated the new villain. "Okay; look, I cannot directly fight Mojo and Porter as of now…"

"Huh? What do you mean you cannot fight- woah!" only now Donnie had noticed what had happened to Bubbles' arm, she had tried to hide it but it only lasted for some minutes.

"Bubbles, what happened? Your arm…? This must be Blossom's work, but… you need some help!"

"I do, but my sisters do more! I'll live, now go to their aid!" Bubbles uttered with a determined face.

It was Donnie's turn to be worried now, but Bubbles' face was stoic. He knew there was no way he was going to convince her otherwise… in his current state, not in the slightest. She was the one good at discussions between the two of them.

"Okay, but try to stay away from the fight and do not attempt anything dangerous!" he said before finally turning to go help Buttercup… too bad the green puff just in that moment got a kick that sent her in a fast course towards one of the chamber's walls, colliding with it.

Doctor Porter gasped for air. He was in a bad shape: the robot left arm was slightly damaged as there were some cables hanging from it, and there were cuts all around his face and clothes. No trace of red blood, though… to be precise, there was a liquid over the injuries, but it was yellow.

He was furious. "YOU!" he bellowed, stopping Blossom and Mojo from fighting each other, no one of the people in the room had ever seen him in such a state, "You've have made the mistake to annoy me, infra-humans! You'll soon regret your foolish decision!"

That said, he rotated his body and sprinted towards Donnie and Bubbles. The blue puff squeaked in fear and began to fly backwards, while Donnie braced himself for his arrival. He was weak though… the arm was still aching from before and he was not fully recovered from his last encounter with him. He needed some help! Buttercup was momentarily out of the game, so that left…

"Porter! Watch out!" Mojo Jojo tried to warn him, but it was too late as Blossom launched a pink beam of energy from her hands towards Porter's back. The Doctor jumped off the side and the beam missed him by a few inches. The attack only resulted in making him madder.

Defeating Porter was a good first target, but there was something else they needed to take care of. Donnie quickly examined the room until he located the pot, which Mojo Jojo had quickly positioned himself in front of. They could either try to eliminate the mixture or the last ingredient needed to complete it, which was to be found somewhere in the large laboratory as Porter had said. Mojo was definitely protecting the concoction, but the second option was viable.

"Blossom!" Donnie shouted to the pink puff, "Leave him alone, you have to look for and destroy all the Unidentified Y stored in this room! NOW!"

Blossom was at first surprised by this request, but the urge in Donnie's voice was clear and she decided to not question it for now. She flew upwards scanning the room with her supervision until she located that, far and fixed on one of the side walls, were hundreds of flasks of Unidentified Y. She prepared to go for it… until something exploded over her, sending her to the ground.

"Oh, no, you don't!" Porter proclaimed as he retracted his Hand Cannon set to explosive shells and made it back into his robotic arm, the one still functioning, and ran after her. Before Blossom could stand up, the Doctor seized her by her neck.

"I warned you once, Blossom Utonium, and you left my warning be unheard. I won't waste more of my precious time with you," he hissed as his grip tensed up, but before he could effectively hurt her somebody attacked him from behind with a war cry.

"Leave my sister ALONE!" Buttercup shouted as he stormed him, again, with a series of melee attacks.

Now free, Blossom returned to her previous task and flew upwards again. She noticed Donnie and Bubbles doing the same… that was it! If they fired with their ranged attacks all at once, there would have been no way for the villains to stop all of those at the same time!

Unfortunately there was someone who wasn't of the same idea, as Mojo Jojo changed back to the laser rifle and put an optic sight over it to aim from the long distance. He began to fire more of the deadly beams towards the three of them, distracting the two puffs and the boy from their target.

"You aren't going to save yourselves today, Powerpuff Girls… not if I, Mojo Jojo, have something to say about it!" he said to himself as he took another shot, missing Bubbles by three centimetres. He just needed to slow their progress down until Porter managed to free himself from Buttercup, who was however putting all of herself into the fight.

Before that could happen though, something entered from the door destroyed by the previous grand entrance of Blossom and Buttercup. "MOJO!" The Rowdyruff Boys shouted as they literally shoved themselves into the room, "Let's get the heck out of here! Metuselah's darn beasts are trying to devour us!"

Close enough, an army of dragoons and porcupines followed the boys into the room, their beastly screeches filling the already noisy situation. And of top of it all, leading them was no other that the Chimaera itself, the same one who had managed to give the girls a piece of their mind at Laurentium's lab… no wonder the boys had found some difficult in beating the mutant army.

The successive events happened extremely fast. Mojo Jojo stopped shooting and watched the boys in surprise. Blossom, Bubbles and Donnie took the chance and fired two eyebeam rays and an energy grenade towards the Unidentified Y's shelves while the villain was distracted. Porter landed a series of hits on Buttercup and with a rotating kick sent her away from himself, before shooting a round from his Hand Cannon at Donnie's grenade and shouting at the Boys. "STOP THE RAYS! NOW!"

But the Rowdyruff Boys were no more sure about Porter's intentions towards them, if he was an enemy or not… and did not do anything. Thus, Porter managed to stop only Donnie's attack and even he, the one who believed to always have the situation under control, was only able to watch as the puffs' eyebeams reached the storage and made the entire thing explode.

"NOOOO!" Porter shrieked, his face said 'insanity' from every point of view. He ran to the storage, far from the puffs, ruffs and Mojo, and began to rummage through the remains, looking for an intact flask. But there weren't any.

Mojo Jojo opened his mouth but did not say anything, flabbergasted. He fired an angry glare towards the Rowdyruffs who, unaware of his plan, ignored him, before making some fast calculations about how to leave Porter's hideout without getting captured.

The creatures were motionless, all watching towards Porter's location. It was like they were somewhat scared by him, as right after his furious cry some of the lower monsters had even escaped back into the hallways. That and the will of the Rowdyruffs to not help Porter let the Powerpuff Girls and Donnie free to hover quietly towards the Doctor.

"Porter!" Blossom announced as they got nearer to him, "it's over. You are alone against us now, you've been defeated. Surrender!"

Porter suddenly froze, stopping his useless attempts to find something usable. Then, he let out a single, evil laugh.

"You'd like it, huh? Pathetic infra-human… you have no idea who you're messing with."

That said, the man stood up and began to walk calmly towards the table where the pot was waiting. The girls and the boy did not stop him: Donnie was aware of the fact that without the substance Porter had no way to complete the experiment, while the girls continued to study him and keep him under their eyes. They followed him from above, ready for everything.

Halfaway, Porter started to speak, now completely devoid of anger, "Thank you for the help, Mojo Jojo. It's time that you see the result of the time spent here!"

Mojo was finding it hard to follow Porter's word now, "What are you talking about, Porter? Without the Unidentified Y or a similar catalyst, we cannot create the new superbeing!"

"Correct. We have no Unidentified Y… to be honest, I have more of it stored in other laboratories, but those are far from our current position, too much for this… complex situation," Porter explained with an ironic choice of words.

He looked at the four heroes and smiled as he said, wickedly, "But I still have an efficient catalyst. A last attempt is due."

Thus, Doctor Porter went over his damaged metal hand with the working one and did something that neither the Powerpuff Girls nor Donnie were able to catch. Whatever he did, it had the effect to release some type of pressurized gas from some areas of the artificial hand…

…then, it fell from its body, the metal clinging as it hit the floor.

The reaction of the girls was one of pure fear, and Donnie wasn't far from it… even though he was the only one who already had an idea about the cause of that, the girls had already seen something similar to that scene.

Blossom was incredulous. He's… mutated. He's mutated, just like the monsters he created himself! … Just like… Dick Hardly!

Porter smiled as he moved the fingers of the newly revealed mutated hand around, testing its muscles. Reptilian like scales covered it in place of normal human skin and it had what could only be described as claws. "Surprising, isn't it? I know I've not been the first one to encounter this type of… modification, but unlike him, I have learned to master it. The metal addendums I've made were needed to channel my newly found power and help me keep it under control while adding some additional, fun twist. But again, I digress… this is not important."

He narrowed his eyes, while the skin around them lost some of its pink colour in favour of a more greenish one, before modifying his remaining robot hand into yet another new instrument.

A blade appeared in place of the hand, its extreme sharpness clear even from a distance.

"Made out of my porcupines' spikes… not as hard as Duranium, but enough to do this," he stated matter-of-factly before making a fast, single cut on the mutated limb.

No one in the room was able to realize what Porter was doing until it was too late. Blood poured out of the cut in single drops… one of a strong yellow colour. A colour similar to red… and orange as well.

Donnie was the first one to put two and two together. He only had the time to scream, "NO!" as Porter put his injured free hand over the pot and let some drops of his own blood fall into the contents inside.

No… no, it can't be… NO!

Porter made some steps back, waiting for something to happen. After eight, silent seconds, the contents of the mixture reacted with each other: everything became white in the lab as a deafening sound invaded it...