Chapter 18: What Little Girls Are Made Of
Ten minutes of wandering the branching corridors of Level Seven and Brick was certain something was very, very wrong. He didn't encounter a soul, hardly heard a peep of movement or any indication that anyone was here at all. His X-ray vision was useless, and there was no sign of the others. Blossom had not followed him; he was alone. Which was just as well, considering he'd done nothing but make things even worse between them somehow.
"I don't want to lead like this; I want a partner."
How could she not see that he wanted the same thing? All he'd wanted to do since he laid eyes on her tonight was get to the bottom of this mess together, but his brothers made that impossible.
No, you did that all on your own, Fearless Leader.
Brick gritted his teeth and stopped in the middle of the hall. It was so goddamned quiet in here; he could hardly hear himself think about anything other than the look on Blossom's face just before she turned her back on him tonight and he knew hers wasn't the only heart he'd broken in his tantrum last night.
"Fuck," he said, his throat twisting painfully.
The stone wall was cold to the touch, but it held his weight all the same. He dug his fingers into the rock, and it crumbled under his superior strength like eggshells. He didn't even feel the crumbling, the jagged rock under his nails that should have drawn blood if he wasn't so numb to the comfort of physical pain to drown out the other kind.
How was he ever going to fix this?
He stayed like that for a few moments until his throat unclenched and his breathing returned to normal, slow and deep.
One thing at a time.
First, Dinah Swathe. Unlike Butch, Brick didn't have a kid counting on him to keep his hands clean. Butch would get over it so long as it meant Brisa was safe. Hell, he'd probably thank Brick. That was one brother down. He would sort out Blossom and Boomer later, somehow. Resolved, albeit wholly unsatisfied, Brick nonetheless put away the ruins of his poor choices and focused on the path ahead.
His paranoia reached critical levels when he came to a door hanging ajar with a handwritten note taped to it. "Please proceed to the Gallery for your appointment," he read the looping handwriting aloud. The hall ended in a wall just ahead, and a placard next to the open door read "Gallery ↑".
Brick hesitated. He glanced back down the hall, but there was no one around. He pulled out his phone, but predictably there was no service so far underground. No way to contact anyone.
"Great."
He slipped through the open double doors and entered a dark passage. The flashlight on his phone illuminated the short path ahead until he came to another set of doors. They were unlocked, and he passed through uninhibited into a cathedral of a room three stories tall. It was pitch black save for his phone light, and he stepped cautiously.
The first exhibit he approached was a resin block that housed an enormous monster tooth. The next one was a red scale the size of a dinner plate, another memory from another monster. Brick examined it a bit more closely and thought of the Red Monster he'd faced with Butch and Buttercup a while back.
He passed by more and more fixtures, each a grisly trophy in homage to baleful beasts. The deeper he wandered, the stranger the exhibits became. There were large tanks full of ice and something more solid, misting in the cold. Brick approached the nearest one and shined his flashlight against the glass. Within, a human form floated, frozen forever. Her red hair reached her stubby feet, and her arms hung limply at her sides. She was more girl than woman, a mere child, really.
A familiar foreboding arrested him where he stood staring at the girl in the glass, and paranoia sank its vampiric teeth into him. "What the hell…?"
The lights suddenly blazed to life, and Brick flinched to shield eyes. The Gallery lit up in waves, revealing more of the exhibits on display from floor to ceiling. An entire, preserved, saurian monster stood as tall as the room, and all around it more frozen tanks full of bodies sat suspended against gravity. Tubes connected the tanks to a bulky, boxy machine, currently powered down, its computer screen dark. A thick, red river of a rug cut across the Gallery from end to end.
Movement. Brick whirled to face it, and his heart leaped into his throat. "Blossom?"
"Hardly."
Dinah emerged from the opposite bank of the dividing rug, her bone-white dress train dragging behind her. She wasn't alone: two very large, masked men bulging through the seams of their Kevlar flanked her and carried thin rifles. Instinctively, Brick's lungs super-heated and he tasted char on the back on his tongue. Every cell in his body warned of danger, and he never doubted his instincts.
"I'm sure she's around here somewhere, but I doubt she's gotten far in her current state," Dinah said.
Brick bared his teeth in a snarl, and cinders spewed from his lips. "What the fuck does that mean?"
Dinah watched the embers submerge into the bloody carpet. "You know, it really is incredible what Chemical X can do. All these years I've spent studying it, and I still feel like I've only just scratched the surface."
Her guards kept their eyes and guns trained on Brick in case he tried anything. Why they thought the guns would save them, he had no idea. Unless, they were not normal guns. Brick tracked the two guards' movements as they split and attempted to flank him.
"And yet, I've come so far." Dinah ran a manicured hand down the face of a glass casket holding a stunted, human body curled up in a ball of limbs on blonde hair. "You would be so proud."
Brick wasn't really paying attention to her anymore as he clocked one of the guards directly behind him now. The guy cocked his gun—too long and thin to be full of lead bullets; an air pistol, or a dart gun perhaps? Whatever the case, something told Brick he could not afford to get shot.
"Honestly Brick, I wanted us to be on the same side," Dinah said.
"Pass. I already have the perfect partner," Brick said.
He looked up and found her staring right at him, those ice-white eyes callous and cold. "Your loss."
Brick felt it before he saw it: power, lightning-fast and pungent like ozone, tingled on his skin, and he was moving before he could logically think about how the flying fuck Dinah had given her guards Superpowers. But she had, and Brick responded in brutal kind.
The dart whizzed by his head as he melted to red and materialized before the Super guard who'd fired on him. Without hesitation, he grabbed the guy by the neck, drove his knee into his belly, and fired his laser eye beams point-blank into his face. The Super guard didn't even have time to scream as he crumpled to the floor in a smoking heap and shielded his melted face. Whatever Dinah had cooked up for the Super guards, it lacked the durability and resilience of true Chemical X.
Brick immediately switched his focus to the other Super guard, but he was a fraction of a second too slow and caught a punch to the face that sent him crashing into the wall. A flash of bright white sprinted after him, and Brick kicked off the wall in flight. The Super guard remained grounded and told Brick everything he needed to know.
White blasters and darts shot after him in tandem, but Brick avoided them all as he weaved between exhibits.
"Shoot him!" Dinah commanded.
Brick spotted her and took a deep breath. Fire spewed from his lips and caught on the red carpet. It licked at her heels as she ran and tripped to avoid it. Brick flew after her, ready to end this quick and dirty before she started monologuing again, because if there was one thing he'd learned growing up under the tutelage of Townsville's most blathering, bloviating Super villain, it was to do the exact opposite of what Mojo would have done.
Her goblin guard managed to get in Brick's way before he could put his fist through Dinah's face, caught him in an iron hold, and tackled him to the floor hard enough to knock the wind out of him. For a couple seconds, the two Supers grappled. Dinah's guard was huge, near on seven feet tall and all muscle, but he was a defective model, and she would pay dearly for it. With a burst of power, Brick rolled them over onto the burning carpet.
The mask he wore did little to muffle the Super guard's screams as the fire wormed its way into his pores and cooked him in his armor. Immune to the flames, Brick rolled onto the stone floor and looked for Dinah.
She was waiting for him on the other bank, a gun pointed at his chest. "Down, boy."
The dart pricked Brick through his shirt, and instantly gravity hit him as hard as Buttercup had when he got here. True fear possessed him and rose like bile in his throat, but all that came out was a pathetic puff of smoke as he staggered away from the fire that burned.
He tried summoning power to his hands, but there was nothing. His mortal flesh ached, and the heat made his eyes water. Brick had never been AX'd before, but Boomer had once, a long time ago. Years later, he opened up about that day when his brothers rescued him from the Powerpuff Girls' captivity.
"It took everything from me, except the fear,"
The fear stayed with Brick now as he heaved and slowly succumbed to total enervation. Across the boiling, bloody river that separated them, Dinah regarded him with clinical glee. Two more guards, carbon copies of the ones Brick had taken out, drew up next to her with blazing fists and burning eyes.
Brick had never missed his brothers as much as he did now. He had never imagined dying without them, unrepentant and alone.
"Now then," Dinah said, "where were we?"
The two Super soldiers at her sides glowed white and ran through the fire straight for Brick.
Blossom sprinted until she heard voices around the corner up ahead, and her heart nearly exploded in a panic. She tried the nearest door, found it unlocked, and ducked inside just as the guards came into sight.
"—still powered and fighting…"
"But the red…?"
Blossom dared to press her ear to the crack in the door to hear them better as they passed her. They seemed to be in a hurry as they jogged down the hall.
"She's dealing with him in the Gallery. We have our orders."
"Yeah, yeah, stop that blue fucker before he blows the whole…"
Their voices faded, and Blossom was left only with her pounding heartbeat in her ears. Fear for Boomer warred against the logic telling her she was no good to him unpowered, that she would only be a liability and get them both killed if she went back for him. In a last-ditch effort, she checked her phone, clinging to some wild hope that she might reach him, but she had no service this far underground. Her sisters and Butch were equally out of the question. She squeezed her eyes shut and quietly beat her fist against the wall.
"Damnit," she whispered in a rare moment of weakness she allowed here in the lonely dark.
She had to find Brick. It was her only option, like it or not.
Boomer was smart. He wouldn't get AX'd so easily. And Butch and her sisters had each other. Buttercup would stay on mission and lead them. They would stick together, and they would survive. They had to. Blossom trusted her team.
And she would find Brick. She would find him, and he would help her, because no matter how angry she was or how badly he'd messed up, she loved him and he knew it and that meant something to him.
Blossom took another short moment to compose herself, and then she peeked out the door. It was quiet. There was not a soul in sight. She couldn't even hear the electric sounds of Boomer's fight. She must have run a long way, or this place devoured sound like a sin.
Those guards had said something about the Gallery. It wasn't much, but it was all she had to go on if she wanted to find Brick, so Blossom jogged down the hall as quietly as she could manage. Eventually, a sign at a fork in the hall pointed to the Gallery down the left branch, and her spirits lifted. The sight of two Super guards blocking the doors to the Gallery smashed them to pieces soon after.
Blossom cursed and pressed her body against the wall around the corner out of sight. The Gallery was right there and impossible to access, unless she could figure out a way to get past two Supers. Biting her lip, Blossom peeked around the corner and discreetly surveyed the two beefy guards. They each wielded long rifles, and Blossom felt an idea begin to form. If she could de-power them, she might be able to get past them. Antidote X hit like a freight train, after all.
Blossom dug a tube of chapstick from her windbreaker pocket and chucked it against the wall in front of her. As predicted, one of the Super guards came to investigate. While he bent down to pick up the chapstick, Blossom slammed her elbow against the back of his neck as hard as she could. Unpowered, she wouldn't cause him any serious damage, but he grunted in surprise and seized up. It was the split second she needed to grab the gun from his slackened hands and turn it on him just as he sprang to his feet. Searing, black eyes bulged from their sockets when she shot him full of AX. He tried to tear the darts from his arms and neck, but he was too late. The effects were instantaneous, and he slumped as the drug sapped everything but the strength to keep breathing. Even that was a struggle as he convulsed on the floor.
By then, Blossom was already gone and turning her gun on the remaining guard, but he was fast and fired his white blaster. Survival instinct guided Blossom safely to the floor, her heart in her throat and her red ribbon singed. He was on her in a flash with a gloved fist in her collar, lifting her off the floor entirely until her legs dangled—all the better to kick him in the balls with.
The Super guard wheezed, perhaps more surprised than wounded that she'd actually gone for it. Unfortunately, he reacted violently and threw her against the wall. The concussive blow summoned stars to her eyes and a wet pain to the back of her head, but instinct bade her scramble for the gun she'd dropped. The stars crackled brighter in the corners of her eyes. She reached for her gun, and the guard reached for her.
Stone cracked and the air grew toxic with a sudden and harsh deluge of Chemical X. Someone grunted in pain, and a blast of divine wind pushed Blossom back against the wall with the gun to her chest.
"And fuck you too!" Princess shouted.
Blossom sputtered and staggered to her feet. "Princess?!"
There she was, a scintillating sun dragging a Super guard nearly twice her size by his hair and tossing him aside like last season's Jimmy Choos. Her hair was a mess, her manicure was chipped and ruined, and her designer dress had a large rip in it caked with dried blood. But her hands glowed yellow with the unearthly power she had blasted the unmoving Super guard with. Wild eyes, liquid gold and so powerful they were nostalgic, turned on Blossom and narrowed.
"Shit, you're bleeding." Princess appeared in front of Blossom in a flash too fast to be human and yanked her ponytail to get a look at the gash on the back of her head. "That looks bad."
Blossom winced, and Princess immediately let go. "I'll live."
"You're not—"
Blossom threw her arms around Princess before she could finish her thought. "I have never been happier to see you in my life."
Princess relaxed a little and returned the embrace like it was her first time. "Honestly? Same."
Despite the terrible situation they were both in, Blossom found it in her to smile. "You just saved my life."
Princess flushed and averted her gaze. "What, like it's hard?"
Blossom laughed and immediately regretted it. Her head pounded, and she was certain she had a concussion. The back of her neck was damp where blood had trickled down from the cut in her scalp, but it didn't seem to be bleeding too badly. Anyway, there wasn't time to worry about that right now.
"Brick's in the Gallery, I think," Blossom said.
Princess bared her teeth. "Then that's where that pasty asshole will be too."
Blossom flushed in anger, pain be damned. "Good. With any luck, he still has his powers."
Something in Princess' eyes dulled. She looked cornered, ashamed even. "Listen, there's some pretty horrific shit happening on Level Nine. Butch's daughter is down there, and a bunch of other people in cages."
Blossom gathered up her gun. "I know. We came here looking for you and Brisa."
"Where are your sisters?"
"I don't know."
"You don't…"
Blossom checked that there were a few more shots left in her gun. "We got separated after we got AX'd. Boomer was the only one still powered."
"Boomer? That explains the dead not-Danes I passed," Princess said.
"What?"
Princess explained that she had stolen and used a sample of Dinah's Compound X concoction on herself as a final effort to escape up the elevator shaft. The sight that greeted her when she emerged on Level Seven was a ghastly tableau of four dead Super guards and a metal shutter torn asunder as though lighting had struck it.
"I thought the monster might have done it, but the hole was too small for it to have fit through," Princess said.
Blossom had a lot of questions about that, but they would have to wait. "Listen Princess, you're going to have to be the muscle. I'm a walking liability like this until I can get an X transfusion back at my father's lab. For now, we need to find Brick, grab Dinah, and get out of here as fast as we can."
Princess manifested pure power in her palms, and her eyes glowed a lambent gold that promised fate and reckoning. Was this how it usually was for Normies to look upon Blossom when she was powered? Helpless and awed in the face of something ineffable? Was this how it had been for Wei?
What a waste.
Blossom had never pitied him and his ignorance as much as she did in this moment.
"Believe me," Princess said, "absolutely nothing would make me happier than to bury Dinah Swathe in the fucking Malebolge after the night I've had." She punched her palm, and the floor cracked under her high heels.
"Abandon all hope ye who mess with the Powerpuff Princess." Blossom shouldered her AX gun with a cocky grin.
The look on Princess' face was absolutely priceless, and Blossom only wished they were not fighting their way through a manufactured underworld so she could have appreciated it properly.
"Let's go." Blossom headed through the double doors to the Gallery, and Princess was right behind her.
Buttercup and her team met little resistance the moment they burst out of the elevator on Level Nine armed to the teeth. There were a few lab coats about, but the minute they saw that she and Butch had guns, they put their hands up or hid behind tables.
"You! Where's Brisa? Tell me where my daughter is!" Butch shouted at the nearest researcher. A short chase ensued as he sprinted after the lanky lab coat and shoved him to the floor before he could escape.
Buttercup was more concerned with the people in cages moaning their misery like some infernal choir.
"Oh my god." Bubbles rushed to the nearest cage and the pitiful prisoner trapped inside. "Are you all right? Can you hear me? I'm Bubbles, the Powerpuff Girl! We're here to help you."
The drowned rat of a woman in the cage was bloated and pale and reeked of sewage. Her eyes were glassy as they lifted to meet Bubbles', as though the very act cost her more than it was worth. "You're the…Powerpuff?" she slurred.
Bubbles was already crying as she put on a brave face for the tortured woman. "Yes! Yes, and I'm going to get you out of here, I promise. Everything's going to be okay!"
Buttercup was too stunned for words. All these people… Could they be Ace's undesirables? How long had they been down here? From the state of some of them, it was clear they had been living in their own filth for weeks. And their appearances…
"Fuck me," Buttercup swore as she came upon a man whose arms were covered in suction cups. If she harbored any doubts before that Dinah was using Chemical X to turn people into monsters, they were gone now. Fury boiled like acid in her veins, a power just barely at her fingertips but still out of reach.
Down the line Buttercup went, each prisoner's sorry state salt on the wound she'd carved herself, because how had she not figured this out sooner? While she was topside chasing false leads and indulging in happy hours with Butch, these people were stuck here suffering indignities worse than some war crimes.
"Did Princess send you?" asked one of the prisoners she passed.
Buttercup whirled at the familiar name. "What did you say?"
The prisoner, a young guy who looked like he'd lost a staring contest with a gorgon, approached the bars and clung to him with what little strength remained to him. "She said she'd send help. She said the Powerpuff Girls were coming," he rasped.
Buttercup's heart wrenched at the sorry state of this young man—this boy, really. "She was right. I'm Buttercup, and I'm getting you and everyone else out of here tonight."
"Buttercup," he repeated her name as tears dribbled down his cheeks. "I'm Danny."
Buttercup seized his shoulder through the bars, slack jawed as she took a closer look at his pebbled face. "Danny Chang? Are you Danny Chang?"
He blinked and nodded listlessly. "Yeah."
Shaking, Buttercup ran her hands over his clammy face, careless of the shale scales that scratched her fingers to the touch. Tears welled in her eyes as she held him tenderly. "I've been looking everywhere for you."
"Y-You have?" he sobbed, fragile and child-like in her hands.
"Your mom asked me to. She's been waiting for you to come home."
Whatever was holding Danny together shattered then as he gave over to impulse and hugged Buttercup through the bars. He shook with the force of his emotions, and Buttercup held on to him.
Danny Chang.
"I got you, kid," she said, hardly able to believe the joy igniting her veins in this nightmare necropolis.
Danny's cage was locked with some kind of touch pad, so Buttercup pointed her rifle at one of the lab coats cowering under his desk.
"Open them," she demanded.
"T-The cages?!" the lab coat stuttered dumbly. "Are you crazy?! They'll get out!"
Buttercup hoisted the nervous man by his collar and glared mightily. Her body protested, battered and bleeding from the beating that Super guard had given her, but she leaned into it and let it fuel her rage. If she had her powers, she'd eye beam this fool for the closest shave of his life. "Open the fucking cages, or I'll open you."
He trembled in her grip. "Your eyes… They're glowing—"
"Brisa!" Butch bellowed. He sprinted past Buttercup toward the back of the cavernous lab.
"Buttercup, we found out where Brisa and Richie are!" Bubbles said.
Buttercup shoved the lab coat toward Danny's cage. "I want all these cages open when I get back, or my sister will snap you like a twig."
He said nothing as he accessed the touch screen terminal.
"Bubbles, stay here and make sure Danny and the others get out. I'm going to make sure Butch doesn't murder anyone without me," Buttercup said.
"Danny?" Bubbles glanced at Danny in his cage and covered her mouth. Her blue eyes turned steely. "You got it."
Butch had dashed into a back room that was as cold as a meat locker. When Buttercup entered the dark, metal-lined lab glittering with electronic medical equipment, the first thing she saw was Brisa's shield.
"Don't you fucking touch her! I swear to god, I'll unwrap you like a goddamned Christmas present if you lay one fucking finger on—"
Butch pounded against the wondrous shield, but he couldn't penetrate it. On the other side, Brisa sat up on a gurney hooked up to an array of tubes and wires, her brown eyes glassy but alert, while a bespectacled lab coat took fluids from her and did his best not to shrink from her very upset Super dad.
"Brisa," Buttercup said.
"Buttercup?" Brisa's voice was raspy and parched, and her skin was clammy and unwell. She struggled to maintain her shield and stay conscious. "You came too."
Buttercup laid a hand on the shield. Its power was warm and smooth like glass, but there was no breaking it in her current state. "Of course I came. We all did." Beside Brisa, Richie lay unconscious and hooked up to more tubes and a heart monitor beeping weakly. He looked even worse than Brisa did, pale and papery like an old man. Whatever the scientist in there with them was doing, he didn't seem to be helping much.
"Brisa, lower this shield right now," Butch demanded.
"No, Daddy."
Butch lost his temper all over again. "I said drop it!" There were tears in his eyes as he pounded futilely against the green, but all he got for his efforts were blistered knuckles.
"Butch!" Buttercup grabbed him before he could seriously injure himself, but unpowered he was much stronger than she was and wrenched away.
"I don't want Richie to die!" Brisa cried. She wiped her runny nose.
The scientist working on Richie and her paused to adjust his glasses, and his eyes met Buttercup's briefly. "Brisa," he said.
Brisa shook her head. "I don't care if it hurts. I'm not lettin' Richie die."
Jesus Christ.
Buttercup was at a loss for words. Brisa was either totally brainwashed, or she was brave enough to endure pain and suffering for the sake of Richie's life. Considering she was only five, Buttercup was finding it hard to come up with any reason not to let Butch maul that calculating scientist as soon as Brisa dropped the shield.
"He will surely die without the transfusion," the scientist said. "I'm only trying to save him."
"I don't give a fuck!" Butch shouted. "You get away from my daughter right now or you'll be begging me for death."
Buttercup had no idea what she was doing, but she had to do something. She wasn't Blossom; she was never going to know what was the smartest or the most strategic choice. She wasn't that kind of leader. But she knew Butch, and she knew herself.
His neck was corded with muscle, and his cheeks were bare—the gauze bandages had fallen off sometime during their mad descent into this hellhole. Faint, smooth ridges stretched over his cheeks, not quite healed. She had his furious, fearful attention.
"You and me," she said. "It's always been you and me."
She'd nearly died. She'd been strangled and dropped into a pit of psychotic, carnivorous plants and she should have died, but he wouldn't let her. Butch had always been desperate to fight, to live, to feel, but so had she.
"Soldiers. No man left behind," she said, kneading the back of his neck, his shoulders.
"She's my daughter," Butch said, scared shitless.
Buttercup looked at Brisa watching them on the verge of tears through her perfect, impenetrable shield. "She's a Green."
"Greens're tough," Brisa said.
Butch wrapped his hands around Buttercup's wrists and squeezed hard enough to hurt. His eyes were closed, and he was on the brink of something. "The toughest."
Buttercup ran her thumbs gently over the burn ridges in his cheeks and wished she could do more to comfort him, but the only thing that would make him feel better would be to see Brisa safely out of here.
"If either of them don't make it," Buttercup addressed the scientist behind Brisa's shield, "I'm going to help him kill you."
The scientist flushed redder than his mop of hair, but he kept this composure. "I believe you."
Butch said nothing as he glared viridian murder at the man poking and prodding at his daughter. Her pain was obvious, but she stayed quiet as the scientist quickly did his work and monitored Richie's vitals. Through it all, Brisa maintained her shield with a fortitude most grown men would not have been able to match.
Buttercup's phone beeped in her pocket: one new voicemail. There was no service down here at all, and she'd missed a call from Ty. She played back the voicemail as she continued to watch Brisa.
"Buttercup, it's Ty. Listen, Elmer and I looked into Dinah Swathe like you asked, and you were right. She's not who she says she is. I think she might have some kinda personal vendetta against you and your sisters—" Ty's deep voice cut Buttercup to the bone as she listened to the secret he and Elmer had uncovered.
Next to Brisa, Richie slept fitfully, his blond hair stuck to his forehead and his little face pinched in pain as the scientist administered something to him through an IV. Buttercup's expression warped to match the boy's, but it wasn't his innocent face she saw anymore.
"No fucking way," Buttercup said, her hand shaking so badly she almost dropped her phone.
Butch shot her a concerned look. "What's the matter—"
An enormous crash shook the entire level and cut Butch off, followed by a chillingly familiar roar.
When Blossom smelled smoke and burning, she knew they were on the right track and broke into a run. "He's fighting! We have to hurry!"
Flying was not a pleasant experience when someone else was doing the driving and she was the unwitting passenger, but Blossom was not about to argue when Princess picked her up and flew the rest of the way to the Gallery entrance. It was worse than anything Blossom had imagined. An infernal river of fire bisected the room and thickened the air with smoke and cinders. Brick was fighting on the far shore against two Super guards, but he was bleeding from a hidden wound in his shoulder as he tried to keep exhibits in between his attackers and himself.
"Princess!" Blossom pointed at Brick.
"I see him!"
Princess flew them both over the boiling river and dropped Blossom safely on the floor before she fired her yellow blasters at the Super guards. Brick seemed to accept Princess' sudden interference without question and used her distraction to shoot one of the Super guards with an AX dart while she pummeled the other one like he'd personally offended her and everyone she had ever loved.
"Brick!" Blossom shouted, comforted just to see him alive and fighting.
Brick met her gaze. He was sooty and sweaty and having trouble with his injured arm, but the relief in his bloody eyes at the sight of her made her believe she could fly again, just for a moment. "Blossom!"
They headed for each other, but the Super guard Princess was fighting sent an energy blast awry. It hit one of the hanging tank exhibits with enough force to dislodge it, and the whole thing came crashing down over Blossom. She dived out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed, but her AX gun was not so lucky.
Heart pounding, Blossom scrambled away from her almost murder weapon, but froze where she lay the moment she saw the figure trapped inside the tank. It was a little girl, stretched out to incorrect proportions, her blonde hair in pigtails and her hands and feet stunted.
"No," Blossom said, hardly believing her eyes. It wasn't possible; he was dead, destroyed, not a trace left, or so she'd thought.
Brick made it to her side and hauled her up beside him. "Are you okay?" His hand found the back of her head and came away bloody. "Fuck. Here, take this." He passed her the AX gun.
"Brick, your shoulder," Blossom said.
"It's nothing—"
"Aaahh!" Princess' scream drew their attention to where she was caught in the enemy's chokehold and flying around erratically.
"Princess!" Blossom aimed the gun Brick had given her, but she couldn't get a clear shot of the Super guard without risking hitting Princess.
"Toss him off!" Brick shouted up at Princess.
"Wow, what a novel idea!" Princess bit out as she struggled.
"Use your power!" Blossom said. "You're a living bomb!"
Princess and her Super burden hit the wall hard enough to crack the stone. Molten power coated her like a second skin, and she blazed. "Get off!"
Blossom and Brick ducked and shielded their eyes from the golden burst, and the Super guard went flying. He landed on the floor, smoking and twitching, and Blossom did not hesitate to shoot him with an AX dart just to be safe.
"Dinah!" Brick shouted.
Dinah Swathe stood at the top of the room near one of the exits, but before she could think to slip away, Princess shot her laser eye beams and melted a crag through the solid stone wall behind her in warning.
"End of the line," Princess said.
"You little thief," Dinah said. "I'm not even upset, considering this just proves me right about you. All you've ever really wanted is to steal power for yourself."
"You mean like how you've stolen it from all these little girls?" Blossom spat. She felt Brick's eyes on her, but she was too livid to care.
Dinah's sculpted face twisted in malice. "I've stolen nothing."
"Haven't you?" Blossom rested a hand on one of the tanks holding a frozen corpse. "I recognize these little girls. They were created and trafficked by Dick Hardly, one of the vilest men I've ever met."
"The shithead who made those fake Powerpuff Girls?" Brick said, incredulous.
"The very same," Blossom said. "He invented a machine that could extract Chemical X from my sisters and me. That's how you've been doing it, right? You collected the leftovers, stole their Chemical X, and used it on people to make them monsters."
"I didn't steal anything!" Dinah bellowed. "I inherited it. All of it."
Inherited? But that would mean…
"Professor Richard Hardly was my father," Dinah said as the red river burned at her back, "until yours killed him."
Blossom's head pounded. She thought of her father now, as dead as old Dick himself, and a terrible seed took root as she considered four years past, the uptick in monster attacks Professor Utonium so diligently tracked until his abrupt and untimely death.
"Oh?" Dinah said in a voice like a haunting. "It looks like you've figured something out just now."
Blossom wasn't sure when she'd begun to cry, only that Brick's hand on her arm was no comfort when all she wanted to do was throw Dinah into Brick's fire until all she could spew was ashes. "My father's death wasn't an accident," she said shakily.
Dinah shrugged. "I couldn't have him exposing my experiments and ruining everything before I found Richie a cure."
Blossom had been the Professor's emergency contact, the first one at the hospital waiting while there was still hope, they could still save him. She'd been the one they broke the news to, the one who had to call her sisters and explain to them that their father was gone, and he was never coming back. The one he had called late one evening just days earlier and asked to come home, there was something strange going on in Townsville and he wanted her sharp opinion, but she was neck deep in a billion dollar merger at work and put him off—next time, maybe next time. But there was no next time. There would never be a next time.
"You." Blossom imagined hailstorms and snowdrifts, the power of gods and monsters wrapped up in a pretty little girl package. "You!"
"Dane," Dinah said.
The bizarre response meant nothing to Blossom, except the pain that ripped into her back like demons. Someone screamed, but it wasn't her. More tears drenched her cheeks, but they weren't hers either.
"Blossom!" Brick's arms used to be so strong when they held her, but now they slipped as he clung to her and she bled out all over the floor.
Somewhere far away, Princess was fighting. Yellow clashed with white as she traded blows with another Super soldier. "No escape this time," he rattled like an unholy wind. His mask was gone and exposed his misshapen jaw, lipless and ghastly, nothing but a skull and skin and two burning eyes that knew nothing but his master's command.
"Blossom, f-fuck," Brick said, shaking like he was the one dying in his arms instead of her. "Hold on, come on."
Blossom tried to speak, but Dane's energy blast must have punctured a lung. All that came up was a sputtering cough as she watched him cry for her.
He fished something out of his pocket and pressed it to her lips. "Open your mouth. You have to drink all of it."
Something cold touched her tongue, and she coughed again. Everything smelled like bodies and blood.
"Goddamnit." Brick wiped the viscous excess from her lip and downed the rest of the vial's contents himself.
Blossom cried out in pain when he lifted her up and pressed his mouth to hers in a kiss that literally drowned. The bitter agent trickled down her throat so slowly she was sure it froze on its way down. Her head spun and her back screamed and her heart ached for him even now as she fell to pieces in his arms.
"I'm sorry," Brick said in a small, broken voice that cut deeper than her demons. "I was wrong, and I'm so sorry for all of it."
"Kill her!" Dinah screamed somewhere far away as Dane bludgeoned Princess with abandon.
Princess needed help, and Brick was just sitting here with Blossom when he could have been helping her. Blossom tried to speak, to get him moving before her fate could befall him next, but her voice was choked, and her throat was frozen shut. Brick's hand on her cheek was so warm that it melted her tears.
"Please," he said, his red eyes more stunning than ever when they were full of heartache and her. "You're more than enough. You're everything that's ever mattered, and I can't…"
The agent he'd given her turned her blood to ice, heavy and solid as it crept through her like a vengeful frost. Her gasping breath misted with each rattling, wet exhale, and soon she was so numb she couldn't feel the pain anymore. She raised a hand to his face and marveled at all he couldn't hold back anymore.
"Blossom," he pleaded with her.
She rose, and the cold rose with her. "Brick," she said, clear as moonlight. Power bonded to her bones and quickened her pulse. The empty vial of raw Chemical X Brick had given her lay empty on the floor in a pool of her blood she didn't need anymore. "Thank you."
Dane flung Princess into a taxidermy Stegosaurus Monster display. "Had enough?" he taunted.
Blossom materialized before him and hauled him up by his Kevlar vest. "No, but you have," she said, and then blew her ice breath directly into his hollow face. White power fizzled in his hands as preternatural frost coated his body and froze him solid. Blossom dropped him on the floor and turned to find Dinah with an AX gun leveled at Princess.
"Stop, or I'll shoot!" Dinah threatened.
Blossom hesitated, and Dinah fired anyway. Princess, beaten and battered from the hard fight with Dane, was too slow to dodge the AX dart that nicked her bare arm, and her knees gave out. Blossom was too stunned to move, but Brick was already there and caught Princess before she could crack her head open on the edge of the broken display.
"Ow," Princess groaned.
Brick plucked the dart from her arm. "Welcome back to mortality."
She struggled to stand on wobbly legs. "Fuuuuuck that."
Satisfied that they were both safe, Blossom gave Dinah her full attention. The river roared its fiery wrath behind her, and her white dress was sooty and torn from the fight, but those blue eyes were ever bright as stars, far away and pitiless with false light. She turned her AX gun on Blossom, but they both knew that was an empty threat.
"You're finished, Dinah." Blossom's voice carried over the snapping tongues of fire and filled the cavernous room. Floating off the ground, she briefly imagined the world from Dinah's perspective, so small down there on the ground. "We both know you'll never be quick enough to shoot me. Surrender."
Something in Dinah's porcelain face warped into an unrecognizable sneer, almost feral. "Look at you, literally looming over me like some kind of queen on her throne. I will never surrender to the likes of you."
"Yes, you will." Blossom summoned pink power to her fists, and it felt so good she could have smiled. "But first, I want to know why."
"How like a self-proclaimed god to make everything about her."
Blossom fired her blasters so close to Dinah that anyone else would have surely leaped out of the way in a fright. But Dinah stood her ground, daring. "Tell me why. Why did you do it? For your father? He was a psychopath and a human trafficker. He deserved worse than his fate."
"I agree," Dinah said. Blossom balked, and she noticed. "My father was cruel and selfish, but he was brilliant. He just happened to live in a world where brilliance alone will never be enough so long as people like you exist unchecked."
"People like us didn't manufacture little girls and sell them to the highest bidders like fucking Beanie Babies, you stupid bitch," Brick said.
Dinah turned her dead-eyed stare on Brick. "No. People like you hoard power to yourselves, even at the expense of innocent lives. What do you care? My father was just a man, and my son is just a child. What's another meaningless death to your ilk?"
"Oh my god, shut up," Princess said. "Blossom, seriously, put a cork in her and let's get the hell out of here."
Blossom clenched her fists. As good as it might feel to make Dinah pay for her crimes in blood, that would not bring justice to the people she had harmed. They deserved to face their tormenter as much as Blossom did.
"Dinah Hardly," Blossom said, "I'm turning you over to the Citiesville Police. You're going to spend the rest of your life atoning for your despicable crimes."
Dinah burst out laughing. From her purse, she pulled out a black, cloth case. "I don't think so." From the case, she selected a large, hypodermic needle filled with black liquid.
"No, wait!" Princess said, her voice strangely panicked.
Before Blossom could make sense of what was happening, Dinah stabbed her arm with the hypo and drained it completely. She staggered on unsteady feet and raised her stuck hand toward Blossom with a ghoulish grin. "Now, a taste of your own medicine." Black veins popped on her arm from the epicenter of the injection and spread across her pale skin like a shadow, and she began to shake. "What is this—" With a strangled cry, Dinah crumpled to the floor and clutched her arm, now swollen to nearly twice its size.
"She's becoming a monster," Brick said. "Why the fuck would she—"
"I-I switched her X! I didn't think she'd—"
Dinah's screaming cut Princess off, and Blossom rushed to her side. But Dinah smacked her hands away, her pale eyes hateful even in her madness. "Kill her!" she commanded.
Blossom whirled, but she was too late. Dane, half frozen and barely standing, fired his laser eye beams at Princess in a desperate effort to take her down, but Brick grabbed her waist and spun her around out of harm's way—
"Brick!" Princess screamed.
The attack hit him in a vital region, cut through skin and muscle like a hot knife through butter, and down he went. Blossom did not even register moving. One moment she was trying to contain Dinah, and then next she'd caught Brick before he could hit the floor and held him in her arms as Princess loomed over them both. Dane expired where he stood, his last attack too much of a strain for his mangled body to overcome.
"No, no, no!" Blossom broke down as she settled Brick prostrate on the floor.
"Brick," Princess sobbed openly as she ripped part of her skirt and jammed it over the bleeding hole in his belly. "You motherfucker!"
Brick choked on his breath, and Blossom laid a hand on his forehead. His skin was febrile and sticky, and he shivered under her touch.
"Blossom!" Dinah roared behind them. She had grown to three times her normal height and ballooned into a confluence of bones sweating poison. She left a trail of it in her wake, and where it flooded too close to the fire, it caught like kerosene and released a putrid, purple smoke. She tried to speak again, but with every passing second, she devolved into more beast than human.
"Go," Brick said, quaking in Blossom's arms. "End it."
Blossom didn't have a choice but to fight the monster Dinah had become before it destroyed the whole Gallery and them along with it. She closed her eyes and let out an agonized cry through gritted teeth, a futile lament for Brick's sacrifice and for the pieces of her that couldn't let him go, wouldn't let go.
The Dinah Monster gurgled, wet and eldritch, and ambled toward them on thick, clubby femurs. Its bright eyes were two weeping rifts in its ribbed body, and they narrowed on Blossom.
With no choice she cast Brick one last, forlorn look, summoned frost to her fists, and flew to meet the Dinah Monster head on.
Bubbles mashed the elevator call button, but it was taking a long time and every passing second was one second closer to something going deathly awry. The longer she spent down here in this devilish dungeon, the colder she became, as though some vile wind pumped in through the vents and gradually froze everyone in place before they could make their escape.
"Come on," Bubbles said, shifting her weight to help one of the more catatonic prisoners remain on her feet.
A low rumble reverberated in the pipes above, and Bubbles glanced up. There was nothing.
"What was that?" Danny asked. He managed to stand on his own and balanced an unconscious man on his good arm. Altogether, the group of survivors numbered only eight out of the twenty or so on Buttercup's list.
A frisson of dread slithered down Bubbles' spine. "Hopefully not what I think it is."
The elevator still had not arrived, and Butch and Buttercup were still in the back getting Brisa. For now, Bubbles was on her own to help these frightened people get to safety.
Come on, elevator, come on!
The rumbling grew louder, and everyone's eyes turned to the enormous central air vent just as it burst open and the Snake Monster felt through with a crash. Its truncated arms flailed uselessly at its sides, and ribbons of blood smeared its scaly body where the X plants had attacked it. When it roared, it exposed a tattered hole in its cheek where the Super guard it had eaten blasted through. How in the world it had escaped the evil ditches on Level Eight, Bubbles had no idea. But she knew it was her problem to deal with now.
"Get everybody out. I'll catch up with you," Bubbles said. She ran.
"Bubbles!" Danny called after her in a voice that broke like glass.
The Snake Monster had zeroed in on one of the researchers, who ran for his life into a cage and locked the door behind him. It smashed its huge maw against the bars, denting but not breaking them, as the researcher screamed.
"Hey! Over here!" Bubbles drew the beast's attention as she reached the center dissection table.
It heard her, and it turned its Plutonian eyes on her with such a vengeance that she was sure it remembered her.
"Oh crap," she squeaked, and took off at a full sprint.
The monster tore after her and lunged just as Bubbles leaped left out of its direct path. She avoided getting eaten, a definite plus, but the side of its head knocked her into a stainless-steel table and all the computer equipment mounted on top of it. Pain exploded in her back as she slid across the table and toppled onto the floor.
Disoriented and throbbing, Bubbles was slow to pull herself up and search for the Snake Monster. It had doubled back around and set its sights on Danny's group gathered near the elevator door.
"Oh no," Bubbles said as she staggered to her feet and ran after it, the pain but a memory. "Hey!"
The Snake Monster ignored her attempts to distract it. The damn elevator still hadn't arrived.
One, two, three.
"Bubbles!" Buttercup shouted behind her, but Bubbles didn't have time to bother with her sister when all those people were so close to surviving this hellish nightmare only to face the lion's maw.
Eyes on me!
Bubbles screamed with everything she had, and the floor in front of her ripped open like a wound. Sonic sound waves rippled the air and caught up to the Snake Monster with the force of a tornado. Its blue scales shivered, and its spine contorted under her power—her power, miraculously returned and just in time for the elevator to arrive.
The doors slid open, and a figure on fire stepped out. Light rose from him in electric blue bolts, and in his hands, he wielded twin power sabers.
"There you are," Boomer said, rising into the air as his power gathered around him in a maelstrom.
Bubbles watched him attack the Snake Monster like he had been waiting all his life for this fight. She clutched her throat, still raw from her Sonic Scream, just as Buttercup caught up to her.
"Holy shit, Boomer," Buttercup said, incredulous.
The Snake Monster rammed Boomer out of the air and sent him crashing through several lab tables.
"Boomer!" Bubbles ran to him, and Buttercup was right behind her.
He was fine of course, fully powered and vicious like she'd never seen him before. The power coming off him was the stuff of myths and legends, and she dared not get too close. Bloodshot blue eyes found her, and something in him softened. "Bubbles," he said, cracking, "you're alive."
She nodded and smiled through her tears. "So are you."
"I thought—I took out those Super guys and followed your path down, but Level Eight was…" He wouldn't look away from Bubbles, like a lost child who'd found his light after so long in the dark. It broke her heart to see him so shaken.
"We're okay, I promise," she said, wishing she could touch him but wary of the raw energy he was giving off without even thinking about it.
"Boomer, welcome back! Now kill that ugly fucker!" Buttercup said, already moving to give the beast a wide berth so she could draw its attention with gunfire.
Boomer's face twisted in fury as he caught sight of the beast that had hunted Bubbles, Buttercup, and Butch to the bottom of this malevolent pit. "My pleasure."
He took off, and Bubbles tried to fly after him, but she couldn't cut it. Faint sparks of power sparkled at her fingertips, but it wasn't enough to fire an energy blast. No matter; she needed to get Danny and the others topside.
"Sugar," Butch said. He jogged to catch up with her, Brisa slung over one shoulder and Richie over the other. "Ready to check out of this clusterfucked castle or what?"
Bubbles automatically reached for the unconscious Richie and cradled him to her. Brisa was conscious, but only barely. "Hell yeah."
A redheaded man in a lab coat had followed Butch and Buttercup out of the back room. He had a black messenger back slung over his shoulder and perspired heavily as he ran after Butch and Bubbles now.
An earsplitting crack rattled Bubbles to the bone: Boomer had stabbed the Snake Monster in the back of its head with his sabers, and blue lightning danced up and down its body. Somehow, it still wasn't dead.
"Just tear the whole damn head off!" Butch shouted at his brother.
Bubbles felt Boomer's eyes tracking her progress from above, and she picked up her pace as she clutched Richie to her chest.
"Daddy," Brisa moaned, struggling to stay awake as they made their mad dash to the elevator.
The beast flailed, and Buttercup fired her gun, but its tail smacked her against a wall and had her pinned there. She lost her gun, and she would soon lose her head.
"Buttercup!" Butch shouted.
Above, Boomer was busy with the head as he tried not to get eaten.
"Fight!" Bubbles screamed. "Buttercup, fight!"
Butch changed course to help Buttercup, but the creature convulsed again as Boomer stabbed it with another electric sword and it writhed right into Butch. It would have crushed him alongside Buttercup, but Brisa summoned her shield at the last second and saved them both.
"Daddy, I can't!" Brisa cried as she shook and gave her shield everything she had.
"You can! I'll help you!" Butch pushed against the little green bubble, and it began to grow.
Buttercup let out a shout as she pushed back against the tail with a strength that wasn't human. "Fuck off!"
The AX was wearing off, Bubbles was nearly at the elevator, and Boomer swooped in for the kill. Blue lightning exploded where he struck the Snake Monster's head, blinding. But before it could electrocute everyone else in the room, a wondrous wall of green light trapped and compressed it. Inside the enormous shield, the Snake Monster gave one final wail before it fell limp in a charred, smoking heap on the floor.
Butch, Brisa, and Buttercup released the shield, and the last of Boomer's thunder fizzled out. It was finally over.
"Bubbles." Boomer landed next to her, still sparking but no longer toxic. She hooked her free arm around his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth. It took him a second, but he wrapped her up in his arms and hugged her like he'd lost her. "Shit," he said shakily.
"Let's get out of here, please," she said, pulling him toward the elevator where Danny and the others were waiting.
Brisa slumped against Butch's shoulder and closed her eyes. "I wanna go home."
Buttercup was the last one in the elevator. She caught Bubbles' eye and returned her tired smile. "Yeah. Let's go home."
Mortality was a bitch and a half, but it had nothing on Princess Morbucks when she gave you her full and undivided attention.
"Don't move or you'll make it worse," she snapped as she pressured the hole in Brick's stomach with one hand and wiped her make-up-smeared face with the other. A streak of blood painted her cheek where she'd touched it. The sight turned Brick's stomach, and he tried to clean it off with his thumb. "Pressure, Brick! I need your help here."
He let Princess press his hand against his wound beneath hers. The bit of her dress they were using to staunch the bleeding was almost completely soaked through. The Dinah Monster rattled angrily, and Brick averted his gaze in time to see Blossom unload her pink blasters into its horned head at point-blank range. Poison sweat splashed the fire and made it roar.
"You're so fucking extra," Princess said as she struggled to tie his hoodie sleeves around his waist as tightly as she could in a crude tourniquet. "Jumping in front of that asshole's attack like that—what are you, some kind of wannabe Superhero now? Zero stars, don't quit your day job."
Brick's stomach felt like he'd hugged a sledgehammer, but even that couldn't stop him from grinning. She was such a mess. Tears and terror were a bad look for her, the worst, but he'd long ago learned to love her at her worst. "I couldn't let you die wearing Tom Ford. Chanel or bust."
"God, you have excellent taste." She sniffled, but the tears didn't stop. "Oh shit…"
Her voice sounded farther away. Distantly, Brick had a vague awareness of his blood leaving his body and that this should scare him, but Princess was safe and Blossom had her powers back, so all in all things could have been worse.
Blossom had managed to corner the Dinah Monster near the bank of the flaming red carpet, and she blasted it with her ice faster than the fire could melt it. As its poisonous sweat burned, the violet smoke it released clogged the Gallery in a haze so thick and potent that Brick began to cough. He couldn't stop himself from gasping as his abdominal muscles clenched in agony.
Princess covered her mouth. "We can't stay here, or we'll all suffocate! Blossom, what the hell are you doing?!"
Blossom towered over the Dinah Monster as it shook, mindless in its violence and careless of the fire at its back. The temperature in the Gallery plummeted as the frost on Blossom's fists crept up her arms, and she glowed pink. "Ending this."
She spiraled hard and fast, a blur of pastel power, right into the Dinah Monster's skeletal hands. Her force tipped the beast over the edge of the fire bank and plunged it into the heart of the preternatural flames. An abominable shriek filled the corners of the cavernous room where even the smoke had not yet reached. It slithered through the cracks in the stone and the hole in Brick's body, penetrating his bones with a numinous dread that had his teeth chattering in his skull. Within the fire's murky depths, only the Dinah Monster's charred, horned skull with its dead-light eyes peeked above the surface for a moment, before the rancid smoke swallowed it from sight.
Strong arms lifted Brick beneath his knees and shoulders, and he cried out. Blossom shouted something, and then they were moving, flying across the Gallery, over the swollen river of fire that was Dinah's resting place along with all the little girls she'd sucked dry. Brick was in and out, rising and falling with the tide of pain that nearly drowned him around every corner Blossom turned.
"Brick," she called his name, maybe.
"The elevator!" Princess said somewhere up ahead. "We have to go…"
It occurred to Brick that dying in Blossom's arms, carried around like an invalid, was not how he had envisioned his final moments. Then again, there were worse ways to go than in the arms of the woman he loved, knowing he'd saved her and his best friend. At least he'd done something right.
"Hey," he said.
There were tears in Blossom's beautiful eyes, and they evaporated to steam on his cheeks. "Brick, stay with me," she said. "I'll get you an X transfusion. You're going to be fine, just stay with me—"
"Unbelievable! Can't this elevator go any faster?!" Princess mashed buttons as they slowly ascended.
"Hey," he said again. He touched his fingers—itchy with his blood and hers—to her ash-smeared cheek. "You know, I…"
Blossom sniffled and shook her head. "Don't you dare. You don't get to be selfish."
He smiled. "I can do whatever I want, just…"
"Brick? Brick!"
As long as it's with you.
The elevator dinged, emergency sirens blared, and the last thing he remembered was the wind on his cheek and her voice calling his name.
Okay for real, who saw that final reveal coming? Let me know in the reviews!
Next time: FINAL CHAPTER. The gang reflects on everything that's happened, all they've lost, and what's left to carry forward.