Episode 7: The Crusader Falls Again

The city of Townsville: If it weren't for the monsters, criminals, and super villains, you couldn't find a more friendly, upbeat, in other words, perfect place to live. If all the horrible evil-doers were gone, why would you need to fix something that isn't broken? To one relatively recent inmate at the Townsville jail, the entire world around him was "broken." Every world he was forced in was "broken" in some way or another.

The guards were all instructed when he first arrived to never give him a paper and pencil, or, a paper with an illustration on it. Photos were fine, but anything that was drawn could not reach his hands, nor could he have the chance to create something to help him escape. It was nighttime, the guards had inspected all the cells before shutting off the lights.

Richard Tremblay sat on his hard bed, not feeling the least bit tired, his cellmate slept above him like a baby. His mind was about to drift off to think about other things, when he noticed a guard standing in the corner of the cell, the shadows almost concealing him, with a little smile on his face. Tremblay jolted when he saw the guard,

"Hey!" he gasped, "I didn't notice you, you almost gave me a heart attack!" the guard chuckled,

"Richard Tremblay, I know your whole story."

"Oh, yeah?" the former teacher laughed back.

"I know about your traveling to other worlds, and..." the guard winked, "...your curse." When the guard winked, Tremblay could have sworn he saw a flash of emerald green light in the guard's open eye. Tremblay put a hand on his chin,

"Wait a minute..." he said, "We've met before... are you who I think you are?" the guard's smile widened. He held out his hands, and a long sheet of paper and a pencil appeared; he handed the items to Tremblay, saying,

"You made a considerable impression on me when you were battling the Powerpuff Girls, before you were arrested." Tremblay adjusted his opaque glasses and began reading. As he read more and more, he realized the paper in his hands was actually a contract. The promises made in the contract appealed to the 60 year-old man; to him, the pros far outweighed the cons.

"Well, I can see this plan of yours going wrong in a lot of ways," Tremblay noted, "But, you've given me a lot of hope. You mean you'll take away this curse, and if your plan happens to work, you'll let me reshape the world?"

"You can fix it how you see fit!" the guard replied, waving his hand, "Are you willing to make the trade to make it happen?" Tremblay looked over the contract once more; then, he signed his name at the bottom. The contract shifted itself to turn into a thick sketchbook. Tremblay shook hands with the guard, before the guard disappeared in a flash of light, he thanked Tremblay, his voice having a soft echo in it,

"You have been assimilated, Crusader; go ahead and take care of any business you have before I need your service."

...

Something was horribly wrong. Ms. Keane didn't show up for school. It's nothing unusual if you call in sick or take a vacation; but, Ms. Keane didn't notify the staff beforehand, so, a substitute teacher hadn't been assigned to her classroom, leaving one of the janitors to try and calm down her active students while the staff tried to sort things out. The Powerpuff Girls were sitting quietly at their desks, when an announcement came over the PA,

"Could someone send Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup Utonium to the office, please? Thank you." The girls froze, usually, the Mayor called the phone in the classroom itself.

"We're not in trouble, are we?" Bubbles fretted,

"They can't use anything against me!" Buttercup protested, "I haven't done anything wrong all week!"

"C'mon, let's just go to the office and see what's up," Blossom said to her sisters, already leaving the classroom. The girls hovered down the hallway to the lobby, where the office was located. Inside was the principal, Mr. Lockhart, himself sitting at his desk. He wore the most horrified expression the heroines had ever seen on his face.

Wiping the sweat off his brow, he gestured his hand towards three chairs that were placed in front of the desk. The Powerpuff Girls hesitated before sitting down. The Principal dabbed at his eyes with a tissue,

"One of the secretaries tried reaching Ms. Keane," he explained, his voice choking up, "A man on the other line answered instead, he said he'd kidnapped her. We think it's Mr. Tremblay, who broke out of jail last night." The Powerpuff Girls sunk into their seats, gripping onto the arms of the chairs, "I had to talk to you girls in private to not start a panic or anything, the man wants you to find them somewhere in the city."

The Powerpuff Girls immediately burst out of the school, trying to fly towards Townsville as fast as they could,

"No, not Ms. Keane!" Bubbles wailed,

"This is revenge for having him arrested," Buttercup muttered under her breath,

"Calm down," Blossom tried to shush Bubbles, "We'll find her, no problem." The girls drew nearer to the streets, scouting the area. At one point they heard a man groan,

"Kids these days, they gotta leave their mark everywhere!" On an abandoned building located downtown were the words "I'm here to fix the world, catch me if you can" in white spread out on the bricks of the structure. Next to the message was a fox's face that looked like Mr. Tremblay's mask. The Powerpuff Girls looked at each other.

They broke through the yellow tape and the door, "Hey, what are you doing?" the man shouted, "You're not allowed in there!" As soon as the girls looked around at the space inside, they screamed aloud. Literally everything inside: the walls, the floor, had been covered in white, with random objects like a lamp or a bed were merely sketched, penciled outlines.

The penciled outlines unraveled and shifted around the room, reshaping the space to look like a theater with no seats. A familiar voice filled the Powerpuff Girls' ears, like he was speaking with a microphone,

"I don't usually consider myself a person who holds grudges," Mr. Tremblay spoke sincerely, "But, in celebration of the deal I made, I decided to repay you bug-eyes."

"Bug eyes?!" Buttercup screeched,

"We don't have time to mess around!" Blossom called out to the empty space around her,

"Where's Ms. Keane?" Bubbles cried. A white curtain in front of the three lifted, revealing a row of cannons and tanks,

"I'm sorry there's no color," Mr. Tremblay apologized in a fake tone, "It would have taken me longer to finish fixing this place." The sketchy canons and tanks began firing at the girls. The sisters flew backwards so they could see the missiles and punch them so they hit the vehicles instead.

The Powerpuffs tried looking around to find the door they came from, only to realize the way they came in had been covered over with the fantastical paper that surrounded them. Together, the sisters repeated a pattern of picking up a tank or a cannon and throwing it so they exploded in a black cloud of pencil lead, which would then reshape itself into more vehicles.

"We're not gonna get anywhere if we keep doing this!" Blossom called out to her sisters in the middle of picking up a tank, "We gotta focus on finding Ms. Keane!" The triplets regrouped together and flew past the rows of machines, spinning around to avoid being shot by the missiles and cannonballs. Past the machines was a blank white wall; even though the sisters had no idea if the space kept going on or if their really was a wall ahead of them, the sisters determinedly drew closer.

The girls' almost had a heart attack when they made impact with the wall; but, they ripped through it like paper. Almost immediately, dozens of sketchy, black and white clones drawn to resemble Mr. Tremblay in his signature outfit ambushed them, gripping their shirts as if they wanted to drag the sisters under. While the Powerpuff Girls fended off the clones, a scream rang through the area,

"Bubbles, go find Ms. Keane!" Blossom ordered her sister, "Buttercup, you and I have to find the real Mr. Tremblay!" The Powerpuff Girls split up. Dodging the clones, Bubbles repeatedly cried out,

"Ms. Keane? Ms. Keane?! Where are you?!" A shaky voice from within the sea of Mr. Tremblay look-alikes answered,

"I'm down here, Bubbles!" the blonde heroine dove downwards, shoving away the look-alikes who were holding Ms Keane, who was bound by a sketchy rope. Bubbles lifted her teacher away from the clones, who began piling themselves onto each other to reach the two.

During this, Blossom and Buttercup scouted the area, looking for any sign of the real Mr. Tremblay in the crowd of his minions. Soon, Buttercp could see flashes of orange hiding behind the clones; Buttercup fired her eye beams at the man,

"This is for calling me bug-eyes!" she growled as she attempted to hit the fox-masked Mr. Tremblay. Although she didn't hit him, to all three girls' delight, the penciled lines of the clones disappeared for good as soon as they were hit. The Powerpuff Girls eagerly blasted the clones with their eye beams, slowly but surely clearing out patches of them.

Then, out of nowhere, a flame appeared. It spread out at an extreme speed, not only taking care of the clones, but also going around decomposing the entire paper arena around them to ash.

"Wh-where did this come from?" Buttercup gasped worriedly,

"Girls, let's just get out of here!" Ms. Keane pleaded. As more of the paper arena crumbled, it revealed the inside of the actual building itself, unfortunately catching on fire as well. The Powerpuff Girls spotted a hole on the roof of the real building. Buttercup took Ms. Keane from Bubbles and flew the teacher up into the hole. Blossom, in the middle of a coughing fit, said to Bubbles,

"Go, Bubbles, I have to get Mr. Tremblay out of the building!"

"But-"

"Just go!" Bubbles, with tears in her eyes not just from the smoke, reluctantly obeyed her sister, flying into the hole above them. Blossom found Mr. Tremblay kneeling on the ground, holding the ashes of his arena in his hands. Before the pink-shirted Powerpuff could fly closer, Mr. Tremblay raised a hand in defeat; a fan on the small chunk of roof left on the building above him detached, Blossom turned her head away in horror, hearing the fan crush his body.

Blossom, without turning back, flew up the hole in the roof, the building unable to support itself for much longer. Blossom landed across the street with her sisters and teacher, too shocked to assist the firefighters who had arrived, much less even look at the building. The sisters hugged Ms. Keane tightly, weeping onto her sleeves.

...

The Powerpuff Girls were definitely not in the mental state to go back to school; Ms. Keane decided she wouldn't go back to school either, and so, she went to the girls' house, trying along with the Professor to calm down the triplets in their room, Buttercup blamed herself,

"I think I started the fire!" she sobbed, "I was just so mad at him for calling me 'bug eyes' I-"

"Buttercup!" Ms. Keane interrupted her, "I saw where the fire ignited, none of you were anywhere near it,"

"Blossom told me to leave her," Bubbles explained miserably, "I shouldn't have left her, she could have died!" Blossom held her blonde sister's arm; in between her chopped up sobbing, Blossom admitted her "sin,"

"I messed up the worst... I wasn't fast enough, and now somebody's dead because of of me!" Professor Utonium gripped his daughters shoulders and looked them sternly in the eyes,

"Now, I don't know enough about Tremblay's past to know if he deserved what he got," he sighed, "But, you need to stop blaming yourself for what happened, it's not your fault. It may not even be entirely Tremblay's fault, the fire could have been started by someone from the outside for all we know!" The Powerpuff Girls nodded, laying down on their bed and pulling the sheets over their head.

The Professor went downstairs with Ms. Keane, the teacher saying,

"Your girls can stay home for a few days if you need them to, I could email you their schoolwork." The Professor looked back up at his daughters' room,

"Well... I guess you will."

Don't be upset, Powerpuff Girls, it wasn't your fault... you saved the day...